Fjan11 writes "Steve Jobs just announced that starting next month on you can buy higher quality 256Kbps AAC encoded DRM-free versions of iTunes songs for $1.29. Upgrades to songs you've already bought will be available at the $0.30 price difference. Currently EMI is the only publisher participating, accounting for about 20% of the songs available." There's also reports from Reuters and ABC News. The deal excludes the Beatles. You can also read the official press release from Apple if you still think this a late joke; this story confirms earlier speculation.

ryrw writes "I'm planning to spend a year backpacking around the world and the hardest question I have to answer is: What technology do I take with me? Aside from the obvious (digital camera, ipod, et. al.) what technological devices would you you take? Specifically, I wonder if I should bring my nice and shiny MacBook Pro. I can think of lots of uses for it (offloading pix, updating weblog, email, etc.), but I'm worried it will be lost or stolen along the way. Does anyone have experience with travel while toting technology?"

Several people noted a NYT piece about Palm's response to the iPhone. Essentially, their response appears to be to hire a former Apple engineer and a couple other folks -- while also pursuing plans to perhaps sell the company. Nothing like a dual approach to the problem.

Wick3d Gam3s writes "Hacker David Maynor attempted to put the strange tale of the Macbook Wifi hack to rest, and offered an apology for mistakes made. All this and a live demo of the takeover exploit was made at a Black Hat DC event yesterday. Maynor promised to release e-mail exchanges, crash/panic logs and exploit code in an effort to clear his tarnished name. Said Maynor: 'I screwed up a bit [at last year's Black Hat in Las Vegas]. I probably shouldn't have used an Apple machine in the video demo and I definitely should not have discussed it a journalist ahead of time ... I made mistakes, I screwed up. You can blame me for a lot of things but don't say we didn't find this and give all the information to Apple.'"

PetManimal writes "David Haskin has looked back at why the Newton failed in the early PDA market, and warns that Apple may be setting itself up for a similar failure with the iPhone. The iPhone shares with the Newton a hefty starting price, and Joe Public may not be so keen on the cost, as recent survey data suggests. Moreover, the iPhone will have to deal with two additional factors that were not issues for the Newton: Competition, and wireless service providers: 'Besides overcharging for iPhone, Apple faces significant competition, something it didn't face in 1993 when it launched Newton. And you can bet that competition from the likes of Samsung and LG will both be good (although probably not as good as iPhone) and most assuredly cheaper... I'm more convinced than ever that, after an initial frenzy of publicity and sales to early adopters, iPhone sales will be unspectacular. If Apple doesn't respond quickly by lowering the price and making nice to AT&T..., iPhone may well become Apple's next Newton.'"

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Apple bucked the rules of the cellphone industry when creating the iPhone by wresting control away from normally powerful wireless carriers, the Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'Only three executives at the carrier, which is now the wireless unit of AT&T Inc., got to see the iPhone before it was announced. Cingular agreed to leave its brand off the body of the phone. Upsetting some Cingular insiders, it also abandoned its usual insistence that phone makers carry its software for Web surfing, ringtones and other services... Mr. Jobs once referred to telecom operators as "orifices" that other companies, including phone makers, must go through to reach consumers. While meeting with Cingular and other wireless operators he often reminded them of his view, dismissing them as commodities and telling them that they would never understand the Web and entertainment industry the way Apple did, a person familiar with the talks says.'"

An anonymous reader writes "AppleInsider is reporting that Apple has plans to reenter the sub-notebook market this year. The project, the article states, should be unveiled around the time of WWDC (summer). Drawing parallels to the legendary PowerBook 2400, the sub-notebook will offer some of the best elements of old and new. With a small footprint, light weight, and manageable screen it will fill a niche not currently occupied by any Apple hardware. At the same time, it will offer some new technologies that the current crop of computers do not: 'The new MacBook model is expected to introduce some features not yet available with Apple's existing notebook offerings, such as onboard NAND flash. Plans reportedly call for the notebook to be the first of the company's MacBook offerings to utilize the solid-state memory in order to improve power efficiency and facilitate near instantaneous boot times. This feature, however, had not been frozen upon last check.' Apple hopes this micro-notebook will capture interest both here in the states and in Japan, where the appeal of small consumer electronics may offset the current weak computer market."

An anonymous reader writes to let us know that Scott Finnie, Computerworld's Windows expert, has given the final verdict to Windows after 3 months of using a Mac. And the verdict is: "Sayonara." Finnie is known to readers here for his many reviews of Vista as it progressed to release. Quoting: "If you give the Mac three months, as I did, you won't go back either. The hardest part is paying for it — everything after that gets easier and easier. Perhaps fittingly, it took me the full three-month trial period to pay off my expensive MacBook Pro. But the darn thing is worth every penny."

Steve Ryan asks: "The direction Microsoft are taking with Windows (for example, the DRM issues in Vista) have led me to believe Windows will soon be an OS which controls the user, rather than the other way round. I like XP, and I find it stable, but I do not want to upgrade to an OS (Vista) which is restrictive. This leaves me with either Linux or Mac OS X. I like Linux, but it may not work with my laptop, so I don't really want to risk it. OS X seems nice. I spend most of my time writing documents and surfing the web, so it should handle everything I want, and I would be happy to buy a lovely MacBook Pro. This leaves me with my question: Will Apple follow Microsoft's lead and implement a DRM loving policy?"

adelord writes "Alpha Geeks have a new do-it-yourself project to terrorize the cat with: use Perl with a MacBook Pro's Sudden Motion Sensor to control a Roomba. Wired's Cult of Mac cites the original site which has other fun ways to pimp your Roomba . This gets my award for most inefficient use of tech, time, and training for the week. It won't freak out her cat nearly as much as a RoboRaptor on Roam mode. "

ApolloX writes "New Macbook Pro Benchmarks are now available. From the article: 'Like the iMac before it, Apple's MacBook Pro underwent an upgrade highlighted by a chip swap — the Core Duo processor that used to power Apple's pro laptop is gone, replaced by the next-generation Core 2 Duo. And as with our iMac benchmarks, these updated Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro models show a modest performance gain when compared to older systems running on Core Duo chips with the same clock speeds.' As expected, the new 15-inch Intel Dual Core 2 (2.33Ghz/2GB RAM) is the new king of Apple portables, with results for the 17-inch model still pending."

