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 | Apple denies late Leopard
Apple has denied reports that it has delayed the release of Mac OS X 10.5 'Leopard'.
Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg claims Apple has said Leopard is still scheduled to ship this spring "as they previously announced."
The denial follows a DigiTimes report last week which claimed the release of the new OS to have been delayed while the company applies support for Windows Vista to Mac OS X's Boot Camp feature, currently available in beta.
DigiTimes cited local sources who claimed the release of the OS to have beeen delayed until October.
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| Sir Elton John will release his entire catalogue through iTunes next week
Jonny Evans
Sir Elton John this morning revealed plans to make his entire catalogue of releases available exclusively through iTunes starting next week.
The entire catalogue of 400 tracks will be made available through the store starting 26 March, his artist management agents explained. The music will be available exclusively there until 30 April, when it will be made available through other music services.
The artist explained: "I've wanted my music to be available for digital download worldwide for some time, but I knew that the entire catalogue not just the hits needed care and attention to be released in this way. Now that it's happening, I'm pleased for the fans' sake. The world has certainly changed since Philips Records issued my first single on seven-inch vinyl 39 years ago this month."
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| Apple iTunes works to boost album sales
Apple has added a new feature designed to boost album sales at the iTunes Store, 'Complete My Album',
This service allows customers to turn individual tracks into a complete album at a reduced price by giving them a full 79 pence credit for every track they have previously purchased from that album.
Also My Alerts...
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| Microsoft ships Vista iPod fix
Microsoft has released several fixes for Windows Vista bugs, including one involving Apple's iPod.
The most prominent of the five-pack of patches is the one that prevents data on iPods from being corrupted if users select Safely Remove Hardware from the system tray to eject the player. That command is what most Windows users call on before unplugging a USB device.
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| Top 10 Apple products which flopped
Apart from phenomenal products like the iPod, iMac and Macbooks, Apple in its 30 year old history has churned out super flop products too. Here is a list of 10 products in reversing order from Apple which fizzled in the market.
No 10 - Apple Cyberdog
Apple's to answer to Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator was the Cyberdog an Internet suite developed to work on the Mac OS. Introduced in Feb 1996 in beta stage, Cyberdog was an OpenDoc-based suite of Internet applications, including email and news readers, a web browser and address book management components, as well as drag and drop FTP. The components could be reused and embedded in other documents by the user. However Cyberdog was a memory hog and sucked up more memory than both the web browser and mail applications in other suites. Also saved documents were not viewable from applications which did not support OpenDoc's Brento format and as web standards evolved Cyberdog became obsolete. It was replaced a year later in May 1997 with Internet Explorer for Mac as the default browser till Safari made debut in October 2003.
No 9 - Taligent
Apple joined forces with IBM (really surprising) in 1988 to develop the next generation operating system to replace Mac OS. In 1992, Taligent Inc. was formed as Apple-IBM joint venture to complete the software codenamed Pink, an ambitious object-oriented operating system. The only product it shipped was CommonPoint which comprised more than 100 object-oriented frameworks, providing developers with a powerful platform-independent model that supported interactive collaboration. By 1995 Apple did not have an OS capable of running CommonPoint and by the end of 1995 it became a wholly owned subsidy of IBM which was later dissolved in 1998.
Source
No 8 - Apple EWorld
In 1994 Apple partnered with AOL to develop EWorld which was intuitive and easy to use and included services like email (eMail Center), news, and a bulletin board system (Community Center). Users of the service were referred as 'EPeople'. The service was heavily GUI dependent was based around a "town hall" theme where each of the serviceís branches were individual "buildings". The town hall metaphor made eWorld simple to access and provided users with a strong sense of community. However Apple kept the prices very high and did not advertise the product. It came preinstalled on new Macintosh's but was buried away several folders deep on a default installation which majority of the customers could not find. After 2 years on March 31 1996 the service was officially shut down,
Source
No 7 - Apple Pippin
Apple Pipin was the technology for a multimedia player marketed by Apple, it was powered by a 66-MHz PowerPC 603e processor,had a 14.4kbps modem and ran a cut-down version of the Mac OS. Apple's aim was to create an inexpensive computer to play CD-based multimedia titles and mainly games, however the timing couldn't be worst as it was released in a market already dominated by Sony Playstation, Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64. Only 42,000 of these ill fated devices were sold before a silent death.
