MacShrine

We have to take a short break out of our publishing schedule. This should be our last break, so you can expect daily postings until Christmas from when we get back! See you Saturday.

Remember Delicious Library? That awesome “little” big application that sorted your music, books, games and DVDs. Well I never used it before today as I didn’t have an iSight, but now with my MacBook Pro I suddenly remembered about it. Using the built-in iSight, you can scan barcodes from items and Delicious sorts them out easily into virtual shelves. It really is a beautiful application. It costs only $40 and is Universal, get it now! The demo lets you scan 25 items.

This nearly brushed complete by us. It was today, 8 years ago, that Apple revolutionized the computer industry as well as re-vitalizing Apple with the release of the original bondi blue iMac! Today we might laugh at the meagre 4GB hard drive, 2MB video, 32MB RAM and Mac OS 9 (available for $1,299.00) but it was the coolest thing ever back then. Many revisions followed with new colors (my favourite being Blue Dalmation!) and then it morphed into the classic G4 “lamp” iMac and then agan into the iMac G5 and now, 4 generations later, the Intel iMac. Thank you Steve for changing our lives forever!

Apple today quietly released an update to Bootcamp. The update brings Bootcamp up to v1.1 but still remains beta (a final version will be included in Leopard next Spring). Boot Camp 1.1 contains many updates and is intended for all new and previous Boot Camp beta users.

New features and updates include:

Support for the latest Intel-based Macintosh computers, easier partitioning using presets for popular sizes, ability to install Windows XP on any internal disk, iSight camera support, support for built-in microphones, right-click when pressing Apple key on Apple keyboards and improved Apple keyboard support including Delete, PrintScreen, NumLock and ScrollLock.

It can be downloaded straight from Apple and weighs in at a hefty 220MB. I personally haven’t tried out Bootcamp since I’m an avid Parallels Desktop user, but I may be willing to give it a go now as they made the iSight work! Let us know how the new update works for you.

Seems Steve forgot to mention like the most important new feature in Leopard, new iChat smileys! We’ll have to wait until Leopard comes out next Spring whilst those lucky developers get to use them… today…

These are the Leopard Preview discs that the developers got at WWDC. As you can see there are 2 discs, the server version and the consumer.

A digital distributor has confirmed to us that a new build of iTunes Producer was seeded to them last week. It now forces distributors to upload music tracks in their native lossless formats. Could we be seeing higher quality tracks coming with the next iTunes revision? We certainly hope so! Other rumored features for iTunes 7 include new social tools and a new metal-less interface.

Here’s this weeks top 10 chart. New entries from The Killers and Ciara and the rest are jumbled around. Fergie still at top.

United States Top 10 Songs:

1. London Bridge - Fergie
2. When You Were Young - The Killers
3. Promiscious - Nelly Furtado
4. Buttonz - The Pussycat Dolls
5. Get Up - Ciara
6. Promiscious - Nelly Furtado
7. Ain’t No Other Man - Christina Aguilera
8. A Public Affair - Jessica Simpson
9. I Write Sins Not Tragedies - Panic! At The Disco
10. Deja Vu - Beyonce Knowles

I don’t know why I do it… but I do. Every August I find myself shunning the impoverished text-only ‘live’ updates web sites from someone in the WWDC hall sitting on their wireless laptop, in favour of hearing all that is latest, greatest and sure to continue the future of the Apple race for years to come, right from the proverbial himself’s mouth. Yes, I am one of those seeming millions who make Apple announcement dodging a sport (to rival only football fans’ avoidance of discovering the full-time score before being able to get home to watch the recorded match), and head straight to Apple’s Quicktime Event web site in the hope Apple will post a stream to their recorded keynote so I can bask in some RDF glory.

