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Depending on where you live, ... the new year has either started already some hours ago or you'll still live in 2004 for a while. For me, 2004 has a bit less than five hours left. Whatever: I wish you a happy new year! And may MWSF start soon and Steve Jobs present us some stuff we really, really want. ;)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-31 at 19:15 CET ]
Making sense of that headless Mac rumour
Ever since Apple killed the clones (1997) and restructured their product matrix, many people asked themselves why Apple left out a really basic desktop Mac, like the PowerMacintosh 4400 once was (which was based on a cheaper motherboard design Apple licensed to clone makers). The iMac came but didn't leave people entering the Mac market with a choice without screen. We've discussed a 'headless Mac' a few times here on macnews.net.tc (cMac as in consumer Mac or 'cheap' Mac) ourselves, but Apple obviously was afraid it would eat into iMac and eMac as well as lower-level PowerMac sales, where Apple can get bigger margins.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-30 at 21:16 CET ] Review: Nokia Communicator 9500
It's not usually a very bright idea to get a new smartphone from Nokia before there's at least one firmware upgrade and before Apple gets its act together to support the phone in iSync. That's a little bit different with the new Communicator, although I still want iSync capability as soon as possible - and a firmware upgrade will eventually fix some bugs and speed things up. But don't misunderstand me here: The bugs are rare and the communicator feels finished, so if you want one: Get one.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-30 at 14:46 CET ] Will Apple support my new smartphone? A while ago, I talked about how Apple needs to be faster in supporting new phones through iSync. (Here and here...) Well... I have a Nokia Communicator 9500 now. While I intend to keep it as my only device for calendar information, it would still be nice to synch contact information. Sadly, Apple still doesn't support new phones very fast... Why? Is it really that difficult? The last time I talked about this, someone informed me that actually, Apple does not use SyncML as transport language. But after digging a little bit, I guess it just depends on which mobile phones we're talking and actually, iSync acts as a SyncML server - yet it doesn't automatically understand any SyncML client. Hopefully, newer versions of iSync will come out soon with support for quite a few newer smartphones that are currently not supported. And not just that 9500 I just bought. Also some Series 60 devices (which should be the same to support like the already supported Nokia 6600, 7650 etc.). If you want to help me out here: Go to www.apple.com/feedback/isync.html and suggest support for Series 80 (Nokia 9500, 9300) and newer Series 60 phones (Nokia 7610, 6630, 6260), too.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-30 at 11:07 CET ]
ThinkSecret says iLife '05, Keynote 2, too Read our early MWSF report here. ThinkSecret now confirms most of our report come end of year. However, ThinkSecret also posted about a sub-500 dollar Mac today. If ThinkSecret's right, I'll buy one of those for my home cinema. Give it a bigger drive, VLC and it's ready to go. ;)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-29 at 10:34 CET ]
MacRumors falls for Innocent Saints' Day
If you've read this article on MacRumors' front page and believed any of it, you're the victim of a victim. Spanish people celebrate December 28th like many other people do April 1st. So: No, Apple's not probably going to be a mobile carrier anytime soon. ;)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-28 at 22:17 CET ]
NeoOffice/J much better now... Right before Christmas, neooffice.org has released a beta version of its OpenOffice.org port. It now uses native Aqua menus and has scrollwheel support for mice that sport those. Give it a download...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-24 at 11:16 CET ] MacRumors posts these patent applications. One is shock protection for the iPod, the other, they say, is about a mouse with a scroll wheel. Can Apple do it? Will they do it? A mouse with ONE button and a scroll wheel? ;) Merry X-Mas, folks!
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-24 at 10:33 CET ]
After Firefox and Thunderbird, the Mozilla project now releases their first usable Sunbird downloads. This latest effort is a calendar/scheduling application, and it's currently in the version 0.2 area. You can get the latest Mac OS X build here and look at it yourself (actually, the build available now, for me, crashes on first startup...). What's next: Mozilla Desktop Search named Moonbird? Or an office application called Rainbird? Who knows, but they sure try to opensource the desktop apps, be it on Mac OS X, Linux or Windows. Maybe someday all of those applications will have a button called 'upgrade your system to the newest version' which automagically installs the right version of linux for your hardware? ;) (That'd sure give MS the creeps, eh?)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-23 at 14:26 CET ] Apple seeds Tiger Server 8A325 as well as a new .Mac SDK (v1.0.3), a Kernel Debug Kit for Tiger 8A323 and others.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-23 at 12:11 CET ]
Just to clear things up a bit: Tiger never was advertised to be 64bit 'clean' throughout the system. Developer documentation always said the same thing. The problem I see - and that's why I brought it up at all - is that consumers out there usually think quite 'simply', naturally. They buy G5 computers because they're '64bit'. And they'll upgrade to Tiger, because - as is simplified for them - it 'brings 64bit support'. If you look at www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/64bit.html, it certainly doesn't look like Apple tells consumers quite directly, that Tiger is not in fact 'a 64bit operating system'. However: For the consumer it won't make a difference either way. If you're interested in the details, look at the linked pages in this and the last article.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-21 at 23:26 CET ] 64bit in Tiger only for server processes At least, so it seems on this article at ADC. This sounds quite different from what Apple promised at WWDC, when they boldly claimed Tiger to be a 64bit operating system. The article now says that "the use of a 64-bit address space is limited to non-GUI application". The kernel, we read, is compiled in 32bit mode for all machines, whether they're using a G5 or an older processor.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-21 at 16:32 CET ]
Sadly, it's not gonna be the long-rumoured iPhone from Apple. It's gonna be a 'good old' (debatable) Motorola phone with some iTunes like software add-on and probably iSync support. Sure, the phone's gonna make synching some 'tunes to the phone simple enough, but it won't be the smartphone from Apple that once was rumoured to surprise the heck out of Nokia, Motorola, SonyEricsson and the likes. So: Take it as it is. It's sure going to be a nice phone and all. But not 'the iPhone'.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-17 at 22:43 CET ]
While we don't know for now, whether there'll still be a 10.3.8 update in the coming months until Tiger's released, it's about time we take a look at Panther's history. Sure, the big cats only live for 1 year (or 1.5 now), but they all have their ups and downs. And we, sadly, must admit, that the Panther era (so far) wasn't all good. In fact: It started with probably the biggest hickup in OS X history.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-17 at 13:36 CET ] Samba: Again a vulnerability...
We've covered Samba (and Apple's inability to update to later versions...) quite a few times lately (here, here and here). Now, there's another vulnerability - and only a patched 3.0.9 version or the fixed 3.0.10 are safe. Apple, as of now, uses 3.0.5 in Mac OS X, so it seems they did in fact update to later versions over the past few months. But unbelievably, almost, not to a 'safe' version, but to one which in October still was affected (and of course is affected by this new vulnerability).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-17 at 01:12 CET ]
iTMS tops 200 million downloads According to this MacCentral article, Apple has sold the 200 millionth track on iTMS now.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-16 at 15:22 CET ] What we so far know about MWSF
We're pulling our strings, of course, and hope to get as much information before MWSF '05 actually happens, but so far, the following is all we can safely say...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-16 at 15:13 CET ] Mac OS X 10.3.7 Combined Updater available You can get the 97 MB file here for future reference, if you've already installed it. My suggestion: Always keep your Combined Updater up to date, so in a case of reinstallation (or if you're installing a new machine), you have it readily available. (If your machine, like mine, came with a Panther installer earlier than 10.3.6, you'd have to download the full 97 MB everytime you reinstall, so the whole process is much faster, if you already have the Combined Updater for the latest OS version somehwere on an external drive or CD.)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-16 at 14:12 CET ] Mac OS X 10.3.7 7S215 released As predicted by our site, Mac OS X 10.3.7 made it to Software Update sooner than initially expected (end of year, then Christmas...). Thanks for reading our site regularly. ;)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-16 at 00:53 CET ]
Apparently, ADC Connect is down at the moment. The last time we've seen that happen, it didn't mean any big news, the site just came back normally afterwards. But we're watching this, of course.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-14 at 23:45 CET ] As c|net reports, one of the latest iPod updates has killed support for Real's Harmony based AAC files. It's clear that Apple hasn't informed its users of the move. However, while some voices say this could affect quite a few users and many, many song-files, I just don't think so. It was a November update, and the fact that we haven't heard any of it so far tells me what I thought before, anyway: iPod people do _not_ want Real's music. And they sure didn't want to use a service that Apple said themselves could one day be affected by a firmware upgrade. Apple back then said Real was using 'hacker tactics'. Guess the 'security issue' is now solved. ;)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-14 at 21:58 CET ] Toshiba releases, according to this TheRegister article, an iPod-sized (1.8") 80 GB drive later in 2005 that could lead the next iPod revision.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-14 at 11:58 CET ] Another new build of 10.3.7 - so fast after the last one - suggests that the release is imminent. So the question "before or after christmas?" will probably be answered soon. The update weighs in at 25 MB and will focus on Graphics and OpenGL, Audio, Printing and FireWire devices, as we've mentioned before.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-14 at 10:06 CET ]
Through Software Update, Apple today has released iCal 1.5.5, which primarily brings the changes from 1.5.4 plus better synching to iSync devices if using Mac OS X 10.2.x. So: Panther users don't really need the update, but are still prompted to download and install it.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-13 at 20:43 CET ]
Swiss paper 'SonntagsZeitung': iTMS Switzerland coming
According to an article in today's SonntagsZeitung, Apple will tell us at MWSF '05, when to expect the opening of iTMS Switzerland. There had been much speculation in the past month about the Swiss iTMS. First someone said it would come together with the 'rest of Europe', then the music industry said they were ready (after Apple had said otherwise before) but Swiss copyright laws were lacking and now Apple is reportedly saying they're in definite communication with the music industry, although they wouldn't go into any detail. Here's to the hope that Switzerland won't have to wait another year...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-12 at 15:08 CET ]
... through Software Update. The 680K update "... delivers enhanced functionality and improved reliability for Mac OS X v10.4 'Tiger' 8A323 and is recommended for all users. For the changes to take effect, a restart is required."
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-11 at 01:09 CET ]
After a kernel panic in Tiger (maybe shouldn't have tried to bluetooth-synch my Sony Clie through Mark Space's Missing Link software just yet?) and starting BBEdit 8.0.3 again, BBEdit said that it sadly had crashed, and then goes on to say: "You appear to be using one or more system additions or preference panels which employ Application Enhancer. APE works by running its own code inside of BBEdit and other applications. This can lead to crashes, unpredictable application behaviour and other symptoms of incompatibility. If you continue to experience problems after removing all third-party system additions and preference panels, please contact barebones.com support for assistance."
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-10 at 03:44 CET ] Tiger Mail.app: The good things
You're going to love Mail.app in Tiger. Or at least I will. Sure, some will say they don't like the new look (then again some always do...), but I like even that. I actually like it a lot! But more importantly: Spotlight is going to rock your world of E-Mailing, if you use E-Mail professionally (but probably also if only privately).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-10 at 01:54 CET ]
New seeds: Dashboard Widgets (QT) and Mac OS X 10.3.7 7S214 Tonight, Apple has seeded a 55 MB Quicktime movie about developing dashboard widgets. Apple also seeded a 25.4 MB sized new build of 10.3.7, build number 7S214. Mac OS X 10.3.7 is still expected to be released before the end of this year.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-09 at 23:59 CET ] Apple's new startpage now live A while ago, we reported about Apple's new startpage on apple.com/startpage (which you can already take a look at...). livepage.apple.com (Mac OS X' default start page) now links to apple.com/startpage as expected back then.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-09 at 14:01 CET ]
While the iMac has gotten its G5 processor and a great, clean new look, the eMac has gotten less attention lately. Sources now claim that the next eMac will finally get rid of the last CRT display in Apple's line-up. TFTs are now cheap enough for this entry-level Mac.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-09 at 13:22 CET ]
iPod mini to go 5 GB in January Although the maker of the 5 GB 1 inch harddisk of Apple's next revision of the iPod mini is yet unknown, Apple is expected to up the mini from 4 to 5 GB in January, in order to better compete with the competition. This would also make 'more room' for the rumoured flash-based iPod.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-07 at 12:32 CET ]
Only shortly after Firefox 1.0, mozilla-based E-Mail client Thunderbird reaches version 1.0. And the project certainly intends to replace IE and Outlook Express on the PC. How does it look on the Mac?
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-07 at 10:38 CET ]
TheRegister publishes this article which reads a bit like a conspiracy theory. Read it to create your own opinion. However, I think Apple's stock price has gone up because of expectations on iPod sales this quarter and not because IBM would buy Apple or create a joint venture. (The speculation article bases on IBM's sale of its PC division.)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-06 at 13:24 CET ]
Again a new seed of 10.3.7. As we've mentioned in our first report on 10.3.7 (7S202), the update is expected to be released to consumers still in this year.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-02 at 10:36 CET ] MacRumors now delaying rumours on a daily basis...
While until yesterday, MacRumors.com said that iTMS Canada would obviously be live on Nov. 30th, the site suggests today as the day. If, however, iTMS Canada doesn't go live today, they'll probably 'update' the rumour accordingly. Let's hope (for Canadians) that 'inside sources' doesn't mean the users in Canada who frantically click on iTunes' built-in store functionality, noticing that it still isn't live and regard any message iTunes gives as a sign that it's coming now really, really very soon. ;)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-02 at 10:32 CET ]
Those 'entertainment server' rumours
Now even Merrill Lynch sees such a device in Apple's future. Maybe our concern about Steve not liking TV was published a few weeks too early - and Apple will surprise us with such a device as early as January?
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-12-01 at 14:51 CET ]
Merrill Lynch: Apple will sell 4 mio. iPods this quarter
Steve Milunovich (of Merrill Lynch), today raised Apple's rating again. If you have Apple shares, don't sell them now. ;) If you don't have any, buy them the next time they're lower. But the most interesting part of the report: "iPods are being adopted faster than Sony Walkmans were [...]" -
(However: I'm not so sure that you can compare the numbers directly, impressive as they may be.)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-29 at 22:03 CET ] I think: Steve Jobs doesn't like TV
And you might think why I think that. Well: The Mac's all about media of any type right? Desktop Publishing made the Mac big, Desktop Video once was Steve's new killer-application when introducing FireWire and the SuperDrive, music is also big on the Mac. Yet: Apple seems not a tiny bit interested in adding TV features to the Mac. Or will they?
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-29 at 19:51 CET ] Gartner: 3 of 10 largest PC sellers will die before 2007 Yet they of course don't say which ones. ;) ... Which kinda leaves me asking: Does that include Apple? Or: What good is a prophecy like that, anyway? What if only two will vanish from the face of Earth? Will that mean Gartner was right to 66 percent? Well, let me put it this way: I say only two will die, and if only two will, does that mean I'm gonna be richer than Gartner by 2007? Probably not. Sometimes, headlines like the one commented here just make me angry. Sure, Gartner has probably put a lot of work into this and has analyzed a lot of data, but it just seems to be a wildly inaccurate business to create such predictions.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-29 at 19:03 CET ]
Sounds like a title from the eighties or something. But this article on TheRegister about MS IE's security flaws is a new one, and it takes a look at how one would do more secure development, instead of how MS seems to be working. The article concludes: "The answer is simple: you follow basic best practices for security and never, ever divert from them." - Yet, Microsoft has been failing this principle for a long time. And now they're caught in a game that just doesn't seem to end, because of their past: It seems they'll always have inherently insecure code, which they'll try to keep up fixing.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-29 at 17:37 CET ] IBM/Sony/Toshiba to unveil Cell chip in February TheRegister mentions that IBM and Sony are now 'ready to announce' the Cell-based workstation (which will be a rackmount server dedicated to the development of software, i.e. games, for the Playstation 3). The Cell processor, according to TheRegister's article, is a POWER derivate with three cores (every core can run a separate operating system) and AltiVec. TheReg poses the question, whether this chip could be interesting for Apple, too. We'll know more in February 2005.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-29 at 12:25 CET ]
Moore's Law, POWER 5, PowerPC et al.
You can read here on TheRegister about how IBM leaves competitors in the dust with their new pSeries servers. Some quotes: "The consequence is that IBM is currently able to deliver in line with the expectations of Moore's Law and will probably be able to do so for the next two generations of the PowerPC chip." (And others don't!) - "... IBM has now delivered almost a tripling of system performance (and a 37 per cent price performance improvement). That is what the benchmark indicates."
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-26 at 15:30 CET ]
Apple has seeded Mac OS X Server 10.3.7 7S206 now as well, as well as Xsan 7N155 (for which 10.3.7 builds are recommended).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-25 at 00:57 CET ]
The reversioner is in the disk image file, apparently.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-24 at 16:00 CET ] Apple seeds Mac OS X 10.3.7 7S206 People who installed 7S202 should be aware that a reversioner is not currently available, i.e. you should _not_ upgrade to 7S206 now. Areas of testing in this build are Graphics and OpenGL, Audio (Firewire Audio), Printing. An issue where saving to a fileserver would end up with truncated file names is resolved and SMB printing should work from 10.3.7 to Windows Server 2003.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-24 at 00:52 CET ]
ADC Select & Premier members get 8A294/8A297 on DVDs
Currently, Apple's shipping developers the two latest builds (Tiger 8A294 and Tiger Server 8A297) on DVDs, an ADC Select member reports. "The DVDs look like the ones you get with your Macs when you buy them, only they're black instead of gray. They look evilly good." ;) Our contact also had a little something else to share: "Apparently, Apple thinks the contents of the envelope are worth 1$, since that's what's the envelope's marked as."
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-23 at 13:26 CET ]
Apple releases iCal 1.5.4 Update It's a security update, not a feature update, though. Available through Software Update.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-22 at 22:45 CET ]
Rather extensive look at Tiger ThinkSecret has a new and rather extensive look at Tiger up along with a lot of screenshots.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-20 at 01:43 CET ]
Or so to speak. Cross Over Office, a plugin for Linux, enables users to run (some) Windows applications. Version 4 has been released with full support for the Windows version of iTunes. We've told you about their iTunes support quite a while ago in August, when preview version 3.1 brought this support. This is certainly an important step for iTMS, too. Sadly, Cross Over Office does not yet directly support the iPod in iTunes. There are, however, other projects for Linux that do.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-19 at 02:56 CET ]
Apple seeds Dashboard SDK Tiger 8A294
Today, Apple released a 10.6 MB sized SDK for Tiger's Dashboard. Developers can use this to develop widgets for Dashboard in Tiger 8A294. Whether this is widgets' finalised SDK remains unknown, and probably it will take some tweaking on your widgets before they'll run on the final version in the first half of next year. On the other hand, this is the first time Apple's released the SDK for Dashboard, so it might also mean that its standard is in fact finalised.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-18 at 22:52 CET ]
Other than claimed by AppleInsider and other sites copying that rumour, the first seed of 10.3.7 weighs in at only 15 MB, not 50. Apple seeded the build late last night and included - among other things - the following information (other sites seem to be wrong here, too, for some reason): Core Foundation improves directional formatting codes, CoreGraphics fixes some printing issues and colour calibration issues with transparency. And: lookupd is improved for, well, domain name lookup (a problem mostly with Safari that showed up recently). Mac OS X 10.3.7 is expected to be released still this year.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-17 at 11:33 CET ] More Musings on why Mac OS X is...
the proof that Linux is not ready for the desktop. I've just read this column at osNews and - again - can't understand how these people think that Linux could be anything like ready for the desktop or, as in this piece, notebook. I mean, read this quote: "With suspend to disk, you can be up and running in a fraction of the normal boot time." - Listen up, linux users: If you wake up a Mac OS X notebook (an iBook or PowerBook) from sleep, it takes between 0.2 and 0.8 seconds to be ready for your input. Yes, that's sleepin' and not suspend to disk, but if you're willing to try it out, you'll notice you don't need suspend to disk on a Mac.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-17 at 02:36 CET ]
The author of this article tries, in my opinion, to create a rumour out of speculation (based on previously known facts and developments). Basically, what he says is that the Power4 processor was used to develop the PowerPC 970 and that the Power5 processor will be used for the next generation PowerPC at IBM.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-16 at 00:19 CET ]
Thinksecret updates us on recent PowerPC developments at IBM. According to their sources, we'll see both the 970MP and a single core version of it, which is probably going to be called 970GX (which would follow IBM's previous naming scheme with the 750 line of processors, although that didn't _actually_ reach a GX variant, the once rumoured 'Gobi' processor). Both of those lines would start at 3 GHz and contain 1 MB of Level 2 cache without any Level 3 cache.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-13 at 14:59 CET ]
Today's news of Gmail offering POP3 access to its free (although still restricted to invitations) 1 GB E-Mail system makes Gmail a grown up E-Mail system that you can use both with your favourite E-Mail application as well as through their great webmail system (the best we've encountered anywhere on the web!).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-12 at 01:41 CET ] It was my fault entirely. Sorry. Didn't see that _both_ the POP3 and the SMTP connection had to use SSL. pop.gmail.com doesn't answer to port 110, simply because it listens to an SSL port instead. Works fine, works fine. :) Happy camper here.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-12 at 00:53 CET ]
According to Gmail users - and I've tested it myself - Gmail now offers POP3 access to its accounts. According to heise.de, this feature was not yet activated for all users when they were testing, but probably the rollout was just taking its time. Great news! Sadly, as of now, the POP-server just doesn't answer. But then again, this _is_ a beta phase after all, and we expect their POP-server to answer sometime during this day...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-11 at 15:41 CET ]
Not to confuse that with iTMS, mind you! But apparently, Amazon has confirmed to AppleInsider that it'll have an 'Apple iPod Store' at amazon.com ready very soon. Whether Apple likes the leaked info or wanted to create some hype with a media event is currently unknown. However: This sure is good news for the holiday season, right?
