A report from AppleInsider indicates that Target, another major retail chain aside from Wal-Mart and Circuit City, is expected to pick up their own stock of the Apple's new entertainment showcase product, the Apple TV.

Best Buy finalized a deal with Apple to shelf the Apple TV in their stores last month, and Target will now become the next retail to have Apple TV on sale and on display.

Of course, the new stock is not yet expected to fill Target retail warehouses. Reports have come in stating that Target should be allowed one month in order to carry a full stock quota of the product in selected retail outlets nationwide. They are also planning on setting up eye-catching demonstration booths in some select outlets in order to introduce the new product to the public.

A representative from Target declined to comment on this report, after conferring with Target's "internal partners." The TiVo contender is a current top seller at all Apple chains nationwide, but is still up against a lot of competition from Microsoft and TiVo. It's ability to be modded for gaming and mobile use is an added edge for the product, however.

The launch of the loudly-trumpeted Windows Vista and the relative market success that followed it did little, if any, damage to the sales performance of Apple computers, says a report by Apple Insider.

Apple sales are down by a mere tenth of a point, which is quite a feat considering that many analysts assumed a market storm by the new Microsoft operating system. The storm has passed and Apple still stands. The Mac's 30 percent annual growth was unaffected this year as it remained at a solid 30 percent.

Apple's computer hardware department is in the US top five of dealers, only slightly behind market leaders Dell and Hewlett-Packard. It faces some tough competition, though, as Southeast-Asian manufacturers Lenovo, Acer and Toshiba also posted strong shipment figures.

"Microsoft's official consumer launch of Vista in January, [sic] had very limited impact on overall worldwide shipment demand on a quarterly basis," says research firm Gartner.

Apple is set to release its own next-generation operating system called Mac OS X Leopard edition, which it claims is easily superior to the Windows Vista. The Leopard is slated to arrive late this year.

The battle of rhetorics rages on. Most recently, Microsoft's Asia-Pacific head of smartphone strategy Chris Sorenson told press in a recent visit to Australia that while Apple's iPhone is a "great music phone", it'll be irrelevant to business users because it's a "closed device" and "there's no support for Office documents."

"If you're an enterprise and want to roll out line of business applications, it's just not an option," said Sorenson. "Even using it as a heavy messaging device will be a challenge." Sorenson also added that with Windows Mobile 6, Microsoft is bringing "more of what you can do on a PC, onto the devices. Manufacturers can innovate heavily in their designs, but keep that consistent [Windows] look and feel."

Sorenson also believes that user familiarity with Windows Mobile's interface will help keep the iPhone off the corporate market. Microsoft is currently battling against the dominance of Nokia and RiM in the converged device market.

Mat Lu of The Unofficial Apple Weblog has a very useful, and easy to use guide up on how to get the most out of having both an Apple Mac and a Microsoft Xbox 360. Yes, a Bill Gates console and a Steve Jobs computer can get a long with each other quite nicely.

Included in the guide are instructions on how to get the said console and the Mac to talk to each other on a network, tidbits on getting to use Xbox USB Accessories with your Mac, streaming media on your Xbox 360 to your Mac, and how to keep track of your Xbox Live Friends using your Mac.

Now, now, the 1337, er, leet, er elite (there you go), among you are probably going, "But we know how to do this already." Well, think of this as a beginner's guide. Hey, everyone's got to start somewhere right?

What's weird about this is that years ago people thought that this all this interoperability will be a bad thing.

For the complete guide, feel free to head to the article via our "read" link below.

Iljitsch van Beijnum, an avid fan of Apple products, wrote an opinion piece for Infinite Loop journal on Ars Technica which delved into why the next major OS X release's delay shouldn't be taken so lightly. Just last week, the official word on OS X 10.5, codenamed "Leopard," was to be delayed all the way until October 2007.

 

Despite Apple's consistent drive for a "spring release," Leopard won't make an appearance until fall of 2007. This proves that the speculation of the Mac OS revelation at the 2007 WWDC does signify that it's already in its polishing stages.

But Beijnum's concern isn't about its delay - he is far more concerned about the detrimental effects of the delay could do in relation to what Leopard could offer and what the current marketing strategy that accompanies the product. For the most part, the OS - as he says - comes with a feature set much needed by the Mac user community. iLife and iWork are claimed to be coming in Leopard-only versions.

Apple used to be the secretive product shipper: always being able to keep everything safely tucked in their closet until the big release date. This has always allowed Apple to slap giants like Sony and Microsoft with their new product releases. That character has been struggling to retain itself recently, with information leaks left and right before a product could even be put to production.

Unfortunately, the Mac community isn't such a forgiving crowd. There are those that don't even see a need for Leopard, and could care less about the release delays for 10.5. Tiger, according to them, is a safer bet to stay with instead of having to stave off months from purchasing a new Macbook.

It is possible that Leopard could be a disappointment to many once it releases, due to lack of HD support and hardware resolution independent support. Who, after all, is to say otherwise? Demonstrations are only slated for WWDC attendee eyes and most screenshots have either been debunked or unsatisfactorily rumored to many OS X users. So is the delay of Leopard really much of a big deal? Feel free to discuss.

