In an attempt to appease them Apple responded by making iMovie HD available for download so that users had a choice.

Yesterday, however, that situation changed. iMovie ’09 has been released with iLife ’09, and it supposedly addresses many of the issues people were concerned about, and Apple is ready for customers to move on to the new experience offered by the re-imagined iMovie.

I, for one, am looking forward to trying out iMovie ’09. The software looks great, and even though I’ve been using the traditional form of Non-Linear Editing Systems since high school – I’m fine with the change in style that iMovie represents.

How about you?

Yesterday afternoon Apple released a software update called Nvidia Graphics Update 2009. The update is designed to improve cursor movement when using Apple’s Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter with the most recent MacBook Air, MacBook, and MacBook Pro.

The update is available via OS X’s Software Update feature.

First the software in question was iWork ’09, but now further reports are appearing that suggest pirated copies of Adobe Photoshop CS4 could also be carrying the Trojan.

Companies like Symantec are all over this, sending our press releases and offering themselves up for interviews regarding the malicious software.

Bottom line is – Macs are getting more and more popular, and with that popularity will come malicious software. The Trojans are out there people…download at your own risk.

Over the weekend many sites posted interesting looks back at the history of Apple. Time Magazine posted their Top 10 Apple moments. Read Write Web posted “Mac: 25 Years in Pictures”. Michael Miller recalled the first time that Steve Jobs showed him a Macintosh on his PC Mag blog, and Digg users voted a YouTube video of Steve Jobs demoing the fist Macintosh from 1984 to the home page of the site.

There are actually many more on other Apple sites, so many, in fact, that it seemed kind of silly to post another one here. So let me just say “Happy birthday Mac.” and leave it at that.

One thing is clear about Apple, no matter how big they get, or how much they change over time, the company has had an amazing impact on the industry with products like the Macintosh, and their legacy will live on for generations to come.

The software, which can be installed on an AppleTV, allows you to stream online networks, and even Hulu movies and other features, directly to your television, and with the addition ABC, all the major networks are now represented on the software.

The company behind Boxee is contemplating releasing a set-top box of their own, or perhaps integrating their software with other devices such as game consoles.

Space creatures can be upgraded with 32 new accessories, including Energy Blades, Stunning Charm, Jump Jet, and more.

The expansion pack is designed to add more depth and variety to the space portion of the game. For the first time, the adventure creator will allow users to build and share missions based on personalized planets.

EA has not announced a formal release date for the expansion pack just yet – but they are happy to take your money if you’re interested in getting it at some point in the future.

You can pre-order it now right here.

Having said that, I’ve been using Blogo 1.2 for a few days now, and I’m finding so far that it really speeds up my blogging productivity. The App stakes up minimal space on the desktop, and leaves me plenty of room to have other windows open. It has a nice clean and simple style to it that I like quite a bit, and so far it’s worked well with almost every blog I write on.

I’m going to be using the application for the next month or so, and report back with a full review of it after I’ve had some extended time with it to see if it will truly replace web-based blogging for me. So far – it’s looking good.

Blogo works with a variety of blogging platforms including WordPress, Facebook, Tumblr, MySpace, Twitter, LiveJournal, and many more. It also has a number of advanced features, and actually hands image editing and integration better than any other blog editor I’ve ever used.

It’s available now for $25, and there is also a free trial that you can give a test run if you like.

For full details about the 1.2 update, check the full press release after the break.

Blogo 1.2 Launched, Adds Ping.fm, Expression Engine, HTML editing, Comment Moderation

Brainjuice announced today that the official release of Blogo 1.2 (http://www.drinkbrainjuice.com/blogo), its Mac desktop blog editor and Twitter client, is available for download. The application makes blogging on the Mac easy even for those with no knowledge of HTML, and this release adds Expression Engine, a popular content management system, and Ping.fm, a service which updates multiple social networks with a single login. This version also adds comment moderation using the new API introduced in WordPress 2.7.

