As The Register reported Apple ditched the ringtone segment from their iTunes Music Store.

What a coward´s move there Steve Jobs, I submit you would have stirred up the entire ringtone market for sure, but you missed that opportunity. Ringtone market in Europe has always been a big cash cow for mobile service providers, kids paying up to 3 Euro for one single ringtone. With that argument given it´s easy to understand why Steve Jobs didn´t take the challenge, it would have been hard to explain, why you could buy a song for 99 cent, but had to pay 2 or 3 dollars/euro for a ringtone.

On the other hand, selling ringtones at a price like 50 cent, which I would regard as sufficient, would make some maybe important future partners like eg Vodafone mad at Apple and it would have spoiled furture business possibilities.

However, shareholder-value wins over value, again.

Not much going on concerning Apple, Steve Jobs and Macintosh. Rumor Sites keep spinning on Intel-Macs and those problems regarding OS X on generic x86 hardware. Its all leaking to the net like mad... it cannot be stopped anymore, even if Steve Jobs now told the world, "it was all a joke, we won´t change", it is too late.

The moment the first OS X version ran on an intel machine, no matter developer or hacker, the fight was lost in fact. It is not important how much money and time AAPL will spend for securing their OS from being pirated and installed anywhere, Steve opened Pandorra´s box and now he has to deal with the results.

I dont care about imaginary patens or whatever TCP,PCP,or TMCIA chip can be found inside the new Intelmacs, it will be cracked. Maybe Mr Jobs did never get to this point, but he is not omnipotent and Apple alongside isnt either. Maybe it is not his fault but the cultists fault that made him their leader, maybe he did not even want things to come to this.

Nevertheless things do change very fast when it comes to AAPL at the moment.

There we go, OS X legendary security has been open to manipulation all the way.

Secureosx.com reports on a problem in Apple´s webkit technology which allows to fool the user into believing to eg visit a trusted website while in fact the user is already trapped in a phishing setup. This is some serious threat, I just hope Apple will solve this problem quick.

With Apple-cultists searching for excuses rather than solutions I doubt the fix for this problem is soon to be expected, stay alert !

Have a little sunday´s laugh, a real funny parody on Steve Jobs and his ever changing ipod products has been reported by ipodgarage.com.

You can watch the clip from the show here or in facebase media archive.

Have Fun!

Steve Jobs reaches a respectable 2nd place in Steven Levy´s " Can´t we all just get along " awards. Apple CEO Steve Jobs is awarded with 2nd place for keeping people from playing their legally bought iTunes Music Store tracks on any hardware or portable player other than the ipod and/or itunes application. At the same time the consumer cannot play their DRM tracks from other online stores on the ipod, so AAPL got their product locked up nice and tightly.

This years winner was AOL for limiting their AIM services as a closed community.

Strange... Sony´s rootkit mishabits do not appear on that list...coincidence?

Personally I would have had Steve getting first price, not for the dirty tricks, but for the ability to make his followers believe even the biggest lies.

Who´s bad? Those who always thought Microsoft was the source of all evil and DRM in the world you were proven wrong for sure during the last weeks. Sony got busted for installing rootkit DRM on users machines, Microsoft takes action on removing the rootkit, considered as a possible security hole. In fact first viruses/trojanhorses/worms whatever you call those exploits have already been spotted taking advantage of Sony´s rootkit to hide themselves.

So Microsoft seems to be that knight on the white horse protecting the user, well you will have to pay for their help in one way or the other for sure.

Finally there is Apple, a company run by an ex-hippie, but do you think Steve Jobs ever imagined things coming to this? I am positive he never did, even not in his wildest acid dreams. So were does Apple stand? On the one hand they made big deals with record industry for sure, one the other hand DRM is in fact already built so deep into OSX most users do not notice until they try to burn a cd with something else than iTunes(DRM music can only be burned on a mac using Apple´s iTunes application).

It seems the user got only to choose bad from worse.

I have never been a LINUX geek and in fact I have made some folks from the LINUX community mad at me by some comments on certain sites, but when it comes to freedom there is no half-step solution. So I will have to reconsider operating systems no doubt.

Quo vadis?

Pat Misterovich presents his homemade mp3 player. Remember PEZ candy? Sure you do. Now imagine an ipod shuffle in a PEZ dispenser.



PEZmp3 is a fully licensed product, that means the PEZ company set up a deal with Pat Misterovich, who is a stay-at-home-dad assembling the PEZpods. So if you like the idea of supporting this surely great idea you should hurry up since its a limited edition.

Make sure to check the features site its full of those little details, like popping the players head back as if you wanted a PEZ for turning on the music.

I am sure these thingys will score high cash on ebay as soon as "official" sales are over.

Does one really need much to imagine an Apple mobile phone based on the iPod nano?



How about Apple´s friendship with Motorola? Does Apple really want to spoil expections with that lousy ROKR mobile? Or is it more a testrun for the real deal? How about a joint venture in the field of hardware? How about installing one of those small phone devices into the iPod nano? The backside of the nano would be just perfect for phone mic and speaker.

