News

The popularity of the iPod is putting pressure on the copy-protection business. CNet News reported yesterday that the most successful copy-protected CD to date, Contraband by Velvet Revolver, was the subject of many complaints from consumers who couldn’t play music from the CD on their iPod. According to the article, those complaints, and the continuing…

BOSTON, MASS. — An unknown group is urging Bostonians and hotel guests to boycott Macworld. The group is driving a large billboard trailer around the streets of downtown Boston around the convention center area asking people to “Say no to Macworld,” and to “save our jobs.” The billboard also urges people to call the Massachusetts…

[Authors Note: Owen and I are still behind in this series, but are working hard to catch up – Bryan] Jef Raskin is one of the most controversial figures in the Mac’s early days. Indeed, the Mac was originally his project, though the product envisioned by Mr. Raskin bore little resemblance to the computer that…

Being a market leader is tough – being a market leader in the music business is even tougher. Such is the position in which Apple finds itself with the iPod and the iTunes Music Store. Apple’s iPod claims 25% of the market for all digital music players, and a whopping 70% of all legal music…

Companies should consider banning portable storage devices such as Apple’s iPod from corporate personal computers because they can spread viruses or steal critical corporate data, according to the research company Gartner, Inc. The report, obtained by The Mac Observer and issued this week, does not recommend outright the banning of such devices from office environments,…

In a Federal Computer Weekly article about the new Army Xserve supercomputer cluster, an exec with Colsa, the company building the cluster, says that Apple’s Xserve is a superior computer. In the same article, an analyst with Illuminata, Inc. is quoted as saying that "Apple has decided to get fairly serious with servers." Those are…

   Show Bizness By now, many of you have made the altogether foolish decision to come here to Boston for Macworld Expo. And when I call this idea Foolish, I of course am saying nothing against the show itself. Macworld Expo promises to be a palace of delights as always — more on this Palace…

Australian newspaper the Herald Sun has published a very positive look at the iPod phenomenon. The paper heaps praise on Apple, Steve Jobs, the iPod, and the iTunes Music Store, including positive words from analysts and competitors alike. From the article: If ever a single device has had an impact on the mindset of consumers…

Mozilla.org has released minor updates to its standalone browser and mail clients, Firefox 0.9.1 and Thunderbird 0.7.1. The Thunderbird release includes a fix for an OS X issue involving profiles from version 0.6. No changes for Firefox 0.9.1 were explicitly noted. From the Thunderbird release notes: Fix for 0.7 not recognizing profiles whose directory path…

If you have a fancy new G5 and don’t want a monitor that goes with the now-discontinued Power Mac G4, you’re in luck. At this morning’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC), Steve Jobs introduced a new line of Cinema Displays featuring a thin-bezel aluminum case. The line of widescreen displays include a 20″ display, a 23″…

Could more next generation game consoles have more in common with Apple’s Power Macs than with x86 based PCs? According to a report in eWeek, IBM believes so, and is marshaling its resources to concentrate on delivering processors for a core set of customers. One well known customer of IBM current 970 processor line is…

Psst! Wanna know a secret? If it has anything to do with Apple, uttering those words to some Apple watchers would elicit such a torrent of Pavlovian-induced saliva you’d be wise to wear a rain slicker and hip-boots. So when some poor schmoe at Toshiba got a wee bit loose in the lips about the…

Apple has added a veritable slew of refurbished Macs, as well as "new and unopened" discontinued models at the Apple Store. The company has also updated the Hot Deals page for ClubMac and O’Reilly at the Macintosh Product Guide. The Mac Product Guide is a list of Mac compatible hardware and software products on the…

If you were trying to run a search in Google, read your Yahoo mail, or buy a Mac yesterday morning, you may have had a problem doing so. These sites and others were affected by a Denial of Service attack that ultimately brought down the Domain Name Service (DNS) server at Akamai that references those…

Mozilla.org has made available Thunderbird 0.7 RC, a release candidate for the next milestone version of its standalone email software. The release includes many improvements, such as better performance and a bugfix for OS X users to address a sleep-related crash. Also, clicking its Dock icon will now automatically open a new mail viewer window…

[Authors Note: Owen and I are still behind in this series, but are working hard to catch up – Bryan] This is a relatively calm week in the annals of Apple history. It was this week in 1981 that The Woz tied the knot with Candice Clark, a marriage that would last almost 6 years.…