Posted by multippt
Looks like Apple released a new update for its operating system. This update adds quite a lot of features (judging its file-size).
You can update your install using the software update feature on the system itself, or if you prefer, download it from the Apple site.
You can view a whole list of changes from the Apple site.
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Apple last week stopped accepting cash for iPhone purchases and reinstated a two-per-person sales limit in an effort to curb the black market for unlocked versions of the touch-screen handset.
The new policy began Thursday, Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris told the Associated Press. Before then, there was no cash restriction and the purchase limit was five per person. “Customer response to the iPhone has been off the charts, and limiting iPhone sales to two per customer helps us ensure that there are enough iPhones for people who are shopping for themselves or buying a gift,” Kerris said. “We’re requiring a credit or debit card for payment to discourage unauthorized resellers.” Since introducing iPhone on June 29th, Apple has sold over 1.4 million of the handsets, the company announced as part of its fiscal fourth quarter earnings last week. However, it estimated that approximately 250,000 of those iPhones were sold to buyers who intended to unlock them and then resell them for use on wireless networks other than AT&T. The new sales restrictions are the latest moves by Apple in its game of cat and mouse with iPhone hackers. Last month, it released iPhone software update 1.1.1, which rendered unlocked iPhones effectively useless.
Posted by multippt
With just only a few days since Apple Leopard launch, several users reported that their computer froze (or bluescreened) after successfully upgrading their install. Some tried reinstalling the OS, and managed to get rid of the bluescreen. More »
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As Yogi might say, it was deja vu all over again on Stockton Street as Apple released Mac OS X Leopard to the general public.
(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET News.com)It wasn’t exactly iPhone Day, but hundreds of people lined up on Stockton Street on Friday outside the San Francisco Apple store to get their hands on Mac OS X Leopard, the newest version of Apple’s operating system.
About 30 minutes before the doors of the store opened at 6 p.m., the line stretched up Stockton and around the corner onto O’Farrell Street, maybe two-thirds as long as the iPhone line at its longest on June 29. Still, prospective customers waited hours in line to buy Leopard, even though they could have preordered a copy from Apple or Amazon.com and have spent that time installing their new OS.
Tyler Howarth (middle) is psyched to be first in line in downtown San Francisco for Leopard.
(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET News.com)
“That’s kind of lame,” said Tyler Howarth, first in line, referring to those who took the preorder route. Howarth, a student at San Francisco State University, arrived at 2 p.m. to start waiting in line, although the actual formal queue wasn’t set up until 3 p.m. He planned to use the $100 store credit he received after the iPhone pricing snafu to defray the cost of the Leopard upgrade (click for CNET’s review) for his Macbook Pro.
Granted, standing in line on a cool autumn evening in San Francisco isn’t exactly as demanding as dodging raindrops on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. And it’s really, really hard to run out of software; I’m pretty sure you’ll be able to walk into any Apple store later tonight or tomorrow and pick up a copy without a wait. But line-waiters seem determined to be part of something, to have an actual experience associated with their upgrades that’s a little more interesting than signing for the package.
Apple’s retail employees do everything they can to deliver that experience, cheering the early adopters like they just completed a 14-point comeback with 2 minutes left on the clock. The free coffee went quickly, but the first 500 people in line were given T-shirts to mark the occasion.
Apple retail employees welcome Leopard customers with a standing ovation and T-shirts.
(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET News.com)
Several of those in line cited Time Machine as the single most important reason they’re rushing out to get Leopard, sheepishly admitting they don’t regularly back up their system. Not many people do so on a regular basis, even if they’ve taken the step of purchasing an external hard drive or going as far as to set up a home server.
Amadeus DeMarzi, about halfway back in the line, was relatively new to the Mac, having purchased his first Mac about a year ago. He was also planning to use his iPhone credit on the purchase of Leopard, and cited Time Machine and Spaces, a feature that lets you switch between four separate work areas to help organize your thoughts when working with multiple applications.
Passersby gawked at the crowd as things backed up in the area in front of the Apple store, which is adjacent to entrances for the Powell Street transit stop. “Ooh, I think they’re giving out free iPhones!” one woman exclaimed as she passed by with several shopping bags. At around 6:30 p.m., the line was still around the corner onto O’Farrell, but things were moving in an orderly fashion.
It was probably a pretty good night for Apple’s retail operation, but we’ll get a better sense of the pace of Leopard adoption over the next few weeks and months. I’ll check back over the weekend to see how the installation process is going for the early adopters. If you run into any problems, let me know in the comments below.
iPhone Day it wasn’t, but foot traffic still backed up in front of Apple’s downtown San Francisco store around 6 p.m. as commuters tried to figure out what was going on.
(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET News.com)
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The highest download traffic of Mac OS X 10.5 occurred after Apple distributed the release candidate in September.
Apple officially launches its new Leopard operating system Friday. But the first major release of the Mac OS in nearly two and a half years has been the hottest download for months on peer-to-peer networks, rivaling at times even the most popular movies and songs, a P2P tracking firm said. Apple has already started selling Leopard in Japan, where hundreds of fans lined up at stores to buy the OS. In the United States, Apple stores will close at 4 p.m. local time, and reopen at 6 p.m., giving away T-shirts to the first 500 buyers. The store closure is to give employees time to turn the outlets into party central, and to prepare for the higher traffic.
