Apple Stay Hungry

Although I support Apple in its bid for iPod/iTunes revenue. I welcome any viable competition to the iTunes/iPod juggernaut it will keep Apple hungry to develop or adapt to the next new thing.

Without viable competition companies stagnate and then rely on existing business models which they then milk for all its worth. Microsoft is a perfect example of this.

I think Steve Jobs expressed it perfectly in his recent speech at Stanford Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish .

-Alt

OT: Stormy weather

lango hope all is well with you and yours ..... Its seems like florida hasn't been able to catch a break since after Bush's first election and the Florda voting recount. If I where superstitious I'd chock it up to the wrath of God ?

Br -Alt

Lango, Since when has PC Magazine become a shill for Apple ?

I could understand questioning the the credibility of a report coming from MacWorld, MacAddict and Mac User but when publications like PC Magazine and Consumer Reports gives Apple high marks thats a bit different.

Again your Steve Jobs bias seems to come through loud and clear.

If the figures that come from this survey are to believed then what does this say about the rest of the industry ?

Dell has had at least three recalls of batteries, motherboard failures and heat related problems in both the Dell Inspiron and latitude laptop line on a scale that Apple would love to have as market share.

I do agree that hardware issues have been an issue industry wide but that's a biproduct of outsourcing the manufacturing to the lowest bidder.

I think the real issue may not be so much hardware but failures caused by malware and buggy Windows software code.

-Alt

AAPL: Highest Approval Rating in PC Magazines Survey

PC Magazines: 18th Annual Reader Satisfaction Survey Poll

Desktops & Notebooks
Apple

Once again, Apple achieves scores that are far and away the highest for all vendors in our survey, earning Readers' Choices in both desktops and notebooks. For Apple, in both the desktop and notebook sections of the survey, every single score is significantly better than the industry average for Windows machines. No exceptions. Apple's overall score for desktops is 9.2, and the closest competing score, Alienware's, is 8.8. Apple's overall score for notebooks, 9.2, is just as high, and the rest are even further behind: IBM and Fujitsu are the closest, at 8.4.

The company's scores are so high there's some concern that they can't be completely trusted: that Apple users are so passionate—almost fanatic—about the company and its products, they're not quite as objective as other computer owners.

Still, there's solid evidence that Apple computers may actually be worthy of devotion. There's little doubt, for instance, that the company builds unusually reliable products.

On the desktop side, readers say that Apple systems needed repairs only 11 percent of the time, an astonishing number when you consider that the closest competing score is Sony's at 16 percent. Just 17 percent of Apple notebooks needed repair—second to Averatec's 14 percent—but this is still amazingly low considering that no one else is under 20 percent.

Tempting as it may be to suspect that Apple owners are prone to exaggerate when asked subjective questions, they are much less likely to exaggerate the number of times a system needs repairs. "I have never had a problem with this unit," says Michael Wright, of his Apple PowerBook. "My only reason for contacting tech support was to set up my wireless network, and they even helped me set up my Windows desktop."

Nonetheless, we've heard from readers about problems related to the all-in-one design of the iMac G5. Looking at Apple desktop systems less than a year old, the iMacs (18 percent) were twice as likely to need repairs as PowerMacs (9 percent).

Apple does walk a thin line with its support, though, offering perhaps the stingiest terms of any of the vendors in our survey. If customers do call Apple for technical support, they're more likely to pay an extra fee. While some vendors offer a lifetime of toll-free telephone support, Apple's standard warranty affords only 90 days. The warranty protects against breakdown for only a year, and Apple fails to offer on-site service.

That's right: The company will not send someone to your home or office to repair your system. Your best option is to carry your system to one of the more than 100 Apple stores spread across the country.

Still, while we appreciate generous support and repair policies, it's even better to offer top quality products and services, as Apple has done.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1851295,00.asp

Mac OS X DTV Beta 2 Released

Today we're releasing the second beta version of DTV for Mac. It's getting better and better-- this new version is faster and more responsive, fixes some bugs, and has some small interface improvements. We've also moved our Channel Guide to a much faster server, which speeds it up a lot (we were getting a little overwhelmed with the rush of users and new channels).

