Apple hits milestone billion App Store downloads As if by magic, the billionth mark was reached at 10pm UK time. On the dot. Nick Spence As predicted, Apple has hit the billion App Store downloads target almost two weeks after the countdown began. As if by magic, the billionth mark was reached at 10pm British Summer Time. On the dot. The clock began counting down, rather up, on Friday 10 April, with a bag of Apple swag, including a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card, up for grabs as extra incentive to get downloading. A message now reads: "The Billion App Countdown promotion has ended. Please come back to this page soon to see who won." The download target included paid and free apps from the iTunes Store, with the Top 20 in each category revealed by Apple. The App Store currently has more than 35,000 apps available for download.

			Apple makes Fortune 100 for first time in 15 years In at 71, up from 103 the previous year on Fortune list Dan Moren Macworld.com Apple’s long been highly-ranked in a number of business-related lists, but on Monday, Fortune announced that the company had jumped into the Fortune 100 list for the first time since 1994, coming in 71st place. That’s a 32 spot improvement on last year, when it ranked just outside of the crème de la crème at 103. The Fortune 500 is the magazine’s ranking of the largest corporations in the US based on their gross revenue (and adjusted for certain taxes). Despite long being a member of the prestigious Fortune 500, the last time Apple made it into the Fortune 100, the world was a much different place. The US was only in its first-year of the Bill Clinton presidency, Schindler’s List had taken home Best Picture, and Apple had only just started releasing computers with PowerPC processors, running Mac OS System 7. Steve Jobs wouldn’t return to the company for another five years. It seems a little hard to believe that the company never made it back into the Fortune 100 after Jobs re-took the helm, but clearly his impact plays a major part into helping Apple reach this point. Several of Apple’s competitors are also holding spots in the Fortune 100, including Hewlett-Packard at nine, Dell at 33, and Microsoft at 35. Google ranked 117th. This year’s list was topped by Exxon-Mobil and Wal-Mart, which swapped places from last year: even in tough economic times, you can apparently count on gas companies and retail giants to bring home the bacon.

			Microsoft suffers first sales decline in history Falling PC sales, netbook sales, blamed for revenue shortfall Eric Lai Computerworld Microsoft's Windows profits fell for the third quarter in the row, the company reported on Thursday, while profits from its Office productivity suite fell for the second straight quarter. Overall sales for the company's Q3 were $13.6 billion, down 6 per cent from the same period last year - the first sales decline in Microsoft's history. No relief is expected next quarter, said Microsoft's CFO during a conference call after the fiscal Q3 earnings were released. But one analyst said Microsoft's sales may start picking up again by year's end, boosted by corporate renewals. Operating income for the Windows client division was $2.5 billion in the third quarter ending March 31, down 19 per cent from the year before. Operating income in the Microsoft Business Division, of which the majority of the revenue comes from sales of Office, fell 8 per cent year over year to $2.9 billion. In its earning release and an accompanying PowerPoint presentation, Microsoft blamed falling sales of PCs to businesses for the Windows shortfall, combined with lower profits per PC on the consumer side with fast-rising netbooks, which use the less profitable Windows XP. On Office, Microsoft cited slumping computer sales, including falling sales of Apple Macs. "I didn't see any trends at the end of the quarter that would encourage me to think that we have hit the bottom," Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell said. "We expect broadly the same trends in [fiscal] Q4 as we had with this Q3." However, Matt Rosoff, an analyst with the independent firm Directions on Microsoft, predicts Windows and Office sales will pick up in the new fiscal year. He said that enterprises, motivated by the upcoming Windows 7 and Office 2010, will start re-signing their volume-licence agreements. Windows 7's expected release later this year will also likely result in a "pretty good bump up in retail upgrade sales" among consumers who are now holding onto Windows XP or using Vista, but who are eager to upgrade, Rosoff said. "Windows Vista was received poorly enough and 7 is getting good enough reviews that I think there will be a lot of consumers doing in-place upgrades [to Windows 7]," he said. Despite consistently poor reviews of Vista from its launch, Microsoft's revenues and profits for Windows did not start falling until late last year, as the recession and the rise of low-cost netbooks took their toll. During its Q2 earnings call, when it announced 5,000 layoffs, the company's operating income for Windows and its Microsoft Business Division fell 13 per cent and 2 per cent, respectively. Income for its Windows client OS also fell 4 per cent year-over-year in its fiscal Q1, which ended on Sept. 30, 2008.

