1GB iPod Shuffles sold out until January

According to the online store. A brief note on the store reads: “Sold out for holiday. Expected availability mid-January.”

This of course if fueling speculation of new iPod Shuffles being announced at MacWorld.

Rumors are smaller and possibly offering colors (black). Storage size and pricing is expected to remain similar to avoid overlap with iPod Nano.

Reminds me of the SNL Weekend Update sketch about the iPod Invisa.

Video of iPod Invisa

Rumors that Apple is thinking about a 1GB iPod Nano

Reports that members of Apple's marketing team were looking at the impact of Apple releasing a 1GB Nano.

Basically a 2GB model with half the NAND Flash memory

Experts feel at that size Apple would have to have an aggressive $149.99 price point and that may take it hard for the device to remain profitable.

To meet holiday demand Apple may be producing as many as 100,000 Nanos a day.

Will the first laptop with an Intel Yonah be an Apple?

The race is on. NEC and Dell have already announced their offerings, but will Apple be first to ship? Dell is rumored to be shipping in February, so they could beat Apple to the punch.

Rumor sites believe the new dual-core chips, being marketed as "Centrino Duos", will be used in new iBooks and Mac Minis to be announced at MacWorld.

Think Secret is reporting that the iBook would feature the 1.5 GHz version of the new chip.

Stick a fork in it, IE for Mac is officially done.

In June of 2003 Microsoft announced that IE would under go no further development

As of December 31st, 2005 IE will no longer be supported and no security or performance updates will be released.

As of December 31st, 2006 it will no longer be available for download.

Next Manhattan Apple Store near Empire State Building

NY Times is reporting Apple has net-leased a 5 story 30,000 sq ft. building at 21 W 34th Street

This location comes after Apple was unable to secure a location in the Flatiron district due to a dispute over their design proposal.

This new location would be the 3rd Manhattan store and this spring Apple is set to open a store under the General Motors building near Midtown.

The Midtown store is going to feature by $9 million dollar 32-foot hollow glass cube personally designed by Steve Jobs.

Apple and ABC add 'Commander in Chief' to iTunes

The show featuring Geena Davis as the first female president it the latest offering to Apples iTunes video offerings.

Apple working with others on specs for next gen display connector

Apple is a part of a Special Interest group along with companies like SGI and Intel to help develop and revise the specification for the United Display Interface (UDI)

United Display Interface (UDI)

Intended to replace the VGA connector and be compatible with DVI and HDMI displays

Also includes support for High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP). Which is a DRM technology being developed by Intel.

High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP)

As expected the Apple and Intel partnership seems to go beyond the processors.

Security flaw in iTunes and Quicktime detailed

Tom Ferris, an independent security researcher has posted details on his site of a security flaw in QuickTime. The exploit could effect both Macs and PCs

Quicktime Security Advisory

"The vulnerability allows an attacker to cause the program to crash and could allow the execution of arbitrary code,"

The vulnerability is triggered when playing a specially crafted .mov file will cause the heap overflow.

Ferris notified Apple of the issue back in December and they have yet to issue a patch.

I have not heard of anyone exploiting this yet, but you can avoid this by not running .MOV files from untrusted sources.

Will Apple expand consumer offerings in 2006?

David Bailey, an analyst from Goldman Sachs, believes Apple will move further away from the Mac core and build on the consumer success of the iPod.

He thinks Apple will continue to announce new products in the consumer electronics market starting with a digital entertainment hub.

MacCast One Minute Tip #009 - Application Integration

Play MacCast One Minute Tip

www.oneminutetip.com

Followup: Insurance claims can cost you your coverage

Many listeners pointed out that while your insurance may provide protection for your Mac, sometime making a claim can cause the company to drop your coverage.

May not be worth it to make a claim.

Has Apple increased .Mac Bandwith

Listener Jason pointed out that his .Mac account info shows the .Mac bandwidth at 1024GB (1TB).

In July the actually limited the bandwidth to 3GB

Was this part of the recent 250MB to 1GB storage upgrade? I cannot find any details on-line.

Tip: Getting past the iTunes 7 CD burn limit

Christopher Breen from Playlist magazine looks at how big (or little) a playlist change is required to break the limit

Cracking iTunes 7 Burn Limit

Simply adding a 61 sec audio track, or removing 1 track will allow 7 more burns.

Keep a USB keyboard around if you opt for Bluetooth

Listener Jonathan pointed out that if you own a Bluetooth keyboard that you cannot zap the PRAM.

He needed to reset his display settings and couldn't

I assume this would also be an issue with other wireless keyboards too.

How to convert audio formats in iTunes 6

Go through the conversion process

1) In preferences, go to the Advanced tab and choose Importing.

2) Choose the format you want to convert to and set the setting the way you want them. There are helpful presets, like AAC Spoken Podcast to help you out.

3) Close the preferences.

4) Select the track you wish to convert and the Control (right) + Click and choose 'Convert..'

You can select multiple tracks or a playlist to convert.

Now you will have 2 versions of the same song(s) in different formats. Make the 'Kind' column visible and sort by kind, or choose "Edit"-->Show Duplicate Songs to clean up.

A special Christmas Keynote

Sent from Father Roderrick of the Catholic Insider Podcast

www.catholicinsider.com

This is a humorous take on a keynote speech and of course is amazingly produced. There are religious themes included in this clip, so if you are easily offended by this stuff skip ahead about 4:00 minutes. I thought it was very clever and got a chuckle out of it.

Play clip from Father Roderick

Father Roderik has a great podcast and provides a catholic priests perspective on many films, tv and books and other things currently happening in popular culture.

iTunes Podcasts, if your not listening it stops updating.

Many listeners have contacted me to say their feeds are not updating.

If you fall behind in your listening iTunes will automatically stop updating (checking) that feed. You will see a little grey "!" next to the feed.

How to find stuff on MacCast.com

The show-notes can be found at the end of each blog post and by looking for the "Show-notes in HTML or OPML" links.

www.maccast.com

Show numbers. Question from Josh.

They are in the first line of the blog entry, after "A podcast for Mac Geeks, by Mac Geeks".

I will add the numbers to future show-notes entries.

There is a search button on the right hand side about 2/3 down the page

The feed carries the last 15 episodes. For older shows you can download them directly from MacCast.com. Click the Podcast link in the top menu and then use the Monthly archive links on the side to find the shows. Each entry contains a "Get the MP3" link at the bottom which will let you download the MP3 file (Control (right) + Click to save the file to disk).

Sounds for Sights Christmas Giveaway

Free audio walking tour from Sounds for Sights

www.soundsforsights.com

The first 100 people to send an email with a Holiday greeting in the subject to maccontest@gmail.com

maccontest@gmail.com

Right now they offer tours for New York. Should be handy with the Transit strike.