It's probably not time to go running for the hills with your mp3 player, but a little information about everyone's favorite music machine is probably in order now. It seems that someone's managed to create the first virus that actually infects an iPod.

Of course, as with any proof of concept, it's not as devastating as one might think. The virus, known as "Podloso" or "Oslo.zip," infects only iPods running the iPod Linux software. When saved to the iPod's memory, the virus scans the hard disk, infecting all the .elf format files. Using the infected files comes up with the message, "You are infected with Oslo the first iPodLinux Virus".

The only bright side so far to this news is that it doesn't have a destructive payload as of yet. Furthermore, iPod Linux is only present in less than one percent of all iPods in the world, due to the specialized nature of using Linux as an OS.

This isn't the first time the device has had a problem with viruses, however. RJump, otherwise known as RavMonE.exe, was a trojan that opened up back doors in Microsoft Windows and was installed into a number of video iPods prior to their shipping.

Earlier in the week, we reported a deal between EMI and Apple regarding selling Digital Rights Management (DRM)-free content which has pleased digital music fans around the world. In a move to react with the status quo, Microsoft has followed by announcing that it, too, will do the same for the Zune community.

In a statement by Katy Asher, a spokeswoman for Microsoft, it was revealed that the company has also been holding talks with record outfits in an attempt to cut the consumers some slack.

It can be remembered that there has been an outcry both in the U.S. and in Europe against DRM because the policy essentially restricts compatibility and transferability of content in an attempt to curb piracy of copyrighted material. Apple and Microsoft has embedded DRM code in their media formats, making consumers clamor for a more flexible policy.

"We plan on offering it (DRM-free content) to them as soon as our label partners are comfortable with it," says Asher. She said that Microsoft has recognized what the people want and is working on giving them what they desire.

Analysts suggest that the move by Microsoft is based on Apple's policy because of the influence that the iPod line of players have over the community. We'll keep you posted as the situation brews in the ranks of the Zune team.

...right off the box! Kudos to curious Randy of Randy's Rants and Grant of Joystiq. After grabbing the newly-released game and controller bundle of Guitar Hero II, they simply plugged it into their Windows machines. And that's right: Windows recognized the controller perfectly.

It's really nothing new, but since Microsoft has been providing Xbox 360 controller ports to use your wireless Xbox 360 controllers on Windows, this controller just screams Plug n' Play.

Playing Frets on Fire, a free clone of Guitar Hero, Grant found that it even works great, after a little controller configuration. Window Vista may have a little bit of a frame rate problem with the game, but if you could step up to official Vista drivers, it should run fine.

Mac OS X is a slightly different story, as Grant claims the controller isn't recognized as an HID-compliant device, with GamePad Companion or the open source Xbox 360 driver.

Additionally, the OS X version of Frets on Fire couldn't be run successfully. So we could extend this post to the Apple blog hoping to catch the eyes of practicing porters and see if they could do anything about it.

Watch out though, butcher99 tried plugging his controller onto the USB port of his Windows Vista machine and Logitech devices, which could include ultra-sensitive G5 laser mice and G15 macro keyboards, to stop working. It's another compatibility problem that Microsoft doesn't have any solution for, except perhaps keeping the controller plugged into your Xbox 360.

Like Randy, we're anxious to know what the homebrew community can spruce up for this interesting little development. Photo courtesy of Randy.

Kevin Hoffman, a former developer of Windows software expressed his amazement for what he felt was excellent response and developer support of Apple for its developer community in the Leopard beta run-through.

"Apparently there are a few traces of good customer service left," he said when comparing the experience he had in the respective development loops of Apple and Microsoft.

Hoffman is referring to an experience he had when he was tinkering with code to develop small applications for the new OS X Leopard. Using Objective-C code, he finished the work and tried running it. He then discovered a few bugs he can't fix, so he copied the source code and sent it to Apple for a look.

Here's what he didn't expect: The people at Apple had a quick peek at the program, examined his work and pointed out possible causes of the bug. They then made some adjustments and optimized the app he sent in and sent it back to him better than ever along with a few expert pointers.

Hoffman says that in contrast, what you get in Windows is "a faceless "submit" button to which you can send your bug reports, but in all my years of testing Microsoft products, I have never received a reply to any of the bugs I've submitted, let alone confirmation that the issue was truly an issue and not a mistake on my part."

Newsflash: you might want to upgrade your digital audio player to support the AAC format. After all, this is the format to be used by Apple in selling their non-DRM music from EMI from now on, with lots of major music labels expected to follow suit on the months to come.

AAC is known to be the better digital audio format in terms of sound quality compared to the more popular MP3. Yesterday, Apple and EMI announced that they will be selling non-DRM tracks for US$ 1.29 per song. Such songs will be available in the AAC format.

Will your digital audio player support AAC? As of now, Microsoft, Nokia, Sandisk (e200 line), and Sony already include AAC playback on their devices. Those that don't have AAC format support are players from Creative, Toshiba, Cowon, Philips, etc.

Thankfully, upgrading your digital music player to support AAC can be done via firmware update. Just check your manufacturer's support if you want an upgrade.