There's been a huge buzz in the past week about an Apple patent application for "Run-Time Code Injection To Perform Checks", which many liken to Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage program and speculate could result in Mac OS X and Apple apps including the kind of serialization and headaches that Windows users are familiar with....

Throughout the history of the Mac, and unlike the highly protected Lisa, the Mac operating system has never been copy protected. From System 1.0 through 7.0.1, Apple even allowed stores and users to freely copy their Mac OS system floppies for others. There was no cost for operating system updates unless you wanted to buy a shrink wrapped package....

I don't think DRM in OS X need be anything we Mac users fear. If it's nothing more than a way of making sure that it's running on Apple hardware, we'll still have an operating system that can be copied, cloned, moved between Macs, and so forth while refusing to run on non-Apple hardware or in virtualized environments.

Time will tell if and how Apple decided to implement this, but based on the company's history, I don't see this as insidious.

Whenever you buy or find an older (or classic) item, there tend to be some repairs or modifications that will turn your treasure into a more usable object.

This is very evident in the purchase of an old house or car. You've got to replace that old furnace or engine, give it a new paint job, and replace some pieces of trim. The same is true with that old Pismo that you're reclaiming from the dustbin of planned obsolescence .

My Pismo came with a lot of extras, but there is a complete list of neat stuff that will enhance the Pismo experience and allow the old dog to learn a few new tricks. ..

Flash memory maker Samsung is doing nothing to change our minds that that Apple will be releasing a sub-notebook based around its drives next week..

Now Samsung has announced that it will be releasing the world's first 128GB Flash memory card in 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch versions.

Canadian songwriters want to give the entire country unfettered access to any and all online music for a flat monthly fee. Meanwhile, the major Canadian record labels want the songwriters to quit smoking opium.

The Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) has proposed a plan that would charge every Canuck internet user a flat monthly fee for sharing tunes on the web. To wit, anyone in the country could download tunes via P2P without running afoul of the law.

But in an interview with Reuters, the president of the Canadian Record Industry Association (CRIA) - the organization that represents the country's largest labels - was less than optimistic about this plan....

Intel has kicked an already down AMD by celebrating the arrival of 16 new chips across its laptop, PC and server lines.

The fresh chip dump marks the arrival of Intel's first laptop chips manufactured with a 45nm process that allows for faster, more energy efficient products. Intel CEO Paul Otellini emphasized the mobile strike at this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas where chip-filled gadgets are all the rage. Along with the laptop parts, Intel pushed out a number of new 45nm desktop and server processors that complement parts released in November.

Screw all the namby-pamby gadgets being dished out by weaklings at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Big Iron - not gizmos - is where it's at, as far as Apple is concerned.

Apple has popped fresh four-core chips from Intel into a new Xserve and new Mac Pro. The eight core, dual processor machines may not count as Big Iron at, say, SGI or Sun Microsystems, but they do at Steve's house.

There's no doubt that Apple, with its elegant 99¢-per-download formula, is the dominant force in digital music. But it's next to impossible to find an industry expert who thinks that Apple's current approach will remain the only game in town forever. Now there are signs rivals will help shape the future of digital music as well.

Some of the most immediate pressure is coming from Amazon.com , which launched its Amazon MP3 store on Sept. 25. The store offers a few things Apple doesn't....

I finally got Leopard for my Intel iMac. I've never had a major install issue, so I didn't expect one with Leopard. Just in case, I did a full back up to my external hard drive. Good thing I did.

The install started out like normal, and I selected an archive and install. I let the machine go and came back a while later expecting Leopard waiting for me when I came back. Instead I got an error message that one of the packages could not be verified (or something to that effect). This cancelled the installation.

Not only did it cancel my installation, but it wiped my hard drive! I could not boot from the hard drive anymore. I booted to my external, ran disc utility and formatted the internal hard drive. I booted from the Leopard DVD and tried to install again. This time a different package could not be verified, and I had to start fresh again.

Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures denied a newspaper report that the studio is poised to follow Time Warner Inc. in abandoning Toshiba Corp.'s HD DVD technology.

"Paramount's current plan is to continue to support the HD DVD format," Brenda Ciccone, a spokeswoman for Paramount, said in an e-mail today.

Got a new Mac Pro or Mac mini? This handy Fast Start guide will help you set up your computer and get you on your way to working and playing in no time.

How did Apple do it? My son recently asked me for an iPod for his birthday. I figured he really meant to say that he wanted an MP3 player of any type, and I asked him if he wanted to try a Zune or maybe another PC-based player. "Oh, no, Dad," he said in response. "It has to be an iPod."

And that explains why no other company has been able to crack Apple's vise grip on the MP3 industry. It simply has to be an iPod.

