The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

If you're musically inclined and the owner of a jailbroken iPhone or iPod touch, keep your eyes and ears out for the impending release of Band (video here), the latest app from Moo Cow Music (the mad scientists responsible for Pianist, Guitarist and Drummer). Coming soon via the ModMyiPhone sources, this application promises to put all your musical fun into one touchable tool.

You'll be able to record and play back your compositions, which is bound to make you the most popular person around (as if the iPhone itself wasn't enough for that).

[via JustAnotheriPhoneBlog]

We're back tonight at 10 pm on TalkShoe for the weekly talkcast; it's news of the week and general conversation tonight with the usual suspects, so put down your barbeque fork and your malt beverage and tune in if you can. Got specific questions or concerns? You can slide them into the comments below or send us an @tuaw on Twitter pre-show.

As we noted a few weeks back in the Mac Parenting show, we did have a few questions to follow up on for listeners and readers:

• One caller had questions about locking down the Dock to avoid inadvertent removal of application shortcuts. While we strongly encourage setting up limited accounts for your kids and having them work in those accounts exclusively, it is possible to lock the Dock plist file and have it reset to your permanent config on each login/logout.
• In a similar vein, another caller wanted to know about controlling the iChat conversations that kids can have -- specifically, who they can or can't chat with. In Leopard, there's a parental control for notification on new chatter requests so that you'll get an approval email when the kids try to chat with someone unfamiliar.
• I suggested that Apple's Workgroup Manager administration tool could provide more detailed control than the Parental Control system preference, which was a source of some amusement for a few listeners. You can learn more about WGM from TUAW, macenterprise.org or this tutorial series.
• Some other products and websites mentioned in the show:
  • Broderbund's Living Books series
  • starfall.com for reading instruction
  • tumblebooks.com for story time
  • Kidpix and open-source alternative Tuxpaint

For more tips and hints check out our Mac parents wiki page.

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Update: Sold out, folks -- sorry! We'll keep an eye out for more refurb deals.

Looking to pick up a discounted, refurbished 16GB iPod touch? One-day discount vendor woot.com is offering the midrange version of the premium iPod for $290 + $5 shipping, comparing pretty favorably with Apple's refurbished sale price of $329/$349 depending on whether you get the $20 January Software Update bundled in. Judging by the description copy, the woot models don't have the update loaded, but that's still $39 cheaper than Apple's version and $79 less than a new unit, again discounting for the JSU.

Like all Woot deals, this is good for today (Saturday 5/3) only and it's valid while supplies last. Mother's Day giftgiving got you scratching your head? Need another touch as your development unit? Looking for a movie player for long car trips? Might want to pick one up. I've gotten in the habit of watching TV shows on my touch during my NYC subway commute; a 44-minute Lost is just about right for the ride. 16GB would mean less shuffling of episodes... where's that rebate stimulus check again?

Thanks Matthew

This week's BW cover story puts Apple's approach to business users squarely in the spotlight, as Peter Burrows captures both the remarkable surge of employee-driven Mac purchasing for the enterprise (often triggered by staff who are Mac users at home, or as I sometimes refer to them, "iMullets" -- business in the front office, party in the home office) and what he characterizes as the mostly-benign neglect of the corporate market by Apple's sales force and support infrastructure.

More and more companies are letting Mac installations out of the creative/graphics and video gulag walled garden, some comparatively large concerns like Juniper Networks are implementing 'open choice' on platforms for employees, and a very few biggies have even declared a new all-Mac era in desktop deployments. Though marketshare gains for the Mac have been driven overwhelmingly by consumer purchasing, at some point that platform choice begins to leak back into the 9-5 window.

While Burrows hits it right on the nose with the factors that are accelerating Mac deployment (beyond employee choice and the iPhone + iPod halo effect, the Intel platform, Vista's lackluster prospects and virtualization are key drivers) and on some of the reasons companies might hold back (hiring additional Mac-centric IT resources and a lack of extensive choice in the product line), I think he overstates the degree to which Apple plays it hands-off with enterprise users. Yes, some of the most critical resources for Mac IT are external communities and not Apple-managed, but the sales force and professional consulting arms at Apple have been quietly toiling away for years to improve the standing of Macs at the office. Big-iron vendors like Centrify & Likewise are helping Macs integrate into corporate networks, and even the Microsoft Mac BU is working hard to make Entourage a best-of-breed Exchange client for the Mac.

Just the fact of IT conference tracks at WWDC and Macworld Expo for the past couple of years, featuring Apple engineers and product managers alongside their customers, shows that on some level Apple has been grappling with the needs of the enterprise market even if it's not the top priority at One Infinite Loop. With the planned introduction of the iPhone 2.0 firmware -- which tackles nearly every pain point of enterprise customers with a vigor worthy of the Other Steve -- it does seem that some Apple execs have begun to drink the Big Business Kool-Aid.

