Mac marketshare hits 8%

According to web firm Net Applications (survey of traffic from 160 million visits to network's web sites), the Mac's market share jumped from 6.8% in November to 7.3% in December. But that's not all: in the last two days of that month, the Mac's share rose even higher, to 8.01%.

iPhone went from 0.09% to 0.12%.

A 7.% increase for Mac and a 33% increase in a single month for iPhone.

Apple's retails store may be playing a big role in growth (AppleInsider)

A Bernstein Research study reports that a typical Apple retail location sells about 21.4 Macs every day versus "less than 2" for many less specialized electronics shops.

The same report concludes that about two-thirds of Apple store revenue comes from the computers

Most Stores Mac sales grew 26% year over year

Stores are highly efficient earning $4,500 per square foot vs. big box stores like Best Buy that typically earn about $930/sq. ft.

Support for growing user base may eat up much of the retail stores profit margin.

Apple sued over iTunes "monopoly"

A lawsuit filed in San Diego

Alleges that Apple dominance in the market constitutes a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act

Claims Apple controls 75% of the online video market, 83% of the online music market, more than 90% of the hard-drive based music player market, and 70% of the Flash-based music player market.

Claims Apple could afford to, but chooses not to support Windows Media Audio format. Keeping it's close iPod/iTunes eco system.

Apple granted display docking patent

A patent for “a docking area configured to receive a portable computer”.

Filed July 3, 2006 and granted last Thursday

Possible announcement along with the ultra-portable Mac?

Other rumor round-up

OLED Mac keyboards

Macs with Blu-ray.

iPhone sales drop-off in France, up in UK

Orange reports they sold 70,000 iPhones in the first month.

Sold 30,000 in the first 5 days

48% to existing customers

3,500 unlocked phones

According to iLounge, iPhones are "not" country locked

ilounge.com

O2’s Matthew Key told Steve Jobs that O2 should move around 200,000 iPhones by the end of January.

Radiohead goes iTunes anyway

Radiohead made headlines when they announced they wouldn't be selling their new album "In Rainbows" on iTunes.

Said they did not want to allow per track sales.

The band released the album digitally and DRM free using a name your own price model.

Last week the new album was added to iTunes (with heavy marketing), $9.99 10 tracks in iTunes Plus DRM-free format, and yes available as single tracks.

iTunes Rentals looking imminent

Businessweek is reporting that Apple may be working deals with of the major studios including Fox, Disney, Warner Bros., Paramount, Lionsgate, and even Sony. Universal (surprise) seems to be the lone holdout.

Apple may be making pricing concessions on sales to seal the deals. With Apple potentially paying a $17.00 wholesale price similar to DVD retailers like WalMart.

Sources say Apple plans to charge $3.99 for 24-hour rentals.

On Tuesday images were posted of a copy of the "Family Guy (Blue Harvest)" DVD that allegedly shipped early to a customer (release date is Jan. 15).

On it there is a pre-endoded iPod version and when attempting to load it the customer was alerted that it required iTunes 7.6

Avon calling, Andrea Jung joins Apple Board

Avon Products CEO and chairman, Andrea Jung, has joined its board of directors

She also serves on the board of directors of GE.

Ken Ray astutely pointed out that GE owns NBC... hmmmm...

Forget Apple Store within a Store, how about Apple door to door?

8-Core Macs revealed pre-Macworld

MacPros

starting at USD $2,799.00

Two 2.8 GHz Quad-Core 45 nanometer "Harpertown" Intel Xeon processors with dual-independent 1600 MHz front side buses;

2GB of 800 MHz DDR2 ECC fully-buffered DIMM memory, expandable up to 32GB;

ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT with 256MB of GDDR3 memory;

320GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive running at 7200 rpm;

16x SuperDrive[TM] with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW);

two PCI Express 2.0 slots and two PCI Express slots;

Bluetooth 2.0+EDR; and

ships with Apple Keyboard and Mighty Mouse.

BTO options for up to 3.2GHz processors and 2 additional GFX options, a 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT or a 1.5GB Quadro FX 5600.

XServe

a single 64-bit 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Xeon processor with 12MB of L2 cache and a 1600 Mhz front side bus;

2GB of 800 MHz DDR2 ECC FB-DIMM RAM, expandable up to 32GB;

a single 80GB SATA Apple Drive Module;

dual Gigabit Ethernet on-board;

internal graphics;

two FireWire(R) 800 and three USB 2.0 ports; and

an unlimited client license for Mac OS X Server version 10.5 Leopard.

Basic configuration USD$2,999.00

First iPhone Trojan Horse

In the form of a fake "iPhone 1.1.3 prep" installer.

Released on iPhone installer sites by an 11-year old.

Once installed, said "shoes", but removing it damages some other 3rd party iPhone apps

Poor kid, someone called his Dad and his site went offline.

MacBook Pro Trackpad wake from sleep issue

Listener Fred noticed he had the issue when Remote Buddy was installed.

Contacted the developer and they uncovered a bug in the Leopard 10.5.1 IOKit and the IOUSB*UserClient.

On "Santa Rosa" Macbooks all the USB devices internal and external share same bus and the bug causes the controller to become deadlocked.

Explanation from IOSpirit

1) after a (deep) sleep, the USB devices all have to be re-enumerated, which means that IOKit will look for available drivers and user space apps that have registered for notifications (including Remote Buddy) will try to connect to the device through the respective IOUSB*UserClient.