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-10 at 00:02 CET ]
You can get it here. The browser is quite a bit faster than others on Mac OS X, and while its interface still shows its ugly end (cross-platform, anyone?) ;) - it's nice to have alternatives. Let's forget about IE - on any platform - and make Firefox the cross-platform standard. We can still enjoy better interface work in Safari and OmniWeb - and keep Firefox for compatibility.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-09 at 10:20 CET ]
Apple, Jobs win Billboard awards Apple has made 'Brand of the Year', Steve Jobs is 'Visionary of the Year' for his dual role as CEO of both Pixar and Apple. The sad thing: Real Networks' Rhapsody has won against iTMS. Then again, they couldn't possibly give Apple and Jobs all the four awards they were nominated for, could they.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-08 at 21:23 CET ] And answers a question we here at macnews.net.tc had for a while. Apparently, Safari 1.3 takes the WebKit development of Safari 2.0 and gives it back to Safari 1.x (without the other improvements of Safari 2.0). Be aware that installing this developer preview doesn't let you go back to the GM version of Safari 1.2.x you had previously installed. The only way to get back to it is to reinstall the system and update it to the previous state. Basically: Do not install this on a system you want to keep running over a longer period of time. ;)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-08 at 21:19 CET ] Apple: Now's the time for the iPod Flash Dear Apple, you're certainly aware that the holiday season is about to begin - and that your iPod sales will skyrocket. But there still are a lot of potential iPod buyers who, in lack of money, will go buy those cheap, MSN compatible flash based music players. If you have a 1 GB flash based iPod mini ready that you could sell for 149 or even 99 USD, we urge you to release it right about now. Make sure that every child has enough time to scribble down his or her note about this new iPod. ;)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-08 at 19:47 CET ] The new (ground up) version of Delicious Library, your 40 USD does-it-all DVD/book/etc. software library with a gorgeous Mac OS X interface, is now available. It has won O'Reilly's innovator price, as you can see on the linked site. The really new thing about this one is, of course, its bar-code reading capability. Use your QT-compatible webcam (iSight, for example) to read your items' barcodes. The software then looks it up for you.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-08 at 16:57 CET ]
Mac OS X 10.3.6 Combo Updater available You'll find it here at Apple's downloads (links to download page). Size is 92 MB for the combined updater. I like those, because when I have to reinstall a machine, I can simply use the combined one instead of letting the computer download everything through Software Update.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-06 at 12:09 CET ] Apple announces "Apple Dashboard Widget Contest" Which means that they're definitely called 'widgets' now instead of gadgets. ;) Developers with access to the latest builds of Tiger should enter the competition until 30. November 2004. The best widget wins an iPod 40 GB. Sadly not of the 'photo' variant. Read more about it here.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-06 at 11:48 CET ]
Apple releases Mac OS X 10.3.6 As predicted on this very site, Apple has released Mac OS X 10.3.6. You can read more about the changes here on our site or directly here at apple.com.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-05 at 22:55 CET ]
You'll find here at developer.apple.com quite a bit of information what Spotlight really is, how it works and how you as a developer can make use of it. Certainly interesting for future Tiger users, too.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-04 at 12:45 CET ] Apple has seeded Tiger Server, first time for ADC Select members, according to sources. The DVD disk image weighs in at 1653 MB.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-04 at 10:39 CET ] Apple seeds this new build, also the Server version of the same build and J2SE 5.0, based on JDK 1.5.0-rc-b63, the latter one only for Tiger builds 8A294 and up. The Mac OS X 10.3.6 build 7R28 comes without reversioners and can only be installed on 10.3.5 GM. A release of 10.3.6 is expected in early to mid November. Key enhancements of this update are improved file sharing for AFP, NFS and SMB/CIFS, more reliable automounts, improved OpenGL with updated graphics card drivers, FW/USB compatibility (more devices), updated Calculator, DVD Player, Image Capture and Safari applications.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-04 at 10:38 CET ] You'll find it here on their FTP server. Final release still expected on 9. November 2004.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-04 at 10:30 CET ]
Ex-Apple, Ex-Be going to lead PalmSource Jean-Louis GassŽe, founder of Be Incorporated and once president of the Apple Products Division, is now CEO of PalmSource (which has bought parts of Be earlier). Whether this will significantly change the direction of PalmSource remains to be seen. Cobalt, or Palm OS 6, will bring quite a few bits from BeOS to Palm (however don't expect it to _look_ like BeOS) - most importantly true multitasking.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-03 at 11:49 CET ]
Mac OS X "world's safest" operating system As if we didn't know that already, there's more info now. Mac OS X (based on Darwin) and BSD outperform both Microsoft Windows and Linux in security. I'm sure we'll read about "only coz of market share" and the likes, but to evaluators: Does it really matter why it's the safest? (And I think there's more to it than just lack of market share...)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-02 at 17:53 CET ] Been using that nice plugin which allows to get songs from an iPod from within iTunes? Stopped working in iTunes 4.7, eh? Well: You can use HexEdit to change that. Open "/Applications/iTunes/Content/MacOS/iTunes" and look for 'iPod Download'. Then change that to read, for example, 'iPod Dawnload'. Make sure _not_ to remove or add a character, though, just replace one. After saving that 'work', iTunes and iPod Download will work again as expected.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-02 at 00:12 CET ]
Tiger's Burnable Folders and Smart Folders
AppleInsider updates us on a few changes in smart folder management (along with screenshots of those). Basically, you can now create burnable folders through a new contextual menu item. Dragging stuff to them creates aliases. Inside the folder, you'll see a yellow 'burn bar' that allows you to burn the files associated with the aliases.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-01 at 18:17 CET ] Camera Mobile Phones burn Digital Camera Sales
Gartner Group and Infotrends note that currently, with mobile phones getting megapixel cameras and memory card slots, they start to hurt digital camera sales. Sounds reasonable, too, since the home user is probably fine with 1-2 MP cameras and doesn't want to carry a lot of gadgets.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-11-01 at 14:16 CET ]
So, Google wants on the Mac desktop...
And apparently, it'll take at least a few more weeks if not months, until Google will automatically index your harddrive for you and display local results in your browser of choice - or something like that. Having shortly looked at how Google Desktop on the PC does and how Spotlight works on Tiger, I have to admit, I don't really understand why Google wants to enter this market. Spotlight, which will be publicly available in the first half of 2005, will outbeat Google's approach by far. Their one advantage, as I see it, just really isn't one. They mix local results to internet results. Now if I'm writing a paper on a subject and go searching about it, I'll drop over my own feet all of the time? Super. ;)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-31 at 21:00 CET ]
According to some reports, Tiger build 8A294 takes a bit longer to install than some of the builds of late. Whether that's due to 'taming' the beast a bit remains a speculative thought, however. After installation, the build is as snappy as any 8A2xx build tested by our sources, they report. There are, however, instances of lag, and some Carbon applications will probably need updating (or Tiger needs fixes, time will tell...).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-31 at 16:30 CET ]
Apple seeds Tiger 8A294 to ADC members Apple has seeded the new build this weekend. There are quite a few noted issues in the build, so it's not recommended to use it in production systems, even if you usually ignore Apple's warning thereof. ;) (For example, activating SMB shares may corrupt login passwords and similarly fun stuff.) Yet: For ADC Select members, this is surely good news, since the last build they held in hands was the one released at WWDC.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-30 at 22:39 CET ] Apple also seeded Mac OS X Server 7R27 as well as Xsan 7N154.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-30 at 00:47 CET ]
Apple seeds Mac OS X 10.3.6 7R27 Apple also changed the download process for developers, according to sources. Apparently they don't choose the location from where they're downloading anymore. In the past few days, download for ADC members was on and off.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-29 at 14:03 CET ]
Late last night, Firefox 1.0rc1 was released to the servers. Get the file here (from this directory).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-28 at 06:16 CET ]
Newer Tiger Info (and screenshots)
Thanks to a source with access to one of the newer Tiger builds, we can show you a few new screenshots.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-27 at 22:31 CET ]
We know that Apple in all probability won't release another iPod in the coming six months. My guess is that we'll see the white iPods go all colour screen in the next revision (5G). This might happen next Spring or Summer. Video, in my not-so-humble opinion, is the logical next step. Sure, there are issues (we'll come to those in a moment), but rather than dismissing an iPod Video, I hope that Apple will take these issues head-on, solve them and create the real next step in a future generation of the iPod.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-27 at 13:22 CET ] Critical Mass Reader Mail Leading To An Answer. ;)
We do get a lot of e-mails by readers. Questions, comments and criticism. We don't usually react to them publicly, but the inbox has hit critical mass this time. ;)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-27 at 01:53 CET ]
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-26 at 23:30 CET ] This new release comes with a slew of new features.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-26 at 22:10 CET ] You can get it here at apple.com/itunes/download. While the software doesn't seem to be necessary in order to access the iTMS in new countries, it's sure recommended to use the newest version possible. This version is also needed for the new iPod Photo. One new feature for other users, too, is the automatic finding of double songs. (Gotta try that now...)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-26 at 20:27 CET ] There's a black U2 20 GB model now, and the iPod Photo for 25'000 pictures. iPod Photo 40 GB for 499, iPod Photo 60 GB for 599 USD. iTunes 4.7 is used to transport fotos to the iPod Photo (downscaled?).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-26 at 20:16 CET ] New iTMS Countries: No Switzerland As expected, iTunes has gotten available in more countries today. The list shows Austria, Belgium, Deutschland, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom and United States now. We'll keep you updated.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-26 at 19:01 CET ] There's been a lot of talk about Mac OS X security in the past 72 hours. The verdict: You're still safe, if you're using Mac OS X and keep it updated. If you really want to install an antivirus package on your Mac (maybe also because you don't want to send viri to your Windows using contacts accidentally), you might want to check out ClamXav. Might be of some use in the future, but also in the present. And be it only to provide you with a nice "nothing found" message... It's free, too. (Note: There still are some rough edges in the application and the installer, however, it should basically work fine. If you notice some window that doesn't seem to react, just quit the application/installer and restart it afterwards. Worked for me the second time around.)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-26 at 01:19 CET ]
Tomorrow's the big day of the music announcement. We're certainly expecting new iTMS locations (Switzerland, please?) as well as an iPod (or similar device) using the 60 GB drive. The black U2 branded iPod is in talks as well. We'll see tomorrow...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-25 at 18:58 CET ] There's another kid in town. iEmulator emulates a PC on a Mac, or so they claim. There's a bunch of screenshots available, "untouched" as the site promises, that show the software emulating up to 4 PCs at a time. They claim they can get a 1.5 GHz G4 emulate about a 500 MHz PC. However you should keep in mind that performance and experienced performance are two different things altogether. The software should be available in November, so we're waiting for comparisons to VPC before applying for a license. ;)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-25 at 15:35 CET ] Happy Birthday, Windows XP! Teletubby-Land has found its way to 'their' desktops on 25th of October 2001. Around that time, I was testing near-final builds of Mac OS X 10.1 and was eager to follow the future evolution of that operating system. In the past three years, we have not only seen the final release of Mac OS X 10.1 (Puma), but also the final releases of 10.2 (Jaguar) and 10.3 (Panther) as well as several 'service packs' in the form of releases such as the most recent 10.3.5 update. In the same time, Microsoft has released SP 1 and SP 2 for Windows XP, both without seriously updating the feature set of the operating system. Granted, they kinda had to focus on the security issues - and many people around the globe are glad they did - but on the other hand: If you want to make sure you're using the most insecure operating system, prone to attackers using worms and viri, Windows XP is still the way to go. And with Longhorn 'just around the corner' (2-3 years?), here's a toast to another three years of Windows XP, while we on the good side will be enjoying Tiger (10.4) in the first half of 2005 and probably Mac OS X 10.5 before Longhorn arrives. Cheers!
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-25 at 13:54 CET ]
AMD: Surf the net securely - use a Mac?
MacBidouille posts a french ad by AMD that asks users to surf more securely.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-24 at 15:09 CET ] Freescale publishes new information on the PowerPC 7448, MacBidouille has the link (French, but you'll find the linked PDF easily). Guess it all depends on what information is true. Our sources claim a) that Apple has a PowerBook with PPC 7448 ready, basically but that b) Apple could just skip this revision in favour of an earlier-than-expected (early 2005 instead of 2nd quarter 2005) PowerBook G5. Either way: Now is definitely not the time to buy a PowerBook.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-24 at 15:05 CET ]
Apple seeds Mac OS X 10.3.6 7R24 ... and cleans up the older builds with a special 'fix it' package that should get rid of the damage done by earlier betas of 10.3.6. A release of Mac OS X 10.3.6 is expected next week, possibly even 7R24.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-23 at 04:13 CET ]
The 53 MB package shows that Apple is still creating about a new build every third day (the first build seeded to developers was 7N130 at the end of August as we reported). Speculation now is that Apple will announce a much broader and bolder business strategy early next year.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-22 at 02:06 CET ]
Misunderstanding at AppleInsider AI posted this about 10.3.6 developer builds today. They say Apple has eased the update process from build to build, removing the reversioners. However, that's not true. The latest build, 7R20, did not contain a reversioner, however that was only the case because the build was _not_ intended to update earlier development builds of 10.3.6. Instead, the build was only applicable to the GM version of 10.3.5. If you are a developer with access to beta builds, do not install 7R20 over 7R14 or 7R12 etc., because after the upgrade, you won't be able to open some of Apple's applications (like iChat, Mail.app for example), effectively ruining your experience...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-21 at 02:15 CET ]
I'm sure you're aware of the fact that macnews.net.tc was the first and one of the more prominent rumour sites to talk about the PPC 7448 PowerBooks we then thought would arrive in Autumn 2004. Apparently, this will now not be the case, and we want to apologise, if our rumour has caused any inconveniences.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-20 at 19:47 CET ] Macintosh, Apache, MySQL and PHP. webEdition has posted a simple installation for a development environment that can just as easily be removed (just trash the MAMP folder). (Updated with English link...)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-20 at 16:04 CET ] Apple announces Tiger Early Start Kit ... and will probably soon start seeding new builds. The "Enterprise" title song springs to mind while I'm typing this. ;)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-20 at 13:43 CET ] "This new line-up of iBooks, along with the current PowerBooks we have will make-up the complete portable line-up we will be offering for the holidays...", David Moody has said to MacCentral. This could very well mean that the 7448-PowerBooks won't see the day of light at all. Which could mean that the PowerBook G5 is being readied for a January announcement. We're digging our sources...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-20 at 00:28 CET ]
Xserve with 400 GB S-ATA drives Apple has also added new options to its Xserve line. A new 'ultimate' configuration for the Xserve offers 3x400 GB S-ATA drives (1.2 TB of storage) and the Xserve RAID can now have up to 5.6 TB (14x400 GB) of space.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-19 at 18:30 CET ] Opinion: Single processor PowerMac G5 1.8 GHz
Apple has introduced a new entry-level model to their PowerMac G5 line. 1499 USD (2299 CHF) is, while certainly not cheap for an entry level desktop computer, cheaper than the previous entry into the PowerMac area. Although I'm glad Apple takes a step into the right direction with this new model, I don't think it's the right thing to do. The PowerMac label should be reserved for the highend models, but a 1.8 GHz single processor PowerMac with a 600 MHz frontside bus, 256 MB of RAM and a GeForce FX 5200 with 64 MB VRAM doesn't cut it for me. Unless it'd cost 999 USD (1499 CHF).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-19 at 15:25 CET ] As predicted by several rumour sites, the iBooks have been brought to 1.2/1.33 GHz G4 processors. AirPort Extreme is built-in and the pricing starts at 999 USD.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-19 at 14:37 CET ]
You're looking at the new server. Everything's okay and will be fine. :)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-18 at 20:27 CET ] Special Music Event Next Tuesday! Apple has invited several press people to a special event on 2004-10-26 (10 AM PST in California). U2 will probably perform their iPod ad song. And quite possibly a _bit_ more (iTMS Europe, iPod 60 GB...).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-18 at 18:49 CET ] Apple also seeds Mac OS X Client 10.3.6 7R20
We're in the wrapping up phase of this update, and a release is now expected anytime, basically - probably as early as next week.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-18 at 11:27 CET ]
Apple seeds Mac OS X Server 10.3.6 7R20 The server version focuses on Active Directory Plugin Authentication, AFP Server Performance, SMB Sharing for Windows XP clients (especially for large files writing to the SMB share), Mail server SMTP authentication when using CRAM-MD5.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-15 at 12:58 CET ]
Microsoft also updates Office v.X You can get the updater to 10.1.6 at the MacTopia site.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-13 at 16:39 CET ] The second beta is out and ready for download. Version 5.1 brings OmniWeb to a newer WebCore version and compatibility with sites like Gmail. Beta 1 had some flaws that have now been corrected. A final build of OmniWeb 5.1 is expected in the weeks ahead.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-13 at 10:52 CET ]
You can take a look here at apple.com/itunes/u2 and at the iTMS there's a 2min extended version.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-12 at 17:32 CET ] Cherry OS claims to emulate Mac OS X at 80 percent of the host's CPU speed. For about 50 USD, that's quite a cheap Mac (OS sold separately...). Their website says (right now) they feature a 'skin enadled GUI' (sic!). Well, I hope they have not so many typoes in their software, then. ;)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-12 at 17:14 CET ] You can read more about it here. Will be available soon here at Mactopia, too.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-12 at 16:08 CET ] Apple releases Remote Desktop 2.1 Fixes and new features include support for full screen mode when controlling and observing remote computers; support for controlling and observing remote computers with multiple monitors; support for mouse scroll wheel and right-click when controlling remote computers; support for computer restart for packages that require a restart; improved reporting of output for the Send UNIX command; improved printing of hardware and software reports; improved remote data collection; improved file copy for files on networked home directories; and enhanced column sorting in Administration application.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-12 at 16:04 CET ] Apple seeds Mac OS X 10.3.6 7R14 Select and Premier ADC members have access to this latest build of Mac OS X 10.3.6. A release of the update is expected in the coming weeks. Developers are still asked to test this build against Graphics including OpenGL intensive games and DVD playback, FireWire, Safari, Disc Recording (CD and DVD), USB, Mass Storeage devices etc.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-12 at 14:26 CET ]
This time the mini with their Zen Micro.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-11 at 13:27 CET ] Does, according to this article, pay out. Changes the way Apple's looked at in business. When Steve Jobs introduced Xserve, he said that they'd enter this market in a very "humble" way. I'm sure making the list of supercomputers isn't quite what Steve meant back then by his words. However, I'm also sure that he meant Xserve to have such kind of reviews and press (and success). But, and the linked article says that, so I quote: "Apple's next challenge will be knocking on the right doors." Well put.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-11 at 09:47 CET ]
A Windows Power User's 1 Month Trip to OS X
Now that was an article I was begging to read. Really. I've heard a lot of switchers' stories, but they mostly were - mildly put - relatively 'dumb' users. Apple clearly caters to those with Panther and will even more with Tiger (Spotlight will show you 'desktop pictures' if you search for 'wallpapers', for example). But someone who grew up with DOS and puts Windows XP to good use and is able to have his/her system running without a crash for several weeks: I hadn't heard much about such a user trying out a Mac. This article on anandtech.com will give you a better idea, too.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-10 at 17:53 CET ]
... wants to badmouth Apple's quality to you again claiming that Apple had to recall some PowerBook batteries, just remind them of the big DELL 4.4 mio. power adaptor recall of October 2004. These things happen to the best (and the rest) of computer companies. The fact that they actually fix things for free is also a sign of quality of service. Quote: "Dell today asked 4.4m notebook users to return their power adaptors after it admitted these peripherals pose both a fire and electric shock hazard." Not exactly a low number of notebooks, eh? And I wouldn't want my power adapter to catch fire and expose its electrical stuff, because it cracks open. Could cause my apartment to burn down. Another important quote, to show you just how _many_ users are affected: "Those parts shipped alongside computers were bundled with Dell's Precision M40' Latitude CP, CPi, CPiA, CPtC, CPiR, CPxH, CPtV, CS, CSx, CPxJ, CPtS, C500, C510, C540, C600, C610, C800, C805, C810, V700, C-Dock and C-Port; and Inspiron 2500, 2600, 2650, 3700, 3800, 4000, 4100, 4150, 5000, 7500, 7550, 8000, 8100, Advanced Port Replicator and Docking Station. [...] The adaptors were shipped between September 1998 and February 2002 inclusive." Compared to that, the number of affected 15" PowerBooks (first generation aluminum only, and only some of them...) that had their batteries replaced simply pales.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-08 at 17:59 CET ] So, those 60 GB iPod drives... ... will finally be put to a good use, then. ThinkSecret reports that within the next two months, Apple will release a 60 GB iPod with 2" colour screen (filling the 499 USD spot) that has iPhoto integration. Also, an A/V out port will be there. Other than that, it's gonna be a 'normal' 4th generation iPod, according to TS' sources.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-08 at 11:30 CET ]
Leander Kahney of WIRED likes VPC 7.0 You can read his short review here. Basically I can't really add anything but just sum it up for you: It won't do wonders (no, you're not going to play 3D shooters in VPC just yet) but for those who could live with VPC 6.x, VPC 7.0 is going to be a good upgrade. And a must if you need VPC and have a G5.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-06 at 12:39 CET ] And I personally like it. WIRED has the story about the EC considering 'cleaning Windows of DRM'. Now here's to an interesting twist in the story. ;)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-06 at 12:33 CET ]
Let's assume the dust has settled and Steve Ballmer's remarks don't drive the blood into our heads anymore. If we cut down through what he said and try to squeeze something useful out of it, it would be something like this: "Many people have MP3s on their iPods that they don't have paid for." We can certainly agree that this sentence isn't altogether wrong, since we can't deny that there was quite a long time when legal music downloads weren't even possible and the old Napster was thriving. And when the original Napster was killed, other services (Gnutella, Kazaa etc.) picked up where things were left - long before iTMS came into the game, and long before other countries than the USA had access to its songs.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-06 at 10:40 CET ]
Improves performance by 10-30 percent and adds G5 compatibility. More can be read here...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-05 at 12:13 CET ] AppleInsider has screenshots of the new Mail.app (in Tiger's 8A27x builds) showing a theme we were expecting quite a long time ago. They're calling it Platinum, but in my head, that doesn't quite ring. The theme fits the aluminum clad hardware Apple's making, so let's just call it an aluminum theme...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-05 at 10:58 CET ] Apple seeds Mac OS X 10.3.6 7R12 Just after the weekend, Apple has seeded a new build of 10.3.6 to its developers. No new information in this build, so it's still: Graphics including OpenGL intensive games and DVD playback, FireWire,Safari, Disc Recording (CDs and DVDs), USB, Mass Storage (external HDs, optical drives, card readers, etc.).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-05 at 10:54 CET ]
Released through Software Update. Still no SMB/Samba update, it seems. AFP Server, CUPS, NetInfoManager, postfix, QuickTime are the areas of this update.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-04 at 23:39 CET ] ... with new features. In the past, a red 'New Features' link in the upper right menu showed us what was changed. Right now, that link is there, too, but it only says that new features are about to come soon. Now let's see what they have for us...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-04 at 21:35 CET ] Mac.Ars PowerMac G5 Dual 2.5 GHz Review You'll find their good and extensive review here.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-04 at 21:17 CET ] If you happen to enjoy a Bang & Olufsen home equipment and a Mac, you can now link them using a swedish Mac fan's software.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-04 at 21:08 CET ] ThinkSecret reports that livepage.apple.com will be replaced next week. Apparently, the new page will be centered around Apple's own Hot News and their products and services (.Mac, probably). You can already take a look.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-04 at 21:04 CET ] Steve (the other one) bashes iPod users ... as MP3 stealing crowd, as you can read here on TheRegister. Maybe our Steve (Jobs) should bash that other Steve (Ballmer) in public, too, sometimes? A good ol' spanking would do, too. MTV Celebrity Death Match would surely be funny for us, too... Or let me put it differently: It's not a news day in the Mac world, really. But SpaceShipOne has apparently taken the X-Prize. I'm tired. ;) Oh, and Jason Deraleau at O'Reilly writes a better comment about this iPod thing. He probably didn't work that much before writing it. He still used the same 'other' joke to refer to the Steves (and even included Wozniak). But I saw that only after I first posted this story... ;)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-04 at 20:59 CET ] TheRegister updates the story about SigmaTel and Apple. Obviously, SigmaTel has announced a deal with Rio this past weekend. So: The source for the flash iPod rumour obviously was led down the wrong path somewhere. Doesn't mean Apple can't do a flash iPod all the same, but kinda defies the original rumour.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-04 at 11:43 CET ]
MacRumors posts this story today. While I don't think Apple should even enter this competition, really cheap iPods could make even clearer that Apple ownz this market.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-01 at 23:41 CET ] This one affects versions up until 3.0.5, so the currently installed 3.0.2 is quite certainly affected. Read the security notice at samba.org for more information. Hopefully, Apple will fix this soon enough by letting us download another of those security updates. Too bad they still mean rebooting the whole machine... :/ Also note that another Samba issue we mentioned more than two weeks ago (!) is still not patched in Mac OS X.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-10-01 at 16:20 CET ]
Accepting your island... (Editorial)
Apple will ship Tiger in the first half of 2005. And 10.5 at the end of 2006, probably. Our beloved OS will get better. But it won't conquer Windows. Here's why...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-30 at 11:51 CET ] Everyone colours MP3 players now, so...
