World of Apple

Apple has been protesting against a new tax on sales of MP3 players. The tax which will take effect on March 1st will be levied against flash and hard drive based MP3 players. The idea has been spawned by local authorities giving pressure on the government about artists royalties.

Apple has posted an update to DVD Studio Pro updating it too version 4.0.3. The update is said to bring compliance for the 1.0 HD DVD Video standard for both Tiger and Panther users.

The update weighs in at 6.8MB available here.

As reported by World of Apple a few weeks a go, Cingular have launched the new Motorola SLVR L7 iTunes phone.

It appears that the phone is still marred with some of the problems that the original iTunes phone was plagued with. The phone retains the 100 song limit and keeps the USB technology but appears cosmetically improved.

Apple today lowered the price of the iMac G5 by $200 while leaving the 17″ model untouched. Hopefully this will help alleviate some issues customers have been having when purchasing new iMacs.

If you bought your 20″ iMac within the last ten days then contact Apple for a refund on the extra money you spent.

An article is currently making it’s way around the Internet purporting that the Intel iMac has a swappable CPU. The CPU is said to be mounted on a standard Intel socket, some iMac owners have in fact gone out and bought a standard 2GHz Core Duo chip and swapped it for the standard 1.83GHz. The machine reportedly booted fine and the Mac reported the new CPU speed.

Apple is set to open the second Apple Store of 2006 this Saturday. The Garden State Plaza in New Jersey is the lucky candidate this time and the Grand Opening will begin at 10 am.

The usual things are going down, sweepstakes and 100 t-shirts.

If your attending we want to hear from you, we might give you a little pressie to show our thanks.

Towards the end of last year Apple filed a trademark on the phrase “Mac Pro” at the New Zealand Intellectual Property Office.

The filing dated November 18 2005 desscribes the phrase “Mac Pro” as “computers; computer hardware; computer software; computer peripherals; notebook computers; laptop computers; tablet computers; computer servers; handheld computers; mobile computers; hard drives; audio speakers; speakers for computers; radios; cameras; video cameras; telephones; mobile telephones; personal digital assistants; electronic organizers; electronic notepads; magnetic data carriers; telephones; mobile phones; computer gaming machines; microprocessors; memories boards; monitors; displays; keyboards; computer input devices; computer cables; modems; printers; parts and accessories for all the aforesaid goods.”

A reader of World of Apple has pointed us out to an interesting fact about the Apple Remote, it appears that the remote is capable of controlling many applications outside of the Front Row environment.

Reports have confirmed that the remote can advance slides in Keynote, start stop and skip music in iTunes, play and pause movies in Quicktime and even function with DVD Player. We also heard that holding the Play/Pause button puts your Mac to sleep.

Could be old news to some but still very cool.

An analyst has predicted that he expects Apple to EOL the iPod shuffle in favour of a 1GB iPod nano.

The analyst has also shed some light on the availability of NAND flash memory;

“Our latest checks do pick some modest loosening of demand in NAND flash within the supply chain that could indicate a slightly more seasonal impact than our very optimistic expectations from only a few weeks ago,”

Rumours have arisen after Bono unveiled a new project to help fight AIDs called Product Red. The charity hopes to raise money to help finance the fight against AIDs, TB and Malaria.

Apparently Bono has been putting pressure on Apple to release a red iPod and according to some tipsters Bono was overheard saying “a new charity red Amex card and red iPod”.

Apple has naturally declined to comment.