"When you double-click a document in the Finder, how does the system decide what application should open it? The relationship between a document and its owning application is called a preferred application binding. Since the very first day of the very first version of Mac OS X, there has been an uneasy detente between the Unix way of binding documents to applications and the former Mac way, inherited from the early days of the Mac OS. Now, in Snow Leopard, users and developers are complaining that the Unix way is being allowed to run roughshod over the Mac way."

According to a leak from a BestBuy employee, Microsoft is initiating a sort of "Anti-Linux Training" course for the employees, and those who take part in the said training are rewarded with a copy of Windows 7 for only ten dollars. The leaked screenshots of the campaign show Microsoft's comparison of its own system with an obscure "Linux" and how Windows is better in every way including security, "free downloads", and software and hardware compatibility.

Late last week, we discussed the Apple vs. Psystar case (again), and in that article several points were raised which would be handled during a hearing Friday morning. Right after publishing said article, the law firm working for Psystar sent a general email to members of the press (including Groklaw and OSNews, among others) which contained the court order which resulted from this hearing. So to finalise these issues, let's walk through them so we can put the lid on this case for a while.

"Manomio's Commodore 64 emulator has finally been approved by Apple. We first reported on the project back in June, after Manomio had received their first rejection from Apple. The rejection was particularly disappointing considering the efforts that Manomio had made in making sure their emulator fully licensed and legal." Update by Kroc: The app has been pulled, after Apple caught wind of the much publicised trick to enable BASIC in the emulator. Tsk, tsk; if you're going to put in easter eggs, the point is to keep them a secret, umm'kay.

"If you're a Web designer, expect your CSS colors & your untagged/unmanaged images to look darker on Snow Leopard than on previous versions of the Mac OS. You'll also see less of a visible color shift when going from Photoshop to Flash or other unmanaged environments (e.g. Internet Explorer). Why is that? Apple has switched to a default gamma of 2.2, which is what Windows has used for years. Colors that aren't color-managed are going to look darker on the whole. Your whole display will now be closer to what Windows users see."

Last week, Culf of Mac published an article showing off some of Snow Leopard's beautiful 512x512 icons, revealing some interesting tidbits about them you could only see when the icons are fully maximised. In this article, I compare some of Snow Leopard's icons to those of Windows 7, and you'll see while both operating systems have beautiful icons, there are some key differences between the styles of these icons. Note that this article contains some large images, so if you're on dial-up, you've been warned.

This was a bit of a weird week for OSNews. Monday and Tuesday I was unable to reach OSNews and its related domains from home; we still don't know why, but the end result was that I could not work on OSNews, meaning very few items. For the rest, it was a very quiet and relaxed week, with little going on.

Geeks.com, home of many digital media players, sent in the Zune 120 GB for a spin. In the eve of the upcoming Zune HD release, how do these players stack up against the iPod? Read on to find out.

"You know, it's been nearly forty years since Intel introduced the first microprocessor, and even at this late date the company comprises a whopping eighty percent of the global market for CPUs. But not so fast! Like an electronics industry remake of The Magnificent Seven (which is, of course, an American remake of The Seven Samurai) NEC and Renesas have teamed up with a stalwart band of companies, including Hitachi, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Panasonic, and Canon, to develop a new CPU that is compatible with Waseda University professor Hironori Kasahara's "innovative energy-saving software." The goal is to create a commercial processor that runs on solar cells, moderates power use according to the amount of data being processed (a current prototype runs on 30% the power of a standard CPU), remains on even when mains power is cut, and, of course, upsets the apple cart over at Intel."

"If you're running newer hardware, there are some definite advantages to installing a 64-bit operating system. But, if you still need to run any 32-bit applications, you'll need to have the 32-bit support libraries installed. Different Linux distros handle this in different ways. For 64-bit Ubuntu, finding the proper 32-bit support packages is a simple matter of opening up the Synaptic Package Manager, and searching for the string 'ia32'. With 64-bit openSuSE, 32-bit support is already built-in, so you don't have to do anything. With Fedora, though, it's a whole different story. Not only are the 32-bit packages not already installed, the Fedora folk don't provide any documentation on how to install them. The directions I found via Google were outdated, and wouldn't work. I finally resolved the problem by sking a Red Hat employee in my local Linux Users Group."

And the Apple vs. Psystar case continues to roll onwards. A lot of mud is going back and forth between the two companies: Apple has accused Psystar of making information public which was under a protective order, and obviously, Psystar denied. In addition, Groklaw's Pamela Jones continues to suspect that this Psystar case is related to the SCO case, and is part of a concentrated effort to destroy the GPL. Update: I've just been emailed (on behalf of Psystar's lawyers, actually) the outcome (in the form of a court order) of the hearing held this morning. Sadly, it's very late here, so I won't be able to analyse it properly until tomorrow.

It's no secret that when it comes to KDE-based distributions, Kubuntu isn't exactly the cream of the crop. With the release of Kubuntu Karmic Alpha 5, the KDE4 desktop delivered with Kubuntu received some much-needed love. Let's take a look at what the Kubuntu people are doing.

You probably missed this earth-shattering news, but Ikea IKEA, the Swedish furniture and other assorted home decoration products company, has switched fonts. The company always used the Futura font for its catalogues, but the latest edition has ditched it in favour of Verdana. This has caused quite the stir among typography geeks.