Notebooks with a 16:9 movie aspect ratio will be introduced by several major PC makers this year and should become increasingly common by the end of the year in smaller systems, says a report detailing their reported expansion. Although Acer is currently the only PC maker selling notebooks in the ultra-wide format with its large Gemstone Blue 16- and 18.4-inch notebooks.... several other PC makers are all said to be introducing extra-wide notebooks....

Apple is rumored to be launching a major redesign of the MacBook Pro for its next revision of the high-end portable and has often been regarded as a pioneer of widescreen notebooks, having popularized the format with the original PowerBook G4 in 2001....

With panel makers pushing 16:9 ratio panels in 2008, Acer has decided to open up all its notebook product lines to be based on the ratio, while other notebook vendors are readying to push at least 14- and 15.6-inch lines in the third quarter this year. Notebook makers predict the proportion of 16:9 models will increase 10% per quarter during in the second half of 2008.

In addition to 14- and 15.6-inch panels, 17.3-inch, mainly supplied by AUO and LG, and 18.4-inch, supplied by Samsung Electronics, Chi Mei Optoelectronics (CMO) and Chunghwa Picture Tubes (CPT) are also sizes Acer plans to introduce. Meanwhile, most other notebook vendors are still evaluating which of the two larger sizes they will bid on.

Ann Sakai has used a digital camera for eight years, but she has yet to conquer photo bloat. The oversized photo files she e-mails to friends and family strain the limits of their in boxes.....

Like many photo-sharers, Sakai doesn't know how to pare down images before e-mailing them. The original files are so big that they can be difficult to view properly on screen. They also clog Internet connections and clutter hard drives.

Resizing images is a simple skill that is well worth learning as more and more photos are shuffled around the Web.....

Even though to all my friends I seem to happily buy every Apple consumer item soon after it becomes available, I still agonize over spending the money. I wonder, "Can the little bits of Leopard really add up to $129 worth? How about the new themes that come with each iLife release? Are they worth $79?" I wrestle with it for a while and then usually end up buying it at one of my local Apple stores.

Little did I know at the time, when I bought Tiger and iLife '06 it would only cost me $30 each. Yes, I paid full retail at my Apple store, but what I never factored in was resale value because it never occurred to me to sell them later.....

Boy was I surprised to see the average selling price of Tiger was $100 and iLife '06 was $50. That's only $30 less than retail!

Mac OS X 10.5 has some amazing features and as a recent switcher from Windows to Mac I've spent a lot of time using as many of them as I could so that I could really become proficient with my Mac. This morning I got to thinking: if I had to choose one single feature in OS X that I would have a difficult time without, what would it be?

For me that feature is Spaces.....

Consumer product strategists frequently ask Forrester how Apple's product strategy will evolve: What will Apple's product portfolio look like five years from now, and how is Apple preparing for that future today? Forrester notes that Apple has completely remade itself from a PC maker to a consumer devices and digital music leader over the past eight years — thus setting the precedent for additional radical change over the next five. While there are a number of speculative industry hypotheses for the future of Apple — including scenarios like Apple as a media pure play or Apple as the "American Sony" — Forrester sees a future that ties together many of these hypotheses into a coherent consumer product strategy: Apple will aim to become the hub of the digital home.....

Analysts like to make waves. After all, if what they say lacks impact, then no-one pays attention.

So how about this prediction from Forrester: "Apple Inc. will become the hub of the digital home by 2013."

Forrester says Apple will evolve an "integrated digital experience" based on eight pillars.

Four of them you will probably recognise:

The Mac, Apple TV, the Apple store (the physical shop), iTunes.

Four of them are, ahem, guesswork from Forrester....

Google today announced the widespread availability of the new Google Sites app. Launched back in February, the site was initially limited to use by companies and organizations. Integrated into Google Apps, Sites gives users the ability to create Web pages that can be securely hosted by Google at http://sites.google.com/[your-website].

Microsoft Word began life as Multi-Tool Word for Xenix in 1983. It was renamed Microsoft Word and ported to MS-DOS in 1983, the Macintosh in 1985, and Windows in 1989. It has been the dominant word processing program on the Mac since 1988 and on Windows since 1993.....

Word for MS-DOS had been written to support high-resolution displays, even though DOS computers didn't yet have them, which made it easier to port the program to the Macintosh. The first version of Word for Mac was released in 1985, and Word 3.0 in 1987. (There was no Word 2.0 for Mac. The second version was called 3.0 to match the numbering of the current DOS version.)

.....Word 4.0 came to market in 1989, the same year that Apple spun off its software to its Claris subsidiary and MacWrite stopped being free.....
Many Mac users consider Word 5.1a to be the best version ever released. The original Word 5.0 for Mac reached the market in 1991, and the upgrade to 5.1 in 1992.....

