Live coverage will begin over at http://live.worldofapple.com at:

• 07:00AM - Hawaii
• 10:00AM - Pacific
• 11:00AM - Mountain
• 12:00PM - Central
• 01:00PM - Eastern
• 06:00PM - London
• 09:00PM - Moscow
• 02:00AM - Tokyo (September 10th)

For some behind the scenes insight follow me on Twitter.

You can now receive the latest news and rumours from World of Apple straight to your email inbox. The service which is provided by our friends over at Zookoda, delivers a nice selection of stories every few days straight to your inbox. Perfect for those who are on the move and can receive email on their iPhone or Blackberry.

Just type your email address in the box on this page, confirm the email that will follow and you’ll be good to go.

RSS Feeds

The quickest and most efficient way to stay on top of the happenings at World of Apple is to hook into a feed. RSS feeds provide an excellent method of connecting to all forms of data. Getting World of Apple is as simple as clicking this link or if you’re using Safari the feed can be accessed by the “RSS” button to the right of the address bar.

For those using an RSS Reader the correct front page RSS feed is: http://news.worldofapple.com/feed

Feed Me

World of Apple can also be read via our handy tool called “Feed Me.”

Feed Me is quite simply a page containing the latest stories from a selection of websites across the Mac web. Feed Me is the easiest way to get an idea of what is hot at the moment.

World of Apple is looking for help in three key areas of the site, see minor descriptions of the three areas below. Those interested in applying for the position or have further questions can contact use via the Contact Form (Select Job Enquiry in drop-down to ensure quick reply).

Regular News/Rumours Coverage

The majority of posts on World of Apple are covering news or rumours, unfortunately news comes in at all hours of the day. World of Apple intends to add writers in more timezones to allow for quicker coverage of the latest breaking news or rumours.

Ideal candidates should have extreme knowledge of all things Apple, excellent writing skills and preferably a background in journalism.

Third Party Reviews

Due to popular demand we have recently sought agreements with Apple to have review units sent to us here at World of Apple. Unfortunately this is a slow process but in the near future more reviews will be posted.

In addition to reviewing Apple products some have asked if we could cover third-party products as well.

We’re looking for an individual with a passion for good Mac software and accessories to help write detailed reviews of products sent from third-parties.

Analysis and/or Opinion Articles

It’s all fine and well covering news, rumours and writing reviews. But thought provoking articles are always a fantastic addition to any site.

The ideal individual for this position is someone with serious expertise in all areas of Apple and covers the news and rumours avidly. Articles should offer analysis on recent moves by Apple or maybe a prediction of future moves.

Interested?

Contact World of Apple via the Contact Form to ask any questions or to enquire about taking up one of these positions.

First of all over the last few months our readership has pretty much doubled, hurtling us towards our next milestone of 20,000 readers. At this rate we should hit that around the middle of next year. The entire World of Apple team welcomes all our new readers.

Some of you out there may have noticed a few changes over the last day or so, over the last 2 months we’ve been working hard at moving World of Apple to our new host; Media Temple.

It all started back when we posted those exclusive images of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Build 9A499. It caused an influx of over 200,000 unique visitors over a 4-day period, during those 4 days we experienced zero site wide downtime but our current host at the time decided that pulling down that gallery was a smart decision to prevent load. The gallery page was down for a total of 24 hours and when it returned only caused the server to choke again.

Believe it or not World of Apple has been hosted on a shared server for the last two years and albeit a beefy shared server it appears it is time to move up the ladder. The distinct disadvantage of a shared server is that what happens to this site or any other site on the server affects every other site on the server and from the point of view of our hosts that isn’t good for business.

So after much searching and deliberation World of Apple is moving away from UK Web Solutions Direct to Media Temple.

The move hasn’t been easy and both UKWSD and Media Temple have helped immensely, but special thanks should be extended to one guy who works ridiculously hard behind the scenes; he knows who he is.

For now not everybody will be pointing at this server as DNS propagation can take anywhere up to 48 hours but if you’re reading this then you have arrived safely, the only difference being a new Media Temple logo under the search box.

Finally World of Apple celebrated its second birthday on September 25th, here’s to another 2 years!

The gallery was first posted on the evening of Thursday 2nd of August, in the five days ensuing that date the gallery saw over 250,000 individual users; and for those of you that love hits that clocks in well over 50 million.