You can download DTV Beta 2 here (free as always):
http://participatoryculture.org/download.php

Best of all, since we launched the DTV Beta two weeks ago, we've had over 100 new channels submitted to the Channel Guide, and new ones are coming in every day. There are also hundreds of other compatible channels out there that you can watch in DTV, just look for RSS feeds with videos. And here's a feature that not everyone knows about: you can enter a webpage address (URL) as a channel and if it has links to videos, DTV may be able to grab them. Try it out (note that it takes a while for DTV to process the website, so you might have to let that channel sit for a little bit).

http://participatoryculture.org/download.php

iTunes pricing

Blue, For new Music that's Hot on the charts .... I could see why the labels would want to charge double what Apple charges but the vast warehouse of older music in which the labels have recouped their investments a 1000 times over should be priced between .49 - .79 cents. They could make a killing selling in volume on the iTunes store.


-Alt

gee ... not ready for primetime ?

Thanks for the heads up.

GOOGLE's Instant Messenger news is doing some great things for AAPL today.

Dill whats the stock symbol for Samsung ?

I've been wanting to make an investment in this company for awhile now.

I see seven of them listed ?

SAMSUNG EL SP 144A G OTC
SSNHY
796050888 

SAMSUNG EL.0,5GDRS NV PFD OTC
SSNGY
796050201 

SAMSUNG ELECT LTD(F)
SSNLF
Y74718100 

SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO LTD SHS SPONS.GLOBAL DEPOSIT.RCPTS
SSNKF
796050409 

SAMSUNG SDI CO LTD SHS OTC
SSDIF
Y74866107 

SAMSUNG SDI CO LTD SPONS GDR 144A
SSDIY
796054203 

SAMSUNGF&MINS
SZVPF
Y7473H10

MAC OS X Vlogging and DTV

Since DTV I've stopped watching Cable and broadcast TV.

My favorite Vlogs so far:

Revision3 -System (HD version) Some Great Technology How Too's

TikiTV - Some weird Humor (LaLa is easy on the eyes)

Siren - Action Adventure Show from New Zealand

RocketBoom - Eclectic American news show

MoBuzzTV- Humorous British news show

I'm viewing this stuff on a 30" Syntax Olevia with a Mac Mini.

The current Mac OS X DTV client has got some bugs loook for Beta 2 to arrive in a couple of days.

-Alt

Re: New DVD Formats

So Tex which format will win out Blu-Ray or HD-DVD ?

I have a very large collection of Widescreen DVD's and frankly I have no intention of replacing them with new High Definition versions if they use DRM.

How many people will purchase both players to access the new formats ?

I expect that adoption will be very slow until a Winner has been declared.

Many attempts have been made to secure content and all have been met with saavy users who will boycott them with our ever shrinking disposable income.

Follow-up: New HD DVD Formats

Now this is going to sour people on the High Definition DVD market. Will the studios stop selling the existing DVD formats ? If they do I suspect sales will be very disappointing.

-Alt

Sony, Toshiba, DVD split

p2pnet.net News:- Toshiba and Sony had been working towards bringing together their very different DVD technologies but now Toshiba is going for HD-DVD, while Sony is shooting for Blu-ray, says the BBC, quoting the Daily Yomiuri newspaper.

"The clash between HD-DVD and Blu-ray parallels the battle a generation ago between VHS and Betamax, which resulted in the demise of Betamax," says the BBC.

Or as DataFuse.net sums it up, "They did it again, the electronic masterminds are as smart as a set of napkins when it comes to working together. Toshiba and Sony, both leaders when it comes to optical storage where negotiating to start a Unified DVD format. But this intelligent plan is dead.

"People who followed the DVD+ and DVD- war will know the trouble this will bring, especially during the beginning of the next-gen optical storage introduction."

