Apple Corp.

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As illustrated by The Oatmeal, you may suffer more than you imagined for loving your apple products. Take a look and decide for yourself though it does get a little raunchy in parts (fair warning).

Bad apple

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A glitch in the newest iTunes software update has caused many people to lose previously purchased music and movies. Though they've fixed the problem and apologized for it, many people are unsatisfied.

"Most of the music I have purchased online from Apple's iTunes Store has been deactivated," wrote Martin of Suisan, Calif. "I have purchased approximately $140 dollars worth of songs and videos from iTunes Store, which currently is worthless due to the fact that iTunes will no longer play any of them."

When you deal with a company that is dead set on controlling everything you do with your legally purchased media, you're best off not using their product. Even if you decide to use iTunes, make sure to strip the DRM off using the Hymn Utility so you can copy or use the music freely.

Apple Corp.

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The iPhone was greatly anticipated as revolution in wireless phones (in some circles, it's been called the "Jesus phone"). As soon as it was released, hackers and tweakers got to work on unlocking it so it could work on other carriers or just be used as a PDA/MP3 player without phone service at all. Soon after that was completed, people were writing custom applications and modifications left and right.

The problem is that AT&T was losing potential customers and Apple was under pressure to make people stop enjoying their iPhones. That said, Apple issued an update to the iPhones that they warned would destroy any phone that had been unlocked or modified. Besides the wicked backlash in press and blogging against Apple for this move (which seems more deliberate than accidental), the new update breaks many legitimate applications that were designed to work with the iPhone as well.

Worst of all, Nokia has just launched their newest product and an ad campaign with the dual slogans, "Phones should be open to anything" and "The best devices have no limits". In the end, if the new Nokia phone doesn't match up to the features of the iPhone, it won't matter, but there's already an in-depth review from an editor at Popular science.

• Nokia has higher data speeds and can be used as a wireless modem for a computer without the clumsy hacks necessary for the iPhone.
• Nokia's are "unlocked" by default. This means they can be used with any GSM cellphone service in the world. No hacks or cracks necessary,.
• Battery life – Inconclusive
• Web browsing – iPhone. No surprise there; the whole phone is a screen.
• 3rd party applications – Nokia wins because Apple is either actively or incompetently blocking 3rd party apps

And many more, but I won't spoil the details, just the results. The Nokia clearly wins in most categories (price and size being detractors). Anyway, iPhone better shape up if they don't want to be left behind.

Apple Corp.

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Apple music files can now be purchased without DRM, but it seems that they hide information in the file with your name and account information.

Now the question becomes, what do they do with the information? Ars Technica theorizes that this might be a new form of identifying file sharers since the file itself will blab who the original owner was.

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Now that Apple is planning a DRM-free store, we can conclusively say that Steve Jobs wasn't just paying lip service. Right on.

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The Mac website is tearing Vista to shreds listing how many of its "cool features" have been in Max OS X since 2001. As I'm reading the nearly snide snickering articles about why Mac is (and has always been in their opinion) better than PCs, I noticed one important thing about the upcoming Leopard system.

Apparently, they plan to have a type of content management built into the OS which means that if you open a file to find it corrupted or accidentally made changes you didn't intend and saved it, the Operating System will let you "go back in time" to see earlier versions of that document.

This is not the same as Windows' System Restore feature that keeps backups of your system files, this is for each individual file and can be accessed without system restart.