The huge influx of traffic caused serious server issues, at one point on Sunday 5th we were pushing over 200mbps (megabits per second). The traffic caused some lengthy downtime and due to this we will make the move to a new host in the near future; more on that later in the month.

Following the Tuesday’s Special Event things died off quickly but the gallery remained in place, receiving a few thousand visitors everyday.

That is until this very moment.

At 1 minute past 8 on the evening of the 14th (British Summer Time) our general enquiries inbox pinged with glee and naturally someone jumped to the case. To our surprise it was a “kind” email from Apple Legal;

To Whom It May Concern:

DMCA Certification: I hereby state, under penalty of perjury, that I have a good faith belief that the activities described above are not authorized by Apple, that the information in this notification is accurate, and that I am authorized to act on behalf of Apple in this regard.

There was certainly some big threatening words being thrown our way.

To be perfectly honest we let it slip for a little while, it was obvious that it wasn’t going to blow over but we did consider fighting it for a fleeting second.

That was until today, it appeared that Apple hadn’t forgotten about it and had decided to contact our hosts about the situation. Naturally our hosts operate strict policies regarding copyright material and by this point Apple was using stronger words;

To Whom It May Concern:
We represent Apple Inc. (”Apple”). It has come to our attention that a website for which you are the administrative and technical contact — World of Apple — is posting numerous screenshots of a confidential pre-release build of Apple’s new operating system, Mac OS X 10.5 (aka “Leopard”), Build 9A499. The webpage in question is http://worldofapple.com/photos/Leopard/9A499.

Yesterday, I sent a notice directly to the site, but have not yet received a response. Apple is prepared to take further legal action with respect to this matter, and expressly reserves its rights to do so.

As you may have noticed the gallery has been removed and now points at this post you’re reading now.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that makes World of Apple what it is, especially our growing reader base.

I also apologise for any inconvenience this post or the removal of the Leopard gallery has caused you.

World of Apple will offer updates during the event but tune into one of the following for more detailed live reports. Also read our rumour roundup for details on what we could be seeing at this event.

• Engadget
• Gizmodo
• The Mac Observer

As of late last week you can now receive the latest news and rumours from World of Apple straight to your email inbox. The service which is provided by our friends over at Zookoda, delivers a nice selection of stories every few days straight to your inbox. Perfect for those who are on the move and can receive email on their iPhone or Blackberry.

Just type your email address in the box below (or on this page), confirm the email that will follow and you’ll be good to go.

RSS Feeds

The quickest and most efficient way to stay on top of the happenings at World of Apple is to hook into a feed. RSS feeds provide an excellent method of connecting to all forms of data. Getting World of Apple is as simple as clicking this link or if you’re using Safari the feed can be accessed by the “RSS” button to the right of the address bar.

For those using an RSS Reader the correct front page RSS feed is: http://news.worldofapple.com/feed

Feed Me

World of Apple can also be read via our handy tool called “Feed Me.” Feed Me is quite simply a page containing the latest stories from a selection of websites across the Mac web. Feed Me is easiest way to get an idea of what is hot at the moment.

World of Apple is looking for unboxing photos and videos as well as well written hands on reviews of Apple’s hottest device.

Monetary gifts will be given to individuals who supply photos, videos and reviews to World of Apple.

All contact should be made to iphone@worldofapple.com

As far as we can tell at this point, one minute all servers appeared fine, so we turned on the redirects and ran a few more tests, everything was good, around 2 hours before the Keynote was due to begin things started to slow down.

It was around 1 hour before the Keynote was due to begin that suddenly the Live server went down, we rebooted and it went down again, the final stats before the reboot for Apache were 8,000 unique accesses and 1.56m/bits of data within the last 59 seconds, that would have been around 1 hour before the Keynote.

At this point it looked fairly hopeless that the server would keep itself up, so in summary we don’t rate goddady.com dedicated hosting at the moment.

After months of planning and development it was recently decided that such a scheme is possible with the necessary funding and the right people in place. By teaming up with numerous companies we have managed to put a foolproof system in place, which will hopefully deliver the best Keynote experience since Apple stopped streaming video of the Keynote.

Anyone wishing to advertise on World of Apple live should contact woalive[at]worldofapple.com immediately for further information.

All of this is of course for the upcoming MacWorld Expo in San Francisco which will run from the 8-12 January 2007. World of Apple will not only be offering a live audio stream of the opening Keynote but also comprehensive coverage of the entire show.

iPod poster at Yerba Buena Center (Image courtesy of Engadget)

World of Apple will not be providing live coverage of the event due to a lack of media presence at the event.