Source
No 6 - 20th Anniversary Macintosh
To mark the company's 20th anniversary Apple released the TAM (Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh) in May 1997. At a time when CPU speed was still measured in Megahertz the TAM was pretty futuristic, it had a 12 inch TFT-LCD monitor (800 x 600), 250 Mhz processor, ATI 3D Rage II video chipset and ATI 3D Rage II video chipset. It had a vertically mounted 4X CD-ROM drive and Bose speakers with a sub woofer which doubled as a power supply. The TAM ran on Mac OS 9.1 and had a 2 GB hard drive, it was discontinued in March 1998, less than a year from launch due to the huge $7,499 price tag.
Source
No 5 - Motorola ROKR
Technically speaking the iPhone is not Apple's first cell phone, in 2005 it partnered with Motorola for the ROKR phone. As with any Apple product it was widely expected, it featured an MP3 player with an interface similar to the iPod interface and allowed users to playback music purchased from iTunes store. The phone had decent specs in its times - 512 MB memory, Bluetooth, bright display and Micro SD card for memory expansion. It still flopped mainly due to awefully slow transfer rates compared to dedicated music players and a firmware which limited only one hundred songs to be loaded at any time.
Source
No 4 - Macintosh TV
The limited edition Macintosh TV introduced in 1993 was one of only a few Macs to come in black, it came with a cable-ready TV tuner card, and included a CD-ROM drive. The Macintosh TV was essentially a Performa 520 which could switch its built-in 14" Sony Trinitron CRT from being a computer display to a cable-ready television. It had a 32 Mhz processor, 4 MB RAM and 160 MB hard drive. Reasons for its failure were its inability display television feeds in desktop window and mediocre graphical performance.
No 3 - Macintosh Portable
The Macintosh Portable was Apple's first portable computer, launched in 1989 it was powered by a Motorola 68000 processor at 16 Mhz and had 1 MB of RAM (expandable to 8 Mb). It featured a black and white active-matrix LCD screen and a full keyboard. However the Lead acid batteries added to the bulk, it weighed in at 15.8 pounds (7.2 kilograms) and was a bit bigger than a briefcase. Other than the mammoth size also in question was the $6,500 price tag which lead to the doom of the Macintosh Portable.
No 2 - Apple Lisa
Way back in 1983 Apple released the Lisa one of the first commercial personal computers to have a GUI and a mouse. It was powered by a Motorola 68000 CPU at 5 MHz and 1 MB of RAM. The Lisa operating system featured cooperative (non-preemptive) multitasking and virtual memory, then extremely advanced features for a personal computer. The use of virtual memory coupled with a fairly slow disk system made the system performance seem sluggish at times. One of the main reasons of Lisa's failure was its astonishing price of $ 9,995 dollars ($ 21,500 in Feb 2007 dollars).
No 1 - Apple Newton
Released much ahead of its time in 1993, the Newton (official name was MessagePad) was touted as the future of computing. It would be the first in a new line of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). The Messagepad was the first pen based system running on the Newton Intelligence OS. It was powered by a ARM 610 processor at 20 MHz and 640k RAM / 4 MB ROM. It sported a reflective black and white touchscreen with a resolution of 336 x 240, PCMCIA card slot for expansion and Infrared port for communication between MP's. The main capabilities of the device was its communications and organizational features. It could fax messages, send e-mail, had applications to organize names, dates, phone numbers, etc, printing, wireless paging and perhaps the most important of all it could supposedly read and recognize handwritten words on the screen. The Newton's astronomical $ 1000 price tag, poor handwriting recognition, large size (did not fit any pocket) and the "Doonesbury" comic strips by Gary Trudeau pushed it towards failure, however the Apple Newton was produced for six years.
Source
Honorable Mention - Apple Puck Mouse
Introduced with the original iMac in 1998, it has only one button but figuring out where that button was and orienting the mouse without looking down created an ergonomic nightmare. Apple did a small indentation in a later version so you could figure out where to put your finger, but you still had to find the indentation. The Puck Mouse was discontinued a few years later.
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| New Petition names - thanks chaps!
46.
Lewis Moon
Jaguars are cool! - Love Macs, Love Big Cats:P - Good idea btw
45.
Craig Carver
I LOVE MACS!!!!
44.
Brian daws
we all deserve to live our lives without fear
43.
Zaid Al-Kindi
42.
Scott Harris
41.
Simon Davey
40.
Ivor Cave
Nice idea Will.
39.
Ian Crawford
good luck will
38.
Martin Crockatt
37.
Ric McCorriston
I like Tigers :)
36.
Stuart Jackson
35.
Stuart Murray Walton
34.
Tom Katt
Do the right thing, Apple!
33.
Adam
Great idea, hope apple aproves of it!
32.
Darren Hendley
31.
