World of Apple

China Times reports that the large wireless headset maker Jabra has come to an agreement with Apple about the development of a Bluetooth Wireless attachment for the iPod. The device which is said to be capable of transmitting music back and forth with devices such as headphones. The report mentions that Jabra is expected to shift over 1,000,000 of these accessories within the year with sales beginning in the third quarter of the year.

Yahoo! News has been today reporting that French parliamentarians are hoping to push through a law that could open the iTunes Music Store to anyone and every device or worse close it down completely.

The new law would allow consumers to be able to legally use software to convert content into any format.

It would no longer be illegal to crack digital rights management — the codes that protect music, films and other content — if it is to enable to the conversion from one format to another

The law would allow songs bought from the iTunes Music Store to be freely distributed to any device, but it is widely expected that Apple would simply close the store to prevent such activities.

[Update 1] Yesterday French delegates allowed iTunes to escape French Authors Rights Law, which could have prevented iTunes from operating using DRM in France. However amendments to the bill have allowed distributors to freely associate DRM on music sold online.

All seven members of Apple’s Board are up for re-election at the annual shareholders meeting. Filing the request with the Securities and Exchange Commission Apple announced that on Thursday April 27 it will hold the meeting at 4 Infinite Loop in the Town Hall Auditorium.

The agenda set for the meeting includes ratifying the appointment of KPMG LLP as Apple’s independent auditors for the present financial year. Hold a vote for the re-election of the seven current board members.

Last year you may remember that the meeting was interrupted by a group of disgruntled environmentalists and the year before shareholders staged a protest on campus.

As of late February 851,679,185 shares of common Apple stock were either issued or outstanding and each share is entitled to one vote on all matters brought forth at the annual meeting.

Readers of WOA have been pointing out over the last few hours that American channels such as NBC and during the NCAA Championships a new iPod advert aired. The ad was shrouded in confusion as nothing similar was viewable on Apple’s site, luckily they have now posted the new ad, with the option of 720p and 1080p.

Check it out

Apple has today reissued a previously released Security Update. The update is around 13MB in size.

Apple has included a method to check whether the update is official using SHA-1 digest.

This document discribes how to verify the a SHA-1 digest (also known as a checksum).

Apple has stated the following about the update itself:

Security Update 2006-002 is recommended for all users and improves the reliability and security of the following components:
apache_mod_php
CoreTypes
LaunchServices
Mail
rsync
Safari

SHA1 for SecUpd2006-002Ti.dmg=
39a36533b1fa33ed742e7cca07f120be8d7e292f

The contest to boot Windows XP on a new Intel Mac has officially ended with the winner receiving around $14,000 in prize money.

The contest asked budding hackers to:

• Boot Windows XP on an Intel Mac
• Neither Mac OS X nor Windows must interfere with each others normal operation
• Upon starting up the Intel Mac the user must be offered the option to boot either Mac OS X or Windows XP

Upon booting the Intel Mac users are greeted with an Apple logo on a grey screen, hitting the down arrow presents the user with the Windows logo, hitting enter allows the user to proceed with booting the OS.

The solution is confirmed and apparently works on all Intel Macs currently available.

Download the boot files and Instructions (For the sake of all the mirrors being down)

Apple has released a new Battery Update for the 15″ Aluminium PowerBook.

This battery firmware update is required for PowerBook G4 (15-inch Double-Layer SD) computers. You will find instructions below on how to determine if your PowerBook requires this update. This firmware update is required to keep your battery life up to specification, may recover battery life in some batteries that have developed short run times, and in some cases can recover batteries that are not recognized by the system.

Apple and CBS Sports have joined forces to bring us the 2006 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championships. The games will be available on the iTunes Music Store for $1.99 per or $19.99 for all 63 games which is making further use of the newly introduced “Season Pass”.

“The new Season Pass feature on iTunes is the easiest way to purchase the entire 2006 NCAA Tournament,” says Apple. “Every game will automatically be placed in a customer’s download queue the day after it airs on CBS. Customers will be notified about new game highlights as they become available via email, and can be downloaded once they log into iTunes.”

Steve Jobs is expected to make a visit to Bangalore in India next month to open Apple’s new research and development centre.

Back in February it was reported that Apple would open the facility and hope to hire 3,000 people by 2007.

Today Apple posted the first full length movie on the iTunes Music Store. High School Musical is 1 hour and 39 minutes in length and was originally available to view on the Disney Channel, the download is 487MB and costs $1.99.

This looks promising for more from Apple in the future, recent rumours have pointed towards Apple moving into the mass distribution of download-able movies.