news of 2005-06-01



Switched to blogger.com

You'll find the new pages here. You can still look at the archives here (we won't transfer all the old articles unless someone comes up with a really easy way for blosxom to blogger) and we'll keep the pages active. RSS is working again, too. This is the link for it, it's an Atom feed now. For everything else, head on to the new pages, please. The domain name macnews.net.tc should be changed to take you to the new pages already.

[ written by fryke™ on 2005-06-01 at 03:36 CET ]
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news of 2005-05-28



Apple seeds Mac OS X 10.4.2 8C21

The combo updater is about 43 MB in size, currently. It'll try and fix the remaining bugs from 10.4 and 10.4.1. Apart from "general" usability and reliability, the note for the seed mentions - among other things - changes/fixes in the .Mac Notification Client, Automator, AddressBook, AppleScript, CoreGraphics, Display Preferences, Finder Search files, iCal, iDisk Syncing, iWork, JavaScriptCore, Mail, AirPort networking, Printing, Safari, Spotlight. Sounds like an interesting and well-needed updated. It's expected to have a rather short development cycle and will probably arrive in Software Update in mid June at the very latest. We'll continue to inform you about it, as we get more information.

[ written by fryke™ on 2005-05-28 at 13:16 CET ]
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news of 2005-05-23



(Almost) Thanks, Matt!

Okay. Spotlight has simple find-by-name search. Just add quotes to the searchterm. Apple: Shoot the people who're in charge of explaining how to work Spotlight, please. After torturing them. M'kay?
Update: Nah, putting words in quotes doesn't really do what I want. It only finds files by name if you put in a whole word. "uff" won't find folders called "Stuff", for example. Too bad, too bad. So my wishlist is still where it was. Look at the article below...
Some people state that Apple is in fact advertising how Spotlight's supposed to work here. But if you look for simple find-by-name: Nada... "If you are working on a project and are trying to find that Photoshop image with a text layer but forgot the filename, just search on the text layer and Spotlight will find it for you." - Apple: I did _not_ forget the filename and there's no text in my Photoshop picture. Now what?

[ written by fryke™ on 2005-05-23 at 18:56 CET ]
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Wishlist for 10.4.2

- Bring back simple "find by name" in the Finder.
- Make Spotlight a user's choice, so he/she can enable/disable it for Mail.app/Finder etc.
- Enable Quartz 2D Extreme by default. It's running fine, it seems.
- Bring back simple "find by name" in the Finder.
- Take the hack for synching a Nokia 9500/9300 and enable support in iSync yourself. Hate to do it over and over again whenever Apple does update iSync but leave that important bit (well, for me at least) out - like it happened with 10.4.1.
- Bring back simple "find by name" in the Finder.
- Fix overall system performance and compatibility issues. (That's the wording for every update to Mac OS X, right?)
- Oh, and yeah: Bring back simple "find by name" in the Finder. It's important.

[ written by fryke™ on 2005-05-23 at 13:06 CET ]
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Renewed Apple-intel talks?

The Wall Street Journal talks about yet another rumour (or is it more?) of Apple being in talks with intel about the use of intel's chips in future Macs. While not completely impossible (Rhapsody DR1 and DR2 were running fine on intel/AMD processors at the time, and so does at least Darwin in current versions), a move to using intel processors would involve yet another transition. Cocoa applications would need a recompile (and then be either "P" for PowerPC code, "I" for intel code or "PI" for "fat" applications that run on both 'sides', just like Apple did with Rhapsody back then), but porting Carbon over could be a harder task. Still: Not completely unbelievable.

While the WSJ article doesn't expect Mac OS X to run on _any_ hardware with intel chips (only on Macs, just like before, even though they'd use PC CPUs), I'm sure there'd be the danger of people actually finding ways of doing it all the same.

I personally hope that IBM will put an end to such diva-like behaviour on Apple's side and deliver more and better PowerPC chips to Apple soon enough. We need the 64 bit PowerBook, the dual processor dual core PowerMac as well as a subnotebook with a G4-replacement processor that runs both quicker and cooler. But if IBM nor FreeScale can do that, does it really matter, should a PowerBook in 2007 contain some intel processor - if it delivers the performance users crave with decent battery life and software compatibility? Apple needs options. The cheapest one is probably to stick with IBM and FreeScale for the time being. But if intel really has the better plan for the future (and really: Neither you nor I know that for sure), maybe it is time for another big transition. (And those usually take about five years at Apple.)

[ written by fryke™ on 2005-05-23 at 12:46 CET ]
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news of 2005-05-17



Apple releases 10.4.1 8B15

As we've correctly predicted, Apple has released Mac OS X 10.4.1 in mid-May. The updater is about 36 MB in size and fixes various issues people have been having with 10.4 so far. It also adds a layer of security to how Dashboard widgets are handled by Safari (we've also covered that before).

[ written by fryke™ on 2005-05-17 at 02:37 CET ]
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news of 2005-05-13



Widget Wars Episode 3

So, we read today that there's more to the Dashboard security issue than we thought. Apple's still going to basically fix this in 10.4.1, though. I'd go as far as saying: Right now, Tiger users aren't very secure. This is certainly no good news for Apple. For now: Don't install any widgets, stay away from visiting strange places on the web and do _not_ open unwanted E-Mail attachments. They basically could contain a widget that installs itself as a widget that looks like one of Apple's and replaces one of Apple's but does different - and possibly very, very bad - things.

[ written by fryke™ on 2005-05-13 at 12:06 CET ]
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news of 2005-05-12



Apple releases DVD Player update (4.6)

Apple has fixed some issues in its Tiger DVD Player software. You can read about it and download it here.

[ written by fryke™ on 2005-05-12 at 13:44 CET ]
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Apple seeds Mac OS X 10.4.1 8B15

Among other fixes in this build stands out this one: "Fixed issue where user would not be prompted before downloading a widget." - So now you know how Apple's reacted on the buzz about malicious widgets already. There's a new known issue with the new build, too (Address Book to .Mac synching) - so this is not the final build just yet. We still expect Apple to release 10.4.1 early next week. The update will be around 36 MB in size and fix various things that were found in Tiger 8A428, the retail final version of Tiger.

[ written by fryke™ on 2005-05-12 at 02:13 CET ]
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