After Creative and Toshiba (and possibly more that I don't know of), now Sony says they're going to ape Apple colouring some MP3 players. And that's good for Apple, although it'll probably mean 'good-bye' to iPod minis' colours...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-30 at 11:38 CET ] Five new iTMS countries in Europe In October, five new European countries will get access to iTMS. While I hope that Switzerland is among them, I kinda know that it won't be. But hope dies last, doesn't it. ;)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-30 at 09:19 CET ]
And you can take a closer look here.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-29 at 16:42 CET ]
According to this forum thread, you can use the usual firmware hack to enable the new iMac's monitor spanning capabilities. In the past, this hack has been working beautifully on all the iBooks I've installed it on. However: You do this on your own, Apple won't pay if you mess up your iMac.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-28 at 17:17 CET ] FreeScale confirms new processors Among them is the 7448 (which will be used in the next round of PowerBooks according to our sources) and also two other contenders of the e600 family (G4) of processors: The 8641 and the 8641D (dual core) processors. You can read the press release here.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-28 at 16:44 CET ] Those Microsoft PMC devices...
I've read about all of the reviews about the first Portable Media Center device available, the Creative Zen PMC-120. A new one's out on infoSync now. Some find the device too big, others like the size. Some mention that converting video for use on the device is ultimately too slow, unless you're using a yet unavailable dual core 6 GHz Pentium V or something. But what most of the reviewers tend to forget is: Buying this device will give you a device that is old in a few months and doesn't deliver adequate quality.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-28 at 12:53 CET ] Apple seeds Mac OS X 10.3.6 7R9 to ADC Select and Premier members. File size is 30.6 MB. Changes from 10.3.5 include: Graphic drivers, OpenGL, Safari, FireWire, USB, and Disc Recording (CDs and DVDs).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-28 at 11:53 CET ]
Apparently, Apple has extended their 'Panther & iLife 04' promotion until MWSF 2005 in January. And apparently some people are making a connection to a possible release of Tiger there. Our take: MWSF 2005 in January will show us iLife '05. However, Tiger will still be some months off in January. While development on Tiger has sure shown great progress in the past two months, no new builds have been made available to Select and Premier members, which we expect to happen months before a possible release of Tiger. We'll keep you informed.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-27 at 12:26 CET ]
Although this past week was a bit of a non-show, let's wrap it up. We've seen a lot of iMac G5 reviews lately, and all of them found the new iMac to be good and not too expensive, the latter being a nice turn for Apple, of course. We've also talked a bit more about Spotlight here and there. Apple has released its Java 1.4.2 Update 2 through Software Update, and then we've heard about Apple acknowledging some iMac G5 17" models' noise problems. And we had news about the PowerBooks. We'll keep you updated throughout next week. Hopefully, we can talk about a new Tiger build. The wait has been very, very long now...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-26 at 00:37 CET ]
Apple acknowledges iMac G5 noise problem And offers to exchange the power supply for affected 17" models. At least in Germany, that's already out. We're expecting an official statement later today.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-24 at 15:23 CET ] In an interview with Pinkerton, Mac.Ars takes a look at browsing on the Mac. While I'm no particular fan of any mozilla-based browser (long story made short: I thought Netscape was a very badly hacked together application on classic Mac OS and never warmed up to the idea that a few hundred or thousand people got to mess with a messed-up source code as big as Alaska...), I have to admit that of all mozilla-based browsers, Camino (and Chimera earlier) was always the best and leanest. And the interview also gives some insight on historical (non-)events, such as Camino almost ending up as AOL/Netscape's Mac browser...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-24 at 01:39 CET ] Apple is offering it now through Software Update. Apple seeded a final candidate of the software two weeks ago (as we mentioned) and has apparently fixed remaining bugs now.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-24 at 00:21 CET ]
Yet another good iMac G5 review Walt Mossberg, Wall Street Journal, has good things to say about the new iMac as well.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-23 at 17:41 CET ] One opinion about the music industry And a very good one to read. He quite shocked his audience, I believe, but he's right on quite some subjects he's talking about. Andrew Orlowski, that is, in his speech to the music industry in the UK (linked above).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-23 at 17:15 CET ] I've again to give away 5 Gmail accounts. As usual, contact me via the contact link below this article, if you're ready to pay 5 EUR via PayPal. Remember: This amount of money is rather your support for macnews.net.tc than any actual payment for the account, of course. So if you don't even _want_ an account, we happily accept your payment, too. ;)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-23 at 12:41 CET ]
As we've told you in the past, this Autumn will show us another round of PowerBook G4 series. (G5 PowerBooks will come in Spring/Summer 2005.) According to our sources, there'll be nothing radical about the next upgrade to the PBG4. We'll see the 12" model move up to 1.6 GHz, as well as the lower-end 15" model. The high end 15" and the 17" model will get the 1.8 GHz processor.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-23 at 12:30 CET ] iMac G5: The desktop replacement replacement time.com mentions that in a column about how great a desktop computer the iMac G5 really is. Like from a sci-fi movie, they say. (If only power-over-air would be an option, or that iPod could be synched wirelessly...). They also make a point that good products are a better switching campaign than the ill-fated switch campaign Apple (and I'm glad about it) has stopped doing.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-23 at 11:37 CET ] Again, Apple has seeded developers with a new version of their Xsan file sytem for Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server. SAN, of course, meaning Storage Area Network, which is a bit of a strange acronym, if you think about it, comparing it to LAN and WAN...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-23 at 00:41 CET ]
MacRumors is saying that AppleInsider has been saying that there might or might not be an Apple position for someone who could or could not work with third or first party iPod accessories. You don't believe me? Go read it yourself... ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-22 at 19:07 CET ] MobileTouch (iPod's wheel for mobile phones)
Synaptics, maker of the iPod's scroll wheel, has nnounced that very wheel for mobile phone use.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-22 at 17:03 CET ] Ranchero Software has published the first public beta of their RSS-reader's new version. Looking good! Going the other way of Safari 2, NetNewsWire 2 will incorporate webbrowsing in tabs, so when you want to look at a news item's full story, it'll open the web page in a new tab for you (if you want so).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-22 at 12:19 CET ] Slow news day, 'bit of humour? "OS 9 users are filthy," said Tom. I asked him: "What makes you say that?" Tom rolled his eyes and nodded in the general direction of Sarah. "She just switched to OS X and wanted me to put the trash on her desk."
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-22 at 11:21 CET ]
Yes. PC Magazine has rated the G5 iMac. Whether its name was a hint... ;-) Quote: "With the iMac G5, Apple has given Mac fans yet another reason to stay in the fold. And its unparalleled execution should attract would-be Windows PC buyers, as well."
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-21 at 23:33 CET ]
Tiger development doesn't only cater for those of us who want the UI to be more lickable, faster and more complete. Spotlight data, according to a Tiger preview session in Paris, is available in Terminal, too. I'm pretty sure there'll be a lot of scripters hacking away as soon as they get their hands on newer Tiger builds...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-20 at 19:02 CET ] Where do you want to go tomorrow, eMac? Giles Turnbull at O'Reilly writes down his idea that the fourth iMac config (low end edu config mentioned in the developer notes of the iMac) could replace the eMac. While that machine (40 GB harddrive, no optical drive, Geforce 4MX 32 MB) will certainly be cheaper than a 'normal' iMac, it's still going to be more expensive than a current education eMac. So: I wouldn't say it's obvious that the eMac's days are numbered, but the question remains whether Apple will create another version of the eMac, possibly with a G5 processor?
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-20 at 18:22 CET ] Just a little detail about how Spotlight is going to ease your life. Say a customer calls you and is sure that he _did_ send you that file you need. You just enter the customer's name into Spotlight, and it'll find the file, whether it was sent to you via E-Mail or iChat. This actually means that files you get via iChat are 'tagged' with the user name. While this sounds great for usability: What about privacy? If I send the same file to another contact, will that new contact see where _I_ got the file from? Will that person also see an e-mail address or other (certainly private) information? We'll have to look into that more closely in the coming months. Quite certainly, users will not be able to completely shut down Spotlight if they want to - unless they stay in Panther.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-20 at 01:10 CET ]
Editorial: .Mac - Die or Revolve...
First there was iTools, a free set of internet tools specifically for the Mac user. Then, Apple turned these services into a yearly subscription service for 99 USD. When Apple introduced .Mac, 99 US dollars seemed a bit much, but the user also _got_ quite a lot for it. Nowadays, however, .Mac seems out of place to me. Too expensive by far.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-18 at 21:46 CET ]
Apple's released Security Update 2004-09-16 through Software Update. It updates iChat. Apparently, there was an issue with it...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-17 at 02:21 CET ]
The Microsoft iTunes Music Store David Pogue, in this (free reg. required) NYtimes article, muses that basically Microsoft has just copied the iTunes Music Store from Apple. It offers more or less the same for the other side of the coin, the coin featuring an iPod and an all-other-players-in-the-world side. For the US market only, so far.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-16 at 18:56 CET ]
... however only in Japan, as we all know. And it's a pity for the end users in the USA and Europe. Their newest gadget, the PEG-VZ90, is the first PDA with an OLED-display we know of. And the specs of this display, compared to the 'old ones' (look at the table at the foot of the linked page) are very, very impressive. We're talking 10 times the contrast of Sony's earlier PDA screens (1000:1 compared to 100:1) and we're talking 100% NTSC colour range, compared to about 40% with older PDA screens (remember those being a little washed out looking?).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-14 at 16:44 CET ]
I've again to give out a few Gmail accounts. Please use the contact link below this message and give a short and good reason why you should get an invitation. :)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-14 at 12:37 CET ]
... acknowledges the FTP hickup and sends out a corrected version of the latest Security Update (now 2004-09-07, v1.1). We've mentioned the FTP problems and warned you _not_ to install any strange old (security-lacking) versions here expecting a fast fix from Apple. Which now happened.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-14 at 10:56 CET ] And Samba on Mac OS X currently is at 3.0.2. There's an advisory at samba.org. Bad people can bring a server (or your machine, if you've activated Windows sharing) to a halt. As Apple's version is affected, we advise you not to keep Windows sharing activated, unless you need it - and then only for a short time.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-14 at 10:51 CET ]
As mentioned earlier this month, newer Tiger builds will soon come into the hands of ADC Select and Premier members. AppleInsider posts this article with screenshots of iChat with additional Jabber support (it's still unclear how/if this will be interoperable with the AIM network...), parental controls and more on Safari's RSS features.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-13 at 23:16 CET ] MacRumors posts a story derived from Daily Variety & Ultimate-Guitar.com that says the settlement would "possibly dwarf the 26.5 mio. USD paid" in 1991. Apple had - before that - promised not to go into the music market, but with MIDI interfaces and QuickTime had violated the earlier agreement. MacRumors muses that Apple Corps (The Beatles' label) could become a large shareholder of Apple, with Paul Mc Cartney on Apple Computer Inc.'s board of directors. I personally think: Why not even merge the two and let Apple Music become the biggest of the 'big five' in the music industry? Apple Computer certainly has a lot of music-momentum at hand, currently...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-13 at 21:05 CET ]
Hard to believe. This WIRED article says Transitive has QuickTransit ready, which should enable 'near native emulation speeds'. Sure. Everyone's done it wrong in the past. Now there's the solution. Rob Enderle (who in the past was flamed by this very website for saying things like "IT people who choose Mac risk being fired." or "Don't buy an iPod or use the iTMS, because Apple might go out of business.") said "Transitive benefits from the fact that most modern machines are fast enough to emulate each other without much affecting performance." I'm pretty sure he would say something similar if Transitive had announced that their software can replicate food for free without an external source of energy.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-13 at 17:32 CET ]
IBM today introduced a new OpenPower system, putting it against more expensive (but performance-comparable) HP and Sun systems. Two- and four-way machines will be available, starting at around 5'000 USD.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-13 at 17:09 CET ] Hello, Apple, wake up, please... Nokia is going to ship the Nokia Communicator 9500 soon. It is Symbian based. Series 80. Features Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity. And it would be nice if we Apple users could synch that baby as soon as we get our hands on it. It's been announced more than half a year ago, so I guess you're alreay finalising the support for this new smartphone in iSync, right? And oh yeah: There's also going to be the cheaper Nokia Communicator 9300. Lacking WiFi (and an integrated camera) but still sporting Bluetooth, so that, too, would be nice of you to support in iSync. Right? Right? (You might notice that I think Apple is always a few steps behind with iSync.)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-13 at 16:45 CET ]
While this might not be world-important, MediaMarkt in Switzerland currently sells a 'PyroGate' (NEC drive inside) 8x external USB-2 DVD +/- R(W) burner for 199 CHF (about 130 USD), which works quite well with Mac OS X 10.3.5 and Toast 6.x. It's not supported in the Finder/iTunes/iDVD etc., but if that's not important to you, it's quite a cheap and good solution for archiving. I've only been able to test the device with 4x media so far, but that works well.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-10 at 12:34 CET ] ... in a 60+ pages PDF document. You'll find a lot of information in that document regarding the new iMac's clockwork. ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-10 at 10:10 CET ] Security Update, FTP server... Some people seem to have problems with the FTP server 'fix' in the latest security update from Apple. MacBidouille - and probably other sites - are 'fixing' the problem by replacing the new FTP server with the old one. That's of course a bad idea in the first place, because Apple replaced the old one because of a security issue. We thus advise people not to do it. If your FTP service doesn't work right now: Go to Apple's support forums and search them for a solution involving the currently installed version. Apple will probably send out another update soon enough, too, to solve the problem, although it hasn't yet publicly acknowledged the problem.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-10 at 09:59 CET ]
With Tiger builds currently on the edge of becoming 8Bxx builds (last current word we had was 8A22x and counting...), we'd like to post a (very small) shot of how Graphite's gonna look.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-09 at 16:14 CET ] They've sold 3 mio. songs at 49 cents apiece - and have probably lost as much as 20 cents per song. Their discount, however, will end soon. After that, they want to sell songs for 99 cents, and sometimes some songs at 49 cents. They sure had the attention of the market for a while, but it doesn't sound like a real danger for iTMS (just as expected). The real danger, of course, is Microsoft (as always).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-09 at 15:06 CET ]
Read it here. Apparently, he's back and will pick up work in a few days. All's well.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-08 at 23:14 CET ] Apple seeds Java 1.4.2 Update 2 FC This 26 MB file is for developers to test their Java using products. Fixes since Java 1.4.2 Update 1 include overall applet support improvements in Safari, correct behavior when LiveConnect is used on a cold launch of Safari, drag and drop improvements, and double-byte input method fixes.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-08 at 21:25 CET ] LaunchBar users: Meet QuickSilver As my long-time readers know, I'm a fan of LaunchBar, the keyboard-kowboy's application (and other things) launcher. Version 4 of that baby is currently in public beta. Now another user of LB has linked me up to QuickSilver, which currently is at Beta 28. And I'm converted. The software is currently free and fits Mac OS X like a glove. Give it a try!
