Apple is looking to entice people to the Mac Mini by offering a 30-day money-back guarantee on the Mac Mini and select accessories. -- Ars Technica.
If you want to install items found in the Optional Installs package on the Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger discs, make sure that you only install from a disc with the same version of Mac OS X that's on your computer, such as Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.4.2. Otherwise, you may end up installing previous versions of certain applications, which can cause applications to become unresponsive.
If you've already done this and are experiencing issues with an application, try updating to the latest version of Mac OS X 10.4 via a Combo update from Apple Downloads, or updating to the latest version of the affected application.
Once you've updated, do not use Option Installs from the Tiger discs to reinstall those applications. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
Apple Tuesday unveiled its Developer Transition Resource Center, providing programmers with everything they need to make sure their applications are ready for the switch to the Intel architecture, the future of the Mac platform. Four sections cover Universal Binaries, Xcode 2, porting from CodeWarrior, and Optimization. Specific topics include Endianness and Addressing; Technical Q&A: Java on Intel-based Macintosh Computers; Working with Xcode: Building Applications for the Future; Moving to gcc 4.0, and more. Apple is offering Developer Technical Support Engineers to individuals or small businesses (while referring larger firms to development services firms) and also offers access to Apple Developer Connection Compatibility Labs--three independent labs featuring over 200 Macintosh configurations and including Developer Transition Systems for testing Universal Binaries.
For more than a year, Apple and Motorola's plans to release an iTunes-enabled phone have tantalized the music and mobile phone businesses. Now, with the two companies set to unveil the long-rumored handset Sept. 7, they might be under delivering. -- Forbes.
Just because I want the new version of Safari to work better, that doesn't mean it really is improved. Or is it? -- O'Reilly Developer Weblogs.
In this, the second part of "Web Apps with Tiger," Morbus focuses on protection. He'll replace the default PHP configuration with a more secure version, and explain some of the differences. Finally, he'll install MySQL and run through its own security tweaks. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
From design to delivery, custom manufacturing is coming soon to a desktop near you. -- Wired.
IN A spate of wishful thinking, an American legal philosopher, Ronald Dworkin, once invented an imaginary but ideal judge, named Hercules, who had complete knowledge of every case ever decided. Hercules saw the law as a seamless web of past precedents, and could come to one right answer to decide any particular case. Of course, no actual judge possesses such a supernatural reasoning ability. Recently, though, scholars have built electronic maps of legal precedents that offer at least some semblance of the Herculean panorama of law. -- The Economist.
Matthew Mei of Case Western Reserve University writes:
I was searching for good places to eat in Knoxville and stumbled on your site. Your suggestions must be good because you include Korea House which happens to serve some of the best Korean food I've ever had anywhere.
Another place that I love is Hong Kong House, 8079 Kingston Pike. The Chinese community knows it as one of the few restaurants where you can order authentic Chinese food. It does offer the run-of-the-mill (albeit fairly cheap IIRC) buffet, but where it really shines is with dishes that you actually order off of the menu. Our family always goes for the salted fish fried rice, but we enjoy pretty much their entire menu.
BTW, I believe that the construction finally did in #1 Buffet -- it's gone now.
Thanks for having this list online.
matt
Good job guys! Let's keep the standards high.
Safari version 2.0.1 for Mac OS X Tiger improves website compatibility, application stability and support for 3rd party web applications.
Safari version 1.3.1 for Mac OS X Panther improves website compatibility, application stability and support for 3rd party web applications.
This update does not fix the problem we have with Safari NOT being able to display the timetable PDF's generated by CPO. I have reported this to Apple, again. Firefox, Mozilla, OmniWeb, and Opera all work.
Today FileMaker unveiled FileMaker Pro 8, the newest version of the #1-selling, easy-to-use database software for Mac and Windows. With FileMaker Pro 8, you get many new features to let you work faster and share information more easily. With PDF Maker and Excel Maker, you can save data as a PDF or Excel file and instantly email them. While there is little change to the internal database creation and/or design structure, the changes in FileMaker 8 are extensive and broad. FileMaker 8's main goal is to improve user productivity.
FileMaker also released a Business Productivity Kit, now available free with the FileMaker Pro Trial Version (which requires a registration form). According to FileMaker: Small businesses can use the Business Productivity Kit immediately for tracking customer and vendor contacts, sales, product information, invoicing, shipping and other key business data all in an integrated database solution. The Kit also provides a "How to Build This Solution Yourself Learning Guide" complete with sample graphics to assist users in customizing a database.
Is the company getting ready to unveil a new product as pivotal as the first iPod? Rumors are running rampant. -- c|net.
Is it possible that Google's got nothing else to offer? According to Bob, Apple -- not Google -- might be the biggest threat to Microsoft. -- I, Cringely.
This document specifies obsolete and vintage Apple products worldwide. Apple has discontinued support for certain technologically obsolete and vintage products. Vintage products are those that were discontinued more than five and less than seven years ago. Obsolete products are those that were discontinued more than seven years ago. Apple has discontinued all hardware service for obsolete products with no exceptions. Service providers cannot order parts for obsolete products.
iPod is a household name and Apple continues to dominate the digital music market with its latest offerings. Will podcast-editing tools be next? Here's what Apple might be thinking on a strategic level, from Strategy and Innovation." -- Working Knowledge: Harvard Business School.
Enter FileMaker Pro 8, six months sooner and six ways stronger than anyone expected. If you're still using FileMaker 6, the time to upgrade is at hand. Think of this latest version of FileMaker as the equivalent to the Jaguar update to Mac OS X--this is the really-ready-for prime time release. -- MacCentral.
Script Software released iWatermark 3 so that one can secure and protect one's photos. If one owns a digital camera and email or put images on the web then anyone can just take and use them for whatever they like. Now digital artwork/photos can be "signed" like paintings with iWatermark. iWatermark is easy to use on 1 or 1000 images at a time.
Jason O'Grady has been using Marketcircle's excellent business relationship management application Daylite (US$149) exclusively for about almost eight months now and still finds it to be the best tool (Personal Information Manager (PIM), Customer Relationship Manager (CRM)) out there. -- O'Grady's PowerPage.
For years I have tried to find a good way to classify my documents. I tried dates, names, projects, everything. What if the solution were, actually, just a bunch of random characters? -- O'Reilly Developer Weblogs.
DEVONthink Professional 1.0 has hit the streets, providing Mac users with a great opportunity to organize their thoughts. Giles Turnbull takes you on a insightful tour of what some people call a great snippet archiver, and others consider a full-blown reading and research tool. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
MIT Technology Review's annual look at research trends in corporations is led this year by pharmaceutical and biotech companies.
Adam Engst notes how you can add a USB-to-Ethernet adapter to a Mac using new open source drivers. -- TidBITS.
Glenn Fleishman resolves a problem with AirPort preferred network listings in upgraded versions of Tiger. -- TidBITS.
Jeff Carlson follows up last week's Mac to School article with some software suggestions for students. -- TidBITS.
Droplets of liquid have been moved uphill by molecular motors designed to manipulate Brownian motion. While other researchers have found ways to make drops of liquids move before, what is new here, says David Leigh at the University of Edinburgh, is the use of molecular motors to achieve it: "This is the first time you can use molecular-level motion to move a macroscopic object. OK, so it's only a tiny droplet -- but it's a start." -- NewScientist.com.
Apple Computer said on Friday it has entered into a purchase agreement with Freescale Semiconductor that will secure it a source of PowerPC G4 microprocessors through the end of 2008. -- AppleInsider.
Two Japanese companies have the answer for people worried about leaving their homes empty while they go on vacation: a house-sitter robot armed with a digital camera, infrared sensors and a videophone. -- CBS News.
Having a backup strategy is essential for every Mac OS X user. When issues arise due to disk corruption, a problematic incremental Mac OS X or Security update, or other unforeseen factors, having access to vital documents and applications is essential.
