Following last week's USA Today story detailing Pepsi's 'I Fought the Law' iTunes Super Bowl ad, Apple has decided to provide its own preview of the highly anticipated spot.

According to the Mail and Guardian Online, after Apple's applications and internet service vice-president Eddy Cue made an upbeat pitch about sales on his company's $0,99-per-track iTunes store, online competitor Napster warned music delegates to "stay-off the Apple platform".

The European digital music market continues to remain unconquered as recent comments from Apple executives imply that an overseas launch of the company's iTunes Music Store could be met with further delays.

According to USA Today, Pepsi's iTunes Super Bowl ad spot will feature some 20 teens who were sued by the Recording Industry Association of America, which accuses them of unauthorized downloads.

A product brief for Momentum's 'Maple' evaluation system appears to be one of the first documents to reference IBM's new 90-nanometer Power PC chip as the Power PC 970FX. Momentum is a technology-driven firm specializing in quick-turnaround design & delivery of standard and custom Single Board Computers.

Aspyr Mac Games

Below are a series of notes gathered from this evenings conference call with Apple CEO, Fred Anderson.

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2004 first quarter ended December 27, 2003. For the quarter, the Company posted a net profit of $63 million, or $.17 per diluted share. These results compare to a net loss of $8 million, or $.02 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Revenue for the quarter reached a four-year high of $2.006 billion, up 36 percent from the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 26.7 percent, down from 27.6 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 44 percent of the quarter's revenue.

The music-oriented Apple keynote that took place last week in San Francisco accomplished its mission of 'wowing' a consumer-based crowd with new versions of the company's the iPod and GarageBand software, but this week's focus will shift to music professionals.

iPod mini

"HP's blockbuster deal with Apple will have one exciting side effect. The company will be working with Apple to add support for Microsoft's superior Windows Media Audio (WMA) format to the iPod by mid-year," raves Connected Home magazine. While the 'superior' designation is up for debate, it appears that the only source of the tidbit is Paul Thurrott of Windows Network Magazine, a renowned anti-Apple, pro-Microsoft commentator.

The introduction of Apple's iPod mini has been met with mixed results from consumers and analysts who were expecting a greater price differential between the company's flagship iPod digital player and the miniature sidekick. With only a mere $50 separating 11 an additional gigabytes of space, it's difficult to decipher the iPod mini's intended target audience, as the computer maker may be starting to realize.

Following an announcement that the company sold 730,000 iPod digital music players between October and December, analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial estimate Apple will earn 14 cents a share on sales of $1.92 billion when it posts first-quarter results on Wednesday, according to CBS MarketWatch. "Apple gained even more attention ahead of its earnings report when it announced on Thursday a partnership with Hewlett-Packard to build iPods that will carry the H-P brand name."

GarageBand

Apple engineers are very satisfied with the latest results of quality assurance tests performed on a pre-production series of XServes, sources said earlier this week. A batch of about two dozen new PowerPC 970 G5-based servers rolled off a production line in one of Quanta's manufacturing facilities about two weeks ago. Each of the units, which consist of both single and dual processor models, reportedly passed Apple's quality assurance tests.

According to an article published in yesterday's edition of AudioRevolution, "rumors of the new budget priced iPod are completely true. The article goes on to state that the budget priced iPods are expected be Flash Memory based and will not carry the hefty storage capacity of their bigger brothers.

Industry contacts have recently reported on sightings of a new pre-production Apple 1U rack-mount server residing in Apple's Cupertino-based hardware labs. The tips arrives amongst wide-spread rumors that the company will finally bear the fruits of a G5-based XServe project during the month of January.

According to a number of circulating reports, Apple may soon unveil a new piece of software targeted at sound engineers specializing in professional audio recording and sound mixing. The Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), as sources describe it, is rumored to consist of a user interface developed by Apple Computer and sound technology acquired from Emagic.

Apple Computer, Inc. recently extended its AppleCare support service to cover the iPod family of digital music players, and rumors of a new plan that would insure accidental laptop damages have also turned heads in recent weeks. But for a company that was once renowned for its top-notch customer support, these strives mark only the beginning of what sources say will become a renewed commitment to reliability and support by the computer maker.

An article published in today's edition of Forbes appears to confirm a slew of rumors first published by AppleInsider over the last several weeks.