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-08 at 11:07 CET ]
It sounds like some Windows software, but wincent.org's name is part of it. It's a Fast User Switching replacement menu item. It's free. And you can make it show your user icon instead of the name (which often is too long), or choose one of the other options... The new version 2.0 is announced and ready for download here...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-07 at 10:41 CET ]
AppleInsider has posted a gallery of screenshots of the new version that will be in stores soon.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-05 at 18:09 CET ]
... and nothing changed, it seems.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-04 at 13:41 CET ] "The doors to connect.apple.com will be open shortly. We apologize for the interruption," the page says. The last time we saw that happen, it didn't have to do with a big new release for developers, such as, say, a new Tiger build. But we can hope, can't we. ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-04 at 11:32 CET ] And Sony went solo, it seems. According to this article (quoting a Nikkei Sangyo Shimbun article), Sony could've been part of the iTMS early on in its history. This would probably have given the iTMS even more marketing power from the beginning vs. Microsoft later in the game, but without Sony, Apple can take all of the crown for being the innovator 'who saved the music industry' (WIRED).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-04 at 11:26 CET ]
This AppleInsider news blurb says newer Tiger builds could be seeded as early as next week as both CD and DVD disk images - first through Apple Seed and later through ADC (Select and Premier). We're sure looking forward to new information on Tiger...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-03 at 14:03 CET ]
A friend of mine looked at the new iMac G5 and instantly said: "It could have been half as thick, had they used a G4 processor. Pity." - Which reminds me of the fact, that Apple will stay with the G4 for the next round of PowerBooks that will be announced in September/October...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-02 at 09:46 CET ]
Xsan is Apple's SAN file system for Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server. It is yet unclear, whether Apple wants to give their business strategy (which started out with the Xserve) another push with things like Xsan, Xgrid etc.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-09-01 at 14:57 CET ]
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 ]
... as a means to ditch Windows, but not completely. But honestly, if you read through the article and how it's 'almost like Windows' but without the security issues, the author makes it read as if it was simple and transparent at the beginning. You then learn that Xandros uses Crossover and Win4Lin. And that he sometimes uses IE via Crossover and sometimes on Win98 in Win4Lin... Wouldn't it be just much easier to either use Windows XP (applying all the patches when they're available) or, to get rid of it, use a Mac? (Read this article for more about UN*X on the Desktop at macnews.net.tc...)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-30 at 11:09 CET ]
With still no new Tiger builds available after WWDC 2004, ThinkSecret takes another look at the WWDC build's Safari release. With pictures.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-29 at 22:35 CET ] Apple warns Real and its users that future software upgrades (and future iPods) might not play Real's songs. Apple also said: "We are stunned that RealNetworks has adopted the tactics and ethics of a hacker to break into the iPod, and we are investigating the implications of their actions under the DMCA and other laws."
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-29 at 16:09 CET ] That curious time.com remark about 4G iPod The article is here. And the important (?) quote: "But you should know that internally the new iPod is a ground-up reconstruction, and its really compelling applications - the ones that very well might get the goat of anyone unable or unwilling to upgrade - are still secret. All that Apple is saying is that there's more to this than what's being publicized." - It certainly sounds as if time.com heard a hint at features not publicized yet. However, we doubt that. Would certainly be cool if it actually were a colour screen, just not using them with current firmware, eh? ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-29 at 15:33 CET ] AppleInsider rumours that a next PowerBook revision could make use of the so-called 'PPC G4 Extended' by Motorola, running at up to 2.0 GHz. Our own sources, however, point out that Motorola is set to release the MPC 7458 and 7448 at speeds of up to 1.8 Ghz 'soon' (earlier 7448 rumours). If Apple is doing one more G4 round of PowerBooks, we're expecting them not to reach 2.0 GHz, sadly. The first PowerBooks with 2 GHz are expected to be based on a low-power G5 processor by IBM - but certainly not this year. We also recently talked about PowerBooks here (Radeon Mobility 9800) and here (no competition, really).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-29 at 14:01 CET ] MacBidouille reports that Hitachi will unveil a 6 GB version of their microdrive later this year. While not a massive jump, a version with more space of the iPod mini would certainly be appreciated by customers. In somewhat related news: Switzerland sees the first pink iPod minis (seems they're the worst sellers in other parts of the world, then...) at Heiniger AG's online shop.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-29 at 13:42 CET ]
Apple releases WebObjects 5.2 Developer Evaluation ... to ADC Select members. So if you've got ADC Select access and want to take a closer look at WebObjects, this is the time for it.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-28 at 22:01 CET ] Apple has just seeded build 7M28 of Mac OS X 10.3.5.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-28 at 03:49 CET ]
Bluetooth headsets with CD-quality You can read more about them in German here on heise.de or directly (in English) on Zeevo's site. Zeevo is offering the ZV4301 chip for device makers. This could, basically, enable future Bluetooth-iPods to stream music wirelessly to a stereo headset. But there are, of course, other uses for this technology, too. For example iChat, or simply listening to music wirelessly from your PowerBook.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-27 at 18:45 CET ] ATi introduces Radeon Mobility 9800 And we can quite safely assume that this chip will be used in future PowerBooks. Currently, we expect Apple to ship new PowerBooks (still based on G4) in the last quarter of 2004 (Oct-Dec), unless a G5 version can be delivered by January 2005, which is still in discussion.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-27 at 18:41 CET ]
ThinkSecret is hinting at Apple's iSync feedback page, where version 1.5 can already be selected as the version used. Current beta builds of Mac OS X 10.3.5 still sport iSync 1.4, so iSync 1.5 is probably developed separately at Apple.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-26 at 18:39 CET ]
Reading some articles around the web about Real's Harmony technology (for example this one), I can't help but notice that 'they' (the article writers) get something wrong. They seem to think that Real's approach might harm Apple. Sure, some iPod owners might consider (also) using Real's store instead of just iTMS. But what rather will happen is that users of the Real Online Music Store will consider the iPod as a viable digital music player now.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-26 at 16:40 CET ] Real's Harmony technology: iPod compatible Real announces that their technology dubbed 'Harmony' will let iPod users buy, download and use songs from the RealPlayer Music Store. This after Apple turned down Real's plea to support the Real AAC format on the iPod directly. Real's effort to support the iPod certainly shows how important the iPod is in the digital music market - and how the iPod's position of being the one most important digital music player will eventually be a real winner for Apple, with other players adopting the technology Apple uses instead of the other way 'round. It's just not necessary for Apple to support WMA or Real.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-26 at 10:39 CET ]
says AppleInsider. Isn't this a bit, well, late?
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-23 at 11:15 CET ]
WIRED takes a look at the birth of the iPod.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-22 at 13:09 CET ]
ThinkSecret brings us another instance of their Tiger reports. This time about the Finder and System changes, which aren't so many (yet), as testers of the WWDC build have confirmed.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-22 at 13:08 CET ] iTMS Europe adds 3 indie labels "Apple(R) today announced that it has signed licensing agreements with three of the largest European independent music labels, Beggars Group, Sanctuary Records Group and V2, adding tens of thousands of additional independent tracks from leading artists to the iTunes(R) Music Store in the UK, France and Germany. With three of the most influential independent record labels on board, iTunes Music Store customers in Europe now have access to an impressive catalog of independent artists including Basement Jaxx, The Crystal Method, Interpol, The Libertines, Morrissey, the Pixies, Prodigy, Stereophonics, Paul Weller and The White Stripes." - Full press release here. So, basically, all's well in the best online music store of Europe. Now let's have _all_ European countries up and running as soon as possible, please... ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-22 at 12:53 CET ]
Is there a competitor? At all?
Today I was talking with a colleague. About how some luxury cars are different from others. I won't tell what each of our favourite was, because I don't want to start a flame about luxury cars. However: We both agreed that once you enter a certain segment of luxury, the product starts to feel finished, complete yet simple and - of course - beautiful.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-20 at 12:31 CET ] 60 GB drive speculation around the web With Apple _not_ releasing a 60 GB iPod today, people are currently driving crazy, it seems, around the web. Apple's inofficial statement: No 60 GB iPod. There are several possibilities now. The most probable one: The 60 GB iPod will come, but later on (Apple Expo Paris?). The less probable ones include video iPods and a more simple 'PowerPod' (aluminum) with additional 'professional' features like 'home on iPod'.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-20 at 01:04 CET ]
HP's iPod is coming in September. And it's going to be based on the 4G iPod now.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-19 at 15:39 CET ] And one thought about iPod's UI
I'm very glad that Apple has now gone back to the initial design of the scroll wheel with the four buttons around it for both the iPod mini and the 4G iPod. The 3G iPod's line of four buttons was a clear step away from the simplicity of the original iPod (and the 2G iPod, of course).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-19 at 14:57 CET ] Pricing and everything was correct, too. 299 USD for the 20 GB model, 399 USD for the 40 GB model. The 'highend' spot of 499 USD is now free for the 60 GB model, which Apple will reportedly release in a few weeks. Info about the new iPods and here's the link to the Apple Online Store...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-19 at 14:47 CET ]
It's three pages of iPod glorification. Granted, the iPod's worth the glorification, but that comes from an Apple fan, doesn't it. ;) Right now, the article seems to be down, though... But the cover of the magazine, which is the really important part, has been copied throughout the web already (even to less-rumoury sites such as MacCentral).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-18 at 11:52 CET ]
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-18 at 04:40 CET ]
Quite an extensive Sendo X review
... to be found here at TheRegister. The author uses a PowerBook 12", so he's a fine guy, anyway. ;-) ... We've been talking about the Sendo X over and over again (search for 'sendo'), but the smartphone based on the Series 60 platform just isn't available yet here in Switzerland (and most other European countries), but I'm told it should be available 'this Summer' (if _that_ ever comes, although today was nice and hot).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-17 at 22:31 CET ] And they're confirmed. They're going to be slightly smaller (slightly, really) and will resemble the iPod mini in design of the scrollwheel (buttons inside), which is good. Whether they're going to come in mulitple colours or only aluminum remains to be seen, though.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-17 at 21:22 CET ]
Apple seeds Mac OS X 10.3.5 7M20
After seeding 7M18, Apple has now given ADC Select and Premiere members this new build. The 41 MB sized file is an update for 10.3.4, actually, and not a combined updater. While it may still contain debug information that will be removed from a final version, it'll anyway be quite a big update. The seed note does not contain any changes from 7M18 according to our sources.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-16 at 12:33 CET ]
SonyEricsson unveils P910 smartphone The new version of SE's highend smartphone includes a thumbboard that makes SMS and E-Mail handling easier. The basic featureset stays the same, but memory is up to 64 MB (from 16) and the included memory stick is 32 MB (up from 16). More info and pictures can be found at infoSync.no.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-15 at 14:12 CET ] Apple's 3rd fiscal quarter: Good. ... and the new iMacs are going to be based on the G5 processor. A happy day for Apple and Mac users alike, it seems. Also mentioned by rumour site ThinkSecret: New iPods soon, with smaller form factor and in several colours instead of white. Well, I hope they'll still make a white one or a silver one, since I wanna buy one soon... ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-15 at 01:35 CET ]
Tiger Detail: Fast Logout & Autosave
We're going to bring you several tidbits about Tiger in the coming weeks and months. The first of these is a treat by Apple, really. We're going to like this... For example, if you start typing an e-mail message in Mail.app in Tiger and then choose 'Logout' from the Apple menu, Mail.app has already saved your draft ("Autosave") and the logout can happen really fast ("Fast Logout"). Whether this will be implemented or not in the applications you use is of course on the developer's side. But it's a good thing that Apple defines such things for Tiger.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-14 at 19:29 CET ] ADC members receive their Tiger seed As we anticipated on 2004-07-09, ADC Select and Premier members have been shipped the Tiger Preview by snail mail. There are, however, no newer builds available on ADC so far.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-14 at 15:03 CET ] About Tiger's Windows integration ... or the lack of talk about it. This three page eWeek article talks about how Apple still seems to forget about how important this is for Apple's business appeal. My note on this, however is: The industry seems to be begging Apple for a business strategy. And Apple stays as mum as it has been before. It doesn't seem to want into the business sector, or it would speak out, wouldn't it?
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-14 at 13:09 CET ]
I've been testing my gmail-account in the past few weeks now and can only say: I'm impressed. They're going down the right path with this one, it seems. There still are some glitches (which they know about), but they're probably going to be fixed soon. The interface is one of the best web-application interfaces I've seen so far - and certainly the best web-mail interface I've seen.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-13 at 13:48 CET ]
to ADC Select & Premier members. The new code is called 'Beta 2'. In other news, Jaguar is running a competition for a black iPod. They seem to have forgotten to also colour the buttons black, though. And: Currently, the linked site is not available.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-12 at 20:33 CET ] I hope I can share this the right way... [off-topic!] I had quite some fun reading the comments to this osNews article about computer annoyances. One of the annoyances is boot time, and one Windows XP user answers that like this: "I am happy using hibernation. If XP begins to feel buggy, then I reboot." - The problem with this, of course, is that XP begins to feel buggy as soon as anyone's actually using it, which would result in an endless loop of reboots... :P - And btw. it's nice to read so many comments about how the Mac awakes from sleep in 1 second. That's really one of the big achievements Mac OS X has made over previous (and all other) operating systems.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-12 at 12:51 CET ]
So they've got their new Mac Centre. And they stop supporting the Mac soon. Which one's true now? Palm has been supporting and skipping support for the Mac throughout the years, and it's always been a game of hide and seek for Mac users. Then Apple made a big step by introducing Palm support with iSync - but didn't quite succeed. Also, that solution still needs Palm's desktop software, so it won't support models that don't come with basic Mac support. The one solution out of this misery I see: Get a smartphone from Nokia or SonyEricsson that works with the Mac out of the box through iSync - and forget about Palm and PDAs, as they're not necessary any longer.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-10 at 13:02 CET ] Yet another "plan how to save Apple"
You'll find it here at BusinessWeek. Alex Salkever talks about his "six-step plan for Apple".
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-10 at 12:57 CET ]
ADC Select Members get Tiger on 2004-07-12 ADC Select members got a note that they'll get access to Tiger Preview on 12th of July. We're expecting newer builds of Tiger shortly after that.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-09 at 16:00 CET ] SIPphone to introduce Mac client Interested in VoIP? Go to SIPphone's website later today (Friday). It sounds interesting, although I think this'd be for US customers mainly?
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-09 at 10:22 CET ] Apple seeds Mac OS X 10.3.5 7M18 Major areas of change: Audio/Sound, Bluetooth, Firewire, Graphics, OpenGL, Mail, Safari, Networking. We'll know more in the future about the quality of this build. Right now, this is all the info we've got.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-09 at 10:15 CET ]
ThinkSecret about Tiger's Spotlight You'll find their article here. While it doesn't add much more information to what has already been said before, it kinda 'covers it all' again and is food for the hungry rumour mouths. Apple has yet to seed another build after the WWDC Preview, which will - hopefully - bring the GUI advances Steve Jobs' build at WWDC obviously had over the build that was handed out.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-08 at 09:42 CET ]
Is UN*X ready for the Desktop?
I've chosen this day to make some fun of the linux geeks. Sorry, if you happen to be one and feel a bit irky after reading this...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-07 at 13:15 CET ]
iPods are security threat for companies ... says Gartner Group. Because you can use the iPod as an external harddrive, which allows malicious code to be brought into the company and intellectual property outside of the company. Of course, that should then read 'external harddrives' instead of 'iPods', eh? We asked a security specialist (my mom is a secretary) about the subject, and she said: "They should also ban fax machines, as these are much more likely to be used for bringing confidential information to the outside. Oh, and, yeah: That lady who brings the coffee. So we have three main issues at hand: iPods, fax machines and the lady who brings the coffee."
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-06 at 18:49 CET ] Or something like that. Fun to read, although I think he's pushing the limits of his ability to write on some of his EIGHT pages switching column. (From an Acer notebook to an iBook G4 12".)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-06 at 01:21 CET ]
MacRumors' 2.5/2.0 GHz benchmark comparison flawed As you can read here at MacBidouille (if you understand French), MacRumors is comparing apples and oranges (although both machines are by Apple) when showing a dual 2.5 GHz's Cinebench numbers (using a beta optimised for the G5) vs. a dual 2.0 GHz's numbers (using a non-optimised version). The 2.5's numbers are okay. But the 2.0 would do better using the same code.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-05 at 15:21 CET ]
Now let's see. DVD quality video, encoded with H.264. A 90 minute movie fits onto a CD-R if encoded by H.264. Including 3 language and 5 subtitle tracks. With broadband connections, such movies can be downloaded in acceptable amounts of time. Apple has the technology (QuickTime, iTMS) and the connections (Akamai for networking, Pixar for the movie industry) to do this. Will we buy H.264 (MP4 would make a good name for those) flicks for 10 USD (or 9.99 for marketing reasons) a piece in 2005?
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-05 at 10:32 CET ]
From the notes: "The purpose of the DotMacKit and its contained classes is to give developers allof the tools that they would require to tightly integrate the Internet-based services offered by Apple in its .Mac product with their own." And: "The .Mac Kit will allow you to build applications with networked features to leverage .Mac's 24/7 service and over one half million paying membersÑall without any network programming. It will also cover the new .Mac-enhanced features in Tiger such as syncing to .Mac with SyncServices as well as the new dynamic DNS capabilities of Rendezvous."
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-04 at 11:16 CET ]
And I still hate to rant. Really. This time this is about a formerly very, very good website: PowerPage.org. They seem unable to control their content for quality. A recent article titled "Iraqi Security Forces use PowerBooks" shows the following picture. Are PowerPage's editors blind?
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-03 at 16:35 CET ] WIRED: "Searching for the perfect OS" This WIRED article talks about the reasons and consequences of Spotlight in Tiger. A quote: "If it's implemented well, Spotlight may become an extremely interesting technology. It's obvious that with the growing amount of data that's stored on today's computers, it becomes more and more important to have the means to search this plethora of information in an efficient manner." That's right. However, Tiger's still about a year away - and until then, Objective Development has part of the answer with LaunchBar 4 (currently in public beta).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-03 at 16:05 CET ]
Some Safari 2.0 (Tiger) details AppleInsider reports on Safari 2.0 Beta in Tiger. They also state that "Apple didn't recreate the web" since Safari's first beta. However, Dave Hyatt's newest blurb about Dashboard tells a different story about WebKit. Interesting stuff - and a good approach by Apple.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-02 at 18:03 CET ]
Seems like a nice error. ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-02 at 16:38 CET ] The PowerPage.org is rumouring Apple's investment in slimmer, thinner harddrives and optical drives for next generation PowerBooks. The limiting factor: The PowerPC G5.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-02 at 12:06 CET ]
Source: Apple. Yes, you've read right. The Apple Store says that Apple planned to empty the stock on 'old' iMacs for the time when the new one would be ready, that now they're basically out of iMacs and the new one would be announced and released in September. G5? You bet.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-07-01 at 23:55 CET ]
I didn't want to, but I have to: Rant - Dashboard, Konfabulator
I won't go into great detail on how I feel about Apple "ripping off" third party developers. Let's say this: I'd want Apple to catch bigger fish than Arlo Rose, i.e. I like Apple's Final Cut Pro competing with Adobe's Premiere (and basically killing it on the Mac), and I like how TextEdit evolves into a much better word processor than, well, Word (TextEdit in Tiger can read/write Word files with tables!).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-30 at 23:25 CET ] "It's _not_ just JavaScript." Instead, he says, Dashboard widgets are effectively webpages using WebKit to be rendered. So they have all the options that WebKit offers. Read more at his blog. It also means that we can probably do quite a bit more with Dashboard than one can with Konfabulator. It certainly sounds very intersting.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-30 at 12:25 CET ] Tiger 8A162 installation report
The WWDC Tiger Preview comes on one installation DVD (and is about the same size as a Panther DVD or the three Panther CDs combined, so it's not really much bigger). Installation is smooth and without any changes from Panther (so far). After installation, the user is asked whether he/she wants to transfer his/her settings and files. This transfer utility can also be called later, but then only offers FW transfer, not - as initially - also importing just another volume's files.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-30 at 10:22 CET ] And just to quiet (or unleash) the whiners... -> Tiger's going to cost 129.00 USD. Too much, you say? Get over it. Apple's said so in their press release. (Not that you should get over it, but that it costs as much as Jaguar and Panther did.) And we're good with that. ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-30 at 08:20 CET ]
ADC Premier and Select members have access to a Safari 1.3 build for Panther. This build (v146) does not contain any visible new features, i.e. no RSS feed browsing or anything Tiger-related.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-29 at 19:44 CET ] You'll find Apple's press release here.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-29 at 19:24 CET ] Apple cuts AirPort Extreme prices ... by 50 for the 'big' station and 20 USD for the card. The 'cheaper' base station has been removed, sadly (who needs modems?).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-29 at 19:22 CET ] AirPort Express will come with a new version of AirPort software. You'll find the documentation for AirPort 4.0 at manuals.info.apple.com.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-29 at 19:12 CET ] Just a quote from the WWDC keynote we missed before... ... about display quality. Steve Jobs said: "Our competitors buy the panels we reject."
