January 2009 - apple-list - University of Manitoba Mailing Lists

INTEREST: the Macintosh is 25 years young...
by billing 29 Jan '09

29 Jan '09

This past Saturday (January 24) 25 years ago, Apple launched the Macintosh with an add during the SuperBowl: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-715862862672743260 25 years later, MacWorld magazine has a bit of a "photo retrospective" of 25 years of Macintosh.... and Steve Jobs. ...from: http://www.macworld.com/article/138405/2009/01/mactimeline.html Wayne

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INTEREST: hard disk encryption coming soon...
by billing 29 Jan '09

29 Jan '09

..."You can use these [enabled] drives to childproof your laptop because it operates outside of Windows. Windows hasn't even booted yet. Your kid can't crack it unless [he] has the password. You can leave the laptop at home and rest assured a 14-year-old can't get on it," Thibadeau said. IT departments will also be able to repurpose drives using the encryption standard by cryptographically erasing them with a few keystrokes. Cryptographic erasure changes the cryptographic key, thus making data permanently inaccessible.... ...from: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&tax… Coming soon: Full-disk encryption for all computer drives Drive makers settle on a single encryption standard By Lucas Mearian January 27, 2009 (Computerworld) The world's six largest computer drive makers today published the final specifications(download PDF) for a single, full-disk encryption standard that can be used across all hard disk drives, solid state drives (SSD) and encryption key management applications. Once enabled, any disk that uses the specification will be locked without a password -- and the password will be needed even before a computer boots. The three The Trusted Computing Group (TCG) specifications cover storage devices in consumer laptops and desktop computers as well as enterprise-class drives used in servers and disk storage arrays. "This represents interoperability commitments from every disk drive maker on the planet," said Robert Thibadeau, chief technologist atSeagate Technology and chairman of the TCG. "We're protecting data at rest. When a USB drive is unplugged, or when a laptop is powered down, or when an administrator pulls a drive from a server, it can't be brought back up and read without first giving a cryptographically- strong password. If you don't have that, it's a brick. You can't even sell it on eBay." By using a single, full-disk encryption specification, all drive manufacturers can bake security into their products' firmware, lowering the cost of production and increasing the efficiency of the security technology. For enterprises rolling out security across PCs, laptops and servers, standardized hardware encryption translates into minimum security configuration at installation, along with higher performance with low overhead. The specifications enable support for strong access control and, once set at the management level, the encryption cannot be turned off by end-users. Whenever an operating system or application writes data to a self- encrypting drive, there is no bottleneck created by software, which would have to interrupt the I/O stream and convert the data "so there's no slowdown," Thibadeau said. "Also, the encryption machinery uses no power. When it reads data from the drive, it displays it to the user in the clear. It's completely transparent to the user," he said. The TCG includes Fujitsu, Hitachi GST, Seagate Technology, Samsung, Toshiba, Western Digital, Wave Systems, LSI Corp., ULink Technology and IBM. "In five years time, you can imagine any drive coming off the production line will be encrypted, and there will be virtually no cost for it," said Jon Oltsik, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. Here are the three specifications: • The Opal specification, which outlines minimum requirements for storage devices used in PCs and laptops. • The Enterprise Security Subsystem Class Specification, which is aimed at drives in data centers and high-volume applications, where typically there is a minimum security configuration at installation. • The Storage Interface Interactions Specification, which specifies how the TCG's existing Storage Core Specification and the other specifications interact with other standards for storage interfaces and connections. For example, the specification supports a number of transports, including ATA parallel and serial, SCSI SAS, Fibre Channel and ATAPI. Several of the drive manufacturers, including Seagate, Fujitsu andHitachi, already support the standard on some of their drives. Hitachi, for instance, is shipping its internal Travelstar 5K500.B laptop drives with full-disk encryption. Several encryption management software vendors, including Wave Systems, WinMagic Inc. and CryptoMill Technologies, have also announced product certification for the standard. Brian Berger, a marketing manager with Wave Systems and chair of the TCG marketing work group, said the specifications call for the use of Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Vendors are free to choose either AES 128-bit or AES 256-bit keys depending on the level of security they want. Neither have been broken. "Things like key manageability and patch management become things of the past," he said. "You don't have to worry about what version of encryption software is running or what [encryption appliance] your system's plugged into. When encrypted drives are under management, users can't turn off encryption, so there's no chance of users losing machines with valuable data on them after having turned off encryption." The effort to create the encryption specifications, which began six years ago, focused on full-disk encryption, which protects data on a computer by encrypting all of the information on the computer's hard drive regardless of what partition it's on. In order to gain access to the information, users would first have to supply a password, which, in turn, would be used to unlock a key used to decrypt the data. "You can use these [enabled] drives to childproof your laptop because it operates outside of Windows. Windows hasn't even booted yet. Your kid can't crack it unless [he] has the password. You can leave the laptop at home and rest assured a 14-year-old can't get on it," Thibadeau said. IT departments will also be able to repurpose drives using the encryption standard by cryptographically erasing them with a few keystrokes. Cryptographic erasure changes the cryptographic key, thus making data permanently inaccessible. "The specific way in which encryption is done inside the drive doesn't matter for interoperability," said Jorge Campello, senior manager of architecture and electronics at Hitachi. "What matters is how they drives are configured and how access control is configured. So any drive, in conforming to these standards, will have the same interface commands."

