THE USUAL, CLEAR, STRAIGHT-FORWARD STORY THAT COMES OUT OF CUPERTINO EVERYDAY 

Study: Apple customers are by far the most loyal of any computer company. Apple, Google and Symantec have today been revealed as the high-technology companies.... [MacDailyNews]

RUMOR: Intel’s Woodcrest to power Apple’s next-gen high-performance Mac Pro desktops. Apple Computer has selected dual-core Xeon server processors from Intel Corp. to power its next wave... [MacDailyNews]

THE USUAL, CLEAR, STRAIGHT-FORWARD STORY THAT COMES OUT OF REDMOND EVERYDAY 

Gates warns yet another Windows Vista delay possible. There's an 80 percent chance that Windows Vista, Microsoft's next generation operating system... [MacDailyNews]

Microsoft CEO Ballmer: we’ll never have this long a gap between Windows releases again. Microsoft Corp.'s customers will never again face as long a wait between new versions of Windows software... [MacDailyNews]

Podcast: Windows 98, you're dead to me. Microsoft leaves 50 million out in the cold! Hear all about it on CNET's daily Buzz Out Loud podcast. [CNET News.com]

Olympics Imperil Historic Beijing Neighborhood. Will the 2008 Olympics enhance the city‘s ‘‘cultural heritage’’ or help finish off what remains of old Beijing? By JIM YARDLEY. [NYT > Home Page] 

VIOLENCE 

Wave of Violence in Baghdad Puts 3-Day Death Toll Past 100. Many Iraqis say the worsening security crisis in Baghdad and neighboring provinces feels like a low-grade civil war. By KIRK SEMPLE. [NYT > Home Page]

Series of Bombs Explode on 7 Trains in India, Killing Scores. Seven bomb blasts brought Mumbai, India’s financial capital, to a panicked standstill, resurrecting memories of past bloodbaths. By SARITHA RAI and SOMINI SENGUPTA. [NYT > Home Page]

GENIUS 

What Kind of Genius Are You?. A new theory suggests that creativity comes in two distinct types -- quick and dramatic, or careful and quiet. By Daniel H. Pink of Wired magazine. [Wired News: Top Stories]

The Cult of Leia's Metal Bikini. It's among the most memorable movie getups in sci-fi history. Twenty-three years later, Carrie Fisher's slave costume still inspires fan-made knockoffs and devotees who see female empowerment in the gold swimsuit. By Philip Chien. Plus: DIY Leia fan photo gallery. [Wired News: Top Stories]

Stolen Lives: Identity Theft Increase Tied to Meth Users. For law enforcement officials in Denver and other Western areas, meth users have become the everyday face of identity theft. By JOHN LELAND. [NYT > Home Page] 

TECH 

Glide: An alternate view. Blog: The ambitious online suite Glide Effortless has gotten glowing press, including some here at CNET. With the release... [CNET News.com]

Microsoft shuts down Windows 98. As Microsoft ends support for Windows 98, users are being urged to upgrade to more secure software. [BBC News | Technology | World Edition]

Firefox Surges to 16% Market Share in U.S.. Amsterdam based analytics firm OneStat is reporting that Firefox has captured a worldwide market share of nearly 13%, up from 8.7% in April 2005. There are some surprising country-by-country statistics included in the report as well. Firefox usage in the U.S. stands at 16%. Australia, 24%. And in Germany Firefox commands a whopping 39% market [...] [TechCrunch]

MACINTOSH 

Apple’s iWork ‘07 Pages to feature significant improvements. Apple's Pages software is set to receive a number of significant improvements when version 3 rolls out... [MacDailyNews]

Feature: Best of Gems: Multimedia apps. This installment of our favorite low-cost apps focuses on 10 multimedia apps that will help you edit photos, add special effects to your videos, and clean up audio files, among other things. We also look at five iPod and iTunes helpers as well as two podcasting tools.

ROSEBURG 

Restoration of marsh on Upper Klamath Lake moving forward.

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) Plans to restore marshes on the northern end of Upper Klamath Lake, proposed as part of the long-term solution to Klamath Basin battles over sharing scarce water between farms and fish, are moving forward. [News Review - News]

Oregon State scientist delves into 'serious games'.

