New and Noteworthy: The iPod turns five; Apple 'Must Make A Decision About The Commercial Market'; more

The iPod turns five Macworld UK reports that five years ago today, Apple introduced the first-generation 5GB iPod with the slogan, 'a thousand songs in your pocket.' "According to Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the time: 'With iPod, Apple has invented a whole new category of digital music player that lets you put your entire music collection in your pocket and listen to it wherever you go. With iPod, listening to music will never be the same again.' It took a little while before the world grew to realize quite how right he was. The device itself was revolutionary. While MP3 players had been around for a while, they suffered in most cases from poor build quality, low capacities, slow file transfer and "clunky" media management software." More.

Apple 'Must Make A Decision About The Commercial Market' Computer Reseller News reports that Apple needs to make a decision about whether or not it wants to be a consumer products company and leave any share of the commercial market to sheer luck. "There continues to be a small number of solution providers that are engaged in the commercial market with Apple, despite the company's focus on consumers. But if Apple is drop-dead serious about the commercial market, at some point it is going to have to reach out more to the value-added channel. In the interest of full disclosure let me say I've become a Mac convert over the past few years. More than 10 years ago, I believed there was no future for Apple given the incompatibility of its product line with the installed infrastructure of the day. The Internet, of course, changed all that. Today, Internet connectivity is far more important than PC network connectivity." More.

DIY Mac paint ZDNet profiles  ColorWare, a company that offers offer brand-new MacBooks in 28 colors (including Fusion, Colbalt and Jade, pictured) for US$1749 (1.83GHz, 512MB RAM, 60GB, Combo) which is a US$650 premium over the same machine directly from Apple. "If you prefer that they pimp your existing ride, they can do that too. Painting a 13.3-inch MacBook will set you back US$449. The same fee applies to painting a MacBook Pro (both sizes), Aluminum PowerBook G4s (all three sizes), and 17, 20 and 24-inch iMacs. The company doesn't paint Titanium PowerBooks though." More.

Previously on MacFixIt

• QuickBooks 2006: Repeated crashes when sound alerts attempt to play
• Problems booting from AppleCare-supplied TechTool Deluxe CD
• .Mac problems (#2): Failure to retrieve/send e-mail; synchronization issues; Backup will not copy files; more
• Mac OS X 10.4.8 Special report follow-up

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