Word 6.0, launched in 1993, is widely considered to be the worst version of Word ever for the Mac, as it was based on the same codebase as Word 6.0 for Windows. That meant that it looked and worked more like Windows software than a Macintosh program. Mac users were so up in arms that Microsoft actually released a Word 5.1 downgrade to unhappy Word 6.0 owners.

It was five years before Microsoft unleashed another version of Word for the Mac....

I remember it well. It was January of 1990. My new husband was a young organic nerdy guy from Palo Alto - his mom translated engineer-speak at Apple into manuals, and his school was awash in Apples. I was older and rougher, a flannel-shirted tomboy from rural Oregon where schools were often awash, another depressed guitar player and hick Kesey-wannabe writer with a massive old manual Royal typewriter and a box of manuscripts.

The odd little beige box with the tiny black and white screen was just another indication that my beloved was a Genuine Smart Guy, my intellectual equal, and that was all I needed to know.

But one day in the grey slodgy throes of morning sickness and boredom, I idly asked for a demonstration of something on "that little computer".

"It's called an Apple Macintosh 512K," he said proudly. "One slot holds a disk with a program, the other is where you save your work."

The drives whirred and clicked. He explained how to drive the mouse, click on the "icons". On to the real magic, he showed me a program called simply "Word".....

Long time colleague and editor of CreateDigitalMusic.com Peter Kirn confirms what I've been saying for a while: Mac OS 10.5.2 is a dog. Granted, my issues with 10.5.2 were mostly with Skype audio, but they're audio-related nonetheless.

Kirn's piece today on CDM Leopard Audio Woes and Digidesign; 10.5.2 is a Lemon for Music? calls Apple out for audio problems in 10.5.2 with audio applications, specifically lagging Digidesign and M-Audio drivers. "The more we learn about Leopard, specifically 10.5.2, the worse it get" he says.

Despite all the attention the media have lavished on the iTunes Store, CDs still dominate music purchases by a huge margin, according to a study released Monday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.....

The Pew report says 82 percent of music buyers still prefer the old-fashioned CD..... Only 12 percent said all or most of their purchases were via digital download.....

Researchers at Core Security have released details of three vulnerabilities in Apple iCal scheduling application, after four months of talks with the company.

The security tools vendor said it is important for users to know about the flaws and make security precautions, even without a patch from Apple.

The iCal bugs comprise a single memory corruption flaw and two null-pointer vulnerabilities. The memory corruption bug creates a mechanism for attackers to inject hostile code into affected systems. The null pointer bugs might be used to crash the scheduling program.

Some users have reported an issue in which the MacBook Air's ambient light sensor process that automatically illuminates the keyboard seems to not be functioning, or functioning in reverse. For instance, when the computer is put in light conditions the keyboard brightens, and in the dark the keyboard will darken and/or turn off. Sometimes the light sensor will not work at all, or will only work for either the keyboard or display brightness, but not both together.

Following up on my review of VMware Fusion, I wanted to present a few reasons you might want to run virtual Linux on your Mac.

Mirrored Development Environments

The most compelling reason to run virtual Linux is to create a development environment that is identical to your production platform. Linux is found on the majority of web hosts, from the least expensive to the most pricey. As a web developer, I appreciate being able to mirror the environment where my application will ultimately run.

While OS X makes a great development environment, virtual machines allow you to create multiple customized environments.....

Upon careful consideration and with deep sadness, I regret to inform Stan's MacMinute readers that we are unable to continue operating the MacMinute website at this time. It is not that we do not have the passion, nor is it because of the emotional pain attached to it. Due to reasons that are completely beyond our control, we are neither able to sell nor operate MacMinute.....

Michael Arrington has an interesting post today on TechCrunch in which he predicts that Microsoft Live Search Cashback will have a material impact on Microsoft's share of the search market. It's worth a read but Microsoft will still have to scale a few mountains before this becomes a smash success.

I suppose Microsoft will get some initial lift from the news, but the PR glow will ebb. Seriously, how many of you really plan to use Microsoft search in hopes of making a buck? At some point, the offering will be judged on its comprehensiveness and that's a comparison Google welcomes. I experienced much the same sense of frustration using the service as did SearchEngineLand's Danny Sullivan. His conclusion: "this is far from ready as the big game changer that Microsoft is hoping it will be."

I've been swapping hard drives in my Mac Pro a lot lately, and they kept getting more and more difficult to pull out once they'd been soundly seated, to the point where I was in danger of bending the lip of the sled.

We know that Mac users stand little or no chance of being infected with malware, at least with Mac OS X so far. In the days of the Classic Mac OS, there were several dozen viruses of various levels of severity, but few that would cause anywhere near the havoc of a typical Windows outbreak.

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