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It hasn't been a very exciting keynote, however. The iMac is new and is, as has been expected earlier, a 'computer in a display', basically. The three fans make a PowerBook G5 look farther than ever, and we still expect a new PowerBook G4 this Autumn.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-31 at 12:28 CET ]
Hello. We'll put the new stuff in bold type. For now, the new lean theme is online for everyone, updating every 60s. We'll switch back to the normal 'Tiger' layout after the keynote.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-31 at 12:17 CET ]
I was sure they'd go quite fast, and so they did... I'll give more when I get more...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-30 at 23:18 CET ]
MacRumors updates their site with a notion of a patent filed on 2004-08-24, that shows something like this:
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-30 at 23:15 CET ] I have 3 Gmail accounts to hand out. Find an intriguing reason for me to give it to you (and be one of the first 3 intriguing reasoners...) and it just might be yours... Drop me a line using the contact link below this article.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-30 at 18:55 CET ] BareBones has just released version 8 of the text editor that still doesn't suck, as they put it. Some badmouthers will of course say that BareBones is at least trying to make it suck by putting in a lot of new features, but initial testing tells us that if they've tried, they didn't manage... ;-) Here's the link.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-30 at 18:12 CET ]
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-30 at 17:53 CET ] Featuring 'Walkie Talkie Man' by Steriogram. See it here on apple.com. Btw.: The internet nor the world did go down, while I was away, and we'll update with news on AppleExpo Paris soon...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-30 at 17:21 CET ]
Internet goes down tomorrow... ... and I'm leaving for the rest of the week into a warmer area. Actually, the latter thing is true, as I'm going to Northern Italy with my girlfriend on our Suzuki Burgman 400. However, the two things are not related at all. There's however something like this going around the web: "Aleksandr Gostev from Kaspersky Labs was speaking at a conference hosted by Russian Information Agency Novosti. The cyber terrorists main targets will be the US and Western Europe, he said." Quote taken from this Inquirer article.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-25 at 19:40 CET ] Using Virex 7.5? Delete it from your computer until a fix is available at the very least. In a long history, this is just the newest incident on the Mac, that unnecessary software like antivirus or disk-tools instead of helping (we got no viruses for Mac OS X and Apple provides a good disk utility with OS X) actually harm your Mac and/or your data. If Virex 7.5 finds, for example, a MyDoom virus in one of your mailboxes, it actually doesn't delete the virus or the mail message - it deletes the 'file', i.e. the .mbox file, i.e. the whole mailbox. If it's in your spam-folder, that might be okay. But you don't want to lose any important mail, do you? I say: It's WINDOWS viruses we're scanning for, so let's stop doing it. Spreading Windows viruses actually helps others making the switch to the Mac. ;)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-25 at 17:30 CET ] You can get it here. It's not _entirely_ what I expected but is a nice little demo for now. And it can launch apps already (yay!). While it works with aliases (i.e. you don't 'move' an item to the 3D Desktop window), be aware that dragging such an alias to the (normal) desktop actually moves its original there. Which is bad, I think. But as I've said, it's rather a demo of what it could become one day than a useful app per se.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-25 at 11:34 CET ]
There's DragThing (and there has been since the earlier days of classic Mac OS), of course. But if that's too much for you, you might want to give Overflow a spin. It very nicely extends the Dock.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-24 at 22:58 CET ]
Still the USA according to new numbers from Sophos. 42.5 percent of all spam originates in the US, currently (while almost 75 percent of all spam messages link to websites that are in China!). Apparently, laws against spam (9 months after initialisation) don't really work.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-24 at 16:28 CET ] ... will get even better over time. We're quite sure of that. In less than a year (hopefully), we'll all be used to reading those feeds (such as our very own RSS-feed) in Safari 2.x. We'll have tab-sets of RSS feeds to wade through. But let's not forget that a separate newsreader application like NetNewsWire can be cleaner and more complete for the task. NetNewsWire 2.0 (not in public beta yet) is promising to be good. And we sure hope to get our hands on a beta version soon, as we'd like to be ready to report about it as soon as it's available.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-24 at 15:20 CET ] MacBidouille: Future iPods could do GSM, WiFi
