World of Apple

An article has appeared on the internet pointing towards anApple support page containing detailed instructions on how to determine your iPods battery life.

Apple describe the page with the following paragraph;

If you feel you aren’t getting the most out of your iPod battery, perform the simple test below before considering battery service or replacement. This test will help you determine how much life (playback time) you are truly getting from your battery

Customers who bought their PowerBook G4 between January 2005 and April 2005 displaying serial numbers W8503xxxxxx and W8518xxxxxx with the following symptoms maybe be eligible for replacement even though their warranty may have ran out the symptoms include, failure to start up, typically followed by three beeps and the sleep LED flashing periodically, only one SO-DIMM memory slot recognizes the memory installed when both memory slots are populated, and degraded system performance due to the recognition of only one memory chip.

The system will require inspection by an Apple technical support rep or an AASP.

Taking place right now in Anaheim, California is NAMM, a music show that Apple is attending. Today Apple reps have been showing off Logic Pro 7.2 which runs natively on Intel machines and is due for release in February.

The application is said to run considerably quicker than on previous PowerPC machines and this was backed up my a comment from an Apple representative.

“The performance is stunning and has met my already high expectations,” Dr. Gerhard Lengeling, Apple senior director and lead architect audio/music app.

Apple has sent an email to podcasters letting them know that it has revised its Podcasting guidelines.

“Since you’ve got an active podcast listed in iTunes, we would like to let you know about a few valuable new resources: First, the technical spec has been revised and expanded. Check here for all questions or problems related to your podcast, or if you’re interested in enhancing the appearance of your listing with iTunes-specific tags. There is also an Apple Discussions Forum exclusively for podcast producers, located here: If you have a question or a problem that the technical spec cannot answer, the community of iTunes podcasters there should be able to provide valuable guidance.”

Todays conference call has finished, announcing Apples Q1 Financial results, the last 14 weeks have been the best in Apples history.

• 14,043,000 iPods sold, 207% growth over the year ago quarter.
• 1,254,000 Macintosh computers sold, 20% growth over the year ago quarter.
• Revenue of $5.75 million, 40% of that from International sales (outside of US).
• Net Quarterly profit of $565 million.
• Gross margins of 27.2% compared to 28.5% Q1 2005.

  “We did see what we think was a bit of a pause from some customers associated with the Intel transition,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO, in a telephone interview.

  Steve Jobs had the following to say about the record quarter and the year ahead, We are thrilled to report the best quarter in Apple’s history. Two highlights of an incredible quarter were selling 14 million iPods and getting ready to launch our new Macs with Intel processors five to six months ahead of expectations. We are working on more wonderful products for 2006, and I can’t wait to see what our customers think of them.”

  After the conference call Apple’s stock has taken a bit of a rocky road eventually settling at $82.49.

It’s been a big story over the last few days, Apple’s new Intel ad was supposedly the same as some music video, well it appears the reason they look similar is because they are by the same Director.

Sarah Moody of Sub Pop Records had this to say;

“… the Apple commercial is indeed very similar, it wasn’t licensed in any form, and was made by the same directors as the Postal Service video. We weren’t alerted to the fact that it existed until the day it came out.”

So serves you all right for jumping to conclusions…

Yesterday we reported on a story about Apple UK possibly using a VAT loophole that would allow the iTunes Music Store to sell VAT free songs.

Apple has today denied this report by saying;

“This report is not true”

AppleInsider is reporting that from March Apple will no longer sell its Final Cut products, such as Soundtrack, Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro and others as stand alone products but will instead only be selling the Final Cut Studio which encompasses them all.

Naturally all these applications will be Universal and as Steve said himself users with the current versions who wish to grab hold of the Universal versions can pay $49 for the cross grade.

Although this doesn’t seem true for Aperture as Apple have posted the following on their website;

“A Universal version of Aperture, which will run natively on both PowerPC- and Intel-based Mac computers, will be available before the end of March 2006. New and existing owners of Aperture will be able to crossgrade to the Universal version at no additional charge via Software Update.”

Introduced around 2001 the 802.11a standard was thought up as an alternative to 802.11b, at the time 802.11g was being ratified and due to its compatibility became the mainstream standard in computers from that point onwards.

Three years ago Greg Joswiak of Apple said “802.11a makes no sense - no sense at all…There’s no conceivable (802.11)a market.”

Apple have now taken the opportunity to implement the standard and its certainly not a bad thing, supposedly Schiller was using an 802.11a network during the Keynote last Tuesday to demonstrate the MacBook Pro’s iSight capabilities.

So now Apple has 802.11 a/b/g how about some n.

Already a billionaire from owning stock in Pixar, Steve is set to receive another set of stocks from Apple.

“Jobs exchanged worthless options on a split-adjusted 55 million shares for 10 million shares of restricted stock three years ago. The shares, Jobs’s entire stake in Apple, vest in March. Right now, they are valued at $808.6 million,” Bloomberg News reports. ‘It’s a bargain,’ said Chuck Jones, a fund manager at Atlantic Trust Stein Roe in San Francisco. ‘I’d gladly pay him another $808.6 million to have him create another $65 billion in market cap.”