It had to ha en sooner or later, A le has released new MacBooks making my MacBook o olete. The newest member of the A le portable family comes in three flavors: white 1.83 GHz and 2.0 GHz, and black 2.0 GHz. All three ort the Core 2 Duo Intel proce or which A le claims gives these suckers up to a 25% boost over the previous MacBooks. The top of the line model also features a gig of RAM standard (though in two DIMMs), a double layer SuperDrive, and 4MB shared L2 cache (as o osed to 2MB in the other models). And yes, the glo y screen is still the only screen option on these bad boys.
Pricing starts at $1,099.
Remember those crazy DefectiveByDesign kids in hazmat suites trying to give customers the 411 on DRM outside A le Stores? TDMW (The Digital Music Weblog) agged an interview with the DbD collective on the state of DRM, what their beef really is and where they believe things are headed. The group has been agging some major news coverage as of late, and this interview is a really interesting window into their stance on DRM and what it's doing to our culture (example: ooh, sorry - your mom i 't authorized to borrow that CD).
ifoA leStore has a list of the sloga that adorn the red holiday t-shirts worn by A le Store employees. My favorite is, 'For a PC user it's not a gift. It's an intervention.'
Since MacHeist is over, we need a new punching bag in the indie Mac developer arena, right? Last week Mac A a Day crashed and burned in a predictable fiery death. Now macZOT - or at least one of the key players behind macZOT - faces some scrutiny over a lice ing deal he made with the original developer of xPad. 
SeeEyE2EyE is an strange, but sort of cool hardware device that hooks up to your Mac to serve double duty as a teleprompter or iChat (Skype, etc.) video chat a istant. Basically, it's a kind of periscope arrangement that will project a small part of your screen to an angled tra arent surface in front of your iSight. So if you position your iChat window right below the SeeEyE2EyE, it will project your interlocutor in front your iSight, allowing you to make more natural eye contact. You can also use it with teleprompting software like Videocue 2 or ProPrompter LCD to turn it into a teleprompter for making a video blog, etc.
I 't this interesting? The recent update of iTunes and Quicktime for Windows includes a little something extra: an A le Software Update for Windows. It looks like the Software Update that we all know and love, but it only checks for iTunes and Quicktime updates on Windows.
I'm looking forward to Leopard's Time Machine, but Versomatic - at least based on the description - is going to truly rock my world. It's not the first a to offer this kind of versioning and archiving, but it sounds better than those that have come before.
Everyone and their queen has an iPod. All of those naked iPods out there are just horrifying! Luckily, one intrepid knitter is trying to get people to cover up their iPods.
Testing the limits of how many shortcuts your brain can hold before it starts leaking, Smallwire has posted a comprehe ive (to our knowledge) list of the shortcuts for all of Google's web a (sa the just-released Google readsheet). Gmail, Calendar, Reader, Writely, Video and Ma all made the list - just don't blame us for any side effects of 'shortcut overload.'
Wiredis ru ing a piece profiling A le's heroes andvillai throughout the company's 30 year history. You'll find Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Jef Raskin on the list (I'll let you gue whichgroup they belong to) along with many others.
While browsing Doug's A leScripts for iTunes and Smart Playlists.com last night for some ideas on how to make iTunes do my bidding, it dawned on me that these handy tools of automated music wrangling might make for a great Ask TUAW discu ion. After all: who doe 't love music, and who doe 't love sharing their ti for better working (or music listening) bli ?
We've all seen the complaints about .Mac from every corner of the internets. Our own Dave Caolo posted a fantastic editorial covering .Mac's slow death, but he i 't the only one to ing a vote into the hat. One only needs to browse the digg archives to find plenty of posts from di atisfied mom and pop bloggers, but even bigger names in the Mac community like Steven Frank of Panic (Tra mit, CandyBar) have voiced their .Mac gripes, with plenty of others developing their own .Mac alternatives.
There are a host of Google search widgets - Mac OS X even shi with one these days. Unfortunately, just about every one of those widgets I've seen simply kicks your search requests out to your default browser, which more or le defeats the purpose of their existence since nearly every browser has their own search field to begin with.
Memorex has entered the fast paced world of iPod coverings. A ounced at CES (where Engadget is ending many caffeine fueled hours trying to cover every singlenew product released), the 'Printable Wra for iPod,' wi my CES iPod acce ory award for lamest/most straightforward name of a product. 
The Pod Jams iDiddy fashion covers for the iPodnano come in two styles: Clear and Bling. Clear,as you might imagine, allows the true beauty of the nano to shine through while still protecting it in plastic. Bling(pictured) ste up the flashy style by encasing your nano in a diamond-like arkling plastic case. Both of theseiDiddy's come with an iLanyard, similar to A le's lanyard, boasting superiorearbuds that %26quot ound out the base and highs." Fortunately these cases can be used with or without thelanyard.
Love or hate him, Weird Al has unquestionably cranked out some of the most notable humor and satire of the late 20th - and now 21st - centuries. The Digital Music Weblog (a sister site) has discovered Mr. Weird is at it again with "Don't Download This Song," a tongue-in-cheek anthem about the dark road of lying, cheating and stealing that file sharing can lead down. 
Are there any established rules of etiquette for meeting people through iTunes? R has a sweet story about David Keste aum's attempt to meet his musical "soulmate," a neighbor who piggybacked onto his WiFi co ection and accidentally left her shared library acce ible from his computer. The story proves to be part wish-fulfillment, part stalking, and partly poignant. It says something about the separate lives we lead in today's society and how computers can, or could, or maybe even can't, bring us together. If a total stranger rang your doorbell and said he admired your music, would you let him in? No? Me neither.