With Ping.fm, Blogo now supports Tumblr, Livejournal, Facebook, Myspace, Jaiku, and Plurk among others.

This version adds lots of features to the blog editor, as well as a number of fixes and improvements to stability in general. Highlights include:

HTML Editor:
The editor can now toggle between Rich Text and HTML, combining the ease of use of the classic editor with the flexibility to get into the code and make adjustments when necessary. There is also a preference to turn off inline styles, a welcome addition for those who prefer to keep their blog’s HTML clean.

Ping.fm:
Users can post status updates via Ping.fm, and accounts can be configured to send a status update whenever an article is published.

Expression Engine:
Users can now post to any blog built with Expression Engine, a popular content management system and one of the most requested blog platforms.

Comment Moderation:
When used with WordPress 2.7 or higher, Blogo will download unmoderated comments, which can be approved, deleted or marked as SPAM.

Twitter Search:
The Microblog viewer was expanded with a tab to search Twitter’s archives, useful for doing quick research and following trends. The application also displays the most talked-about keywords at the moment from Twitter’s Trends API.

Improved Safari Integration:
The application comes with a bookmarklet which can be added to Safari to post videos, slideshows and inline ads directly from Flickr, Picasa, Vimeo, YouTube, Google Adsense, Google Maps, Boo-box, and Blip.fm without copying and pasting HTML.

Offline Editing:
Users can write and preview their posts while not connected to the internet, as well as save drafts to a local drive to be published later.

Blogo is available for Mac OS X 10.4 and up as a 21-day unlimited trial, and can be purchased at the Brainjuice store (http://www.drinkbrainjuice.com/store/order/new/1) for $25.

Benjamin Jackson
(617) 381-4275

See screenshots of Blogo’s interface: http://www.drinkbrainjuice.com/products/screenshots/1
See screencasts of Blogo in action: http://vimeo.com/brainjuice

About Brainjuice:
Brainjuice is an independent software house founded in 2007 by Benjamin Jackson and Ivan Neto. Its products focus on the Mac and iPhone and put usability first.

If these videos are truly shots of Snow Leopard then you can see that it appears that you’ll be able to customize which Spaces your Apps open into from the Dock itself as well as few other minor things.

With Leopard’s release, that kind of thing would have been in the tally of over “300 new features” that Apple claimed the OS had. Most of those “features” however, were minor tweaks to things like the DVD Player.

You can see more videos here.

In addition to OSX 10.5.6, Apple issued some updates to Mobile Me yesterday that arrived across several key aspects of MobileMe’s web apps and syncing abilities. The primary updates are for improvements to syncing changes that are made to the contacts, calendars, and bookmarks.

This, of course, coincides with the Mac OSX 10.5.6 update.

I just got a notice a few days ago that this is the last week of my Mobile Me subscription. I wish I hadn’t bothered signing up when it was .Mac – because now I’m tied to this email address, and I feel like I HAVE to spend the $100 – and I really don’t have it to spend right now. If I don’t, though, I’ll lose it. So it’s a bit of a mess.

I hope that this update makes it worth the $100 finally. I’ve yet to have a good experience with MobileMe since the rebranding. I know many of you have it working fine – but I haven’t been so fortunate. We’ll see how it goes.

There hasn’t been much said about Mobile Me recently. Things have been quiet since the less than spectacular launch of the service earlier this year. That is – until Ars Technica found this support document.

The document reveals a large list of changes, including some features that may be returning soon. There are many enhancements mentioned in the support document, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was somehow posted by accident.

Apple is not typically this forth-coming with the “under the hood” info on any product. Still, it makes for an interesting read…and I wonder when we’re actually going to start seeing some of these things?

As I sit here (extremely frustrated) wishing that Mail would actually work, I can’t help but wonder why we haven’t seen an update on the MobileMe News page since August 29th.