But coverage can be found at Engadget and MacRumors at the following times;

• 7:00AM - Hawaii
• 10:00AM - Pacific
• 11:00AM - Mountain
• 12:00PM - Central
• 1:00PM - Eastern
• 5:00PM - GMT
• 6:00PM - London
• 7:00PM - Paris
• 2:00AM - Tokyo (September 13th)

Join World of Apple today at:

7:00AM - Hawaii
10:00AM - Pacific
11:00AM - Mountain
12:00PM - Central
1:00PM - Eastern
5:00PM - GMT
6:00PM - London
7:00PM - Paris
2:00AM - Tokyo (August 8th)

Introducing Vista 2.0

IFOAppleStore continues its excellent coverage of the event with regular updates and details of what is happening on the scene of the Grand Opening.

Steve Jobs inspects the giant glass cube at Fifth Avenue Store

At around 10am this morning Steve Jobs arrived on scene, he reportedly spent a lengthy time inspecting the glass cube.

“…Steve Jobs has just showed up. He and some of the other Apple bigwigs are currently looking over the outside of the premises. It’s getting better by the minute. writes one person in the vicinity of the Store this morning.

For those who can’t make it to the Store opening, World of Apple will be making the best of its resources and offering open ftp storage to those wishing to off load movies, podcasts, and images for World of Apple to compile and publish to the rest of the world.

FTP Details

Hostname - 216.70.83.166
Username - upload
Password - upload

Every few minutes the World of Apple team will filter through the content and publish on the site.

In light of recent issues with some posts made to the main site we thought that the idea of a separate section for the less important news, fun things and pretty much anything related to Apple that isn’t of great importance will go into the Blog section.

To define the new section even more, we’ve given The Blog its own sub-domain (http://blog.worldofapple.com), and it also has its own feeds:

• The Blog - Atom Feed
• The Blog - RSS Feed
• The Blog - RSS 2.0 Feed

We’re also thinking of a free-for-all Friday, where anybody can write a post to the Blog section, let us know.

As for World of Apple 2.0, its in slow and steady development, we hope it’ll absolutely blow your socks off, naturally we would like to hear your feedback on what rocks and what sucks, so let us know either in the comments here or via the Contact Us button.

We’ve put up a new header with the original Apple colours to get you in that 30 year ago spirit, we’re also going to be posting a series of 3 articles, starting Thursday through to Saturday they will cover the three decades of Apple.

Oh and how could I forget, we were getting quite a few complaints from you readers about our search or lack of, so we’ve spruced it up, considering we have masses of content now we really needed something as powerful as this, give it a whirl and check out that slide!

This months poll we look at big surprises, with lots of “wild” rumours floating around lately we thought this might be the perfect poll to have, vote away!

As for the week past, it was a bit monotonous with some standard news floating past so nothing to report here.

As for the week ahead, well we don’t expect anything big but we are expanding our text messages services, as you know we run a text message news delivery service, well we’ve teamed up with macTV to deliver videos to your phone, its not quite ready yet but you can sign up to the Beta to get a sneak preview.

Have a good week and we’ll see you next week.

Check out the images of the Expo floor

Yes we are aware that the images appear to be scrambled, not sure why this has happened.

Text File

This is WOA’s official apology for the Firewire panic towards the end of the Stevenote, it appears that news caused shockwaves among the web, we’re sorry, the MacBook Pro does has 1 Firewire 400 port, we even took a picture of it

We have so many now that we’ve created a page to list them all

We’ve updated the galleries with out visit to Cupertino!

View the galleries

Enjoy.

We currently has three methods in place that could connect us to the internet while the Keynote is taking place, the first method is pretty standard and uses our mobile phones as modems via bluetooth, the connection rate is quite fast and reliable and should be our primary method of connection.

The second method is purely for backup and is guaranteed to get us Internet access, we have rented a small bidirectional satellite dish which connects to the Internet anywhere in the world. It can easily be concealed in a bag and still be effective.

Our final methods includes a Pringles can and some poor DIY skills, we will use a series of Pringles cans to create a powerful Wi-Fi network from the hotel into the Moscone centre, we’re not joking!

This is all incase Apple decide to switch off the Airport which they usually do, of course if they keep it on then all our efforts will have been in vein but its the thought that counts.