C´mon Apple give the crowd what it wants...

Just like old times.If an innovation doesnt come from Apple the user of such machines are often locked out from the product.A new example of such unfair product philosophy is the Virtual Laser Keyboard.

Everything seems fine,pricing,supports BlueTooth,compatible to all PDAs all PCs,even design,but it doesnt work with all the PCs... they do not support the Mac.I hope there will be drivers for OS X soon.

People say Mac users get all the gadgets, I say, then question is "when".

Norman Rohrer, one of IBM´s top chip designers, points out Apples switch would not in any way have an effect on IBM roadmaps and in addition to that tells further details about Apple´s current top shot chip PowerPC 970MP like each core can operate at independant wake/sleep states for reducing power consumption and heat by 50 percent (higher mathematics )

Troy Wolverton from thestreet.com reports about Apple executives scoring big cash with AAPL trading so high.

Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer alone made a fine $32 million when he sold 750k options last week.

This could be the first piece of evidence for a soon to come stagnation of share price, due to the recent law suits, a yet unkown problem in the field of sales or even due to executives share sells itself as stock exchange is a very sensible environment.

In his article "PowerPC, x86 and Apple pricing" Paul Murphy takes a very interesting approach on Intel Mac pricing, he draws a not too bright picture as mac sells might "fall through the floor" when the first Intel Macs arrive.

After Apple got sued over the ipod nano, it is reported that just another law suit has been filed against Steve Jobs.Inside Bay Area reports a handful of Pixar top managers including Steve Jobs would have distributed misleading information about the company´s financial performance.

To make a long story short, earnings from Pixars movie "The Incredibles" were not as high as predicted.

Steve Rubel reports the Disney owned ABC to broadcast (or better "vidcast") their local news (WABC-TV New York and WLS-TV Chicago - itms links) via iTunes Music Store for free.

Being among America´s 25 Best Leaders Steve Jobs seems to hold all the trump cards necessary to rule home media centers all over the world. The machines (iMac G5, Mac Mini and iPod) are all available, and the market is sure hungry for another approach from Apple to take over the livingroom. Another approach? Yep, the idea with the all new iMac isnt so new after all. But no need for whining folks, its Apple who "stole" Apples own idea, as reported on lowendmac.

APC describes how iMac, Mac Mini and ipod combined with the knowledge Steve Jobs gathered around himself by recruiting the head of TV recording company ElGato will enable Apple to become the leading company in home entertaining.

While Apple iTunes is de facto standard for digital music sales and storage, the TV market seems to be the new target for Apple. Having nice contracts for music videos, some series like "Lost" and of course fine Pixar clips, it seems to be just a little step towards complete dominance of home entertainment.

Another not often mentioned but very obvious fact is that the power that drove so many innovations during evolution strikes again. Sex! Believe me, there will be loads of movie-on-the-go sites which offer adult material for video ipods soon.

Though Apple is very silent about new products, especially new processors, the new friend and supplier Intel doesnt really care about Steve Jobs love for secrets. So Intel Corp speaks in the open about the new mobile processors coming out in mid/end 2006. Memron is reported to be a dual core cpu and would fit so nicely into the new Intel-Powerbooks.

I would love to see Stevie jumping up and down on that action, sleep with the dogs and wake up with fleas, as they say.

Another quite weird thing I came across is this article ,not because another journalist joins the chorus, buys a mac and lives happy ever after, but because of real strange things the author points out.

"About 20 percent of Mac users reported in a 2005 Consumer Reports survey that they had found a virus on their machines in the past two years compared with 66 percent of Windows users who said they had."
This , to me completely unknown, statistic won my interest and I am busy searching the web for it, so in case you can help just use the comment function or send me an email via "contact" - I want to see the Mac viruses! Or then again were the sightings of Mac viruses , made by 20 % of the Mac users just Windows exploits from office documents etc, so a serious statistic would have counted the percentage of working exploids for the Mac.

While things about the scratchy iPod nano get hot and wild not not only in online-discussions but also in court as consumers filed a class-action lawsuit against Apple.

Apart from cheap materials on the hardware side, the software side, to be more precise the operating system OS X gets a good review concerning security from Steven H. Wildstrom(BusinessWeek online).But at the same time Wildstrom points out, the reason for the missing exploits for OS X would be the much lower marketshare of mac computers and the resulting lower expection of a financial gain.
Maybe he should check the story I had a while back and check the great pieces of visionary coding I created, I wasnt in it for the money, it was all for the fame.

However, I am still waiting for the first virus to seriously attack OS X, I am still sure it is out there.

BTW the idea to use Automator for creating some "bad apps" seems to have inspired some very interesting people.

Since Apple didnt give too big new features for the new powerbook apart from stuff I would count among the range of goodies NOT real features. New audio and video i/o devices were needed for a long time so I wouldnt say "thank you" to Stevie but "good thing you made it".