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During Apple’s Annual WWDC Keynote given by Steve Jobs and a host of other Apple top executives and product managers, Phil Schiller introduced the PowerMac’s Intel replacement: the Mac Pro. According to Apple VP Phil Shiller, the new Mac Pro is anywhere from 1.6 to 2.0x faster than the latest PowerMac G5 “Quad”. Advertised as having “millions” of ways to configure the machine, the base configuration includes the following:

Dual-Dual Core 2.66 GHz Xeon 5100 Processor, upgradeable to 2x Dual 3 GHz, 1 GB FB-DIMM RAM (2×512 MB), expandable to 16 GB, 250 GB Hard Drive, 3 empty slots (3 Gbps SATA), NVidia GeForce 7300 GT (256 MB VRAM), configurable to ATI Radeon X1900 XT or Quadro FX 4500 (512 MB VRAM), SuperDrive (2 5.25″ slots total, 1 remaining) and 4 PCI-Express Slots (One extra-wide, taken by GPU).

Apple also updated its Xserve server line to include Intel processors and other advanced features such as lights-out management and redundant power supplies that business customers require. The base configuration now stands as follows:

Dual-Dual 2 GHz Xeon 5100 Processors, upgradeable to 2x Dual 3 GHz, 1 GB DDR2 ECC FB-DIMM RAM, configurable up to 32 GB, 24x Combo Drive, configurable 8x double-layer SuperDrive, 2 x 10/100/1000 (Gigabit) Ethernet, Built-in ATI Radeon X1300 with 64MB of GDDR3 SDRAM and mini-DVI to VGA adaptor.

They are both available immediately on-line via the Apple Store.

It’s finally here! The WWDC keynote with Steve Jobs will start at 10AM PST (6PM - GMT) tomorrow and he is due to showcase Mac OS X 10.5, Mac Pro and new displays as well as “one more thing…”. We’re not providing any live coverage but these sites will doing text feeds: MacRumors, MacTeens and The Apple Blog. We’ll have a full analysis of everything from WWDC on Wednesday when Craig re-starts his article series! 20 hours to go…

A survey published by Apple today could possibly reveal features coming up in the next revision of iTunes. It mentions features such as “a rewards program if you buy more”, “ability to view what my friends wish they could buy”, “ability to view what my friends are listening to now (with their permission)’, “ability to view my friends’ playlists (with their permission)”, “ability to view my friends’ recent purchases (with their permission)” and “ability to view my friends’ favorite artists (with their permission)”. It looks like Apple is trying to make the iTunes Store more social. Also, it mentions how you would feel about Apple adding more movies and T.V. shows to the UK iTunes Store, at last! Maybe this will be previewed at WWDC?

Update: It also mentions about Apple possibly replacing lost songs through a maintenance agreement, as we reported last November.

Apple announced that music fans have purchased and downloaded more than 200 million songs from its European iTunes Music Stores in just over two years, and the iTunes music catalog now includes more than three million songs from major music companies and over 1,000 independent record labels. Launched in the UK, France and Germany in June 2004, the iTunes Music Store now operates in 17 European countries including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Congratulations Apple!

A closely watched French law that lets regulators force Apple to make its iPod and iTunes online store compatible with rival offerings went into effect Thursday. The Internet copyright law passed France’s parliament June 30 after fierce debate and a gradual weakening of its initial punch. Apple had called an early draft “state-sponsored piracy,” and some analysts have said the law could force Apple to close iTunes France and pull its market-leading player from the country’s shelves. But the law was expected to have little immediate effect. A new government regulatory authority assigned to monitor the law is not expected to be in place until this fall. Much will depend on the law’s interpretation by the French courts, as well as the stance taken by recording companies. Other governments may follow France’s example. Recent proposals to open up iTunes have emerged in Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Poland.

