New & Noteworthy: Apple see retail profit next year; Apple scraps MP servers; Palm; Microsoft suit "dropped"; Wi

Apple sees retail profit next year In a presentation at the Salomon Smith Barney technology conference in New York, Apple's chief financial officer, Fred Anderson, said its retail division is on track to turn a profit next year after breaking even in the final quarter of this year, an update that comes as the computer maker seeks new markets to compensate for weaker demand. He declined to say whether Apple was on track to meet Wall Street profit estimates for the current quarter. Anderson said, however, that the lack of a profit warning could be considered good news. More.

Apple scraps MP G4 servers Macworld UK writes: "Apple has withdrawn its multiprocessing Power Macintosh G4 servers from international versions of the Apple Store The move has sparked speculation that the company is planning to launch new servers – based on 733MHz and 800MHz processors – at Apple Expo, Paris." [However, Steve Jobs had previously said that no such new hardware announcements are "planned."]

Palm tumbles from stardom An msnbc.com article discusses Palm's recent woes, especially those surrounding getting its latest m500 model recently.

Steve, Don't Give Palm a Hand On a related note, a BusinessWeek article cautions Apple not to pursue its rumored interest in acquiring Palm.

Bush Drops Microsoft Breakup The Bush administration has all but abandoned the lawsuit against Microsoft. For starters, it is no longer seeking a break-up of the company. More.

Windows XP activation requirements loosened The w2knews site notes that "two major changes" were made to the oft-criticized Product Activation restrictions to be used in Windows XP (a process that requires an online check from Microsoft): "The first one is that new users who get XP preinstalled on their new box will not have to activate or reactivate WXP. Copies of XP that ship with new PCs are coded only to the BIOS, so you can change as much hardware as you like, just leave the BIOS alone." See this Microsoft document (in Word format) for complete details.

Margin Note: Whew! Even with this loosening up, we find these "activation requirements" to be far too intrusive. The idea that a copy of Windows might stop working if you modify the computer's BIOS is a bit much. Looks like Microsoft has not shown any sign of change as a result of the lawsuit.

Windows XP goes wireless A zdnet.com article notes that Windows XP "will support a technology standard known as Wi-Fi, or 802.11b, a wireless protocol." This could have an indirect benefit for Mac users, as the technology used in AirPort becomes more widespread.

Wi-Fi security Meanwhile, an extremetech.com story covers the continuing controversy over Wi-Fi's relatively weak security.

California woman sues CD company over user-tracking technology The suit alleges: "that Fahrenheit and Music City never disclosed on the shrink-wrap of certain "impaired" CD(s) that consumers couldn't listen to music on their computers anonymously. If left unchecked, this will be the start of an era where consumers will be coerced to give up their privacy to listen to music on their computers." More.

Apple Computer sued for alleged patent infringement Meanwhile, Apple has been sued for 'alleged infringement of two computer patents owned by BIAX Corp." More.

4D 6.5.9 is the latest version of this relational database system. The update "offers 4D users continued product maintenance and stability while providing technical improvements."

The Sims 1.1.5 is an update to this popular house life simulation game. New in this version: Macs with multiple video cards installed may experience poor video performance if DrawSprocket chooses the second monitor for gameplay. A new check box in the "Screen Size" dialog lets you tell DrawSprocket to use the main screen if possible.

Slow loading of Forums? TechTracker continues to have intermittent problems with the servers that host VersionTracker and the MacFixIt Forums. The symptom is very slow loading of pages. Apparently, we have been the victims of a SYN flood attack.