Aple Expo Paris started today…and the keynote (given by Phil Schiller, Steve is still recovering from surgery) had some good stuff

The big item… the new iMac G5! Its a complete redesign of the iMac G4..and it looks pretty interesting. All the ‘guts’ of the computer have been moved into the display housing. So, you get a display that looks pretty much like the aluminum studio displays (a bit thicker, though) and all the goodies tucked neatly away.

Specs:

17″ or 20″ Widescreen.

1.6Ghz or 1.8Ghz G5 CPU

up to 2GB of RAM

GeForceFX5200 (64MB VRAM)

80 or 160GB HD Standard (Upgradeable to 250GB)

Combo or Superdrive

Airport Express Ready, Optional built in Bluetooth

Starting at $1299.

Can’t wait for the local Apple Stores to get them in to play with.

Also announced at Schillernote… 5 million songs sold through iTunes Music Store – Europe (not bad for 10 weeks). Since this is the first day of the expo. Look for a whole mess of product announcements from various Apple related companies….

The iTunes Music store has broken 100 million songs sold

it happened a little before 1:30 Eastern time last night/this morning. Apple’s got a list of winners here. The big winner is Kevin Britten of Hays, Kansas. He wins a 17″ Powerbook, a 40GB iPod, and a gift certificate for 10,000 songs to fill the iPod with! So, Congratulations to Kevin, you lucky bastard…

Oh yeah.. and Internet Exploder’s market share is starting to go down, its dropped 1% since the latest IE vulnerability was announced…

On Monday, Apple gave developer’s a early preview of the next version of OSX

This one, code named ‘Tiger’ is not due for release until the first part of next year. Apple was laying down the smack talk from the beginning, with banners floating around the conference that had pictures of the OSX install DVD, and captions like “Introducing Longhorn” “Redmond: Start your photocopiers” and others also poking fun at M$ for copying so much of OSX into each successive version of Winbloze. While most of the new features in Tiger (there’s 150 in all) are covered by the developer’s NDA, people who know where to look can find copies of the developer’s preview online.

My favorite announced features are in Safari. There is going to be an RSS reader – which is cool because you don’t have to launch a separate news reader to catch up on all your favorite feeds. – This is why I really never got into the whole RSS thing… It didn’t make sense for me to open one app, read the ‘headlines’ if you will, and then have to open the site in my web browser anyway if I want to read the whole article. Now I can do it all from the same browser, and I think that’ll make it more popular (at least with me). The other new Safari feature, is ‘private browsing’ Safari now has a ‘private’ mode that doesn’t leave any site’s your visiting in your history so it covers your tracks….

The feature everyone is talking about is Dashboard. Most of the reaction is good. But, some people, including the creator of Konfabulator, are claiming that Apple stole the Dashboard idea from Konfabulator. These people are conveniently forgetting that Konfabulator itself is just a hack of the original Apple Desktop Accessories from Way back when (like 1984 or 85 IIRC)…. so, to all you ‘Apple is Evil, they stole from Konfabulator” people – GET OVER IT – Arlo didn’t write anything new… his “idea” was a re-hash of something Apple had over a decade ago!

The update gnomes at Apple have been busy this week…. Airport Express, New G5s, a new version of iTunes…

Between what’s been announced this week, and the big music event in London next week (rumored to be the release of iTunes Music store for Europe). Steve isn’t going to have anything to talk about at WWDC except for Tiger (10.4)!

G5s are now dual processors across the board…with the top end being a liquid cooled Dual 2.5 Ghz system… Still can’t afford them..but damn.. I want one.. can’t wait to play with the 2.5s..and see how the liquid cooling was implemented..the picture about it on Apple’s website doesn’t really show where in the system it is (I would assume that its now inbetween the front fans and the CPUs..or its part of the heatsink assembly).. It also doesn’t mention if there is an extra pump to keep the liquid moving or not… oh well.. still an amazing update.

Airport Express is a wireless access point (802.11g) that fits in the palm of your hand. It provides wi-fi support for up to 10 users, sharing of a USB printer, can be used to extend your existing Airport network, oh yea.. it also has an analog and digital audio output so you can stream your iTunes music wirelessly to your home stereo…all for the low low price of only $129.00

iTunes 4.6 is going to be released sometime this week… from what I’ve read in Apple’s announcement of it, it primarily just adds support for AirTunes (the tech to wirelessly stream to the Airport Express), common sense also dictates that 4.6 would be the iTunes version that includes support for the iTMS Europe (If its really getting released next week).

if this is the pre-show announcements…. WWDC ought to either have some REALLY good surprises, or there will be no hardware announcements, and it will be all about Tiger.

