Apple Needs a budget entry-level system.
...if it did, I wouldn't have spent Friday night ordering a Dell on behalf of my Mother-in-Law.
I'm sorry to say that she will be upgrading from a G3 iMac to a Dell Dimension C521. She came over on Friday night and we got talking about her computer upgrade. The sad thing is, she would have preferred a Mac if there was one cheap enough.
The plan was to get online and look up the price of refurbed Mac minis on Cancom's website. She was amazed that her iMac had given up the ghost so soon! (It's a G3 for pity's sake). The cheapest available was a Apple Mac mini G4 1.25GHz (512MB/40GB/ComboDrive/ENet/56K inc OS X 10.4). Now for someone who expects a computer to last as long as she did, I was feeling a bit guilty for even suggesting something that didn't even have an Intel Processor. Also including a cheap-as-chips 15" display, it would have totted up to about £500. I recommended that it would be better to buy brand new. Cancom offer a Mac mini/17" display bundle for just under £590 (remember - she's living on a pension).
That's when, deep inside, I knew the battle was lost. It would be very wrong to let her spend that much on something that she'll only use for email and the internet. I paid Dell a visit.
I was annoyed to find that she could purchase a small Dell Dimension with a 19" flat panel (bigger than my iMac's), 512MB Ram, a 320GB(!) SATA hard drive, with a CD-RW/DVD-ROM for less than £450. OK, it did only have an AMD Sempron processor inside, but most of the spec pisses on that of a Mac mini. And as Steve Jobs has spent the last year telling us that Windows Vista is a carbon copy of Mac OS X, then she should have no problem figuring out where everything is (if I set it up correctly). It'll be with her in two weeks. She also signed up for an exclusive £12.99, Tiscali broadband 1MB Unlimited deal.
'But there's no iLife' I hear you say. Mothers-in-Law don't want to make webpages, lay down some funky tracks or edit home movies. She can make do with free copy of Photoshop Elements (that came with her scanner) and iTunes? No problem. (It runs a lot quicker on my Dell at work that it does on my G4 iMac).
The main point of difference comes down to wonga. £450 or £590?
I guess Mitchell & Webb will never be comparing price. No wonder Mr Dell is smiling.
Come on Apple. You're not making it easy for me, are you?
(Shit, I sound like one of those fake marketing bloggers.)

The Naughty Step is Always Serious.
Apple are airing some new ads from the 'Get a Mac' campaign. Two are just UK versions of US ads, but this one, 'court' and 'magic' are written especially for us Brits. Bless.

Get your handkies ready...

Today's Apple News from The Onion:
It looks like this is product is going to be huge and could change everything.

Apple Unveils New Product-Unveiling Product

SAN FRANCISCO—Apple claims the iLaunch can garner the same amount of press attention as a major scientific discovery, high court ruling, celebrity meltdown, or natural disaster at 200 times the speed of a traditional media-fostered launch.

Put it away Steve!
This photo has popped up on Flickr.
It's a phone-cam pic of Steve jobs talking into his iPhone at a kid's football match.
"Look at me dad! I nearly scored. Oh sorry. I did realise you were still at work." A little sad, really.

Upgrade your old iPod mini with a flash drive.
I think it only works with 1st generation minis, but the Geektechnique has done it and his works alright. Of course, with a flash drive instead of a micro drive, the player will be more stable and use less power. These days you can pick up a 4GB Compact Flash Cards for around £40. As always, don't attempt this sort of thing if you have a nervous dispostion.

Good old Woz.
I can't see the other Steve doing something like this.
The clip is from a new film, In Search Of The Valley. It's "the story of three friends' personal journey into the psyche of Silicon Valley, when in September of 2004 they swapped London for California, spending one month visiting and talking to many of the valley's heavyweights and biggest personalities."
Here's another sneak peak:

Sony's Video Walkman.
It was launched on Friday and looks nice. Not as nice as an iPhone though.

I like iLike.
There are a few products of the Web 2 that I've been slightly addicted to - YouTube (isn't everyone?), Flickr (the photo sharing extravaganza) and iLike.
iLike is a music-based community site (remarkably it's still a Beta version). You start it by signing up and downloading the iLike toolbar. This is an iTunes plugin that can be used by Mac or Windows user - the Windows version works better, sadly. This keeps tags on your music playing habits, noting recently played, most played and recently added (windows only) tracks and displays them on your iLike profile page (you can see mine here). It was at this point I (and everyone else) discovered that my most played track was the theme tune to Rosie & Jim. Luckily there' a way of removing certain tracks from your list. Now it shows OutKast's "Hey Ya'.
Once your profile is up, you can start searching for other users with similar music tastes. You can do this by randomly clicking on people and letting iLike work out your musical compatibility. You can also click on your preferred artist's pages and see who else likes them. When you've found someone with a high compatibility rating you can invite them to be your friend. If they agree you can start browsing through their profiles, looking for interesting stuff. Your friends appear on your homepage where you can instantly see the tracks that they last recommended. The most useful features I've found are that when on a friend's profile you can click on 'Discover songs {friend} has that you don't...'. Also you can listen to a preview of their songs. Even though some may not have previews , once you've started listening, it'll preview the whole list of tracks one be one. If you want, you can expand the track info to see the album it came from, see other users who also have it, recommend it, and view the video (if it has one). To help your new buddies out, you add songs to an 'iLike' list and write your own quick description on why you think the song is so great.

If you like free tracks, you can use the iLike toolbar.As you listen to your collection the said toolbar recommends a selection of related music and free tracks to instantly add to your library. These free tracks are usually pretty good and are tracks offered up by artists on the GarageBand community site (nothing to do with the Apple app). To be honest, they're usually better than most of the songs found on free cover mounted CDs.

f you need to kill some time there's a 'Name that Tune' style quiz that you compete against your group of friends. The quicker you answer, the higher the score. There are different levels of rank but it seems that this is worked out on the number of questions you answer correctly, incorrect answers don't come into it. So as long as you get some questions right, and you play it for long enough, you can beat everyone else. You get to hear so many different types of music playing it, and as the answer is revealed it shows the album and a link to iTunes. Playing this game, I've come to realise that I absolutely detest emo rock (sorry to all you heavy fringed, eyelined readers).
The community feel of iLike is great - much friendlier than mySpace. I often message my 'friends' about new tracks and each other's comments about tracks and artists. Not only are we all music freaks, we're into the same music. Listening to what other people have just listened to enthrals me.

If you're after new ways to find new music and one of those people who can't help flicking through other people's music collections, then this will be right up your alley. Hopefully you should get as much out of iLike as much as I do.

Update for Backup 3 available.
Being a .Mac member, Backup is my prefered choice of software when all goes horribly wrong. Thankfully, nothing has gone wrong yet (touch wood). It was quite simple to set it up to backup my iTunes and home folder automatically every Saturday. Today Apple updated it to version 3.1.1.Significant areas addressed are:

Backup and restore with external drives
Memory management
Restore of bundled file types

Significant?! What does that mean? Wasn't it capable at backing up to my external hard drive before?!