2) Apple's HID drivers (IOUSBHIDDriver and subclasses) schedule an async read on all HID devices (including the IR Receiver, which, too, is just a HID device)

3) Right after, Remote Buddy receives notice from IOKit in userspace that a matching device (here: the built-in IR receiver) is available

4) To start from a clean basis, Remote Buddy's current release will make a ResetDevice() call via the user client for the respective IOUSBDevice.

5) In Kernel space, Apple's HID drivers still have their async reads scheduled. As the device is reset, they receive an error (errorcode kIOReturnUnderrun). Their standard reaction is to make a synchronous call to reset the interrupt pipe they are listening on.

6) The IOUSBController instance responsible for the device deadlocks.

7) As the IOUSBController instance has deadlocked, but is responsible for handling the communication for all other devices connected to the same port, all other devices connected to the same port will no longer appear to work, as data is neither handed to them nor polled from them.

8) As Santa Rosa MacBook Pros internally connect keyboard, trackpad and built-in IR receiver to the same USB port, unfortunate timing can lead to the ResetDevice() (in user space) and ClearStall() (on IOUSBPipe, in kernel space) calls to deadlock the IOUSBController instance handling all three devices. That's also, why all other USB ports will continue to work.

Said simply, any application that uses the quite common and widely used approach of accessing a USB device from user space and that makes a call to ResetDevice() on the IOUSBDevice can potentially deadlock the IOUSBController handling the port of the USB device - consequently disabling all I/O handling for all other devices connected to the same USB port.

So this bug can occur with almost any 3rd part app that interfaces with the USB and takes this common programming approach

The workaround of now is to disable sleep mode or remove the 3rd party apps until Apple issues and update.

How to export iMovie Project to iDVD

Play question from Ezra

For iLife '08 You just need to make sure you go under the "Share" Menu and choose the "Media Browser" option. Then select the quality you want. I would recommend going with Medium or Large.

Then launch iDVD and the project should be available from the "Movies" tab of the "Media" browser.

Setting up a kids Mac station

Listener David was looking for advice and tips for setting up a Kids gaming Mac like the ones in the Apple store

Specifically wanted the "Flash" launcher app.

I couldn't find that, but found and old but good article on AllForces.com

Kids Computer-part1

Cool launcher called "Docktop" that has some nice ways to lock it down. Creates little "wells" to add selected application icons, website hyperlinks, etc.

Docktop

Combine with a limited user account using a simplified Finder and parental controls.

Bumpercar Browser from Freeverse.

Bumpercar Kids Browser

What's the best format/bitrate for importing in iTunes

The $10 million dollar question from Richard.

There is a lot of debate on this topic, but depending on what you are going for.

Personal preference and your ears will guide you. Try it out on different sound files and listen.

MP3 for the most compatibility, find a good balance between size and bit rate. I like at least 160 or 192Kbps.

AAC for iTunes, iPod and iPhone compatibility

Apple Lossless or AIFF for best quality. Limited to iPods with Dock Connector or 1st Gen and newer iPod Mini.

Leopard, .Mac, and iCal syncing woes for some

Listener Bruce and others have emailed me describing all kinds of issues with .Mac syncing after updating to Leopard.

There are whole threads on Apple's support forums.

Complaints of loss of quick view edit/info pane. Command+E is the quickest way to get to edit mode in Leopard iCal.

Backup, log out and back in to .Mac account from the .Mac preferences, and reset .Mac syncing. In .Mac Sync tab, go to Advanced... --> Reset Sync Data. Make sure .Mac has a good clean copy of all the latest data first, can check from the .Mac website.

Switcher asks about Photoshop Elements for the Mac

Robin is a recent switcher and son uses PE on Windows. Wanted to get it for their new Mac, but discovered Mac version is still on v. 4.

Spend less (~USD $70.00) and get Parallels or VM Ware. Use your old copy of Windows and Photoshop Elements

Try one of the many emerging Photoshop alternatives

Pixelmator: www.pixelmator.com

Pixelmator

Acorn: flyingmeat.com—acorn

Acorn

Graphic Converter: www.lemkesoft.com

Graphic Converter

Open source Mac GIMP (free)

Listener Questions

Jamie wants to know about running Leopard on a G4.

Minimum requirements are an 867MHz G4

Mac OS X Hints has way to hack together and install image to bypass the checks

Hack Leopard on older G4s

Steven is having issues with Keynote '08 and Quicktime on a G4

ALready did this, but this is the fix for the issue he is describing:

Open Keynote's Preferences, then click on the Slideshow section.

Check (enable) the 'Allow Exposé, Dashboard and others to use screen' preference. Ignore the warning below the option about affecting animation performance.

Reinstall Quicktime, make sure you are up to date.

Quicktime preferences and click "Use high quality video settings when available"?

More memory?

Run maintenance, clear caches, etc.

PC viruses can use a Mac

Listener Jim wanted to share an experience and offers some sound advice

A Mac user opened a Word attachment from an emil in Office 2004 for Mac

It then asked to run an included macro, which they also agreed to. The macro was a W97m virus.

It modifed the Normal template in Word to replicate itself on to new documents.

There are many kinds of W97m macro viruses, but Jim says this one on a PC looks for the C: drive and then the command This virus is aimed at PC users as the code looks for the C: drive and then the command "Kill.FoundFiles(i) A VB command to delete files. Harmless on the Mac.

Jim was able to use the free tool Clam X AV to remove the infected files on his Macs.

Never run Macros in Office or switch to iWork.

www.clamxav.com