Stan's List

Low End Mac analyzes the beginning and near end of the PowerBook: “Apple had no presence in the portables market prior to 1992. Its attempt at creating a laptop Macintosh, the Macintosh Portable, weighed almost 15 lbs and failed to sell. On the personal behest of John Sculley, Apple contracted with Sony to create ‘Asahi’, a smaller Portable. Apple developed two high end models in company. After 1992 and until the disastrous 5300, Apple was the leading notebook maker.”

Microsoft has submitted the Office Open XML document format to the Ecma international standards body, garnering the support of Apple, among others, in its effort. CRN reports Apple made a strong endorsement of the Microsoft submission, too. ‘Apple and Microsoft will continue to work closely together to deliver great products to Mac users and application developers for many years to come’” said Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, Philip Schiller, in a statement. Massachusetts officials maintain that a move to the OpenDocument format would open up office productivity software to more competition.”

Apple has announced long-term supply agreements with Hynix, Intel, Micron, Samsung Electronics and Toshiba for NAND flash memory through 2010. As part of these agreements, Apple will prepay a total of $1.25 billion for flash memory components during the next three months.

“We want to be able to produce as many of our wildly popular iPods as the market demands,” said Stevie.

A great move, especially after the Samsung debacle.

Apple is offering its first fresh freebie, Jam Pack 4, in several months to .Mac subscribers. This latest come on is a collection of sweet sounds for use with GarageBand:

“You’ve got 100 new loops from [the] latest Jam Pack 4: Symphony Orchestra in the Members Only folder in the Software folder on your iDisk. Enjoy this taste of Jam Pack 4 (free to .Mac members), plus 300 loops from Jam Packs 1, 2 and 3.”