HP has stopped placing orders with Apple’s manufacturer for iPods. This is because HP wants a price protection policy from Apple. Since they have no price protection policy, HP is vulnerable to financial loss if Apple suddenly cuts the price of the Apple iPod. HP has refused to place any further orders for Apple’s iPod until Apple is willing to discuss the issue and agree on a solution. Could this be the end of iPod + HP?

Read More | Apple Insider

Gallery: The End Of HP iPods?

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Motorola, Inc. announced that they are working with Oakley Inc. to develop new Bluetooth-enabled wearable wireless communications devices. Motorola wants to combine their Bluetooth technology with Oakley’s eyewear style. The products will be unveiled by mid-year. Imagine the possibilities these two companies will come up with. We have already seen MP3 player sunglasses. The most obvious product the two might come up with is probably sunglasses that can connect to your cell phone to eliminate the need to carry around a headset and sunglasses.

Read More | Reuters

Gallery: Motorola Teams Up With Oakley

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The moment that many a Mac user has been waiting for seems to be arriving very shortly. Quanta Computer, the manufacturer of Apple’s Powerbook notebook PC line, has received massive orders for Powerbooks with G5 processors in them. The expected shipping date? Q2 2005. You know what that means - start saving now to be one of the first to get your paws on one of these babies. Also, iBook G5s will ship around the same time. Let’s just hope they don’t melt all over our laps.

Read More | Digitimes

Gallery: Apple Powerbook G5

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We will update notes as the conference progresses. Go ahead and start refreshing!

• This is the first MacWorld to use HD projection. Apple has exactly 101 Apple Stores, garnering 1 million visitors per week. That is equal to 20 MacWorld Expos’ worth of visitors according to Steve Jobs. I personally have never gone through any sort of turnstile when visiting an Apple Store, but, whatever.
• The iMac G5 debuted last autumn, and has become Apple’s best selling Mac.
• Mac OS X Tiger, which was announced last June, is still on schedule to ship in the first half of 2005, which is “Long before Longhorn.” Again, according to Jobs. This guy loves sticking it to Gates, doesn’t he?
• Jobs demoed the Spotlight feature of the Tiger OS. Since the search is built-in to the core of the OS, it is supposed to be much better than Microsoft and Google’s foray into the desktop search arena. Cool search features, but the program did crash during the demo. Hot damn.
• A demonstration of Tiger Mail’s new capabilities followed, garnering a nice response from the audience when Jobs showcased how photos attached to an email can be instantly viewed as a slideshow, or imported into iPhoto with a single click.
• QuickTime 7 is set to ship with Tiger. The main upgrade here is the H.264 video codec which is scalable from cell phones to high definition TV. QuickTime 7 features 24 channels of surround sound, and live resizing. Using the H.264 codec, you can transcode movies for the PSP.
• Jobs showed of some of Dashboard’s widgets. The apps Jobs demonstrated showed currency conversion, yellow pages, eBay auction tracking, and weather reports. They used OpenGL graphics. Nice effects.
• Steve called 2005 “The year of HD video editing”. That being the case, he introduced Final Cut Express HD. Animated titles, custom soundtracks, integration with iMovie. Available in February at $299 new, or $99 for an upgrade.
• iLife 2005 was talked about, with every app in the package getting an upgrade this year (aside from iTunes). If goes on sale January 22, 2005 at a price of $79. It will be pre-packaged on new Macs for free.
• iPhoto now supports MPEG-4 and RAW images. Nice touch. It has a new calendar view, letting you view photos by day, week, month, etc. New book designs and new book sizes also included. Apple has also cut the price of printing images from iPhoto using a professional service to $.19 per print. Prices on books range from $3.99 to $29.99 depending on the amount of content.
• GarageBand has been updated. Realtime music notation from Garageband. Multrack recording at up to 8 tracks. Pitch & timing fixing. Create your own loops. John Mayer played live, and GarageBand recorded it in realtime, producing 4 separate tracks.
• iWork is the successor to AppleWorks. Now we can talk about it without getting sued I guess. Keynote 2 uses 10 themes designed by Apple, animated text, new animated builds, a presenter display control panel (notes, countdown timer, progress to next slide, etc.), interactive slideshows and autopilot keynote slideshows. Can export in QuickTime and PDF.
• Pages is the word processing program. Includes 40 Apple designed templates. Drag & drop rearrangement of templates text and image placeholders. Phil Schiller came up to demonstrate the new Pages app. Designed by the Keynote 2 team. Pages supports PDF, AppleWorks, and PDF.
• The Mac mini was introduced, and looks very cool. This thing is about as tall as the iPod mini, and about as wide as three iPod mini’s next to each other. It features a slot-loading CD-RW/DVD-ROM Combo drive, USB 2.0, FireWire 400, DVI and VGA connectivity and a headphone jack. Big Steve says the Mac mini is BYODKM: Bring Your Own Display, Keyboard and Mouse for the laymen. The Mac mini works just fine with Apple’s peripherals,  or you can use other industry-standard peripherals. The price just blew me away: The 1.25GHz 40GB G4 system is $499, and the 80GB 1.42GHz G4 system is $599. Both include Panther and iLife 2005. You can find them in stores on January 22, 2005. I think we will see a lot more Mac owners in the very near future.
• 230 million songs have been sold through iTunes to date. Steve projects that iTunes will eventually sell 1.25 billion songs per year, giving it a 70% market share of online music sales.
• Apple sold 4.5 million iPods last quarter, while they sold 733,000 in Q4 2003. This is a 500 percent increase in sales. The 10 millionth iPod was sold on December 16th, which Steve kept for himself. Selfish bastard. He held it up for all to see.
• Mercedes Benz, Volvo, Scion, Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, and Nissan will be introducing iPod adapters for their factory-installed music systems this year.
• Jobs mentioned Motorola’s upcoming iTunes-enabled cell phone. No hardware was shown.
• iPod shuffle flash MP3 player was introduced. Very tiny (about the size of a pack of gum) with no display screen. Focuses on playing random music. Has a click wheel similar to larger iPods. The rechargeable battery lasts about 12 hours per charge. They are shipping today. 512 MB for $99, 1 GB for $149.