			Twitter app Tweetie for Mac released Tweetie features a unique UI with separate sections for your friends’ timeline, replies and mentions David Chartier Macworld.com Last week I took a first look at Tweetie for Mac, a Twitter client from atebits that shares a name with its slightly older, but still-just-as-hot iPhone cousin. On Monday, Tweetie for Mac 1.0 was been released to the public in both free and paid versions. For a short refresher, Tweetie is a fairly full-featured Twitter app that sits quite well between long-time incumbent Twitterrific and the everything-plus-a-kitchen-sink challengers like TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop. Tweetie features a unique UI with separate sections for your friends’ timeline, replies and mentions, direct messages, and a search panel that can be torn off into a separate window. You can easily dig through conversation chains by double-clicking tweets, and clicking users’ icons will display their profile with things like recent tweets and follower/following stats. There is a keyboard shortcut for almost everything, and you can even close the main window to avoid being distracted by your friends while still tweeting with the separate compose window. Multi-account support is also present, making Tweetie a great choice for those with multiple personalities, a spoof account or two, or a business identity to run. I beta tested Tweetie for a couple weeks, and it is my new default Twitter client. Tweetie is fast and provides a fun amount of UI polish and flair, offering a lot of productive Twitter power so I can tweet and get back to what I should be doing (yes, I just said “Twitter” and “productive” in the same sentence). Tweetie requires Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, and you can download a free, full-functional, ad-supported copy of Tweetie for Mac now. A license that gets rid of the ads costs $14.95, around £10, through 4 May, after which the price increases to $19.95, around £13.

			Deck of Secrets launches DRINK. London iPhone app New iPhone guide to London's most stylish bars Nick Spence City-guide publisher Deck of Secrets has launched DRINK. London, an iPhone application that aims to guide you round the best bars in London. According to Deck of Secrets, the app is written by industry professionals and DRINK. London promises insider info on London's most stylish bars, a where to go guide to impress partners, prospective partners, friends and business contacts. The experts reviews are supplied by Ed Sullivan, the former Drinks Correspondent for the Evening Standard, Robbie Bargh of the Gorgeous Group, designers of bars and restaurants, and Hannah Sharman-Cox who works with Diffords Guides. The iPhone GPS can prioritise the closest bars in the guide, and choosing a venue shows you pictures inside and the information profile of the bar. Users then are offered the chance to call the venue, email a friend to invite them to the venue, add the venue to your address book, with a picture of the bar, or visit the venue's Web site. According to Deck of Secrets, it also works with Google Maps, to provide directions to the bar from your current location. Deck of Secrets says new venues will be added when they open up and downloadable updates created. Reviews are a 100 per cent independent, bars and venues don't pay to be included and all venues are selected purely on their merits. Available from the Apple iTunes App Store DRINK costs £2.39 and requires the iPhone 2.0 Software Update.

