Vista will not boot on MacIntels

Microsoft Windows Vista will not support Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) booting.

It appears that only the 64-bit version Vista will offer EFI support as most Desktop PCs on the market continue to only use a BIOS and not EFI

Multipass added for iTunes Video

Apple added new Comedy Central shows, "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart." and "The Colbert Report".

They are available as a new purchase option, "Multipass"

For $9.99 you get the most recent episode, plus the next 15 episodes.

That works out to about 62.5¢ per episode.

Apples Birthday Plans

Apple will hold a media event around April 1st, it's 30th anniversary. It may not be on the 1st as it is a Saturday.

They are expected to announce a 13" Widescreen iBook (MacBook) as the timing would be right to take advantage of the educational buying season

There is also the possibility of a 17" MacBook Pro and a high-profile iPod-related product (Video iPod?)

Apple Setting up Tech Support in India

Apple is setting up a massive tech support center in Bangalore, India

Apple could hire as many as 1,500 employees by the end of this year, and then double that to 3,000 by the end of 2007.

Many people are concerned over the quality of the service once outsourced.

New Apple Retail Store: Reno, Nevada

Apple Retail Store at Sierra Summit in Reno, Nevada opens Wednesday March 15th at 10:00 AM.

Apple releases another security update

Security Update 2006-002 corrects problems caused by the previous patch and fixes a couple newly discovered security flaws.

The errors were with PHP and the "rsync" file transfer utility. The PHP issue may prevent SquirrelMail from running and the rsync "--delete" command may not have worked.

Does not patch a recently discovered iTunes and Quicktime flaw

The integer overflow and heap-based buffer overflow vulnerability affects both the Mac OS X and Windows versions of QuickTime Player 7.0.3 and 7.0.4 and iTunes 6.0.1 and 6.0.2.

New French Law may be Au Revoir iTunes France

French parliament will vote on a draft law that would make it legal to use software to remove iTunes FairPlay DRM so that music can be loaded onto non-iPod devices.

This my prompt Apple to close down iTunes in France to prevent "unprotected" tracks from being stripped and then distributed outside France.

The old school burn CD and rip back trick can accomplish pretty much the same end result.

Follow-up on Tesco Apple Mini Stores

Tesco is mainly a SuperMarket and posted the largest earnings of ANY supermarket retailer in 2005 (beating even WalMart)

3 Types of Tesco Stores (thanks Scott)

Tesco: Standard store, mostly grocery with some electrical.

Tesco Extra: Flagship stores that sell almost everything including electronics. There are the likely candidates for Apple Mini Stores.

Tesco Express: These are the smallest of the stores, mainly situated on housing estates, the operate very much like a corner shop.

Follow-up on FrontRow Enabler 1.2.1

Apples legal team sent Andrew Escobar a letter saying he was violating Apple's trademarks and Intellectual property rights and forcing him to remove FrontRow enabler

My question is if FrontRow seems to work so we'll with older Macs, why hasn't Apple made it available. I think many people would pay $19.99 USD for the software.

Some listeners reported having an issue where icons in the menu bar were missing and dashboard widget would not close. Seems to be an issue with the bezel services file getting double patched if you had a pervious version of FrontRow enabler installed.

Front Row Enabler Missing menu items article and potential fix

Fixing FronRow Enabler Issues

17" iMac Core Duo Review

Play review from Jack

Will Apple build iSights into Cinema Displays?

Listener Richard threw out this interesting theory and it makes sense to me.

The Mac Mini and the PowerMac (without a major re-design) are not designed to have a good place for a built-in iSight.

Would be a simple addition, so it makes sense.

Disabling Dashboard to free up memory

A quick check of my system with the Activity Monitor shows my widgets using between 5-10 MB of physical memory each.

Listener Alex pointed me to a set of Automator actions that can turn the Dashboard on and off. WidgetKiller

WidgetKiller

You can accomplish the same thing in other ways like using UNIX commands and the Terminal, but this seems easier to me.

Handling Podcasts in iTunes Library

Play question from Andrew

Apple actually removed them from the Main Library and so many people complained they added them back in

A couple things:

First by default podcasts are set to "skip when shuffling". This setting can be changed from the Info window

You can "uncheck" the podcasts and this will prevent them from playing in the main Library. Command+Click the checkbox to select/deselect all

Use the Search Bar (Edit-->Show Search Bar). Here you can "filter" the view to just show Music or just Podcasts, etc.

Multiple Macs with IR Remotes

Listener Zach has a problem we would all love to have. 2 Intel Macs, iMac and MacBook, and the remotes are confused. Can also interfere with other devices in the same room (TV, Stereo, etc.)

You need to "pair" the remote to the Mac. Apple has instructions on their site.

Pairing Apple IR Remote

Now you just need to remember which remote is paired to which Mac. A label should do the trick.