There are essentially two practical strategies for backup: Cloning your Mac OS X startup disk to an external volume, providing a bootable drive that is virtually identical to your current set-up; or simply duplicating your Home user folder to another volume or an online repository then relying on other methods for restoring your applications and various settings. -- MacFixIt.
A St. Louis Dispatch article starts off with a joke "Q. What do you call 50,000 geeks playing Monopoly? A. Microsoft." and goes on to explain why Google really represents a threat to the Redmond giant. "Web searches and desktop searches aren't what ought to worry Microsoft about Google; it's everything else the company's doing. In 2001, it acquired Deja, the former Usenet archive, for better access to Internet newsgroups. In 2003, it snagged both Pyra Labs and Genius Labs, two Weblog providers, to take advantage of the blogging boom. Last year, it snapped up Keyhole Corp., a digital mapping company, to bolster its own Google Maps search tool."
Apple is one of the companies that will help the Detroit school system start over, the Detroit News reports. The News writes that Apple "will help finance, equip and advise a small top-quality high school for Detroit students at most risk of being left behind."
Fully illustrated and written by innovative computer hardware hackers and automobile customizers, Car PC Hacks is a collection of tips, tutorials, and techniques for installing, displaying, and controlling a car PC, whether Mac or Wintel. It shows readers how to use a keyboard touch screen, or voice-activated in-car computers for things like watching (and even pausing and rewinding) live TV on the road; videoconferencing on the go; and using GPS to create a constant travel record.
If you're a Mac OS X user, and especially a Terminal addict, this little trick may save your time and your sanity. Yes, it's in the user manual and no, I didn't read about it until today -- I know, I'm bad. -- O'Reilly Developer Weblogs.
Developed at MIT in 1984, the X Window System, now up to X11 release 6, or X11R6, has been the standard environment for Unix windowing systems. Ellen Siever provides some historical context for X's staying power, then discusses its major features: working with X and the X server and X clients; configuring X; and much more. Ellen is a coauthor of Linux in a Nutshell, 5th Edition. -- O'Reilly Network.
The University of Wisconsin RFID Lab, principally funded by a dozen Wal-mart suppliers including 3M, Kraft Foods, and S.C. Johnson & Son, believes that RFID could spell the end of the ubiquitous bar code. The big draw? Speeding up supply-chain management. Wal-mart's warehouse conveyor belts presently move products at 600 feet per minute... but they want to be faster. And better informed. -- Associated Press.
Inventgeek.com has an interesting article on modding laser printers. In this how to mod they have converted a standard Xerox laser printer into an automatic high volume paper shredder. Just what we need to take care of those pesky alien autopsy photos, TPS reports and Apple & IBM's CPU Contracts.
There's an interesting, if partisan, review of OpenOffice 2.0 in comparison to Microsoft Office over on Real Tech News. Open Office gets a general vote of approval, as you might guess from the title 'Open Office 2.0 Kicks MS Office Around The Block.'
OmniNerd has posted an interesting article about the statistical math behind iTunes. The author makes some interesting observations concerning the same song playing twice in a row during party shuffle play, the impact that star ratings have on playback, and comparisons with plain old random play (star ratings not considered).
Apple developers who have received their Intel transition kits from Apple expect "that this transition will likely be the easiest of all those yet," according to an article at RedNova.com. In fact, the biggest hurdle likely won't be making sure their code runs on Intel processors -- it will be the switch to Apple's Xcode development environment, which CEO Steve Jobs mandated in June when he announced the move away from IBM processors.
A number of posters to Apple's Discussion boards are reporting an issue where Safari apparently causes a system-wide freeze that can only be escaped via a restart of the system.
Users experiencing this issue may want to peruse the MacFixIt tutorial "Minimizing System-Wide Freezes where 'Force Quit' will not work" which contains several causes for (Bad RAM, USB Device issues, network traffic problems, background applications and more), and solutions to this issue.
OsiriX 2.0 is the latest release of the open-source image processing software dedicated to DICOM images produced by medical equipment and confocal microscopy.
York University is using a £175,000 Apple cluster to help analyze and store data at its new neuroimaging center, according to ComputerWeekly. The 64-processor cluster analyzes data from a MEG scanner and includes Xserve 1U servers, 55 Xserve cluster nodes and three Xserve RAID 3U storage platforms.
Microsoft's Mac product line -- including Office and PowerPoint designed for Apple computers -- is a profit generator for the company. Though Microsoft does not break out revenue, the general manager of Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit says there are some 7 million Mac Office users. -- San Jose Mercury News.
Apple has scooped a US PC Magazine's Reader's Choice awards for a second time.
It's a convincing whitewash in Apple's favor, says PC Mag: "Once again, Apple achieves scores that are far and away the highest for all vendors in our survey, earning Readers' Choices in both desktops and notebooks. For Apple, in both the desktop and notebook sections of the survey, every single score is significantly better than the industry average for Windows machines. No exceptions."
"Apple's overall score for desktops is 9.2, and the closest competing score, Alienware's, is 8.8," the magazine explains. The company's notebooks also achieve a 9.2 score, with closest competitors IBM and Fujitsu taking just 8.4 points.
The report observes that Mac users are martial in favor of their platform, but nevertheless states: "There's solid evidence that Macs may be worthy of devotion."
PC Mag's reader survey found that Macs are far less likely to need repairs than most competing systems, though iMac G5s fared slightly less well than the company's other products.
Apple's after sales support does take some criticism, as the company offers limited technical support and does not sponsor a network of engineers equipped to repair faults at end user's homes or offices.
"Still, while we appreciate generous support and repair policies, it's even better to offer top quality products and services, as Apple has done," the magazine concludes.
Some basic tips on how to keep what's yours, yours.
Pay Attention
Monitor financial accounts every week.
Travel Light
Don't carry unnecessary personal information, including Social Security numbers, bank checks and passwords, in your wallet.
Get Rid of It
Shred all sensitive personal documents before discarding.
Stay Secure
Protect your computer with regularly updated security software.
What do you do with your old Mac when you buy a new one? There are plenty of good ways to use a spare Mac, from storing and playing your digital music to backing up a home or small-office network, or even turning your lights on and off automatically. Automating your home isn't that hard to do. With a spare Mac and a bit of extra hardware, you can do it in a weekend. -- Macworld.
Each August, as students start to arrive, Beloit College releases the Beloit College Mindset List, which offers a world view of today's entering college students. It is the creation of Beloit's Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and Director of Public Affairs Ron Nief.
The Web is abuzz with critiques and accolades for the search giant's foray into the IM business. Compatible Mac clients include iChat, Adium, and GAIM. -- c|net.
MacFixIt's monthly Troubleshooting Tools column, penned by Contributing Editor Dan Frakes, covers products that can help you maintain and fix your Mac. This time Dan talks about one of his favorite Mac OS X troubleshooting utilities, Fixamac's $25 Printer Setup Repair, currently at version 5.0.3.
ComputerWorld reports on a shift at the U.S. Copyright Office that may cause compatibility to be relegated to only Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape browsers. However, the office says it is also working on Safari compatibility. Julia Huff, the Copyright Office's chief operating officer, says "And we are actually already doing some preliminary testing with [Apple Computer's] Safari Web browser, and it works with one exception," she said. "With a little configuration, we may be able to use other browsers [now], but we cannot promise that. We may have to move ahead just using IE and Netscape, because we're not making the transition to a newer version of Siebel until we're further along with our development of our overall registration system, which we will roll out in early 2007."
In this article, we will examine how to get Ubuntu Linux up and running on the Mac Mini. Assembly language skills on a RISC CPU like the PowerPC are very much in demand in the embedded-systems industry - and we shall use the PPC Linux system to do a bit of assembly language hacking! -- Linux Gazette.
New and updated reviews of awesome free and low-cost software from the folks at Macworld.
U.S. colleges are finding themselves on the front lines of the battle against identity theft. -- c|net.