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INTEREST: Engadget article on Win7 BETA installs
by billing 28 Jan '09

28 Jan '09

...from: http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/20/windows-7-install-roundup/#continued Windows 7 install roundup by Paul Miller, posted Jan 20th 2009 at 11:01AM After resting up and settling into our post-CES golden desk chairs, team Engadget got busy at installing Windows 7 on pretty much anything they could find. Most installs went off without a hitch, and BSoDs were fairly few and far between. You can check out all our various first impressions after the break... the names aren't made up, but the stories are true. Joshua Topolsky System: • MacBook Pro (unibody) • 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo • 4GB of RAM Install process: Partitioned the drive with Boot Camp, popped in a burned Windows 7 disc and booted to it just fine. Formatted the partition and installed, nary a bump. Installed Vista graphics drivers from NVIDIA's site. First impressions: Fast boot times, and the graphics drivers and WiFi work great. Unfortunately, the sound and webcam still aren't working, and the trackpad experience is pretty bad with the new unibody MacBook Pro button-free pad, even with the latest drivers -- there's no right click, for instance. Also, hit a BSoD when trying to resize an active title bar. Microsoft has clearly taken time to listen to people this go-round and made some noticeable ease-of-use improvements, but I think the real power of Win 7 likely lies in its trimmed requirements and ability to adapt to a wide variety of systems... just like XP. Paul Miller System: • Dell Dimension 9150 • Intel Pentium D 2.8GHz dual core • 2.5GB RAM • NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT graphics • Windows Vista SP1 Install process: Ripped the install DVD and put the contents on a USB flash drive in a folder called "windows," ran setup.exe from there. The "upgrade" method failed, but failed gracefully, with the full original Vista setup remaining. Tried a clean install (with the old install moved to windows.old) and it worked flawlessly. Took about an hour. First impressions: Boot times and responsiveness seem comparable to Windows Vista, though the time from start-up to usability is improved. Drivers for a multitude of odd hardware pulled just fine. Unfortunately, there seem to be some problems with returning from sleep with the GeForce card -- certain window elements won't draw, the system becomes unstable and it continually cycles the graphics card, none of which happened with Windows Vista. System: • Sony Vaio P • Intel Atom Z520 1.33GHz • 2GB of RAM • Windows Vista SP1 Install process: Ripped the install DVD and put the contents on a USB flash drive in a folder called "windows," ran setup.exe from there. A clean install (with the old install moved to windows.old) worked flawlessly. Took about 45 minutes. First impressions: Machine became much more responsive and usable. OS includes a simplified, more usable version of Vista's DPI setting panel that scales UI elements to look much better on the high-res screen. We wrote up the rest of our impressions of Windows 7 on the P right here. Thomas Ricker System: • MacBook Pro • 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo • 2GB DDR2 SDRAM • Leopard 10.5.6 Install Process: Ripped Windows 7 Beta installer to .DMG image using Disk Utility and renamed .DMG image to .ISO. Created new virtual machine in VMware Fusion 1.1 and selected .ISO image of Windows 7 when prompted. After about 10 minutes I was up and running Windows 7 Home Basic on WiFi network. First impressions: There's a slight lag felt when running in the default 512MB memory slot allocated to Win7. The lag mostly disappears when dialing up the memory to 1GB -- that's mainstream netbook territory. I keep Fusion running in OS X Spaces for quick access to the Windows applications I require for day-to-day computing. Only real problem seen so far is the occasional wonky behavior when jumping in and out of VMware Fusion's full screen mode (the Win7 desktop disappears). Nilay Patel System: • MacBook Pro • 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo • NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics • 3GB DDR2 SDRAM Install Process: Installed really quick'n'dirty on a Boot Camp partition just to play around for a while -- I'm going to buy a dedicated Windows 7 box soon, so this install will get deleted anyway. Didn't pay much attention to anything along the way for that reason -- I just let things happen the way they happened, and everything works fine except for trackpad right click, but I solved that by plugging in an external mouse. Took about 45 minutes start to finish. First impressions: Works great so far -- I'm really liking the automatic window management. Can't say I've done much to stress the system other than poke around the web and download software updates, but overall it's fast and responsive. There's still a sense that the OS is trying to help you a little too much when you do things, as opposed to the go-it- alone feeling of XP, but that might just be familiarity talking. Definitely a vast improvement over Vista -- if this is just the beta, I'm encouraged to see what the final product looks like. Kevin Wong System: • MacBook Pro • 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo • 4GB of RAM Install process: A breeze to install via VMWare Fusion using the .ISO and entering the key. Was surprised how quickly it installed all of the updates, without a bunch of messy pop up windows or warnings. Took me all of 15 minutes to install (at most) and use right away. Allocated one core, 10GB of hard drive and 1GB of RAM and it's running smoothly. First impressions: Compared to Windows Vista, Windows 7 is a god send. Being a recent Apple convert, I've used XP all my life. I was stoked for Windows Vista before it came out because it looked nicer than my XP setup, but now I can look forward to Microsoft releasing a better looking product that works! It's snappy, quick and looks great, everything Vista should have been. Looking forward to installing it on a touch screen netbook soon! Ross Miller System: • HP Pavilion Elite m9150f • 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Quad • 3GB RAM • NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT • Windows Vista Home Premium • HD DVD player ... cause I'm cool like that Install Process: Installed from DVD. The upgrade initially refused to run, citing nondescript reasons. Eventually figured out I had to uninstall my antivirus software entirely. From there, the update ran smoothly -- good to go in less than 15 minutes. First impressions: Haven't noticed too much of a speed boost yet. Aero Peek is useful for checking the desktop widgets, but so far not much else. Really love being able to drag windows to the side or top of screen for tiling and maximizing, respectively. Navigation is much better, but still not as efficient for me as OS X's Exposé. Wrap-up Overall, pretty good experiences all around. Microsoft has clearly done a lot to get the install quick and painless, and it's great to boot an OS that seems in most cases to bring with it immediate performance and usability improvements. We'll be delving in further in the coming weeks, but Windows 7 certainly passes the "first date" test. A typical install -- including Paul's fateful upgrade failure -- plus some larger shots of our desktops are in the gallery below.

