Mac News Online

Some users have reported that brand new Leopard discs are failing to mount(simply ejecting on insertion), on certain machines (Powerbook, MacBook, Mac Mini) even though the disc is seemingly flawless. Calls to AppleCare have resulted in Apple suggesting either creating a disc image and burning a duplicate disc, or the customer being issued a replacement disc. I was able to get around this by using a little bit of brute force and a little bit of finesse.

Work-Around Solution
1. With the Machine on, make sure there is no disc in the drive.
2. Initiate a restart, when the machines display goes to the “blue” intermittent screen right before it restarts, insert the disc.
3. Now that the disc is inserted and accepted hold down the “C” key on the keyboard and the Leopard install screen should boot when the machine comes back on.

Please leave comments if this worked for you.

MacRumors.com is reporting on a new web-only advertisement from Apple that has appeared on a number of sites, including News.com, Engadget.com, and PCMag.com. The Apple advertisement features “Mac” and “PC” as played by Justin Long and John Hodgman in a web ad composed of two separate components.

Mac Rumors Article This also ties in with the new tv ads that were released seen below:

One of the most perfect applications of Apple’s widget platform is the tracking of packages. Since it’s inception the dashboard has given rise to countless attempts at the package tracking widget but none have come along which are as useful as the Delivery Status Widget. Delivery Status Widget allows your to track packages from the following sources: Amazon, UPS, USPS, Royal Mail, Purolater, Posten, FedEX, DHL, DPD, Apple, Amazon, and Adobe. The widget changes it’s appearance based on which service you are tracking but it retains it’s functionality across all services. Check out the Delivery Status widget today!

With the holidays just around the corner I found myself adding important events into iCal and I noticed something missing, they holidays. Turns out there are no default holidays in iCal like you would normally find on a paper calender. After doing a little looking I discovered Apple’s own comprehensive repository of calendars you can add directly into iCal. They have a myriad of standard holiday calendars for all religions and ethnic groups. In addition to these holiday calendars they also have some cool dynamically updating calendars, such as “Movie Releases”, which polls the weeks new movie releases. Here are the ones I added:

U.S. Holidays

New Movie Release

DVD Releases

Now I have all the US/Christian holiday’s like Christmas, Easter in my iCal. The whole list can be found here:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/calendars/

The Apple rumor-mill is abuzz once again with renewed rumblings of an Apple powered Tablet on some of the bigger sites (MacNN , AppleInsider) The basic design specs are supposed to have been leaked from a Apple’s Taiwanese contract manufacturer Asustek (ASUS) to CNET’s Crave Blog who first reported the story. This new tablet will purportedly be 1.5 times as big as the iPhone and mirror the design mentioned in late September on AppleInsider. Accoding to that story Apple has in the works, an Apple PDA that utilizes the Multi-Touch interface, and has a screen resolution of 720×480, as well providing a more robust version of the Mac OS X embedded operating system, that includes interface bells and whistles like: copy and paste, and drag and drop, features currently missing on the iPhone platform. This new newton/multi-touch/apple PDA platform, could be Apple’s an answer to the rather paltry UMPC initiative(Oragami) Microsoft put forward in 2005. If Apple chose to venture into this new mobile computing platform they would need a “Killer App” to launch with. On the iPhone the “killer app” could be summarized as “An iPod that can Make Phone Calls”, Anybody have any idea what the “killer app” would be on the Apple Tablet?

Apple recently renovated one of it’s most profitable Apple Store in southern california at the South Coast plaza location in Orange County. Since this store happens to be located very close to Mac News Online we decided that some coverage of it’s re-opening was in order. The store itself has a very industrial feel, with grey flooring and paneling storewide it appears as an early indicator of future Apple stores. The entire front of the store consists of 6 large glass panels. Check out the pictures below.