Apple plans to buy as much as 40 percent of Samsung Electronics' flash memory output, research analyst says. -- c|net.
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Learn how to change or reset an account password in Mac OS X, including the original administrator account password. You might need to do this, for example, if someone forgot their password. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger features Spotlight, a lightning-fast search technology that instantly lets you find things on your Mac. By default, Spotlight will index and search in the following locations. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
Intuit Inc. has released an update to Quicken 2006 for Mac that includes what the company is calling "stability improvements"
To get two free QuickTime apps with several functions missing from the standard OS X player, including copy, cut, paste, trim, export, etc., first visit the QTKitImport page on Apple's Developer site. -- Mac OS X Hints.
A Boston Globe article says that back-to-school shoppers may be able to save some money on software by purchasing Macs instead of Windows PCs.
McAfee this morning announced that Virex for Macintosh now supports Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). The new release, which purportedly will not exhibit the same issues as the 7.x releases, will be available August 29, 2005.
Intel Developer Forum attendees are being given the chance to learn about its software tools for Mac OS X development.
These sessions detail Intel's plans to deliver compilers and libraries for OS X on Intel. The company plans to provide test versions of its Mac development tools later this year.
The session discussed compatibility with existing Mac compilers and libraries, including MetroWerks, GNU GCC, and Apple's Xcode. Intel also confirmed that its compilers will plug-in to Xcode. -- Macworld UK.
When invoked, MailTags lets you add comments (or Flickr-style tags, if you wish), due dates, and flag markers to individual messages in Mail. You can also create Projects and assign messages to them. -- O'Reilly Developer Weblogs.
It turns out there is one feature out there I would really, really love to see added and its notable absence from all browsers out there is something I can't really understand. Those of us who routinely develop web sites and applications know how important it is to clear (1) caches, (2) cookies, (3) favicons and (4) history between every test lest we want to run into inexplicable behavior -- and this with every browser. The problem is that there is no way to do that that does not involve a clicking and dialog-dismissing extravaganza. -- O'Reilly Developer Weblogs.
At the Intel Developer Forum, CEO Paul Otellini unveiled the new architecture aimed at helping Intel chips run slow and cool. And elsewhere at the conference, Jonathan Seff sees first-hand how Intel's approach differs from Apple's when it comes to talking about the future. -- Macworld.
MAKEZine has posted a tutorial on how to turn your PowerBook into a WiFi access point.
In this first of two articles, Drew McCormack shows you how to set up a small Xgrid for testing purposes, submit simple jobs to the grid with the command line interface (CLI), and query their progress. The second article will be a Cocoa Tour de Force, involving new Tiger technologies like Automator and Core Image, in addition to Xgrid. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
Groups headed by Toshiba and Sony offering competing technologies for next-generation DVDs have given up efforts to develop a unified format, the Yomiuri newspaper reported Tuesday. -- c|net.
After suffering through yet more broadband problems with John's cable modem, Dave and John get a Geek Gab out, albeit a day late. Dave's chiming in from Austin, Texas, and he and John talk about their favorite ways to keep their Macs running smooth, and how to tell when it's not! John also wraps up his Apple tech support experience for us all, as well. -- The Mac Observer.
Symantec Norton SystemWorks or Utilities is no longer going to support Tiger. If you thought that running the regular uninstaller for your Norton program would actually uninstall everything, then you thought wrong.
So if your goal is to remove everything, go to the support page for Norton SystemWorks, and then use the search phrase NortonUninstall removal utility. Make sure to please read the warnings in the linked page before using the provided program -- this program will uninstall all Symantec stuff, both retail and beta.
The Boston Herald notes the utility of KVM switches, and their ability (with the help of a Mac mini) to make dual-platform set-ups feasible. "What if you could put a Mac mini next to a small Windows desktop computer and let them share a keyboard, mouse and monitor? Enter the Iogear switch. There are lots of KVM switches on the market to let a computer user toggle between multiple PCUs on the same desktop. Things get a little trickier when trying to cross platforms."
John Markoff writes in the New York Times about an intriguing Apple-Google connection: Indeed, largely overlooked last week in the glare of the $4 billion stock announcement was Google's acquisition of Android Inc., a start-up founded by a former Apple hardware designer, Andy Rubin. The move did not go unnoticed, however, by Silicon Valley cognoscenti.
Following IDT's notebook clock device and Fujitus's hard disk plans, there's another development that could impact upcoming Apple laptops. SigmaTel, which makes mixed-signal integrated circuits for the portable consumer electronics and computing markets, has introduced a new family of high-fidelity high-definition (HD) audio codecs. -- Macsimum News.
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is running parts one and two of a three-part series dealing with the future of technology in America's schools. Part one asks whether technology in schools is merely a fad or, as some may argue, a necessity in today's technology-driven society. It raises some interesting points, such as the contrasting the wide availability of computers in schools to the generally limited use among students.
Part two goes in-depth about the technology's cost, citing the dependence of grants that are disappearing and the effects of reducing technology staff. For part three you will have to tune in the the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel tomorrow.
Part Three seems to show that people fail to understand to old saw "When you find yourself in a hole, quit digging." Since there is no proof that computers increase learning or test scores.
ZDNet UK posted Ontrack Data Recovery's 2004 list of the 10 strangest and funniest computer mishaps.
If I were headed to college in September, these are the things I'd want to bring with me. -- TidBITS.
Some years ago, best-selling author Stephen King bought a local radio station in Bangor, Maine, reportedly so he could be assured of turning on the radio and hearing music that he'd probably like. Thanks to a brilliant little program called Indy from Change.TV, I don't have wait until I'm a multi-millionaire to enjoy my own radio station. -- TidBITS.
Researchers in Switzerland have succeeded in breaking the cosmic speed limit by getting light to go faster than, well, light. -- LiveScience.com.
Student fee helps UT get ahead on its network, software, projects. -- Knoxville News Sentinel.
Mac OS X is a great OS and rarely gives any trouble but sometimes your install something that eats your system. It can be a version of the OS or an application. So the question is "How do I regress for success?" Remember that reverting your system will remove any refinements brought by the update and could leave your system open to potential vulnerabilities as the current patches will not be installed. Always make a backup before doing something like this. You'll need to perform an Archive and Install to remove all of the Security Update's (and potentially problem-causing) components, and replace them with the components of a fresh copy provided by the Mac OS X disc that shipped with your system, or a retail Mac OS X disc.
As you have read here and elsewhere, UT is moving to using and Exchange server for e-mail and calendaring. It isn't just e-mail, it's the entire package of software including NetMeeting.
Well there is no NetMeeting (it is a Windows only product) for OS X but there is Project: XMeeting - Video Conferencing for OS X. The project goal is to produce a Mac OS X native application that does Internet VoIP and video conferencing. The application will base on protocol stack developed by openh323.org. The peace of software to note is XMeeting.
Sun Microsystems has announced an open DRM alternative to the proprietary content-control systems of Microsoft, Apple and others. After years of work, Sun Microsystems has begun trying to rally corporate allies behind a neutral standard for digital rights management, technology that governs how music, video or other information can be used or copied. -- c|net.
O'Reilly's MacDevCenter has published an article on the open-source ClamAV antivirus software for Mac OS X (and whether or not Mac users need antivirus software).
Ever wonder why your PowerBook's battery life seems to suck? If your battery life isn't exact what is used to be, or you're just curious about how much capacity is left in the darned thing, check out coconutBattery 1.1. This little universal binary application that gives you live feedback about the cells in your PowerBook or iBook.
Marcin Wichary produces and writes the excellent GUIdebook graphical user interface gallery, where he obsessively collects screen shots of user interfaces, copiously documenting everything from icon design to login screen layouts. GUIdebook is both interesting and amazingly comprehensive, and there's nothing else like it.