Thanks to Arik + everyone who sent this in

Given the choice between buying a physical DVD and grabbing a downloadable iTunes version of the same movie, you might choose what's behind door #2 for convenience, iPod playability and speed; that is, if you're willing to wait it out while the DVD-only window ticks away. Up until now it's been about 30-45 days post-DVD release, with a few exceptions, before the iTunes version showed up. With a report from the NY Times yesterday that Warner Brothers was moving to "day-and-date" digital release, simultaneous with the disc ship, we expected to hear something from Apple promptly, and we have.

According to this morning's press release, it's bigger than just Warner Bros. Multiple studios' films -- 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, and more -- will now be delivered to iTunes customers at the same time that DVD buyers can snag them in stores. "American Gangster" and "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" are two of the first movies available on the new ship schedule.

Does day-and-date change your attitude on buying movies from iTunes? Inquiring minds want to know.

For more than 25 years, one name has stood for quality television entertainment; one name has represented the finest in Hollywood production values and narrative standards. One name... and that name is Norman Lear. Since he's not available, it's my duty to report that the guilty pleasure of classic TV -- Stephen J. Cannell -- has now placed a big chunk of his delightfully down-n-dirty oevure on the iTunes store for your downloading and viewing enjoyment.

Cannell's shows, which we all are ashamed to admit we loved, included such classics as Wiseguy, Hunter (did you know that DeeDee McCall's nickname was "The Brass Cupcake?"), The Greatest American Hero (my personal weakness -- Connie Selleca, you haunted my dreams), Silk Stalkings and the teen cop drama-slash-launching pad for the future Sweeney Todd & Captain Jack 21 Jump Street. Those five are showing up in the store now, and a couple are yet to arrive (The Commish and Renegade). I'm not sure if I can handle the cognitive challenge of watching the young Johnny Depp bust dealers on my iPod touch, but I'm going to try it and see how it goes.

It's been six months between major upgrades to browser credentials manager and all-around swell pal 1Password, and the Agile team has not been napping; the new version 2.6 offers anti-phishing tech courtesy of integration with PhishTank.com, compatibility with SSB fave Fluid, and a more streamlined password-changing option to avoid the proliferation of old credentials.

Single-user licenses of 1Password are $34.95 and 3-license family packs are $49.95 (otherwise known as $35 and $50; can we agree that pricing downloadable items as if they were sportscars or boxes of detergent, while psychologically valid, is darned silly) and upgrades from 2.5 to 2.6 are free of charge for most users. MacHeist II bundle owners are covered for this upgrade, however those who got a free license via Macworld's Mac Gems promotion will have to cough up the dough for the new version.

Imagine you're trying to sell a bundle of Mac applications that includes Parallels. It's an obviously appealing deal for anyone in the market for Windows virtualization, since the bundle is priced below the retail cost of Parallels alone. Might you choose to place a teensy promotion of your bundle someplace that would-be virtualization customers would see it? Someplace, I dunno, associated with a Parallels alternative? Hey, waitasec -- you've got this handy site where people come to see updated and reviewed Mac software... now you've got something going!

Sorry, MacUpdate Promo team, but this kind of internal cross-promotion strikes me as being more than a little disingenuous, especially in the wake of a recent VMware update that is bound to drive readers to the VMware page. Lose the sales pitch and regain some editorial dignity.

Update: To clarify for our commenters, I couldn't care less if MacUpdate advertises the bundle at the top of every page on the site (as they do), including the VMware page. The issue here, however, is the specific contextual ad right next to the update listing for VMware (and ONLY there). You can call it valuable consumer information for someone who might otherwise purchase VMware at full price; I call it advertising/promotional interference with the editorial content of the site. Having it say "Editor Note" implies that the editors of MacUpdate judge the value and worth of applications by whether or not they choose to participate in a promotional bundle; so much for editorial judgement and independence. Tomato, tomahto.

Thanks to J. Carlos de Pinho for the heads-up.

We're going to be covering the Apple earnings call live at 5pm ET / 2 pm PT, now that the earnings report is out ($1.16 per share, hot hot hot!). To listen in on the call, you can pick up the QuickTime stream here. Remember, for ongoing coverage of AAPL be sure to check out our sister site BloggingStocks.

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Just last week we noted that BusySync 2, which adds Google calendar syncing to the iCal sync app, is now shipping. Another 2.0 would seem to be around the corner, as a post on the SpanningSync blog shows a video demo of Address Book -> Google contact synchronization coming in the next version of the utility.

While Plaxo and other tools are lining up to take on the contact sync challenge -- most sync only in one direction right now, although with the Google contacts API in play that's going to change -- it's nice to see SpanningSync picking up the torch on contacts as the competition on calendaring heats up.

[via ars technica]