If iTunes is too commercial for you try this...

Lost Tunes is a new music download site set up by Universal that caters for those of us after those hard to find tracks that iTunes will never sell in a million years. All tracks are high quality 320kbps Mp3s so they'll play on your iPod and any other digital music player. Currently there's only 602 albums on there and because they're all dug up from the Universal vaults, the site has a warm and cosy specialist music shop feel. Just don't search for Stevie Wonder's I Just Called To Say I Love You.

No real news so here's fun with words.

What's happened recently? Steve Jobs isn't going to die. Perhaps he is the new messiah; My mate Neill queued for two hours in the Regent Street Apple Store to buy a 16GB iPhone 3G; and there are rumours of a MacBook touch flying around. A few years ago Jobs said that he had no reason to even think about an Apple Tablet but He also said that about a iPod phone. Anyway, Wordle.net was featured in Creative Review this month. It takes words from cut and pasted paragraphs and blogs and arranges them artfully on your screen. Above is a peice created using words from this very blog.

Loyal .Mac/MobileMe Customers get a month free for their trouble.

The transition from .Mac to MobileMe took a little longer than expected so Apple are giving us 'loyal' customers an extra 30 days on our current subscriptions. Isn't that nice? Here's the electronic letter:

"We have recently completed the transition from .Mac to MobileMe. Unfortunately, it was a lot rockier than we had hoped.
Although core services such as Mail, iDisk, Sync, Back to My Mac, and Gallery went relatively smoothly, the new MobileMe web applications had lots of problems initially. Fortunately we have worked through those problems and the web apps are now up and running.
Another snag we have run into is our use of the word "push" in describing everything under the MobileMe umbrella. While all email, contact or calendar changes on the iPhone and the web apps are immediately synced to and from the MobileMe "cloud," changes made on a PC or Mac take up to 15 minutes to sync with the cloud and your other devices. So even though things are indeed instantly pushed to and from your iPhone and the web apps today, we are going to stop using the word "push" until it is near-instant on PCs and Macs, too.
We want to apologize to our loyal customers and express our appreciation for their patience by giving all current subscribers an automatic 30-day extension to their MobileMe subscription free of charge. Your extension will be reflected in your account settings within the next few weeks.
We hope you enjoy your new suite of web applications at me.com, in addition to keeping your iPhone and iPod touch wirelessly in sync with these new web applications and your Mac or PC.
Thank you,
The MobileMe Team"

1m iPhones sold and 10m App Store Downloads in first weekend.

It looks like the iPhone bug has bitten. In the UK, O2 have completely sold out and awaiting new stock. The App Store is a hit too, but note how Apple mention downloads and not purchases. Everyone's downloaded the free apps (like Carling's iPint), but to do this they must have either bought a new iPhone 3G or downloaded the iPhone 2.0 software. Apple are quids in. Bye bye, Blackberry.
The only thing that hasn't gone Apple's way is MobileMe. That's not quite working as well as it should. I unsuccessfully tried to merge my Work Calender on a PC with my iMac at at home and iPod touch and my PC.
Also, the Remote app that lets you control iTunes on a Mac wirelessly doesn't work at all for me, but I blame my iMac.

Leopard Updated to 10.5.4

The 10.5.4 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Leopard and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility and security of your Mac.

General

* Includes recent Apple security updates.
* Resolves an issue with saving and reopening Adobe Creative Suite 3 files on a remote server.
* Includes additional RAW image support for several cameras.
* Addresses an issue that may result in a partially installed X11 application.
* Improves L2TP VPN client reliability.

AirPort

* Addresses AirPort reliability issues with 5GHz networks.
* Addresses AirPort issues that may result in slower performance in Logic Studio or MainStage.

iCal

* Improves overall iCal reliability for meeting requests, cancellation notices, delegation, and syncing with iPhone.
* Resolves an issue that prevents deleting an iCal event without notifying the creator.
* Addresses an issue in which events in all calendars affect availability. A checkbox now enables information-only calendars to be transparent from free/busy lookups.
* Resolves a UI issue preventing delegated calendars from showing up as a separate window.
* Addresses an issue with copying and pasting attendees from one event to another.
* Resolves an issue in which iCal may not delete events after a specified time interval, even when set to do so in iCal preferences.
* Addresses an issue in which To Dos cannot be marked private.

Safari

* Addresses a potential performance issue when loading secure web pages.
* Resolves issues that may be encountered when accessing secure web pages with client certificates that reside on a smart card.

Spaces and Exposé

* Addresses an issue in which switching from a space with a Finder window keeps the Finder as the active application instead of the application residing in the destination space.
* Fixes an issue in which dragging an application from the list of application assignments in Spaces System Preferences does not assign the application to the desired space.
* Resolves an Exposé issue that may result in only a subset of windows being shown.