A few weeks ago, Marcin asked John Gruber if he'd be interested in an interview to discuss the user interface of Mac OS X, and of course John said yes. Topics include the "Welcome to Mac OS X" first-run experience, the Dock, brushed metal windows, and, of course, the Finder. Marcin even managed to dig up a screen shot of the purple "single window mode" button that Apple had proposed putting in the title bar of every single window in the first public demo of the Aqua user interface.
Apple has announced a worldwide first-generation iMac G5 extended warranty program that offers to repair video or power-related issues on the all-in-one desktops, free of charge.
Chipmunk has updated their Macintosh serial number analyzer. It is now aware of the iMac G5 Exchange Program. If you enter the serial number of an iMac, it will warn you that it is part of an Exchange Program. The analyzer takes the serial number of any Mac (or other piece of Apple hardware) and tells you what exact model it is and when it was produced.
If you've never used Login Items, it's time to give them a whirl. They are among the most convenient shortcuts in Mac OS X. Actually, even if you have never created a Login Item, you may be using them anyway, as a result of applications that automatically add themselves to your list without exactly telling you. And for those already familiar with Login Items, there may still be some tips and tricks of which you are unaware.
In this two-part MacFixIt tutorial (concluding next month), they explore all about Login Items. Using a Q&A format, they'll explain what Login Items are, how they work, and how to get the most use out of them.
MacInTouch readers sent in a number of recommendations for OS X DNA Applications.
Two weeks and six full MiniDV tapes later, I sat down at my PowerBook G4 and fired up a little application that I'd previously launched only once: iMovie. In less than two hours--without any instruction--I'd imported some footage, edited it, added titles and music, and uploaded a one-minute short to a web page for family and friends to view. -- informIT.
If you've spent any time at all ripping your CD collection to your Mac, you've probably got gigabytes of music sitting on your hard drive. But how do you play your Mac-based music library on your living-room stereo--or, for that matter, share it with the rest of the house? -- Macworld.
Given the increase in scripted attacks to guess ssh passwords, I decided to disable passwords altogether, and move to public key authentication. -- Mac OS X Hints.
A global race is under way to reach the next milestone in supercomputer performance, and the customary rivalry between the U.S. and Japan now includes China. -- New York Times.
We've heard a number of reports of Safari memory leaks, and we'd like to fix a bunch of these. This is a very important factor for usability of Safari and other WebKit apps. You can help! Here's how: -- Surfin' Safari.
Security Update 2005-007 v1.1 replaces Security Update 2005-007 v1.0 for Tiger systems Mac OS X v10.4.2. Users who have already installed v1.0 on Tiger systems should install v1.1. Security Update 2005-007 v1.1 provides a combined 32- and 64-bit version of LibSystem to replace the 32-bit version that was delivered in v1.0. No other changes have been made in version 1.1.
Nearly all photo album applications can make basic image adjustments. Sometimes you need more than they can provide in order to clean up a digital image. We'll show you how using your image editing app of choice on your platform of choice. -- Ars Technica.
Universities look for ways to protect networks yet maintain a free flow of data and ideas--something businesses could learn from. -- c|net.
Apple's developer website has an article about creating native Mac OS X ("Cocoa") applications using Python.
A Red Nova story looks at the use of Apple's PowerSchool software to monitor student activity remotely. From their computers at home and work, parents across the state can log on to a website and keep tabs on their children's attendance, grades, and even their cafeteria purchases during the school day.
There is now a Value Guide, much like what NADA or Kelly Blue Book is for cars, for used Apple G4 Towers. The G4 Tower Value Guide asks you for the tower model and its specs, and then gives you a market value for your machine. The "value" represents the average ebay selling price for any given configuration, and it seems to be pretty accurate.
Yesterday we closed the Softpedia News poll in which we asked our users to express their preferences regarding OSs. We have to admit that the results were a little bit surprising. Although we would have expected Windows to be the indisputable leader, Microsoft's OS had a difficult time "winning" the competition, and Apple's operating system was only 3% behind it. -- Softpedia.
Sometimes it's next to impossible to figure out which bits of an image are the blackest black, and/or the whitest white. Picking the wrong area can produce "not so correct" color correction. So how can you find out which pixels are really black, and which pixels are really white? To become a real pixel super sleuth, you need to cozy up to the Threshold dialog box. -- Graphic Reporter.
There's been a lot of debate about Apple's new multi-button Mighty Mouse over the past few weeks, but one of the most common complaints is that the Mighty Mouse mouse driver doesn't give advanced users as much control as they would like. Those who crave more options should check out PlentyCom System's $20 SteerMouse 2.0, a third-party driver for Apple's new pointing device. (It also works with other mice, but is designed primarily for the Mighty Mouse.) -- Macworld.
Jason D. O'Grady relates the good news bad news involved in the death 35-inch Mitsubishi cabinet television and his move to HDTV.
MapMemo is a software application that allows you to load a map file and plot various points on it. The fun part is that you can drag files from the OS X finder to spots on the map and they become linked. It's great for mapping customers, prospects or even your favorite destinations when traveling. More customer use cases are posted on the MapMemo Web site.
MapMemo can be used as a free reader with no limits. Users can also alter files - like the MapMemo Paris archive - save, archive and send it out without ever paying a license fee. If you want to save a specific map file more than five times you'll have to pay a license fee.
Those wanting high-speed access to the Internet essentially have two choices: Buy it from a cable TV company or from the local telephone company. But a third option stands in the wings for many consumers: the electric company. -- The Christian Science Monitor.
Five of the top companies in the online music industry are being sued by an individual who claims that the digital rights management software used by the Internet's most popular music download services violates a seven-year-old technology patent. -- AppleInsider.
MacGuru Joe Biedlingmaier wrote after reading the TidBITS article on VPN wanting more information. Well I hope one of the articles below helps. If you have information please share it.
Adobe Systems released late Tuesday Acrobat 7.0.3 in its Standard and Professional versions, as well as an update to Acrobat Reader.
MacFixIt's Reader Reports on Apple's new Might Mouse:
I had a call recently from someone updating from 10.2 to 10.4 (Tiger). If you are doing this don't forget the MacGuru report Recommendations for Installing "Tiger" on the MacVolPlace front page.
This warning is from Wolfram Research about a major bug in Apple's new Security Update 2005-007:
** Important notification for users of G5 Macintosh systems running OS X 10.4 **
At approximately 8 p.m. PDT on Monday, August 15, Apple began automatic distribution of Apple Security Update 2005-007 for Mac OS X 10.4.2 (Tiger).
Due to an error on the part of Apple, this update prevents any 64-bit-native application from running. In particular, this means that Mathematica 5.2 will not run on any G5 system if it has installed this Security Update.
This problem was discovered by our testing procedures a few hours ago, and Apple has now assured us that they have stopped automatic distribution of Security Update 2005-007 at this time.
If you did not install Security Update 2005-007, then you will not be affected. If your Mathematica 5.2 successfully launches and performs any computation (such as 2+2), then this also means that you have not been affected.
If you have been affected, then Mathematica 5.2 will generate a MathLink error when you try to do any computation with it. (If you run MathKernel directly from the command line, it will crash at startup.)
Apple has informed us that there is no workaround for this problem.
Apple is investigating the problem at high priority, and intends to distribute a new Security Update in the very near future. This update will correct the problem and allow Mathematica to run successfully. [...]
Should you require further technical support for this problem, Apple has informed us that you should contact them through [Apple Phone Contacts]
Apple Computer, which has been re-engaging in the CAD-based technical markets lately, has added both new and not-so-new CAD products to its physical Apple Stores as well as their online equivalents. -- Architosh.
Apple has shipped a monster security patch for Mac OS X to fix 34 flaws in the operating system and bundled third-party utilities. -- eWeek.
AppleScripting is a powerful way to automate repetitive (and often tedious) tasks on the Mac. You don't have to know how to write scripts in order to take advantage of them. There are tons of AppleScripts on the Web and quite a few of them are for iTunes. These 10 should get you started. -- Macworld.
