âPodmapsâ Patent Reveals Interest in Mapping

A filing made by Apple in January 2007 shows that the company may have interest in merging visual maps and spoken directions.

The mix of a visual map and spoken directions would be assembled together to create a “Podmap”, which could then be transferred to an iPod or iPhone.

“In this regard, the application server can reply to the client program to notify the client that the requested podmap is now available from the podmap RSS server. The client program can then interact with the podmap RSS server to retrieve the requested podmap,” Apple said.

“In any event, once the requested podmap is resident at the client or the portable media device, the podmap is able to be played on such devices. Due to their support of media playback, the client and the portable media device can also be referred to as media playback devices. When being played, the podmap presents to the user of the device the voice directions and the corresponding images so that the user is able to successfully navigate from the start location to the destination location. It is particularly useful to play on the portable media device because it can be easily carried or transferred by the user.”

In Brief: T-Mobile to Begin Selling iPhone in Austria During First Half 2008

T-Mobile Chief Executive Hamid Akhavan said on Tuesday that T-Mobile will begin selling the iPhone in Austria in the first half of this year.

T-Mobile currently sells the iPhone in the German market.

Updates: Security Update 2008-001, Leopard Graphics Update 1.0, WebObjects 5.4.1

Security Update 2008-001 - Universal (28.8MB) - PPC (16.7MB)

Leopard Graphics Update 1.0 - 48.9MB

Leopard Graphics Update is recommended for all users and improves the stability and compatibility of your Mac. This update requires Mac OS X 10.5.2.

WebObjects Update 5.4.1 for Mac OS X 10.5 - 153MB

WebObjects 5.4.1 is an update release for the version of WebObjects included in the Mac OS X Leopard tools. This release fixes several bugs in areas such as web services serialization, deployment tools, and database compatibility, among others. This update can be installed on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. See the release notes for more information.

Mac OS X 10.5.2 Leopard Released

Following months of testing Apple has finally released the latest point update to Mac OS X Leopard.

The Mac OS X 10.5.2, is a 180MB update (340MB Combo) and is now available in the software update utility, a restart is required following installation:

The 10.5.2 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Leopard and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility and security of your Mac.

For detailed information on this update, please visit this website: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307109.
For detailed information on security updates, please visit this website: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61798.

The update includes hundreds of bug fixes and enhancements but the following are of particular significance.

• Back to My Mac: Adds support for more third-party routers, as detailed in this article.
• Dock - Updates Stacks with a List view option, a Folder view option, and an updated background for Grid view.
• Desktop - Addresses legibility issues with the menu bar with an option to turn off transparency in Desktop & Screen Saver preferences.
  Adjusts menus to be slightly-less translucent overall.

• Time Machine - Adds a menu bar option for accessing Time Machine features (the menu extra can be enabled in Time Machine preferences).

$100 Price Drop on iPhone and iPod touch?

9to5Mac believes that the iPhone and iPod touch could see a $100 price drop in the next two months. The move would also see Apple discontinuing the lower end models.

The rumour site speculates that Apple will scrap the 8GB iPod touch and iPhone, leaving a 16GB iPhone at $399, 16GB touch at $299, and 32GB touch at $399.

The move is highly reminiscent of the $200 price drop which happened in September 2007, the surprise price drop caused outcry amongst earlier adopters causing Apple to offer a $100 credit to those who initially bought the iPhone.

BBC iPlayer Coming to Macs, Apple TV?

The BBC has announced that it will make a download version of the iPlayer available to users of Macs by the end of 2008.

Currently Mac users can watch iPlayer content by streaming it over the internet but Windows users have the added ability to download content and store it locally for watching at the users convenience. This announcement will bring the download capabilities to Mac users.

“I hope this good news is evidence of the hard work that the BBC is committing to supporting other platforms,” wrote BBC director general Mark Thompson on his blog.

He continued “Were we to choose to not develop any systems or services until they could be received by every single individual licence-fee payer, our capacity for development and innovation - in the interest of serving those who fund our services - would be severely limited.”

On the same subject Ashley Highfield of the BBC writes in his blog that the Macworld 2008 announcement that movie rentals will be coming to Apple TV opens the device to iPlayer content.

This, coupled with Apple’s (long anticipated) move to a rental model, means that we can look to getting BBC iPlayer onto this platform too, as we should be able to use the rental functionality to allow our programmes to be downloaded, free, but retained for a time window, and then erased, as our rightsholders currently insist. write Highfield on the BBC website.