David Hopkinson
30.
Issy Paitence
29.
Dave James
About time somone did this, well done Will
28.
Andrew Lord
27.
Peter Miles
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 | Uncle Mac's Siesta - Getting a cheap Mac!
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| p.s. that would be a good feature.. How to get a cheeper mac. As far as i know both teachers and journalists get decent discount at the mac shop and we have our own web pages to buy from online.. you can even buy for friends. Who else gets decent discounts i wonder..?
From Christian - Documentally
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| Teacher and Student discount...
Who is Eligible To Purchase?
The following education individuals are eligible to purchase through the Apple Store for Education Individuals:
- a teacher, lecturer, tutor or other supervisor of students at a UK education establishment
- a student aged 18 and over with a valid student card, attending, or accepted into, a UK education establishment
- a parent purchasing on behalf of their child who is a student currently attending or accepted into a UK Higher or Further Education establishment
Purchase Quantity.
Staff, students and parents purchasing from the Apple Store for Education Individuals will be allowed to purchase the following quantities of product per academic school year:
a. Desktop: One (1) may be purchased per academic year
b. Mac mini: One (1) may be purchased per academic year
c. Notebook: One (1) may be purchased per academic year
d. Display: A maximum of two (2) may be purchased per academic year
e. Software: A maximum of two (2) per software title may be purchased per academic year
f. iPod: there is no limit on the quantity of iPod purchases per academic year
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| Normal - Macbook £749 - Student £704
Normal - iMac £679 - Student £639
Normal - Mac Pro £1699 - Student £1563
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| Buy a new Mac and trade-in your old equipment. Let us help you make the most of your investment with our special trade-in offer for businesses.
Please enter your contact details in the form below, along with a brief description of your used hardware. One of our partners will contact you to discuss your requirements.
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| Apple offers affordable pro-Mac leasing deal
Apple offers low-cost leasing deal on pro-Macs for business and education users
Jonny Evans
With Adobe's CS3 suite out of the starting gates, Apple has introduced a no-cost leasing deal for professional Mac users wishing to upgrade their kit.
The offer is subject to credit clearance and is only available to business and education customers who make a qualifying purchase from a participating authorised reseller, the online Apple Store for Education Institutions or Small and Medium Business.
Between 23 March and 31 May, the company is offering customers the chance to lease a Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, or Apple Display plus software and accessories for no more than the recommended retail price, with payments spread across two years.
A cited example on Apple's website shows that £2,400-worth of Mac, equipment and software would be repayable on a quarterly basis (eight payments) at £300 per payment.
An additional £99 charge will be levied if a user decides to lease the equipment beyond the two-year period, when further rental payments would also be required.
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 | Desert Island Applications
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| From Peter Williams
Hi Will,
You mentioned in your show listeners recommending five applications each; this would be my pick (all universal binary):
1 - SpellCatcher is far more than a simple spell checker. It’s available in a variety of languages, including British English, so it doesn’t flag a spelling error every time you do something like insert the letter U into “color”.
Some other features are:
Spell checks as you type.
Auto correction of common spelling errors (with a build-in, user-definable, glossary of over a 1,000 words).
Able to setup auto-completion (you could type BM, for example, every time you want to see “British Mac”).
Document (or selection) word count and readability analysis.
Captures all keystrokes, in case of lost data and stores them for a week before auto-deleting.
Built-in dictionary and thesaurus.
Available from http:// www.rainmakerinc.com. It comes in two flavours: the lite one is $29.95 (just over £15) and $39.95 (under £21) for the full version.
2 - CopyWrite is a word processor for anyone who has to write much more than a simple letter.
A CopyWrite projects (as they’re called in the application) actually functions like a folder containing any number of documents. If, for example, you were writing a novel you could have a document for each chapter, one for the bio of each character, plus research, etc.
Any document can be assigned a category (chapter, research or plot for example) and a status (new, first draft, final, etc.) both user definable.
And versions can be locked and unlocked later) for safety whilst rewrites are being done in a new version.
Full-screen mode (user definable text and background colours) to eliminate any distractions.
Undo up to twenty levels.
Auto-save between half a second and ten seconds, user definable.
On-screen word count.
And much more.
Available from http://www.bartastechnologies.com/products/copywrite/ at £16.36 (around $32 for American listeners).
3 - NetNewsWire is an RSS newsreader (or, why buy newspapers?:-) ). It comes with a lot of feeds to which you can add your own.
All the major websites (BBC, Sky News, Digg.com, etc.) have their own RSS feeds and you can have them updated anywhere from 30 minutes to twelve hours, or do it manually.