Morbus is back with more web serving tools and tricks, updated for Mac OS X Tiger. In this first article, he'll take you on a whirlwind through the basics: turning on the Apache web server, learning a teensy bit of its configuration, then enabling and testing PHP. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
IBM has taken the next logical extension of booting Linux from a flash drive. Researchers were recently able to boot Knoppix from an iPod and run an x86 virtual machine in VMware, which provided an easy way to encrypt the whole operating environment. The tests were conducted on a 60GB iPod photo using Knoppix. -- c|net.
Next Generation has a piece up exploring where gaming is going on Max OS X. From the article: "Almost since the introduction of the Mac, Apple users have lamented the lack of game support provided to the platform as compared to its Wintel brethren. Sometimes that lack of support was due to hardware and input devices that weren't competitive with the PC, but the adoption of PC standards like AGP for graphics cards and USB support for 'proper' multi-button mice did away with those obstacles. But the largest reason usually has had to do with the size of the Mac market.
Security Update 2005-007 delivers a number of security enhancements and is recommended for all Macintosh users. This update includes the following components: AppKit, CoreFoundation, cups, Directory Services, HIToolbox, Kerberos, OpenSSL, ping, Safari, and traceroute.
With development ahead of schedule, Intel Corporation today announced it is accelerating the availability of its dual-core, hyper-threaded Xeon and Xeon MP processors. -- AppleInsider.
What do you get if you cross Google Maps with an online gas-price tracker? A shift in the way the Web works. Public Web sites are becoming programmable platforms, giving consumers and developers more control. -- c|net.
At colleges around the country, the ritual of downloading free music using illegal file-sharing programs has become as much a part of campus life as football, frat parties and, oh yes, studying.
But this year, major California colleges and universities are hoping to take the illegal part out of the equation by rolling out new, licensed online music services sometime in the school year. -- San Francisco Chronicle.
While we anxiously wait for Madsonline to start shipping their 65 watt Lucille AC adapter for PowerBooks, you may find that your current ride is in need of repair. -- O'Grady's PowerPage.
An article by Rob Pegoraro for The Washington Post, Buyer be wise when looking for a laptop, discusses the practice of some Windows notebook vendors shipping a "starter" battery with their laptops and the tactic of low-balling laptop weights.
Kevin van Haaren sheds light on an often perplexing topic: virtual private network (VPN) technology, and explains why you might want to start using one. -- TidBITS.
They're pronounced the same, but, technically speaking, there is a distinct difference between a disc and a disk. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
AppleCare Knowledge Base article tells how some Xerox printer models may be unable to print using the PPD (PostScript Printer Description) files included with a Mac OS X 10.4.0 Tiger installation. If your printer is affected, it may print out the following error message instead of the expected document:
ERROR: undefined
OFFENDING COMMAND: COMMENT
STACK:
Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg has weighed in on Apple's new Mighty Mouse and declares it inferior to Microsoft's latest Wireless Optical Mouse 5000.
Orbital mechanics, also called flight mechanics, is the study of the motions of artificial satellites and space vehicles moving under the influence of forces such as gravity, atmospheric drag, thrust, etc. Orbital mechanics is a modern offshoot of celestial mechanics which is the study of the motions of natural celestial bodies such as the moon and planets. The root of orbital mechanics can be traced back to the 17th century when mathematician Isaac Newton (1642-1727) put forward his laws of motion and formulated his law of universal gravitation. The engineering applications of orbital mechanics include ascent trajectories, reentry and landing, rendezvous computations, and lunar and interplanetary trajectories.
Recently I have received many emails on errors people receive when either editing the httpd.conf file or indeed, putting together their first PHP script. This article discusses text editors on Mac OS X: the pitfalls, problems and also merits of those available. -- PHPmac.com.
DropDMG is the easiest way to create Mac OS X disk images. Just drag and drop a folder or file, and DropDMG will create an image in .dmg, .img, or .smi format or a Tar, Zip, or StuffIt archive. Or, you can drag an existing image or archive file onto DropDMG to easily convert it to any of the other supported formats.
Giles Turnbull over at O'Grady's Developer Weblogs gives some advice to his brother about buying a Mac.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are developing software for cell phones that would analyze speech patterns and voice tones to rate people -- on a scale of 0 to 100% -- on how engaged they are in a conversation. -- USA Today.
The University of California at Berkeley is creating an interdisciplinary center for advanced search technologies and is in talks with search giants including Google to join the project. -- c|net.
As promised in my last column, this column is going to review the System Preferences of Tiger, reviewing one of the basics, but primarily focusing on the features that are new to Tiger. -- The Mac Observer.
In some cases, Safari will spontaneously become unable to reliably load the full content of certain Web pages. This may result in an error indicating that the document contains no data, partial loads of pages no matter how many times the Refresh button is pressed, and more. There are a few quick fixes that generally resolve these issue:
A rumored iTunes-Google deal may have helped push Apple's stock to an all-time high last Friday. According to TheStreet.com, shares of Apple "set an all-time high on Friday following a disappointing report from Dell and amid rumors about a major new partnership.
Derrick Story over at O'Reilly MacDevCenter tells of one of the little things in Mac OS X that make him smile and ask his readers to contribute theirs.
JudysBook.com, which seeks consumers' online opinions, is offering free iPods to those who submit 50 reviews of local businesses. So far, the chief executive says, the tactic is working. -- The New York Times.
The 10 Best Resources for CSS provides an impressive list of the CSS resources which have recently become essential for web-developers. Among them - CSSZenGarden, The Web Developer's Handbook, Stylegala, PositionIsEverything etc.
The PowerBook G4 Graphics Update 1.0 improves graphics stability for some 1.67-GHz PowerBook G4 computers. This update is recommended for PowerBook G4 (15-inch, 1.67 GHz) and PowerBook G4 (17-inch, 1.67 GHz) computers.
When you scroll through some application windows in Mac OS X, the contents in the window may become slightly distorted. This can occur when using certain ATI video cards.
The distortion can be described as ripples, waves, visual tears, or horizontal lines, and the distortion location and intensity can change, depending on the size of the window and the speed at which you scroll. The distortion only appears inside of a window--never outside--and it disappears when you stop scrolling.
Important: This does not indicate a hardware issue that requires repair, nor is software troubleshooting necessary.
Why does this happen?
Safari, some games, and some multimedia applications that display animated content may turn off "coalesced updates" to improve performance. This can lead to the visual symptoms described above. Coalesced updates that are designed to eliminate visual "tearing" or other display artifacts can reduce display performance.
This document will be updated as more information becomes available.
Encyclopedia Britannica today announced the 2006 edition of Encyclopedia Britannic's Ultimate Reference Suite.
This just can't be right. According to the otherwise-reliable Consumer Reports, only 20% of Mac users had a virus in the past two years, compared with 66% for Windows. [I have always felt that computers was one area where Consumer Reports had NO expertise or creditability. -- mam] Clearly both numbers are wrong, for the same reason, ironically: ignorant Mac users (yes, they exist) attributing quirky problems with a "virus", and ignorant Windows users (I don't need to justify this one) not knowing when they have a virus. I like how the Mac has a good reputation for security, but I would prefer that the truth be more readily told: the Mac doesn't have "few" viruses; it has "NO" viruses. Big difference. -- MacSlash.
No, really. The Mopah scooter actually uses your iPod's unique serial number as its key, and won't power on unless it's docked. -- Engadget.
Apple has released QuickTime 7 for Windows Public Preview 3 (7.0.2.70). QuickTime 7 is Apple's cutting-edge digital media software for both Mac and Windows-based computers delivers unparalleled quality for creating, playing and streaming audio and video content over the Internet. Besides playing MPEG-4 and MP3 content, it supports timecode tracks as well as MIDI standards such as the Roland Sound Canvas and GS format extensions. It also supports key standards for web streaming, including HTTP, RTP and RTSP. Plus, it supports every major file format for images, including JPEG, BMP, PICT, PNG and GIF. QuickTime 7 features an ultra efficient new H.264 video codec delivering stunning quality at remarkably low data rates from 3G to iChat AV to HD.
