Lionsgate adds to films on iTunes

Monday Lionsgate films became the next studio to offer films for purchase and download on iTunes

Follows Disney and Paramount

The deal will bring over 150 new titles to iTunes in February.

Lionsgate is an independent studio and a producer and distributor of movies with over 10,000 titles in it's library

Most titles will be "library" titles like "Rambo", "Terminator 2", and "Basic Instinct" Library titles sell for USD$9.99

Beatles not exclusive to Apple?

From MacMinute quoting a Fox News story

Neil Aspinall, head of Apple Corps, says 13 "core albums" have been re-mastered and will be released for digital download soon

In the article Aspinall said once songs become available for download they, “will be on all the services, not just one.”

It is rumored that as part of the recent Apple vs. Apple lawsuit settlement the Apple Corp may be receiving royalties on Apple iTunes sales and/or iPod hardware.

Stock option woes continue for Jobs

The Wall Street Journal and CBS Marketwatch both have reports on options offered to Pixar director John Lasseter to lure him to Pixar

The problem, the date on the options signed by Jobs was when shares were at their lowest and 3 months before Lasseter's contract was signed. Doh!

Stock-options backdating is not illegal, but there are U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations on how they must be accounted for and disclosed to shareholders.

Talk that if Jobs should suddenly become "incapacitated" Google CEO and Apple Board member Dr. Eric Schmidt is ready to step in at least temporarily

Apple TV still shipping this month

Amidst rumors that Apple TV shipments might slip to March an Apple spokesman has reconfirmed that units will be shipping in February

Pre-order customers have been given a February 28th ship date

EMI considers offering DRM free music

According to an AP article EMI has been talking with online retailers about possibly selling its entire digital music catalog in MP3 format without copy protection.

They are asking for proposals on how big of an advanced payment online retails would be willing to give for the DRM free rights to their catalog

EMI has been experimenting with selling some tunes sans-DRM and says," The results of those experiments were very positive, and the fan feedback has been very enthusiastic.''

Yahoo! Music and Monster Cable have also come out in support of Jobs' vision for a DRM free music download society.

Apple Store Bentall Centre opens this weekend in UK

Apple plans to open a new retail store this Saturday, February 17th at 10:00 AM in Kingston upon Thames. The Apple Store is located on the first floor of The Bentall Centre.

Apple Retail

Follow-up on replacing the MacBook Hard Drive

Thanks to everyone who sent in this info

The "tab" is actually on a carrier plate attached to the drive.

Need a Torx-T8 screwdriver to remove

Plate goes on the bottom of the new drive with the tab opposite the ports. Orientation is important so pay attention when you remove the old drive.

Instructional videos at OWC

OWC instructional Video

iFixit Guides

Evangelizing the Mac

Play question from Brad

Apple's get a Mac site is updated with "Thinking about upgrading to Vista? Even more reasons to get a Mac."

Get a Mac

Security pop-ups, viruses and spyware still there, need a better PC, no eye candy, driver issues, many versions to get all features.

What do they use their PC for?

Focus on Macs strengths, not Windows flaws. Be honest, not smug.

Show them what you can do with a Mac. iDVD, iMovie, etc. Let them try the same thing on a PC.

Get them to use a Mac for a week.

Tip: Use toolbar title to reveal path

From listener Erik

If you Command+Click (Apple+click) on the title of a Finder window a drop-down menu appears showing the folders path.

You can also drag and drop the folder icon to move it around the Finder.

As with any file or folder in the Finder if you hold the option key while dragging you will get a "+" icon and dropping it will copy instead of move. Command+option to create an alias.

Finally dragging any file or folder into the Terminal window will copy it's path. Handy for doing issuing command and 'cd's.

Review of H2O Audio Products

Play review from Tee

H2O Audio

h2Oaudio.com

Billibub Baddings Podcast

Followup: Sending email using Quicksilver

Shannon offers another way (a few more keystrokes) to send email using Quicksilver, but no Automator required and their are more fields populated.

Invoke Quicksilver and start typing a contact that is in your address book, then tab to the action panel and start typing compose.

You can start by entering "." (period), entering text in Quicksilver then follow the steps above and your text will be entered in the body and subject of your email.

Finally, if you make sure 'recent mail addresses' is checked in the Quicksilver Catalog pane then you will have access to emails that are not in your address book.

Quicksilver

MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo Airport issues

Listener Jim has been having "dropouts" and other connection issues with his Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro.

He appears to not be alone and some report that booting into Windows under Bootcamp solves the issue.

C2D MacBook Pro Airport Issues

Macfixit has an explanation and some fixes:

Anecdotal evidence suggests that this issue is the result of a mismatch of some sort between the new 802.11 pre-N chipset Apple is using in its MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo (Late 2006) and the chipsets used by some routers -- particularly older models with 802.11b-only transfer capabilities.

Try a different router While it's not an ideal solution, some users have reported that they are able to achieve normal signal strength and network throughput by simply switching the wireless router to which the MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo is connecting. In particular, older routers that use 802.11b-only chipsets appear to be causing problems, where newer routers using 802.11g or even pre-802.11n chipsets do not.

Moving SystemConfiguration folder Moving the folder SystemConfiguration located in /Library/Preferences, to the Desktop then restarting can resolve some connectivity issues. This workaround appears to be effective because of permissions problems that can affect the SystemConfiguration folder, and the therein contained com.apple.airport.preferences.plist file. Note that this workaround will require you to re-enter network configuration settings and may cause other lapses in functionality.

Switching channels In some cases, switching channels on your (non-AirPort) WiFi base station can improve reception weakened by incremental updates.

Watch for other device interference Other wireless devices operating on the same spectrum can cause interference with your AirPort connection. In fact, 2.4 GHz wireless phones and even household microwaves can cause lapses in connection or drops in speed.

iStumbler

istumbler.net

Mac Flash Card app

Listener Tom was looking for a Flash card app for OS X to help him study

I found iFlash from Loopware USD$14.95

iFlash

Printing, audio support, images, iPod support, 3 different memorization systems built-in

Built-in deck library of over 900 user contributed flash cards to download for free.

Versiontracker

versiontracker.com