Macs have a reputation for being user-friendly and easy-to-use personal computers. And, generally speaking, they live up to that reputation. Most Macs perform flawlessly for years. However, every Mac occasionally misbehaves. You might know what we're talking about. Sometimes programs on your Mac won't launch, wireless hotspots won't appear in the menu bar, or applications keep crashing. Things just act wacky.

Macs have come a long way since they were capable of displaying the infamous "Sad Mac" image, but things can still go wrong on your new Mac.

Before you run your Mac down to the local Apple Store, read this guide. We'll show you basic troubleshooting tips that you can perform in a matter of minutes, from the comfort of their own home. With any luck, you won't have to call Apple!

European Union regulators will rule Wednesday on whether Apple, the maker of the iPod media players, broke EU rules by varying prices at its iTunes music stores in different countries, the EU competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, said Tuesday.

Until I figured out how to sync my Palm based Treo smartphone with the Palm Desktop on my iBook, I had no use for bluetooth. Before then, bluetooth was one of those technologies that was around but that I largely ignored. Now, the thought of syncing via USB cable seems so 20th century. As a bonus, I cover how to transfer camera images from the Treo to the Mac via bluetooth.

This article documents all the steps needed to set up wireless syncing via bluetooth between a Treo and Palm Desktop the Mac. Since there are a variety of Palm based devices and OS X versions, it is offered as is. Just because it "works for me" doesn't mean it will work for you. At the least, you may get some useful hints for your situation.

Nearly a year ago, Apple CEO Steve Jobs boldly called for the music industry to abandon its practice of using digital rights management (DRM) software to protect its content.

"Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats," Jobs wrote in a post on the Apple company blog. "In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat."

Jobs pointed out that most music sold is DRM-free, because no effective system was ever developed for audio CDs. But he argued that the major music companies were unwilling to license their content to Apple for download without the implementation of a DRM system.

Perhaps hinting that it has more products in its pipeline that can comfortably fit into a single Steve Jobs keynote — now a week away — Apple bowed an updated version of its MacPro desktop machine, this one bearing two Intel Quad Core Xeon Processors, making eight cores standard. It's a powerful machine to be sure, and is aimed mostly at Apple's creative pro user segment who really needs that power for multimedia production.

Apple introduced Safari for Windows around six months ago calling it the fastest web browser that is almost twice as fast as IE 7 or Firefox 2.

Since then, Apple has released couple of minor upgrades for Safari 3 that are mainly bug fixes and the browser is still in beta stage.

"At CES 2008 and for the rest of the year, it looks like laptops will be using a new transistor formula. The mobile "Penryns" or Intel's latest Core 2 Duo architecture officially launches today with 5 new processor models, including 4 Intel Core 2 Duos with higher frequencies and an Extreme processor X9000 (2.8Ghz) processor for game enthusiasts. The new processors deliver new SSE4 instructions, up to 6MB L2 cache, and higher levels of energy efficiency with Deep Power Down technology. Consumers, according to Intel, will experience up to 70% higher performance when encoding high definition video, 30% faster performance for apps like Adobe's Photoshop CS3, and better battery life."

Toshiba execs must be feeling a bit like Hillary Clinton after the Iowa Caucus right now. Although not necessarily a favorite, HD DVD had an even chance to win the format war. It was cheaper, came to the market first, and had solid industry support. And overnight, all that changed. Just days before the show started, as much of the industry was boarding planes to Las Vegas, Warner Home Video announced it would no longer release movies on HD DVD and would back Blu-ray exclusively.

The reason the company gave is pretty basic: Consumers just don't know what to buy. As Barry Meyer, the Chairman & CEO of Warner Bros. stated in the company's official release: "The window of opportunity for high-definition DVD could be missed if format confusion continues to linger." No kidding.

Warner Bros is just one studio, but this switch creates a supreme-court like shift in power. Blu-ray now has a 5 to 2 advantage in major studio support. Blu-ray will simply have more movies from which to choose."

Monday at CES upped the ante on everything from digital cameras and HDTVS to cell phone touchscreens and TiVo.

An increasing number of consumers are having trouble just paying for the roof over the heads, much less a new PC, 150-inch television or digital camera.

Most experts agree that 2007 was a record year for Internet scams, and 2008 will be even worse. However, Audri and Jim Lanford, co-directors of ScamBusters.org, explain that you don't have to take things lying down, or sitting down at your computer. Instead, by being aware of how the most common online scams work you can avoid being "taken."

I'm sure many of you were blindsided when Apple quietly upgraded the Mac Pro and the Xserve to use the new Intel "Harpertown" Xeon chips, code-named Penryn. Now it's perfectly clear that this is a worthwhile upgrade. The new chips are not only faster, but cooler running, consuming less power.

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