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INTEREST: Blank CD-R tax to increase 38 percent in Canada; new music CD charging model
by billing 22 Jan '09

22 Jan '09

...from: http://www.oto-online.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1245&It… Blank CD-R tax to increase 38 percent in Canada Wednesday, 17 December 2008 The Canadian Copyright Board has announced that it will raise the tax on blank compact discs to 29¢ (US$0.23), a 38% increase. Previously the tariff on blank recordable CDs was 21¢ (US$0.1679), according to Billboard.biz. Blank CD manufacturer Brad Yeager, senior product manager optical media for Memorex, toldOne to One that this decision pretty much kills the CD-R business in Canada. The tariff is collected on behalf of the Canadian Private Copying Collective, an organisation formed in 1999 and created to collect money that compensates musicians and stakeholders for having their music copied by individuals. The board says there were two reasons for the increase. Billboard quotes the report. "First, increased mechanical licence royalties, coupled with the elimination of container deductions and free goods allowances in the calculation of the performers' and makers' remuneration, greatly add to our estimation of the total remuneration per pre-recorded CD," the board said in a report. "Second, the use of compression technology raises from 15 to 18.4 the average number of tracks copied on a blank CD used to copy music." Using the new royalty rate, blank CD sales would have generated $29 million (US$23 million) in revenue in 2008, the board said, adding that despite the rate increase, the total amount collected would remain consistent with past years due to falling blank CD sales. "Should this forecast not materialise, the estimated amount of royalties would be adjusted accordingly," the board said. The increase of 8 cents will lead "most consumers to use blank DVDs or flash-based products. The CD-R business has been decreasing by about 15-20% per year over the past three years. A 50 pack will cost about $15.00 less in the United States. Paying an additional $10.50 for a 50 pack was a stretch, but paying $14.50 Canadian is mind boggling," says Yeager. "The Canadian Copyright Board should find a way to target users of CD- R that are actually copying music. This "shot gun" approach to collecting money for musicians unfairly penalises nearly all of MAM- A's Canadian customers. A very small percentage of MAM-A discs sold into the Canadian market are used for music," said Joe Weisenbach of MAM-A Inc (pictured). The decision leaves the rate for audio cassettes at 24¢ = - = - = - = ...from: http://www.oto-online.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1273&It… New business models for music Wednesday, 21 January 2009 According to the IFPI's Digital Music Report 2009, which gives a comprehensive overview of trends in the music business internationally, the industry has shifted its approach from one based only on unit sales of music to 'monetising' access to music across a multitude of channels and platforms. John Kennedy (pictured), chairman and chief executive of IFPI, said: "The recorded music industry is reinventing itself and its business models. Music companies have changed their whole approach to doing business, reshaped their operations and responded to the dramatic transformation in the way music is distributed and consumed." However, while music companies are embracing new revenue models, and offering consumers more choice, the download model still has its own headaches: an estimated 95% of music downloads are unauthorised, with no payment to artists and producers. "The music industry has transformed its business models, offering consumers an increasing range of new services with leading technology partners," says the report. "Yet generating value in an environment where 95% of music downloads are illegal and unpaid for is still the biggest challenge for music companies and their commercial partners." The digital music business internationally saw a sixth year of expansion in 2008, growing by an estimated 25% to $3.7 billion in trade value. Digital platforms now account for around 20% of recorded music sales, up from 15% in 2007. Recorded music is at the forefront of the online and mobile revolution, generating more revenue in percentage terms through digital platforms than the newspaper (4%), magazine (1%) and film industries (4%) combined.