In addition to that there are no obvious new processors for protable macs, all the 1.5 + ghz processors are just overclocked in fact. So why not do it yourself? Check this article (link, french) , the powerbook was overclocked to a stable 1.83 ghz, in a result we might see another speed bump for apple powerbooks but made by apple and paid by the user. Its a shame they (ha!) didnt come up with a nice mobile ppc before doomsday ( doomsday = end of transition to intel)

A word on the dualcore macs, it all sounds to good to be true, too easy to be true, too affordable to be true and what do we learn first in this world? Nothing is for free. Lets wait and see what will happen, as the first dualcore intel processors were in fact slower than a dual processor system.

Keep in mind you are messing with a quite expansive thingy there when trying to overclock your mac.

The new iMac G5 will be another step towards Steve Jobs goal to make Apple the new Sony. The iMac features among improved memory and a little more speed, built-in isight camera (VGA 640x480), infrared remote control(reciever hidden behind the apple logo under the screen),photo booth (a new "killer app" for easy manipulation of photos) and comes with apples new MightyMouse.
So the whole package looks like a serious start into the world of home entertainment, together with the 20" display it should work fine as movie and music station.Alongside Apple abandoned the sale of the eMac to non-educational customers which I find a rather harsh way to push people into buying the iMac or an iBook, since the Mac Mini isnt an all-in-one product it may not be counted among the alternatives.

But what is on the other side of the coin? I mean Apple does great in investing money and human resources in the developement of entertainment technology, while it has become very quiet on the side of "Pro" products. It seems Apple fell into deep sleep and decided to focus on consumer products and entertainment rather than serverving the users who do business with their Macs.

Funny how things change when shareholder value kills management. So Apple arrives in the livingroom but leaves the office.

Thats what I see and I do not like it.

Did you ever clean up your computer mess in the garage? You certainly should and you may discover loads of Playstation games (psx games). If you are lucky you find a working playstation with that, but if you are unlucky you will have to find a working emulation app for mac ( OS X ) and if you are a real unlucky guy, you have to get such a handy app for OS X 10.4 ( Tiger ).

My searches took my to this (link) very interesting but not very informative website. On that website you may download CVGS (which has become free/abandonware nowadays) along with all updates and patches, FlareStorm 2 and PCSX. While CVGS is an OS 9x app and didnt work for me in classic mode in Tiger telling me my cd-drive wasnt able to read cds and wasnt supported or something, the other two apps are advertised to run in OS X. To make a long story short, FlareStorm 2 didnt work for me at all, but is a nice little helper to "prepare" some older game cds for the working PCSX. Some older game cds mount two images as you insert them into your mac( one with the game another will be identified as a music cd), to run those games on PCSX simply fire up FlareStorm and insert the game. You will see it only mount the game just as you wished, now quit FlareStorm and start up PCSX - easy eh?
Links to several BIOS files for PCSX will be found in renewed Emulation Section soon ( maybe I will host these files myself because they are hard to find as soon as I am positve about the legal background of hosting Sony BIOS files ) - meanwhile google for "SCPHBIOSES.zip"

Wireless networks everywhere! No matter where you walk in the cities across the world, WiFi is already there.While WEP encryption, though useless, is still state of the art protection for home and business users, new safer encryptions like WPA(2) progresses are still at stake.
Applications like Kismac(link) include a simple brute force attack mode(along with some other tricks) for entering protected networks(oops check your own network for security). Another way to add security to WEP networks was ( as in "is no more" ) simply to allow connections to known computers only by submitting ethernet ids of the individual computer. Now thats gone totally insecure as there is a cute little app(link) which changes the ethernet ip of an apple airport extreme card to a desired value.

In case you are interested in what I did to secure my wireless network at home... I switched back to the cable-solution, oldskool but secure.

500 bucks for a virus that meets the conditions(link). Thats not a lot compared to the 25k bucks once raised on that topic. What is behind this? Well , most certainly people are not to sure about the security on OS X anymore, otherwise the bet would have gone up over time. So there are self crowned Macintosh kings who bet a lousy 500 US$ on their loved fruit.

I mean, if they offered 500 british pounds, hey , there would be a lot of people joining the big game, but US $ ...

What kind of great 1337 h4xx0rs will spill beans for that kinda loot ? They want cheap exploids? I certainly can provide them LMAO - great pieces of visionary macintosh exploids, made on a mac, made with automator.

Allthough its all very basic and obvious, these scripts/apps could do harm to your data, do NOT run the things, if you decide to do otherwise its not my problem. You can find those cheap examples in download section - password to unstuff is " iknowimstupid " (no quotes - no blanks)

The first little script searches for Adobe stuff on your drive then moves it all to trash, then it sends a little mail to me(RIP Adobe). The other one is a very lame and basic version of "iGetUrMail", it retrieves your mail, combines all your daily mail to one email and then sends it over to me again.

I am positive some of you can do much better (maybe even I could do better), for example add a little "force empty trash" to the script, but it wasnt intended to harm anyone really in the first place. Please keep those stupid little apps/scripts in mind when wildy double-clicking everything you get.