New and Noteworthy: iPod mini goes int'l; Apple design on the right track; Sony's claims criticized; iTunes contest for free

iPod mini to be available internationally Despite low availability in the U.S., Apple has announced that the iPod mini will be available internationally starting July 24. More.

Apple's "Just One More Thing" product design A MacNewsWorld commentary makes the argument that Apple's "Just One More Thing" product design is the right approach: "While some vendors look to lock in customers, so that they have to live with the products. Apple's panache is creating distinctive products that are so cool some people feel that they can't live without them." More.

Apple takes issue with Sony's storage claims A MacCentral article cover's Apple's criticism of the claim by Sony that their new hard drive-based Walkman stores 13,000 songs, noting that this is only true if you encode songs at 48Kbps, compared to the iPod-default of 128Kbps: "'If we played the same trick and took it down to 64kbps, you could say the 20GB iPod could hold 10,000 songs,' said Joswiak. 'You could take it down to 16kbps -- which is the lowest available to us like 48kbps is the lowest available to Sony -- and we could say it holds 40,000 songs." [Note that Sony's claims of 30-hour battery life also depend on 48Kbps encoding; at a more reasonable 128Kbps, battery life would likely drop to less than a third of that.] More.

Enter iTunes contest for free As most U.S. retail contests are required to provide a "no purchase required" way of entering, Apple's new "100,000,000 Song Countdown" contest does, as well. Engadget explains how. More.

Previously on MacFixIt:

• Entourage 2004: Problems sending files from iPhoto -- update
• Word 2004: Page numbering issue
• Odds and Ends: iCal event bug; Knowledge Base updates
• Utilities Updates: Xserve RAID Admin Tools; maintain1; Adium; Ext2 Filesystem; SafariBookmarkChecker
• New and Noteworthy: Spotlight center stage; Apple and open source; Expo appearances and products

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