French iPhones are scarce

According to an Orange press release they have sold 30,000 iPhones in the first 5 days

80% of customers are opting for the 2 year contract.

48% of customers are new to Orange

There are now some reports that some Orange locations are "sold out" of the phones.

Orange might see a boot in unlocked phones since T-Mobile Germany won an appeal on a case brought about by Vodafone

The latest ruling from the German courts says the can sell only locked iPhones and T-Mobile plans to drop the unlocked offerings "as soon as possible".

Subnotebook rumors continue to heat up

Digitimes (not historically accurate) says 2 vendors, Kenmos and Nano-Op will ship significantly increases numbers of 13.3" backlit-LED displays in December.

Nano-Op shipped just 10,000 units in November, but with increased demand from Apple they expect to ship over 90,000 units in December. (they also supply Dell and the report is not clear if the 90,000 units are just for Apple).

Some of the latest rumors say it will be a 12" flash based device priced at USD $1,500.

Rumors also flying that Intel will have mobile versions of their mobile processors based on 45nm Penryn architecture ready to go in early January

Dual-core initially with Quads following in the Summer.

Offering faster clock speeds (from 2.1 to 2.8 GHz)

new media-oriented SSE4 extensions

3 to 6 MB of Level 2 cache

running at same 35 watt peak power of the current gen chips

iWork gets 16%, not bad

According to a NPD Group report.

Microsoft Office pretty much makes of the rest of the OS X Office suite Market

I feel iWork is a great replacement for most people. At $79.00 bucks vs. Office 2008's minimum $239.95 for upgrade (with the full version running $399.95).

If you want free there is always NeoOffice

NeoOffice

Overall Mac share may be up as well

According to recent data from Net Applications

In November Macintels showed 3.59 percent of web surfers and PPC racked up 3.22 percent, for a total of 6.81 percent.

The bad news... Windows Vista (despite Apple's marketing) still beat OS X with 9.19 percent. Windows XP was 78.37.

iPhone also came in at 0.09 percent edging out Windows CE.

QuickTime Hole exploited

Attacks using the Apple QuickTime RTSP Response Header Stack-Based Buffer Overflow Vulnerability in QuickTime 7.2 and 7.3 are now beginning to surface

All currently targeting Windows systems and most on Adult websites. Macs could be targets too.

There was also one use in Secondlife where attackers used it to steal in game "Linden dollars" which can actually be converted to real dollars.

Studios squeezes Apple for move Video dollars

MacNN has a story that According to a report by Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield. Studios have pressured Apple into increasing the average wholesale price they pay for movies on iTunes $15.

Increase seems to be for 2 reasons

So Apple can get AppleTV and iPod formatted versions on physical enhanced DVDs

Pressure on the studios from WalMart

I think it can only serve to lower what I assume is already low movie sales on iTunes

May push Apple into the rental market.

Apple's new NYC store opens

Apple opened it's 3rd Manhattan store on Friday 12/7 in the Meatpacking district.

3 stories tall with a spiral glass staircase

One whole floor devoted to customer service.

Several of our listeners were in line and and sent reports early in the day saying that over 600 people were already waiting to get in.

Some final reports estimate that over 6,000 people were waiting to get a glimpse at the new store and that the event was like a "rock concert".

Jobs inducted into California Hall of fame

Along with 13 others including Willie Mays, Tiger Woods, Ansel Adams, John Steinbeck, Elizabeth Taylor, and John Wayne.

The "hall" was created by first lady of California Maria Shriver and she clams it was hard to get Jobs to attend the ceremony.

"He's trying to balance children, family, business, he doesn't like to be singled out," she said. "He believes that Apple is the star of the Silicon Valley, not him."

iPhone coming to Alaska

AT&T has begun the process of converting Cellular One territories to AT&T.

Back on June 29th, AT&T bought Dobson Communications, Cellular One's parent company.

This means areas covered by Cellular One will now get access to the iPhone

AT&T will start with stores in Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau, Alaska.

They plan to convert 200 stores across 16 states throughout 2008.

Tis the season for Sharing

Kick off a series on sharing on the Mac.

Back to my Mac

Screen Sharing

File Sharing

iTunes and iPhoto Sharing

Starting off with Web Sharing

Apache built-in

The config file locations

Tiger: /etc/httpd/httpd.conf

Leopard: /etc/apache2/httpd.conf

/Library/Web Server/Documents and ~/Sites

If you are just looking to set up a local development environment and don't want to mess with the built-in stuff try MAMP and MAMP Pro (~USD$62.62) from Living-e.

mamp.info

Some minor issues under Leopard

Can use it for serving live, but takes some tweaking.

iWeb and .Mac make a good alternative if you don't want the complexity.

Getting through to your Mac

Buy a static IP or use DynDNS

Open up your router and possibly use a non-standard port

My Backup strategy under Leopard

With SuperDuper still not Leopard compatible server listeners have asked how I'm coping.

TimeMachine is working great. A pair of Seagate 500GB FreeAgent drives added to the mix.

Carbon Copy Cloner

bombich.com

Victor's Screencast on scheduling and incremental using CCC

typicalmacuser.com

Widgets on the desktop

There are a few ways to do this, but Chris reminded me of the easiest one

Activate Dashboard, drag the widget but don't let go, de-activate Dashboard, drop widget on desktop.

Used to require using a terminal plist hack to put it in dev mode, but maybe no more?

Widgets always on top.

Amnesty Widget Browser

amnestywidgets.com

Manage iPhoto and iTunes remotely

Listener John was wondering about accessing a remote iPhoto Library when not at home

Use Back to My Mac

1) Connect to your remote Mac's harddrive or home folder using Back to My Mac.

2) Launch iPhoto while holding down the option key.

3) When promoted choose "Choose Library..." and select the iPhoto library on your remote Mac

4) Browse, add, edit photos. Note that only one iPhoto can connect to a library at a time.

5) Quit iPhoto and disconnect. Launch iPhoto with the option key held down again and choose your main (local) library.

Also works for iTunes.

Time Machine drive filling up fast

A couple listeners have mentioned this issue.

I believe it is related to .Mac and iDisk Sync.

iDisk uses a sparse image locally to store and then syncs with iDisk when you are connected.

The sparse image content changes, but TimeMachine can't see inside so incrementally backs up the entire file which will be equal to the site of used space on your iDisk.

Turn off iDisk syncing and/or exclude the local iDisk sparse image. You'll find it at ~/Library/FileSync/[some folder]

Change your login desktop

From Wasfy.

The file is stored at: HD/System/Library/CoreServices/DefaultDesktop.jpg

Make a copy (Command+D) the existing file so you have a backup of the original.

Replace the file with your own JPG, just make sure it is called 'DefaultDesktop.jpg'.

Logout and log back in or restart.

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