Should be in your software update, or get it from Apple’s website

Here’s the blurb on whats updated:

– improved file sharing and directory services for Mac (AFP), UNIX (NFS), PPTP, and wireless networks

– improved OpenGL technology and updated ATI and NVIDIA graphics drivers

– improved disc burning and recording functionality

– iPods connected via USB 2.0 are now recognized by iTunes and iSync

– additional FireWire audio and USB device compatibility

– updated Address Book, Mail, Safari, Stickies, and QuickTime applications

– improved compatibility for third party applications

– previous standalone security updates

Safari does seem snappier… must have implemented some of the changes Dave Hyatt talked about here . I’ve downloaded it and ran it on my iMac… no problems so far.. so everyone update away!

LOL! Apparently, there is a fake version of MS Word 2004 (Just released for the Mac) floating around on some P2P networks

And, in a case of pirates getting what they deserve… it deletes most (if not all) of the files in your home directory. A good first tip off… if MicroSloth was going to release a demo of Office 2k4, or any of its parts, chances are..they would not choose to distribute it over a P2P network.. and .. since its file size is only 108k… when’s the last time M$ wrote any of their bloat ware that small? I think their icons are even bigger then that!

so.. if you’re stealing software over P2P networks..don’t run the 108k version of MSWord =)

And no.. I don’t think this is some kind of huge security risk for Mac users… I can write a batch file for windows that does the same thing, and a script file for *nix that does the same thing… this is all about safe computing.. if you don’t trust the source of your files 100%.. don’t open them in an account you aren’t prepared to have erased. And anything off a P2P network.. not a source to trust 100%

This really cool game, set about 4000 years before episode I was released last year for X-box and Windoze..

And today, Aspyr announced that they are porting it over for the Mac. I remember asking Bioware to port this to the Mac back before they even released it for Xbox… Definitely a must have game for Star Wars fans… Available in August for the Mac, pre-orders now being taken by Aspyr. Now..to start begging them to port KOTOR 2….

Apple today released Security Update 2004-05-03

In addition to the enhancements made in the 2004-04-05 release, today’s release included updates to these services:

AFP Server

CoreFoundation

IPSec

Hit the update button now!

I’ve had a little time to play with it now..

And I think it was a good update. One of my complaints about ‘smart’ playlists in the previous versions of iTunes, was that you couldn’t specify a playlist as the ‘source’ of the ‘smart’ playlist. So, for example, if you had a playlist and you wanted to create a smart playlist that only played songs off that list that you hadn’t heard in like 3 days , you couldn’t do it (unless that ‘source’ list was a unique genre, same artist, etc..). With 4.5, you can now specify a playlist as one of the criteria for the smart list.

Party shuffle – this is similar to the ‘shuffle’ feature in earlier version (and thats still there), except, you can now see what the next songs are going to be, and re-arrange them as you see fit. A click of the refresh button, re-randomizes the list.

Free music – Ok..technically, this isn’t a feature of iTunes 4.5…but.. I like it.. granted, I don’t normally listen to any of the Artists who have had ‘free’ songs so far this week (one a day for 8 days, then it goes to 1 a week). But, its a chance to hear a song from someone you might not normally listen to at no expense to yourself.

If you haven’t updated yet… go get it!

iToday was the 1 year birthday of the iTunes Music Store. To celebrate, Apple hosted a conference call for industry analysts and the media, to talk about how the store is doing…

All in all… I’d have to say the store is doing pretty good. The hoped for goal of 100 million songs downloaded in the first year, didn’t quite happen (apparently, no-one drinks Pepsi…that contest didn’t result in as high a number of redeemed songs as expected… not that I can blame anyone.. I don’t drink Pepsi either…—- on that note, if you still have any unredeemed caps, you’ve got a little more then 48 hours to redeem ’em)

Here’s the numbers:

more than 70 million songs downloaded in the past year.

70% market share (Number 1) of legal downloads for both singles and albums

Listeners are buying songs at the rate of 2.7 MILLION songs per week – on track for about 140 million songs in the next year.

Over 700,000 songs from the big 5 labels, and over 450 independent labels.

As if that wasn’t enough…. As a birthday present to the listeners.. Apple will be giving away free tracks each week – an easy way to increase your library. The current track is ‘My Hero’ by the Foo Fighters… but there is a note on one of the iTunes web pages that states there will be a new track on 4/29.

Also today:

iTunes 4.5 – Lossless encoding, convert WMA to AAC, Publish your playlist to the iTMS, Print CD inserts, Party Shuffle, purchased music now authorizable on 5 machines instead of 3, watch movie trailers via iTunes —– I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet.. I’ll let you know after I play around a bit.

Quicktime 6.5.1 — Goes with iTunes 4.5 – Lossless encoding is the biggie here.

iMovie 4.0.1 – Performance improvements for large projects

iPod update – updated all iPods to allow playback of lossless encoded music.