Mac Odds & Ends And Things We Forgot.

Apple’s world continues to grow. Macs. Chips. iPods. OS X. Market share. Will it ever end?

There’s just so much to write about, and so little time. Here’s what we forgot this week.

Widgets. At 2,000 and counting you’d think there would be enough just to mention a few each week.

Alexis forgot the I Used To Believe widget. It’s a web site with a funny and bizarre collection of what we thought was true when we children.

For example, “butter comes from butterflies.” And, “my granndma said my thumb will shrivel into nothing if I suck it, so one day I tried it and my thum shriveled because it was wet I never did it again.”

You get the idea. The widget will keep you in stitches. If not, it’s because you’re forced to use a Windows PC.

Ala Ellen Fleiss, Bill Gates once overdosed on cough syrup and posed Tiger Beat style on an office desktop.

Is internet radio alive or dying? It’s probably both. The iPod is beginning to affect radio listenership.

Those radio stations that broadcast on the internet are having trouble making money to pay the price; music licensing fees, high bandwidth costs, smaller listenership, and lower advertising revenue.

WOXY was one of the first to drop broadcast and go all online. Now they’re drumming up revenue from their remaining listeners.

The world is changing. Again. Thanks to 300 cable TV channels, 20,000 radio stations, and 100-million web sites (estimate), we get to watch it.

How worthy is your iPod? Not only can it hold thousands of songs, it’ll hold hundreds of TV shows and movies. And $100-million.

In Harrison Ford’s new movie, Firewall, he uses his daughter’s iPod to steal $100-million. I won’t give away the ending, but Ford’s use of the iPod to hack a bank is a bit farfetched.

He clenches his teeth and scowls, though. In the age of change, some things don’t change.

We don’t have PowerMacs with Intel chips yet, but we have quad processor PowerMac G5s (dual dual core CPUs). How fast are they compared to PowerMacs of just five years ago?

Surprisingly slow. Or, fast. It depends.

MacReviewZone has a comparison of a PowerMac G4 circa 2001 and a new quad PowerMac G5.

In basic tests, the newer Mac was only two to nearly nine times faster than five years ago.

How about comparing the quad PowerMac G5 to an Intel-based iMac? MacReviewZone did that, too.

Surprisingly, for about twice the money, you don’t always get twice the speed. In some cases, the iMac with Intel’s Core Duo chips is even faster than the quad core PowerMac G5.

That speaks well of the future. Oh, one more thing. The future. Microsoft’s Vice President Peter Moore says retail will change in the future.

Maybe Windows Vista Service Pack 39 will be out by then and there won’t be any more viruses or spyware on PCs.

It’s OK to dream.

Oh, one more one more thing. The Mac Observer reports that Skype 2.0 for the Mac is nearing completion. What’s new? How about video conferencing, ala iChat AV? On Mac and PCs. Long live Skype.