Their recent article shows a job listing for the group at Apple that makes the iPod. It says you need experience in protocols such as GSM, Bluetooth, IEEE 802.11, FireWire and USB. Of course this doesn't mean that the next iPod will support all of these - however it looks like Apple's at least interested in giving the iPod wireless connectivity also.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-24 at 15:07 CET ] Musings on a slow Tuesday morning... "Google takes over world, crystal ball says..." - So for many users, Google's search engine has taken the place of managing Favourites or Bookmarks. It's even replaced a spell checker for many (just search for 'bookmarks' and 'bokmarks', the one with more results is probably the right one...). Then Google went and introduced their news aggregation thingie (news.google.com in constant beta, it seems). And now, with Gmail, they want to handle all of your E-Mail. If I ever wanted to write a plot for a cy-fi thriller, Google's scheme would be a nice start for the evil guys. "We can't get into everybody's computer, but we can make everybody connect their computers with our services. Over time, by giving them more and more personal services, we can accumulate all of their relevant data." Read that again with that good old Nazi-German accent American actors acquired when they played Germans in the Wonderwoman TV Series (and others...) - and suddenly it's even more frightening. Is it just the luck of mankind that Google, for now, does not seem to be the bad guy? ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-24 at 11:19 CET ]
Lack of Tiger news and its effects...
Since showing Tiger to developers at WWDC 2004, Apple has only released one newer build through Software Update (150K update). While development has been quite fast behind closed doors (as we've reported here, Apple's well in the 8A2xx builds...), rumour sites have not acquired much new information about the next big release of Mac OS X.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-23 at 23:30 CET ]
ServerWatch about Panther Server (10.3.5)
Quoting the summary: We suspect most organization considering a Panther migration are weighing Mac OS X Server alongside Linux servers. One consultant with whom we spoke said he sees Apple's mix of proprietary and open as fortuitous. "If keeping the GUI proprietary fosters speed of development, I'm happy with that," he said, adding, "I think it's telling that some of the open-source desktops are copying the Apple 'look-and-feel,' which is superior to anything else out there."
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-20 at 10:32 CET ]
BusinessWeek Apology (iPod mini) BW's Alex Salkever has written a column to apologise for his early criticism on a possible iPod mini success. He's still criticising it a bit, but he now has apologised openly. ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-19 at 23:44 CET ] Apple replaces burning 15" PB batteries "The recalled batteries have the Model Number: A1045 and serial numbers that begin with: HQ404, HQ405, HQ406, HQ407, or HQ408. Batteries with the affected serial numbers contain cells that were manufactured by LG Chem, Ltd. of South Korea during the last week of December 2003 only. " Read more details here at depot.apple.com. Sadly, mine isn't part of that model number. I love to get free replacements. ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-19 at 18:59 CET ]
... offers FM transmitting from iPod in a car for 19.99 USD. However: iTrip is certainly the better solution, as RoadTrip only uses _one_ frequency (so you're done if a local station uses that one, too) and takes power from the cigarette lighter, so you can't use that to charge your iPod at the same time. Here's the shop for RoadTrip. iTrip may be 35 USD, but those 15 USD plus are probably a good investment. Go here for more info on iTrip.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-19 at 13:30 CET ] Coradine's LogTen 2.0 released This might be only for a really small fraction of my readers, but I thought I'll still mention it shortly: LogTen is a professional logbook solution for pilots. It's the only such solution built for Mac OS X, and from what I read, it uses Apple's APIs very well. Searching your logs for info is easy and the app even has that smart search saving feature known from iTunes or Tiger.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-19 at 12:47 CET ]
iTunes Music Store: More than 50% in German online music According to the 'Phonoverband', iTMS has more than 50% of online music sales with currently ca. 570'000 songs per month of a total of a little more than a million. Closest competitors T-Online Musicload and AOL each sell about 150'000 songs per month, the Phonoverband says. I want my MTV, erh, iTMS in Switzerland (and other European countries)...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-18 at 15:41 CET ]
ThinkSecret notes that the current iSight model is disappearing to make way for a new, updated model. The new model is already in circulation, sources say, and the only (visible) change is a new mounting that attaches magnetically.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-17 at 10:38 CET ] OmniWeb 5.1 to have newer WebCore So soon after the release of OmniWeb 5.0, OmniGroup is already testing the follow-up release of 5.1, which will adopt the current Safari version of WebCore, which also supports the nice shadows behind text feature we're using here on macnews.net.tc. A first sneaky-peek version has been seeded to beta testers and is working incredibly well.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-17 at 09:10 CET ]
