Month of October , 2004

According to ThinkSecret, Apple has seeded build 8A294 to developers this morning.

At this stage, little is known about iLife '05, but there is one very interesting feature of the next major release of iTunes that was confirmed by several sources.

The Mac Observer reports that according to Gartner, Apple's worldwide market share fell to 1.8% this year from 2.1% last year.

Dear readers,

MacosXrumors has recently been transfered to new servers. This transfer, combined to some configuration mistakes, has resulted to a big percentage of lost emails. If you have sent important mail to rumors@macosxrumors.com, contact@macosxrumors.com or through the anonymous form, please send it again so as to be sure that we received it.

Thank you in advance.

For the first time since late 2000, Apple's stock price has reached the price of $50. Today, the company's stock has closed at $50.30.

In a thread posted on a major French Mac site?s forum (MacGeneration), a reader reveals that Apple?s Quartz Composer that I have mentioned in a recent article is actually just a newer version of a program called PixelShox.

Apple has announced on its UK web site that its first European retail store, located in London, Regent Street, will open its doors on November the 20th 2004.

QuickTime has been updated to version 6.5.2, this release fixes bugs, enhances security and provides better Lossless and AAC encoding.

The update is available for download here.

As expected by recent rumors, Apple releases iPod Photo and iPod U2 Special Edition.

iTunes Music Store opens in Austria, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain.

UPDATE: Apple Store US has just closed as well.

The french online Apple Store is closed. Today Apple is expected to launch a new special U2 Edution iPod and maybe a color screen, photo capable iPod with a 60GB hard drive.

UPDATE: if you encounter connection problems to our mirror that hosts the screenshots, try this.

More reports are coming from sources who are actively testing 8A26X builds of Tiger. The next major revision of Mac OS X brings a new application called VoiceOver Utility, a Migration Assistant (though it has been present since very early builds) and many improvements of the developer tools. QuickTime has some hidden new features not noticed in earlier reports while Mail has been totally revamped in the last seeds.

UPDATE: if you encounter connection problems to our mirror that hosts the screenshots, try this.

Sources have sent us detailed reports on the latest beta builds of Tiger (8A26X series) and provided us information and screenshots on Apple?s new Graphing Calculator, Preview annotations, Polytonic Greek support and some new settings added to some System Preferences? panes.

LightScribe is a technology from HP that allows you to burn the label of a CDR/DVDR directly on the printable side of the media itself, using laser light. This technology requires the use of LightScribe compatible media but these type of media will be just 10 cents more expensive to produce than current ones.

Some quite reliable sources reported that Apple was seeking a SuperDrive manufacturer that can use LightScribe technology on its components.

Latest builds of Tiger reveal several new features in Mail, Safari, QuickTime and account Administration. AppleInsider has recently posted some screenshots illustrating these new features. The last article concentrates on Multi-user controls and QuickTime sharing.

MacCentral has recently interviewed David Moody, Apple's VP of Worldwide product marketing, about the new iBooks release.

Apple has finally re-opened its online store. New iBooks and a new entry-level PowerMac are now available to order.

UPDATE: US Store has now closed as well.

The French AppleStore web site has just temporarly been closed. The classic message "We are busy updating the store for you and will be back within the hour." with the "We'll be back soon" post-it are displayed. New products are expected to be released today.

MacRumors claims that Apple may release an entry-level PowerMac G5 today, along with the rumored new iBooks. According to its sources, the entry-level PowerMac will be a single 1.8Ghz PowerMac G5 and will be priced $1499. The site also provides suggestions of its sources on the specifications of the new iBooks.

Additional information provided by new sources and qualified as "technically possible" by initial Freescale story's sources gives us a more precise timeframe for the use of MPC7448 processors in Powerbooks.

According to MacWorld, Apple has sent invitations to the media for a special event that will take place at the California Theatre in San Jose on October the 26th.

Think Secret is confirming that new iBooks are coming tomorrow and adds some information of unconfirmed sources

UPDATE: Amazon has stopped taking pre-orders on Tiger, availability dates have disappeared.

Readers noticed that Amazon has started accepting pre-orders for Apple's next major operating system release, Mac OS X Tiger 10.4 on it's online store.

According to reliable sources, the next generation of Apple's Powerbook line will feature new G4 processors from Freescale, a subsidiary of Motorola that focuses only on the processor market.

A quite reliable source has recently reported that the Powerbook 12" will be replaced by a 13.3" widescreen model, before mid-2005.