Foxconn admits breaking Chinese labor laws

According to China CSR, a corporate social responsibility website focused on China, Foxconn now admits that employees work as much as 80 extra hours each much which violates the 36 hour limit set by Chinese labour laws.

A company spokesman said they did pay workers according to the minimum salary requirements of the local government and that Apples special investigative team found no problem with Foxconn

Apple supposedly signed off on the site even after the CSR report was published. CSR is the only source of the story so the accuracy of the information may be in question.

Jobs to Keynote WWDC and show off Leopard

Steve Jobs will present keynote preview of Mac OS X “Leopard” on Monday, August 7, 2006, beginning at 10:00 a.m

Other Apple execs like senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, Philip Schiller and senior vice president of Software Engineering, Bertrand Serlet will also be participating.

No word on whether or not the even will be webcast.

Rumors say we will be waiting for next gen iPods

At least one analyst thinks we will not see new iPods until next year.

Original expectations had new Nano coming out in Q3 with a new video iPod in Q4. Now those release dates may be slipped 1-2 quarters.

He sites the change of chip suppliers as the primary cause for delay in new iPod Nanos. Apple recently abandoned the Portal Player chip they currently use and ids believed to be switching to a new System-on-chip (SOC) design that would offer an integrated audio/video co-processor. Samsung is believed to be the new supplier.

Nano prices are expected to remain the same with storage sizes being increased to 4GB and 8GB.

The next "vPod" is said to be having battery life issues. Apple wants to increase screen size and battery life which are conflicting propositions

Apple maybe trying both a bigger battery, and using both NAND flash and microdrives to achieve the results they want

There is also a possibility that Bluetooth headphones may or may not be included depending on the development schedule.

NBC sold over 6 million shows via iTunes

NBC reported they have sold over 6 million shows through iTunes. Battestar Galactica, Monk and SNL sketches have been the most popular.

MTV Networks and Apple added new shows, including the new Blade series. The Blade Series pilot and many other programs are available for free download.

Apple now offers over 150 network and cable programs and has sold over 35 million shows to date.

Apple releases 10.4.7 and other updates

Now available via Software update and on Apples support site

www.apple.com—support

For 15" MacBook Pro owners, they can now enable a two finger "right-click" in the Keyboard and Mouse Preferences. MacBooks and newer 17" MBP installs already have the feature.

Available for PowerPC and Intel, both packages address the same issues

Addresses an issue that prevents AFP deadlocks and dropped connections

saving Adobe and Quark documents to AFP mounted volumes is more reliable

Bluetooth file transfers, pairing and connecting to a Bluetooth mouse and syncing to mobile phones has been improved.

Also iPhoto 6.0.4 (new themes), QuickTime 7.1.2 (an issue previewing iDVD projects) and iTunes 6.0.5 (Nike update)

Apple opens two new retail stores this weekend

The West Town Mall in Knoxville Tennessee and the Stamford Town Center in Stamford, Connecticut

Both open at 10:00 AM on Saturday July 1st

More details on Apple's retail web site

www.apple.com—retail

Intel ships new 2.33GHz Core Duo

The "Core Duo T2700" sells for $637 in quantities of 1,000. The previous top of the line 2.16GHz Core Duo T2600, was recently reduced to $423 in lots of 1,000.

Wonder if Apple will rev the MacBook Pro line or offer the new chip as a Buiild-to-Order (BTO) option?

More on Location Management

Listener Ross points out Location X which brings back a lot of the location Management functionality lost from OS 9

Determine and switch your location based on AirPort network

Change settings for Mail, time zone, default printer, Energy Saver settings, Internet preferences and more

Location X

Snowball Blue Mic Review

Play review from Jim

Blue Mic Web Site

www.bluemic.com

Apple's Repair and Warranty Extension Programs

Listener Elvin pointed out the program for eMac video and power issues

Talk about my iMac G5 problem

My Broken iMac

Apple's current repair extension programs cover specific issues on models out of AppleCare

Battery Exchange

iBook G4 and PowerBook G4

Repair Extension Program

PowerBook G4 Memory Slot (15-inch)

PowerBook G4 Display (15-inch)

iBook Logic Board

iMac G5 (Video and Power Issues)

eMac (Video and Power Issues)

Reboot often fixes pesky iPods

Play comment from Bryan

5th Gen, iPod Mini, Nano and other "click wheel" iPods hold down Menu + Center button for 6-10 sec.

To reset iPod, iPod (scroll wheel), iPod (touch wheel), and iPod (dock connector). Press and hold the Play/Pause and Menu buttons until the Apple/iPod logo appears, about 6 to 10 seconds

Shuffle, turn it off for 10 sec. and then back on.

Reorganizing your Application folder

Listener Murray found out that putting his applications into sub folders in the Applications folder cause Software Update to no longer see the apps (iTunes, iWeb, etc) for updates.

Create a new folder in your home folder, I call mine "Launch" (switchers may like "Start")

Create subfolders (categories) in that folder.

Place aliases to the applications in those folders

Put your new "Launcher" folder in the dock. Now when you Control(Right)+Click that folder you have a "Start" bar style access to all your apps organized in neat little groups.

You can also do this unorganized by placing your Applications folder in the dock.

Trick also works for any other folders you want quick organized access to.

Another trick is to place items in your Finders toolbar. Just drag stuff in. Right click to remove.

Do TV ad changes signal death of BootCamp

Apple recently change their "Touché" TV ad and Get A Mac site to focus on Parallels rather than Boot Camp as the way to run Windows on a Mac

Will Apple include "virtualization" technology in 10.5? Will they buy Parallels?

Boot-Camp is public beta and does expire in September of 2007 or upon the next commercial release of Apple software.

Labeling your own content as "TV Show" in iTunes

Several listeners and myself are frustrated by the fact that only Apple purchased TV Shows seems supported by iTunes, FrontRow and on iPods

You can Select the file in iTunes-->Choose Get Info-->Go to the Options tab and set the Video Kind to TV Show, but it will never show up in that category in FrontRow, in the Video section in iTunes or on your video iPod.

There is an open-source project called Atomic Parsley, AtomicParsley is a lightweight command line program for reading, parsing and setting iTunes-style metadata in MPEG-4.

Atomic Parsley

Parsley is Automatically Delicious, GUI Interface

Parsley is Automatically Delicious

Atomic Parsley is a little on the "hacky" side so proceed with caution.

Lostify solutions seems to work

Get Lostify

Lostify

Get your video into MPEG-4 format. Use iSquint final 1.0 (or later) or QuickTime Pro (passthrough option if video is already in a correct format)

iSquint

Drag the video onto the Lostify icon

Change the tags and be sure to click the lock next to each change you make to set it.

Click the options and check the force append the filename as .m4v

Click Apply and then it will create a copy of the video with the correct tags

Drag that video to the Video library in iTunes. You may need to do a Get Info on the file in iTunes before iTunes sees the tag change.