New and Noteworthy: Firefox 2.0 Beta Set To Launch This Week; Users find .Mac underwhelming, overpriced; more

Firefox 2.0 Beta Set To Launch This Week Top Tech News reports that Mozilla is set to release the first beta of Firefox 2.0, a highly anticipated follow-up to the increasingly popular browser. "Although Mozilla already has made a test version of the beta available for download by way of FTP, the company will not formally launch Firefox 2.0 Beta until later this week, 'until all testing has been complete,' said Alex Guerra, a spokesperson for Mozilla." More.

Users find .Mac underwhelming, overpriced Ars Technica reports on the growing perception that .Mac is one of Apple's most neglected product services. "US$99 is way too much to pay for services that haven't really been updated to meet modern expectations. Google's Gmail is mostly to blame, however many of .Mac's services and their pricing seem to be vastly out of line with what you can get by using 3rd party products. Applications like JungleDisk (works with Amazon's S3 service) is vastly cheaper for online disk space, and the aforementioned Gmail or Yahoo! Mail fills the bill for web mail. On the topic of mail, Gmail is obviously free and actually does a decent job of spam filtering on its own, whereas Apple's .Mac mail service is limited to whatever free space you have on your iDisk account and has woefully inadequate spam filtering when put up against Gmail's service." More.

Switching from Windows to OS X caused five "Argh" moments ZDNet columnist Robyn Peterson details his experience switching to Mac OS X from Windows, noting that he ran into some frustrating pitfalls. "During the initial start-up sequence, OS X asked me if I wanted to log into my home Wi-Fi network, which it had already found. That impressed me. After clicking "Yes," I entered my WEP password and clicked to proceed. No go: Authentication error. So I entered the password again, and again, and again. I even used a Windows machine to log into my router to verify that I had the correct information. I did. Argh. There went an hour of my life that I'll never get back." More.

Top Apple executive in Japan resignsThe San Jose Business Journal reports that , Yoshiaki Sakito, a Japanese executive at the forefront of Apple's successful marketing of its iPod digital music player in Japan, has resigned with plans to start his own venture business. "The iPod has become a market leader in Japan, as it has elsewhere in the world, and Sakito's resignation comes at a times when other rivals, such as Sony Corp., plan to push their own products." More.

Previously on MacFixIt

• Special Report: Troubleshooting Mac OS X 10.4.7
• Aperture 1.1.2 (#2): Users report marked speed improvement
• iMac (17-inch Mid 2006) lacks Bluetooth

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