[MyAppleMenu] Monday, Dec 15, 2003

[applesurf at myapplemenu.com]

MyAppleMenu Newsletter
Monday, Dec 15, 2003

MyAppleMenu : Top Stories
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Marketer Of The Year: Apple (Alice Z. Cuneo, Advertising Age)
<http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=39387>
An innovative company changes consumers' lives.

Apple: iTunes Downloads Top 25 Million (Peter Cohen, MacCentral)
<http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2003/12/15/itunes/index.php?redirect=1071472221000>
Extrapolating based on this traffic, Jobs said that the numbers show that the iTunes Music Store is selling about 1.5 million songs per week, or 75 million songs per year.

iPod Is Favourite Stocking Thriller As Internet Shopping Finally Booms (Robin McKie and Ben Wilson, The Observer)
<http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1106680,00.html>
The iPod may be just a hard-disk storage device, but it has become a cult consumer gift that has achieved a unique festive status over the past few days: it is the fastest-selling item being snapped up by internet shoppers.

MyAppleMenu : News
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Apple Offers G5 Firmware Update (Peter Cohen, MacCentral)
<http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2003/12/15/firmware/index.php?redirect=1071501478000>
The update provides Power Mac G5 systems with performance improvements in some PCI-X configurations.

Shopping For Electronics, Peacefully (BusinessWeek)
<http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2003/tc2003129_0013_tc137.htm?c=bwtechdec12&n=link2&t=email>
Apple, Gateway, and Sony are luring customers with Zen-like stores aimed at providing service and building loyalty to their products

Apple Offers Details On WWDC 2004 (Peter Cohen, MacCentral)
<http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2003/12/15/wwdc/index.php?redirect=1071465641000>
WWDC 2004 is billed as "the definitive event for programmers, IT managers, content creators, systems administrators or anyone who wants to make the most out of Apple's innovative technologies and the robust and flexible Mac OS X platform."

Downloaders Dance To Apple's iTunes (Jefferson Graham, USA Today)
<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-12-14-apple2_x.htm>
While piracy continues to threaten the music business, Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store is the digital hit of the year with 20 million 99-cent-a-song downloads since April.

Even With A Fee, Legal Music Sites Are Attracting A Crowd (Jennifer Inez Ward, San Mateo County Times)
<http://www.sanmateocountytimes.com/Stories/0,1413,87~11271~1830999,00.html>
2003 will be marked as the year the market for legally downloading music began really taking off.

Sacred Heart Goes Worldwide -- Web (Kathie Dickerson, Coshocton Tribune)
<http://www.coshoctontribune.com/news/stories/20031214/localnews/37092.html>
The iMovie program is a great way for the students to enjoy getting hands-on computer experience.

MyAppleMenu : Opinions
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Can Apple Cement MPEG4 As The New Music Standard? Here's One Way To Help... (John Papola)
<http://homepage.mac.com/jpapola/iblog/B2047079309/C142463209/E1508979921/index.html>
The key is making "iPod Compatible" a must-have feature for any music service and actively courting the other services to add the AAC format to their offering.

A Marketing Tale Of The Great And Desperate (Scott Donaton, Ad Age)
<http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=39383>
Apple's brillance vs. Abercrombie & Fitch's gaffs.

Mac OS X Misconceptions (Prachi Gauriar)
<http://comp.uark.edu/~pgauria/archives/000240.html>
You can't say Apple took an idea from Windows if the things aren't functionally similar.

Tempter For A Christmas Gift (Chris Oaten, The Advertiser)
<http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,8167653%255E21669,00.html>
I usually shy away from suggesting the wait-and-see approach to buying a new Mac but in this case my instinct says hold off.

MyAppleMenu : Reviews
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An App The Mac Can Brag About (Arik Hesseldahl, Forbes)
<http://www.forbes.com/home_europe/2003/12/15/cx_ah_1215tentech.html>
So what does Konfabulator do? Pretty much anything you want to dream up.

Losers, Weepers (John Gruber)
<http://daringfireball.net/2003/12/losers_weepers>
If Apple wants to provide a useful, standard, system-wide human interface for user-customizable keyboard shortcuts, they need to provide a system-wide mechanism for applications to register all of their menu key shortcuts.

MyAppleMenu : Wintel News
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Music Sites To Get More Competition (Benny Evangelista, San Francisco Chronicle)
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/12/15/BUGO23MF8I1.DTL>
Microsoft Corp. is teaming up with a digital media company to offer a new service that lets any firm quickly launch an online music store, a move that could create even more competition for music sites such as Apple's iTunes and Napster 2.0.

More Wintel news at <http://www.myapplemenu.com/wintel/>

MyAppleMenu Tomorrow: News & Opinions
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The Return Of The Free 'PC' (Drew Cullen, The Register)
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/51/34509.html>
A British start-up is to offer up to free PCs to the public. The catch? The PC fills the screens with ads for 60 seconds every 20 minutes.