NetNewsWire is also a browser, that the web pages can be opened in. It can also be used to download video and podcasts.
At http://www.newsgator.com/NGOLProduct.aspx?ProdID=NetNewsWire for $29.95 (just over £15).
4 - Default Folder X attaches itself to the open/save dialogue ox and adds huge flexibility to it, including:
Pick a default folder for opens and saves.
Designate favourite folders easy selection.
Keyboard short-cuts for each folder.
Create, rename, create zip archives or trash files and folders from inside the dialogue box.
Remembers previously used folders.
Available from http://www.stclairsoft.com/DefaultFolderX/index.html for $34.95 (just under £18)
5 - AppZapper is a one-trick pony but it does that one-trick very well.
Drop any application onto AppZapper and it will show it and all associates files with check marks beside them. One click deletes all marked items.
From http://www.appzapper.com/ for $12.95 (under £7).
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| Transferring from old Mac to new...
Will
Just a quick question. I don't know whether you could feature it on the podcast. I can't be the only Mac user who doesn't know how to do this.
My old ibook is creaking, so I'm going to buy a new one, I'll probably wait till 10.5 comes out.
My question is how do I get all the stuff I did on my old Mac, for example my itunes library, my emails - I use Mail - my ical appointments etc over to the new machine?
I back up using .mac and had assumed I could just upload all the stuff onto my new mac. Is this correct?
But what about Mail? How do I transfer my emails over from the .mac to the application on my machine?
I thought this might make a feature for the podcast, because a lot of us, I assume, will be tempted to buy new machines when 10.5 hits the shelves.
Thanks for featuring Hornby in the British Icons section.
What about Roberts Radios, Chicken Korma and Jenny Agutter as potential subjects? All things that make me proud to be British!
As Terry Thomas would say, Good Show.
Yours
W
Will Mapplebeck§
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| Hi Will,
Ahh - one I can answer! Here's how...
Mail and Address Book.
To back up mailboxes and addresses, make copies of:
• The Mail folder, located in the Library folder of your home folder.
• The file com.apple.mail.plist, located in the Preferences folder of your Library folder. This file stores the preferences you set in Mail Preferences.
• The folder AddressBook, located in the Application Support folder of your Library folder. The folder AddressBook contains the information in your address book, which is used by both Address Book and Mail.
Then reverse the process on your new machine.
iTunes
To create backup CDs or DVDs:
1. Choose File > "Back Up to Disc" and then select your options.
2. Insert a blank disc (CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, or DVD-RW).
3. Click Back Up.
4. iTunes burns the number of items that fit on one disc, and then asks you to insert subsequent discs to continue burning the remaining files. Don't eject a disc while a backup is in progress.
Although you also need to back up the Itunes Music Library.xml and iTunes Library file too.
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| Boot Camp question from Pete
hey will, have to say the pod cast is great. I bought a new mac book pro 2.16 core2duo about 2 months ago and can't believe how good it is. however i'm an architect and use autocad, so need to install a version of windows on the mac with boot camp.
My first question to you is, should i install the beta version of bootcamp and install autocad ( even thought it isn't supported by apple) or wait until Leopard is released? and secondly, before i install anything i want to buy an external hard drive. There are so may to choose from, are there any you would recommend? I read the G-Drives, WD book, and Lacie drives are all good!
Thanks for your time
Pete
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| Apple and non-HD TVs... from Darryl - Standard TV answer!
Hi Will,
I can't offer an answer about the AppleTV's ability to work with non-HD televisions....
However the topic has been touched upon several times on Adam Christianson's MacCast podcast and is currently receiving quite a bit of debate on the MacCast website ( http://www.maccast.com ).
Based on the various comments on the MacCast website it looks like no one is saying conclusively that the AppleTV will never be able to work with a non-HD television.
However using the AppleTV with non-HD televisions doesn't seem to be officially supported at the moment and no one (on the MacCast website anyway) seems to be saying for definite that it will work either.
The answer coming from the MacCast website seems be that getting an AppleTV to work with a non_HD television is a definite maybe!
not sure if that's of any help or not,
Darryl
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| From Christiane - lovely bit of parody!
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| Roberts is a global consumer electronics limited company based in Yorkshire, England. It has been producing radios for over 70 years. Initially the company only traded in the United Kingdom, but now exports worldwide. The company has been granted three Royal warrants in its own right, and one via the purchase of Dynatron in 1981.
For many years the company's products were the only radios permitted in UK prisons (mainly because their cases could be easily opened to check for contraband). Specific MW/LW-only models were designed for this market.
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