Norway and other EU countries not happy with Apples iPod

Norwegian Consumer Ombudsman has ruled Apple's iTunes service breaks their consumer protection law and has given the company 2 weeks to fix the problem

Norway is taking issue with Apples iTunes agreement (ELUA).

They claim Apple violates section 9a of the Norwegian Marketing Control Act because consumers area asked to enter a contact regulated by English, rather than Norwegian law. The big issue is that Apple holds the right to change the terms of purchase after the purchase has been made which violates Norwegian law.

They also want Apple to defend it's DRM policy. They feel the policy violates Norwegian copyright law since it restricts playback to iPods only. They feel the policy is not designed to protect illegal copying as much as it is to restrict the consumers buying options.

If Apple does not respond the Ombudsman is likely to start fining the company.

Denmark and Sweden are also expected to launch similar complaints about Apple's iTunes agreement.

a	Play comments from Ylan.

Also, the British Phonographic Institute said in a hearing before the U.K. House of Commons Select Committee for Culture that they feel Apple's dominance in the digital music industry is unhealthy and that they want Apple to allow interoperability of iTunes Music with other music players.

Apple should just allow licensing of FairPlay, but make the cost extremely high.

Besides no 3rd party will be able to replicate the seamless music experience offered by the iPod/iTunes relationship.

iPods more "in" than beer on college campuses

A recent survey of 1,200 undergrad students at 100 colleges by Ridgewood, New-Jersey based Student Monitor claims that students rated the iPod as a more "in" thing than beer drinking.

Beer cam in second for only the second time in the 18 years of the survey. Last time was 1997 when the Internet was #1.

Apple lowers Canadian iPod pricing

Apple lowered 5th Gen iPod prices in Canada

The 30GB iPod was CAD$379 and is now CAD$249, with the 60GB model dropping to $459 from $499.

Apple offers new CBS content on iTunes

Apples has added several popular prime times CBS shows to the line-up available on the iTunes Music Store

Survivor, NUMB3RS, NCIS and all 3 CSIs are available in the US store for $1.99 per episode.

Rumors of new Leopard features

MacOSXRumors claims their sources tell them Apple has new "collaborative" tools set for inclusion in OS 10.5.

The main feature would be the ability to define a document as collaborative and then have multiple users working on it at the same time with updates in real-time

We have that now with SubEthaEdit from Coding Monkeys

SubEdthaEdit

These features would be used in upcoming updates to iWork and iCal (shared calendars).

Like previous rumors of integrated virtualization support, the claims are not verified and likely purely speculation.

Will new Mac Pros offer "Quads"

Lots of speculation surrounding the new systems given Intels upcoming processor road map.

Likely Apple would continue to offer a "quad" core model. Intel has a single-chip with quad cores, the Kentsfield due in the first quarter 2007, but it likely would not be ready in time for Apples Mac Pro launch. Some expect announcement of the new systems as early as at the WWDC in the second week of August (2 months later than normal).

Most likely be a dual dual core system like the G5

Apple passed off the motherboard design to Intel back in October and early prototypes looked like they were considerably smaller. Many worried about Apple design with an outsourced motherboard. New prototypes look to be the same size as the current G5s

MacCast One Minute Tip #15: Desktop Printing

Play MacCast One Minute Tip

Get more at The One Minute Tip Podcast

www.oneminutetip.com

MacBook Pro kernel panics from Airport issue

Sent in by listener Dino

Long discussion thread on Apple's forum

MBP Airport Panics

Seems to point to an issue with the Airport Extreme networking in some MBPs.

Majority of problems seem to be the ones made in Week 20, but others are having issues too.

Swapping out the Airport card does not seem to fix it. Some say replacing the logic board will correct the issue.

You can verify if that is the issue by turning off the Airport and using a wired connection.

Listener Joe also reports Airport issues with some MacBooks

Reports on Apples discussion boards of MacBooks dropping Airport connections while on battery power.

MacBook dropping AirPort

Seems to stay up when plugged in and/or getting packets.

Problem with the Linksys WRT54 Wireless G (many with the "hacked" firmware), but other routers too.

Turning off WEP and/or switching to WPA would fix the issue fro some. Writing a script to continuously ping the router and keep the connection open also seemed to work.

Upgrading the 54G to the 4.30.5 firmware update for Joe's router fixed it.

Mac Fixit for Mac troubleshooting

www.macfixit.com

Fix strange characters when publishing iWeb sites to your own server

Listener Bill pointed out that some iWeb sites posted to your own servers are having issues displaying some characters. Your get "?"s and other oddities. He found the reason and some solutions

It has to do with the character encoding, Apple uses UTF-8 (Unicode), and your server settings. Can also possibly be caused by your FTP client.

Corruption during FTP upload.

In Fetch, set the preferred encoding to UTF-8, uncheck any box in its preferences which says "Translate ISO Characters," and possibly set to Raw Data rather than Automatic.

In CyberDuck and Transmit, try setting View > Encoding to UTF-8 and perhaps Transfer Mode to Binary.

Server set incorrectly.

Try setting View > Text Encoding in your browser to UTF-8. If this makes it appear correctly, it means your server is probably forcing browsers to interpret the page as being in Latin-1 encoding.

You will need to get your hosting provider to correct it or fix it yourself with something like an HTACCESS file.

Link to a post with more details on this issue

iWeb UTF8 Issues

Restoring user account after a fresh install of OS X

Play question from Kirk

I use Carbon Copy Cloner to create a clone of my OS X drive. Then after install I use Apple's Migration Assistant (Applications-->Utilities-->Migration Assistant) to bring my User files over to the new system.

Carbon Copy Cloner

Could also use .Mac Backup. They have a plan to backup the User folder. Then just restore that backup to your new system.

I know people who do a copy and paste of the user folder using the root account, but don't recommend that method.

Managing 2 iWeb sites from 1 Mac

Listener patrick has 2 .Mac account (work and home) and has a iWeb site on each and would like to manage them both from 1 Mac.

Set up 2 user accounts

Work and Home.

Set up the .Mac account for each one in the preferences for that account.

Run iWeb from the appropriate account and publish from there.

You could enable fast user switching (System Preferences-->Accounts-->Login Options) to move quickly between the two accounts.

The story behind iCal and July 17th

Listener Suraj noticed that iCal icon in the dock displays the current date when running, but show July 17th when closed. He was wondering what the significance of that date was.

July 17th, 2002 was the day Apple announced iCal. They also introduced OS 10.2 "Jaguar", new iPods, iTunes 3, iSync and the 17in iMac (desk lamp).