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-29 at 13:12 CET ] Apple seeds Java 1.5 DP for Tiger Preview The new developer preview of Java 1.5.0 Beta 2 requires a preview build of Tiger. So far, the WWDC Preview Build is the only build of Tiger that has left Apple as far as we know.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-29 at 11:07 CET ]
Wrapping up WWDC Keynote Live Report...
Gotta say: Tiger sounds interesting. As Apple has said a few weeks ago, the development speed is going down a bit. No more upgrades every year, rather, we're seeing 1.5 years right now. Whether we'll end up with a two-year strategy remains to be seen. However: We _wonder_ whether next year's WWDC will be the place to show the successor of Tiger (since WWDC will probably be about the time when Tiger's actually released...).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-28 at 20:56 CET ] (You'll find the newest information at the bottom of this article. Read as you would.)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-28 at 20:46 CET ] You'll find the new version here. The 155 MB file also contains Xfree86.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-28 at 17:30 CET ] MacRumors has revealed some Tiger screenshots this weekend and has 'confirmation from ThinkSecret'. The source of the screenshots, however, is a known troll from Slashdot, which isn't exactly the kind of source you'll want for Tiger screenshots. We'll keep you informed. The fact remains that the shown features are part of Tiger, as far as we know.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-28 at 09:44 CET ]
Re: Scooter, (Was: Comparing Xserve to Windows 2003 Server)
I first thought: Wow, finally someone's comparing this. However, the article really is quite non-sensical. The user tested an Xserve G5 with Panther Server against some desktop computer running Windows 2003 Server. The user, however, doesn't know much about Windows and couldn't even create a user, which is quite definitely the user's fault and not the operating system's. If you still want to read the 'article', go here, but I can't really say I would, if I were you.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-27 at 11:15 CET ]
PowerTune: Making Apple's PowerBook G5 possible eWeek reports on IBM's PowerTune technology, which will make iMac and PowerBook G5 a possibility. However, a chip using this technology has not yet been released as far as we know. Apple still says "not this year". Whether we'll hear more about this in the near future (Monday?) is unknown at the moment. Monday, of course, will bring news on Tiger, which we all anticipate. Keep your eyes on macnews.net.tc, as we'll bring you the news as soon as possible. We'll also test drive Tiger for you as soon as Monday night (with a report as early as Tuesday).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-26 at 12:54 CET ]
ThinkSecret: Displays yes, iMac no for WWDC In their newest article, TS are making fun of rumour sites that bet their money on an iMac for WWDC. While I wouldn't go so far as to bet money on anything like a Macintosh rumour, I agree with them about the facts. They're not mentioning the iPods, though, which have been confirmed to me by at least two 'good' sources (i.e. they were right before and had inside information about iPod/iTMS themes). You'll find our WWDC Roundup(s) here.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-25 at 01:03 CET ]
Sophos releases Anti-Virus update for Panther Sophos fixes its AntiVirus software to work with more than half a year old Panther operating system. - And I wonder why they even _did_ that, because I'm pretty sure that the customers they've had in the past have either upgraded to another maker's antiviral tool or just lived without one, since there's still no known (working, bad) virus for Mac OS X out there. But *if* there's ever going to be one, Sophos now has a tool that works with Panther. Let's just hope that their virus definitions are a little more up to date, eh? ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-23 at 17:28 CET ]
There are two kinds of unnecessary comments. The one sort are comments like I've made in that news blurb about the U.S. Army buying Xserves. Believe me, I know that we shouldn't mix Macintosh news with politics. The other sort of unnecessary comments: Flame mails. ;-) Believe me: I won't change my mind politically, just because someone tells me to f*! off and that he or she won't read my site any longer. I tend to believe in freedom, and freedom of speech especially. So if I once in a while hurt your nationally challenged feelings, please feel free to ignore that. It's not as if I personally attacked you. I just share the opinion of the _others_ if you happen to feel attacked. That said, back on topic. Or at least almost... I'm the proud owner of a Gmail account now. I'm testing this for a while and will give a short report soon. First impressions: Webmail done right. It's fast, easy and gives everything one needs - besides POP3 or IMAP access, that is. I wonder how much I'll miss that after a while, since basically, it's just a matter of adapting to a new 'mail application', which I've successfully done before. However, Mail.app was and is quite good, and I continue to use that for my main accounts.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-22 at 16:42 CET ] ... to the U.S. Army research, according to this news article. A good sale for Apple. However, I'm not really a fan of the U.S. Army. But maybe this supercomputer will find out that the US should stop bringing war to the world and instead focus on peace a bit more?
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-22 at 01:20 CET ]
You can take a closer look at the promotion here at apple.com.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-21 at 20:40 CET ] Apple extends iBook logic board repair program If your white iBook G3 has screen hickups or similar problems, head on to this Apple FAQ page. You might get a free logic board replacement. Sad as it is that Apple has to do this, it's still good they ARE doing it. ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-21 at 17:02 CET ] Apple today has released Remote Desktop 2. With 50 new features. I wonder if the 'new speed improvements' are counted among those 50 new features, as Apple usually mixes 'new features' with 'enhancements' when they count. ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-21 at 15:26 CET ] Gizmodo claims to have more details. They say that the Dock for the iPod is in the glove-bay and the steering wheel has (very simple) controls for the iPod (previous, next track, mute).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-21 at 12:02 CET ] British mobile phone manufacturer Sendo is now shipping the long-awaited SendoX (Series 60) smart phone. More information at infoSyncWorld.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-21 at 12:00 CET ]
Photograph of 2.5 GHz watercooling
Techseekers.net has some photographs of the dual 2.5 GHz machine's watercooling (click the picture for more):
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-20 at 14:46 CET ]
'State of the Rumours IV' for WWDC 2004
SotR III here
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-18 at 17:42 CET ]
Motorola's MPC 7448 Apple's next notebook processor? According to Sonnet Tech's Vicki H. Burkhard, Motorola (Freescale?) will release a successor to the MPC 7447A which is currently used in Apple's PowerBook line. The new processor named 7448 will probably be used in another iteration of the PowerBook G4 in Autumn 2004. A PowerBook G5 is not expected this year.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-17 at 20:05 CET ] iTunes Europe event in QuickTime You'll find it here at apple.com.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-17 at 20:02 CET ]
Our comments link now features a (*gasp!*): Subject. Yes. If you click on the comments-link below our stories, the resulting e-mail window in your favourite mail-application should now feature a subject that has the same title as the respective story. (This after getting a message that read "It doesn't work." with the subject of 'information for macnews.net.tc', which was very helpful.) ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-15 at 17:12 CET ] ... rest of Europe following in October, this year. We're talking about iTunes Music Store Europe, of course. Price per song: 0.99 EUR. Sounds good. Now if only _Switzerland_ were part of the countries online. ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-15 at 15:56 CET ] MacBidouille posts that there'll be three localised iTMSs: UK, France & Germany. All other European countries will have access to a generic English version of the shop. Price per song between 1.05 and 1.19 EUR, which is definitely more than US citizens pay per song on iTMS - and might not be very competitive with other online music stores in Europe. Apple might say that their store is better in some ways, but it'd still be a sad thing. Good thing, though, if the availability rumour is true.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-15 at 10:07 CET ]
A user on macosx.com has taken a mobile-phone-photograph (i.e. bad quality shot) ;-) of an Apple ad in the UK. Guess we'll hear more tomorrow.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-14 at 17:15 CET ] Nokia's Summer 2004 "iPhone" Galore This Summer, Nokia will release the 6260 smartphone, the 6630 3G smartphone and a wireless keyboard for (newer) Series 60 phones. And it raised the feature set of Series 60. More information available at infoSyncWorld.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-14 at 10:41 CET ]
Apple seeds Xcode 1.5 build 7K525 ... to ADC Select and Premier members. Many changes, among them: gcc 3.3 updated, Java Application Servers Development, CHUD 3.5 tools etc. Also new: A CodeWarrior importer.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-11 at 22:02 CET ] According to this ThinkSecret article, Apple is finalising Remote Desktop 2.0 now. No exact release date known so far.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-11 at 15:59 CET ]
250 Mio. QuickTime 6.x copies downloaded ... and I'm very sure that I myself have downloaded it more than five times. *cough*... Well, I don't think Apple could in any way decide who's downloaded it more than once - and competitors aren't going to do that either for their software - so the number 'counts'. Just don't try and imagine 250'000'000 QuickTime 6 users, as that number would quite certainly be wrong. Also, because QT6 is now bundled with the iTunes for PCs download.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-10 at 15:58 CET ] Everyone's a manager again (AirTunes speculation worldwide)
Yep. Apple has once more brought something very, very simple to market - and the heads of many wannabe-Apple managers are keen to speculate what's coming. If those articles were to be true, we'd see a WiFi enabled iPod this Summer, then a highend version of the AirPort Express with an integrated harddrive and display and then an even more advanced one that also streams video to your home cinema as well as Bluetooth remote controls. But let's keep it cool, shall we?
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-10 at 13:06 CET ]
The new version is available in Software Update. New: AirTunes support. And "many small enhancements", i.e. nothing visible.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-09 at 20:36 CET ] Target missed. (I gotta rant.)
Now that Apple has failed to deliver 3 GHz within 12 months, we have to adapt. (No sense in not accepting, as you won't get a 3 GHz PowerMac for it, anyway...)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-09 at 17:14 CET ] As predicted by ThinkSecret, Apple has released new PowerMacs today. But: No more single processor models. The 'cheapest' G5 now comes as a dual 1.8 GHz model for 1'999 USD. The highend model will be available in July and comes with dual 2.5 GHz processors and is liquid cooled (starts at 2'999 USD). More information at Apple's PowerMac pages. No new displays so far, btw.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-09 at 15:59 CET ]
Up and down the rumour alley...
Yesterday late, the rumour world went wild about the PowerMacs that should have arrived today. They didn't. Also, it seems that the promised 3 GHz won't make it into this release. Instead, ThinkSecret (and others picking up on TS) suggests 1.8, 2.0 and 2.5 GHz PowerMac G5s 'soon' (as in any day now).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-08 at 17:37 CET ]
Apple fixes the latest security issues with Mac OS X through Software Update. (ca. 1.3 MB)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-07 at 22:55 CET ] Jobs unveils 'AirPort Express' (featuring 'AirTunes') ... which not only acts as a 'portable AirPort Extreme Base Station' but also connects users' home stereo to iTunes libraries. Sounds good. ;-) -> Link at apple.com.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-07 at 19:23 CET ] Seagate is about to announce a 1" harddrive with 5 GB capacity. Apple could make use of these (slightly) bigger harddrives in a revision of the iPod mini. Hitachi, Cornice and Magicstor are the current options in 1" drives, and they all only go up to 4 GB so far (4.4 GB for Magicstor). However, 6 and 10 GB 1" drives are expected for the end of this calendar year - and it would certainly make more sense for the iPod mini to go directly to 10 GB instead of such a mini-move.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-07 at 14:22 CET ] Confirmation: iTMS Europe June 15th macworld.co.uk notes that a special event in London will take place on the 15th. The slogan to go with the event: "The biggest story in music is about to get even bigger." The event starts at 11.00h, which is noon for us in CET. I'm not keeping my fingers crossed for a Swiss iTMS, though. We'll see. ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-07 at 13:20 CET ] Steve Jobs remains richest man in Silicon Valley according to this Mercury News article. Quote: "The executive who topped the list last year, though, did it without exercising a single option: Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs."
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-07 at 11:19 CET ] 'State of the Rumours III' for WWDC 2004
You'll find SotR II for WWDC 2004 here and
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-07 at 10:20 CET ]
Is it me? I think not. Sure, your set of applications may vary, but in my Dock, more than 40% of the icons are blue&grey. Finder, Safari, Mail, NetNewsWire, iChat, BBEdit, Bluetooth FileExchange, FileMaker Pro... When I'm switching through my active applications (most of the time it's about 10-12 apps) I sometimes have a hard time finding Mail.app. Couldn't that stamp be, say, orange. Or yellow. Or green. Red. Purple. What's this about? It's not as if other colours than blue&grey wouldn't make nice icons. I think Fetch, Acquisition, iCal etc. have nice icons, too. But most of the icons are just blue&grey. Not that I think Adobe's solution of having all apps' icons look pretty much the same (but not blue&grey) is better, but at least they're not just ... well, I've already said that now.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-06 at 16:56 CET ]
I haven't read much about it on the Mac-centric media, but that could well be because I wasn't paying attention, but Fedora Core 2 has a development tree for PowerPC machines. The referenced article shows you in a few steps how to go about installing Fedora Core on your Mac.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-06 at 09:32 CET ]
This is going to sound corny, but I want it to, so that's fine. It's seventeen years this Summer that I have put my hand on a computer mouse for the first time. It was at school. I was thirteen and was fascinated with computers. I had used a C64 at a friend's house. I actually wrote BASIC programs on paper at home that I would then go hack into that C64's command line prompt - to see whether they worked as I expected them to. When they didn't - which often was the case - I corrected them both on the computer and on paper. This was fantastic and terrible at the same time. It meant that I loved computers - and that I didn't have one.  And I want to thank Apple for so many things... I don't know where to start, although I know where to end. But let me start first, anyway. Thank you Apple for MacWrite. It made me the writer that I am today, for which I'm more than grateful. Thank you Apple for MacPaint, as it taught me more about how symmetry works than any other thing or person in the world. Thank you Apple for making it difficult for me to get my own Mac, because it made my very first own Mac so much more of an experience (Macintosh PowerBook 150, more than six years after my first experience with that Mac Plus). Thank you Apple for creating machines that actually helped me writing what I wanted to write, because they were made for me, it seems (PowerBook 150, PowerBook 180c, PowerBook 520c, PowerBook 190, PowerBook 5300ce, eMate 300, iBook 300, PowerBook 15" G4/500, iBook 12" 800, PowerBook 15" G4/1.33...). Thank you Apple for bringing WYSIWYG and DTP to my life, as it helped me create books instead of just letting me write stories. Thank you Apple for the iPod, which enables me to spend more time actually creating something instead of switching CDs every hour or so. Thank you Apple for iSync, which made me keep appointments that I would otherwise have forgotten (I was a wreck with PIM stuff before iCal/Mail/AddressBook and a Series 60 phone made it possible to easily keep an overview...). Thank you Apple, and this is now the end of my list, although I'm sure I have forgotten a thousand things and more, for that smiling face on the symbol of a Mac on that screen of that Macintosh Plus at that school in 1987.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-05 at 12:10 CET ] "Mac users don't tolerate shit." Or: Read about 'broken windows'. Or why the Mac is a good neighbourhood, and Windows is the place you just don't want to stay.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-05 at 09:08 CET ]
Product/Service announcement next week? The PowerPage has received such info from one of their sources. However, WWDC is close, and the 'being busy' could be related to that. While PowerPage mentions 90nm PowerMacs and 60 GB iPods as possible reasons up for a release party, there's of course also iTMS Europe which is expected in June by some - and I'm pretty sure Apple's getting Tiger ready for the public (or at least ADC Select and Premier members). Let's wait until the end of next week before we judge PowerPage's rumour.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-04 at 19:14 CET ]
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-04 at 15:30 CET ]
An Ex-Microsoftie about missing opportunities ... and a probable demise of Microsoft. It's quite an interesting read, too. And the writer, Jeff Reifman, who left Microsoft in 1999, was fed up with MS when he tried Outlook 2003. He now uses a PowerMac G5 and Panther. And he sees how things should be. ;-) Read the article at SeattleWeekly here.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-03 at 16:46 CET ] iTrip mini, 60 GB 1.8" drives etc.
Griffin has announced the iTrip mini, and infoworld says Toshiba is ready to ship 60 GB drives (fitting the 'normal' iPod) in July/August. However, Toshiba hasn't released a press release as it seems. Everyone around the web is just repeating what infoworld says...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-03 at 01:10 CET ]
The notebook Apple won't build...
Speaking of those 4GB flash-memory based harddrives... Bear with me. I'm a writer of German short stories. I love to write in trains, out in the green, in cafés etc. Hence, I'm quite obviously always looking for such a writer's tools. The following is, thus, probably not right for you. But _I_ would buy it instantly. (Some nostalgy involved.)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-01 at 13:13 CET ] iCook: Overclocking 750FX-based iBooks
A software called iCook enables some iBook G3 users to overclock their iBooks in 50 MHz steps. You can clock your iBook from 300 to 1200 MHz. However, the developer's 700 MHz iBook could only take 800 MHz - and it wasn't very stable at that. Also, you'll lose Mac OS X' processor speed management while using the kernel extension (however, everything goes back to normal after a reboot), so you can't expect battery life to be 'normal' when overclocking your baby. I, personally, wouldn't. But there's always people who want to do such things just because they can. And now they can. ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-01 at 12:59 CET ] 10.3.4 gives it away - new PowerMacs, iMacs New PowerMacs? Sure. A completely new iMac G5? Quite probably. The update contains hardware information for a new PowerMac (7,3, the current model is 7,2) and probably a (completely) new iMac (G5?) with the code of 8,1 (previous iMacs used the 6,x number). More information (in French) here at macbidouille.com.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-06-01 at 11:45 CET ]
Two (contradicting) sources informed us about one (common) subject in Tiger: Exposé. While one source 'has seen' a lot of 3D effects in the new Exposé, our other source has only heard of one simple addition to Exposé, which is an additional control which shows all windows, regardless whether they are hidden or not.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-31 at 13:38 CET ]
MacRumors cites this reuters news about Sony's ongoing pursuit to challenge Apple in Europe and expects Apple to sell songs in Europe for 1.29 EUR, which would be a disaster, as that's about 1.50 USD! Let's just hope that under no circumstances a song would cost more than 0.99 EUR, which still would be more than in the USA. I smell a "much too little, much too late and too expensive, anyway" kind of thing. But I certainly hope MR (and their sources) is wrong here.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-27 at 14:35 CET ]
You'll find a description and the download of this new browser here at MacUpdate. It's quite nice, and some people see it as faster than Safari. The feature set is similar, the look is uglier (but you can, it seems, load your own icons...). And the shortcuts for switching between tabs is not compatible with some international keyboards (such as my Swiss German one, sadly).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-27 at 12:36 CET ] Finally! charlessoft.com has released BootCD 0.6, which brings Panther compatibility. BootCD is a utility that lets you create a CD-R out of your installed Mac OS X installation. Add some tools of your own and you have your own, booting support CD.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-27 at 00:12 CET ]
If you want to keep the Mac OS X 10.3.4 Update for later (re-)installations, you can download the 79 MB sized combined updater here at "www.apple.com/support/downloads". (You can also get the Mac OS X Server 10.3.4 updaters there.)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-26 at 23:02 CET ] Apple releases Mac OS X 10.3.4 7H63 ... in Software Update.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-26 at 22:35 CET ]
... "The Mac is a harsh mistress." And Microsoft? "Microsoft, ladies and gentlemen, is a cheap whore. [...] There's a certain painted-on mystique to her, of course. We've all been indoctrinated with the propaganda, the hooker with the heart of gold, the disturbingly wide-mouthed Pretty Woman. When you find her, though, beneath the paint she's really quite plain. You take what you need from her, but reluctantly and because you have no alternative. You get what you want, but she is almost peripheral to the act."
