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With Apple getting a lot of heat lately for their lack of environmentalism, they have decided to take a step to help good ol’ mother nature. If you take your iPod into any of Apple’s Retail Stores, they will give you 10% off of the purchase of a new iPod. The catch is that it has to be the iPod, iPod Mini, or iPod Photo and it has to all be done the same day. Apple has agreed to take the iPods that are brought into the stores and dispose of them without exposing the environment to the hazardous materials that the iPod consists of including lead. The major incentive to this is that if you have an older iPod and you’re battery is on the fritz, you can get a substantial discount on a replacement.
Critics have blasted Apple for the fact that the iPod’s battery is difficult and expensive to replace, giving consumers an incentive to throw them out and buy new ones. Apple recently agreed to extend service warranties and replace batteries for free in certain cases. The agreement is part of Apple’s settlement of several class action suits related to iPod battery complaints.
Read More 
| News.com
Gallery: iPod Recycling Program
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Apple Choosing Intel Over IBM Tomorrow
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Corporate News, PC / Laptop,
Word has been getting around like wildfire that Apple will formally announce tomorrow that they are dumping IBM as their processor manufacturer in favor of Intel. It’s an interesting move which seems to point to Apple’s frustration with the length of time it is taking IBM to get the latest PowerPC into laptops. Intel has been very successful in high-performance, low power consumption mobile computing. The Apple World Wide Developers Conference begins tomorrow, and we will keep you updated.
Read More | MSNBC
Gallery: Apple Choosing Intel Over IBM Tomorrow
Sony is testing out some new Anti-CD burning technology in hopes of stopping what they refer to as “school-yard piracy”. Ah, when will they learn? I mean it takes them how long to come up with a “new” anti-piracy technology; and it takes people how long to come up with a work around? Even without someone breaking the security there’s always some other method to work around it. Nonetheless, Sony’s new method allows consumers to make limited copies of protected discs, but blocks users from making copies of the copies
Read More | ABC News
Gallery: Sony Tests Anti-CD Burning Technology
Antitrust Case Puts Microsoft vs. the EU
Posted by Kristin Wenzel Categories: Corporate News, Software,
Last March, the European Union’s Antitrust Regulators slapped Microsoft with a whopping $624,000,000.00 fine (that’s 624 million United States Dollars – and that ain’t chump change!) for using their market-dominating Windows software “abusively” to lock out competition in the EU. Additionally, the Redmond, WA based software giant was forced to share their source code selectively with rivals to encourage competition.
EU antitrust chief Neelie Kroes said last week she wants to take stock of the situation by Wednesday and could move to impose sanctions on noncompliance soon afterward if she is not satisfied with the concessions. The EU has within its rights the possibility to fine Microsoft up to 5 percent of its daily global sales for each day that a decision is not applied to its satisfaction.
In other words, Microsoft will be subject to huge fines and penalties if, by Wednesday, 01 June 2005, there aren’t more concessions made in favor of the competition in Europe. Microsoft has yet to reach a compromise as the deadline looms nearer, and the EU threatens sanctions and punishment that could be as steep as 5% of Microsoft’s global daily sales for each day that passes after the deadline, before an agreement is reached. And that really isn’t chump change.
Microsoft EU Antitrust Case | KOMO
Gallery: Antitrust Case Puts Microsoft vs. the EU
Proving that no one is safe, the RIAA is once again going after Internet2 users. Described as a second-generation network serving universities and research institutes, Internet2 is the means by which students have illegally shared music with the i2hub program. The RIAA is filing lawsuits against 91 students from Berkeley to Harvard.
Read More | Internet News
Gallery: RIAA Hands Out Lawsuits To Internet2 Users
Apple is voluntarily recalling certain lithium-ion rechargeable batteries that were sold worldwide, in systems and separately, between October 2004 and May 2005 which are used in 12-inch iBook G4, 12-inch PowerBook G4, and 15-inch PowerBook G4 notebooks. Looks like the batteries are overheating and posing fire hazards Xbox style. If your laptop battery includes model numbers A1061, A1078, and A1079 and serial numbers that begin with HQ441 through HQ507 and 3X446 through 3X510, you may want to go for the trade. Don’t worry - they send first.
Read More | Apple Notebook Battery Exchange
Gallery: Apple Recalls PowerBook Batteries
AOL Raises Prices A Month After Lowering Them
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Corporate News, Internet,
You know, this is the kind of thing that just proves that AOL really has lost its over the last, oh, 12 years or so. Recently, they dropped their prices in an effort to gain more subscribers since people are leaving them in droves. Hell, they even started selling their own branded PC with the AOL service thrown in! So, they dropped the dial-up price from $24 to $20, and their BYOA plan from $15 to $10. Ready for the best part? This price hike brings the prices back up to where they were - and the lower prices weren’t even in effect for a full month! It’s things like this that put a smile on my face.
Read More | AOL Price Plans
Gallery: AOL Raises Prices A Month After Lowering Them
Microsoft Offers Free Windows XP OS To Users of Pirated Versions
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Corporate News, Software,
In an effort to thwart pirates yet again, Microsoft is looking to gain their information by way of their customers. If someone has purchased a high-quality copy of Windows XP that closely resembles Microsoft’s official packaging of the product, they can pick up a free license key and installation CD for the product if they reveal the identity of the selling party.
Microsoft said that only edge-to-edge hologram CDs are considered for a free replacement. The participation in the program also requires users to agree to a full scan of their system files and to reveal the identity of the seller of the counterfeit software.
Users of “low-quality” pirated versions of Windows XP also can request an update to a legal version of Windows XP. In this case, the upgrade however costs $149.
Read More | Genuine Microsoft Software
Gallery: Microsoft Offers Free Windows XP OS To Users of Pirated Versions
iPod Shuffle Locks In 58% of Flash Player Sales
Posted by Edwin Soto Categories: Corporate News, Portable Audio / Video,
CFO Peter Oppenheimer has told Merrill Lynch analyst Steven Milunovich that the iPod shuffle market has increased 43% since February dominating 58% of the market.
Mr. Oppenheimer reportedly said Apple was “supply-constrained in March and will be interested to see the April (sales) data.” Mr. Milunovich said he was told by the exec that “Apple isn’t feeling competitive heat yet” in the digital media device market from the likes of Creative, Sony, iRiver and others.
It was also said that Apple may try to advertise more on television. Surely their competitors need to do more of that too.
Read More |The Mac Observer
Gallery: iPod Shuffle Locks In 58% of Flash Player Sales
Hybrid Hard Drive By Microsoft And Samsung
Posted by Oscar M. Cantu Categories: Corporate News, PC / Laptop,
Microsoft and Samsung are working on a new hybrid hard drive that will use 1Gbit NAND flash memory as a buffer. The goal here is to take part of the load off the spinning drive and to lower loading times and boot times. Longhorn will fully support this technology once it ships. However, the question remains about how the two companies plan on addressing the flash memory’s erasure endurance. Knowing Microsoft, they will give us an answer next year along with a big marketing technique. If this comes into fruition, we have heard that bootup times can be sped up to mere seconds.
Read More | arsTechnica
Gallery: Hybrid Hard Drive By Microsoft And Samsung
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