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>> Brian Tong: What's cracking? Brian Tong here and welcome to The Apple Byte. Well, we're talking all the good and bad inside the world of Apple. So what moves are publishing companies making now that the iPad's arrival is only two months away? Well, Amazon prices their e-books at $9.99, the Macmillan, which is one of the big-six publishers, recently put their foot down and said if they couldn't price new e-books at $15.00, they would distribute new releases to them. Amazon then threatened to pull all of Macmillan's content off of their website, but then agreed to the new pricing instead.
Now, in a story by Media Memo, News Corp's CEO, Rupert Murdoch, whose media conglomerate owns publisher HarperCollins, says they're also looking for higher prices for e-books and Apple's agreement allows them more flexibility. So, companies are now using Apple as a negotiation tool for higher pricing of digital content when it used to be the music labels fighting against Apple. Oh, how the times have changed.
Now, we haven't talked about Apple desktops for a while, but Ars Technica reports that Apple's Nehalem-based Mac Pros are having heat and performance issues when doing any kind of audio processing tasks. It involves something as simple as playing iTunes or watching movies in QuickTime, and users can potentially experience a performance decrease of up to 20 percent for other tasks. I don't know why, but that kind of sounds like a Cialis commercial. You know what I'm talking about, right, Ariel? Okay, no response.
All right. Apple's not publically addressing the issue, so get on top of things with your desktops, or else I'm really throwing out the bad apple. And I've heard plenty of questions asking about the status of the 27-inch iMac screens' flickering and discoloration issues. Apple released their second firmware update a few days ago, and also refuted a claim that production was stopped due to the issues. Current on-line orders show about a two-week wait time.
Now, an Apple spokesman told the Wall Street Journal the 27-inch iMac has been a huge hit with customers. I think you should ask your customers how they feel about that one. But he also added the company has also fixed the screen issues. But my advice: wait it out until this new batch of 27-inchers are available. And if you want to wait even more, iLife 10 is just around the corner if you don't want to pay extra to get the latest version.
All right, sometimes The Apple Byte finds some lost footage from our events, and we just couldn't pass on this one.
Man, you got to check this out, okay...
>> I got work to do, man.
>> You're always on, Facebook. Don't even give me that. Okay, look at that. See, that's Steve Jobs right there, right?
>> Uh huh.
>> And so, I'm doing my thing... he looks at me, I look at him, and he walks away! He walks away.
>> You guys didn't even look at each other.
>> No, look, look, look. Right there. We're looking at each other, and he walks away.
>> That's it?
>> All right, this is all the proof you need. He's gonna look at us right... right there, right there. Look at that!
>> You know what? I think you're right.
>> He's trying to send us a message. I told him we stand our ground. Brian Tong, one... Steve Jobs, zero.
>> Did he say my name at all?
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>> That's right, I dissed Steve Jobs. And Steve, I see you, too. Okay, let's get some quick bytes. If you want to get some quick PR, why don't you just sue the Apple iPad? Chinese manufacturer Shenzen Great Loong Brother Industrial is reportedly considering doing that, claiming the iPad has too close of a resemblance to their P88. Their president says the two devices are completely identical, and he's right. Let's just take a look at some of their similarities. It runs Windows XP, it has a webcam, a 250 gig internal drive, a thicker and heavier body, and it has one and a half hours of battery life. Yeah, good luck with that.
All right, that's gonna do it for this week's show. We had a lot of stories, so I promise we'll get your emails in next week's show. Send them along to, theapplebyte@cnet.com. I'm Brian Tong, thanks for watching, and come back next time for another byte of the apple.
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