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-26 at 20:19 CET ]
You'll find quite a good column about it here. On some forums around the world, of course, people don't get the point the writer wants to make at all.* I'm sure she gets a lot of hate-mail from Christian Americans who've already forgotten that the USA is not exactly a one-religion country. Which makes me think about whether those people actually think the USA are in a 'holy war' themselves... Which then leads me to the thought that people just shouldn't try and compare computers to religions - period.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-26 at 20:12 CET ] iBook 14" SuperDrive 'standard' model ... for 1699 USD? AppleInsider says so. And their reasoning sounds okay. This would mean you can get a SuperDrive equipped 14" iBook through normal channels soon. However, you might want to spend the 100$ (instead of adding an AirPort Extreme card to that iBook) more for a PowerBook 12". Not only is it faster and also has Bluetooth (another 50 USD) integrated, but is smaller and sexier, too.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-26 at 19:46 CET ] A new project called ipodlibrary.com has started to store reference works (and later probably other eBooks, they call the iBooks...) for iPod users. Someone should quiet definitely start a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy now. ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-26 at 19:27 CET ]
Prosumer report: Maxtor One Touch FW Harddrive
Today I woke up and thought: "Hey, my external 60 GB harddrive is only as big as my internal 60 GB drive. How am I going to backup AND archive with this?" - So I went to the Media Markt to buy a 160 GB drive. And came back with a Maxtor One Touch 200 GB FW/USB-2 harddrive. I didn't care about the 'one touch', as I thought it'd only be Windows compatible anyway. But I was wrong.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-25 at 19:12 CET ] hothardware.com about ATi Mobility Radeon 9700 They've tested the mobile graphics card in a PC notebook, but comparing it to desktop ATi cards is still a test that can also be important for users of new PowerBooks (such as myself). It seems like the "M11" is comparable to the desktop 9600XT, which also was kind of the 'father' to this mobile graphics card. Sadly, the test does not compare it to its predecessor, the ATi Mobility Radeon 9600, which was used in the previous PowerBook generation. (Of course, there's always Tom's Hardware's extensive review of the new card, which also takes the previous model into the comparison.)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-25 at 11:47 CET ]
Apple has seeded the new build to ADC Select + Premier members. The seed note does not contain any known issues. We're expecting Apple to release 10.3.4 any build now, but have no definite information just yet. Right now, 7H63 is being tested is all we can say. :)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-24 at 23:34 CET ] Until 2004-06-26 (WWDC!), Apple offers ADC Select and Premier members G5 1.6 GHz models for less, which obviously means that they're emptying their stock now. Some websites have updated their rumours on new PowerMacs at WWDC, and a recent 'page 2' rumour at macrumros.com joins our 3.0 GHz number and the PPC 975 part, although our most reliable source points at 3.2 GHz now. In any way: It seems like we're definitely going to see new PowerMacs at WWDC.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-24 at 17:58 CET ] Emulating a MacSE (System 7) in Flash... You'll find a wonderful flash animation here. However, some mouseclick-stuff is wrong, and it doesn't really emulate a Mac, of course. But it's a nice demo for the days when those old Macs are truly gone. ;)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-24 at 13:34 CET ] A little more information on Apple's reorganisation ThinkSecret has put together a little more info on how the new iPod and Mac divisions are being led after 2004-06-07, when the changes are in effect.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-24 at 13:31 CET ]
'State of the Rumours II' for WWDC 2004
You'll find our first roundup article on rumours about upcoming products at WWDC 2004 here. I'm just mentioning changes to the rumours this time.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-23 at 01:35 CET ]
Yep, it works. Read all about it here on O'Reilly or at the original macosxhints.com thread. - Basically, you can set some 'initial delay variable' lower than Apple thinks is correct. This seems to work just fine. You can also set it back to 1.0 if you wish so, of course. I have made the changes in Terminal while Safari was closed, as I'm not sure whether Safari reads its new defaults while running...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-23 at 01:18 CET ]
Apple has finally fixed that Help Viewer security issue themselves. The update is available for all currently supported versions of Mac OS X (as well as beta versions of 10.3.4).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-22 at 23:28 CET ]
Apple has seeded yet another 10.3.4 build. Only known issue right now: Some iBooks take a while before going to sleep. As we've said a few days ago, Apple is wrapping up development on Mac OS X 10.3.4 - and will release the update in Software Update within the next two weeks. We'll keep you informed.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-21 at 12:20 CET ]
And then: Mac OS X 10.3.4 7H58 Always the same. Say something - and Apple does something. ;-) ADC Select & Premier members have access to build 7H58 of 10.3.4 now.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-18 at 22:14 CET ] The future PDA will know where I left my carkeys
This heise.de message (German) talks about a system with neuronal networking technology that is shown items. It then learns them and will remember where it has last seen them. So, I'm thinking. A really personal digital assistant will - of course - have to remember the stuff I'm constantly forgetting, just like a really non-digital personal assistant has to. This is great. Now what was the URL of the server I have to save this article to? ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-18 at 18:52 CET ]
... but this is just too stupid - so I have to mention it. There's someone on slashdot asking for help. He wants to travel and take notes while at it. He used to take a paper notebook with him, but that's too uncomfortable for him now. But: He doesn't want a notebook/tablet/PDA, rather something like a (!) clock radio with USB and keyboard. Huh?! Here's the link to the discussion. - A certain amount of people give advice that is only logical (i.e.: do use a PDA, because they're not that expensive - and you can buy used: Alpha Smart, Apple eMate 300, Palms with keyboards etc.). And then, of course, a couple hundred messages that state that the original question is just stupid.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-18 at 02:08 CET ] Opera releases version 6.20 for Series 60 phones
I know, I know. I've been bashing Opera's Mac browser in the past. And believe me, I'll continue to do so. But! Their browser for Nokia's Series 60 platform is the best thing I've ever seen on that platform. It, basically, puts the web in your mobile phone. The new version has some nice new features and: If you've got a Nokia 6600 in basically any part of the world (except the USA, afaik), you've already got a license for the browser (version 6.10). You can update to 6.20 without any problems at all. Just make sure that installing replaces the old version and that you install on the MMC instead of the internal memory (because of memory issues rather than registration issues).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-18 at 01:38 CET ]
To version 1.1 to be exact. In Software Update. From the release notes: "GarageBand 1.1 addresses isolated performance and stability issues, allows per-track Echo settings similar to other effects, supports loop libraries in other disk locations, supports importing unprotected AAC audio files in addition to AIF and MP3 files, and addresses issues with ReWire support, moving GarageBand songs between different computers, Help support, fixing the timing of individual notes (as well as entire regions), and dragging entire tracks in the timeline."
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-17 at 22:57 CET ] Virginia Tech awaiting Xserves According to this ThinkSecret article, Virginia Tech will receive their Xserves in June.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-17 at 14:25 CET ] osNews about Apple and the enterprise market
... or Apple's lack of success therein. Good read - and my thoughts, exactly. While Apple's server and client hardware and software is certainly up to the tasks, there just isn't enough to persuade enterprises to make the switch. And the most important point: Enterprises need roadmaps. Apple, instead, tries to surprise their customers year after year.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-17 at 12:11 CET ] Computerworld compares 12" PowerBook to iBooks
Mainly to the 14" 'highend' iBook, which (if you add an AirPort card) costs more or less the same in the US. You can read the comparison article here..
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-17 at 11:44 CET ]
Fryke's State of the Browser Speech
So here we are, in the middle of 2004, and things have changed in the Macintosh browser world since the days before Safari Beta 1.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-16 at 22:03 CET ] Microsoft Office 2004 shipping
This weekend showed us the first users having installed the retail version of Microsoft Office 2004. Reports are even: No problems installing and running the software. And it looks nice & fast. Good for Microsoft. ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-16 at 21:08 CET ] Apple patents (?) translucent window behaviour
You'll find the info at this US government page.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-16 at 20:33 CET ]
Just a little update. It seems that the afterprocessing feature of Safari isn't even needed. So there's only one rule now: Don't click links you don't know are secure. This one is, of course. Or isn't it? You see, we can call this one bad now. Please, Apple: Fix this. We don't need that autorun feature, really. Clicking a link in Safari to erase your home folder just shouldn't happen.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-15 at 19:35 CET ] A short review of Mac OS X 10.3.4 7H56
Very short indeed: Runs okay on a PB 15" G4/1.33. Application launching is much improved over builds of Mac OS X 10.3.3 and earlier.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-15 at 17:43 CET ]
(this time more serious than an Intego-Trojan...) - If you've set Safari to automatically process known file-types (such as .sit or .dmg files), a malicious webmaster can prepare bad things for you. You'll click on the link for the .dmg (which he can, obviously, also cloak as a link to another website...). The disk image is then downloaded and processed. Now the security flaw comes into play. Automagically, an AppleScript is loaded in HelpViewer and from there an application on the DMG (and paths are always /Volumes/"Volume Name" for dmgs) is automatically started. This app can, of course, be a simple AppleScript that, say, deletes EVERYTHING your user can delete (i.e. your home folder). More information at fundisom.com's warning.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-14 at 12:25 CET ]
MacRumors is citing this AppleInsider rumour, where some video (on TV/external screen via Dock) features are described in quite strange ways for a rumoured fourth generation iPod. Somehow 'Home on iPod' got mixed with these video features.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-14 at 10:34 CET ] Apple seeds Mac OS X 10.3.4 7H56 Nothing new in the seed notes, known issues still involve resolution problems between logins, wakeup problems on some machines etc.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-14 at 00:27 CET ]
'Aluminum' appearance in Mac OS X 10.4? When Apple brought 'Graphite' as a second hue to Aqua, it made perfect sense, as it perfectly fit the graphite PowerMac G4 as well as the later Titanium PowerBook. Now that all Macs are either white (eMacs, iMacs, iBooks) or aluminum (more 'yellow/brown' in the gray than 'blue/green'), an 'Aluminum' appearance would perfectly fit the new style of Apple's hardware. Whether or not Apple will change the appearance of Mac OS X in Tiger is still unknown - but small adjustments are expected, because Apple has always used the chance to do them in the past few iterations of Mac OS X.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-13 at 15:26 CET ] In Australia, someone has found a way to disrupt WiFi networks with a simple WiFi access card. Instead of joining a network, one can use the card to disrupt WiFi networks in a range of about 1 kilometer. I certainly hope no-one in my vicinity is going to try this out... Read more at MacCentral.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-13 at 14:49 CET ] If you have a 15" AluBook, ...
... you'll probably like my new desktop picture. It's a very blurred photo of the keyboard and gives a nice overall look and feel to the PB.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-13 at 12:28 CET ] MacBidouille had a look at VPC7... And was surprised (very positively so) to actually find direct graphics card support in VPC7. This is, well, huge - and worth the wait, I think. The app also has a new icon, reportedly (in French). ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-13 at 12:21 CET ] Most said: "WiFire" or "wiFire". Answering my call to give me names for the un-term "Wireless FireWire", most said "WiFire". Although this still doesn't entirely hide its roots, that's a term I could live with. Mental note: If I ever can actually buy hardware that supports this, I'll call it WiFire - unless something better or at least different comes up. Thanks to all of you helping me out here. :)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-13 at 11:58 CET ]
New 'Intego Trojan' for Mac OS X Let's just call them Intego-Trojans instead of 'real' trojan horses, shall we? It's a program that looks like a Microsoft installer but isn't, actually, this time. That's not a security issue of Mac OS X (like Intego might want to make it look) but rather a case of 'dumb user' if he installs such files. More at MacCentral's article.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-12 at 21:32 CET ] Please give us an acronym or sumthin'! I never thought I'd cry out loud for an acronym, but 'Wireless FireWire' is just terribly, terribly wrong. Sure, we could just call it 'Fire', but there's already something warm and bright that sort of earns the term for being, well, fire. 'WiFW' doesn't sound good either (and doesn't solve the linguistic or even mathematical problem). Whatever. Wireless FireWire has been specified is the news in this bit.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-12 at 21:08 CET ] Microsoft's MBU has announced that VPC 7 will not appear in the first half of 2004, but rather in the second half. Sad news for G5 owners, who still can't run VPC because of that. According to Microsoft, there have been more problems than anticipated. You can read more at this macobserver.com article...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-12 at 11:26 CET ]
Apple should re-enter innovation.
Remember the days? Of course you do. Apple was an inventor. Apple brought a human user interface to computing. Apple - together with Adobe and Aldus - made Desktop Publishing possible. Apple basically invented a personal digital assistant that was more than an electronic (and worse) version of a simple notebook (a paper based one, I mean). And more...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-11 at 18:12 CET ] A short review: PowerBook G4 15"/1.33 GHz
As some background information, I'd like to state that I haven't bought a 'professional' class machine since the original Titanium PowerBook G4/500 in early 2001. So I can't make first-person comments on the quality of the pro-hardware Apple has released since that time.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-11 at 16:24 CET ] According to the 'about' page of the project, Panther is indeed running, although relatively (what a word...) slowly. Still, the project is young, and over time it might become a solution for some tasks.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-11 at 15:25 CET ]
There's a PowerPC emulator for PCs, running on Linux and Windows XP as it seems. I haven't read through all the comments, but the only screenshots of Mac OS X running in PearPC I could find showed the boot/options process of the first Panther installation CD, which leads me to believe that an actual installation is currently failing.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-11 at 11:33 CET ] You can read about it at MacCentral. However, if you really only need to backup stuff from your Mac to a FireWire-HD, you can also use the free SilverKeeper by LaCie, which does a good job, too, and doesn't make you buy a .Mac membership. And always remember my article about backups as well as the other 'articles from the past' on the upper right corner on this page.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-11 at 09:35 CET ]
New PowerBook. For me, at least. Yes, I've bought one of those shiny new PowerBooks. To be exact: A 15" Combo (1.33 GHz) model. I chose this one, because I don't really need a SuperDrive (got plenty of DVD-burners around the house) and am a fast and blind typer (so I don't need the backlit keyboard, either). Speed seems very, very good, coming from an iBook G3/800, and I'm configuring the baby right now. All seems well, so far. :)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-10 at 16:18 CET ] 'State of the Rumours' for WWDC 2004
At the very end of June, people around the world are expecting quite a few things from Apple. Let's take a look at the various rumours and the percentage we're giving them right now.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-10 at 10:59 CET ] MOSR claims Mot's PPC 7460 will come...
... and cites "their most reliable sources at Motorola" for it. However: By the time FreeScale (the processor spin-off of Moto) would release those enhanced G4 processors, Apple should be using G5 processors in all but eMacs and iBooks (early 2005). While there'd still be interest for faster G4 processors until then, it seems like Apple would be stuck with 1.33 to 1.5 GHz PPC 7447/7457 until 'early 2005' - if the rumour does indeed turn out true and FreeScale would release 1.6 to 2.0 GHz G4s by then. But the gap between a 2.0 GHz iBook G4 and a PowerBook G5 of any speed beyond 2 GHz would seem a bit too big - unless pricing of the PowerBook'd go up, which we certainly don't hope.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-10 at 10:44 CET ]
Apple releases test update for 10.3.4 7H50 Apple has released a test update through Software Update, bringing beta version 10.3.4 7H50 to build number 7H51a.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-07 at 20:24 CET ] Apple's quarterly SEC filing wrapped up You can find a wrap-up of the document at this MacMinute.com page. iPods seem to be quite good, I hear. ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-07 at 11:13 CET ] Apple seeded 10.3.4 7H50 on Wednesday The new build, according to our sources, is much more stable already than the previously seeded builds of 10.3.4.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-07 at 10:44 CET ]
Apple Security Update 2004-05-03 Apple has released a security update containing changes in AFP Server, CoreFoundation and IPSec. It's available via SoftwareUpdate.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-05-03 at 23:19 CET ]
New features...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-04-28 at 11:16 CET ]
Apple seeds Mac OS X 10.3.4 7H41
... and notes changes to Core Audio, OpenGL, Graphics, Core OS, and the High Level Toolbox among other things.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-04-21 at 15:13 CET ]
Windows equipped mobile phones? No problem! infoSync.no notes that a new version of PocketMac enables Mac OS X users to use their Windows Mobile handsets with their Macs.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-04-20 at 11:46 CET ]
The Apple Store is now back up online and has the new PowerBooks and iBooks available for your shopping pleasure.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-04-19 at 15:06 CET ] Apple announces new iBooks, PowerBooks Apple has just announced iBooks at 1 and 1.2 GHz as well as PowerBooks at 1.33 and 1.5 GHz. For the first time, you can have the 15" AluBook at the full speed of the highend 17" model, which makes perfect sense for mobile professionals who don't want to buy extra-large notebook bags. ;-) And yes, you can also have the Mobile Radeon 9700 with 128 MB VRAM (standard is 64 MB). More information at apple.com's PowerBook pages...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-04-19 at 14:53 CET ] Apple starts introducing again... Apple introduced new versions of their video editing applications at NAB'04 and added 'Motion', a new application for 'real time motion graphics design'. And today, so rumour sites along the web say, we'll see new PowerBooks and iBooks. We're watching store.apple.com, of course, but might not be able to update macnews.net.tc in time. (Still not having enough time, lately.)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-04-19 at 10:54 CET ]
First Mac OS X Trojan isn't, really. Yesterday, Intego released a statement about the 'first Mac OS X Trojan'. But it's really a proof of concept posted to a newsgroup only. Doesn't do any harm to your computer and according to WIRED: "It isn't in the wild, and can't be spread in the wild. It's a non-issue."
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-04-09 at 22:43 CET ]
Renew - Automatic Software Update
Myndlink Software wants to update your third party software on Mac OS X. Just like Apple's Software Update preference pane, Renew does the same for other software.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-04-08 at 11:03 CET ]
I'm recovering from increasing amounts of stress (i.e. not yet recovering) and thus can't update macnews.net.tc as often as I'd like to. In other news (;-)) Apple has released a security update for Jaguar and Panther and the PowerPage expects new PowerBooks (not G5 based) in the next few weeks. And: Everybody's quite surprised how few hardware upgrades Apple has released in the recent past.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-04-06 at 09:49 CET ]
PlayFair does just that for your own iTMS music files.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-04-05 at 13:23 CET ] according to this macrumors.com article. SAN stands for Storage Area Network. The product will probably be sold with Apple's Xserve product line.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-04-05 at 13:06 CET ] A short trip through the history of IBM's chips. I wonder where IBM sells the 750GX nowadays, if it does at all...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-04-05 at 09:43 CET ]
"Am I ready to ditch my Mac and use Linux only? No." You'll find this (the title line) and other stuff in Dan Gillmor's column titled "Linux on desktop gaining in OS race". It's not really about the Mac, however Dan gives it credit where it's due.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-04-04 at 23:11 CET ]
My favourite launcher utility is growing in features and flexibility. The current beta will expire on 30.4.2004. Looking good, working fine for a beta. Check it out... (And yes, the last article was an April fool's joke, of course... This one, apparently, isn't.)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-04-02 at 11:10 CET ]
After more than a decade of messages around the world that "Apple is going to die soon", Apple today formally accepted the message and dissolved the company. Several companies have issued statements about buying assets. According to an Apple spokeswoman, Disney buys the QuickTime part of Apple, Sony buys iTunes/iPod and Microsoft buys Mac OS X. As Bill Gates puts it: "We're interested in Mac OS X' code base, because we want to fight Windows' security issues at the very root, which is still DOS, although we managed to hide this from many third parties with Windows NT and higher."