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INTEREST: whither Apple sans Jobs?
by billing 22 Jan '09

22 Jan '09

...from: http://www.macworld.com/article/138240/2009/01/triumvirate.html?lsrc=mwweek Jan 15, 2009 11:50 am20 Comments+ 5 Recommendations Strong Apple team can fill in for Jobs by Dan Moren, Macworld.com The downside of being a company that gets as much press attention as Apple is that it cuts both ways: while even the most minor product release can grab headlines, less positive news gets amplified as well. So Steve Jobs’s announcement on Wednesday that he’d be taking a six month leave of absence for medical reasons has apparently caused more panic and consternation than Godzilla setting foot in Tokyo Bay. It’s true: there is no one person at Apple who can replace Jobs as an icon. He’s been the public face of the company for the last 10 years and his image has been inextricably tied to Apple since he co-founded the company more than 30 years ago. Ten years of keynotes and special events has solidified the image that the company’s a one-man show, even if we all know that’s not really true. But while Steve as the one-man prophet, priest, and king may be irreplaceable—and I brook no argument over the fact that he's a Great Man—that doesn’t mean that he can’t be replacedat all. Over the years, Apple’s developed a solid roster of senior talent in a myriad of fields, all of them players brought to the majors with the approval of Jobs himself. As CEO, he’s built a team that subscribes to his ideology, who can ably steer the ship in his absence, whether it be temporary or permanent. So, instead of the Caesarean dictatorial rule of the Jobs era, think instead of the triumvirates of ancient Rome. Apple still has Tim Cook to run the day-to-day operations of the company—which, for many intents and purposes he’s been doing for awhile; Jonathan Ive to handle the design, as his gaggle of awards shows he’s capable; and Phil Schiller to handle product demos, as he ably did last week at Macworld Expo. Just because Jobs's image has conflated the roles of showman, designer- in-chief, and CEO into one über-role doesn’t mean that that’s the way it has to be. Sure, it’s one of the things that sets Apple apart from many of its competitors, but it’s certainly not the norm in the tech business world. The triumvirate of Cook, Ive, and Schiller may lack some of the fabled reality distortion field of Steve Jobs, but there’s no doubt to my mind that they’re capable of creating the same kind of great products that we’ve come to expect from Apple. And that’s because, consciously or not, those executives have been learning from Steve—and, I’d argue, vice versa—for almost a decade. They’re attuned to the way he does things, because they’d have to be just to survive at Apple, never mind at such a high level. But if there’s one thing that—"worries" is too strong a word—makes me curious in such an arrangement, it’s the issue of executive power: who has the authority to veto a project that isn’t up to snuff, and how will they use it? If Cook takes the CEO reins, will he exercise that ultimate verdict wisely, listening to counsel from the likes of Ive, hardware VP Bob Mansfield, and iPhone VP Scott Forstall? Or will he focus instead on the strength of his own instincts for operations, potentially killing off products that simply needed more time to mature? Take the Apple TV, for example: would a “hobby” like that survive in a Cook administration, or would it fall prey to the hatchet of operational efficiency? We just don’t know. But then again, if that’s the biggest question, the company’s in pretty solid shape. So don’t cry for Apple. This isn’t a repeat of 1985, where Jobs was ousted by a man in a suit with a completely different vision of the company—the people who are left running the company in Jobs's absence are the people Jobs put there. While there may be no single hand- picked successor to Jobs, it doesn’t mean that there’s no successor at all—far from it. In fact, he’s got a whole company of successors, people who have come to Cupertino because they want to help make great products that they love. So even if Steve Jobs isn’t at the company in person, you can be sure that his influence will continue to be felt on every level for a long time to come.

