Previously Apple charged 1.5% of the wholesale price per unit for use of their proprietary iPod dock connector, but as of yesterday (May 10th) the dock connector license is a flat fee of $4 USD.

Apple has refused to comment on the fee. The move is set to favor the manufacturers of high end iPod accessories such as Bose, Jamo, Altec Lansing and Hi Fi manufacturers who are selling iPod connector or docking stations. It's also set to please who late last year were angry with Apple over the move to increase license fees.

The move makes managing the program for Apple easier and also  makes it more affordable for manufacturers to produce accessories compatible with the dock connector.

When you want to take your computer with you when you're on the go your options are usually pretty limited - you're often forced to go with a laptop - taking a large tower, monitor, keyboard and mouse along is a little bit of a difficult thing to do. Peter Green, however, decided to try a new approach with the already small Mac Mini design in case modding his Mac Mini to include a micro keyboard, battery, small lcd and touch mouse.

You have to applaud people who take the time and effort to try something new and different like this, but the money that it would have cost and the sheer time it would have taken to make something as bulky as this makes you wonder why he wouldn't have gone with an iBook or MacBook in the first place.

Apple has taken out a patent on a new type monitor that combines display functions with those of a camera.

Thousands of microscopic sensors are placed between liquid crystal display cells in the screen. Like an insect's eye, each sensor receives its own small, individual image. Essentially, there will be one sensor for each LCC. By giving individual cells different focal lengths, the device could have a zoom function as well. These images would be combined into a single large image with software code.

This invention has great implications for videoconferencing. By adding PDA and cell phone functions, the need for several different devices will be eliminated.

With the heightened danger of living nowadays, everyone needs protection (no, not that kind of 'protection'). It's quite natural to see politicians wearing bullet-proof vests even when they go fishing; teenstars crashing their cars to avoid paparazzi (duih?!); and hard disk drives getting wrapped with specially designed silicon jacket bumper to protect it from unwanted crashes. No, I'm not joking.

Plextor Corp., manufacturer of high-performance digital media equipment, has come up with a portable and shock-proof external hard disk drives for users that are constantly on the go (and troubled by a destructive personality). The product line, dubbed as PX-SP, weighs a mere 8 ounces enabling the computer user with Logan-like tendencies to carry his data without worrying about it getting destroyed whenever he makes a berzerker barrage. It comes in two capacities, 80 GB (PX-SP08U) and 120 GB (PX-SP12U), both compatible with Microsoft(R) Windows(R) and Apple(R) Macintosh(R) personal computers; it also packs a Hi-Speed USB 2.0 port interface paving the way for maximum data transmission speed of 480 Mbps.

Aside for having a penchant for violence, the PX-SP twins also require a personal computer running Windows 2000/XP(TM) or Mac OS 9.1 - 9.2.2 / Mac OS X 10.1 - 10.4.4, with minimum Celeron 466-MHz processor and 64 MB RAM. Set to be available in North and South America in May 2006, anger management dropouts should expect to shell out $169 for PX-SP08U (80 GB capacity) or $260 for PX-SP12U (120 GB capacity). All orders are guaranteed labor warranty and unlimited toll-free technical support (poor customer care agents, expect a lot of cussing coming your way).

Geneva Sound Systems offers their very own iPod dock for $1,075 But why will you pay a thousand bucks for the Geneva model when Apple sells their own Hi-Fi system for only $349?! Here's why...

Geneva Sound Systems Model XL is said to be the only iPod dock that can rival Apple's very own. Made out of piano lacquered wood, this beauty has built-in stereo tweeters, 8 inch subwoofers and powered by a 600-watt high fidelity digital amplifier to satisfy the audiophile in you. It accomodates all types of iPod, including the Nano. Plus, play your CDs with the built-in CD player or listen to FM radio. You can also connect the XL connects to other MP3 players, vinyl, TV or any audio by using the enclosed audio and line-out (RCA) cables. The Geneva Sound System Model XL also applies the patented "EmbracingSound" professional sound technology to deliver true stereo in a single cabinet. Now if all these doesn't convince you and you still think $1,075 is too much to spend for an iPod dock, there's also the Model L for $599.00 - same specs in a smaller cabinet (XL measures 21.7Â? x 23.5Â?; while Model L measures 17.6Â? x 11.1Â?). Available at Genevalab.