CORVALLIS, Ore. (AP) Think of it as a video game for forestry buffs. [News Review - News]

Musselwhite to play at Half Shell.

ROSEBURG: Charlie Musselwhite will perform from 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesday at Nichols Band Shell in Stewart Park, Roseburg. [News Review - News]

TIDBITS 

Out to Launchd. Matt Neuburg (~830 words)

Anyone who has ever run Activity Monitor (in the Utilities folder) and chosen Administrator Processes from the pop-up menu is aware that a Mac OS X computer is actually a hotbed of little programs that start automatically and whose purposes are probably unclear to most users. This is not usually a source of concern; most of these programs were put there by Apple and are part of Mac OS X. Ignorance is Bliss, and Big Brother Knows Best.

New iMac Replaces eMac for Education. Mark H. Anbinder (~250 words)

Yet another PowerPC-based Macintosh is consigned to the history books. Apple last week introduced a new, low-end, stripped-down version of its Intel-based 17-inch iMac computer, replacing the eMac for the education market. The new $900 model, priced $300 below the education cost of the existing 17-inch model, boasts many of the same features.

Crazy Apple Rumors Site Skewers Week's News. Adam C. Engst (~260 words)

Crazy Apple Rumors Site Skewers Week's News -- John Moltz's Crazy Apple Rumors site is one of my must-reads every day, and while I find the site funny most of the time, not many weeks have as many news stories so ripe for skewering. On 03-Jul-06, John picked up on the news of several well-known bloggers switching from Mac OS X to Ubuntu Linux. The site's coverage announced excitedly that it would henceforth be known as Crazy Ubuntu Rumors, a euphoria that lasts for several paragraphs until reality set in. Two days later, John was back, with a graphical look at all the different devices that sources claimed would be running "Leopard Mobile" (a rumored version of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard for the iPod), ranging from the Motorola Razr cell phone to, well, a bagel. The picture of the "Leopard Mobile" screenshot pasted over a cream-cheese slathered bagel says so much about rumors in the Mac world. And finally, on 06-Jul-06, the news of Microsoft's impending "iPod killer" came under John's knife, as he poked fun at Microsoft's staid naming scheme, calling it the "Microsoft Windows Media Player 11 Portable Media Player Device Media Player Media Player Media Player," after which he listed out the first six steps in the device's instructions, an over-the-top parody of the worst Windows documentation imaginable. If you haven't visited Crazy Apple Rumors recently and need a laugh, last week's posts are utterly worth the visit. [ACE]

StickyBrain Replaced with SOHO Notes. Joe Kissell (~180 words)

StickyBrain Replaced with SOHO Notes -- Chronos LLC announced today that its highly regarded snippet keeper, StickyBrain, is being discontinued in favor of SOHO Notes, a product with a nearly identical interface but more features. StickyBrain started as a more-powerful replacement for Apple's Stickies application and evolved into a multipurpose database-driven repository for notes, URLs, Web pages, and other information; it offered Spotlight searching, a system-wide menu for grabbing information, and numerous other capabilities. (For more about StickyBrain, see "Stuck on StickyBrain: Info-Clutter Organizer Extraordinaire" from 2003 and "Three Simple Snippet Keepers" from 2001.) SOHO Notes includes all this plus multi-user capabilities, note syncing via .Mac, and support for multiple simultaneous databases. The announcement corresponded with the release of SOHO Notes 5.5.2, an update that adds several new features, such as blog posting using the Atom protocol, color-coded labels, dated and time-stamped journal entries, and audio recording.

Opera 9 Released. Jeff Carlson (~250 words)

Opera 9 Released -- Opera Software has released Opera 9, the latest version of its traditionally quirky Web browser. In a world where browsers are included with the operating system (Internet Explorer under Windows, and Safari on Mac OS X) or available for free (the open-source Firefox), you might think it's crazy for a third-party company to develop a competing Web browser. However, Opera has managed to make inroads on all platforms, from Windows to Mac OS X to cellular phones. The release of Opera 9 also shows that you need to innovate to survive.