My pre-ordered new Wireless Keyboard arrived, and I can say easily that my first impressions are very positive.

I have owned a Core2Duo MacBook for about a year, and become very accustomed to the keyboard style and layout. As a result, more and more when I sat down at my iMac to do some work I became annoyed at the bulky, blocky keyboard that came with the iMac. I even replaced it with the Wireless one that was previously released, which had little effect on my appreciation of the keyboard.

When Apple announced the new keyboard design I felt as if my mind had been read- for awhile now I had been thinking that it would be great if the keyboard for the imac was identical to that of the MacBooks. In fact, I’m considering an upgrade to a MacBook Pro, but am waiting for it as well to be upgraded to the recessed, square key design of the MacBooks and now iMac keyboards.

The New Wireless Keyboard is very, very compact. I don’t think it’s clear in the photos just how small, thin, and well-designed it is. It’s width and profile are exactly that of the MacBook’s- to a tee.
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It’s finally here and I am downloading it now. For sure I will be covering the new features and updates on the next show. One thing that was made VERY clear from the installer was Apple’s stern warning to iPhone un-lockers that the update would potentially permanently damage their iPhone (see below). So re-lock your iPhone or don’t do the update.

Update: Looks like there are some challenges for iPhone hacks even if they re-lock the iPhone prior to running the update. I just spoke with Shooby and he used the currently published re-locking procedures to relock and restore his iPhone. He reinserted his AT&T SIM and ran the 1.1.1 update. After update his AT&T SIM was invalidated. Now, we are not sure if the error is with the procedure he used to re-lock the phone or if this will be the experience for everyone, but at the very least it should server as a BIG warning. If you have a SIM unlocked iPhone, please wait for the iPhone Dev team to look into this before running the 1.1.1 update. Shooby is working with them now, so stay tuned.

Having recently purchased in an Xbox 360 I was disappointed to find out there was no native support for streaming content to your 360 from your Mac. One of the major selling points of the 360 is its ability to act as a media center, even allowing Mac formated iPods to connect via USB. Windows users can stream a wide array of media to their 360, but Mac users have been left out. This is where Nullriver Software comes in with Connect360.

The concept behind their software is to allow all of your iLife content to be streamed directly to the 360, and it works as simply as it sounds. Requiring minimal setup and only $20 USD for the full version, Connect360 is a must have for Mac and 360 owners. The only notable downsides are not the fault of Nullriver, but of DRM and Microsoft’s limited codec support.

There is a generous free trial version available that allows you to stream a limited number of photos, music, and videos at a time. For more information about supported content see this blog post from msdn.com

Microsoft, on Monday lost it’s three year long appeal case (full extremely long document can be read here) against the EU anti-trust order which was imposed in 2004. The order will make the enormous fish pay a record fine of $613 Million, sell a version of Windows which does not include its media player, and force them to share code relevant for allowing devices of different operating systems to communicate with Windows devices.

This is a landmark case for the European Commission (EC) who seems to be actively pursuing large US companies with large market share in their respective fields, and it appears that Apple is next on the EC’s radar.

Apple and some of its music partners are currently facing investigation by the European anti-trust officials for the pricing of items in the iTunes store. The commission wants to discover the reasons for different pricing in different territories of the European Union (for people who aren’t in Europe, you can only purchase from the country which your credit/debit card address is located. Apple also has different prices in the different stores). This is no joke for Apple as the EC has power to fine a company up to 10% of there worldwide revenue.
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Well, Apple did NOT announce the arrival of the Beatles on iTunes today like I thought and I have never been happier to be wrong. As most other rumor sites predicted, Apple did officially announce the date for the UK launch of the iPhone. November 9th the iPhone will go on sale in the UK and as predicted O2 will be the exclusive carrier of the “Jesus” phone.

“We’re thrilled to be partnering with O2 to offer our revolutionary iPhone to UK customers”, said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “US iPhone customer satisfaction is off the charts, and we can’t wait to let UK customers get their hands on it and learn what they think of it”.

Apple held a special event at the Regent Street Apple store Tuesday morning to announce the deal. At the event Apple and O2 also gave details on pricing and service plans. The iPhone will be available in an 8GB model for £269 (inc VAT) (USD ~ $536). For service, customers can pick from three monthly iPhone “tariffs” offered by O2. £35 (USD ~$70) for 200 minutes, £45 (USD ~$90) for 600 minutes, and £55 (USD ~$110) for 1200 minutes. The 200 minute plan includes 200 SMS messages, while the upper two plans come with 500 SMS messages a month. All plans come with unlimited data, visual voicemail, and access to 7,500 wifi hotspots from The Cloud.
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Well I just checked with the US Apple Store (Thursday September 13th, 2007 @ 9:00 PM PST) and they still claim the iPod Touch has an estimated ship date of September 28th. Now, that would be in line with Steve’s statement made at the special event last week that the new touchable iPods would be available in a couple weeks. So, if we believe Apple, listener Luis should not have been able to walk into a Florida Apple store today and saunter home with the brand spankin’ new iPod you see pictured here. The cool thing is… he DID! Looks like the new iPod Touch has hit the streets (or at least maybe your local Apple Store) a bit early. So what are you waiting for… go on… you know you want to touch it.

