Next gen Intel Xeons on the way

A new chip may make it's way to the MacPro by Christmas.

The Register out of the UK is reporting that Intel's next gen quad core Xeon chips will ship in November

The chips use a 45nm design and have two Thermal Designee Power levels. E designated at 80W and X designated at 120W

7 speeds ranging from 2.0GHz to 3.16GHz, all with 1333MHz front side buses

All designs also contain 12MB of L2 cache. 6MB of L2 cache shared between each pair of cores.

Apple retires Appleworks, or have they?

Many sites are reporting that apple.com/appleworks now redirects to the iWork '08 page which is true.

They are also claiming the product has been given "End of Life" status by Apple. EOL means the product is no longer sold or updated.

I doubt AppleWorks will ever be supported or updated again

BUT... AppleWorks 6.2.9 (Mac) is still available for purchase on Apple's on-line store for USD $79.00

Jobs ups share count

A Bloomberg report says that Job exercised his stock options last Thursday picking up 120,000 share for the bargain basement price of $5.75 a share.

Thursday Apple stock was trading at around $114/share making the deal potentially worth around $13.7 million in pure profit. Way to go Stevie!

iPhone Europe just weeks away?

MacNN is siting a source and article from Unstrung that says Apple and Vodaphone are just weeks away from announcing a deal to bring the iPhone to Europe

Vodafone seems to be in line to cover most of Western Europe, with T-Mobile International AG in Germany , and rumors of Vodafone or O2 getting the UK nod.

The terms of the deal and some "bugs" are cited as the hold up. Most carriers don't want to give Apple as much control as AT&T did in the states.

Bug fixes mentioned include

Support for Outlook and Exchange syncing (Apple currently doesn't license Microsoft's Activesync technology).

Better VPN support, like MSCHP1 and support for Cisco PIX

Easier connectivity to WEP and WPA access points. Currently not obvious that you need to place a $ before the security keys for any access point that is not an Apple Airport. (can't confirm this bug).

iPhone battery lawsuits, please.

A second class-action suit was filed in California, with similar claims to complaints made by an Illinois man.

Claims over $100/yr iPhone battery maintainence "fee". $79.00+$30 loner phone, was not disclosed up front.

Added cost and no user replaceable battery

400 charge cycles, not 300 times. Use 1/4 and charge back up 1/4 is 1/4 of a cycle. After 400 it is at 80% capacity.

My iPod is used everyday sine I got it and I have had no battery issues.

Already 3rd party, cheaper, battery replacement solutions.

Tip: Take it out of the case when charging. Excess heat can degrade battery capacity.

Lennon 3rd Beatle on iTunes

Following Ringo and Paul, John made his iTunes debut this week

The offering includes 16 solo albums from EMI.

Many of the albums have recently been digitally re-mastered and 2 collections, "Lennon Legend" and "Acoustic" are available for the first time in digital format.

The albums are available in the DRM-free iTunes plus format and for the first 30-days several of the albums include exclusive video content

iWeb 2.0.1 Update

Not much here, but Apple says it does fix issues with upgrading and publishing iWeb 1.x websites.

Weeee!

Woz linked with Kathy Griffin

And now this podcast has degraded to a cheap prime time entertainment show, but this rumor is too strange/interesting not to mention.

Steve Wozniak is rumored to have meet D-list comedienne Kathy Griffin after seeing her do stand-up and they hit it off.

I checked the source which is contactmusic.com ( i never heard of them either), and Kathy has done fake dating stunts on her show before, so this one could be a hoax.

Strange and cool all at once. Woz himself is a know practical joker, so I guess it makes sense.

iLife font issues

My iPhoto event renaming problem was a font issue (HelveticaNeue.dfont).

Needs to be in /Library/Fonts

Listener Chris had same problem

Open Numbers templates to confirm problems, it will warn you about missing fonts

Re-install the fonts, in our case Helvetica Neue

Restoring fonts

I couldn't find a good recommended way

The recommended way is to re-install OS X. Archive and install.

I was able to restore from Suitcase "Moved System Fonts".

Could restore from another Mac at the same upgrade level.

If you need to restore just the fonts from the install DVD, you can use a tool like Pacifist

Pacifist

List of Tiger Essential fonts on Apple.com

OS X Essential Fonts

Morale of story... Don't mess with fonts in the /System/Library/Fonts or /Library/Fonts folders

Vintage and obsolete products

Scott noticed the "Support Status" in Mactracker and wondered what vintage vs obsolete meant.

Apple has discontinued support for certain technologically obsolete and vintage products.

Vintage products are those that were discontinued more than five and less than seven years ago. Apple has discontinued hardware service for vintage products with the following exception:

Products purchased in the state of California, United States, as required by statute. Owners of these products may obtain service and parts from Apple Service Providers within the state of California, United States.

Obsolete products are those that were discontinued more than seven years ago. Apple has discontinued all hardware service for obsolete products with no exceptions. Service providers cannot order parts for obsolete products.

All retail Apple Stores and the Canadian, European, Latin American and Asia-Pacific operating regions follow the U.S. product list, but make no distinction between vintage and obsolete. When applied to the retail Apple Stores and these operating regions, all products on the U.S. Vintage list are considered obsolete.

Mactracker has technical details of ALL Apple products. Get it.

Donationware. Please donate if you like it.

Image, history, startup chime, sync to iPod

mactracker.ca

802.11 in Airport

Drop in speed to lowest common denominator

Recommendation for other routers

Linksys,

www.linksys.com

Belkin, N1 Vision

Belkin N1 Vision

Apple Airport Extreme