We have decided to change the iTunes Chart countdown to Fridays instead of Sundays. So here is this weeks Top 10:

United States Top 10 Songs:

1. London Bridge - Fergie
2. Crazy - Gnarls Barkley
3. Deja Vu - Beyonce Knowles
4. Promiscious - Nelly Furtado
5. Buttonz - The Pussycat Dolls
6. A Public Affair - Jessica Simpson
7. Ain’t No Other Man - Christina Aguilera
8. Me & U (Main) - Cassie
9. Over My Head (Cable Car) - The Fray
10. I Write Sins Not Tragedies - Panic! At The Disco

Just let us correct our little credibility issue then we can all start anew. Here are some of the things we’ve reported right in the past 2 years:

Mac OS X 10.4 exclusive images.
Apple studio display price drops.
Xserve & Xsan updates.
More Tiger exclusive tiger images.
iPod price drops and axing of “gold” iPod mini.
iPod photo specs.
Motorola iPhone in iTunes.
Mac OS X 10.4.4 update tomorrow.

Also in November last year we posted a huge list of rumors and updates, most of you laughed - but seems most of it was right now, aren’t you all so quick to forget! Here’s a quick breakdown of what we said:

Upcoming Powerbook G5.
iTunes 5, and some features.
The new iBook specs (in new colored casings)
Special editions black laptops
Mac OS X 10.6 “Lion”
Work on a 3D Mac OS 11
iWork ‘06
Upcoming 5th generation iPods
The camera iPod? “iPal”
iPhone
New bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

Let’s now see what’s happened from that list of ours! First, the new iBook (now MacBook) sizes and colours. Second, I guess we misunderstood the “black promotion” but we got the gist of it, the black MacBook is rather “special edition”… iWork ‘06 was pretty much a given - but still. Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, tick tick. Fourth, the 5th gen iPods. Well they’re being developed just not release yet! Also part of what we said transpired to the iPod video (40GB+ capacities). The iPhone not out yet so wait on that one. iPal is abit confusing - it WAS in development, but got cancelled. The team on it got split and half fired. Some of the ideas moved onto the proper iPod video project - including the camera but we’ve recieved no news on it since. The camera was accessed via the main menu (Main Menu - Camera) and displayed a PhotoBooth style interface to choose different filters with the touchwheel with photos saved onto the internal hard-drive and synced with iPhoto when connected to a Mac. iPod shuffle is due to be dropped from Apple’s lineup and was replaced by the nano, so again a tick there. With regards to Mac OS X 10.6, who knows what happened there - we were pretty dumb actually to even post that, but expect some of the features to appear in Leopard. Also Apple IS (and has been for the past few years) working on the next major series update - Mac OS 11. You didn’t honestly think that Apple could develop a major upgrade in 1-2 years, they’ve been working on this for ages and ages. Expect an all new file system and kernel, it’s going be awesome! The PowerBook G5 project got cancelled when Apple decided to swap to Intel, if the swap didn’t happen then you would have expected what we stated! So in conclusion, yes we have been wrong, but again we’ve been right more times and have reported many things before the “major” sites did - woohoo!

Anyway, enough about that. If you want to read the full report then this thread has all the details. No let’s leave this in the past and look forward to the future of Apple and MacShrine. Thanks to all those who have stuck by us these past years - it’s already our 3rd birthday in November!

I know we’ve had exclusives for the past 2 years on Mac OS X builds (check MacRumors.com if you don’t believe us… *sigh*), but this year we really can’t be bothered and also our source won’t be there this year. You may have also noticed we’ve posted no WWDC predictions this year either. I know some of you stick by us here at MacShrine (and we thank you!) but the rest still can’t get over the iPod video mess in April, which is a real shame because if they had got over it we might have been in a better mood to actually post some rumors! To clear up our credibility we will shortly be posting an item on everything we HAVE gotten right, and boy, it’s a lot. MacShrine wish to anew after WWDC - so please, just love us!

Just in case some of you were wondering about those “leaked” image and videos of the supposed iChat mobile. First, you would be an idiot to actually believe that it’s is real! What kind of name is iChat mobile?!? Anyway, Apple IS working on a mobile, you’ve just got to hold out longer! I’ve attached the image here for archive purposes.