Adobe Offers Public Beta of Lightroom -- Adobe Systems, Inc. revealed a public beta of their upcoming professional photography workflow software, Lightroom, just before Macworld Expo

When Apple introduced its new video-capable iPod in October, the early iTunes Music Store video offerings were limited to ABC and Disney Channel television programs

Exclusive Coldplay EP at iTMS to Benefit Hurricane Katrina Victims -- In "Net Responds to Hurricane Katrina Aftermath" in TidBITS-795, Jeff Carlson reported on how the Internet community has come together in countless ways to help the victims displaced or otherwise affected by Hurricane Katrina, which struck the Gulf Coast of the southern United States a little over two weeks ago

As part of last week's press event, Apple CEO Steve Jobs shared the stage with Cingular Wireless COO Ralph de la Vega to announce the availability of the long-rumored iTunes cell phone, the new Motorola ROKR E1

Google, the ubiquitous Web search company that shook up the Web-based email world a year and a half ago by offering a gigabyte of permanent email storage with its free Gmail service, last week staked a claim to the instant messaging territory with the announcement of its free Google Talk service. Based on the open Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) developed by the Jabber open-source community, Google Talk offers text-based instant messaging using any Jabber-compatible client software, and voice chats with the official Google Talk software

The conventional wisdom has been that Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs would never allow the company to ship a multi-button mouse; such an animal would compromise the legendary simplicity and ease of use that were Apple's hallmarks

Apple Recalls Laptop Batteries -- Apple has announced a voluntary recall of certain rechargeable laptop batteries sold with, or sold separately for use with, its 12-inch iBook G4, 12-inch PowerBook G4, and 15-inch PowerBook G4 models from Oct-04 through May-05

Qualcomm Acknowledges Eudora Bug -- As reported by our friends at MacInTouch, Qualcomm has acknowledged that recent versions of its Eudora email software for Macintosh could incorrectly delete messages from the Inbox associated with an IMAP account. The company has told site license support providers that an upcoming release of Eudora, version 6.2.3, addresses the problem

Apple expanded its wildly successful iPod family of portable music players last week, lowering prices and adding new capacities to the iPod mini and iPod photo product lines. With its 4 GB capacity and new, lower price of $200 in the U.S., the basic iPod mini, which also gains extended battery life (the company claims "up to 18 hours"), fills the midrange gap between the $100-$150 iPod shuffle and the previously pricier models starting at $250

First Apple Security Update of 2005 Patches Mac OS X -- On 25-Jan-05, Apple released Security Update 2005-001 to patch several reported vulnerabilities in both desktop and server versions of Mac OS X 10.2 and 10.3

Apple Posts Highest Ever First Quarter Profit -- Fresh on the heels of its Macworld Expo product announcements, Apple released its first quarter results for fiscal year 2005, with CEO Steve Jobs boasting the "highest quarterly revenue and net income in Apple's history." The quarter ending 25-Dec-04 gave the company a net profit of $295 million, compared to a net profit of $63 million in the first quarter a year ago

Perhaps paving the way for Steve Jobs's scheduled keynote address at Macworld Expo in San Francisco, Apple last week announced an upgraded line of Xserve rack-mount servers, as well as the availability of its long-awaited Xsan storage area network product. The top of the line Xserve G5 now sports dual 2.3 GHz PowerPC G5 processors and a 1.15 GHz front-side system bus, which Apple calls the fastest in the industry for a 1U rack-mount server

On 05-Nov-04, Apple released Mac OS X 10.3.6, a free update to Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. The update includes a new version of the Safari Web browser that will no longer stop trying to load a Web page or submit a form after 60 seconds, but will instead keep trying until the user cancels the attempt

Security Update Patches Apple Remote Desktop -- Apple has released Security Update 2004-10-27, a patch to Apple Remote Desktop Client 1.2.4 that prevents a remote user from starting an application behind the login window, which would allow the application to run as root

Microsoft has released a long-awaited update to Virtual PC, the emulation software acquired from Connectix over a year and a half ago. Virtual PC 7, which is available as a standalone product or as part of Microsoft Office Professional, boasts faster performance, better integration with the Mac's fast graphics processors, easier printing from Windows to the Mac's printer, and, perhaps most importantly, compatibility with the Power Mac G5. That Virtual PC was incompatible with Apple's flagship Power Mac G5 desktops gave a black eye to both Apple and Microsoft, so the mere resolution of this problem makes Virtual PC 7 newsworthy