news of 2003-11-28
Discreet Cleaner 6 - no, REALly?
According to a source that has tried the retail package of Cleaner 6, the application which promises encoding in REAL's formats, does not in fact offer this option in Mac OS X. Not even in Classic. You'll need a computer which boots into Mac OS 9 in order to produce REAL videos with Cleaner 6. Sad...
[ written by fryke™ on 2003-11-28 at 13:25 CET ]
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Japanese robot can carry 60kg
 And thus, a human. Well, a woman. Or a youngster. Although I don't read Japanese, the page is worth a look, for the pictures mainly. (Yes, this is majorly off topic, but why not link it all the same?) ;-)
The site also has MPEG movies you can watch - a bit further down the page. Fun to watch, of course. (Links not working at the moment, sadly...) However: What can such robots be used for, actually? Can they take you upstairs? Then they're quite perfect. :-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2003-11-28 at 13:18 CET ]
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Nov. 28 is here: Apple gives 10% off iPod
... and iPod accessories at store.apple.com. It seems that there are no other announcements today, but we could be surprised. And would like to be, too. ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2003-11-28 at 12:14 CET ]
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Apple's Office plans
Apple has a long history with word processors. I've used MacWrite in 1987 for the first time and was impressed. Well, I've used a non-electric typewriter before, so that might be a reason, but it just felt so natural to me. Might be one reason I became an author of short stories later on.
Later, Apple created 'Claris', the subsidiary that made MacWrite Pro and later ClarisWorks, which eventually turned into ClarisWorks Office and then was renamed AppleWorks when Claris was erased (and FileMaker Inc. was born). However, AppleWorks never really had the chance of being a real MS Office killer, mostly because the integration with Office documents was always just a little bit too flakey to be really good enough.
Another path of the 'evolution': SimpleText. Initially, it was called TeachText. Mac OS X brought TextEdit, which replaced SimpleText with quite a few features - and in Panther, it can read and write MS Word files without problems - as long as you don't mind some formatting issues. ;-) Still: If you mostly need MS Word v. X now to open attachments from business contacts and not because of its vast feature-set - TextEdit 1.3 will do the job.
Keynote was released with PowerPoint compatibility. So what's Apple waiting for? We need an Excel replacement. AppleWorks already has a spreadsheet part. But Apple is doing it one by one, while keeping AppleWorks updated for compatibility - without feature enhancements. Up next: Document, the word processing application that is TextEdit on steroids (and Brushed Metal, probably). According to our sources within Apple, a lot of work has been put into this piece of software, and Apple is going to release the 1.0 version at MWSF 2004. It seems, though, that there are voices inside Apple against such a move just yet. Because the more Apple replaces Office with their own applications, the less likely Microsoft is to further support the Mac. Office v. X is the 'last thing standing' from the Microsoft Business Unit. And switching to the Mac is easy mostly because there is MS Office v. X. It's a delicate decision for Apple. A critical one. And their choice is to release single apps rather than a whole "Office-Replacement Suite" - mainly because of this.
We're pretty sure that an Excel replacement is the very last thing we'll see released in this plan. But come it will.
[ written by fryke™ on 2003-11-28 at 12:07 CET ]
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David Pogue thanks Apple and others...
... in his latest column.
[ written by fryke™ on 2003-11-28 at 11:52 CET ]
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Apple responds to DHCP/LDAP flaw
... with a document on how to disable LDAP for DHCP. However, this does not solve the problem for users who want to actually use the feature.
[ written by fryke™ on 2003-11-28 at 11:43 CET ]
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