Apple recommends that you use QuickTime 7 for Windows Public Preview only for testing purposes on non-essential systems. Apple does not recommend its use with other QuickTime-based applications, such as iTunes. The Public Preview is not supported by AppleCare.
At the same time, developers with cross-platform products will also be busy updating for Windows Vista. Now here's the dilemma. If Apple is going to deliver computers that will run Windows too, some publishers might just feel it's no longer worth the time and expense building a Mac OS version. Sure Mac users will feel betrayed at having to endure a Windows interface when they use these applications, but the publishers might not care. A Mac Virtual PC for Intel might even increase the possibility of some developers abandoning the platform. If the Rosetta translation technology, which will let you use PowerPC software on the Macintel, runs with a decent level of performance, it might even complicate the situation. -- The Mac Night Owl.
A little compact memory card made my day, not to mention my August family vacation. It bent over backwards to simplify my gear. -- The New York Times.
Before Apple can bring computers featuring Intel processors to market, hackers get the company's operating system running on generic PC hardware. -- Wired.
Just another day in the strange world of food scientists. Mr. Kelleher, the founder of Proteus Industries in Gloucester, Mass., is one of many chemists who work, often in secret, in a little-understood part of the $550 billion processed-food industry. These are the people who ultimately put food together, and their mission is critical: developing foods that let consumers have their cake and eat it, too. -- The New York Times.
XSKey Updater provides a tool for validating XSKey licenses.
The Apple Uncompressed 422 Codec update addresses issues in Shake 3.5 when working with 10-bit QuickTime Files. It is recommended that Shake 3.5 users update to the latest version of this codec.
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one. -Albert Einstein
Optical illusions are cool; just ask any Escher fan. What would be even cooler is if there was a Web site chock full of optical illusions. Well of course there is, A Cool Waste of Time.
I had some problems with my Mighty Mouse in that the Primary and Secondary clicks were reversed, so that if I had set a clicker to be a Primary (left) click, I would get a Secondary (right) click from the mouse. This led me to discover where these settings are stored, and it seems to be in the file com.apple.driver.AppleHIDMouse.plist in your user's Library -> Preferences folder. -- Mac OS X Hints.
The Mac OS X x86 on any PC project has apparently succeeded in running Mac OS X on non-Apple PCs, using several different approaches to the problem.
A Mac Mini teardown report on DigiTimes Systems estimates Apple's cost well under $300, thanks to innovative design.
Columnist J. D. Biersdorfer of the New York Times ties to answer a reader's question of weather to buy a new iMac now, or wait until the new Intel-based versions appear.
CodeWeavers, a company selling Crossover Office, a packed version of Wine, has announced in its roadmap that they plan to make CrossOver Office available for Windows-to-Mac application porting in 2006. Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X and UNIX and Crossover Office allows to emulate most of windows application on Linux.
John Gruber at Daring Fireball writes about a problem when the "current font" doesn't contain the "black star glyph" (this would apply to any glyph), Web Kit uses the (ugly) glyph from Mshtakan rather than (correct) glyph. If you code web pages you should take a look.
The US copyright office is looking for feedback on its plans to change to a Web solution that will only work in Internet Explorer. -- c|net.
If your home, like mine, has more than a couple of Macs, backing up each one individually can be quite a chore. You can make your life easier--and keep your data safer--by setting up an old Mac or a Mac mini as a dedicated backup server. It'll do all the heavy lifting of backing up every computer regularly, without requiring your constant assistance. -- Macworld.
In this article, I'm going to do a little condensation of the content in the book and give you ten ways to improve your podcasts. There is no priority to their listing, though the first five tips cover some of the basics: getting a good microphone, proper microphone technique, show preparation, reducing noise, and formats; the latter five are more concerned with the content of your show. All are practical methods for improving both the sound and the content of your show. Feel free to take from them what you will and leave whatever you don't agree with on the floor. -- O'Reilly Digital Media.
A near three-year-long attempt by Apple Computer to patent the menu-based software interface of its popular iPod digital music player has ultimately proved unsuccessful, AppleInsider has discovered.
I am probably the last person to know this. If you are reading a message in OS X's Mail.app and your press command-option-u you will see the source code for the message.
When creating a local mailbox in Mail.app, if you put a forward slash in the mailbox name, it will create subfolders. The words you put between the slashes determine the level of the folder in the hierarchy. For example:
Tom's Hardware reviews Intel's upcoming 2006 Processor roadmap based on information they have obtained. According to the hardware enthusiast site, Intel is indeed aggressively reducing power consumption on high end desktop processors as well as mobile processors.
Apple's recent Podcasting FAQ covers basic questions about the new iTunes podcast features, including what to do with enhanced podcasts and how to email podcast URLs. It gives only a brief nod to creating and troubleshooting podcasts, but other Apple resources help to fill those gaps:
Voice over IP can bring cost savings and convenience, especially in the business world, but VoIP also brings security risks by opening another door into your network, according to an article in Silicon.com.
The Participatory Culture Foundation today announced the release of DTV, its new open-source internet TV software that is designed to make watching videos from RSS feeds easy.
Broadcast Machine R14, also open-source, is software that can easily publish video files to website, offering the option of using torrent technology to reduce or eliminate bandwidth costs.
Wired sat down with the CEO of Transitive, Bob Wiederhold, and grilled him on how their technology -- the guts of Apple's Rosetta technology for converting PowerPC code on Mac Intel systems -- actually works. Or more important, whether it does or not.
In the end, Apple's ability to advance in this market remains up to Apple, as has always been the case. Apple has to either be responsive to the business buyer or remain a niche player which, though safer, bars them from any potential opportunity that would result from a Microsoft stumble. -- TechNewsWorld.
MacOpinion has published their latest Buyer's And User's Guide To Low-End Macintosh Laptops.
I've not watched Apple's forums for 2GHz iMac G5 threads to see if anyone else reported that model overheating in use, but yesterday a reader sent a mail saying his was and mentioned adding a cooling fan. -- Accelerate Your Macintosh!.
The latest version of Macromedia's visual Web-page authoring program continues to push the envelope of Web development. In this first look at the update, Macworld's David Sawyer McFarland examines the new features in Dreamweaver 8, including workflow improvements, expanded CSS support, and snappier file transfers.
NeoOffice/J is the long-awaited Mac-friendly version of OpenOffice. This open source project provides Mac users with most of the functionality of Microsoft Office, but for free. Is NeoOffice robust enough to serve as your only office suite in a Microsoft-dominated world? Matthew Russell explores. Plus, an in-depth interview with its lead developer, Patrick Luby. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
BeLight Software's Image Tricks is freeware image editing tool that uses Tiger Core Image filters for applying special effects to images. With the program you can easily edit and apply various effects and filters to your photos and images. Have fun modifying your pictures and save the masterpiece.
Don Yacktman mulls over the idea that eventually Mac OS X will be sold for and run on non-Apple hardware. I say that's highly unlikely, but it makes for a nice opener to a fun little thought exercise.
In August 1991, Sir Tim Berners-Lee created the first website. Fourteen years on, he tells BBC Newsnight's Mark Lawson how blogging is closer to his original idea about a read/write web. -- BBC.
Microsoft's Mac Business Unit released Messenger for Mac 5.0 [I don't care what they've announced, it's still not on the site as I post this.] , a major update of its instant messaging client. Among the highlights of this release are tabbed viewing that allows accessing different accounts simultaneously, multiple file transfers, improved proxy support, an updated design with brushed metal, and support for animated and custom emoticons. Also new is support for Live Communications Server 2005, which allows for server-side session logging, enhanced messaging security, Public IM Connectivity, and integration with the Global Address List. Messenger for Mac is free for Mac OS X.