Once in a while, TheRegister.co.uk enters the Macintosh rumour market with quite wild things. This time, they foresee the long-awaited Apple tablet computer as you've certainly read by now (I was away for the weekend, so I've just read it...).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-16 at 10:43 CET ]
Apple to open second Japanese retail store on 28th of August. Read more here at apple.com.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-12 at 13:33 CET ] Information about the next iMac generation is rare to come by, we can tell you as much. Reading MOSR may amuse you, but not really inform you. We've heard that despite hopes of people that the iMac G5 would be a big step forward in performance, people shouldn't get their hopes too high. The iMac will stil be a consumer-level Mac, clearly differentiated from the PowerMacs. For one, the iMac will be a single processor G5. It'll also lag behind the PowerMacs memory-wise. Although it'll be 64bit capable, the memory of the iMac won't exceed 2 GB (unless someone comes up with a 2 GB brick to fill each of the new iMac's slots). Still: The iMac G5 will crush the old G4 one in every area. Just don't expect it to be a better PowerMac. (We've heard such requests in our mailboxes...)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-12 at 12:44 CET ] I was lucky enough to be among alpha and beta testers of OW5, and it's one great browser. My new default for now, anyway. You'll find a digicam picture of the box here on omnigroup.com (the picture also shows an old NeXT or OpenStep version of OW in the background) and, of course, the release at OmniGroup's site.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-12 at 01:10 CET ]
Apple has updated DVD Studio Pro to 3.0.1, Compressor to 1.2.1 and also released Pro Application Support 2.1. A little more information is available here at MacCentral.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-11 at 09:35 CET ] ... available via Software Update. Should improve behaviour of applets in Safari.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-11 at 07:39 CET ]
As has been rumoured earlier, Apple was finishing iSync 1.5 lately, and has now released it.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-10 at 21:25 CET ] Apple announces 1 mio songs + at iTMS USA Quite proudly, Apple announces that iTMS USA now has more than 1 million tracks available. This number, sadly, is not yet true for iTMS Europe. News about iTMS Europe are expected at AppleExpo in Paris at the end of this month.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-10 at 16:49 CET ] Apple to announce 'Production Suite' Today at SIGGRAPH. The suite contains Final Cut Pro HD, DVD Studio Pro HD and Motion - for about 1300 USD.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-10 at 16:46 CET ] Internally at Apple, Tiger's at 8A213 already ... and Safari 2.0 is right now at build v153. ADC Select and Premier members are still waiting for newer builds of Tiger to come out of Cupertino, so they can really dive into Tiger's development.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-10 at 15:21 CET ] The first build of Tiger to come out of Apple after WWDC, 8A171, was just a very small (150 KB) update through Software Update. It's meant to test the Software Update mechanism and contains only one change to the operating system other than the build number: Spotlight can now search vcards, according to the release notes.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-10 at 13:21 CET ] SonicSolutions takes Roxio's products So the next version of Roxio Toast Titanium will probably be called SonicSolutions Toast Titanium. Quite a long name, eh? ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-10 at 10:52 CET ] ... through Tiger's Software Update. More information later.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-10 at 09:48 CET ] If you want to download the combo updater instead of just the 'Delta' one (from 10.3.4), you can get that one here at http://search.info.apple.com/?search=Go&lr=lang_en&kword=kbdload&q=10.3.5. (Actually, the update is not yet available as of this time, but will be soon enough.)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-10 at 01:58 CET ]
Apple releases Mac OS X 10.3.5 7M34 ... to the public. Yep, it's in Software Update now, just as anticipated. Once more, our sources were perfeclty right (a big thank you goes out to them) about Apple 'wrapping up' development.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-09 at 22:19 CET ]
Apple has seeded this new build of 10.3.5 tonight. The seed note contains reduced 'areas of change': Core Graphics, Audio/Sound, Bluetooth, Video drivers, NFS and Safari. File size (update from 10.3.4) is still 41.5 MB. Apple is slowly wrapping up development on 10.3.5. A release seems imminent now, although it's still possible that a bigger bug could delay release until later in August. 7M30, seeded just a few days ago, already felt 'finished' and fixed some bugs we experienced with earlier builds of Mac OS X 10.3.5.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-07 at 01:00 CET ]
ArsTechnica: History of the PowerPC
Quoting their introduction: "To make a long story very short, IBM needed a way to turn POWER into a wider range of computing products for use outside the server closet, Motorola needed a high-end RISC microprocessor in order to compete in the RISC workstation market, and Apple needed a CPU for its personal computers that would be both cutting-edge and backwards compatible with the 68K."
