Stan's List

Macworld’s Chris Breen has an associate whom watched a part of Spider-Man after renting from iTunes that morning, concerned they would have to rent it again, were surprised to find the movie where they left it, 36 hours later. There has been one major complaint about the rental service, that being, for many, especially families, you may not get back to the movie for days. So, how long has Apple extended the time to view the rentals? The focus of the article said 36 hours. More …

Apple is willing to let you keep the rental for 30 days, so how does this violate by giving the user a week to finish viewing the movie?

BabyGotMac has some screen shots of DVD sharing, improved stacks, translucent menu bar switch and network backup. A number of the Leopard 300 plus features were not included, network backup is one of them. The bug fixes are substantial as well. More …

Gizmodo has a picture of a memo detailing the no contract option

Great News! The No-Commitment option is now available for customers on all rate plans (postpaid) in OPUS and PDC. This means that customers no longer have to sign a 1 year or 2 year contract in order to take advantage of desired rate plans and features. They can now select No Commitment, no matter which rate plan they select.

More …

Does not mention the iPhone specifically. Can anyone see them letting go of their money tree?

Reviews from reputable sources, interestingly they have a common comment, even though some are more enthused than others.

Apple’s MacBook Air Is Beautiful and Thin, But Omits Features - Mossberg

MacBook Air: The sexy kind of skinny but with some flaws - Edward C. Baig

The Skinny on the MacBook Air - Steven Levy

Definitely, a mixed bag, though both Baig and Levy are definitely more smitten than Mossberg.

Apple’s quarterly report exceeded predictions and demonstrated year over year performance. In spite other reports, Apple’s stock did not fall due to present quarter reporting, but predictions for the next quarter.

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2008 first quarter ended December 29, 2007. The Company posted revenue of $9.6 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.58 billion, or $1.76 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $7.1 billion and net quarterly profit of $1 billion, or $1.14 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 34.7 percent, up from 31.2 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 45 percent of the quarters revenue.
Apple shipped 2,319,000 Macintosh computers, representing 44 percent unit growth and 47 percent revenue growth over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 22,121,000 iPods during the quarter, representing five percent unit growth and 17 percent revenue growth over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone sales were 2,315,000.

A Poster on MacRunors discovered Apple is now shipping 64-bit Vista drivers for Boot Camp.

So I was setting up my new Mac Pro today, I installed 64-bit Vista … I noticed that on the restore disks under Drivers Apple, there was a file called Boot Camp 64.exe, so I decided to run it, and now everything works perfectly, keyboard, bluetooth, everything.

New York Times’ Pogue’s Post reports attendance at 55,000, 10,000 more than last year, and vendors at 475, 100 more than 2007. Not surprising in that Gartner research has Mac shipments 28% over the year before.

Apple will release their quarterly report tomorrow.

Seen as further battle with M$$$$, IBM has announced they will port Lotus Note to both the iPhone and iPod Touch. According to eWeek, IBM will release a email package for Lotus Notes at its Lotusphere conference on January 21st. Also, Lotus Notes and Lotus Symphony will be released for the Mac.

As third party applications are being announced in anticipation of Apple’s permission at the end of February. the possible enterprise use should create promise. The most important enterprise improvement should be in Email, that being Exchange ability. I can access my companies email via web page on my iPhone. What concerns me is the Macworld warning about lack of password security. While it was expected at Macworld due to the number iPhones and cell phones present, does the lack of surety continue? TidBITS

AppleInsider:

Due to its ultra-thin profile, Apple’s new MacBook Air was designed with an integrated 37-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery that is not user-replaceable. Though this has caused some initial concern amongst potential adopters, AppleInsider has learned that the replacement process is quite trivial.