iPod Battery Settlement moves forward. Finally!

The appeal filed in the settlement has been thrown out so Apple can now move forward with it's original plans to send out the settlements.

New Intel Logo

New logo shows the company name surrounded by an oval swirl and no longer has the lowered "e".

new_intel_logo

They are also replacing the "Intel Inside" slogan with the tag, "Leap Ahead".

New branding is said to emphasize Intels move from just PCs and into consumer products. This includes their new "media center" technology the Viiv (five). Hopefully that includes a new consumer Mac Mini DVR?

Intel Viiv

We already know the new processors will drop the "M" label in favor of "Core". The Core Duo and Core Solo.

Have OS X updates damaged Powerbooks?

The Unofficial Apple Web Log, is reporting a potential lawsuit in the works over PowerBook lower memory slot issue.

tuaw.com - Powerbook lawsuit

I had heard of this issue from several listeners, but this new info alleges that when users upgrade to 10.3.9, 10.4.0, and 10.4.1 on their 15" PowerBooks it actually damages the motherboard firmware controller or chipset.

Site with more info on the issue and link to the lawsuit page

lowermemoryslot.editkid.com

Sony "rootkit" settlement includes iTunes option

As part of their compensation one option in the suit offers the settlement members 3 free album downloads for each "rootkit" CD they purchased. In addition the CD is replaced with a non-DRMd version.

Jonathan Ive inducted into the Order of the British Empire

Apples VP of Design has been inducted into the Order of the British Empire as a Commander (a CBE honor) by the Queen.

Has Apple outsourced the next PowerMac motherboard?

AppleInsider is reporting that they have to Intel

Claims Apples own resources are spread thin prepping the Intel iBooks, PowerBooks, iMacs and Mac Minis and they need to outsource to meet a 3Q 2006 ship date for PowerMacs.

Will Apple lose control of the design? What about secrecy? Another potential source for leaks.

Apple will continue to do the industrial and case design.

Apple redesigned support site

I may be late in noticing this, but it looks like Apple has redesigned its support web site

www.apple.com—support

Looks a little cleaner and more organized to me.

Also, check out the new MacMini "Big Ideas" section if you haven't seen it yet. Has cool stuff people are doing with MacMinis, like the Millennium Falcon case mod.

MacMini "Big Ideas"

Followup on Bluetooth keyboards and startup keys

Listener Jonathan pointed out that if you own a Bluetooth keyboard that you cannot zap the PRAM.

Many listeners sent in email saying they could zap the PRAM with their Apple Bluetooth keyboards.

May be model dependent as Listener Dan told me he can zap on his PowerMac G5, but not his 17" PowerBook.

Follow-up on Spellcheck in Firefox

Spellbound Extension. A port of the spellchecker code and user interface from the Mozilla Suite's Composer.

spellbound.sourceforge.net

Listener Brian claims the reason the built-in OS X spell check feature doesn't work in Firefox or Camino is that they are Carbon and not a Cocoa apps.

Not sure if this is true. I know that Camino uses the Cocoa Interface toolkit and Firefox uses Javascript for UI.

Looking at the Mozilla developer roadmap, built-in spellchecking is a planned feature for Firefox 2.0

The easy way to convert DVDs to iPod format

From Mike Talmadge of Thoughtout

www.thoughtout.biz

Tyler Loch of iSquint released a stripped down version of Handbrake called HandBrake Lite.

www.isquint.org—handbrakelite

New Mac? Try the Migration Assistant.

Starts up when you first startup your new Mac. Also available in the Application-->Utilities folder

Can go from another Mac via a direct Firewire connection or can be from a full backup, like a Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper image.

I used it when I upgraded from OS 10.3 to 10.4.

Clarifying Mac PC file sharing

Play comment from Alison

Depending on which account you are trying to access it will make a difference as to what you can access.

You will need to have an account on the Mac to allow you to access the 'Public' shares of other users.

SharePoints software will give you better control over sharing

www.hornware.com—sharepoints

New podcast, Typical Mac User

Victor of the Typical PC User Podcast is a confirmed "switcher" and has just launched the Typical Mac User Podcast.

www.typicalmacuser.com

Will be geared toward recent switchers and new Mac users.

Listener Mark says you may want to check out MacMentor.com/switch which is Mac site focused on PC switchers