			Voice Recognition included in iPhone OS 3.0 Voice control features will bring the iPhone up to speed Brennon Slattery PC World Another hidden feature has been discovered in the latest beta of iPhone OS 3.0, this time in the form of voice recognition and voice synthesis. The software is nicknamed Jabbler and will be built into the SpringBoard application, the software that controls the home screen, launches other applications, and will be the basis of the new Spotlight search feature. Jabbler will likely have voice functionality similar to the software bundled with the latest iPod Shuffle, i.e. a computerized voice reading off playlists and other textually-based content. Sources close to iPhone OS 3.0 told Ars Technica of this advancement, but it has yet to be confirmed by official Apple sources. Since the voice software was built into the latest iPod shuffle, and Apple tends to carryover advancements into new products (like the "shake to shuffle" feature officially announced for iPhone OS 3.0 that appeared on the latest iPod Nano), all signs indicate this rumor is true. The ability to control voice features via the iPhone headset is also rumoured. Voice control features will bring the iPhone up to speed with many other phones that come with voice-dialing, and will broaden the playing field with a voice search function like the Google app. It'll also be great for turn-by-turn GPS navigation, eBook reading capabilities, and on the spot note-taking.

			Apple dismisses netbook trend Apple executive says netbooks have "junky" hardware Agam Shah An Apple executive on Wednesday lashed out against netbooks, calling the small and light laptops unusable. Netbooks have cramped keyboards, small screens, "junky" hardware and bad software, said Tim Cook, chief operating officer of Apple, during a fiscal second-quarter earnings conference call on Wednesday. They don't offer the "consumer experience" that Apple wants to offer through its Macintosh hardware. "It's not a space ... we're interested in," Cook said. "It's a stretch to call them a personal computer." People who want to use e-mail or surf the Web can instead buy products such as Apple's iPhone or an iPod Touch, Cook said. Netbooks are small and low-cost laptops that are designed for people to run basic applications such as Web surfing. Netbooks are priced between $300 and $500, with screens anywhere between 7 inches and 12 inches. Apple's cheapest laptop costs $999, and it would rather focus on offering quality through its Mac products, Cook said. In the fiscal second quarter, Apple's desktop sales rebounded with new products, and its lower-end laptop sales picked up as prices dropped. But despite those gains, Apple saw its overall PC shipments fall. It sold 2.22 million Macintosh computers, a 3 per cent decline from a year earlier, the company said on Wednesday. "We feel great about our performance, and the pipeline looks fantastic," Cook said. Apple reacted strongly to netbooks because the increased adoption of that type of product is annoying them, said Roger Kay, founder and president of Endpoint Technologies Associates. "If they didn't bother about [netbooks], they wouldn't comment about it," Kay said. Netbooks may not be ideal today, but there is plenty of room for them to mature, he said. "They get in as a poor cousin like any disruptive technology, but the quality will improve," Kay said. Netbooks are already being considered the bright spot in an otherwise tumbling PC industry. In the first quarter of 2009, which roughly corresponds to the quarter Apple reported on Wednesday, worldwide PC shipments totaled 63.4 million, according to IDC. That was down 7.1 per cent from a year earlier. Some vendors, including Hewlett-Packard and Acer, saw shipments grow, partly due to sustained demand for netbooks, according to IDC. Apple doesn't worry about the ebb and flow of PC shipments, but wants to develop a reputation around quality of products, Cook said. "Cycles come and cycles go," Cook said. "What we are about is making the best computers in the world."

			Plan 9 from outer space

			http://britishmac.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=616&page=1

			Forum Cat: I have recently been taking a mild interest in astronomy. I am starting to learn some really cool stuff. Now you guys may be well up on the subject but for me every new fact seems to boggle my mind. This is one example. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7774287.stm I seems that there is a Black Hole at the centre of our galaxy. How cool is that? It has been measured to be four million times bigger than the Sun. Light from it's vicinity has takenm 27,000 years to reach us. How cool is that?

			Hi Guys, Has anyone heard the episode of radiolab's podcast called 'DIY Universe', if not I strongly recommend it: Blog Clicky or MP3 Download Or also take a look at there whole podcast here: iTunes Clicky Alex

			CyberChimp: If you like Stellarium you'll probably like Celestia as well. It's a little bit like a flight sim, but in space (although that description doesn't do it justice).... and it's free! http://www.shatters.net/celestia/index.html

			Mercury Retrograde

			Starry Night Widget About Starry Night Widget The Starry Night widget shows you the night (and daytime) sky from anywhere on Earth, for any date and time. Try these: - See what the sky looked like on your birthday! - Set the date to the next eclipse and see how it will look from your backyard. - Zoom in and see galaxies and nebulae photos from Hubble and other telescopes. - Show the constellations. What’s New in this Version - Mouse-over for object information. - Click to centre objects. - Several bug fixes.

