....and OS X 10.5 delayed.......

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...from: http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/mwvodcast/2007/04/mwvodcast10/ index.php?lsrc=mwweek

Macworld Video: Apple TV interface

By Christopher Breen

This latest Macworld Video is all about giving you a first-hand look at Apple TV in action. Senior news editor Jonathan Seff puts Apple TV through its paces so you can see how it operates and what its interface looks like.

Starting with the main screen of the interface, work our way into the movie screen, and show how a movie plays. There is also a tour the screens for TV shows, music, podcasts, and photos. After a peak at the Settings and Sources screen, things are wrapped up with a look at the trailers and previews feature.

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...from:

http://www.macworld.com/2007/04/firstlooks/googledesktop/index.php? lsrc=mwweek

First Look: Google Desktop (Beta) for the Mac Google’s search application comes to Mac desktops, and we try it out By Dan Moren Love it or hate it, Spotlight is pretty much the de facto choice when it comes to searching your Mac’s files. Until today, that is.

Google has released a Mac version of Google Desktop, its desktop search app previously available only to Windows users. Google says its search application and OS X 10.4’s Tiger are complements, not competitors. Still, many Mac users dissatisfied with Spotlight might approach this new product with the following question in mind: By bringing Google’s considerable expertise in all things search-related to bear on your Mac, could Google Desktop outshine Apple’s Spotlight?

Let’s take a preliminary look at this application, which you can download for yourself, provided you’re running Mac OS X 10.4.

Search party You can summon Google Desktop’s search window by hitting the command key twice in quick succession. (That keyboard shortcut can be changed in the preferences.) Typing a query in the text box will display a live list of results, much as Spotlight does. In my informal tests, Google Desktop seemed zippier than Spotlight, showing results with little or no delay.

Google Desktop easily lets you use powerful search operators to narrow down your query.

Google Desktop will match searches against files, e-mail messages, addresses, and chat transcripts—by default, the application will display the first ten results but you can shorten that to the first five or expand it the first 15 via Preferences. An icon to the side of each result lets you know the type of file you’ve found and its associated application; selecting any result from the list will open that document in the associated application, just like in Spotlight. For example, if I do a search for “Apple” and click on an e-mail result labeled “Apple eNews,” that e-mail will open in my default e- mail client.

At the bottom of the list there’s an option to display all results from your desktop or search the Web with the same string; selecting either of these options will open your default browser and call up the appropriate results.

One feature that ought to have Spotlight users (particularly Spotlight detractors) jumping for joy is the ability to use the same query operators that Google.com uses. For example, enclosing a string in quotes will only search for instances of that complete phrase; you can also require or exclude terms with + and -, respectively. (It’s worth noting that Apple plans to add support for boolean logic—using AND, OR, and NOT—in search requests in revamped version of Spotlight to be included in the forthcoming OS X 10.5 update.)

Among the most powerful options Google Desktop brings is the caching of deleted files. If you accidentally trashed that report you need for tomorrow’s meeting, you may still be able to recover the content via Google Desktop.

What’s your preference? Like Spotlight, Google Desktop builds an index of your files to enable quick searching. Google Desktop’s preferences, which are installed as a preference pane, allows you to choose which volumes are indexed and whether or not you want your Gmail account and web history indexed as well.

Indexing begins as soon as you install the application, and while I didn’t notice a substantial slowdown in using Google Desktop, I did notice that the fans on my MacBook kicked into action. A quick check of Activity Monitor showed the indexing processing taking anywhere from 15 to 85 percent of CPU cycles during the initial procedure.

By integrating with Google.com, Google Desktop can return results from your Mac whenever you use search on Google.

There’s also an option to integrate Google Desktop with Google.com. Once enabled, whenever you search for anything on Google.com, you’ll also be alerted to how many results appear on your own machine. Google says that these results are kept private (even from the company), but you can disable this functionality in Google Desktop’s preferences if you choose.

Concerns Since Google Desktop is not drag-and-drop and it doesn’t use Apple’s standard installer, there’s no information about what files are being installed and where. Google Desktop does offer an option for uninstalling via the preference pane.