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FYI: Seagate offers recovery service for disk drive firmware bug...
by billing 19 Jan '09

19 Jan '09

While it's been some time since Seagate drives shipped in Apple machines, external drives or other machines may have them.... here's a description of the problem and a link to find out if your Seagate drive may be susceptible... ...from: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,39596623,00.htm Bug hits Seagate disks Colin Barker ZDNet.co.uk Published: 19 Jan 2009 16:12 GMT Seagate on Friday acknowledged failures among recent models of its Barracuda and DiamondMax disk drives. Users affected lose all access to data on their disks, and the disks themselves are reported to become undetectable to the computers in which they are mounted. Seagate acknowledged the problem in a statement on its website that said: "A number of Seagate hard drives… may become inaccessible when the host system is powered on." The drives in question are the Barracuda 7200.11, which comes in capacities ranging from 160GB to 1.5TB, the DiamondMax 22 and the Barracuda ES.2 SATA drive. Once a drive has become affected, "the data becomes inaccessible to users but the data is not deleted", the Seagate statement read. According to the company the issue is caused by a problem with the firmware on the drive, which "is affecting drives from these families manufactured in December 2008". With the statement, Seagate provided details on how users could check if their drives were affected, but did not provide an immediate update to the firmware that could fix the problem. Instead Seagate advised users of affected drives to contact the company directly, and offered a data-recovery service if required. More information on the issue is provided on the Seagate website. Users who believe they have affected disk drives Seagate must contact the company by calling them directly. According to a Seagate spokesperson, although an international call is required it should be at no charge. Users can also contact the company by sending an email (discsupport(a)seagate.com ), mentioning drive model number, serial number and current firmware revision. ZDNet UK contacted Seagate for comment but the company had not responded at the time of writing. = - = - = - = http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931 Welcome, Seagate hard drive owners. A number of Seagate hard drives from the following families may become inaccessible when the host system is powered on: Barracuda 7200.11 DiamondMax 22 Barracuda ES.2 SATA Once a drive has become affected the data becomes inaccessible to users but the data is not deleted. Seagate has isolated this issue to a firmware bug affecting drives from these families manufactured in December 2008. Please use the following tools and instructions to determine if you have one of the affected products. If your drive is affected, we recommend that you update the firmware on the disk drive to prevent this condition. To identify your drive, retrieve the model number, serial number and firmware revision without removing your drive. There are multiple methods: Seagate DriveDetect.exe method (recommended) Click here to download Drive Detect: When running Drive Detect you will see a screen like this. Look for the drives that are attached: In the example above the Drive Name is the same as the Model: ST31500341AS, the serial number is 9VS00J20 and the firmware revision is SD1A. Device Manager Method : Use Microsoft Windows Device Manager to see the model numbers of your disk drive. - Choose Start | Run | type: devmgmt.msc - Click Ok. - Expand the Disk Drive branch to see the model numbers: Seatools for Windows Method: Download SeaTools for Windows which displays all of the required information. After determining your serial, model and firmware revision please attempt to find your model in the following list of affected models. If you have one of these drives you can choose it from the list for model-specific instructions to update the firmware. Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000340AS ST3750330AS ST3640330AS ST3500320AS ST31500341AS ST31000333AS ST3640323AS ST3640623AS ST3320613AS ST3320813AS ST3160813AS Barracuda ES.2 SATA ST31000340NS ST3750330NS ST3500320NS ST3250310NS DiamondMax 22 STM31000340AS STM3750330AS STM3500320AS STM31000334AS STM3320614AS STM3160813AS If you need assistance updating your firmware you can email us directly at disksupport(a)seagate.comPlease include the following disk drive information: serial number, model number, and current firmware revision. We will respond to your email request with appropriate instructions.