  Gallery: MacWorld 2005: Keynote Bits

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VoIP provider Vonage said Wednesday it has signed up 400,000 subscribers for its Internet telephoning service, more than doubling its base in less than six months. This helps bring more credibility to the young VoIP market. Vonage has plans to release a VoIP Wi-Fi phone in the near future, making it easy to recieve and make calls whenever you are near a wireless hotspot. If there were more wireless hotspots available in the United States, this would become a very viable means of communication.

Read More | TechWeb

Gallery: Vonage’s VoIP Subscribers Pass The 400,000 Mark

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SBC announced today their plans to provide digital set-top boxes for consumers that would provide DVR-like capabilities. In conjunction with Dish Network, Cingular, Yahoo, SBC broadband DSL, and other SBC owned companies, the devices would allow customers to record TV, listen to internet radio, view pictures from their computers,  and program their DVR remotely from the internet. Also planned is the ability to program the DVR from your Cingular wireless phone.

Perhaps the most appealing part of their plan is the waiving of a monthly fee for usage; consumers will pay a one time fee for the device, and only continue to pay the standard subscription fees to Dish Network and SBC Yahoo DSL, all of which can currently be rolled into a single bill from SBC. This convenience is a contrast to the monthly fees charged by TiVo.

Read More | Forbes

Gallery: SBC to Rival TiVo in Digital Home Entertainment

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The death toll for the tsunami in Asia reached over 150,000 this weekend, with over a third of those deaths being children. As reported earlier in our article on HelpDisasterVictims.com, the internet community has reached out to those in need, and it is reported that over $350 million has been donated by internet users and corporations alike. This CNET article discusses several of the donations being made by corporations, such as the Microsoft Corp donating $3.5 million, and the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation announcing a $3 million donation. Amazon and Google have both made it easier for their users to donate to the Red Cross and other organizations. eBay, MSN and Yahoo have also posted links to organizations. If you would still like to donate to help those in need, check out some of those sites or read more below.

Read More  | CNET ZDNet

Gallery: Online Donations Total Over $350 million For Relief Effort

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I remember my first computer, the Commodore 64. It had a monitor, a keyboard, and a floppy disk drive, and thats about all it did. It was the best selling computer of the 1980s; the Commodore 64 was the Ford Model T of computers. It only ran programs written in Commodore BASIC, and had its own version of DOS. According to this article from PCWorld, Tulip Computers agreed to sell its subsidiary Commodore International for $32.6 million to Yeahronimo Media Ventures. Yeahronimo plans to use Commodore to sell its line of digital media playing devices, but with the acquisition of the brand it is very possible that we might one day see Commodore computers again!

Read More  | PCWorld

Gallery: Commodore Computer Brand Sold

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Unless you have some sort of unlimited DVD rental service, it's inevitable that you will eventually have to pay a late fee. If you're like me, it's rare when you don't. Well, Blockbuster has decided to change their policy on late return in an attempt to "help" out their customers. Starting January 1, 2005, all movies and games rented from Blockbuster will still have a normal due date. If you fail to return the item by the due date, you get a one week grace period where you can still return the movie with no fee assessed. Now the fun part. If you fail to get the item in by the end of that grace period, then Blockbuster simply charges the full amount of that movie to your account. Yup, the movie or game is then yours. If you are unhappy about the situation, you have a month to contest the decision. They will take it back, but will also charge a restocking fee. Looks like I am gonna be buying a lot of DVD's from Blockbuster come 2005. Crap.

Gallery: Blockbuster Revamps Late Fee Policy

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Do you like shopping around for the best deal? If something has a cash back rebate or price reduction, wouldn't you be more inclined to purchase it from the store with the sale rather than another store that sells it for the regular price? So would I. Apparently, Best Buy thinks that by doing so that this makes us "devil shoppers" and thusly they would prefer it if we didn't shop at their establishment. On the other hand, shoppers who don't care about prices or discounts are more than welcome to shop at their stores. Best Buy will even go out of their way to welcome these "angel shoppers" to make the comfortable enough to spend even more money. The funny thing is, whenever I go into Best Buy I know about 100 times more about the products I am shopping for than the salesperson trying to sell me the item. Either way, look for Best Buy to start training their staff to cater to the "angel shoppers" of the world over the next couple of years.

Read More | Wall Street Journal

Gallery: Best Buy Wants to Get Rid of Smart Shoppers

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