Blu-ray backers include Apple, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Samsung, and Disney, and HD-DVD supporters include Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures and Warner Brothers Studios, says the BBC.

And, "That leaves consumers, especially the ones who have bought into the high-definition hype machine and purchased expensive HDTVs, facing the prospect of purchasing two different players, one for each blue laser DVD format," says WebProNews. "Hollywood studios that have chosen a format have split their support between the two. Others haven't publicly decided yet.

"September arrives soon, and retailers certainly don't relish the prospect of stocking two different format DVD players for the holidays. Customers may see the prospect of one format winning out over the other, and not wish to be stuck with the modern equivalent of the Betamax. They may choose not to buy either one."

http://p2pnet.net/story/6001

OT: DELL Satisfaction Ratings

Dell's customer satisfaction ratings have dropped recently due mainly to frequent Hard Drive failures. I work for a predominately Dell based shop and the grumblings about Dell have gotten louder recently. This is usually a sign that some of Dell's customers may leave. I'd be careful with Dell it could go alot lower from here. I'd buy in at about 32 dollars a share though.

-Alt

OT: Web Design

WLD with the tips Blue and I posted you can produce a very aesthetically pleasing site. You just have to be adventurous in choosing a nice web safe color palette with a great understanding of good design. I produced a commercial site with GIF animation some years back that loaded extremely fast via 56 K modem so it can be done !!

-Alt

Tips on optimizing graphics for the web:

1. use web safe colors also
2. use gif rather than jpeg with color indexing.
3. Many Scanned images are typically to large for the web so you need to scale them to a screen resolution of no more than 100 dpi.

Vince ;-}

Bootz, Flip books or Hypercard for iPods .... Cool.

Free EasyEnvelopes Widget for Tiger

Ambrosia offers free EasyEnvelopes widget
By Peter Cohen pcohen@maccentral.com

Ambrosia Software Inc. has released EasyEnvelopes , a free utility for Mac OS X v10.4 “Tiger” users designed to work as a Dashboard Widget.

With EasyEnvelopes, you can print envelopes, either one off or using Apple’s Address Book application. An integrated search feature will pull up the address of contacts in your Address Book just by typing in the first few letters of their name or address. You can also paste in addresses, and EasyEnvelopes will automatically detect it when you have an address on the Clipboard.

The EasyEnvelopes Widget prints five and nine-digit United States Postal Service (USPS) bar codes, works with any country's addressing format and is “international-friendly,” according to the developer. You have control over the size of the envelope, the format used to print your return address and mailing address and more.

http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/08/22/easyenvelopes/index.php

more info and download from here:

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/easyenvelopes/

-Alt

OT: Lessons Learned

Dilleet, I'd be happy if we all just learned to remember the lessons learned from the last 230 years of human history.

-Alt

Linda your welcome.eom

On Topic: Free 140 page iPod book

In PDF format.

Checkout page 74. for 101 iTunes Tips and Tricks !!!

http://ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/ilounges-the-ipod-directory-now-available-searchable/

Awesome guidebook

-Alt

OT: Blue theirs alot of wisdom in those words.

Looking down on others and believing them to be inferior for NOT believing in your particular version of God (or for not believing in God at all) *is* a bad thing, and is the cause of much of the murder, war and strife that wdave noted.

A great deal of Dubbya's support for the iraqi war and dehumanizing all arab peoples is based on religious intolerance. Thats what the over reaction on this board is really all about.

I'm sick of the death and misery this war has wrought and part of that is because of religious differences which will never be resolved. The irony is that the Right that supports this misery in iraq has forgotten that the founders of this nation had the wisdom to seperate Church and State as a way of both protecting religious freedom for all and the unity of our country. The further the Right goes in tipping that delicate balance the more violent and intolerant this country will get. It seems that Misery loves company.

Br, Altaire4 :-

OT: Peace to that brother !!!

OT: Man, what an Insult.

ILA just because you and Colorado do not believe in the CAT GOD from the planet Nip you don't have to be mean about it.

How about a little Tolerance.