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-06 at 12:17 CET ] Details about Apple's quarterly SEC filing Available here on macminute.com.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-06 at 12:15 CET ]
It's an old tool alright (from the NeXT/OpenStep era, actually), but it can't be mentioned enough, I think. I've just used it again, and think I'll tell you about it while I'm at it.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-06 at 12:08 CET ] ... in Software Update. Seems like Apple has solved the problem, as we've anticipated, rather quickly. You can also get it here.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-06 at 11:36 CET ] MS Office for Mac: Get rid of those PDF icons I'm sure if you've used MS Office v. X or 2004 in combination with Adobe Acrobat Professional, you've seen those PDF icons-bar that uses too much vertical screen real estate and _can't_ be removed normally. Thank God, there's a way to remove those. You just have to delete the 'PDFmaker' files in the subfolders of 'Applications/Microsoft Office/Office/Startup/'. No more additional PDF maker toolbars in Office. :)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-06 at 10:26 CET ]
Those beta times, eh? Every year since Rhapsody DR2 (PowerPC and PC Compatibles), I've been following the development of the next version of Mac OS X. This year seems to be a bit different, though.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-05 at 20:52 CET ] Mossberg tests BMW/iPod integration ... and finds it a tad less distracting than other solutions, but far, far from perfect. I agree, I expected more from companies such as BMW and Apple.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-05 at 18:14 CET ] Editorial: iSync - The promise, the problem
When Apple introduced the first iSync beta version in 2002, they managed to do what Apple does best: Provide a simple solution to a seemingly big problem.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-05 at 11:49 CET ] Not that it's really that important, but Mac OS Rumors is back online after several weeks of non-reachability. The 'original Mac rumor site' has a pretty rough history of being off- and online, being right about some and far out on other rumours. Either way: My rumour-site tabset looks better in Safari without the exclamation mark on MOSR's tab. So welcome back. ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-05 at 11:22 CET ]
Toshiba's 60 GB 1.8" drive before end of year If the statement by that Toshiba guy earlier at Computex in Taiwan is true (that Apple had already ordered the drive in large quantities), this could mean that a 60 GB iPod model for 499 USD is still 'doable' before the end of the year, now that the drive is announced for that timeframe. The drive is as large as the current 40 GB iPod model's and a one-mechanism version (such as the current 20 GB model's) holds 30 GB. Apple could therefore also replace the 40 with a 60 and the 20 with a 30 GB drive for the holiday season, which would be perfect for Apple (and consumers). This is, however, speculative. First, Toshiba has to actually produce the drives in time. Here's the link to Toshiba's pages about the drive.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-04 at 17:42 CET ] Apple pulls iPhoto 4.0.2 update Apple has stopped delivering the iPhoto 4.0.2 updater both on their website and through Software Update. No reason was given so far, but it's expected that a 'showstopper-bug' was found and will be fixed asap. If you often use iPhoto and have already updated to version 4.0.2, we advise you to back up your iPhoto library now and wait for the newer updater, which should be available soon. If you still have to use iPhoto in that waiting period, at least you have a backup if something goes wrong.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-04 at 16:33 CET ]
I want to thank all of you who wrote in to congratulate me on the new design of macnews.net.tc. I'm glad to report that from all the mails I've got, over 90% were positive ones. I'm sure that some of those who don't like it didn't write me, but I can, of course, only listen to those who actually tell me something. ;)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-04 at 15:13 CET ]
