Briefly: Apple sued by Ramones drummer, MainStage 1.0.1, more...
Apple is among several music download service operators that have been hit with a new lawsuit from the former drummer of the 1980s punk band, The Ramones. Meanwhile, Apple has released a small update to MainStage. And there are also rumors of a current quarter Mac sales surge.
In the suit, filed in a Manhattan court on Friday, Reinhardt alleges his music publisher never had the right to authorize distribution or duplication of six songs — Smash You, Somebody Put Something in My Drink, Human Kind, I'm Not Jesus, I Know Better Now, and (You) Can't Say Anything Nice — that he wrote on his own between 1983 and 1987.
The suit is similar to one filed against Apple and others by Dawg Music back in May, where the owner of the small bluegrass label accused the service operators of selling his work without consent, and sometimes without compensation.
In his suit, Reinhardt is seeking at least $900,000 in damages, profits the defendants made from the songs and a permanent injunction prohibiting the defendants from using the songs in any manner whatsoever, according to Reuters.
MainStage 1.0.1
On Thursday evening, Apple release MainStage 1.0.1 [19.7MB], which improves stability and adds options for saving parameter values when switching patches. The software update, which is detailed further in this PDF, is recommended for all users of MainStage 1.0.
Designed for live performance, MainStage is a part of the Apple's new Logic Studio software bundle that lets keyboardists, guitarists, and other musicians perform with software instruments and effects through a full-screen interface designed specifically for the stage.
Mac sales surge?
Despite its shaky track-record, The Street.com pressed forth with more Apple predictions on Friday. Their latest report claims that Apple is on track to sell "2.35 million iMacs and MacBooks this quarter."
"A sales number that high would beat analysts' estimates by nearly 400,000 units," the report states. "Pegging the average Mac sales price at a conservative $1,500, a beat of that magnitude stands to boost Apple's top line by about $600 million."
Apple has yet to break the 2 million mark for quarterly Mac sales, but has been inching ever closer with each successive quarter. During the July quarter, it sold 1.76 million systems.
The Street.com also claims that Apple next quarter will hold "a big announcement regarding a so-called subnotebook Mac." Citing "people inside the company," the say the notebook will be "ultra-thin" and "will have a 10 inch-to-12 inch screen, sleek rounded edges and weigh less than 2 pounds."
23 Comments
As for 10" to 12" screens... if The Steet's contacts "inside the company" actually knew the details of the products they were leaking, they would actually know one of the core specs. I'd trust this leak about as far as I can pee. (leak = pee... funny...)
Now watch as Shaw Wu changes his story to reflect a laptop UNDER 13".
All this time he's been saying 13, and I've been saying, "If Apple's going to play the sub-notebook game, they're going to play it right and create an amazingly light and compact tool... not a crippled MB." And have you listened to me? NooOoOooooOOoooo. You're all too busy listening to Shaw Wu, who (BY THE WAY) gets all his news from AI anyway.
Fools.
-Clive
Former Ramones drummer Richard Reinhardt is suing Apple, Wal-Mart, Real Networks and others for copyright infringement, claiming the companies lacked permission to sell downloads of six songs he authored.
He sounds a little self-effacing... sarcism aside, I think Apple and the others should pool their entire sales together of his songs that people downloaded, give this guy his .99¢ he's due and remove his entire solo song catalog of half a CD's worth and give him an iPod Nano (last year's version) with their apologies!
This article (with video) has some comments from The Street that should be taken into account before paying any attention to their "information." They lie about Apple (and other stocks) for profit, and admit it openly:
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM...22A105D18.html
Seeding false reports of bad Apple news is easy, as Cramer explained, “If I were short Apple, I would be working very hard today to get that. And the way you would do that is pick up the phone and call six trading desks. And say, listen, I just got off the phone with my contact at Verizon, and he has already said 'listen, we’re a Lucky G [LG] house, we're a Samsung house, we’re a Motorola house. There is no room for Apple. They want too much. We are not going to let them in. We are not going to let them do what they did to music.' And that’s a very effective way to keep a stock down.”
“What's important when you're in that hedge fund mode is to not do anything remotely truthful. Because the truth is so against your view that it's important to create a new truth, to develop a fiction. The fiction is developed by almost anybody who is down by 2% or up 6%. You can't take any chances, you can't have the market up any more than it is if you're up 6.”
Sometimes they invent good news, sometimes bad, but they can NOT be relied on to report what they feel to be the truth. They are just as likely to be reporting this because they heard confirmation that Apple never planned such a laptop, and want to profit later with bad news of the project's late cancellation
I'd love an Apple subnotebook, but The Street is not a source that I give credence to. They may guess right, or report something true if it suits them, but you just can't tell. 9to5Mac is a more reassuring source on this matter.
Gabba Gabba Hey!