Just a few comments about the opening of the Glasgow store in Scotland on Saturday just gone. The store is at 147 Buchanan Street which is the major shopping street in Glasgow, and the store is located slap bang in the centre. I arrived just before 9am on Saturday and was somewhere between 5-600 in the queue. When I was in town about 7.30pm on the Friday evening there were 3 people queuing already so there had been some die hard fans there waiting. In terms of queuing time it took about 50 mins for me to get into the store itself as they fed people in about 20 at a time after the initial 100 or so.

On entering the store the first impression is of the amount of space there is between the door and the glass spiral staircase which is off to the left in the corner of the store. I expect this will be used for the bands that will be performing each Tuesday evening as part of the ‘Live From Glasgow’ special events that are planned. Upstairs next to the 2 Genius bars there are 4 iMacs set up on low tables with ‘ball seats’ specifically for use by kids – whether the location of these kids iMacs is specifically so that parents can be at the Genius bar have a convenient distraction to keep their kids happy, or just a happy coincidence I don’t know.

Whilst the Genius bars were operating the bookings made through the Concierge system weren’t being honored until Monday, but I was still able to get my Macbook reviewed for the discoloration of the bezel and trackpad that became apparent last year, and which I’d been waiting for an Apple Store to open locally for me to get resolved – I was able to leave my Macbook and have it repaired under warranty and available for collection the next day (1 benefit of getting in early ;-) ). The store was full of Apple staff (including quite a few US accents).

One thing I found interesting is that there did NOT seem to be an iPod HiFi on display anywhere, it certainly wasn’t next to all the 3rd party speaker systems, but I didn’t go around every display stand/ table.

Not that any of you across the pond have been waiting for this or anything, but if you haven’t seen it yet you might want to head over to Apple UK and checkout the main graphic.

Thanks to listener Jeremy for the tip off.

Ok, Microsoft is not the first company you think of when you think creative, artistic, or avant-garde. They also tend not to be too trendy or hip. Well, the folks over at the Microsoft Mac Businiess Unit (Mac BU) seem to want to try and up old Mr. Softies’ cool factor. To that end, they have created a new “social” networking site to showcase the more creative side of Office for Mac. The new Art of Office site is an online community where users can go, share, view, and download some of the most unusual (and I have to admit, somewhat cool) Office .doc, .xls, and .ppt files I have ever seen. The site has a nice web 2-oish look and feel and it might just change your thoughts on what you can do with a spreadsheet. The Mac BU says they, “wanted to give Mac users an outlet to showcase (their) creativity and passion”. Now, I’m not sure I believe we are all suddenly going to drop Photoshop and FinalCut for PowerPoint and Word, but I will give the BU props for their efforts. They are at least trying to “Think Different” and make Office more appealing (or at least interesting) to a Mac crowd. The site is definitely worth a look and I have to say I was impressed by some of the things I saw there. Check it out for yourself at http://www.artofoffice.com/. Who knows, maybe you can be the next Van Gough of Microsoft Word.

As of late I’ve been trying to solve the ever-worrisome issue of efficient and effective data backup for my personal information at home. I recently purchased and installed a product that’s put my mind at rest – at least for now. It’s the D-Link DND-323. This is a dual SATA drive NAS enclosure that allows you to configure the drives as a redundant array (RAID 1). I was able to pick up the D-Link product, and 2 500GB drives for about USD$400. This gives me just about 500GB of total storage space. The D-Link site does not show Mac compatibility for this product, but I’ve had no trouble managing and connecting to it from my MacBook Pro. The device is simple, runs pretty quiet (mine’s tucked in a basement) and has some pretty useful features:

• Easy to use web interface for management
• Gigabit network jack
• Built-in USB print server
• iTunes server (iTunes shows a Shared library)
• Email alerts for things like drive failure, overheating, etc.
• FTP server that can allow you to access your files remotely over the Internet (some security issues if you’re familiar with FTP)

All in all I’ve been very pleased with the device. It’s comforting to know that my family videos and pictures, as well as my digital music and important documents are being stored safely. It’s not bullet-proof, but honestly, you could ramble on forever in perinoia over backups if you let yourself. This offers a relatively low cost & simple solution to data backup. It runs the EXT2 file system and does not support NTFS – so don’t plan on using something like this in a Windows business environment where you need to set specific user permissions. The device, however, does support embedded user accounts that you can setup and manage from the web interface.

Checkout a full in depth review of the D-Link DNS-323 at ExtremeTech

Update
Editors note: I received an email from a listener in Japan who uses this also and had a note for any international listeners who may be dependent on a solution with double-byte character support.

I read the review on D-Link DNS-323. It’s a nice neat device except one thing… It does not work well with double byte character sets (or Japanese UTF-8). It doesn’t recognize Japanese file names using OS X (it works with XP, though…). Since I’m Japanese, this is very critical… I ended up creating a huge disk image on DNS-323, and coping Japanese files to the disk image…