rjoseph writes "MacUser is running an article about how the new Celine Dion CD A New Day Has Come with copy protection mechanisms to prevent the CD from being played on a PC not only won't play on an iMac, but it will lock the CD tray (so it can't be removed) and fubar the firmware (so the machine can't be rebooted), effectivley killing the iMac. Ouch." We mentioned this interesting experiment in consumer relations last month as well, but now it's getting noticed a lot more. However, emkman writes: "What was first thought to be an April Fool's joke, now appears to be true. Some Audio CD protection schemes such as Cactus DATA Shield 100/200, KeyAudio, and perhaps others may be defeated by invalidating the outer ring of the CD with a black marker or post-it sticky note. www.chip.de has their report in German, here is a translation."

A user writes "According to a story at The Register, schools who want to take advantage of educational bulk licensing agreements with Microsoft have to count all PCs (and Macs!), even those not running Windows." One package of software applies to all installed PCs and Macs, including those running Linux or BSD, so schools end up paying for stations that Windows (and other programs) cannot or do not run on. Microsoft's justification is that the agreement requires an "institution-wide commitment." Coincidentally, bc90021 points out that "RedHat announced its Linux Pilot Program for schools today. Designed to improve the overall learning experience for children, seven North Carolina school districts have already joined. One county director is quoted as saying: 'With the money we saved from not buying proprietary licenses, the school district purchased additional resources that directly [a]ffected the learning experience of our students and brought us into the 21st century.'"

paradesign writes "Citing both Apple and Sony's intentions to become the hub of the digital lifestyle, Popular Science has pitted an $1,800 800MHz flat-panel iMac up against a $3,400 1.7GHz Sony Vaio PCV-MXS10 to see which really comes out on top. The bottom line is that the Sony PC -- almost twice as expensive as the iMac -- just narrowly edged out the iMac, with an overall score of 42 to 40."

danboid asks: "I'm going to buy an 'internal' IDE burner for my iMac (revision A- I have to open it up and lead an IDE cable out and buy a power supply for it though!) so I was wondering if anyone has any recommendations or could tell me what to look out for or avoid. I will probably be burning under Linux but I'd like to get a burning program for Mac OS X- has anybody had any experience with such a setup?"

cpk0 writes "Well, we finally have Photoshop on Mac OS X. Now that must have been one heck of a year over at Adobe, cause this piece of software is pretty elegent. Even on my iMac 600 it's pretty swift and smooth. There's no official Adobe press release yet, but there's a VersionTracker page for it, and that makes it official enough for me."

rograndom writes "There's something very interesting on Apple's Japanese site. CaptyTV is part of Apple's 'Digital Hub', and it's a USB analog-to-digital video converter. A rough translatation from the site says talks about TiVo-like functionality, looking up program listings on the internet and recording at a certain time. It also talks about dumping your archived videos to DVD with the iMac's & PowerMac's SuperDrive. Sounds very cool, I hope it makes it over to this side of the world." And is that an external SuperDrive there on the sidebar?

rschroeder writes "Apple updated several products at MacWorld Tokyo tonight (or tomorrow morning). A $499 10-gig iPod, with, get this, custom laser engraving on the back, ($49 extra) and vCard support. They also announced a $49 USB bluetooth module, shipping in April, with beta drivers availble today. Among other tricks, Jobs synced a Clie with a mac via bluetooth. Also a new 23" (1920x1200 )Cinema Display. Jobs also said they're raising the price of the iMac due to LCD and RAM cost increases. All this courtesy MacMinute.com's live coverage." Maccentral has several stories about Jobs' keynote at the convention.

cannonball_D writes "CNet has an article about the first (?) inevitable PC imitation LCD iMac from Gateway. The design is a step in the right direction, but I still think it has all the tell-tale signs of a cheap knock-off. " It really looks like it lacks the elegance of the apple design, but I'm all for the LCD based terminal to be available on x86.

Vishniac writes "It looks like Disney CEO Michael Eisner is accusing Apple in part for fostering music piracy, particularly with its 'Rip, Mix, Burn' campaign. Testifying before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, Eisner said that the ad suggests to people that 'they can create theft if they buy this computer.' Apple? iMac? Impossible."

