John Martellaro

A bill before Congress that would allows customers to affirm their Fair Use rights of digital media is being opposed by the RIAA according to InfoWorld on Wednesday. The goal of the Freedom and Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship (FAIR USE) Act, introduced by Reps Rick Boucher (R-VA) and John Doolittle (R-CA), is to exempt the…

Apple has a large presence at Europeis largest imaging show being held in Birmingham from February 25th to 28th. Apple UK posted photos of the event on Monday. Apple said that they are using the event to showcase their professional hardware, the Mac Pro and MacBook Pro, as well as Aperture 1.5. In addition, Apple…

The company was dinged for the bruises it gets when problems arise right after a product warranty expires, but such bruises were far outweighed by other aspect of its customer service. “Despite frustration about iPod battery replacements,” BusinessWeek wrote, “Appleis customer service phone support ranks tops among electronics providers. In particular, customers rate its automated…

The adequacy of the security and privacy features of IE7 in Vista remain open to question. according to a report at The Register on Tuesday. Windows has been responsible for “turning the Internet into the toxic sh*thole of malware that it is today,” Thomas Green wrote. But he noted, “IE7, at least on Vista, is…

Apple is viewed in a very positive way by investment firms Bear Stearns and Prudential according to Notable Calls on Wednesday. Bear Stearns is maintaining their outperform rating at target share price of US$130. They predict a 2Q earnings per share of US$0.65 and revenues of US$5.2B with sales of 1.4M Macs and 11.2M iPods.…

Of particular interest was a link to a deeply technical and wide ranging analysis of the DRM in Vista by Peter Gutmann. Basically, Vista comprises a dream platform for Hollywood in which pervasive DRM provides Microsoft and its partners with a new monopoly on content distribution. Peter Gutmann went on to explain the effects: "These…

Microsoft announced on Thursday that the translator to convert between the Open Document Format (ODF) and their own Open XML file format is now available. The current phase, Release 1, supports only MS Word and is compatible with Word XP, Word 2003, and Word 2007. Phase 2 will support Excel and Powerpoint. Microsoftis announcement also…

North American customers and those in the German speaking countries appear to have a different view of Apple without Steve Jobs at the helm after he retires. That was the surprising result of an iDelphi poll published on Thursday. Both North American and German speaking customers were asked two questions: 1. When will Steve Jobs…

A Gartner analyst maintains that Apple shouldnit consider the Microsoft Vista rollout an opportunity, but rather a diversion from Appleis strengths. The Gartner analysis was presented at the IT-Enquirer on Tuesday. Because Vista is a distraction for IT professionals who would rather go about their business rather than spend day and night testing and certifying…

Not every computer operating system now running is ready for the automatic switch to Daylight Saving Time (DST) when it arrives on March 11th, 2007. Charles Moore at The Low End Mac discussed the situation, another possible “Y2K” scenario, on Friday. Mac OS X has been patched to account for the new, earlier change over…

Microsoftis own Windows XP will be the biggest competitor to Vista and be the main factor in Vistais slow growth according to Gartner. The Gartner report was cited at the Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday. The Gartner report said that Vista would only end up on about 12 percent of PCs found in the home…

TMO got together with the President and CEO Alykhan Jetha of Marketcircle at Macworld to talk about his company, their Mac only Daylite 3 productivity suite, and their new Billings 2 software. Daylite 3 is a software package that elegantly ties together calendaring, projects, tasks, contacts, and also integrates with Appleis Mail app. The Mac…

Parallels Software revealed that it is controlled by SWsoft on Monday. Mr. Ben Rudolph, Parallelis Director of Marketing, characterized this as a substantial announcement, but affirmed that nothing has changed as a result. He told TMO: “Parallels will still have its own brand, site, and team, we will simply be leveraging SWsoft?s substantial experience, talent…

MailTank has been upgraded to version 2 according to MacTank Software on Thursday. Version 2 of the e-mail archiving and remote access tool has these improvements: New visual interface that is easier to use Better performance when assigning, transferring and escalating messages Click and write email addressing with automatic From address entry Localized in five…

The IBM series of high performance CPUs is moving to the next level with the Power6 and speeds in excess of 5 GHz. This was published in the program guide for the International Solid State Circuits Conference and reported at C|Net on Friday. Modern CPUs have suffered from increased heat output as the clock speed…

Micromat announnced TechTool Protogo, an application that turns an iPod, a Flash drive, or similar device into a bootable device that can diagnose and repair a Mac. The announcement came on Tuesday. One of the features touted by this product is the ability to turn an older, less often used iPod into a more useful…

The Aero interface had little or no impact on Windows Vistais performance according to measurements made on the most common business software activities in tests conducted by a North Carolina company. Principled Technologies was hired by Microsoft to do the study according to a story published at Information Week on Friday. A Microsoft programmer with…

IBM announced an upgrade to Lotus Notes, version 7.0.2, that added several new features, supports Intel and PowerPC Macs, and enhances the user interface. IBM made the announcement on Thursday. New features include: An enhanced user interface and key email productivity features, enabling Mac users to group emails through a conversation thread, to view emails…