Apple has inundated the marketplace with new releases this week, all emanating from the Macworld Conference and Expo in New York.

A new 17-inch LCD iMac was introduced, with an 800 MHz PowerPC G4 processor, 256MB SDRAM and 80GB of hard drive. It's expected in Australia sometime early in August for AU$4,395.

The next generation of iPod MP3 players will arrive in mid-August, and a new Windows version will hit the shelves later in the month. The iPods come in three sizes, 5GB for AU$645, 10GB for AU$845 and a whopping 20GB for AU$1,045, which can reportedly hold 4,000 songs.

Interoperability is Apple's thing, with the announcement of iSync, which will allow users of Mac OS X version 10.2 to synchronise their address books and calendars between Mac computers and Bluetooth-enabled GPRS mobile phones, PalmOS devices and iPods. It will be a free download, but we'll have to wait till September.

Also as a free download is iTunes 3, available now. Basically the latest version of Apple's digital music player, it includes Smart Playlists and other features, and requires Mac OS X version 10.1.4 or later.

Speaking of Mac OS X v10.2, Apple has revealed it will be available In Australia on 24 August for a suggested retail price of AU$229. It boasts more than 150 new applications and features, but recent purchasers of Mac OS X may be upset at the lack of a cheap upgrade option.

For Net Admins, Apple has released Mac OS X Server v10.2, also available on August 24. A 10-client edition will cost AU$899, while the unlimited client edition will set you back AU$1,799. The server is UNIX based, and includes more than 50 new features, according to Apple. They claim the main benefit is the simplicity of use.

Users of iTools will be annoyed to find Apple has changed the name to .Mac and is charging an annual fee of US$99.95 for usage. This includes e-mail, 100MB of Internet storage and always on hosting for personalised Web pages. People who were iTools members as of midnight Tuesday and who sign up for .Mac before Sept. 30 get an introductory offer of US$49.95 for the first year. New customers can sign up for a free 60-day trial.

Not everything released at the Macworld Expo came from Apple. Channel Storm announced the release of Live Channel Pro 1.4 for the Mac, and claims the software-only solution is designed to fully replace a television studio, which is a pretty big call. A free evaluation copy is available for download from their site.

Not to be outdone, Microsoft has brought out a couple of free Mac downloads, the Handheld Synchronisation add-in for Entourage X, which allows users to transfer information between their Palm and their e-mail program; and the Remote Desktop Connection Client, which allows users to access their Windows PC from a Mac.

An Australian company, Prowess Development, has released a product it designed for a removal company onto the general market. QuotaMove is designed to let staff in the field provide a detailed, on-the-spot quotation for even the most complex removal jobs. This saves time and increases sales, according to Prowess. AU$5000 will get you QuotaMove, and a HP Jornada 720 to run it on.

NetIQ has released some updates to protect its customers against -Camera/Shy". Camera/Shy is a program to hide information in pictures, and was released by hacking group Hacktivismo. While the use of Camera/Shy encryption won't do any harm of itself, it is theoretically possible for a dangerous payload to be hidden inside. Of course, a person has to be running Camera/Shy in order to read the potentially damaging information. A 14-day free trial of NetIQ's protection can be obtained from NetIQ.

Verbatim has released CopySmartPlus DVD Copier Towers, a series of standalone towers with either three, five, or seven target DVD recording drives. The seven drive tower can copy 14 4.7Gb DVD's an hour, according to Verbatim. Don't get too excited, the towers don't duplicate copyrighted DVD discs, which pretty much sinks your plans to become a pirate movie mogul. The units sell for AU$4995 (three drive) AU$7495 (five drive) and AU$9995 (seven drive), and details of sale locations are here.

GFI has released EventLogScan, which is designed to analyse all the events in the user's security event log and produce an HTML report with all the critical, high and medium security events on the machine, with a brief explanation of each.

Sony has released a new VAIO notebook, the PCGR505MP, which replaces the PCGR505BP and boasts a 1.2GHz Pentium III processor. It comes with a bundle of multimedia software and Windows XP Pro. It also incorporates a CD-RW/DVD combo drive, i.LINK connection, Memory Stick slot, USB, Network Port and internal modem. It's available now, and has an RRP of AU$5,299.

TDK has released a new external CD writer, the VeloCD 24X10X40X Firewire CD Re-Writer. For AU$399, TDK say you can burn a CD in less than four minutes. No commment on the copyright situation, though.

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