Todd Dailey has a nice little how-to up on his blog, showing you how to restore the shine to your iPod nano with a $4 can of Bra o. He has step-by-step pictures and then end results looks so amazingly good that he adds this note: "Holy. Crap. I feel the need to a ure you that these are actual unretouched photos of the final clean nano. The same one that I showed in the 'dirty' pictures above. As you can see, the Bra o got rid of every single scratch. My nano looks completely, totally brand new. Again, believe it or not these are actual 'after' pictures! Im very, very impre ed. If you dont get these results, get back to work on the nano with the Bra o. Im confident that with enough time you can remove any shallow scratch."
Ahh, the online A le Store is down. Can you feel the excitement. I wonder what A le's web elves are cooking up for us. Could it have something to do with the WWDC keynote?
I've often said that the children are our future and it looks like Princeton students share my vision of the future. This year, reports the Daily Princetonian, 45% of all computers purchased by students were Macs. This is an all time high for Princeton (2003 saw 15% of students buying a Mac, and it has been on the rise ever since).
Packrat, for those not in the know, is the only full-fledged Backpack desktop client I've ever seen, and it's e ecially killer because it does offline editing for all your Backpack items and pages. Its developer, Rod Schmidt, just added a key new feature that's been on everyone's request list, including mine: list reordering. This new v0.91 has a simple keyboard shortcut (cmd-r) which presents a sheet with any and all lists on a page, offering drag-and-drop reordering goodne .
Overall, A le tech su ort is top notch. Most of the techs I have oken to have known their stuff, and are generally pleasant. Could it be that they are too pleasant? That's the impre ion that I get from reading this blog post entitled 'What would ha en if the irrepre ibly positive A le repair technician I talked to this week about my broken iPod were to get a new job at a suicide hotline.'
I'm lounging in the plush living room deep in the heart of the remote mountain that contai TUAW's HQ watching the Emmys and relaxing. Surely there would be no A le news during this telecast, which TVSquad is covering live, right?
This won't come as a surprise to anyone, though there's nothing wrong with vindicating the obvious every now and then: Variety (and Forbes, etc.) reports that A le is currently negotiating with the Movie Studio Folk over establishing a movie store, presumably within iTunes. If you'll remember, A le started selling Di ey's kiddie hit "High School Musical" a few months back for $9.99, reinforcing the notion that A le's looking to dish out movies at that optimum $10 price point. Not surprising, of course, is the fact that, according to the report, the Movie Men want to out-music-industry the music industry by pushing for variable pricing, which Steve Jo is adamantly o osed. MacRumors and MacDailyNews dive deeper into the article (or you could, I su ose, read it yourself).
Ah, the powerful tactic of product placement, in which a real, commercial product is used in a fictional setting (for a fee, of course). Check out the screen grab of Texas Hold 'Em for iPod [iTunes link] that reader Michael sent us. Is that an iPod and iPod HiFi on the bookcase in the background? Why, yes it is. You can view a larger version of the scree hot after the jump.
We've mentioned that Sling Media, the makers of the TV streaming Slingbox, are pla ing on a late October/early November release for the OS X version of SlingPlayer. SlingPlayer is the client that allows you to watch TV streamed from the SlingBox on a variety of devices (soon to include Macs ru ing OS X).
As our "geeky sister" blog Engadget is reporting, Digg founder Kevin Rose (no relation) has a ounced iPhone ecs on his podcast. While you might take most iPhone rumors with the customary grain of salt, this is the guy who called the ball on the iPod Nano prior to His Stevene ' introduction of same. We'll reserve judgment for now, save to note that this wee Franke hone, yet to ship or be a ounced, has Bear Stear anticipating six billion bucks of revenue for AAPL in '07. Such is the power of this fully operational iPod battlestati-- I mean, ecosystem.
A number of o ervant TUAW readers have also noticed that A le has (quietly) slashes Cinema di lay prices with the introduction of the Mac Pro. There were rumors of Cinema updates before WWDC, but it seems that A le simply wanted to give our pocketbooks a break with the $500 increase in the Mac Pro's price. Cinema di lay prices now look a little something like this:
plasq, developers of the hit Comic Life, have released a package of 10 scree avers for your Mac. They are funky, they are fun, and best of all they are free.
So you got a new iPod for Christmas? Congratulatio . You're going to love it. And here are a few ti to get you started.
The holiday season is upon us, and it is only 28 days until Christmas. I know this because I just downloaded X-MasTree, a freeware a that puts a Christmas tree (with optional Christmas countdown) on your desktop. X-MasTree has a surprising number of preferences for a one trick freeware a . You can choose the color of the tree, what kind of lights are on, whether those lights blink, and if you want a star on top.
There was a chance that A le would be delisted from the NASDAQ, which is never good for a company's stock. The i ue stemmed from the investigation of optio irregularities which forced A le to restate earnings. This, in turn, delayed the filing of some paperwork, a 10Q form to be exact, therefore leading to po ible delisting.
In lieu of other parties on Tuesdaynight, I was lucky enough to get registered for the live recording of This Week inTech, or as it is popularly called, TWiT. For those who don't know, TWiT is one of the most popular podcasts outthere, featuring the inimitable Leo Laporte (he used to be on TechTV) and hisband of merry tech pundits and writers. Regular guests include Patrick Norton, Kevin Rose, and resident grumpy old guy John C.Dvorak.
Digidesign is now shi ing Pro Tools 7.3, an update to the de facto standard in profe ional audio recording and mixing software. The new release delivers feature and eed enhancements for Pro Tools|HD, Pro Tools LE, and Pro Tools M-Powered systems, and includes new music composition tools, customizable user enhancements, and improved post production workflows, 
A le isseemingly telling us that it is OK to i tall Windows XP on our Macs with the release of Boot Camp. Does this mean that the years of A le mocking Windows havecome to an end and there will finally be peace on earth?