Dear All - 0. Macintosh is 22 years old (24 january 2006) Earlier this week we celebrated the birthday of the Macintosh (as well as that of a fairly famous composer). 1. Apple worth more than Dell After years or waiting and anticipation earlier last week, Apple's share price closed on friday (20 jan) with market capitalisation of $72.13 billion, surpassing Dell's $71.97 billion and making it one of the most valuable PC vendors in the world (behind HP). 2. Google Earth released in beta for OS X This is fun, but only for the OS X 10.4 users amongst you. Google Earth is a program that allows you to see any part of the earth's surface, from space, and then to "fall" down to the place seeing more and more detail as you approach the earth's surface. The pictures are all taken by satellites in the last 3 years, and feature detail down the level of cars and pedestrians' shadows. Then when you are looking at something of interest, you can ask Google to overlay the city street plan, or ask where are the restaurants, points of interest etc. And you can 'fly' from A to B as if in an aircraft. Aldeburgh isn't very clear, but Munich is clear right down to the buildings on the street where friends live. 3. Results CUPERTINO, California-January 18, 2006-Apple Computer Inc. announced financial results for its fiscal 2006 first quarter ended December 31, 2005, reporting the highest revenue and earnings in the Company's history. Apple declared revenues of $5.75 billion and a net quarterly profit of $565 million, or $.65 per diluted share, in this 14-week quarter. These results compare to revenue of $3.49 billion and a net profit of $295 million, or $.35 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 27.2 percent, down from 28.5 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 40 percent of the quarter's revenue. Apple shipped 1,254,000 Macintoshî computers and 14,043,000 iPods during the quarter, representing 20 percent growth in Macs and 207 percent growth in iPods over the year-ago quarter. "We are thrilled to report the best quarter in Apple's history," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "Two highlights of an incredible quarter were selling 14 million iPods and getting ready to launch our new Macs with Intel processors five to six months ahead of expectations. We are working on more wonderful products for 2006, and I can't wait to see what our customers think of them." 4. Adobe announces Lightroom Adobe has announced a new product called Lightroom. Adobe Lightroom offers a tool for professional photographers to import, select, develop and showcase large volumes of digital images. The software is presently released as a public beta and will expire at the end of June 2006 and is available for download now from Adobe's site Adobe Lightroom Beta requires Mac OS X version 10.4.3 (Tiger) or higher, a 1GHz or faster PowerPC G4 or G5 processor (including iBook G4 or PowerBook G4), and 768 MB of RAM (although more is recommended), and 1 GB or more of free hard drive space. MacCentral has some early notes on Lightroom and offers some comparisons with Aperture -- Apple's professional photography tool which was announced in October. 5. For 15" PowerBook owners only Apple has finally responded to a long-standing PowerBook memory slot defect by announcing another "repair extension" program: The PowerBook G4 (15-inch 1.67/1.5GHz) Memory Slot Repair Extension Program is a worldwide program covering repair or replacement of the memory slot in PowerBook G4 models manufactured between January 2005 and April 2005 (2005-01 through 2005-04) that are experiencing specific component failures. If your PowerBook G4 has a serial number within the eligible range and is experiencing any of the symptoms listed below, it may be eligible for repair, free of charge. Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP) will determine eligibility under the program. Repairs will be covered by Apple for up to two years from the original date of purchase even if your computer is out of warranty. What are the symptoms of an affected PowerBook G4? Affected systems will exhibit one of the following symptoms: * The computer does not start up; instead, there are three short beeps (typically) followed by the the sleep LED flashing periodically. * When both SO-DIMM memory slots are filled (populated), only one slot's memory is recognized. * System performance may be degraded because the memory in only one slot is not recognized. Important: These symptoms may only occur intermittently. The affected PowerBook G4 (15-inch 1.67/1.5GHz) computers have eleven-digit serial numbers in the range: W8503xxxxxx through W8518xxxxxx Finding your PowerBook's serial number is easy. If it's turned on, choose About This Mac from the Apple menu, and double-click the Mac OS X version number. Your PowerBook's serial number appears in place of the version number. The serial number is also located on a label in the PowerBook's battery bay. To access the label, turn the computer off or put it to sleep, then remove the battery from the computer. The serial number is located on the label situated on the lip of the bay as shown below. You'll also see a description of the computer's configuration and its Ethernet ID (or MAC address). 6. Suffolk Macintosh Users Group On wednesday of this week I attended the inaugural meeting of the Suffolk Macintosh Users Group. We had a very interest ng presentation and demonstration of Photoshop by Guy Gowan (very expert in the use of layers), and he's a fan of Aperture. 7. The Mac Doctor website After years or waiting, I have finally registered the domain "themacdoc.co.uk" and put up the first page of a web-site. In addition to some information about the services I offer, and ways of getting in touch, I'll also put a page containing all these emails. But what would YOU like to see/find on the website? Let me know and I'll talk to my designer (one of you naturally). 8. Short break I will be away from my office from friday 3 february to monday 6 february inclusive. Any questions? Let me know! Anything you'd like me to write a note on? Let me know! thanks for being Mac users hugh