The CAT GOD loves all of his creations.

Peace and and a good Nap will make all the difference.

-Alt

OT: Tolerance and belief

Your Silence indicates that you do not wish to attend the CAT GOD's service ?

Do you doubt that he exists ?

You see .... I mention the CAT GOD and you have a double standard you speak of peace and tolerance but because I don't believe in what you believe well I get the silent treatment.

P.S. May the CAT God love you and keep you .... your donation of a case of Whiska's would be much appreciated.

OT: Absolutely, we can believe anything

Would you like to attend a service to invoke the return of the CAT GOD from the planet Nip ?

-Alt

Herb this Buds for You.

http://beer.trash.net/

-Alt

OT: Nanotechnology breakthrough

Scientists tout nanotechnology advances

By Dan Vergano, USA Today


An advance in nanotechnology may lead to the creation of artificial muscles, superstrong electric cars and wallpaper-thin electronics, researchers report.

      Nanotechnology has tantalized researchers for decades, promising a new era in stronger and lighter electronic materials. Nanotechnology is the science of engineering such properties at the molecular, or nanometer, scale. For all its promise, the technology has mostly been locked in laboratories.

      In Friday's edition of the journal Science, however, scientists from the University of Texas and Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization report the creation of industry-ready sheets of materials made from nanotubes. Nanotubes are tiny carbon tubes with remarkable strength that are only a few times wider than atoms. They can also act as the semiconductors found in modern electronics.

      "This is fundamentally a new material," says team leader Ray Baughman of the University of Texas at Dallas in Richardson.

      • Self-supporting, transparent and stronger than steel or high-strength plastics, the sheets are flexible and can be heated to emit light.

      • A square mile of the thinnest sheets, about 2-millionths-of-an-inch thick, would weigh only about 170 pounds.

      • In lab tests, the sheets demonstrated solar cell capabilities, using sunlight to produce electricity.

      The team has developed an automated process that produced 2 3/4-inch-wide strips of nanotubes at a rate of about 47 feet per minute. Other methods take much longer to create nanotube sheets.

      "The technique is most elegant and the applications they've shown are quite impressive," says nanotube expert Shalom Wind of Columbia University in New York. Industry and academic researchers are already regarding nanotubes with avid interest, he adds.

      Future applications that scientists have discussed include creating artificial muscles whose movement is electrically charged, or race cars with stronger, lighter bodies that could also serve as batteries, says chemist Andrew Barron of Rice University in Houston.

      "We could see this on Formula 1 (racing) cars by next season, says Barron. "This is a jumping-off point for a technology a lot of people will pursue."

      Wind is more cautious about the future. "We'll really have to wait to see the impact this has and whether it will pan out in commercial technology."

      The federal government has made nanotechnology a research priority in recent years. Funding for the scientists' research came from the Defense Department, the Texas government and a partnership of nanotechnology labs.

      The research team suggests first using the nanotube sheets as transparent antennae for cars or as electrically heated windows. "We do need to think of a catchier name than 'nanotube sheets,' " Baughman says.

http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,600156981,00.html

Whats a PITA ?

P - Proprietary

I - Intranet

T - Twisted

A - Additude

No AAPL Annie ....

but the Flat Earth Society should know something about this ?

http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/FlatHome.htm

F.U.D. - Friendly User Desktop

Not necessarily ... Just a very slow news day.

Anybody excited about XBox2 and Windows Vista ?

Any Windows Vista beta torrents out there ?

HD slow to arrive

With all the hype on High Def Video I don't think this format will take off until the HD-DVD Standards War is worked out. Excellent quality Widescreen DVD's are cheap and getting cheaper. Consumers have invested alot in the current format DVD collections and the big studios are making some serious dollars from this new revenue stream so they will be slow to switch to a new format. It will arrive eventually but not until someone breaks the copy protection schemes.

-Alt

AAPL just drifting ..... I don't expect any upward momentum until about a week before MacWorld Paris on September 20th.