But all the fanfare is anticlimactic for P2P users who have been downloading Leopard in various forms of beta for about a year, Eric Garland, analyst and chief executive of Big Champagne, said. The highest traffic occurred after Apple distributed the release candidate in September. At that point, the number of Leopard downloads was comparable to those of the most popular movies and songs.
“It’s a little bit like kids on Christmas Eve,” Garland said. “They just can’t stand it. They know they’re not supposed to peek, but the excitement is just too much for them.”
Illegal copies of a new OS showing up on P2P networks are not unusual. Leopard’s rival Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)’s Windows Vista, which was released to consumers in January, was also available over the Web before the OS shipped. Microsoft, however, uses a serial-numbering protection system that hackers had to penetrate first before the OS started showing up, Garland said. Apple doesn’t use such anti-piracy technology.
“It’s really as simple to acquire and use a pirated copy of Leopard as to install and use a legitimate copy,” Garland said.
Interestingly, Apple’s strategy of less protection for Leopard, officially known as OSX 10.5, actually works to the company’s advantage. People downloading illegal pre-release copies often say in chat rooms and discussion forums that they plan to buy a legitimate copy, which was not the same for Windows Vista thieves.
“There’s a commonly expressed sentiment among the community to go buy Apple,” Garland said. “Many of the people who have downloaded and installed pirated copies have also pre-ordered legitimate copies.”
People who downloaded Windows Vista, however, tended to take offense at what they viewed as draconian measures on the part of Microsoft, so felt less inclined to buy a legitimate copy, Garland said. In addition, Mac lovers view Apple’s price tag of $129 a better value than the $399 Microsoft charges for its most feature-rich version: Vista Ultimate.
Nevertheless, because Apple’s OS accounts for a sliver of the PC market compared to Windows, the amount of P2P traffic the operating system generates is extraordinary. “It really points to the cult of Mac,” Garland said.
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If you want an iPhone, which is really a 6th generation iPod, but don’t want to use it as a phone or pay AT&T for the privilege of having an iPhone that works, DVD Jon has unleashed a way to make the non-phone iPhone a reality.
Want to use an iPhone in a country other than the US, or use it in the US without needing to be on a two-year contract with AT&T?
Thanks to new software from Jon Lech Johansen, famous as ‘DVD Jon’, the man that cracked the DVD’s copy protection, you can ‘crack’ the iPhone and ‘activate it’ – but you won’t get phone service from it when you activate it using DVD Jon’s method.
The software and brief instructions are available at Johansen’s blog called ‘So Sue Me’ , in the June 3rd post entitled ‘iPhone Independence Day’ and let you use the iPhone’s web surfing and email features using your Wi-Fi connection, listen to music, watch photos and videos and do everything but make phone calls and surf using an EDGE connection to the Internet.
Naturally, users trying to make phone calls find that it simply doesn’t work, as there is no connection to any cell phone networks without a proper SIM card, activation through AT&T and a valid contract.
Yet predictions that the iPhone would be ‘unlocked’ within one to two weeks are raging online, with the expectation that iPhone users will in theory be able to insert any SIM card from any GSM provider worldwide.
If hackers are successful, it could easily unleash a worldwide frenzy of grey importing as iPod and Apple fans around the world try to get their hands on a iPhone long before their official release in other countries.
But Apple is known to not look upon such activity favorably at all, with the likely outcome being that Apple attempts to block any hacks or cracks through an iTunes and iPhone software update.
This could cause updated iPhones to stop working in other countries, causing grief for overseas iPhone owners and more work for hackers who will need to find new ways to play the cat and mouse game of hack and repair with Apple.
As rumors swirl that an updated 3G iPhone will appear in Europe rather than the existing EDGE model, and with the reviews all generally quite positive, the issue of being able to only buy the iPhone in the US will soon be eliminated as the iPhone starts going on sale worldwide.
But even when that happens, the issue of being able to use an iPhone without needing to have a phone contract will still be officially impossible, even though DVD Jon proves it’s easy.
With the iPhone barely more than a week old, the story and saga of the iPhone’s future is still being written, and what the iPhone’s conditions of use will look like with future versions is unknown.
For now, what we do know is that the hackers are no doubt causing Apple to iMoan internally about their vaunted iPhone, as hackers react to consumer demand to make the iPhone operate the way they want it to – not entirely the way that Apple wants.
Posted by multippt
While Microsoft and Apple (and other companies) has started measures to enforce DRM (Digital Rights Management) in their products, the Media Rights Technology (MRT) is attempting to sue them, for not using enough DRM.
Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, and Real develop media player softwares, and even gadgets. These software can be used to play digital music streams and files. However, when one uses them for streaming (e.g. Radio stations and Podcasts), such streams are not protected by any DRM encryption, and hence, anyone with a stream ripper can rip off segments of the stream. MRT claims that these companies should have used one such DRM technology, called the “X1 SeCure Recording Control”. Guess who’s the maker of that technology? That’s right, it’s MRT.
So in other words, they are suing those companies for not using their products. How “sweet”…
The subject of DRM has been a rather rough topic, with half of the people agreeing or are against it. While DRM is designed to be protecting the rights of music artists, it is killing the right of the users using digital music. DRM basically enables the user to play the copy of the protected music, on a specific device. So, what happens if the user wants to listen it on something else, like an MP3 player? That’s right, they need to buy the song for that particular device. Imagine buying at least 2 copies of your legally owned music. In addition, it is difficult to recover lost DRM files (or backup DRM-protected files for future use). It is received a significant amount of criticism, especially amongst hard-core music listeners.
