Stan's List

MacNewsWorld: An old perception is that business users of the Macintosh platform had limited software options. While that view is not a true picture of the Apple software market today, business users must be prepared for some tradeoffs. More …

RoughlyDrafted Magazine reportedly has a picture of the iPhone motherboard. The motherboard does have Apple printed on it. Yet, if true, would be the first substantial evidence that the iPhone exists. Worth a look. More …

Slate observes, If you’ve shopped for gadgets online this holiday season, you almost certainly found that the camcorder or DVD player you wanted was selling at a wide range of prices. Why is there so much price variation for the same product? And how come some gadgets, like the iPod, cost the same no matter where you shop? More …

MacOSRumors reports, the latest build (9A321) of Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 is revealing several great features. We gathered all this information in one article for you, Mac OS X fans! More …

The iPod shuffle Reset Utility 1.0.1 restores the first generation white “gum pack” iPod shuffle. Restoring an iPod deletes all music and data and reinstalls the latest software, v1.1.5 in the case of the white iPod shuffle.

According to Apple, the Reset Utility is used to fix the following problems:

* With the iPod shuffle switched on, pressing the Play button will cause amber and green LEDs to flash for a few seconds, and the unit will not play any music, nor can you sync music to it from iTunes.
* On a Mac, the unit will only be recognized in Apple System Profiler under Hardware -> USB and will not appear or mount in the Finder.
* When attempting to restore, the unit may not be recognized at all. However, if it is recognized, the restore may fail with an error dialog “Firmware update failure. Disk write error” or another error. It may take 3 restore attempts before the error appears. Note: iPod shuffle may take several minutes to be recognized. More …

Quoting NPD figures and commentary, Forbes reports that 90 percent of all legal video downloads come from the iTunes Store. Moreover, some 1.2-million US households purchased at least one title via download in the third quarter of this buyers chose TV content 62 percent of the time.

“Even though right now the majority of downloaded video content is adult-film content,” said NDP senior analyst Russ Crupnick, “the amount of intellectual property stolen from mainstream movie studios, networks and record labels will continue to rise, unless strong and sustained action is taken to prevent piracy.” More …

Parallels Desktop 2.5 Build 3094 has been released, brining USB 2.0 support to the software for running Windows operating systems concurrently with Mac OS X.

The new release also improves “coherence” mode — functionality that allows users to run Windows applications in a manner that appears seamless — i.e. no Windows desktop is displayed, Windows apps reside in the Dock, etc. Improvements to this function include:

* Use Command+tab to cycle through Windows and Mac applications simultaneously, and ‘hide and show’ Windows applications just like you would with Mac applications
* View the Windows Command Console in Coherence mode
* Use Coherence in Windows 2000, Windows 2003, Windows XP and Windows Vista!

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ZDNet reports that there are three ‘iPhone’ trademark applications neither Cisco nor Apple owns, are awaiting Trademark Office action. More …

Single of the Week

Now, we generally try to turn the spotlight over to new artists for our Single of the Week, but we’re feeling the spirit of the season this month. Check back here each week to get a “free” holiday track from an establish artist. Here, Sufjan Stevens (indie rocker with a penchant for baroque tunes and midwestern history) provides his very own That Was the Worst Christmas Ever.

Discovery Download

Formed in 1968 by six Choral Scholars from King’s Colllege, Cambridge, the King’s Singers are known around the world for their fresh interpretations of everything from pop to plainchant. Their Christmas album highlights seasonal favorites from all around the world, all arranged for their trademark line-up of six male voices. Check out our “free” holiday Discovery Download, which is the King’s Singers’ version of Franz Xaviar Gruber’s 1818 Christmas classic, Stille Nacht (Silent Night).

Get all of this week’s “free” iTunes Store downloads

Microsoft today released an Office 2004 11.3.2 Update along with Office v. X Update (2006-12-19), addressing a serious security problem. A Microsoft PR spokesperson notes:

The new download is for both Office X and 2004 and contains all of the stability improvements that were ready to go live, and removes the not-yet-ready-for-prime-time code that was accidentally released last week. Use AutoUpdate or direct download