			Will The opening of this weeks show is the best you have ever done - I'm still laughing! Just bought a pay as you go iPhone on o2. The data plan is free unlimited for a year which makes the overall cost very cheap for me because I never make calls. After the first year, it's £10 a month for unlimited data. Cheers Darren Sent from my iPhone

			Darren Davies 89, has it really been 89! BM was the first podcast I had ever   listened to. May I say what an absolute pleasure it has been. I'm off to OZ next week, for a merry jaunt. I have a tale of woe which   might be useful to other listeners to learn a lesson from. I was told before buying my pay as you go iPhone that I could buy data   roaming bolt-ons to ensure a less excruciating bill when abroad. Alas   this was complete bollocks to use the technical term. They are only   available to those on contract. So no beloved iPhone for me, which I will dearly miss on the 18 hour   flight! But there is good news, for existing customers I can convert to an   inexpensive contract called 'simplyify' which for £19.something a   month gives you 600 mins and 600 texts with a data roaming facility   when required. This is just £5 more than I would normally spend on pay as you go. I   do however have 5 months free unlimited data usage left, so I won't   take it up just yet. Moral? Never believe the first thing you are told and there is always   a positive side to every problem. P.S. I was watching WALLE the other week when I couldn't help notice   the British Mac music and Walle's Mac startup sound. A perfect BM film   if ever there was one. More power to your elbow dear chap. -- Sent from my iPhone

			web address: http://britishmacrevamp.yetanotherexample.co.uk/WebsiteWaffle

			Good luck Rob Hancox If you’re down in the London area and want to see London in all its’ glory along with over 500,000 spectators then you’ll have a great day out and will be helping the runners towards the 26.2 mile goal.   Look out for me and give me a shout.  Runner Number 9999.    Thanks for all your support, your charity needs it. Rob

			Peter Rogers (20 February 1914 – 14 April 2009) was a British film producer. Rogers began his career as a journalist for his local paper before graduating to scriptwriting religious informational films. He progressed to film production, working with director Gerald Thomas, the first work being a production for the Childrens Film Foundation. Rogers is most well known as producer of the Carry On series of British comedy films, beginning with Carry On Sergeant in 1958. There were 31 films in all. Rogers has also been linked with a further installment, Carry On London, which has been in pre-production for several years, but since his death is now unlikely to be produced.[1] The majority of Rogers' work, including all the Carry On films, were made at Pinewood Studios in Iver Heath, Bucks. Rogers' other production ventures include the television series Ivanhoe with Roger Moore and the film adaptation of the long-running sitcom Bless This House with Carry On regular Sid James. His wife was the film producer Betty Box, responsible for the Doctor series of films. They did not have children. Their godson was actor & theatre producer Marc Sinden who appeared in Carry On Columbus, the son of Sir Donald Sinden, who starred in Doctor in the House and Doctor at Large.[2] An authorized biography, Mr Carry On-the Life and Work of Peter Rogers (BBC), by Morris Bright and Robert Ross (author of The Carry On Companion and the Monty Python Encyclopedia) was published in 2000, with extensive input from Peter Rogers himself. It attempts to defend him against charges that he exploited the cast of the Carry On films by paying the lead actors an unchanged £5,000 per film from the first in 1958 to the penultimate movie. Rogers attended the 50th anniversary of the Carry On films held at Pinewood Studios in March 2008. On 15 April 2009, it was announced by the Carry On Gold website that Rogers had died at his home the previous day aged 95, having been ill for several months.