ITV, a hand-picked London-based 'dream team,' covered the 2005 Tour de France using a 'dream system' based around Apple's Final Cut Pro and Xsan. The non-linear workflow allowed the team to start editing the footage even before recording was complete. -- Apple.
Nowadays, the webcam is kind of like the bastard child of a digital camera and a digital video camera; one which can't really record movies as well as a video camera and can't take still pictures as well as a digital camera, and is permanently tethered to your Mac by way of the USB or Firewire cord that keeps it feeding continual information. And yet, somehow, the general prevalence of broadband Internet connections has managed to make the dumb things somewhat useful. Imagine that. -- Applelinks.
If you find your Printer Setup Utility crashing all the time, or you simply need to delete all your printers and start again, launch Printer Setup Utility while holding the Option (Alt) key.
Your Finder window will vanish when you do this--Option double-click closes the window from where you launched the program. You can also reset the system from within Printer Setup Utility itself; this hint is just a shortcut to the Printer Setup Utility -> Reset Printing System menu item. This feature did not exist pre-Tiger, as far as I can tell.
Apple has relaunched their switch website. The website previously featured stories and advertisements from their 2002 "Switch" Ad campaign. (videos).
The new site continues to promote switching from Windows to Mac and is divided into the following sections:
There had been rumblings that Apple would be launching a new Switch-based ad campaign to build on the success of the iPod and enticing Windows iPod owners to the Mac platform.
With 35.5 percent of respondents reporting some form of complication during or after the upgrade to Mac OS X 10.4.2, our most recent user poll indicates that overall susceptibility to hardware and software conflicts is decreasing with each incremental release of Mac OS X 10.4.2 (Tiger). -- MacFixIt.
Some users power up their Macs to find they are re-living the year of the first moon landing, with the date and time setting reverting to Dec. 31st, 1969. The problem can be temporarily resolved by simply using the Date and Time System Preference pane to correct this setting, but the erroneous date/time may return the next time the system is restarted, causing significant issues with file creation dates, some date-reliant applications and more. -- MacFixIt.
Lemkesoft has released GraphicConverter 5.7, an update to the popular graphics utility for Mac OS 9/X. It adds new quick cropping functions, direct icons export, a temporary visible grid, bsb/psf import, export as favicon, improved trim functionality, and several other improvements and bug fixes. The utility imports more than 190 graphic file formats, exports to more than 75 file formats, offers batch conversion options, can perform slideshows, offers both basic and advanced image manipulation, supports JPEG200, and more. The shareware is available for $30.
Choosing the right settings for a project may seem confusing at first, but its important we don't skip these steps or it may easily lead to larger problems down the road. To start out, there are no overall settings that set up everything for a new or current project. This is good and bad. On the good side, this allows you to work with multiple video formats. For example, you can have a hi def video sequence and a DV sequence open at the same time in the same project.
On the down side, this method means that we need to be aware and choose more settings to ensure proper consistency from initial input through to final output. Overall, settings are found from the following main menu items located throughout FCP. -- Ken Stone's Final Cut Pro web site.
These days, it's almost unquestioned that college-bound students will tote laptops back to school. For parents of high school and middle school kids, the decision to invest in a laptop is far from given. -- MarketWatch.
IBM plans to give away key search technologies for corporate data retrieval that use concepts and facts instead of simpler "keyword" searches relied upon by consumer Web companies such as Google Inc., the world's largest computer company said on Monday. -- Reuters.
An upcoming U.K. test run turns license plates into wireless vehicle-tracking devices, and U.S. officials are watching with interest. -- Wired.
Okay, guys, it's test time in east Tennessee.
The quiz has 25 questions about things we see every day or have known about all our lives. This is based on U.S. info. (Apologies to the overseas crowd.)
Some are way easy & some you will think you know but still get it wrong. Go figure. Have fun. The average person only gets 7 right.
Write down your answers and check the answers AFTER completing all the questions.
Put your thinking caps on. No cheating! No looking around! No getting out of your chair! No using anything on or in your desk or computer!
Questions
When the audio technicians working on "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" needed bird sounds, they knew just where to go: to the Macaulay Library at Cornell University's Lab of Ornithology. The world's largest archive of bird sounds and associated videos relies on Apple Xserves and Xserve RAID systems.
Mac users have never had it so good in terms of a choice of great Web browsers. Rating my favorites among what are all pretty good solid applications by historical browser standards is shooting at moving targets, but here is how I personally rank the current crop. I say "favorites" rather than "best browsers" because it's partly on matter of subject of taste, and what works best for me may not be the ideal choice for you. -- Applelinks.
To be a Mac user in these days of x86, multi-button mice, and now, maybe, Trusted Platform Computing (TPM) is indeed a brave new world. -- Ars Technica.
Macromedia today announced Macromedia Studio 8, the next version of its suite for web designers, developers, video professionals, and graphic artists. The suite now includes the latest releases of Dreamweaver 8, Flash Professional 8, and Fireworks 8 as well as Macromedia's Contribute for easily maintaining websites and FlashPaper for quickly creating Flash and PDF files.
Oracle 10g for Mac OS X has much improved management over previous versions, but the optimal performance is still achieved by a trained DBA and the installer needs a lot of manual intervention, according to a Techworld review: "The Mac version of Oracle is, in reality, little different from the other versions -- or, at least, the other non-Windows versions.... The company's been thrown a bit of a bouncer now that Apple has proclaimed its desire to start using Intel processors instead of the PowerPC, but according to Oracle's product chaps it's no big deal because Mac OS on Intel is that much closer to the core Linux build structure than Mac OS on PowerPC. Although there's a bit of a hiatus in Oracle's Mac OS development department at present, the company insists that as well as producing Intel-based applications, the PowerPC version will be supported for as long as Apple supports it.
According to the guys at www.osx86.classicbeta.com, some intrepid individuals have been able to get OS X running on generic hardware. There is a full explanation and some details on the site.
Here's how to build a hands-free photography rig using an iSight, a Bluetooth headset, a backpack, and a dash of AppleScript that enables you to capture images on the go by simply speaking, "Take shot." Romain Guy shows you how to build it. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
CoolTechZone.com has posted a good write-up on how to select an inkjet printer without falling prey to many of the common marketing gimmicks.
Technology evolves. Good technologies and products usually survive; poor ones usually go extinct. But not all of the technologies and tech products that have swirled down the drain of the tech gene pool deserved their fate. Here are some big, and some small, ideas that we thought we'd have with us forever, but that unfortunately have gone the way of the dodo. -- c|net.
It's the weekend, so I'm in a mood for diving into crazy Apple fanatic mode. So I beg your pardon in advance, while at the same time hopefully you'll find a spark of a good idea in this little ramble. -- Random Eyes.
It started with a forum thread and the following front-page blurb at OSx86, a site produced by people attempting to crack the Intel version of Mac OS X to get it to run on non-Apple computers -- Daring Fireball.
Businesses use data-mining to detect manufacturing problems or track competitors, the government to detect links between terrorist groups. A new open-source standard will let multiple computing engines for sorting unstructured data work together. -- Wired.
Fans upset over security chip designed to prevent the loading of the new Intel-centered Mac OS onto non-Apple machines. -- c|net.
If Disk Utility or the fsck command line utility reports "overlapped extent allocation" errors that it cannot repair, here are some things you can do to resolve the issue. This affects both Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server. (This article offers advanced solutions that use the command line interface.) -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
Diskology on Thursday announced that it has added write blocking capability to its Disk Jockey portable hard drive duplicator, making it available for forensic use. The company has packaged the new version of the Disk Jockey in a forensic kit that includes a Serial ATA adapter as well as cables for connecting hard drives.
The folks at Ars Technica have performed another one of their technology surgeries, this time dissecting a Mighty Mouse.
The ability to save a video feed as part of a composition that can be opened by other QuickTime-aware applications presents some interesting possibilities. -- Mac OS X Hints.