No Recovery For The Internet (David McClure, CNET News.com)
<http://rss.com.com/2010-1037_3-5121810.html>
Lost in all the good news about the economic recovery is a chilling fact: The recovery isn't being felt by the Internet industry.

Fax -- The Technology That Refuses To Die (Paul Robens, BBC News)
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3320515.stm>
Why bother with fax machines when almost everything put on paper has been produced in digital format?

Using A Bicycle To Uplink On A Downtown Platform (David F. Gallagher, New York Times)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/technology/15wifi.html>
As a saxophone's melancholy music bounced off the tile walls of the subway station at Union Square in Manhattan last Thursday afternoon, Yury Gitman was hunched over a laptop computer, trying a different kind of performance.

The Internet's Role In Media Freedom (Mick Stern, Boston Globe)
<http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/12/14/the_internets_role_in_media_freedom/>
As the opponents of Web censorship become more sophisticated, so do the censors themselves.

MyAppleMenu Reader: Science & Tech
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Inventions For The Gifts Of Tomorrow (Sabra Chartrand, New York Times)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/technology/15patent.html>
As always, the holiday season sets off a mad scramble for new gift ideas. Who knows? Even some of the more bizarre of the last year's patents might one day evolve into real products that can be tied up with a bow.

MyAppleMenu Reader: Life
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Children With Time On Their Hands Have Vanished... Let Us Mourn (Mimi Swartz, Los Angeles Times)
<http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-swartz15dec15,1,6526325.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions>
FAO Schwarz and its customers knew, once, the difference between doing and being, understood that children needed time alone, in peace, to imagine their futures, even if it was just to scan the pages of a catalog. Those children are gone now, so there is no need for a company that catered to them. That's a reason to mourn, if ever there was one.

When Books Kill (Aidan Doyle, Salon)
<http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2003/12/15/books_kill/index_np.html>
Movies and video games get blamed for acts of senseless violence all the time. But some famous murderers got their ideas from literature.

Traffic Flow Is Crucial Part Of Debate At Trade Center (David W. Dunlap, New York Times)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/nyregion/15TRAF.html>
Planners have been given, through unparalleled disaster, the rare opportunity to correct what is now regarded as a major mistake made in the 1960's: the truncation of Dey, Cortlandt, Fulton, Greenwich and Washington Streets to create the site of the twin towers and 7 World Trade Center.

Saving The Family Farm (B.J. Roche, Boston Globe)
<http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2003/12/14/saving_the_family_farm/>
"Innovation" might not be the word that comes to mind when you travel the back roads of New England. And "marketing expert" might not be the term you'd apply to the guy cutting hay. But agriculture is changing, and farms are having to change with it. Witness these four examples of farmers breaking with tradition to survive.

Spare Us The Dreary Science Behind Art (Kate Taylor, Globe And Mail)
<http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20031213/KATE13/TPEntertainment/Art>
It ultimately doesn't matter much what event caused Munch to paint The Scream.

DreamWorks Still Looking For A Hit In '03 (Laura M. Holson, New York Times)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/business/media/15dream.html>
DreamWorks operates in a netherworld of being too big to be considered merely a production company yet too small to be a major studio.

MyAppleMenu Reader: Expressions
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Debarking (Lorrie Moore, New Yorker)
<http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/content/?031222fi_fiction>

A Visit From Saint Nicholas (In The Ernest Hemingway Manner) (James Thurber, New Yorker)
<http://www.newyorker.com/archive/content/?031222fr_archive01>

MyAppleMenu SingaporeSurf : News & Opinions
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Singapore Jobless Rate Rose To 5.9% In Q3:MOM (Channel NewsAsia)
<http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporebusinessnews/print/62055/1/.html>

Fear Factor -- Is It Just An Excuse? (Teo Hwee Nak and Ng Shing Yi, Today)
<http://www.todayonline.com/articles/11644.asp>
In a twist that was both sad and ironic, the fear quotient crept up and usurped a forum on politics on Saturday.

The Art And Soul Of Singapore (Wang Jie, Shanghai Daily News)
<http://english.eastday.com/epublish/gb/paper1/1117/class000100006/hwz173230.htm>
Sterile, efficient, and boring -- that sums up the usual impression of Singapore. But while no one was looking, the island nation has been building up an impressive collection of Asian art.

Solving Low Birth Rate Not Just About Getting More Babies: DPM Tan (Channel NewsAsia)
<http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/print/61957/1/.html>
He said a total approach was necessary to ensure that Singapore has strong families where parents can take good care of their children and give them the best chance of success in life.

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MyAppleMenu is edited by Heng-Cheong Leong. This site is not affiliated with Apple Computer, Inc., or any other companies in any manner. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, Power Macintosh, PowerBook, iMac, iBook, iPod, and eMac are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. All other brands or product names are trademarks of their registered holders. Copyright (C) 1996-2003 Heng-Cheong Leong. All rights reserved.