It can’t be because MobileMe is fixed. If it was fixed, I wouldn’t have to keep a browser window open to use the mail service on me.com because my actual Mail App can’t send or receive email half the time.

I understand that we’ve all been given extensions of our MobileMe accounts, and that they’re “doing their best” to get it up to snuff – but seriously – HIRE MORE PEOPLE. Get this figured out. I am sick and tired of my email not being dependable.

I’ve already started moving important business email to other services, but if at least a month or two of the extension isn’t problem free, then there’s just no way I’m going to pay for this. I’m getting nothing of value out of this constant trouble, and if it was any other company I would have abandoned this crap months ago.

“I’m sorry, we’ll fix it” is only going to work for so long, and I’m beginning to think that actually fixing this problem is beyond their capacity.

argh.

Today’s Show: iPhone 2.0.2 released, MobileMe update, and more!

You can subscribe via iTunes, or by RSS feed, or…

you can listen to the episode right here: right here

In addition to that, you can also download the Apple Gazette Daily Widget and listen to every episode of the show right on your Dashboard. Click Here to download.

Yesterday afternoon Apple released another iPhone update. This one, update 2.0.2. At the time of this writing its not exactly clear what the update does, but one hopes that it will help the 3G reception problems that have been bugging so many users. It’s not something that I’ve had a problem with, but I know others who can barely make a call with the 3G turned on. With any luck, this will fix the problem.

Apple also sent out an email to MobileMe customers yesterday evening thanking them for being patient with the MobileMe launch, and extending everyone’s accounts by 60 days (this is in addition to the original 30 day extension). The email even refers to the fact that the launch of MobileMe hasn’t been Apple’s “finest hour” and promises to make it better.

As a MobileMe customer I have to say I appreciate the extension. I’m not sure I would have renewed next month, and now I can give them a little more time to sort everything out.

Today’s Show: iMac turns 10! Phishing Scam targets MobileMe Users and More!

You can subscribe via iTunes, or by RSS feed, or…

you can listen to the episode right here: right here

In addition to that, you can also download the Apple Gazette Daily Widget and listen to every episode of the show right on your Dashboard. Click Here to download.

There is a new phishing scheme out in the wild that is duping hundreds of MobileMe users into giving up their credit card info and other personal data. Computerworld spoke with Dan Clements, the president of CardCops, an identity protection company, who uncovered the scam.

They report that the scam was timed with the switch from .Mac to MobileMe, and was presented to people as an email asking users to re-enter their credit card information because of a billing error. CardCops claims that even very sophisticated users were falling for the attack.

They claim the reason for this is a combination of the professional nature in which the phishing email was presented, and Apple user’s trust in the company itself. While that last bit may be debatable, what isn’t debatable is that if you’ve received an email like this you’re probably going to want to cancel that credit card.

Today’s Show: iPhone 3G problems, MobileMe problems, and Singapore!

You can subscribe via iTunes, or by RSS feed, or…

you can listen to the episode right here: right here

In addition to that, you can also download the Apple Gazette Daily Widget and listen to every episode of the show right on your Dashboard. Click Here to download.

Yesterday afternoon my mail just stopped working. MobileMe went down, and there was no way – not through iPhone, Desktop, or Webmail to access my email. Since I depend on my email heavily for work, to say that it was a bit upsetting would be an understatement.

To make matters worse, Gmail went down at the exact same time – making my alternate email unavailable as well. Had that not happened, there would probably be an article today about how I was dropping my MobileMe account, and it was time to move back to Gmail.

Unfortunately, now I’m sitting here not sure what to do. The MobileMe situation is getting past the point of acceptable. I mean this is a paid service that can’t even keep my email available on a consistent basis. My subscription expires in a month or so – and I see no reason to renew it. Not one…except that I don’t want to lose email from people that might be sending something to my @mac account.