Just yesterday I was chatting with a co worker about the Apple Boot Camp news.  Not an Apple user [yet], his initial impression was that Apple had sold out.  To which I explained my view and the related benefits of this news.  Most notably, "What other computer is capable of running both OS X and XP?  That's 2 mainstream operating systems on one laptop."  His face lit up a bit.  Later he asked about the speed and capabilities, figuring slower results - no doubt considering the previous requirement to run under emulation.  Well Macworld comes to the rescue with benchmarks which pit the Intel Macs against similar HP and Dell machines.

You may notice the Mac Mini is not shown in these results.  There were apparently some issues that precluded it from being listed here.  Interestingly - in my opinion - is that the MacBook Pro beat out even the desktop based iMac.  The MacBook Pro takes the crown in 4 of the 6 tests used.  The 2 that it gave up were by a point or two, and the iMac was just a hair behind the MacBook Pro in just about each result to boot. 

Very impressive showing for the new kid on the block, eh?

OK, first a little background on the Merom processor from Intel. The Merom is a mobile 64-bit processor. It is said to offer 20% more performance than the current Core Duo at the same battery life. It will reportedly come with 4MB L2 Cache (up from 2MB on Yonah), and it's supposed to be released in late 2006.

Now for the great news. The same guy who had revealed earlier that the Mac mini could be processor upgraded simply by swapping out the socketed Intel processor, now reports that the unreleased Merom 64-bit mobile processor is also similarly compatible.

"It is possible to drop in Merom into Mini, one hell of an upgrade path. confirming this is a working combo, just drop the chip in."

More details aren't available. Blame it on those pesky NDAs. This time, the backward compatibility has been advertised by Intel themselves .

"During a separate briefing, Intel's Mooly Eden showed a benchmark pitting a Dell Core Duo system against the same system with a Merom processor (Eden literally swapped out the Core Duo CPU and stuck in a Merom processor, partly to showcase its backwards comptability). The benchmark was a custom Quake 4 timedemo, with the Core Duo system scoring 106.6 fps while the Merom system scored 134 fps: advantage Merom by just over 25%. We don't know any of the specifics of the settings on the systems, other than they were claimed to be identical."

It's great times for Apple fans these days, after Windows XP booting on it, and later bootcamp. Clearly, Apple is on a roll these days. That ought to shut-up the critics who were up in arms after Apple announced their partnership with Intel.

Logitech has unveiled its new speaker set to upgrade from the old mm22 speakers. These speakers will run off of four AA batteries and will allow up to 10 hours playback. The set also includes an AC adapter if you don't feel like spending your weeks gasoline allowance on batteries.

The mm32 set will not be as spiffy as the mm50 and the price reflects that. It will retail in the US for around $80 later this month.

OK well I'll admit it, I go through headphones like Homer goes through doughnuts, but this is by admission of choice and upgrades and not faults and breakage. I feel its appropriate to make you aware of the best sounding headphones, because lets face it, theres so many of them people don't have the luxury of trying each of them and understanding the specs that manufacturers offer. Read on and I'll explain some of my favorite earphones.

OK, so whats the difference between earphones and headphones. Simple think about its logic, headphones fit on your head, whereas earphones fit in your ear. In this article I'll discuss normal in ear earphones, and in the future I'll move onto headphones. Now, I've got a music background, we have a small recording studio in the family. You maybe thinking how does this help? Well it allows me to test the units on uncompressed music, and it also means that the equipment we use must always be the best. In order to make great sounding music, its is important to test it on various sound outlets.

With normal in ear earphones, the likely hood is you are going to be using them with a portable device, maybe an iPod or similar. It is important that your earphones work well to any genre and sound level. If you use something like EuPod then increasing sound levels are important to your quality, because you will find your unit can handle quite loud volumes but your factory spec earphones wont.

Most earphones work via the vibration of a tiny plastic bubble inside the units, mostly seen in the iPod Ear buds. However higher quality earphones work via magnets, apart from providing loud bass and less distortion, there is a better clarity between sound levels and bass/treble. Read on and I'll go through the review process of 3 top earphones.

Fujitsu has announced that it will be offering a 200GB notebook hard drive in the third quarter of 2006.  This will double the currently available storage limits for laptop computers, which is always a good thing.  (I get antsy and start cleaning stuff out whenever my PowerBook's drive gets down to 10 free gigabytes...)

The 2.5" serial-ATA drive includes hardware acceleration to improve command queueing.  It will be able to handle and reorder up to 32 instructions at a time.  The transfer speed will be 150MB/s and the drive will suck up 1.6 watts of power.  No prices available at this time.  Wonder how soon Apple will be able to get their hands on these and start offering them in the MacBook Pros?