"If a new desktop computer is the object of your holiday hopes this season, look no farther than the new G5 iMac from Apple.

"I said it when I first tested it and I'll say it again after two months of use: This is the finest personal computer I've ever used, hands down. Nothing comes close. If you have ever thought of switching from a Windows-based PC to a Mac, this is the deal-clincher. It is a stunning machine to look at and to use."

"The chief developer of Camino has published an updated roadmap for the Mac-only Web browser, with several existing features to be overhauled and new ones to be added in the first half of 2005.

"Mike Pinkerton is aiming for version 0.9 to be 'essentially feature-complete' so that for 1.0 the developers can focus on stability and polish. Camino 0.8.2 was released last week.

"The major changes planned comprise: a redesigned new tab interface; an overhauled preferences system; a rewritten keychain implementation; form autofill; spell checking in forms; further improvements to the download manager; event system overhaul for better flash performance and reduced CPU; and better bookmark searching, including history."

"'The Apple' is not a PC, because 'The Apple' doesn't exist. Apple is the name of the company, Macintosh is the name of the product. Do you call a Corolla 'The Toyota' as well?

"This is a pet peeve of mine. Every time I see a media type calling the Mac, 'Apple' I immediately suspect the person does not know what they are talking about. Apple makes a lot of products, including the iMac, iPod, PowerBook, PowerMac, Final Cut Pro, etc. If someone really understands Apple and the Mac product line, they would know this.

"Oh, and just for the sake of argument, those market share stats are skewed. If you wanted a fair comparison, remove any PC numbers for machines used as simple terminal (i.e. boxes serving as checkout counters in stores, machines running electronic billboards, etc.) These machines are stripped down to their bare essentials and could not fulfill the same function as a Mac (or a consumer PC for that matter.) Macs aren't used as checkouts because checkouts do not require Firewire connections, DVD burners, Multimedia"

"Toshiba Corp, Japan's second largest chipmaker, has agreed to start selling flash memory to Apple Computer Inc, maker of the best-selling iPod digital music player.

'Toshiba, based in Tokyo, will start selling the memory chips to Cupertino, California-based Apple "early next year," Yasuo Morimoto, senior executive vice-president at Toshiba said. His comments come amid speculation Apple will unveil a flash-based iPod in January.

'IPod, which accounted for 23 per cent of Apple's sales, is the world's best-selling music player equipped with a hard-disk drive.

'Flash-based players, which store music on memory cards instead of drives with moving parts, allow for more shock-resistant, sleeker designs.'

"More than one in five British consumers (22 per cent) has purchased software in response to spam email, a study by Forrester Research claims. The study - sponsored by the Business Software Alliance - found that a substantial minority of punters are quite happy to make junk mail purchases across a broad range of products.

"Other popular junk mail purchases included clothes and jewellery (23 per cent), leisure and travel (20 per cent), finance (18 per cent), adult content (8 per cent), pharmaceuticals (8 per cent) and "business opportunities" (8 per cent)....

"Anti-spam firms and economists talk of response rates to spam of around one in 10,000 or less. This sits uncomfortably against the idea that a substantial minority of people are looking through junk mail messages for bargains.....

"Forrester quizzed 6,000 in six countries (Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, the UK and US) last month in researching the study. The global version of the study found that 27 per cent of those quizzed had bought spamvertised software."

"I'm about to save the music industry from shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars for consultants and research reports, by revealing the marketing secret behind the five-year-long surge in illegal online swapping of songs:

"People like to get things for free that would otherwise cost them money. And they won't stop taking them for free just because there's a convenient legal alternative, if that alternative requires opening their wallets.

"Stunned by my unique powers of insight? You shouldn't be, yet this obvious lesson seems lost in the squabbling among record labels, quasi-legal peer-to-peer file-sharing networks and start-up companies hoping to offer compromise solutions."

"Attractive from a distance, the Apple Cinema HD 30-inch display turns out to have feet of clay on closer inspection. It is indeed an expansive and impressive LCD monitor, but its limitations cause it to fall short of the superlative claims made by Apple. It may well be good enough for your needs, but make sure you buy it with your eyes open."

"The format wars are here.

This week, the Walt Disney Company and its Buena Vista division said they would release content on the Blu-Ray next-generation DVD standard, meaning that battlelines have been drawn in publishing content.

Walt Disney and Sony Corp. are now backing HD DVD, as well as Disney subsidiaries Walt Disney Home Entertainment, Hollywood Pictures Home Video, Touchstone Home Entertainment, Miramax Home Entertainment, and Dimension Home Video. Previously, New Line Cinema, Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros. Studios all said they would support the rival HD DVD specification, led by Toshiba Ltd. Sony is the chief backer of Blu-Ray."

"Microsoft promised to send out XboX 2 developer's kit sometime in Q1 next year. This kit will finally have an R500 card inside which means that R500 development is quite advanced. Microsoft's current kit is powered with older Radeon 9800 cards and things will get much faster this time round. Developers have to code on Shader Model 3.0 hardware.

"We are not sure which one of G5 machines Microsoft wants to send to developers, but yes it will be a Mac G5. It's kind of funny but you have to remember that XboX 2 uses a RISC CPU and is not Intel X64 compliant CPU anymore.

'It will be funny to see this G5 machine running some kind of Windows OS."

"We live in the age of the digital packet. Documents, images, music, phone calls - all get chopped up, propelled through networks, and reassembled at the other end according to Internet protocol. So why not TV?

"That's the question cable giants like Comcast and Time Warner and Baby Bells like SBC and Verizon have been asking. The concept has profound implications for television and the Internet. TV over Internet protocol - IPTV - will transform couch-cruising into an on-demand experience. For the Internet, it will mean broadband at speeds 10, 100, or even 1,000 times faster than today's DSL or cable. Online games would be startlingly realistic; the idea of channels would seem hopelessly archaic. Why not indeed?

"So far, the answer has been inertia. But competition is a powerful stimulus. For years, DirecTV and EchoStar have been adding subscribers far faster than cable, so cable companies want something satellite can't match. At the same time, voice over IP is enabling cable operators to poach phone customers from telcos. Combine VoIP, truly high-speed broadband, and totally on-demand TV - and you've got such a compelling proposition that the Bell companies figure the only way to survive is to do likewise."

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