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Contact info: | Feed: feeds.feedburner.com/geekcast | TheGeekcast.com | geekcast@gmail.com | Skype & Gizmo: Geekcast | 206-98-geek-1 | Show notes: send blank e-mail to geekcastpodcast-subscribe@yahoogroups.com | Frappr Map: Frappr.com/thegeekcast
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Items of Note:
A new extension to The Geekcast is coming. Will you be ready?
Check out the Thunderbird Six podcast where I was interviewed by David who runs the show from a university in Canada. www.thunderbirdsix.org
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Tech news:
This episode of The Geekcast is all about Macworld 2006.
Apple retires the Powerbook, releases the MacBook Pro. This ‘new’ laptop features the following specs: 1.67 or 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo processor, 2MB on chip shared L2 cache running 1:1 with processor speed 667MHz frontside bus 512MB (single SODIMM) of PC2-5300 (667MHz) DDR2 memory on 1.67GHz configuration; and 1GB (single SODIMM) on 1.83GHz configuration; two SODIMM slots support up to 2GB.
The MacBook incorporates features found on the iMac with a built-in iSight & Front Row software. The laptop also comes with the remote control. On top of that the MacBook also comes with: 15.4-inch widescreen display, PCI Express architecture, Up to 120GB Serial ATA hard drive, ATI Mobility Radeon X1600,One FireWire 400 port, two USB 2.0 ports, Optical digital and analog audio I/O, built-in microphone and stereo speakers, SuperDrive, Illuminated keyboard, Scrolling TrackPad, Built-in AirPort Extreme (802.11g), Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, and the normal packaged software. The prices start at $1999 for the 1.67 Core Duo and $2499 for the 1.83GHz.
Apple brings more intel inside. Jobs announced that all products will be transitioning to intel processors through the end of the year. Along with the MacBook Pro, an update to the iMac is out where the iMac is 2-3x faster and it’s shipping today. Nothing on the iMac is really different except where it counts: the processor. The iMac’s will now sport an Intel Core Duo processor that is dual-core, where each core is faster than the last G5 used on this machine.
Apple financial news. Steve Jobs released his normal figures and forecasts for how Apple’s retail business is doing and how much market share they have. Here’s the rundown:
8 million TV shows sold since Oct 12th.
850 million songs sold, 3 million songs a day, over 1 billion songs per year. This is an 83% market share.
42 total million iPods sold since the it was first released with 32 million in 2005. This is over 100 every minute through the quarter.
Total retail revenues are $5.7 billion total. The retail stores had their first $1 billion quarter this past quarter.
There are currently 135 stores worldwide.
Apple adds radio capability to the iPod. Apple has rolled out an FM tuner that is also a remote control for your iPod. With this new accessory you can listen to FM radio on your iPod and control everything. You also get a set of earphones with a shorter cable. It is compatible with the iPod nano and iPod with video.
The tuner incorporates into the interface of the iPod adding a “Radio” item on the main iPod menu. Tuning takes place right there in the color display with the click wheel. You can mark a favorite station for quick access later and switch between favorite stations using either the iPod or the remote. The remote supports the Radio Data System (RDS) standard so you can even see song title/artist or radio station information in the iPod display. The tuner is out now and will retail for $49.00.
Office for Mac is going nowhere! With iWork and other rumored updates to it in the pipeline (which have yet to come true) we were all worried that Microsoft was going to go the way of IE on the Mac and kill of MS Office for OsX. The exact opposite happened today when Microsoft announced that they are committing to keeping Office alive for another 5 years.
iLife ‘06 is released. Each component of iLife has been updated. It remains $79 and is available now. Here’s the rundown:
iPhoto 6. iPhoto has been tweaked and is now much faster including support for 250,000 digital pictures. There are more projects to make such as calendars & also more photo effects. Apple has also introduced a new feature called Photocasting. You take a picture, upload it to a .Mac account, Choose to Announce, and this brings up mail to email to people. When you receive the email, you click on the RSS link and it launches iPhoto and receives the photo automatically. The best part is that you don’t need iPhoto to receive the photos because it’s just an RSS feed.
iMovie. iMovie has become a favorite tool for making movies as it’s easy to use but you can create very nice looking projects with not a lot of knowledge. With the new version you can open more than one project at once, which is great when moving things around. You can also have animated themese, real-time effects, tweak the audio and more.
iDVD. This compliment to iMovie has been tweaked as well with support for 3rd party DVD burners, better slideshows for the menus and overall better functionality.
Garageband. A lot of people use GarageBand for podcasting and that fact has gotten through to those guys in Cupertino. GarageBand now sports a new feature called Podcast Studio. This allows you to put artwork into your file, comes with effect & jingles, a speech enhancer & incorporation with iChat so you can record voice interviews. A new JamPack has also been released to give you even more loops to use for music creation.
iWeb. What is iWeb? iWeb is a new addition to the iLife suite. This is a website publisher that incorporates with a .Mac account to allow you to create great websites that take very little effort. As with the other programs, there are pre-packaged themes that look fantastic. You can also incorporate RSS feeds & slideshows using AJAX. Perhaps the best feature is the included templates for getting a podcasting page live.
Misc Announcements:
-Over 1500 widgets are available for Dashboard.
-Aperture is being touted as “Aperture is to the camera as Final Cut is to video”.
-A new iPod silhouette commercial is coming out.
-SNL video has been added to the iTunes Music Store.
-Bowl Games have been added to the iTMS as well.
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Test a geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast
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How To: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast
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Ask A Geek: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast
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Hack: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast
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The geek’s view: This segment will return on a future episode of The Geekcast
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