PMcGovern writes "Do you know a great sysadmin? Nominate them for OSTG's sponsored Sysadmin of the Year. The first 2500 sysadmins nominated receive a free ThinkGeek T-shirt. Your sysadmin can also win great prizes including an Apple MacBook, a trip to the LISA conference in Washington DC, Splunk Professional server, and cases of Bawls soda. Only two weeks left to nominate your sysadmin (Oct. 31, 2006). (Note: Slashdot is part of OSTG.)"

An anonymous reader writes to tell us about an extremely helpful user who is answering questions from all comers about the new MacBook Pro. "A few days ago, a user by the name 'bcavanau' posted on the macrumors.com forums that he had just picked up a new MacBook Pro. Forum members started asking him about features, specifications, and benchmarks. He was happy to oblige, posting responses to everyone's questions. Eventually the forum thread got out of hand, and he set up a website devoted to answering the questions. If you have a question that hasn't already been answered, email him at the address on the site. He is responding daily and sometimes within minutes. This guy is dedicated. Thanks 'bcavanau', you get two thumbs up." The link to the site is cached via the Coral Content Distribution Network.

daveschroeder writes "Apple has just announced the upgraded MacBook Pro (15.4- and 17-inch models) with the Intel Core 2 Duo ("Merom") 64-bit dual core processor. The standard hard drive sizes have been increased, a FireWire 800 port has been added to all models (again, reaffirming that FireWire, and specifically FireWire 800, is not dead, and that Apple responded to customer requests to add it to the 15.4-inch model), and the optical drive is now dual-layer-write-capable on all models."

Clodas writes, "smcFanControl 1.1 is a simple GUI that lets you control how fast each fan spins on your MacBook, MacBook Pro, or Mac Mini. The temperature of my MBP when idle averaged around 63 degrees celsius. After running smcFanControl 1.1, my temperature dropped to 43 celsius within 10 minutes of use. This now allows me to sit my MBP on my lap, something I was unable to do previously since the machine got so hot. I have my fans set to spin at a minimum of 3000 RPM and I still don't hear the fans spinning. Apple by default has them set to 1000 RPM. I really recommend smcFanControl 1.1 for any that feel their MB, MBP, or Mini are too hot to handle."

jcatcw writes "Ken Mingis has been running Vista on a MacBook Pro for a couple of weeks. Highlights from his review: 'Apple's UI is called Aqua. Microsoft calls its interface Aero. Hmmmm... Gadgets and widgets. What's that line about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery?... The UAC implementation in Vista is heavy-handed and intrusive — it halts what you're doing, even if you want to do something as simple as change your clock. My sense here is that Microsoft has been criticized so often for security vulnerabilities that it decided to club users over the head with its new operating system-in-lockdown-mode... I'm more enamored of Vista's Flip 3D feature, which basically takes all of the open windows on your desktop, stands them up on end and stacks them in a way that you can cycle through to the one you want to use. It's similar to what Apple's Expose does... Vista's method wins on aesthetics.'"

Sabathius writes "Hard on the heels of the last 'Special Event,' Mac Rumors reports that Apple will make another announcement on the 25th of September just one day before Photokina, a world-wide a photography/imaging gathering in Germany. There are rumors of a new version of Aperture (based on the lens image on the invitation matching the one on the Aperture box), as well as the possibility of a MacBook Pro update."

PetManimal writes "Ken Mingis, Computerworld's Mac editor, has given Vista a spin on his Macbook Pro in order to review and compare hardware performance with OS X. It's not a rigorous benchmarking, but he does notice a few issues relating to power consumption: 'Since installing Vista, I have found that my MacBook Pro runs hot. No doubt Microsoft hasn't worked on power management issues that might affect Apple hardware, which leaves me to wonder whether I'm slowly cooking the motherboard of my laptop. It's not hot enough to fry an egg on the aluminum case, but my laptop is noticeably warmer than when I use Mac OS X. I've also noticed that battery life is substantially reduced. Once again, energy management for Apple hardware is not likely at the top of Microsoft's list. Once Apple writes updated drivers to work with Vista, I'd expect these issues to be addressed.'"

elzurawka writes "Apple has issued a recall of over 1 million batteries in the U.S.. This comes after Dell recalled over 4 million batteries just last week. It appears to be again an issue with Sony produced batteries. From the article: 'Computer giant Apple is recalling upwards of 1.1m batteries used in its laptop computers in the US. The announcement affects laptop computers sold between October 2003 and August 2006 and impacts the company's latest range of machines ... The recall is said to be the second biggest in consumer electronic history and will come as a blow to Apple after its launch of new MacBook and MacBook Pro machines had been hailed as a huge success for the firm.'"

Kevin C. Tofel writes "If you want to see where the computer industry is going, you often have to watch the computer component manufacturers, and that's just what DigiTimes did. AsusTek and Quanta both produce Apple notebooks and sources appear to have just revealed that September is the month for 64-bit Merom CPUs in the MacBook and MacBook Pro line."