Two encouraging Mac-related sites fell into my browsing this morning. The first is how to turn el-cheapo wireless cards into Airport cards for early iBooks and, I assume, iMacs. A pretty hefty savings over a true Airport card, certainly. The trick seems to be taking the case off of the old school wireless card and replacing it with electrical tape so that it fits.

tanais: How to save 100 [British Pounds Sterling] (and try not to break something in the process...):

Knowing the original Airport 802.11b card was an antenna-less Orinoco Silver and Gold Card sold as an OEM lucent jobbie (also used in Sony VAIOs...), ... and actually having an Orinoco/Lucent Silver to hand I first of all I had a quick test to see if the card actually worked. (These are about $16-$20 on eBay if you look hard enough).
[he was successful]

The other positive I saw was the slashdot response to today's post regarding DRM in Apple's iPhone. The posts getting modded up actually seem to have a pretty practical approach to Apple and DRM. This post seems to sum it up fairly well.

Apple had to produce a DRM that was acceptable to the music industry, or else iTunes would never exist. MP3 players would still be gimmicks, much like minidisk players, and the advances we have seen across all brands of MP3 players never would have happened.

Now admittedly, I've got small bones to pick with the above. It's as if it took Apple for the music industry to go digital. I'm not sure that's the case. I do wonder if the digital music biz would be as successful now, but you'd expect eventually somebody would soak out much of the iPod dough from the market. This is, of course, part of the music industry's beef; if it weren't for Apple, the money-soaking would look different, quite likely wouldn't involve so much cash heading through, if not always to, Apple, and would potentially be much more favorable for their bottom lines.

I've got to say, of all the digital ecosystem tooth & claw battles, music is the most interesting. Sony's rootkit escapade has been incredibly interesting, not just for the perceived screw-up, but for exhibiting just how far a company will go to make its legacy distribution system a combatant for the battleground of PCs.

A more insightful /. iPhone post might be this one...

How is this fresh? That is... we knew it was an iPod, right? Did people think it would not have DRM just because it was a phone this time?