Apple Archive

There is a possibility that Apple could reshape itself as a consumer entertainment company, according to Gordon Haff, an analyst with Illuminata. In fact, he said doing so would be a smart move. Also, Apple announced that it has sold over 2 million songs in the first 16 days of the iTunes Music Store.

Deal.com has an analysis of the Apple situation and they suggest a restructuring of the company, even if that might mean break up into smaller companies a'la Palm/PalmSource.

From the press release: "Boosting performance while lowering the price of its popular desktop for home and school, Apple today announced an entirely new eMac line offering up to a 1 GHz PowerPC G4 processor, a faster 4x SuperDrive(TM), high performance ATI Radeon 7500 graphics, up to 80GB hard drives and internal support for AirPort Extreme wireless networking. Featuring a 17-inch flat CRT and a remarkably compact all-in-one design that is even less deep than the original iMac, the most affordable PowerPC G4 system now starts at just $799." Update: New keyboard for eMacs. Read on.

Macbidouille.com offers some benchmarks of the PPC 970 platform running MacOSX in 32bit mode, against a P4 at 3 GHz and a dual G4 1.42 GHz. Keep in mind that OSNews can't confirm the validity of the benchmarks as there is no official word from Apple or IBM (the article also doesn't give information about the exact hardware configuration used for both platforms).

For all the glitz surrounding the unveiling Monday of Apple Computer's new music service, a quick look suggests that it's a solid, but hardly revolutionary, addition to the market.

MacMinute and Maccentral have live coverage on the Apple online music initiative. Macslash also reports: "Steve Jobs announced a new music download service from Apple to go along with the new iPod and the updated version of iTunes. The music service offers a song catalog of over 200,000 songs from the top 5 record labels. It will allow unlimited burning to CDs, and will play on up to 3 Macs. There's a catch with the burning, though. It will require you to change a playlist after 10 burns in order to burn again. Online 30-second previews are available for each song, as is cover art. The service will include artists not available in other online catalogs."

Billboard is the latest to report on Apple's digital music service, today posting an article that further describes the service. According to Billboard, the service is an "a la carte" download store that is built into iTunes. No subscription will be required for the service, and tracks will retail for an average of 99 cents. Once purchased, songs are automatically transferred to your iTunes library and synched to an iPod (if available). The content can also be burned to CD. Read more here, here and here.

Apple and AMD have been working together of late, a senior AMD official admitted at the launch of the chip maker's 64-bit Opteron processor this week. Also, The Register is hosting an article about Piles, a feature to reportedly be found on 10.3 Pather: They were developed by Gitta Salomon and her colleagues at Apple's Advanced Technology Human Interface Group and announced to the world at the CHI conference in May 1992.

A red flag for Jobs & Co: Apple's sales are falling as the overall PC market worldwide showed growth last quarter. IDC's figures of 34.6 million PCs sold last quarter, which would indicate that Apple accounted for 2.05 percent of PC shipments worldwide. Read the article at MacDailyNews.

It seems that the SMP 1.25 & 1.42 GHz Apple PowerMacs came by default with a NEC USB 2.0 controller and no one knew about it. A Korean site broke the news that while these Macs are currently sold as "USB 1.1", in reality they are USB 2.0-capable, missing only the drivers needed to function as such. Some users claim that these drivers work fine with that NEC chipset, as USB 2.0. Caution: Installation on other Mac models could render the system inoperable.

Apple is on the verge of announcing a trio of speed-bumped eMacs, sources confirmed to Think Secret. 'Highly reliable' sources said that Apple's consumer eMac lineup will be expanded to three models at 800MHz and 1GHz, and with larger hard drives. But other changes are also in store.

MacObserver editor Bryan Chaffin said that even though a new agreement between the two companies is improbable, Microsoft still has incentive to continue developing Office for Mac. Read it at NewsFactor. Update: On other Apple news, Mac OS X Server 10.2.5 has been released via Software Update.

I was desperately looking for something to write about when I happened to chance upon Apple’s new shipping system – a dual 1.42GHz Power Mac G4. A new system, a faster system, but does it mean a brighter future for Apple?

OSNews' sister web site NewMobileComputing posted the experiences of a reader with Apple's service department over the support of an iBook.