Apple Thoughts - News & Reviews on all things Apple

"Maintain today announced Cocktail 4.6.2 (Snow Leopard Edition), the latest maintenance update of Cocktail for users running Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. This version improves overall stability, adds clearing of the latest variants of the RSPlug/Jahlav trojan horse and addresses a number of other minor issues."

You can download this update now, or if you don't have Cocktail, you can try it out for free. Basically this is a system maintenance program, for those that don't want to mess around with the Terminal, and instead can do the same functions from a graphically pleasing program by using buttons and sliders. The more I read about it, the more I think that it is just as useful for the home user as it is for the techie. Anyone out there using it? If so, how do you like it?

"Digital music purchases have been dominating the market for some time now as physical CD purchases continue to fall. For Apple, a significant lead over the rest of the music proprietor world is not enough: according to the Financial Times, the company is now working together with the four largest record labels in the business to add new features to accompany digital music purchases through its iTunes Store in hopes of stimulating full album purchases."

This little project is code-named "Cocktail" and has Apple working with EMI, Sony Music, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music. What they plan on doing is making the album buying experience more advantageous to the consumer, and in return getting more revenue since the profit margin for album sales is higher. What you will get are things such as lyrics, liner notes and interactive booklets. Some of the things (lyrics specifically) bring back memories of what I got when I used to buy albums (the vinyl kind for those of you not old enough to remember). I understand the profit motive, but it isn't enough of an advantage to get me to buy album versus a few songs that I want. How about you, will any of this sway your purchasing decision?