Leslie Holland writes "A new article from Mac insider news site Think Secret explains some of the recent iMac shipping delays. According to Think Secret, many of the first-run models were hit by firmware issues, and we shouldn't expect to see the low-end units for some time."

Brent Foster writes: "The staff at iMacLinux.net have Linux running on the new flat panel iMac G4s. They have an initial installation guide available here(1). It has several photos of the iMac G4 during the installation as well as cat /proc/cpuinfo. They also have some photos of the unpacking available here(2). The iMac was sponsored by PowerMax, it is nice to see companies sponsoring Linux efforts, especially in the Apple world." John Buswell adds: "It currently works in novideo mode, but we plan on testing newer kernels and XFree 4.2 with nvidia patches later this week."

Emous Pratt writes: "There is a neat article up on iMacLinux.net which talks you through separating the monitor and computer parts of the iMac. It is very detailed, with lots of cool screenshots including this one of the completed machine, and this one showing the machine is still working. This is useful if you want to run Linux and not run the monitor, or if your monitor is broken." Update: 02/03 19:37 GMT by T : Note for the curious: this is about the old iMac (CRT equipped), not the new lampish G4 variety.

el.cerrito.slasher sent in an amusing bit found on MacSlash. This story is a tale of a stolen iMac that just happened to be running Timbuktu (a remote control program like VNC I believe). Well the stolen box kept getting used, and the owner was able to track it down through a variety of amusing Timbuktu Fu. Funny story.

From the first, this has been a cornerstone idea at Apple Computers: make stuff that is cool and hip enough and it will eventually succeed. Until recently, this foolish idea permeated the hacker culture as well -- if it's neat, it's good. Initially, Apple was a welcome antidote to the elitism and cluelessness of the tech elites who designed early computers. Although that seems a long time ago, the early idea behind Apple was revolutionary -- make computing accessible to everyone, not just coders and programmers. But the recent history of software development, networked computing and the Net suggests that now just the opposite is true: being cool is nice, but it's not nearly enough. Steve Case and Bill Gates have known this for awhile. Nobody would ever label them cool, just stunningly successful.

eschasi asks: "Recently we've been seeing some trend towards smaller footprint machines like the new iMac or the tiny PC system shown in this recent article. All these tiny systems have scalability or quality problems for me, and I don't think it has to be that way. But all the solutions I see require discarding much of what we think is standard to desktop/deskside mechanical design for PCs. Apple has been able to do with much more freedom becuase they own the whole process. PC makers, however, don't. The last major improvement to PC motherboard/case design was the ATX design, and that was evolutionary rather than revolutionary. I think that major improvement can still be made in an evolutionary way. I want both worlds: I want a small footprint; I want it in a premium system; I want it to have enough room for a pair of hard drives, a 5.25" external slot, and a 3.5" external slot; and I want it using largely off-the-shelf components, and I don't want to have to re-invent ATX and PCI and ya-da-day to get it!" Do you feel the same way? How would you improve the current crop of PC form factors?

rleyton writes "The Independent has an interesting interview with Jonathan Ive, the designer of the new imac (and the iBook, the iPod and original iMac...)" It's actually a pretty interesting even if you think the new iMac is repulsive. Personally I dig it.

red5 writes: "Newsforge has a report of a new "iMac-like" internet computer from the good people over at OEone. On an interesting note it uses Mozilla as its GUI. Read the article for all the details." Another submitter sent in an interview with the company.

Bored in Chattanooga writes: "Tom's is running an article reviewing a Shuttle mini-computer. Seems to have everything the average computer user would need, minus a nice 3D graphics card. Perhaps the standard large ATX-size computer cases will cease to exist and be replaced by these "mini-computers." I find these gems cuter than any iMac I've ever seen!"

As promised chrisd back with his report from the expo floor at MacWorld and a brief note about what Linux can learn from the Macintosh.

MrGHemp writes "The new iMac with a flat panel has been offically announced, and can be seen on the Apple website. According to Steve Jobs the top 3 things we asked for were put into this new design. 1. Flat Panel screen 2. G4 processor 3. Superdrive (DVD burner on one of 3 models)... Apple also announced other new products like a 14' display on some iBooks, and iPhoto - the iTunes of digital photos." It's definitely unique looking ;) Update: Slashdot author ChrisD was there and has a report too.