News Word Wild

Apple’s TV plans continue to split the broadcast industry, at least in the US where any such service is most likely to appear first.

News from broadcast industry insiders show Apple in an increasingly isolated place with its plan, with Disney (on which Apple CEO Steve Jobs sits on the board) ready to roll withh 99-cent show rentals. All the other networks aren’t convinced at the plans, leaving just one global multimedia firm in position as kingmaker for the iTunes initiative.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is dealing with overtures by mighty media magnate, Rupert Murdoch, in whose hands the fate of the plan could sit.

“For several weeks Hollywood has been wrangling over Apple’s push to offer rentals of TV show episodes for 99 cents. Many in the entertainment industry fear that the low price could break the economic model that supports the high cost of producing TV shows,” Chicago Tribune explains.

NBC Universal, CBS and Time Warner are opposing Apple’s 99-cent TV show rental plan. Walt Disney is saying yes leaving News Corp. in pivotal position.

Internally at the Murdoch-owned company execs are divided, the report says citing insider sources. Broadcast pros are concerned the deals could eat into DVD sales and a la carte downloads.

Total sales of digital TV program downloads, of which Apple accounts for roughly two-thirds, will reach $395 million this year, according to Screen Digest.

Murdoch however is prepared to join in Apple’s six month price trial because he hopes to parlay his assent into other positive moves for other arms of his media empire, specicially newspapers on iPads.

Murdoch believes the iPad will be the saviour of print media.

“Apple has shown in the past that they can alter consumer behavior by dropping the consideration below a dollar,” said Aram Sinnreich, an expert in digital media who teaches at Rutgers University. “They’ve done it twice, with music and applications.”

Media infustry execs are scared that lower priced TV show sales will impact DVD sales — I’d observe that as shows are already floating around online, it is in the interests of broadcasters to find a spot at which customers are happy to purchase shows.

Microsoft has decided on the branding for its all-new Office 2011 for Mac releases, offering the two packages in grey and orange boxes, Setteb.it reveals this morning. And here’s the pictures to prove it.

The release of Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 will be simultaneous across 100 countries at the end of October. Two versions will be available, Office for Mac Home and Student 2011 and Office for Mac Home and Business 2011. It will cost between $99 and $119.

We love the smell of freshly fried rumor in the morning — particularly the day before an Apple special event. This morning’s rumor takes us back, right back to last week’s claims of Apple’s plans for streaming video services, hinted at by a question held inside an iTunes customer survey.

Now we already know what to expect tomorrow:

• iPod touch update
• Apple TV update potentially
• MacBook air update (as briefly rumored)
• iTunes revision of some kind
• iPod nano, shuffle and classic updates — or deletions
• iPad OS 4 preview is likely

The new iTunes customer survey asks, “What are the primary reasons for your satifaction with the video content you’ve purchased or rented from iTunes and watched on the iPad?”

One answer suggests — well, more preciselyhas been construed by Engadget to hint at future video on demand services.

“Titles are available to watch instantly“, though for all the growing brouhahah on this I’d like to observe that this is already the case when purchasing video at iTunes retail…thohugh you do need to wait for some of the video to download, even when renting a movie.

Security researchers are this morning panning Apple Inc. for a security problem which affects Windows.

Wintercore’s Ruben Santamarta claims Apple has failed to clean up some old code nested within QuickTime which can leave Internet Explorer vulnerable to yet another of the Microsoft browser’s long line of potential attacks.

The exploit is simple to execute just by tricking a user into visiting a malicious site hosting the exploit code, a so-called “drive-by” attack.

The attack code works when someone browses with IE on a machine running Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 that has QuickTime 7.x or the older QuickTime 6.x installed.

Apple patched QuickTime for Windows on August 11 (version 7.6.7).The exploit works because Apple didn’t tidy up QuickTime’s code after developers dropped the “_Marshaled_pUnk” function, something the researcher attributes to human error.

“Although this functionality was removed in newer versions, the parameter is still present,” Santamarta wrote. “Why? I guess someone forgot to clean up the code.”

Nice new feature for Gmail users, rolling out to users now.

Arcade Fire made this incredible video using only HTML5 and Google Earth.  Check it.

Other experiments in HTML5. (via day job)

…there won’t be a shortage of cases or color selection for the smaller mini-Nano (should one be announced).

It appears that AMD is slowly killing off the ATI brand and will now use AMD for video cards going forward. Look for new AMD video card options in your upcoming Intel Macs.

It appears that AMD is slowly killing off the ATI brand and will now use AMD for video cards going forward. Look for new AMD video card options in your upcoming Intel Macs.

Intel has confirmed weeks of rumor, filing a $1.4 billion takeover offer for iPhone component supplier, Infineon’s Wireless Solutions business.

Announced last night, the move means Intel’s determined to take a slice of the emerging smartphone business.

“The global demand for wireless solutions continues to grow at an extraordinary rate,” Intel CEO Paul Otellini said in a statement.

“The acquisition of Infineon’s WLS (Wireless Solutions) business strengthens the second pillar of our computing strategy–Internet connectivity–and enables us to offer a portfolio of products that covers the full range of wireless options from Wi-Fi and 3G to WiMax and LTE (4G).”

Infineon ranked fourth in cellular-baseband shipments last year with a 10.7 percent unit share. These are the chips which enable 3G on these devices. The company also supplies Nokia and Samsung.

WLS will operate as a standalone business. “Intel is committed to serving WLS’ existing customers, including support for ARM-based platform,” the company said.

Apple has a previous relationship with Intel, and currently depends on Infineon chips — open to question is whether Apple may invest in development of its own baseband technology as part of its effort to develop its own breed of ARM-based mobile processors.

The board of directors of Intel and the supervisory board and the management board of Infineon have approved the transaction. It is expected to close in the first quarter of 2011.