The Gmail situation is a one time thing (for me anyway) in the last several years – so I don’t think that you can say that gmail is as unreliable as MobileMe has become – but all of my email address are set up with one of these two services – and have been for years.

As a result, I don’t really want to look at Yahoo! or (God forbid) Hotmail. So it seems, for the time being, I’m just stuck with Apple’s crappy MobileMe service.

I would warn others, though, that MobileMe is not something that is currently good enough to pay for. In fact – I almost feel like Apple should be paying ME something for putting up with this crap.

Last night Apple CEO Steve Jobs sent an internal email to Apple employees admitting that the MobileMe launch was a mistake, and that they company had a lot to learn. Ars Technica had a chance to look at the email, and provide a few quotes.

Jobs started by saying that the MobileMe launch was “not up to Apple’s standards”, and continued by saying “It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store…We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence.”

As a result of all the problems, the MobileMe team has been restructured and Eddy Cue will now be in charge of all Internet based Apple initiatives, including iTunes, the App Store, and MobileMe.

Jobs concluded by saying : “The MobileMe launch clearly demonstrates that we have more to learn about Internet services…and learn we will. The vision of MobileMe is both exciting and ambitious, and we will press on to make it a service we are all proud of by the end of this year.”

Today’s Show: More on MobileMe,iPhone 3G cracks, and more speculation!

You can subscribe via iTunes, or by RSS feed, or…

you can listen to the episode right here: right here

In addition to that, you can also download the Apple Gazette Daily Widget and listen to every episode of the show right on your Dashboard. Click Here to download.

Another update on the Apple MobileMe Status blog informs us that Apple has completely repaired the mail service which was unaccessible by 1% of registered users on and off for the last week or two. If there are MobileMe users that are still experiencing Mail problems, Apple has launched a dedicated chat line for this exact issue. No other issues will be dealt with while contacting the line – so don’t bother.

Apple also admitted that there was a bug discovered on Monday that was causing some users to lose their contacts and calendar data over the air. This issue has been fixed as well. Apple suggests that if if you’re still having problems you should restore your data to correct the problem.

Its really nice getting this information direct from the company. Hopefully they will see the value of this status blog, and continue to give us bog style updates on Apple.com in another capacity once they have MobileMe at 100%.

Today’s Show: Apple speaks on MobileMe, Jobs speaks on his health and more

You can subscribe via iTunes, or by RSS feed, or…

you can listen to the episode right here: right here

In addition to that, you can also download the Apple Gazette Daily Widget and listen to every episode of the show right on your Dashboard. Click Here to download.

Today’s Show: Mossberg on MobileMe, Apple hiring, and more!

You can subscribe via iTunes, or by RSS feed, or…

you can listen to the episode right here: right here

In addition to that, you can also download the Apple Gazette Daily Widget and listen to every episode of the show right on your Dashboard. Click Here to download.

He also points out that calendars and address books are not synched into their main Outlook counterparts in Windows. Instead, MobileMe creates separate files that do not become immediately visible. Apple blames the problem on Microsoft’s software…but these issues are the least of a MobileMe subscribers worries at this point.

The real question is – how long will this last? Personally, if I didn’t have some critical email that I need replies to on my .mac address, I’d have already left the service after these problems. They’ve gone on too long for something as essential as email to my job. Still, there is really nothing I can do but wait it out and hope for the best.

What about you?

You can read the full email below.

In spite of all this, people are still reporting quite a few problems with MobileMe. I have noticed an issue where email that I send isn’t arriving for hours, and sometimes not at all. Others have reporting syncing problems, multiple copies of email, email not deleting, and more.

Are you still having problems with Mobile Me?

This morning Apple has released a software update for OS X to enhance MobileMe compatibility on the desktop.

The Mac OS X Update For MobileMe is recommended for users running Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.4 and includes general system fixes that enhance your Mac for MobileMe.

For detailed information about MobileMe, please visit this website: http://www.apple.com/mobileme/

You can get it through Software Update now.