BindApple

Microsoft's last offer to buy Yahoo is still under the scope of the board of directors at Yahoo, and even if they accept, the deal must also get the green flag from the European and American antitrust organizations. While this deal has most chances to pass through, if Yahoo agrees with it, Google simply can't make any offer to buy them, being the market leader, but other can... and one of them is Apple!

To be honest, this came as a surprise to me. OK, Apple is going up these days, but can they cover so many market areas at the same time, and manage to remain efficient in all of them? Well, that's what remains to be seen, especially since all we have at this time is nothing more but rumors...

At this time, it seems that those with their eyes on Yahoo include Apple Inc., Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., the media conglomerate InterActiveCorp, as well as the leading Chinese Internet search company Alibaba.com, but let's focus on Apple, shall we?

In a report published yesterday, the Scotsman wrote "It is believed he would be particularly open to a rescue bid from Steve Jobs' Apple Corp, having openly expressed his admiration for the firm in the past.", but I think this is not true, at least for now. Apple is not the Bruce Willis of the industry, and Yahoo doesn't actually need to be saved. They got an offer, but they can simply refuse it, and then allow things to move on, so it won't happen any tragedy, after all.

The fact that Steve Jobs was invited by Jerry Yang to hold a surprise speech to revitalize Yahoo's management morale at a meeting held back in October doesn't say much, and taking things from here to a "rescue bid" is a bit too much, at least for now, but I won't call it "impossible". Just keep your eyes on us, we'll be there to let you know all there is to know, if and when it happens...

Apple's current growth needs, apart from new markets to sustain it with their demand, new people to help driving the company into the right direction. Since Microsoft got a new CIO from Walt Disney, now Apple made the same move, bringing in someone from a notorious company to help the higher level management team. This time, it's not about Walt Disney, but about Wal-Mart...

Less than 2 years ago, Wal-Mart released their own video downloads site, and at the end of 2007, they closed it. Now, the only message you'll get from the site is "The Wal-Mart Video Downloads Service closed on 12/21/07", and the reason should be obvious. Even Hector Martinez, HP spokesman, said the market was not as good "as expected". Since this happened, it was a good occasion for Apple to grab someone with experience in the field, this person being Kevin Swint, the former digital media head of Wal-Mart.

As one would expect, Swint's job at Apple will involve taking care of their international movies and TV services. Other than that, time will tell, but I think Apple can succeed where others have failed, so let's bid Kevin Swint "good luck" in making Steve Jobs' company go higher!

Despite the fact that iPods are being overrun by Macs, the iPod accessories market still comes up with a lot of new things, and maybe the most popular sector of this market is the one literally taking care of iPods. Yes, I am talking about iPod cases, and today I want to tell you about a new line of such products, coming from the notorious Tunewear...

The Tuneshell clear cases for the entire iPod lineup, pictured above, were announced to become available one of these days, so you should be able to grab one pretty soon, depending on your local retailer, but let's see what do we have here first, shall we?

All these shells are manufactured using clear polycarbonate plastics, offering full screen protection, while allowing you quick and easy access to the controls and ports of the iPod. Some models include belt clips, and if you don't have a clip, then a lanyard should be there to help you keep your favorite music player close to your heart...

The Tuneshell line's cases are priced between $20 and $30, and if you want to check the entire line-up of such cases available from Tunewear, including older models, feel free to visit this page.

Since it's Sunday, I don't want to keep you with long stories. After all, there have been a bunch of interesting news last week, and if you missed them, you know what to do... Today, I will highlight an interesting fact, something that everyone expected to happen sooner or later, and now it's finally happening - iPods are manufactured in smaller numbers, while Macs production is going up!


This is not my imagination, and it's not a rumor I read somewhere on the Web, either. In fact, it all comes from the Bank of America investment firm, which made some checks with their sources located in the Far East, where Apple's hardware is manufactured, and the information they got from there lead them into believing iPod production has been lowered, while Steve Jobs' company ramped up the production of Macs, at the same time.

Well, I was expecting this to happen since Leopard came up. Being given the excellent market performance and customer satisfaction of this latest Mac OS X version, combined with Vista's problems, it's something normal to see a lot of people making the switch to the Macs.

The numbers go like this - compared to early January estimations, Mac desktops and notebooks production is about 20 percent higher, while the quantity of iPods expected to be manufactured in the March quarter is over 30 percent lower compared to early December estimations, and about 20 percent, when looking back at the estimations done in early January.

Unfortunately, it seems I was right to say I wouldn't bet my life on seeing Leopard updated last month, because it's February already and the patch didn't arrive yet. Anyway, there's no need to worry, because Apple is working hard on it, and today I just found out about a new proof of this fact - earlier this week, the developer community got another pre-release of the upcoming update from the Cupertino-based company...

Just like the one that came before it, Mac OS X 10.5.2 build 9C27, the current build of the soon-to-be-released update, seems to be free of known issues. Since there were no bugs to fix, all that can be said about this last build is that 9C27 managed to add a few more improvements to the list that already exceeds the 130 new features/improvements mark.

According to those familiar with the latest Mac OS X builds for the developer community, the list of improvements now included various fixes to Leopard's Finder sidebar, new desktop backgrounds, support for the new Time Capsule backup appliance, iChat Bluetooth functionality, as well as disk space management and improvements to the Time Machine software.

Leaving the above aside, Apple's efforts seem to concentrate their attention of system core components, such as Bluetooth, Audio Input, the Finder, Spotlight and the graphics drivers, these being the items they asked developers to focus their testing efforts on.

I know there's one big question remaining, but I don't have a straight answer to that. Last news I heard place the release to the public of this update during this month, so let's keep our fingers crossed...