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-04-01 at 14:00 CET ]
This release features a ton of fixes for bugs and crashers, as well as bookmark synchronization using .Mac iDisk or any WebDAV server. Be sure to read the full release notes at (URL Release Notes) for all the details.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-31 at 08:49 CET ] MacMagazine.com.br (completely unknown to us, previously) posts this and that Apple is internally at Mac OS X 10.4 8A85. Our latest information had been about build 8B12, so we're a bit in doubt about either source. However, more information will become available as WWDC (end of June) nears.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-31 at 00:58 CET ] Apple posts Xgrid Developer page You'll find it at this location.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-31 at 00:55 CET ]
MOSR is talking about a direct move to the PowerPC 975 (aka G6) for the next PowerMacs, delivering the promised 3 GHz speed, while the PowerPage.org is strongly expecting new PowerBook G4 models this week.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-30 at 15:58 CET ]
WebObjects 5 in 15 minutes streaming video rentzsch.com has released a 15 minute tutorial to WebObjects 5. Go, become a web developer fast. ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-27 at 11:32 CET ] 40+ Panther Secrets @ macworld.com Macworld.com has issued 40+ tips & tricks for Panther for all to see. Some of them ain't exactly news to most of us, but others might be things we previously overlooked.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-27 at 11:30 CET ]
... to anticipate sales of killer products. It's a pity. No iPod mini worldwide until July.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-25 at 17:41 CET ] A first look: Office 2004 Preview
Just to calm some of our readers who have asked for screenshots, really. I must say I'm not a typical 'Office' user. Or maybe I am: I use it mainly for opening documents from others, make some changes and send the documents back. Ever since Mail.app (i.e. Mac OS X), I've sworn off to MS Outlook Express and Entourage, but I still like to take a look from time to time.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-25 at 11:15 CET ] Yes, yesterday was the third anniversary of Cheetah (Mac OS X 10.0). Eric Bangeman takes a trip down memory lane and mentions good and bad about our favourite operating system.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-25 at 10:37 CET ]
Official: EU-Commission fines MS 497.2 mio EUR and adds some measures about opening server source code and splitting WMP from Windows (XP). Read the whole thing here. However, Microsoft is sure to appeal against this ruling. Yet, it's always fun to see MS judged.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-24 at 12:28 CET ] You'll find a few sources here at gimp.org for Mac OS X versions. The Gimp 2's main work is interface work, which should lead to more acceptance in the graphics design area. Update: Link works again, right now.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-24 at 12:11 CET ]
Apple announces shipping of single processor Xserve According to Apple's Press Release, Apple is now shipping the Xserve model to customers. Cluster and dual processor models will start shipping in April.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-23 at 15:03 CET ] According to sources testing the preview of MS Office 2004 :mac, some parts of the software mention that the software will come in form of a DVD instead of one (or more) CDs. Whether this will be a problem for users who simply don't have a DVD reading device (many older iMacs and iBooks as well as CD-RW-only TiBooks) or if there's also going to be a CD-version available is not known as of yet.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-23 at 14:40 CET ] AAC is Audio-Codec for the ROM-part of DVD-Audio spec
... according to High Fidelity Review. (Found it in German at heise.de.) According to heise, the plan is to, additionally to uncompressed audio, add DRM'd AAC files to the DVD-Audio as a plus for consumers. The decision of the DVD-Forum may or may not have been based on iTMS's success.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-23 at 12:35 CET ] Six barriers to open source adoption
During a keynote at the Open Source Business Conference 2004 last week, Ray Lane (former Oracle executive) laid out six barriers for wider open source adoption. Some of them also concern Apple (which is using open source tools in Mac OS X Server, too). Let's take a look where Apple could learn from some of these points.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-23 at 12:22 CET ] Recent reports tell us that a fourth beta is coming soon, and that it adds - among other things - a lot of performance and bug fixes, iDisk synching. The final version of OW 5 will quite certainly make a splash in the Mac community. The 'Workspaces' feature alone makes it worth trying.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-23 at 11:42 CET ]
Mariner Write 3.6, MS Office 2004
Mariner Software releases a new version of their word processing application with a 'slew of new features'. Mariner Write is one of the MS Word competitors. Up until today, sadly, none of those has been able to replace Microsoft's application in a really good way.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-22 at 14:48 CET ] Okay, tomorrow's the day, according to MacPlus.org's rumour. MacRumors.com adds a second possible date to the long-awaited PowerMac update round: 30. March 2004. And then there's IBM's Power event on 31st, too. We'll see.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-22 at 13:23 CET ]
roughlydrafted.com is talking about pros and cons (and is pro-merging, basically). While I very, very much don't want a more bloated Finder, there's one thing I would love the Finder to adopt: Tabbed browsing. Just think about it for a moment. I pretty much use the Finder as a one-window application already (column view), but if that Finder window had tabs like Safari, the Finder would at the very least have a point for using Brushed Metal, but more importantly: We could browse the file-system more easily. Home folder in one tab, Desktop folder in another, second harddrive in a third. Choose a file in one tab, drag it to the next and place the file where it belongs. Makes Spring-Open Folders even more useable. I'd like that.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-20 at 12:19 CET ]
Three products Apple should have made...
... by now, if I were in charge and a very large group of people with the money to buy enough of the items. I know, I know. But I wonder if some of you agree with the things I would want Apple to release.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-18 at 19:35 CET ] At Ce'Bit 2004, Apple has won three times the iF design award 2004. For both the 15" and 17" PowerBook as well as the iSight FireWire camera.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-18 at 19:11 CET ] FileMaker Pro 7 First Impressions
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-18 at 15:19 CET ] This article talks about what you can do with your Mac and Speech. It's quite impressive. Completely forgets about anyone who doesn't speak the American variant of English or even (gasp!) German, French, Spanish or Japanese, but it's still impressive. It's also impressive that Apple seems to have put a lot of energy into this forgetting completely about the fact that the world isn't English speaking. Well, so do we here at macnews.net.tc - our page is in English - but while you can easily copy our articles and more or less translate them through Google or Babelfish, you can not use the Mac's Speech features easily while speaking another language. End of rant. Still a good article. ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-18 at 14:33 CET ] This AppleInsider article expects Apple to release a new iPod in April (iTMS' birthday) that not only has a colour screen but also some sort of video output. In line with this, also a new version of iTunes is expected.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-18 at 00:34 CET ] Apple preparing PowerMac introduction? Apple's homepage today reflects the power of the PowerMac G5. While this is not exactly news, it would perfectly fit to prepare the introduction of even faster models using the new PowerPC 970FX, which is rumoured to make its entrance in less than a week.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-18 at 00:27 CET ]
ThinkSecret notes in this article that Apple is developing Remote Desktop 2.0, which will incorporate some VNC technologies and allow it to be a client for other operating systems at the very least. (Hopefully, it'll also serve others...)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-17 at 13:52 CET ] 'Spoken interface': MAc OS X 10.4? This Apple page talking about the spoken interface says that it's coming 'soon'. Yet it names the 'next major release', which will either be called 10.4 or 10.5 as far as we know. ... My take? Well: It's probably going to work in English only, right? Too bad. Because while Windows doesn't have such great features included in the OS, there are many third parties adding them in several languages, while they're just not available on the Mac. I'd love to be wrong and hear my Mac talk German for the first time, but I doubt it.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-17 at 11:27 CET ]
HP PCs with iTunes end of March? This macrumors.com article shows that meta-info on HP's music site gives that away.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-16 at 13:05 CET ] Remember that drawing with an iPod scrollwheel on a mouse? Seems like Apple has a new patent, describing an optically based scrolling feature on a mouse. "Optical touch pad configured to translate finger motion into movements on the display screen." Read more at MacPlus.org's article (in French).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-16 at 13:03 CET ] Just as we told you. We love to be right. ;-) Get it here.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-16 at 00:50 CET ]
... or, well, given away a few, too, of course. MacCentral has the story.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-15 at 16:43 CET ] Lemke Software today has released version 5.0 of its beloved graphics converting shareware in the major languages the application provides. Many, many new features and bug fixes from the older version (4.9.3).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-15 at 13:52 CET ]
Apple seeds Mac OS X 10.3.3 7F43 Apple has seeded the new build on Friday. Again, nothing new to report from the seed notes. Internally, one source which has a good trace record for such info tells us, Apple has seeded 7F44 by now and is going to release it early next week.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-14 at 15:08 CET ]
Florida State U mentions this exactly on one of its pages.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-12 at 14:48 CET ]
Adobe starts "Adobe Designer" Beta Test Adobe's XML-forms generator application now dubbed "Designer" starts with a closed beta-test programme. You can apply for the beta at this location.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-11 at 18:17 CET ]
A short report on Mac OS X 10.3.3 7F40
The builds 7F34 through 7F40 appear more than stable enough for release. Apple has apparently got the time for thorough testing and for small improvements. It has been rumoured that 10.3.3 contains support for yet-to-be-released hardware, but we haven't found confirmation for this yet. We're expecting Apple to release 10.3.3 any day now, as the bug-list has been at zero (the kb-article not being online isn't really a bug) for a few builds now.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-10 at 12:50 CET ] Apple seeds Mac OS X 10.3.3 7F40 Yes, yet another seed. Compared to 7F38, this build has a fix in the prebinding performance area.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-10 at 10:33 CET ]
The upgraded family is now officially available. FileMaker Inc.'s new version offers, among other things, a new kernel for the software, 'graphic relational stuff' and some new user interface features.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-09 at 17:20 CET ] SonyEricsson unveils K700, S700 mobile phones Focus is clearly on media. The K700 features a VGA camera, the S700 an 1.3 MP digital camera with 8x digital zoom (no analog zoom, sadly). You'll find the K700 here and the S700 here at infosync.no.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-09 at 13:16 CET ] Our server was down from yesterday evening until noon today (CET). We apologise for the inconvenience. (It was our provider's provider's fault, according to our provider.) Grrr... Now back to the good things. ;)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-09 at 12:31 CET ]
ThinkSecret posts a little more details about FileMaker 7.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-08 at 13:31 CET ] Another look at 20 years of Macintosh And another interview with Jef Raskin.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-08 at 09:21 CET ]
In a short article, heise.de is reporting that several notebook makers will release 14 inch widescreen models this Summer. According to reliable sources, Apple is planning to replace the current 12" PowerBook model with a widescreen one that uses either a 13.3 or 14.1 inch display. If Apple wants to keep the price of that model lower than the 15" model's, the screen resolution would however be 1152*768 rather than the reported 1280*800 for the 14" widescreen displays heise.de is talking about. Our take: Replacing the current 12" PB model with a 13.3" (1152*768) one would make sense and be well received by the market. It also would more clearly set apart the PowerBook line from the iBook line.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-07 at 15:33 CET ]
Can be found at www.kernelthread.com/mac/oshistory/. It's a nice lineup. Mistakes I've found so far:
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-06 at 19:35 CET ]
An IBM internal memo apparently has cropped up, saying things like: "We've handed Intel another defeat. Earlier this year, we kept them out of the Apple G5 and now we've thrown them out of Xbox." - Earlier this year, another IBM memo showed that Apple was actively thinking about choosing intel, however, it was decided that this was a no-go, because it would lead the customer-base into another of those really big transition phases (68K -> PPC, Classic Mac OS -> Mac OS X).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-05 at 19:29 CET ] Apple seeds Mac OS X 10.3.3 7F38 Late yesterday, Apple has seeded the latest build to ADC Select and Premium members. No news in the seed notes (same as 7F34, basically). This build is expected to be released to the public early next week, according to our sources.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-05 at 12:26 CET ]
Railheaddesign.com talks about a new seed of Mac OS X. ADC Select members confirm that there is no newer build than 7F34 available so far.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-04 at 17:24 CET ]
Apple's Corporate Controller Peter Oppenheimer says: "We're not focused on shipping four, five, six hundred dollar PCs. We don't think there's a good way to innovate there or differentiate, and we don't think people are making a lot of money." (You'll find the whole article here...)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-04 at 16:53 CET ] MacWorld has posted a 'first look' on Office 2004. Without pictures, but better descriptions of the features than on MS' page about the new version. Worth a look if you're going to buy the update.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-04 at 13:41 CET ] "Things I don't like about being a Mac user" You can read the full column at osNews. It says things like: "To me, the iBook is the perfect example of what mobile computing is all about. It's small, yet can accommodate an optical drive. Battery life is exemplary. You really can use this machine away from the mains for a good four hours. And we're not talking about using huge capacity batteries that double the size of the machine. The iBook is whisper quiet in use. The advantage of using an archaic 800MHz G4 processor is that it hardly ever requires active cooling so there is no obtrusive fan noise. You can start up the machine in the quietest of environments without drawing undue attention to yourself and without annoying others. Finally, the instant wake up from sleep is a revelation. This may sound like a trivial point but not having to wait for your laptop to wake up when you open it really does make a difference to usability." Then, of course, comes the part about not liking to be a Mac user. ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-04 at 11:36 CET ]
Rozz Williams: Thank Apple for FreeBSD
Yes. In a column called just that, Rozz Williams talks about how FreeBSD was called 'dying' and then saved by the company that was called 'dying' all along.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-03 at 10:03 CET ] OmniGroup releases Beta 3 of OmniWeb 5 You can find it on their beta page. It's still a beta, but has made much progress in stability and speed.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-03 at 04:36 CET ]
A few people have found this article quite interesting but didn't know how to exactly backup the three important directories to a FireWire harddrive. So let's shortly go through the whole process...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-03-01 at 12:14 CET ]
The Inquirer reports that Microsoft delivers the SDK for the forthcoming Xbox 2 as a PowerMac G5 (dual 2 GHz) running a custom Windows NT Kernel.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-29 at 11:51 CET ]
... about WiFi, Bluetooth etc. - security is lacking, and maybe we shouldn't adopt WiFi where it's not necessary. However, if you're equipping an office, at some point some people will want WiFi. And adding one WAP (and some workers might bring their own...) can affect the whole network.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-28 at 13:37 CET ] news.com posts that the DVD forum has endorsed VC-9 (among other standards) for the HD-DVD video specification. This would/will bring part of MS Windows Media 9 to the standard. Means the standard needs to lose its proprietary status. Means Microsoft will have something like an official standard. Scary, eh? Well, it could also be good. In some way. I'm sure. Hmm... Now I gotta get out and have a drink.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-28 at 01:29 CET ] Mac OS X = No need for 3rd party disk utilities.
... but people only learn slowly. Here are my three survival tips for living with a modern Macintosh computer. ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-28 at 00:56 CET ]
Nokytech.net: PC cases like G5s
Nokytech.net (French) posts some pictures of the Lian-Li beasts.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-27 at 19:14 CET ] MacDailyNews posts a rumour about quad-processor PowerMac G5s. Their nostalgic take on it doesn't make the rumour very believable, but it would sure kick some ass if we could buy quad processor 2.5 GHz PowerMac G5s anytime soon. The low power consumption of the PPC 970FX would allow Apple to do this in a reasonable computer case (such as the current one).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-27 at 19:04 CET ] MacWorld.co.uk has a story about the iPod mini overtaking the first generation iPod's sales of 125'000 units in the first quarter. (It's a short article.)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-27 at 19:00 CET ] Why buy MS Office 2004 :mac?/Why buy office packages at all?
MS Office 98 was a finished product. So was Office 2001. And Office v.X. What do you need Office 2004 for?
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-27 at 18:48 CET ]
Early last year, Steve Jobs named the year 2003 the year of the notebook. While this was certainly true for the whole PC industry (the ratio notebook:desktop changed faster in 2003 than in the years before), Apple acted rather against their own words. The PowerMac G5, while certainly needed, took away a lot of the initial momentum Apple was building at MWSF 2003 with the introduction of the 12" and 17" PowerBooks. Apple only updated the PowerBooks once more in 2003 and added the 15" model to the aluminum list. (And the iBooks made the step into the G4 family of processors.)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-27 at 17:04 CET ]
croquer.free.fr says PowerBook G5 in about 8-12 weeks and iBooks to use Motorola's PowerPC 7447A in a future upgrade. Our own sources could not confirm croquer.free.fr's rumour that the PowerBook G5 is near to ready. However: We've been surprised in the past (Aluminum PowerBooks early last year, for example). croquer.free.fr has not much of a track record so far and has been wrong in the past (for example about IBM's PowerPC 970FX running at 2.6 GHz instead of 2.5 GHz, however nobody but ourselves had that right back then).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-26 at 17:00 CET ] Correction: It's quite stable. ;) In my previous post I mention that Safari v125.1 appears 'crashy'. However after a restart I haven't had a single crash of Safari in 10.3.3 7F34. I've also received comments from a few developers: Some have also had that crash on first launch, others have not. It seems to be okay.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-26 at 16:04 CET ] Safari 1.2 v125.1 in Mac OS X 10.3.3 7F34
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-26 at 11:48 CET ] Apple seeds Mac OS X 10.3.3 7F34
Apple seems to be wrapping up the work on Mac OS X 10.3.3. The single 'known issue' in this build is, that "The Knowledge Base article referenced in the installer read me is a place holder. Article is not available online yet." This means the ReadMe note has now been written and the KB article is now being prepared. Whether or not 7F34 will be the build downloadable through Software Update remains to be seen, though.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-26 at 11:06 CET ]
Apple offers 'more memory for less' In a new promotion. In a range from 25 to 700 USD (depending on how much you purchase and for what Mac) US customers can get rebates. However, you'll probably still be cheaper off buying RAM from a third party.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-25 at 17:59 CET ]
David Coursey has written a column about a few of his latest XPeriences with Windows PCs. And he has titled it with the solution: "When Windows won't work, it's time for a Mac."
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-24 at 14:53 CET ] Larry Angell writes at macminute.com that key components for a PowerBook G5 are ready. And indeed they are. We can also safely assume that Apple wants to release a PowerBook based on the PowerPC 970FX as soon as humanly possible. However, the chip would still have to run at a maximum of 1.6 GHz in order for the PowerBook to stay usable on the road. IBM's PowerTune technology will certainly help here, but with the constraints of a PowerBook form factor, higher clock rates can not be expected with the current chip. Whether Apple will skip this one and use the new PowerPC 7447A (updated G4 by Motorola at up to 1.5 GHz) instead is speculation. However: The question is not, whether Apple will release a PowerBook G5. The question is simply about the when. The 970FX is the first G5 processor that would be acceptable in a PowerBook, but Apple may want to wait for IBM to come up with a chip that can work at higher clock rates with similar power consumption than the 970FX now has at 1.6 GHz or lower.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-24 at 12:08 CET ] Apple releases security update In your software update control panel. This one's about: "Security Update 2004-02-23 delivers a number of security enhancements and is recommended for all Macintosh users. This update includes the following components: DiskArbitration, IPSec, Point-to-Point-Protocol, tcpdump."
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-24 at 00:02 CET ]
Nokia unveils Communicator 9500
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-23 at 18:48 CET ] Palm synching, Xgrid software, 10.4? osNews has an article that talks about future options for Apple on how to handle PDAs, Xgrid etc. No news about Mac OS X 10.4 in this one as the title'd suggest, it's more about Apple's future OS strategy in general.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-23 at 11:42 CET ] Vertu's new mobile phone collection
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-23 at 11:31 CET ] It doesn't exactly fit the iPod mini, but can be attached and used. You can take a look at a picture here and read the article here at PowerPage.org.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-23 at 11:14 CET ] Feedback weekend about Mac OS X 10.4/10.5
The article about the next big OS X upgrade generated a lot of feedback.
It seems that the fact that some ex Be engineers now work at Apple for
some time gives the rumour much more credibility than I initially anticipated.
However, the source has not as of yet doubled with another contact.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-23 at 10:59 CET ]
Destra providing iPod playable AAC? MacRumors notes that Destra is acquiring about 30'000 Sony songs. They will be available in WMA and AAC, copy protected and playable on iPods (the AACs, of course). For more, see here (Australian IT article).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-22 at 09:42 CET ]
First Mac OS X 10.4/10.5 info?
We must admit, we're doubting this one. We've received word that 10.4 is planned for 'end of 04'. So far, so good. The info goes on to inform us that Mac OS X 10.4 will go "further than anticipated", introducing not only a database-driven new Finder (although the file system itself will still be HFS+) but also a wide support for file metadata. According to the source, this will rather replace than extend current implementations of Creator/Type, Labels etc. According to the source, current (very early) builds of Mac OS X 10.4 are best described as 'radical'. Our source ends the (short) information with the addition that because of the 'radical' new features, Apple might call this one Mac OS X 10.5 instead of 10.4.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-20 at 02:08 CET ] Apple has posted a firmware update for iSight through Software Update. According to the release notes: "The iSight 1.0.2 update provides improved auto exposure and auto white balance functionality, enhanced IIDC compliance and better overall performance. The iSight 1.0.2 update is recommended for all iSight users."