Here’s what our head developer had to say on the project:

The Keynote Coverage system uses the latest internet buzzword, AJAX, to ensure a smooth process for the user as well as lighter load on the servers. Requests are made to the server for raw data, which is then processed and output by the user without the need for page refreshes. Submitting to the system can be done via WAP or a standard browser, so World of Apple is never far away.

During and up to the Keynote the whole site will be redirecting to http://live.worldofapple.com

Wish to mock us on our efforts on wish us good luck then place your comments on our Keynote Coverage in this post.

This week is of course the final countdown to MacWorld San Francisco and here at World of Apple we are ready and raring to go. We leave for San Francisco on Friday and for that reason there will be no Special Article this week, sorry.

But we’ve got something even better for you, on our visit to San Francisco and surrounding area we hope to provide you with not just excellent coverage of the show but with photographs of everything that is happening, we’ll have staff snooping the Moscone premises for clues and others will be heading to Infinite Loop to grab some snaps of our beautiful Mecca.

Have a good week and don’t get too excited!

Merry Christmas all, and to anyone who doesn’t celebrate Christmas, please enjoy your celebrations.

Posting will resume 26th December

This year all the talk has been about Intel and its quite possible we may see the limelight move away from the iPod this year, but not for long.

So here we go in no significant order:

iPod Shuffle

Last year we saw the introduction of the iPod shuffle and it has been a roaring success ever since. Recently Apple released the iPod nano, which forced the iPod mini out of the picture but subsequently caused a decrease in the capacity difference in the lower end iPods.

The main reason for thinking the iPod shuffle will a see a refresh is the small capacity, the only problem with this is that even a 1GB increase in the shuffle would cause it too be the same size as the bottom end nano, surely Apple couldn’t refresh the nano already.

So right now (apart from the time since the release) the only thing pointing towards an iPod shuffle release is the recent news of mass shortages of the 1GB model. This could of course simply be Apple selling more than anticipated.

WOA Rumour Rating - 4/10

Mac mini

Moving onto the hot stuff now, the Mac mini was first introduced one year ago at MWSF 2005 and has seen a similar success as the iPod shuffle, switching hundreds of PC users to the Mac platform.

It has been almost certain since day 1 that the first Mac’s making the big switch will be the consumer computers and the mini is the best product for this.

World of Apple and many other sites on the Mac Web have it on good word that the Mac mini is definitely moving the Intel platform in the New Year. With Apple’s recent introduction to the living room with FrontRow it has become evident that Apple will begin to push the mini as a DVR.

This has caused some rumour that the Mac mini will change in form factor, of course recording movies, TV shows and storing music uses up a lot of hard drive space and the current mini uses a 2.5″ Drive, we have it on good word that the Mac mini will increase in size slightly top accommodate a 3.5″ hard disk. 3.5″ hard drives can now commonly go up to 500GB in capacity but obviously price will mainly dictate this.

Of great interest to the Mac web is what processors the new Intel machines will use, until recently it was a mystery but it appears developments in the Yonah processor chip have meant it is certainly going to be used in the Mac mini.

From a World of Apple article:

“The new Mac mini will feature the new Yonah processor, two different speeds will be available, 1.66Ghz and 1.50GHz single core low voltage and the possibility of a higher tier Yonah at 1.66Ghz but featuring dual cores.”

WOA Rumour Rating - 9/10

Intel iBook

Also expected to be included in the consumer Intel line-up is the iBook, the iBook rumours have mainly been led by ThinkSecret and here at World of Apple we have received very little information about such a release, but that doesn’t discount it.

No specifics have ever been release on the spec of the upcoming Intel iBook, or whether it will sport a new look, but it expected that the price could drop by as much as $200 from what it is now.

ThinkSecret has mentioned on a couple of occasions that it expects the new iBooks to feature widescreen displays and drop the 12″ model to introduce a 13.3″ model, in particular a WXGA Display supporting up to 1280 x 720.

Very recently Think Secret said that “reliable sources” had confirmed the rumoured Intel iBooks, using the Yonah processors but still failed to supply any further information.

WOA Rumour Rating - 7/10

Intel PowerBook

Rumour of a Intel PowerBook at MWSF 2006 have been scarce and for valid reason, updating the PowerBook at such an early stage in the switch could be risky business for Apple but on the flip side so could keeping it how it is, updating the iBook could cause it too be considerably more powerful than the PowerBook.

With this in mind it is a hard call on whether Apple will even touch the PowerBook, so we believe that unless Apple has something up its sleeve (low voltage G4) then the PowerBook will stay festering just how it is now in Apple’s lineup.

