Apple

For years, people have showered their iPods with adoration. Now, through a newly launched iPod dating site, the music player might reciprocate some of that love.

Columbus, Ohio-based PodDater launched a beta Wednesday of what it calls the world's first dating/social networking site that brings online dating to the iPod community, an idea fueled by the new video iPod.

The free service allows you to view user profiles, download video profiles to your iPod or any portable music player, and create and upload your own video profile. So far, there are 172 profiles up, but most don't … Read more

A buck may soon not buy you the latest track from Coldplay.

Speaking after his company's earnings report on Wednesday, EMI Music CEO Alain Levy said that Apple Computer is likely to institute more flexible pricing for iTunes, allowing the labels to charge more for hits and less for some older songs.

"We are having discussions which make us believe it will happen in the next 12 months," Levy said at a press conference, according to the Wall Street Journal. "There is a common understanding that we will have to come to a variable pricing structure. … Read more

MIT's Media Lab turned down millions of free copies of Apple's OS X operating system, an offer extended by Apple Chief Steve Jobs himself, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. The proposal was Apple's attempt to support the university's effort to supply children in developing nations with cheap laptops, the paper reported. The university decided to use free, open-source software instead because designers can freely tinker with it, the paper said.

But in a note to CNET News "clarifying" the Journal story, Media Labs co-founder Nicholas Negroponte said Jobs' offer … Read more

Hey, Palm fans. Are you jealous of those lucky stiffs with the Motorola Rokr and soon Razr that listen to their iTunes library in between taking calls?

Well, if you're a Treo 650 user working in a Macintosh world, at least you can now take some of your library around with you as well.

Los Gatos, Calif.-based Mark/Space released its update to Mac synchronization software, the Missing Sync for devices running on the Palm OS. Version 5.0 improves syncing with the Address Book and iCal applications in Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger", introduces … Read more

iPod Nano owners from the United Kingdom and Mexico filed a class-action lawsuit against Apple Computer last week claiming the wee music player is defectively designed with a scratch-prone screen. The new case, filed on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, is similar to one filed in October on behalf of U.S. consumers.

The new complaint asserts that the manufacturer "knew of the iPod Nano's design flaw but chose to ignore them in an effort to speed the product to market," according to a press statement from the plaintiffs. … Read more

Shoemaker Lugz issued a cease and desist order last week against Apple, asking the computer maker to halt using its iPod advertising campaign that features silhouetted figures against a fiery colored, cityscape backdrop, according to a report in Adweek.

Lugz is claiming its 2002 television advertising campaign, as well as its print ads, have a striking resemblance to Apple's advertising campaign for its popular iPod.

An Apple spokeswoman declined comment on the Lugz cease and desist order, noting the iPod ads are still accessible through its iPod and … Read more

New York Daily News gossip columnist Lloyd Grove (formerly of The Washington Post's "Reliable Source") wrote earlier this week about Steve Jobs and his alleged reaction to author Fredric Alan Maxwell's 4,000-word still unpublished article on Jobs' biological father "a Syrian immigrant and political science professor named Abdulfattah Jandali."

In response to the piece, Grove said Jobs offered the following one-liner: "Are you a nut case?"

What started as 19-year-old Yegor Simpson's Web-based plan to raise money for an iPod that he would then smash on film, has evolved into a dispute between two rival sites: the original SmashMyIpod.com and knock-off Buy Me An iPod.com.

According to the Cult of Mac blog, Buy Me An iPod.com "briefly hijacked SmashMyiPod.com's traffic--if you visited SmashMyiPod.com at about 4 p.m. PST (Wednesday), you would have been redirected to Buy Me an iPod.com."

"The hijacking was only possible because SmashMyiPod.com contained hidden code to Buy Me An … Read more

Yo baby, you think you're the "Apple" of your parents' eyes now? Just think of how spoiled rotten you'd be if you helped them win a whole "family" of iPods through iPodMyBaby's "World's Cutest Baby" contest.

All you need your parents to do is submit a photo of you in a "Click Wheel" outfit, either one purchased through the iPodMyBaby site, or made using click wheel art downloaded from the site. A panel of "celebrity judges" will then pick a winner to be announced around Dec. … Read more