Stupid me. I though I was being smart by pre-ordering Leopard on-line so that I could get my copy in advance of the 6:00 PM retail launch time. It was a great idea and I was even more excited this morning when I began seeing images and getting reports from listeners who were already receiving their copies. Last night I had checked my tracking info and saw that my copy of the fast cat was already in Texas and due to arrive on my doorstep by 10:30 AM PST. My plan was working, joy! Today, I patiently awaited my kitties arrival. The anticipation was exciting, but much to my dismay 10:30 came and went. At 10:32 AM I went on-line to check the package’s status and was met with the horror you see above. The package was in Indiana at 4:47AM?! How could that be if it was due to be on my doorstep in California at 10:30AM? Does FedEx already have teleporter technology they aren’t telling us about? Nope, FedEx had screwed me. I called, they placed a “trace” on the rouge feline, and said they would call later to let me know where she was (yes OS X is a woman). Well, I just got the call and was told that my copy of the latest OS is stuck on the ramp in Indianapolis and won’t be delivered until Monday. Thank you FedEx.

Enjoy the party everyone, hopefully it’s still going when I can join in next week.

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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I just saw this on the Fake Steve Jobs web site. Looks like Microsoft has a Flash header on their Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 page. In the image a streamer flows through displaying different words at random. One of the words is “viruses” and other is “built-in” so at the right moments it will actually read “viruses built-in” or “built-in viruses” (see above). Too hilarious. See it for yourself.

Take a look at this. Listener Bryan has an iPod Nano that is less than a year old and has developed some serious pitting and corrosion along the bottom near the dock connector and headphone jack. The iPod has never had direct contact with water, but Bryan is a runner. He uses the iPod while exercising and has it in a Belkin Sport Sleeve while he’s running. The best guess is that the damage has been caused by sweat. From the picture it looks like the unit is one of the original iPod Nano’s and not one of the current models that have the anodizing. I assume the newer model would be more immune to this kind of problem, but would love to know your experiences. Have you experienced any damage like this with your iPod?

Follow up to this story. (Taken from the comments)

This unit died a few days after talking with Adam. After a run of course.
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AT&T has begun sending out bills and to iPhone customers and it is not pretty. To manipulate a quote from Star Wars, “I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of trees suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced”.

Checkout the video below from iJustine (tastyblogsnack.com). It shows her opening her 300-page AT&T bill. It had to come in a box rather than an envelope?! Come on.

The issue is, even though the iPhone data plan is unlimited, AT&T itemizes every bit (and byte) of data along with it’s associated charge. That means when you load a page in Safari, every graphic, image, video, sound, etc. is listed line by line in your bill. Now luckily, iPhone owners can opt-in to receive their bills electronically. If you have an iPhone you should set this up immediately. Do it now, don’t wait.

My big problem with this is that AT&T (and Apple) should know better. With an unlimited data plan it makes no sense at all to itemize charges like this. Let’s hope they hear the complaints coming from their customers and change this practice soon.

Last week, on the first “I have something to say” segment, we discussed some strategies for convincing our PC using friends and family to make the switch to Mac. In that conversation we briefly touched on what I consider to be maybe the best method for creating a switcher; get them to use a Mac. Now, that can be a challenge as many would-be converts would prefer to try before they buy and most are not willing to drop $600 plus bucks up front for a Mac test-drive. Luckily, many of us have a secret weapon hiding in the spare bedroom, the closet, or tucked away in the garage. It’s your old Mac and chances are it’s still a decent little machine. Anything with a G4 or better processor can pretty much be dusted off, loaded up with Tiger and iLife, and compete with just about any currently sold bargain basement PC. It’s a great way to go. So what are you waiting for? Pass on that OS X Mac goodness. Listener Eric did it and checkout what he experienced.

[Email to the Maccast, 7/29/2007]
I actually converted my parents to Mac when I was in college. Two years ago I gave my mom my year old laptop that ran Windows when I purchased my Power Book for school. My parents are as far from computer literate as they come… they had a computer that was running Windows 98 and was turned on about 3 times a year before I gave them my old laptop.

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We all know about Apple’s meticulous attention to detail when it comes to design. They design the hardware, the software, heck even the packaging to be perfect. After her iPhone started having trouble, listener Lorrie found out that Apple pays attention to detail and design even after the sales has been made. Here is her story…

I wanted to tell you about my experience with Apple. I had my iPhone for 5 days when I realized that it had stopped working correctly. If I used the earbuds, or the speaker, everything was fine. If I held it to my ear I couldn’t hear the call and the other party on the call couldn’t hear me. I called Apple and went through all the troubleshooting procedures, and the technician determined that it was a hardware issue and needed to be repaired. He arranged a “loaner” for me and told me to send in my own phone when the loaner arrived, that all the instructions would be in the box.
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Who knows whether you MacCast readers will even see this before the actual Apple World Wide Developers Conference Keynote happens, but a few of us on the MacCast crew thought we’d take a shot at some (harebrained?) predictions for what we might see (or at least hope to see) tomorrow at WWDC.

Live Maccast Chat: If you are reading this before or during the keynote and want to chat about it live join us on iChat/AIM in the room: maccast. To access it using iChat:

1) Launch iChat
2) Go to: File–>Go to Chat… and enter ‘maccast’m as the chat name.

See you there.
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This bin is in the entryway of Microsoft’s Zune Headquarters and is there to encourage employees to recycle their iPods in favor of a Zune. This picture was recently posted to Flickr and apparently some Mac sites, like MacWorld UK are saying the bin represents , “child-like and unrealistic behavior”.

I think it’s actually kind of funny for two reasons… First, I like that Microsoft has picked a clever and funny way to take jabs at their competition. Let’s face it, it’s not easy to be taking on the most popular music player in the world. Things like this might serve as a rallying point for the Zune team boosting morale. Secondly, and what made me chuckle more, is how pathetically large the bin is in relation to the iPods it contains. I guess the management was a little more optemistic about their employee’s willing to trade their iPods for a Zune. Note that most, if not all, of these iPods seem to be older units. I don’t think I see a single 5th gen in there, do you?

iPod Amnesty Bin (via fimoculous)

Like many others, I use Skype and Call Recorder to record my podcast, Uncontrolled Airspace. They’ve been working great together for months now. I highly recommend both.

But this past week I did a stupid thing, and this morning it bit me in the butt.

Simply put, if you upgrade to Skype 2.5, make sure you’re also using the latest version of Call Recorder: 1.0.7. If you’re still using 1.0.6, like I was, then only one side of the conversation will get recorded. And you don’t want that.