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news of 2003-11-17

AppleInsider claims biprocessor PBs coming...

AppleInsider claims to have a source for information on an upcoming dual processor PowerBook. The rumour of a dual processor PowerBook is as old as January 2001, when people saw the Titanium PowerBook G4 for the first time. We're doubting this new rumour as much as we have done the ones in the past. It's an interesting idea, but our own sources tell a different story. (See yesterday's weekly roundup edition for more information.)

[ written by fryke™ on 2003-11-17 at 19:11 CET ]
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Cocoa File Saving Bug!

Apparently there's a Cocoa bug that instead of saving your file under the specified name replaces the surrounding directory with it. If you save into the root of a mounted partition, you might end up losing all the partition's data.
The bug is some kind of buffer overflow. However, in order to see it, you have to enter a file name that is very, very long. The number of 1'000 characters has been named, although that's probably not an exact number. It could be that already a file name such as "I'm just too stupid to find good names for my files so I tend to end up choosing the content of the file as the filename.doc" could lead to the bug. (It doesn't, I've tried.) ;-)
Cocoa applications warn you that they're going to overwrite the -name_of_surrounding_directory- before actually doing something. So if you're a fan of longish file names (255 characters and up, probably), I'd wait for 10.3.2. Until that, why not choose shorter file names instead. ;-)

[ written by fryke™ on 2003-11-17 at 18:17 CET ]
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Fink updated to 0.62

OpenSource package manager 'Fink' has been updated to 0.62. The new version is available in both source and binary form. From their site: "This release, like the previous one, was built on OS X 10.2 using the gcc 3.3 compiler, and runs fine with some exceptions on OS X 10.3. Most Fink users who upgrade to 10.3 will continue to want to only use the binaries from this new distribution for now, while the Fink team continues to modify Fink packages for 10.3."
We advise users new to Fink to carefully read more about it before going ahead and installing on Panther.

[ written by fryke™ on 2003-11-17 at 17:39 CET ]
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Adobe chastens Windows-favouring author

PCPro's article mentions Adobe PR director Russell Brady is denying a deliberate snub against Apple: "Ted Alspach's views do not reflect the views of Adobe. He shouldn't have written what he did and indentified those opinions with Adobe. It can be safely assumed that Ted won't be making any more statements like that."
The article also mentions that Alspach's claims were based on Macs before the arrival of the PowerMac G5.
The article raises the question however (again), that Adobe sure would like to cut R&D-costs by half (leaving one platform in the dust). However, the Macintosh side of Adobe's sales is still at a strong 30%, and R&D-costs would certainly not drop by 50%, because much of Adobe's R&D budget is spent platform-independently.
With Apple selling more pro machines this year than in 2001 and 2002 combined, Adobe will quite surely see a rise in sales of their Mac applications as well.

[ written by fryke™ on 2003-11-17 at 17:17 CET ]
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Microsoft going to release Office 2003 file formats

news.com is reporting that Microsoft is releasing the XML-based file formats for Office 2003, opening access for third-party application developers. We expect to see support for those formats in future versions of OpenOffice.org and Mac OS X (TextEdit, for example). Read more in news.com's article.

[ written by fryke™ on 2003-11-17 at 17:07 CET ]
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New 'lean' layout for macnews.net.tc

In the main menu, you can now switch from the default layout to a leaner one that uses less graphics and smaller ads. (I hope this doesn't decrease my income, though, as clicks are always appreciated...) You can, of course, also bookmark the 'lean layout home page', if you want it as your default (it's not cookied).

[ written by fryke™ on 2003-11-17 at 15:21 CET ]
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How Linux and Mac OS X can fight Longhorn

Rob Enderle, in his newest column, talks about this. A quote from the article: "Apple will have some serious problems because the Apple hardware platform will not be able to create customer demand comparable to what Linux could do. To generate that kind of demand, Apple will need to either move to Intel, or get significant help from its hardware partner, IBM." The latter, please. ;-) Mr. Enderle also hasn't done his homework concerning Mac OS X codenames. He suggests 'Cheetah' as the next release from Apple. I hope Apple won't listen, because it'd mean they'd release Mac OS X 10.0 again. ;-) Otherwise, it's a good article that bases its content on historical similarities (IBM and Apple expecting Windows 95 to fail).

[ written by fryke™ on 2003-11-17 at 14:57 CET ]
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Yay (I just have to post this...)!

Swiss cable ISP Cablecom just upgraded my 600kbps/200kbps line to 2000kbps/400kbps and at the same time reduced the price by about 5%. Good times, good times... :)

[ written by fryke™ on 2003-11-17 at 13:06 CET ]
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CRN names Steve Jobs as one of the 2003 top 25 executives

You can read a nice article about our favourite CEO that states: "Once again, Steve Jobs, the king of digital cool, managed to raise Apple's mindshare, if not market share, though his quest to stay at the forefront of innovation in the PC and consumer arenas."
They didn't notice that Panther was not in fact a '64bit OS', but I don't mind. ;-)

[ written by fryke™ on 2003-11-17 at 12:02 CET ]
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Acrobat Elements Server

Adobe is going to announce Acrobat Elements Server later today, according to this zdnet.com article. Quoting the article: "Acrobat Elements Server will reside on a central server at the company, where employees can access functions via a Web server or other means. The simplest way to convert a file is to drag it to a desktop folder, Krasilczuk said. The server software converts the file and drops a PDF into another desktop folder.Acrobat Elements Server will reside on a central server at the company, where employees can access functions via a Web server or other means. The simplest way to convert a file is to drag it to a desktop folder, Krasilczuk said. The server software converts the file and drops a PDF into another desktop folder."
I've just found Acrobat Elements Server on Adobe's website, and it seems as if it's always been there. ;-)

[ written by fryke™ on 2003-11-17 at 11:34 CET ]
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Groupcal: iCal + MS Exchange Server

The shareware 'Groupcal' by snerdware lets you manage Exchange calendars from Apple's iCal. Currently, you can get free licenses for the beta version (currently 1.0b1). Pricing for the final product has yet to be determined. Anyone care to test this and tell us what it's like? I don't happen to have an MS Exchange server around... :P

[ written by fryke™ on 2003-11-17 at 02:11 CET ]
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Performance of Panther on slower G3s

MacNightOwl's test of Panther on a G3 iMac shows that for Jaguar users, Panther is a must-have update. Good read, too!

[ written by fryke™ on 2003-11-17 at 01:31 CET ]
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Graphical Update done!

The graphical updates to macnews.net.tc 2004 are done. We hope you enjoy the new site and its new featureset as much as we do. Keep on giving us e-mail feedback! We're appreciating it.

[ written by fryke™ on 2003-11-17 at 00:30 CET ]
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