You'll want to read this BusinessWeek article about the second coming of Steve Jobs. It's not very objective, though, and sounds as if I had been asked to write a very optimistic view on Apple's prospects. But: This is exactly what Apple needs - good press.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-03 at 22:59 CET ] Apple seeds Mac OS X 10.3.5 7M30 to ADC Select and Premier members. Areas of testing in this build: Core Graphics, Audio/Sound, Bluetooth, Video drivers, NFS, Safari and Power Management (Sleep). File size of the build is 41.5 MB.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-03 at 21:10 CET ] ThinkSecret previews the forthcoming application for your home entertainment library with many a delicous detail, such as barcode scanning with iSight, for example. The report includes a screenshot slideshow.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-03 at 20:11 CET ] About macnews.net.tc (Version 2004.2, code name "Tiger")
Welcome to macnews.net.tc. Our tagline "macintosh rumours with common sense™" is our motto. What we mean by that is that we post news and rumours from the Macintosh world and try to put them into the bigger picture. While we're certainly not entirely free of subjectiveness, we often find other rumour sites to be a tad incapable of thinking outside the box, which is important to us, when we're scanning the information we get our hands onto.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-03 at 20:00 CET ] For about 30 USD, these keychain devices let you see wireless networks' availability. Has anyone ever used one of those? Do they show you networks you can't join (i.e.: are they dumb)?
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-03 at 18:17 CET ] MacCentral about Harmony vs. Apple: A lawyer's perspective
In this article, MacCentral shows a lawyer's (Scott Culpepper) perspective on the case, should Apple decide to take Real to court. My personal opinion about this is quite clear, and I've already posted it here on macnews.net.tc a few days ago.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-03 at 17:54 CET ] Apple releases Xcode Tools 1.5 to ADC
Currently, Select and Premier members have access to the new version. All ADC members will have access to the Xcode Tools 1.5 on 2004-08-05, the day after tomorrow. ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-03 at 12:44 CET ]
heise.de (German) reports that CodeWeavers' CrossOver Office (version 3.1 preview) can run the Windows version of iTunes. It's working just fine, access to the iTMS also works, the only important thing still missing (but in the works) is iPod support.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-03 at 12:30 CET ] macnews.net.tc 2004.2, or "Tiger" In anticipation of Tiger's new, more glassy, look in some parts of the system, we've come up with our new site design. If you prefer the old, more plain look, you can still use the lean one. But if you're anything like us, you'll want to use that new look of Tiger. ;-) Comments welcome... (more about macnews.net.tc 2004.2)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-03 at 09:30 CET ]
The 7.1 MB sized upgrader is available in Software Update. Or as a 5.9 MB (?) update here on apple.com.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-02 at 23:06 CET ] Rio releases the Rio Carbon 5 GB player. Looking at it, I almost expect it to fold open to a clamshell-style mobile phone - and I'm wondering when we'll first see something like that. The Carbon is certainly a 'good' competitor to the iPod mini - and I hope Apple will come out with an updated version of the mini with, say, 6 GB space soon enough.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-02 at 15:21 CET ]
And it's aimed at Mac users, as MacCentral puts it. I personally don't see the need for a very expensive removable 35 GB harddrive solution, but that's just an opinion. I think iomega had a winner with their zip-drives in the past when they were about everywhere, becoming a de-facto standard. The jaz-drives already were much less of a success. Nowadays, iomega's offerings have been replaced by optical media widely, and for even larger stuff, 'normal' external harddrives do an excellent jobs. If that drive were at least able to sport USB-2 AND FW400/800 at the same time, that would make a better package.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-02 at 14:34 CET ] Steven P. Jobs had a small cancer removed from his pankreas over this weekend. Without going into too much detail: He's going to be well, expects to make much too many phone calls in his month off and will be back at the end of August. Good luck, Steve!
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-08-02 at 11:15 CET ]
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