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INTEREST: Windows 7 on MacBook Pro
by billing 11 Jan '09

11 Jan '09

Microsoft is now allowing anyone interested in testing a BETA version of Windows 7 to download it from: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/default.aspx ...more info and features of Windows 7: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/jan09/01-07CES09PR.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/events/ces/default.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/ces/keynote.aspx?initialVideo=Win… Not content until pushing the limits of several envelopes at one time, some have installed it onto one of the new "unibody" MacBook Pros: http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/11/windows-7-gets-installed-on-macbook-pro-… Wayne

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FYI: iPhone University Program for teaching iPhone/Touch app development
by billing 05 Jan '09

05 Jan '09

Program Details: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The iPhone University Program program is now open for applications from Canadian degree granting universities and colleges who wish to teach iPhone development as part of the curriculum. The iPhone Developer University Program is a free program designed for higher education institutions looking to introduce curriculum for developing iPhone or iPod touch applications. The University Program provides a wealth of development resources, sophisticated tools for testing and debugging, and the ability to share applications within the same development team. Institutions can also submit applications for distribution in the App Store. We would like to invite you apply for the program. The steps you need to take are as follows: 1. As you prepare to apply please identify: the professor who will be teaching, and a legal signing authority for the university 2. You will need to apply via this web site. --> http://developer.apple.com/iphone/program/university.html 3. You will be prompted for an Apple ID. If you do not have an AppleID you will need to create one. Once you have applied the application will be reviewed by Apple Corporate and your signing authority will be contacted before a decision is made. Thank you for your patience, we look forward to seeing your application in the near future. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Let me know if you have any questions... Take Care, Rob Klassen --------------------------------------------------------------- Systems Engineer  Apple Inc. Email: rklassen(a)apple.com Voice: 204.285.7513 Cell: 204.227.1464 --------------------------------------------------------------- = - = -= - = - = - additional resources: http://iapps.stanford.edu/ - Stanford course curriculum: http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi-bin/index.php

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INTEREST: Happy New Year and sorry 'bout the Zune's leap-year thing...
by billing 05 Jan '09

05 Jan '09

...from: http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/music/showArticle.jhtml;j… Zune Leap Year Bug Fixed, Microsoft Says The software maker says affected users need to drain their batteries and restart the device. By Paul McDougall InformationWeek January 2, 2009 09:39 AM Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) says it has resolved a glitch that caused the 30-GB model of its Zune MP3 player to freeze up over the past week. "You can go back to using your Zune!" the company said in a support note posted Thursday on its Web site. The note details steps that Zune owners should take to eliminate the bug by resetting their players. CBSSPorts.com GM(NYSE: GM) Jason Kint Talks About the Video On Demand Offering for March Madness 2008 Earlier this week, thousands of Zune users flooded blogs and support forums with reports that their devices had locked up. Microsoft traced the problem to a software bug that caused the Zune's internal clock to fail when switching from the past leap year to 2009, which is not a leap year. To fix the problem, Microsoft advised users to unplug the Zune from its power source and allow the batteries to drain. "Wait until the battery is empty and the screen goes black," the company said in its support bulletin. It then instructed users to power up the devices, but only after 7 a.m. Eastern time on New Year's Day Thursday. "No other action is required," said Microsoft. However, the company added that Zune owners with copyright-protected songs might have to resync their devices with their PCs after rebooting in order to restore DRM files that allow the songs to be played. Prior to Microsoft's posting of the fix, some Zune owners took matters into their own hands and turned to the Internet for help. One procedure for resolving the problem that made the rounds involved opening the device and disconnecting the battery in order to force a reset. "This is a bad idea and we do not recommend opening your Zune by yourself," said Microsoft, noting that such a move would immediately void the warranty on the device. The inability of Microsoft's engineers to anticipate a leap year is the latest black eye for the company, which has been stung by criticism of its unpopular WindowsVista operating system and by Xbox 360 hardware failures. The glitch also won't help the Zune gain ground against Apple's popular iPodplayer, which controls more than 70% of the MP3 hardware market.

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