Also, though Google Desktop offers an option of whether or not to display results from deleted files, disabling this option does not prevent those files from being cached—it merely hides the results. Those users who work with sensitive files should be aware of this fact.

Naturally, this being a Google app, Google Desktop is still in beta, but in the brief time I’ve used it, I’ve experienced no problems. While it may not offer the same level of integration into the OS that Spotlight has, it seems a more than able competitor when it comes to the nitty-gritty of searching your Mac.

Macworld will have a full review of Google Desktop as we get more of a chance to put the application through its paces.

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Apple ships 100 millionth iPod By Marguerite Reardon Staff Writer, CNET News.com Published: April 9, 2007, 7:54 AM PDT

Apple said last Monday that it has sold its 100 millionth iPod [NOTE: Greg Jowswyak, Apple's VP of iPod World Wide product marketing spoke with Macworld's Philip Michael's about this milestone. In that podcast, Greg stated that, of that 100 million units, 46 million were sold during 2006.] [...]

Apple's iTunes Store has seen comparable success in selling items from its catalog of more than 5 million songs, 350 television shows and 400 movies. The company says it has sold more than 2.5 billion songs, 50 million TV shows and 1.3 million movies.

[Editor's note: the TV shows and movies are not yet available in the Canadian iTunes Music Store.]

[...]

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...from:

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/04/03/tech- iphonejune-20070403.html

Apple confirms U.S. iPhone launch set for June

Last Updated: Tuesday, April 3, 2007 | 3:45 PM ET CBC News

Apple Inc. has confirmed reports that its iPhone cellphone will be released in the United States in June.

[...]

"We haven't announced whether we will carry the iPhone," Odette Coleman, manager of corporate communications for Rogers Wireless, said in an e-mail to CBC News Online. "Everything in the media has been speculations to this point. The only fact is that we are the only GSM carrier in Canada. That's the only fact."

(Editor's note: the "only fact" quoted is not quite true. www.icewireless.ca shows the ICE Wireless GSM system available in Yellowknife and Inuvik.... Well, OK. The "only fact" is that Rogers Wireless is the only GSM carrier in most of Canada within 100 miles or so of the US border - except for Alberta (where most of the province is covered - thank-you Teles) and North-Western Ontario where you won't have any coverage at all between Kenora and Sault Ste. Marie except for around Thunder Bay. ::-)

***** ***** ***** ***** [Editor's note: from an email received January 16, 2007 from Rogers Customer Service:

Dear Wayne Billing,

Thank you for taking the time to write to us, we appreciate your use of online customer service.

In your recent email, you have informed us that you have concerns about the availability of the iPhone on Rogers.

We would also like to assure you that we take your concerns very seriously and we appreciate any feedback that you can provide us. We appreciate your feedback because this is information that we can use to address any similar problems that may arise in the future. On the whole it makes us better able to address our customers concerns.

On Tuesday, January 9, 2007, Apple announced the unveiling of their new iPhone, a combination mobile phone/digital music player/camera

Availability " The iPhone will first be introduced in North America " Cingular is the only wireless carrier to launch the iPhone in the United States " Rogers is actively working with Apple to launch the iPhone in Canada as soon as possible and will be the exclusive provider of the iPhone in Canada " Apple is planning to introduce the iPhone in Europe (Q4 2007) and Asia (2008) " Please be advised that Rogers will be offering the iPhone exclusively in Canada. Unfortunately, the launch date and pricing for Canada are not yet available " Other Canadian wireless carriers will not launch the iPhone, Rogers will be the only Canadian wireless carrier to offer the iPhone

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...from:

http://www.apple.com/macpro/

http://www.apple.com/macpro/specs.html

Apple has announced the new MacPro line which can have two Quad Core Xeon or two Dual Core Xeon processors, 16 GB of RAM, well..... OK.... it's Big and Fast with lots of room for Expansion. ::-)

Apple sees is aiming this at film/video, 3D animation, 3D modeling, 3D rendering, Scientific computing, in addition to high end graphic desing, music/audio, and photography users.

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OS X 10.5 delayed

...from:

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/

Apple Statement iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is. However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard's features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait. Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we're sure we've made the right ones. [Apr 12, 2007]