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ExtraBITS for 6 June 2011

We have a couple of podcasts from TidBITS staffers for you this week, along with the continuing saga of the Lodsys patent brouhaha, news of a MacBook case replacement program, Apple’s release of iWork for the iPhone and iPod touch, and Gmail’s new people widget.

Lodsys Persists in Targeting iOS Developers — As we noted in our coverage, the whole Lodsys patent mess won’t end until Lodsys allows it to end, despite Apple’s contention that iOS developers are covered by Apple’s license with Lodsys. ZDNet is now reporting that Lodsys has posted additional screeds on its blog, defending its position and offering a bizarre $1,000 payment to targeted developers if Apple turns out to be right. It’s getting really weird, and you have to assume that there will be significant discussion of the situation at Apple’s Worldwide Developer
Conference this week.

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MacBook Bottom Case Replacement Program — Apple has started a replacement program to fix MacBooks whose rubber surface is separating from the bottom case. The program covers MacBooks shipped between October 2009 and April 2011 that are exhibiting the problem. You can take an affected MacBook to an Apple Retail Store or Apple Authorized Service Provider to be fixed, or order a replacement kit online and do the work yourself.

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Adam on MacBreak Weekly to Discuss Lodsys, iCloud, and More — Once again, Adam joined Andy Ihnatko, Chris Breen, John Gruber, and Leo Laporte for MacBreak Weekly, where the tremendously enjoyable conversation ranged from geek hair care (Gruber relies on a Perl script!) to Apple Legal’s response to Lodsys to what we might see in a forthcoming iCloud music service from Apple.

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Apple Brings iWork to iPhone and iPod touch — Apple has announced the release of the iWork app suite — Pages, Keynote, and Numbers — for the iPhone and iPod touch. Each of these apps costs $9.99 for new users, but they’re free updates for those who own the iPad versions.

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Gmail to Introduce People Widget — Google’s Gmail group has announced that it will be rolling out a new “people widget” that will display information about people involved in a Gmail conversation, including links to recent messages from them, Buzz posts, shared documents, and calendar events. It hasn’t appeared in our accounts yet, but we’ll be curious if it will supplant Rapportive for us.

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Rosetta Takes Center Stage at MacVoices — Following on from his TidBITS article about finding your PowerPC applications in case Lion won’t run them, Matt Neuburg talks to Chuck Joiner on MacVoices about the possible loss of Rosetta in its historical context, and what it might mean for users.

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