News Round Up for November the 3rd

The big news from the Apple blogosphere this weekend was that Netflix has opened the beta of its live streaming service to Mac users. You’ll need a Netflix account (of course), an Intel-base Mac (but who doesn’t) and a copy of Microsoft’s Flash-a-like Silverlight (you what now?) to join the movie-streaming party. Don’t have Silverlight? Then pop over to Microsoft and let them force a copy on you. I’m sure they’ll offer to scan your PC for malware, too.

In other Microsoft news, Office for the Mac recieved a small version bump in the same week that the Mac Business Unit got a new head. Latest incumbent Eric Wilfrid is a 11-year veteran of the department, and is the third person to sit in the chair in as many years. He seems nice enough, but we’re already taking bets on how long before he cracks under the constant ribbing from fellow Microsofties.

Meanwhile, confusion continues to surround Opera’s browser for the iPhone. Maybe, as we reported, it’s been submitted to Apple and rejected. Or maybe not. Or maybe. We’ll be following the story, and will bring you further details just as soon as we’ve looked up more cool opera terms to use in the headlines. Like ‘arias’. We can get away with saying ‘arias,’ right?

Those of you with more money than baggage space will be pleased to hear that the new MacBook Airs started shipping a little ahead of schedule. Elsewhere, research has revealed that the other new MacBooks are happy being filled with up to 6Gb of RAM. Apparently Apple was aware of this, but only listed up to 4Gb as an option because they doubted anyone could afford to buy the full 6Gb from them.

iPhone game maker Tapulous ship the Nine Inch Nails version of their Tap Tap Revenge rhythm game, while Puzzllotto, the fiendish lemur-based puzzle game by exiled Tapulous founder Mike ‘Monkey-Lover’ Lee, has finally been solved. The winner, a guy called Dave H. from Portland, scoops the $8,000 prize and demonstrates that it’s not just iPhone programmers who get to clean up after just 8 days work.

For those of you who don’t know how to change Safari’s start page, Apple has redesigned the default one. Be sure to tell all your friends. After all, we’ve seen how upset Apple gets when we don’t notice their ‘innocuous’ server-side updates.

Oh, and The Beatles still aren’t available in iTunes.