The Second Press

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) had an interesting take on Acquisition 2 and it’s touted as the best BitTorrent application on the Mac. Many users commented that it’s more of a P2P file-sharing application instead.

So, what’s the best BitTorrent application? Personally, I am a huge fan of Transmission as it is lightweight, speedy and free! Another option is xTorrent which coincidently is developed by the same person who did Acquisition, David Watanabe.

Handbrake 0.9.1 is out in the wild! It’s probably the best DVD ripping application out there.

This minor update squashes a number of glaring bugs. Most notably, HandBrake will no longer hang at the end of encoding MKV files with chapter markers. This means the Animation, Bedlam, Constant Quality Rate, Deux Six Quatre, Film, and Television presets are now usable.

For a complete list of changes, check out the Trac.

Microsoft on Tuesday unveiled three new models of its Zune portable digital media players.

The three new Zunes include at the high-end an 80G byte hard-disc drive (HDD) model that carries a suggested retail price of $249.99. The other two models use flash memory. The 4GB model, described as ultraportable, is priced at $149.99, while a 8GB version is $199.99.

The company also launched Zune Social, a beta online music community that gives people a place to share their music tastes, knowledge and experiences with others. It has also restocked and redesigned its Zune Marketplace online store to include over 1 million MP3 files that are not protected by DRM, and can be played on the Zune and other devices.

I guess it’s a good attempt by Microsoft but considering the iPod lineup in the market, I doubt it’ll be a success.

Via Macworld | Microsoft unveils new Zune players and community

“Microsoft announced pricing for the new version of Office 2008 for Mac on Tuesday.

Office will be available in three versions: Office 2008 for Mac ($399.95; $239.95 upgrade), Office 2008 for Mac Home and Student Edition ($149.95) and Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition ($499.95; $299.95 upgrade).

(Via Macworld.)