-Alt

OT: Individual Choices

WLD, That used to be very true if housing prices we'ren't so inflated, energy prices hadn't doubled, Medical Care was affordable and Wally World paid a decent living wage with benefits.

I make a pretty decent salary which allows my wife to be a full-time mom but we still struggle to pay the mothly bills. My transportation is six years old we have No second car and our house is very modest by todays standards. If energy prices double next year and health care premiums go up another 25% then I better hope my wife gets a part-time job or I'll be looking for one.

Now if I we're working for a Wally World my wife would have to work or we would have to sell my investments our home or go bankrupt.

Sorry kid's No college for you unless you pay for it yourself.

How much of a choice is that ?

OT: Societal and Individual Choices

In many instances its not an individuals choice you pay your bills or you end up on the street or a homeless shelter. If our society had its priorities straight then something along the lines of a parental tax credit could happen but the current reality is that our goverment is investing in misery, death, Rich People and oil ...... wether we like it or not.

..... our U.S. Tax dollars plus One BIG I.O.U for the next generation.

That is an individual and societal choice. There is absolutely nothing preventing governments from using the tax code to level the playing field for parent-at-home families. It wouldn't even be complicated: if a parent is being a full-time parent, simply give the family an (eg) $30k annual income tax deduction.

-Alt

OT: Education

I don't believe that the Seven hour class day should be completely structured. In fact their are many unconventional and unstructured ways to instruct children. We must recognize that we are in a global economy in which American workers are competing with other workers in emerging economies which put much more emphasis on learning. As for parental involvement ... It's very important .... but its getting more and more difficult to schedule because many middleclass families require Two paychecks inorder to pay all the bills. Which leaves less time for involvement.

OT: The subject of education in this country is one of my biggest pet peeves.

The problem isn't always the teachers though. However, teacher certification exams should be a requirement. One of the problems is cultural, its amazing how American school systems plan an educational school year based on what was once an agrarian culture in which children we're needed to plant and harvest crops. Mechanization and technology has long since transformed agriculture in most of the United States so that it is less labor intensive. What we need to do now is harvest and cultivate better minds by making School a full-time deal. Seven hours of school should be mandatory.

A national mentoring program should be put in place so that real life work experiences can supplement educational curriculum.

Student vacations should be incentive driven.

Teaching positions should be a full-time job with time for sabbaticals so they can learn and improve teaching methodologies.

The biggest problem is in how we fund education in this country its usually based on property taxes. Poorer areas of the country end up with less resources. A percentage of a National Sales tax should be used to provide every public school with the needed resources.

A minimum set of National standards would also be a good reform.

How is that for Pie-in-the-Sky stuff ?

Yo Bootz that was Prince Bandar I believe.

ILA ..... Yeah we get it.

It's obvious that your an ardent believer in Bush's plans for the Middle East lets just agree to disagree and leave it at that. This is an Apple stock board and we have strayed completely off topic. Besides I'm sick of Bootz posting those silly pictures of Harrison Ford's Prop Plane.

OT: ILA ... Time to wake up and learn the truth

You know I wished I lived in your world .... Ignorance must be bliss.

BUSH'S PERSONAL FINANCIAL TIES TO SAUDIS RUN DEEP: According to various sources, Bush has been awash in Saudi money for years. Journalist/author Craig Unger in his new book "House of Bush, House of Saud" traced millions "in investments and contracts that went from the Saudis over the past 20 years to companies in which the Bushes and their allies have had prominent positions - Harken Energy, Halliburton, and the Carlyle Group among them." According to the Boston Herald, that includes a $1 million gift from Prince Bandar to the Bush Presidential Library in Texas.

If you decide to read on be prepared to have your illusions crushed. A Double shot of Bourbon works well.

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=99415

OT: Compassion and Humanity ?

Is it compassionate or humane to cut federal funding for VA hospitals ? How about some medical assistance for our wounded vets coming from iraq ? How about some humane treatment for iraqi's incarcerated for no other reason than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I don't know if Dubbya even knows the meaning of those words ?