Two lawsuits were filed last week against Microsoft, claiming that its anti-piracy initiative Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) is in violation of consumer protection laws in California and Washington, according to MacCentral. Released last July, WGA connects with Microsoft’s servers and delivers data about the hardware and software on specific computers, with the goal of alerting…
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Apple Sued Over Stock Option Irregularities
One suit was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, a federal court, and the second was filed in the California Superior Court for Santa Clara County. Apple announced on June 29th, 2006 that it had found irregularities in the stock option grants, and that it had hired independent…
Tiger "Phone Home" Features Raise Privacy Concerns
Mr. Jakult uses a utility called Little Snitch to monitor his network and Internet activity, and it detected the new communication between his Mac and Appleis servers. His research, along with others, determined that a new process called dashboardadvisoryd is initiating the communication to verify that certain Dashboard widgets are the same versions as the…
Behind the Scenes: Screen Shots
Capturing My Screen Every screenshot starts with an image capture of all or part of my display. Mac OS X includes a screen capture feature (Command-Shift-3), but it doesnit offer as many features as Snapz Pro X. This utility lets me capture only what I need, select which format the images are saved in, and…
Steve Jobs Declines $65K Disney Board Salary
As the AP story noted, Mr. Jobs typically declines full salaries. He officially earns $1 per year as Appleis CEO, and during his tenure running Pixar, the animation studio paid him $52 annually. However, he does have stock to rely on at Apple too, and in 2001 the company gave him a Gulfstream V jet…
Podcast - Mac Geek Gab #60: Swap RAID with HDTV Printer Sharing... and more!
Show notes for TMO To Go: Mac Geek Gab For July 3rd, 2006 Direct Links: MP3 Version or AAC Enhanced Version (courtesy of Michael, aka Computernap!). With topics covered including RAID, HDTV, swap files, printer sharing, Acrobat, Safari and more, how could you go wrong? Listen to John and Dave not only answer your questions,…
Just a Thought - A Moment 20 Years P.G. (Post Gates)
"Stephen, I have a message for you from your son, Bill. Would you like me to play it for you?" Stephen Doors inserts his uPad into the receptacle in his apartment’s entry way; the receptacle connects the device to the apartment’s cMac (Centralized Mac) where security is checked and data is synced. The process had…
Duplicate Your iDVD Projects
iDVD makes it amazingly easy to burn your movies to DVD. If you burn one disk, and then later on decide you want to make a couple more, however, you donit have to spend time waiting for iDVD to re-encode your movie. You can save a bunch of time by using Disk Utility instead. Launch…
Apple iPod Factory Would Set Good Example
Apple’s ongoing investigation into “sweatshop” allegations at the Foxconn plants that manufacture iPods is commendable, but building its own factory would remove the potential for poor working conditions. Writing for BusinessWeek Online, Arik Hesseldahl thinks that the best way for Apple to ensure good working conditions is to build its own manufacturing plant in China.…
The Slacker's Guide - From the Way-Cool Tree Fort Clubhouse: Tremulous
Sometimes I wonder about them. The open source software scene has always been a strange beast by nature. Good of heart and even better of intention, the average computer user doesn’t regard it askance, provided they know what it is, but may not know what to make of it. Here is a community composed of…
Podcast - Mac Geek Gab #59: Tips and Tricks Galore!
Show notes for TMO To Go: Mac Geek Gab For June 26th, 2006 Direct Links: MP3 Version or AAC Enhanced Version (courtesy of Michael, aka Computernap!). John and Dave take your questions and share *your* hints and tips with the rest of the listening audience this week. With topics ranging from backup tips to permission…
Apple Financials Leave Some in the Dark
Apple always provides information about operating profits based on regions and not products. For products, it only offers total sales data. Operating profit for its retail stores is also broken out as a separate item. Accounting standards indicate that any segment that generates more than ten percent of a companyis revenue, like the iPod, should…
Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Context Explosion
Direct Link: MP3 Version This week it’s Apple and IT, the Torque Game Engine, and violent video game ratings. And a Roundup favorite, Jeff Gamet, returns to the Context Machine to help sort out the smattering of stories. The Weekly Roundup will be included in TMO’s main RSS feed, and also in its own feed…
TMO Quick Tip - Erasing a CD-RW or DVD-RW
Every Mac made today can burn CD and CD-RW (rewritable CDs) discs, and if your Mac has a SuperDrive, you can burn DVD and DVD-RW discs, too. The problem with reusing a rewritable CD or DVD is that Apple didn’t exactly make it easy to figure out. If you want to erase a CD-RW or…
Hidden Dimensions -- Synergy and Serendipity at Apple
"The definition of a civilized computing platform: the time required to learn how to use it is less than the time required to complete a major simulation on it." – Bill Buzbee, Arctic Region Supercomputing Center The BeginningsIt was the summer of 2003, and university staff members in the computer science department at Virginia Polytechnic…
Did Rising Costs Doom Apple's Bangalore Support Center?
The article noted that while Indiais economy is strong, its Sensex benchmark index dropped by 20% over the past month as investors reacted to the news that paychecks jump 13% and 30% for entry-level and management jobs, respectively, between 2000 and 2004. Apple has retained a small sales and marketing staff in the country, however,…
Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Welcome to iPod City
Direct Link: MP3 Version “Knock Knock….Who’s earning 15 cents an hour?” Two emotionally charged stories made this a doozy of week. The ‘net neutrality bill got torpedoed in the House, and iPods are being built in sweatshops. Is it really all that bad? Or is it actually much worse? In this week’s show, TMO’s Dave…
Just a Thought - iPod Killer?
I was chatting with John G., a friend of mine in Louisiana, and he posed a question to me that got me thinking; he said, "Vern, now that we have Intel based Macs where does that leave the CPU upgrade market? Are upgrade makers out in the cold? Will mortgages be missed as the market…
Sofa Control 1.0 Available
Sofa Control is available for download at the CASE Apps Web site, and is priced at US$9.99.
iPod Sewer Durability Test
Spring semester at the Santa Clara University in California left students a little backed up while maintenance crews worked to free an iPod mini that was accidentally flushed down a toilet. Once stuck in the College of Arts and Sciences building plumbing, the diminutive iPod proved next to impossible to extract. According to NBC 11,…
Analyst: Apple Tracking to Sell ~8 Million iPods This Quarter
Mr. Munster noted that Appleis iPod market share in May was 76%, which was flat with April. However, he said: “The iPod number will likely be a nonevent for the June quarter. More importantly, we believe the Mac number has room for upside. We expect new versions of iPod and positive seasonality will be a…
Podcast - Mac Geek Gab #57: One Year Old and Going Strong
Show notes for TMO To Go: Mac Geek Gab For June 13th, 2006 Direct Links: MP3 Version or AAC Enhanced Version (courtesy of Michael, aka Computernap!). One year later, Dave and John are still at it. As has become typical, Dave and John answer your questions about all things Mac and beyond, including topics such…
Analyst: Apple to Enter Cell Market, But Not Today
Appleis entry into the cell phone market will require FCC approval, and Apple would have to file for approval at least three months in advance. To date, no filing has been made. Since the filing is public, the company would likely make a product announcement at the same time as the filing, offering consumers several…