MacRumors

Apple announced today that it has reached long term supply agreements with a number of memory supply companies including Hynix, Intel, Micro, Samsung Electronics and Toshiba.

Apple will prepay up to $1.25 billion for flash memory over the next three months. The agreements secure a supply of NAND flash memory through 2010.

"We want to be able to produce as many of our wildly popular iPods as the market demands," said Steve Jobs, Apples CEO.

Apple now uses Flash memory in two of the iPod models: the iPod shuffle and the iPod nano. Recent reports have hinted that Apple was seeking out more suppliers for the needed Flash memory components for their shuffle/nano iPod products. The traditional 5th Generation Video-capable iPod still uses a hard drive for storage.

The New York Times reports that TiVo is announcing both iPod and Sony PSP support for its Digital Video Recorder (TiVo).

The newest version of its TiVoToGo software will allow users to transfer recorded television programming to either an Apple iPod (5G) or Sony PSP.

According to a press release the feature will begin testing in the coming weeks, with full availability to TiVo Series2 subscribers as early as the 1st quarter of next year.

According to the New York Times, there will be a one-time fee to users to enable this feature which will cover the licensing fee for MPEG-4. Another article notes that the encoded video will contain digital watermarks to discourage internet sharing of the resultant video files.
Update: More info in the official press release.

Apple is again planning on an after Thanksgiving (Black Friday) sale at its retail stores.

Apple has offered special discounts for the past several years (2002, 2003, 2004).

Last year's event saw variable discounts on many items in the Apple Store. (a list from 2004)

An American Technology Research analyst claims that they have heard that Apple may be working on an even smaller form factor for the iPod shuffle as well as a introduction of a choice of colors.

The price points and storage capacity, however, are expected to remain at $99/$129 and 512MB/1GB in order to minimize overlap with their recently introduced iPod nano.

Apple recently added a "black" option for the 5th Generation iPod, and previously offered iPod minis in a choice of 5 colors.
Whether or not this is simply rehashing of this Page 2 rumor is unknown.

Apple released a .01 update to their Front Row Application that ships with the newest iMac G5s.

The Front Row Update delivers overall improved reliability and compatibility for browsing music, photos, and videos on your iMac.

The update appears to only offer stability improvements and no major new features. The newest update reportedly includes checks to make sure that the user is running on the iMac G5, which is presently the only supported configuration. Front Row is only available by purchasing the new iMac G5 with built in iSight.

ThinkSecret is adding its two cents on possible Intel-Mac releases at Macworld San Francisco in January of 2006.

ThinkSecret is citing that according to "highly reliable sources", Apple is planning on releasing their first entry-level Intel iBooks at the Macworld expo. Detailed specs are not available, but the rumor site hints that the iBook line may see a price drop by as much as $200 in some cases. While another Intel-based release is not out of the question, ThinkSecret expects there to only be consumer level products to be shipping with Intel processors at this early date.

There have been conflicting earlier reports on the possibility of Intel-based Macs at MWSF. A previous report claimed an Intel iMac release at MWSF with Powerbooks soon after, but Intel iBooks not expected until Spring.

MarketWatch reports on a Wall Street Journal article saying that Alain Levy, CEO of EMI Music, expects Apple to end the one-price-fits-all pricing in the iTunes Music Store within a year, increasing prices for popular songs and cutting prices for music by unknown artists. Levy reportedly discussed the issue with Steve Jobs, although the details of those discussions were not given and it was not claimed that Jobs made specific statements about iTMS pricing himself.

From a Levy press conference:

There is a common understanding that we will have to come to a variable pricing structure. The issue is when. There is a case for superstars to have a higher price.

Apple announced today that iTunes and iPod have almost 60% market share in Japan.

Since the launch of the iTunes Music Store this summer and introduction of the iPod nano and fifth generation iPod, market share in Japan has grown rapidly, solidifying iPods position as the number one digital music player in Japan by a wide margin.

Since its launch in August, Apple reports that dozens of music labels have added their catalogs to iTunes Japan. Among these include For Life Music, Geneon Entertainment and Dreamusic. Major music label Sony Music Entertainment was also amongst the latecomers due to disagreements about the pricing.

After a lackluster launch, Businessweek is reporting that Motorola and Cingular are working on a revamp for the ROKR iTunes-enabled phone.

Though an early move by both companies to put music on mobile phones was a disappointment, they don't plan to make the same mistake twice.

According to the article, Motorola says to have shipped 500,000 of the ROKR phone, despite the poor reviews. While able to play iTunes-purchased songs, the ROKR was limited to holding only 100 songs regardless of storage capacity.

In 2006, Motorola is planning on introducing a new version of the ROKR that addresses many of the issues of the first generation. New features expected include a 1 megapixel camera, a 3.5mm earphone jack, capacity to hold 1000 songs, and a "sleek new look". iTunes support is expected to remain.

Now available for download via Software Update:

Java 2 Platform Standard Edition (J2SE) 5.0 Release 3 includes version 1.5.0_05 and improves functionality of J2SE 5.0 on Mac OS X v 10.4 Tiger 10.4.2 and later. This release does not replace the existing installation of J2SE 1.4.2.

For more details on this Update, please visit this website: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302412

As the Quad PowerMac G5's start to arrive, more benchmarks are emerging.

Barefeats posts a collection of benchmarks from After Effects, Cinebench G5, Photoshop CS2, Xbench, and UT2004 comparing the Dual Dual-Core ("Quad") G5 2.5GHz PowerMac to the previous Dual 2.5GHz G5 PowerMac.

Meanwhile, Macsonly also provides the same comparison with some similar benchmarks but also some "Real World" tests.

The Wall Street Journal reports on an initiative to develop a $100 laptop targetted at school children in developing nations. A non-profit organization called One Laptop Per Child has been formed to oversee the project with plans to put the laptop into the hands of 100-150 million children.

The $100 design remains a challenge and has not yet been solidified, but due to the scope of the project has drawn interest from many industry leaders, including Microsoft and Apple.

According to the WSJ, Steve Jobs offered to provide Mac OS X for free for the upcoming machine. The offer was declined, however, as they were looking for a 100% opensource solution. This offer, however, was only possible as Mac OS X is now capable of running on the x86 architecture as well as the PowerPC. The new $100 laptop will be powered by an AMD processor running Red Hat Linux.

Official site: http://laptop.media.mit.edu/

ZDNet.co.uk posted a review on installing Intel Mac OS X on non-Mac hardware.

The [Intel Mac OS X] is bound directly to the hardware by a special security chip. However, some developers have succeeded in circumventing this coupling, allowing the operating system to be installed on any x86 system, as this test report shows.

The article describes the installation and use of Mac OS X on a Toshiba Portg M300 notebook. There are some limitations with the test installation. Of note, there only exists support for the Intel integrated graphics chipset (915G) for 3D graphics support.

ZDNet reports that power-saving functions of the Pentium M processor is already supported and the Intel OS X shows similar power consumption as Windows XP on the same notebook they tested. They also post a few benchmarks but the results come with the usual caveats for beta software.

They also post an image gallery from the installation.

Several sites are reporting that Apple is shipping a small protective sleeve with the iPod nano. This mimics the protective sleeve that they have been shipping with the 5G iPod.

Despite reassurances from Apple that the Nano ships with same screens as the previous generation of iPod, a class action suit regarding the scratching issue has been launched against Apple.

Images of the new case can be seen here.