Dive into OS X

This gallery of Apple’s computers features most of the major products from the last three decades, starting from 1976 through 2007.
Some data to remember:

• 1977 - Apple ][ - The first successful mass-market personal computer!
• 1984 - Macintosh - The original Mac!
• 1998 - iMac - We all loved it!
• 2001 - iPod - Set the tone for a new century of consumer electronics!
• 2007 - iPhone - Yes, you want one!

This type of auction scams are back, again!

iPhone auction scam on eBay

Last time we saw them was last year during the PS3 launch.

I don’t know how many people were ripped off but this scam appears to be to the scale of tens of thousands. So watch out, and DO NOT BUY!!

Check out the last secret features of the IPhone.
1 The ringtone exterminator

2 Pranks: a barrel of fun apps

3 iSpy suite

4 Tricorder

All revealed by Joy of Tech.

Apple has created a 20-minute video describing how to use the features of the iPhone in detail.

You can check it out at Apple’s site, or you can watch it at YouTube:
Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

The Safari 3.0.2 Beta is now available for download. This beta includes fixes for international users and for missing text issues caused by having a large number of fonts installed.

Apple Inc.’s digital music store iTunes is now the third-largest music retailer in the United States with 9.8 per cent market share in the first quarter, ranking behind market leader Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s with a 15.8 percent share and Best Buy’s with a 13.8 percent share, according to The NPD Group. Apple has overtaken online retailer Amazon.com, which share was 6.7 percent in the first quarter, slightly ahead of the target of 6.6 per cent.

The NPD Group report also highlights the growing strength of digital music in the U.S. market as physical sales of compact discs continue to slide.
Both, Wal-Mart Stores and Best Buy’s, mostly sell music in the CD format. Online store bestbuy.com has a 1.1 percent market share with sales of both CDs and digital music. Amazon also sells music mainly in the CD format, but last month it started selling digital music but without copy protection software such as that used by iTunes.

NPD said the iTunes digital music store had benefited from sales of Apple’s iPod digital music player during the holiday season. The vast majority of digital songs and albums bought on iTunes will only play on iPods, as well as the iTunes PC application.

iTunes last month rolled out a new service called iTunes Plus which sells higher quality digital songs without copy protection at a premium price.

Apple’s rise in the NPD survey reflects a key shift in the music industry: compact disc sales are declining while digital music sales are climbing. That, plus the popularity of Apple’s iPod portable music players, has helped boost iTunes sales.

Still, digital music represented less than a quarter of total music units sold during the quarter, NPD said.

Apple has just unleashed Mac OS X 10.4.10 for PPC/Intel Macs.

Find out more about this update here (and the security implications here). Improved in 10.4.10 is:

• More RAW support for various cameras
• Improved decimal number rounding in certain applications
• Improves compatibility of Mathematica 6 with 64-bit Macs

If you are updating from something lower than OS X 10.4.9 download the Combo updater.

Rumors have circulated over the last couple days that Google may be interested in buying Apple.

Is this just speculation or is there more? however, you must have noticed how Apple and Google have been teaming recently. We just note the following:

• Google CEO Eric Schmidt sits on Apple’s Board of Directors;
• They have a same enemy (Microsoft);
• The companies have a similar culture;
• Apple produces great looking hardware which is easy to use and appealed to the mass and Google has the data to fuel these innovative applications;
• The new Apple TV software enables users to navigate YouTube to look for videos;
• The iPhone got an integrated Google search, Google Mapsa and Google mail.
• And Google’s popular video-sharing Web site YouTube will be accessible for the upcoming iPhone.

For sure, it would be a great victory for Apple and Steve Jobs; they’d get great partners, lots of money, and skilled engineers.

For now, we see a merger or an Acquisitionthis as improbable. But who knows.

Apple has just released the 10.4.10 update.
The update addresses a small set of problems that include: RAW camera support, mounting and unmounting external USB devices, support for third party software applications and, of course, security updates. These arer issues that most people don’t have.

Is this the final Tiger update, or are more updates to come between now and October? Anyway, it’s good to see Apple still actively developing 10.4 even though 10.5 (Leopard) is just around the corner.

The 50MB update is available via Software Update.

Apple has announced today that content from Google’s popular video-sharing Web site YouTube will be accessible via either Wi-Fi or EDGE networks for the upcoming iPhone.
Apple also said YouTube videos are now available on its Apple TV device. Until now, the Apple TV has mainly been able to show videos from the user’s iTunes library, and some movie trailers from Apple’s site.

YouTube has begun encoding their videos in the advanced H.264 format, which results in higher video quality and longer battery life on mobile devices. Because the iPhone will be the first mobile device to leverage YouTube’s encoding of video in H.264 format, Apple CEO Steve Jobs was right when he said in a statement that “iPhone delivers the best YouTube mobile experience by far”.

Initially, only about 10,000 YouTube videos will be available for the iPhone’s launch, but the complete video catalog will be available in H.264 format by the end of the third quarter of 2007.

To take advantage of Youtube, iPhone buyers will have to subscribe to a data plan from AT&T, which will be the only wireless carrier offering the iPhone initially. A plan with web and email access as well as unlimited data transfer volume is currently priced at $20 per month. Voice plans are available from $40 per month.