WOA Rumour Rating - 4/10

iLife ‘06

Every year since its introduction Apple has released a new version of iLife at MacWorld in January and with good reason (they include the year in the products name).

So we expect Apple to release the usual plethora of applications that will be bundled up and sold to customers at the same price as the full package.

Rumours of features to be included in iLife ‘06 have been non-existent, apart from a mention of Apple bundling FrontRow and an optional IR receiver and remote control for $50.

With the recent release of Aperture it is expected that some features could move into iPhoto.

WOA Rumour Rating - 10/10

iWork ‘06

Apple once started with Keynote, then this year it added Pages and it now expected that Apple had developed “Numbers” an application built for working with spreadsheets.

Other than this Apple will likely make some minor improvements too the other two applications and no doubt add some eye candy.

WOA Rumour Rating - 8/10

Briefly some more things that have been thrown around

• Lots of pie charts and percentages presented by Steve Jobs -
  It’s a given thing.
• Updated iSight (due to the new iMac iSight using the USB interface and rumour of Apple dropping Firewire) -
  It’s quite possible Apple will release a higher specced iSight, but that Firewire stuff is pure conjecture.
• Updated Airport, using the new 802.11n standard -
  Not yet a confirmed standard but Apple could update using a Firmware upgrade at a later date once standardised.
• Aperture Express -
  We’ve seen Logic Express, Final Cut Express so there’s no reason why we won’t see Aperture Express but previous release times make us think that its too close to Aperture’s release.
• Mac OS X 10.5 Preview -
  It would be really nice to see but Microsoft might get some ideas and something like this is more for the Developers at WWDC.

This week World of Apple will be doing what we always do and collecting all the rumours together for an easy and enjoyable read. Of course we’ll add in what we know and what we think and hopefully you out there will chime in with your views. It seems you already have, the poll we started last week has had good response, and we’ll keep it up for a few more days to see what the results are.

Right now World of Apple would like to make an apology, last week we promised something big for you all and unfortunately we didn’t deliver, we know you’re all on the ends of your seats but bare with us, we are getting this just right and we know you’ll love it!

A few days ago we revised the list of Apple releases in 2005, it is now very comprehensive, and it seems other sites have had a go at it as well, World of Apple values the competition.

Finally, we’d like to thank everyone posting in the gallery, it’s a feature we don’t tout often enough but it’s growing slowly and we hope it will grow to be a great addition to the site.

From all at World of Apple, enjoy your week and we’ll update you again later in the week on the Christmas schedule.

For this reason the poll this month is themed in that direction, we realise that more than one thing on the list could be selected but we are looking for a nice concise poll, so give it your best shot and we’ll feed back the results after Macworld just to see how brainy our readers are.

Behind the scenes the new site is fully up and running and we believe we have ironed out all the bugs, (if you spot any, let us know.) But further development continues and hopefully it will all be worthwhile. One of these features we are keeping close to our chest so that it really shocks when we release it (hopefully this week), the other is nothing special, but we hope we’re doing it in a way that will out perform all other sites.

During a Keynote or special event the whole Mac Web comes to a stand still has we scramble to find a source for the latest gossip, IRC channels become clogged and the most popular sites crash under the pressure, yet we hope to change this, during the Macworld Keynote on January 10th we intend to redirect the whole site towards a Javascript applet page, this page will load in at under 20KB and contain no graphics. Reporters from inside the Keynote hall will use a mixture of GPRS and Satellite technologies to guarantee news delivery and the small page load will guarantee a quick and responsive page.

So please join us on the day of the Keynote as we change the Mac web forever.

Cool Tip Those panels to the left of the front page; they can be dragged up and down to reorganise there order, you can even open and close them to make your sidebar longer or shorter, and all done with some cool effects.

The page can be seen here or found in the sidebar to the left.

Coming tomorrow - Rumour Roundup for Special Event October 19th

As time passes you are going to see a new site which I hope you will enjoy, in the future expect a new, more professional look, more content than is currently available and at the start of 2006 we intend to do something that no other site on the Mac Web has done successfully.

As you may have noticed we are running a promotion for macTV, if you haven’t heard of macTV then I ask; where have you been? World of Apple will be working closely with macTV in the future and we fully support and love whats going on over at macTV.

Please visit macTV

Thank you for your patience

Please accept our apologies for this and our hearts go out to those affected by the barbaric attacks in London today.