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-20 at 01:55 CET ]
Apple seeds Mac OS X 10.3.3 7F32 And, according to sources, notes a single known bug: "If you need to install Java 1.4.2, please do it before installing this build. There is a version issue if you install Java 1.4.2 after 10.3.3. This will be addressed in the next build." - It's not quite ready for release yet, but nearing.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-19 at 11:41 CET ]
... but a new home page with a nice graphic. No new build of 10.3.3, sadly, we're informed.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-18 at 06:57 CET ]
ADC site down for the moment... Right now, connect.apple.com does not let users in. Probably an update... ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-17 at 23:30 CET ] A lot of bug fixes in this build. You'll find it here.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-17 at 22:57 CET ] Apple releases iSync 1.4, opens WWDC registration
Today, Apple's released iSync 1.4 through Software Update. Its main new features are compatibility with newer Series 60 phones as well as the iPod mini. There are also a few bugs fixed, according to Apple.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-17 at 21:35 CET ] Chinese Evermore Software wants to create the MS Office alternative with EIOffice 2004. Sounds interesting. Mac OS X development is mentioned - but not ready yet. Java-based, apparently. Certainly one more development to watch, if you want to leave Microsoft behind. Pricing sounds interesting, too: You lease the software for 99 USD per year or 249 USD for three years.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-17 at 17:33 CET ] iPod mini on Apple's frontpage
It's coming.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-17 at 16:01 CET ] Follow-up article about that "smart PDA"
You can find it here.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-17 at 12:28 CET ] Microsoft offers not to comply to Europe's demands In a move to calm down the jury, Microsoft has offered to add a CD with competitors' software in future Windows packages. According to Financial Times, the European Commission is shaking its head, though. Europe could, if they go to extremes, force Microsoft to exclude the Windows Media Player from their operating systems. Mr. Mario Monti already explained that he's willing to force Microsoft to lay open the communication interfaces between server and client. According to the council, the whole thing should be over come 1st of May.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-17 at 11:30 CET ] Apple seeds Dec 2003 gccLongBranch Tools "This package contains a revised gcc3.3 enabling the -mlongbranch option. This option is only useful for executables/shared libraries with text addresses larger than 32Mbytes. Enabling this option causes a lower powerpc calling sequence." - Not sure what it really is, as I'm no software developer myself, but I guess it causes a lower powerpc calling sequence. ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-17 at 10:11 CET ] Matthew Thomas' list of UI glitches in OS X
Specifically, he's targetting Mac OS X 10.3.2 and applications shipped with it. His points are mostly true, although some could probably be argued out in a good old flame war. ;-) The sad part is that he seems to think he's attacking. He seems to want a flame war. At least I can't explain why else he'd be so defensive at the end of his article...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-17 at 08:55 CET ]
ThinkSecret: No new PowerMacs in February
Among other stuff, ThinkSecret notes today that sources told them not to expect the next PowerMac G5 earlier than March.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-16 at 14:39 CET ] macnet2.com has an article about such a device. However, it's more of a column about market share with a rumour-addon... We go with Steve here, though: Won't happen anytime soon. The PDA market is going down. Smart phones are replacing PDAs - and if you've got an iBook, an iPod and a SonyEricsson phone - all connected through iSync, there's not much need for a PDA any more. Putting an iPod sized harddrive (as suggested by the article) in a PDA makes it too heavy and too big (and you'd want the 40 GB drive instead of the iPod mini's 4 GB drive for sure!) for a PDA.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-16 at 12:28 CET ]
Make Safari "Keyboard Kowboy" compatible :) I've always been a fan of OmniWeb's shortcut system. As a 'keyboard kowboy' (I browse with minimal interface overhead, mostly using the keyboard only), I'm in love with "Cmd-L (focus in location bar) - 'mn' - Return" - which brings me directly to macnews.net.tc. Or "Cmd-L - 'g searchterm1 searchterm2' - Return" - which searches google.com for the two search terms. It's fantastic. And you can have that in Safari, too. Officially works with 10.2.6 (and up), 10.3 (and up), Safari 1.0 (v85), Safari 1.1 (v100) as well as Safari 1.2 (v125). The latter is not tested by the maker - but by myself. Works great. It's called "Sogudi" - and it's really a really good one. One thing, if you're going to try it out: You've sadly got to add a space-character after the shortcut. (You'll find a screenshot here.)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-14 at 13:12 CET ]
Macromedia releases beta version of Shockwave-Player 10 For media developed with Director MX 2004, you'll need a new shockwave plugin. The beta version is available as of today.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-13 at 14:34 CET ] GarageBand 1.0.1 - 21.5 MB of clarification. Apple has released the first update to GarageBand. Reports range from better overall performance to nothing at all, but quite surely the 21.5 MB size of the download does kinda interfere with Apple's message: "This update clarifies specific alert dialogs regarding system performance." You can find the download here.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-13 at 11:58 CET ] The full update will be released soon, according to our sources. The build is delivered as a >600MB .dmg file, with changes in many areas according to the seed notes.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-13 at 10:19 CET ]
More PowerPC 970FX (90nm) thoughts ... from TheRegister this time. The article can be found under this link. Looking good.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-12 at 18:23 CET ] When marketing people go too far... "Install Spector on your Mac and it will record EVERYTHING anyone does on the Internet." - Last time I checked, there were quite some people on 'the internet'. But hey, haven't we all wanted super-powers sometimes? Can I sue them if their software doesn't show me the content of Steve Jobs' e-mails? ;-) (I wonder when they're going to change the description. Drop me a line...)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-12 at 18:10 CET ] NYT about iPod and competition (free registration required to read the whole article) - They've got kind words for our beloved digital music playing device: "The iPod is still smaller, more attractive and more thoughtfully designed than any of the upstarts."
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-12 at 10:58 CET ]
Confirming our long standing information that the 90nm PowerPC 970 has been running well at 2.5 GHz (the expected top speed of the next PowerMac G5 in all of our 'next G5' rumours, such as our oldest mention of it), this article talks about "The Microprocessor Report AnalystsÕ Choice Award for Best Desktop Processor of 2003", that goes to "IBMÕs PowerPC 970FX, which shipped to Apple late in the year for use in the Xserve G5 and possibly other still-unannounced systems."
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-11 at 22:07 CET ] iChat AV 2.1 (Beta) one-way video chat The beta, if installed by both parties, allows people to do video-chats one way. Good one! Now you can test iSight before buying it by chatting up someone who has got one. -- Update: According to a reader, this was available in 2.0, too, via contextual menu.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-11 at 16:55 CET ] Electronic News about 90nm PowerPC 970FX In this article, they say: "IBM is about to deliver its very first volume production of an SOC on 90nm, said Reeves. This will be a design for Apple." The term 'SOC', which means about 'system on a chip', has Mac-heads turn their heads, but probably is no real news, as IBM already delivers PPC 970 chips to Apple on a mini-board. We'll keep you updated.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-11 at 16:54 CET ] One good marketing article about Apple & Steve Jobs
There are many, many articles about Apple from a marketing perspective nowadays. They're mostly badly written and "don't get the first thing about Macintosh". Or Apple. Or Steve Jobs. This one is better in many ways. (David Yoffie interviewed.)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-11 at 12:10 CET ]
From Microsoft's site. Apparently paving the way for upcoming WinXP security updates or something. At least they say: "This update addresses security issues and bugs related to running upcoming Windows XP Professional service packs." ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-10 at 20:17 CET ] SonyEricsson: More phones in that video...
In the now pulled promotional video, there are other phones to be seen that have not - as of yet - been released. In the picture below you see the T650 on the left and a hinge-turnaround-kinda phone on the right.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-10 at 19:16 CET ] Safari 1.2 improvements laid out Dave Hyatt has written up what's new in Safari 1.2 (v125).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-10 at 12:26 CET ] SonyEricsson T650 spotted in promotional video
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-10 at 12:17 CET ] While 1394ta.org has announced "wireless firewire" (802.15.3) in December, Intel is said to be announcing wireless USB-2 soon. Both will provide only about 55-60 Mbps, which is rather low for harddisk and DV use (what firewire is mainly used for) but might just be okay for printers, scanners and CD-RWs etc. Our take: USB will have an advantage here.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-10 at 12:10 CET ] In Software Update, you can now download updated graphics drivers. Word is that DVD video playback should be better after the update.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-10 at 12:06 CET ] MacRumors: More iTMS Europe delays? In a new tidbit, MacRumors hints at various problems that might put iTMS Europe introduction further and further away. Bad news for us Europeans, Apple and the music industry?
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-10 at 12:03 CET ] The new specification has just been released, features almost double the throughput of HT 1.0 (22.4 GB/s to 12.8 GB/s) and will probably be used by PowerMacs in the second half of 2004. The next iteration of the PowerMac G5 is likely not using it just yet.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-10 at 11:58 CET ]
Mac OS X 10.3.3 supports Pioneer's 107D drive And natively so, MacBidouille reports (in French). This means that future hardware will probably make use of the drive. No other news about 10.3.3 so far. ADC members are still waiting for a new build after 7F24 was pulled from seed servers.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-07 at 15:14 CET ] A recent MacRumors page 2 article says that any Apple-Nokia rumours are 'unfounded'. The thing is: There have been no Apple-Nokia rumours. Maybe I should add to this 'story' that also any Apple-AMD rumours are unfounded. As well as those recent Apple-LG rumours. ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-07 at 13:57 CET ] iTMS sells silent tracks for 99 cents apiece ;-)
According to this heise.de article (German), Apple's iTunes Music Store somehow automatically took in 'silent' tracks (including a silent 30s preview) like "Silence" from Slum Village.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-07 at 13:54 CET ]
ThinkSecret has the story. Release date: Probably first half of 2004.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-06 at 23:33 CET ]
Apple releases iChat AV 2.1b & Bluetooth 1.5 BT 1.5 is only available via SU right now.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-05 at 21:46 CET ]
ATi announces Mobility Radeon 9700 A chip that could well be used in future PowerBooks. From their press release: "The MOBILITY RADEON 9700 visual processing unit (VPU) delivers the highest standards of performance required by the most demanding notebook users. It has more processing power than ever before seen in a notebook graphic card. It redefines the mobile computing experience for the next generation of home and business users."
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-03 at 18:39 CET ] Ambrosia Software today released Snapz Pro X 2.0, their screenshot and screen-camera utility. Pity that it costs 69$ (upgrade from 1.0 is 20$).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-03 at 14:47 CET ] OmniWeb 5 - First Impressions...
The verdict first: Great browser for big displays, almost unusable at 1024*768.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-03 at 13:36 CET ] Apple releases 50.6 MB Java 1.4.2 Developer Package to ADC members.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-03 at 09:18 CET ] The beta version of the Mac OS X update has been pulled by Apple, according to our sources. We also need to clear up on the size of the update. As it's a combined updater, the 75 MB are only relatively big. (10.3.2 was 36.9 MB and is obviously included in the 10.3.3 update.)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-03 at 02:11 CET ]
Apple releases Java 1.4.2 through Software Update Not much more to say. ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-02 at 23:02 CET ] Apple has just released Safari 1.2.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-02 at 22:54 CET ] It's out. And it works quite well indeed. There are several usability features that I've been missing during the time I had abandoned OW for Safari (because of tabs, mostly) like keyboard shortcuts and 'open link behind' and stuff. And now OmniWeb comes back with a bang. It gives back all of these and adds even more. Most prominent feature for me right now: Site preferences. (Yep, I can set OmniWeb to _always_ open macrumors.com with the font size set to 80%.) I can also set pop-up blocking on a per-site basis, so that those bad sites which actually _need_ to pop up a window _can_ open up one. (Yes, you can also just stop looking at such sites, of course.) ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-02-02 at 20:26 CET ]
... at least of OmniGroup. On Monday, OG will release the public beta version of OmniWeb 5. This is an important day for me, personally, because... OmniWeb 3.x was the only browser for Rhapsody DR2, really (the first version of 'Mac OS X' that I was actively using, on a PowerMac 9500/200 and an AMD K6/200 machine). And when Apple released Mac OS X 10.0, OmniWeb was the only browser that didn't suck (remember how sluggish IE was?). With OmniWeb 4.5, OG turned to Apple's WebCore as the driver behind the browser, which added the speed necessary to the best web browser from a usability standpoint. OmniWeb 5, if all goes well, will not only be one of the fastest web browsers on the Macintosh platform, it'll also go a step further in usability with its feature set. In the days of free browsers, OmniWeb is the only pay-browser that actually is worth its money.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-31 at 16:10 CET ] Wei-Meng Lee writes in his column at macdevcenter.com about Lava Software's PC-Mac-NET FileShare. However, I'd rather see macdevcenter.com feature articles about how easy it is to make FTP the basis for such an effort. At least from the Mac side. And there's free FTP-Server software for the Windows side, too.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-31 at 01:29 CET ]
Apple has seeded Mac OS X 10.3.3 7F24 (75.5 MB, so it's quite a biggie...). Also, Safari 1.2 has been seeded to developers.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-29 at 19:02 CET ] Apparently, a simple reset of the base station solves the aforementioned problem. Thanks to the ones who were writing in!
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-29 at 12:50 CET ]
A reader wrote in with some problems regarding the recent AirPort software update. He writes that when trying to upgrade the firmware on his AirPort Extreme base station, the administration software just disappears (read: crashes), without even a notice. (No 'Submit bug to Apple' message or anything...)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-28 at 17:38 CET ] Seven logic boards, then back to Linux
Steve Mallet of OSDir.com writes in his column about those lousy iBooks of 2002/2003. About how he fell in love with 'the forbidden fruit' (Mac OS X) and how after all this trouble (six dead logic boards in two iBooks) he went back to using Linux full-time, in order to circumvent vendor lock-in.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-28 at 16:59 CET ] You've just got to read this. It's about a teacher inviting an FBI computer security guy. It's fun to read, anyway, but further down the page, you'll find stuff like this: "If you're a bad guy and you want to frustrate law enforcement, use a Mac." There's other Mac hints, too. Such as the FBI using Macs internally, because OS X is secure from installation to using and can run UNIX and Windows software (via VPC, probably), too.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-28 at 15:24 CET ] Old AirPort cards can access all channels... Since the update to AirPort 3.3 yesterday, you can now access all WiFi channels. This was a drawback before, since AirPort Extreme base stations (and other base stations) could set the channel to something old AirPort cards couldn't even see. Now, all's well.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-28 at 10:49 CET ]
You'll find a few quotes in this c-net article. There's a lot of bla-bla. I'd love to ask Bill Gates to install a Windows XP machine for me with broadband connection. Why? Because as soon as the Windows XP installation has found the network card, the computer is attacked. I had the installation of my sister's PC fail two times until I even guessed that this could be the problem. However, after having installed Windows XP: How do you get your insecure system up-to-date without a network connection? How do you download a firewall software without a network connection? You guess right: You need a Mac OS X or Linux machine with a CD-burner. ;-) (Or a patched and secured Windows XP machine, of course... But that's not really an alternative, is it?)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-27 at 17:27 CET ]
Apple releases January Security Update 7.8 MB in your SU control panel. Info: MacCentral.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-26 at 23:03 CET ]
OrangeWare has released a new driver version for Mac OS X. With the driver installed, you can use many "PC" WiFi products such as CardBus cards (with TiBooks etc. that have a PC-Card slot) and PCI-cards. It's - or so they say - the only solution for 802.11a wireless networks. A definite license costs 15 USD per seat - a demo version is available at the link above.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-26 at 14:08 CET ]
Yep. Tomorrow's the day. Some people expect new Macs and/or iPods that day or the Monday after. We've been saying that the new PowerMacs would come in the month after MWSF 2004, so this would be a nice date for them.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-23 at 19:25 CET ] 5 things for iPod software 3.0... Harold Martin writes at this little o'reilly blog about the things he wants the iPod to have. He mentions line-in recording. But I'd rather have that and an integrated stereo microphone, please. :)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-23 at 19:22 CET ]
Mac OS X 10.3 Server reviewed (part 1) Read Slashdot's Pudge's review part one here. Part two will follow soon.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-22 at 00:50 CET ]
... and the new version (.dmg) brings the changes needed for Max' themes to shine. We'll see text colour changes etc. Not entirely needed for a working environment, of course, but fun all the same. ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-21 at 23:43 CET ] According to one source which previously informed us about the next revision of the PowerMac G5, Apple is ready to deliver the PowerMacs based on the PowerPC 970+ (90nm process) at up to 2.5 GHz.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-21 at 09:43 CET ] Use your Mac's keyboard with GarageBand You can use this driver software called 'MidiKeys' to use GarageBand without a MIDI or USB keyboard (well, not that kind of USB keyboard...). MacBidouille has an article in French about using it.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-21 at 00:47 CET ]
Yes. We've been off the 'net for almost 10 days now, which has various reasons. The most important one: The cable modem died and was not replaced until today. Now, everything should be back to normal - and we'll provide updates on a day-to-day basis as usual.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-20 at 21:10 CET ]
Now that the music industry is dead... ;-)
I initially wanted to name this little article 'Now that the music industry is saved... ;-)' but noticed that it isn't and remembered that WIRED magazine once said (not too long ago) that 2003 was the year the music industry died. Oh, well, this is not about music piracy for once, this is about video piracy...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-11 at 21:09 CET ]
After installing iPhoto 4, the application updates your photo archive, which can take quite a while, depending on the amount and size of images you have archived. After that, you'll be surprised at the speed. Well, I was, at least. The new options are nice additions, but it seems mostly evolutionary than revolutionary. Most features are known from iTunes (sharing options, smart albums), so they feel quite natural, which is a good thing. But the most important thing about this release is quite certainly the fantastic speed of the application. On an iBook G3/800, iPhoto rocks. No complaints. Have a faster Mac? You'll be happy.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-10 at 16:24 CET ] WIRED looks at the birth of Macintosh 20 years ago... Their article summarises the time before 1984-01-24, when the famous 1984-spot aired. Did you actually know that Steve Jobs was against the Mac project at the beginning?
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-10 at 16:17 CET ] The 20 Macs that mattered most... WIRED is covering them with 20 little stories. Some of you might be too young to have even been there, when the first, the 128K Macintosh, was released. But it's a good read and a little bit of nostalgy for all of us, how ever old or young we are... ;-)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-10 at 03:30 CET ]
Is rebranding iPod/iTunes through HP (and possibly others) the solution?
We've (among many others) criticised Apple for basically locking iPod and iTMS together so that no other digital music players can play tracks bought through iTMS as well as that iPod cannot play tracks sold by other online music services. Now Apple has announced a deal with HP, which will essentially sell iPods that look HP (but show the Apple logo at startup). But is this the right answer?
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-09 at 17:23 CET ] A comparison between high end PCs and Macs
RobGalbraith.com has published a 10+ pages report comparing PCs and Macs in digital photo handling. While the Mac doesn't come out at the top, the comparison looks much better than a year ago, when the dual G4 PowerMacs were easily crushed by the competition.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-09 at 17:08 CET ] About those 90nm PowerPC 970+ chips... IBM is set to introduce the chips at up to 2.5/2.6 GHz (depending on other factors such as cache and bus speeds) in early February. The recently introduced Xserves use the 2.0 GHz variant of this new chip already. And Apple will, according to our sources, reveal the new PowerMacs with 2.0, 2.2 and 2.5 GHz (middle and high-end versions are dual) at the end of January or early February. All of the new machines will make use of the new chip, although there's the possibility that the low-end version will initially use the older 130nm chip to still sell more of those (with a silent upgrade later on). This, however, seems less likely now that Apple's already taking orders for 90nm chip Xserves. We'll see soon enough...
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-09 at 15:44 CET ]
Apple an HP have announced that HP will sell rebranded iPods and include iTunes with their PCs.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-09 at 15:36 CET ]
Thanks to all of those (more than two dozens) viewers that have expressed their thankfulness to our service today! We're quite proud here to be one of the few sites that actually were able to provide an (almost, 60s) live text-feed of the keynote by Steve Jobs. One user wrote: "1. One minute reloads. Most sites did not have this. And to top it off, the only one that worked besides yours was Macminute (their window could not be minimized to a smaller size) and their reload died halfway through the Keynote Presentation. 2. Ran efficiently and without errors. 3. Informative! [...] The most annoying site went to Macteen who asked for a donation three-quarters of the way through the Keynote." Again, thank you!
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-06 at 21:35 CET ]
So this was it, this was the keynote of MWSF 2004. And while there wasn't anything that wasn't on the rumour sites (such as ours) before the show, it was an entertaining one. GarageBand came kinda late (for the rumour sites), but was worthwile at the keynote. This sounds like big news for musicians, and 49$ is certainly a low price for iLife - and you're getting it for free with a new Mac, which is quite nice.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-06 at 20:18 CET ]
(We post the news in 'normal' mode, i.e. the newest item will be the lowest item. macnews.net.tc is set to reload every 60 seconds, so please do not reload the page by hand.)
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-06 at 20:12 CET ] ... to device makers (Sony, PalmOne etc.). This'll mean a nice round of PDAs in springtime, we guess.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-06 at 17:06 CET ] ThinkSecret posts its rumour roundup for MWSF 2004 keynote, which starts in less than 4 hours.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-06 at 14:11 CET ]
We'll be covering the keynote live here on the site and will install an even lighter theme for that time. It will auto-reload every minute, so you won't have to hit that button over and over again. ;-) We're looking forward to the event as much as you do. Happy waiting-time... You can test-drive the MWSF-layout at http://macintosh.fryke.com/cgi-bin/macnews.cgi/index.mwsf if you want to.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-05 at 23:39 CET ] According to this MacRumors article, Apple will definitely announce GarageBand tomorrow.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-05 at 23:14 CET ] Pre-MWSF-keynote-rumour-addons...
MacRumors mentions that Philips' Stremium is coming to the Mac.
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-05 at 22:18 CET ]
The masters of the web browser user interface are at it again: OmniWeb 5 is coming in 2004. A preview site shows you some of the new features, more to follow at MWSF 2004 (a preview version will be made available in February).
[ written by fryke™ on 2004-01-02 at 00:07 CET ]
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Apple has apparently updated Safari (and WebKit) for Mac OS X 10.3.3. However, this build (Safari) seems a bit crashy, sadly. (First launch: Crash. Second launch: It seems a bit better now. Haven't found any changes, really - not UI-wise, anyway.) The Mail.app build in this seed notes v614/613 as the build number.
I have no idea whether this one's supported by iSync, but if you're buying one, you probably have a personal human assistant that takes care of synching your address books, anyway. And I bet she looks good. ;-)
The video has since been pulled from the web (... and is likely to appear again somewhere), but the rumours are that the T650 will replace the T610 and T630 models, featuring an 1.3 MP camera and a Memory Stick Duo Pro slot. Both additions will be welcomed by previous T610 and T630 users. (The camera of those phones, well, sucks.)