This has saved me a lot of trouble: It is now possible to reliably read NTFS disks (NT File System, as used by modern Windows versions such as 2000 or XP) under Mac OS X 10.4 (tested under 10.4.1). -- Mac OS X Hints.
Following Ars Technica's dissection of Mighty Mouse, don't forget the original. I grew up with him. For those too young to have witnessed Might Mouse fight Oil Can Harry, here is a trip down my memory lane:
Earlier reports circulating around the Internet concerning Apple's inclusion of a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip in Intel-based Macs were incorrect, Open for Business was informed.
Mac OS X 10.4.2 has been out in the wild for a few weeks now. Is this the update that will make Tiger purr? MacJournals.com, publisher of the MDJ and MWJ newsletters, digs deep into the update to tell you what to expect when you upgrade. -- Macworld.
To capturing streaming audio on your Mac take a look at Ambrosia Software’s $19 WireTap Pro and Rogue Amoeba’s $16 Audio Hijack and $32 Audio Hijack Pro. If you’d like a tool that specifically captures iTunes radio and streaming MP3 radio broadcasts, take a look at Bit Cartel’s $15 RadioLover.
Skype lets you make free calls over the internet to anyone else who also has the service. It's free and easy to download and use, and it works with most computers. Skype offers free global telephony and unlimited voice calls with its next-generation peer-to-peer software. This O'Reilly Network article discusses the following: The Viral Phone Service, How Skype Works, Skype Extras and Presence, and Skype Limitations.
As rumors heat up around Apple's launch of a video iPod, here's a look at how it could create a new mass medium: video podcasting. -- MIT Technology Review.
A programming technique called AJAX enables software developers to create powerful programs that function independently from the PC's operating system. Will it wipe out Windows? -- Wired.
Using MRI, Dr. Nouchine Hadjikhani wants to unravel the mystery of migraines and body language perception. To help her get there is a toolset anchored on a Power Mac G5 and a powerful Mac-only 3D neuroimaging application called NeuroLens.
Chatalog is a powerful app for seamlessly storing your iChats directly in your email program -- exactly where all of your other online correspondence is kept, and where it is easy to group and search.
Chatalog compiles lists of the links and images sent via iChat and builds them into convenient web pages for you to browse.
MacFixIt has continued to cover a number issues with iMac G5s apparently overheating, and generating excessive fan noise in an apparent effort to cope with the heat. In some cases, the overheating can cause actual component damage, causing the power supply and other parts to fail.
As noted yesterday, users experiencing these problems generally must replace one of two hardware components: the power supply, or the "mid-plane" assembly which consists of the motherboard and other circuitry. In most cases, users whose machines are still under warranty or AppleCare are able to quickly obtain replacement parts that resolve the issue.
Yesterday MacFixIt also reported that this problem afflicts more first generation (rev A) iMac G5s than later (rev B, or Ambient Light Sensor) models. The later, less susceptible models include the iMac G5 20" running at 2 GHz and other models sold from June 2005 onward.
MacFixIt has now received additional confirmation from Apple resellers and authorized service providers indicating that the earlier (revision A) models are indeed more susceptible to this issue.
One reader, who wishes to remain anonymous, cites bad capacitors as the reason for failure. He writes:
"Anyway, 90% of issues with the iMac G5's are because they used some cheap capacitors, that tend to blow really easy.
"The company that made the capacitors, no longer exists. The issue has been resolved on the newer units. If you have a first generation iMac G5 , you have the cheap capacitors, and there is even a hint of trouble, I'd recommend getting it fixed.
"Again, please pass this info on as anonymous, I'd get in a bit of trouble if I was passing internal info."
Jon Rasmussen pointed out a petition concerning lower memory slot failure on 15" PowerBook G4s, which includes links to Apple Discussion Forum threads on the topic. According to posters in the discussion threads, the primary symptom is that memory installed in the PowerBook's lower slot is no longer recognized, though the upper slot continues to work properly. Associated symptoms are loss of the startup chime and power button light.
According to conventional wisdom, Apple's resurgence is due almost entirely to the popularity of the iPod. But the company's success lately may have as much to do with something more prosaic: Apple's rapidly expanding chain of retail stores. -- TheStreet.
L-Soft today released Listserv for Mac OS X, its email list management software. The Mac version of Listserv provides "all the power and functionality" available on Linux and other UNIX systems, and includes a free edition for hobby users.
The Sound Guy has released PlayLyrix 0.9, an application that searches the user's iTunes collection and automatically creates a new playlist of all the songs whose lyrics contain specified words or phrases. PlayLyrix can be used to create playlists of songs with lyrics that reinforce a wide range of moods or themes.
A new update to Mac OS X Tiger is expected this summer which will address some of the persisting remaining problems with enterprise networking which still persist, according to an eWEEK report. The update will also reportedly fix continuing problems regarding integration with Microsoft's Activity Directory and SMB file sharing--all of which are being reported in discussion forums at Apple's Web site and around the internet.
Paul Nixon's fascinating infographic entitled: The Tipping Point: Macs for the Masses illustrates how Apple has created a bridge from high-end to low-end, with price structures that ultimately are leading to rapidly increased adoption of the platform by PC users who have been enticed by low-cost iPods. According to Nixon, "The graphic ... illustrates extreme patience and foresight from Apple to bring users to the platform by innovating increasingly towards the mass market over time without sacrificing the middle or high-end markets."
Word came out earlier this week that Apple's Mac OS X on Intel developer kits depend on TCPA, still often known by its old name, Palladium. While Odysseus is long since dead, it is easy to see why Apple may be fearful of piracy as it moves to the x86 platform. The question is: exactly how does this impact the end user? That is not exactly clear just yet. -- Open for Business.
The SWIPE Toolkit is a collection of web-based tools that sheds light on personal data collection and usage practices in the United States. The tools demonstrate the value of personal information on the open market and enable people to access information encoded on a driver's license or stored in some of the many commercial data warehouses.
Decode Your Barcode unveils the mystery of the 2D barcode. Currently 39 states use 2D barcodes to digitally store personal information on the backside of drivers' licenses. What information is encoded on your license that machines can read and you cannot?
Apparently, Apple heard of Microsoft Office changing to XML formats. If you have OS X 10.4.2, you can save documents in TextEdit in Word XML Format. They are saved with a *.xml extension, and are riddled with references to Word.
Apple is facing one new lawsuit and settled three in the last quarter, according to the company's latest 10-Q SEC filing for the quarter ending June 25, 2005. -- AppleInsider.
For those of you who use PubMed (for online medical literature searches) and the newest Macintosh operating system, 10.4 (Tiger). Scott Russell at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center has created a Dashboard widget that searches the PubMed database, then launches your web browser to show you the results.
You'll find two widgets available at the PubMed widget home page. One provides PubMed results with special links to UT Health Science Center library holdings. Let Scott know if you run across any issues with these widgets.
Multibutton mice have been a given for every computer maker in the world--except Apple. This changed with the launch of the Apple Mighty Mouse. Was the 21-year wait for a multibutton mouse from Apple worth it? -- Ars Technica.
The full list of AppleCare Knowledge Base documents changed within the last seven (7) days.
The Washington Times' Mark Kellner reports on a positive experience with an Apple Store's Genius Bar, where he was able to "ask a simple question and get an unambiguous answer in plain English."
Old e-mail messages are usually among the neglected components of a healthy backup routine. Despite their general tendency to contain sensitive, important information, and the utility they can serve when searching for old contacts or other data, many users fail to properly preserve previously viewed or sent messages.
In addition, having too many messages in your Mail.app database can cause significant performance issues, both when refreshing the entire list of messages, as well as when performing routine searches of recent items, or even launching and operating within Mail.app. Here are a few simple solutions for quickly backing up your Mail.app messages. -- MacFixIt.
MacInTouch brings reader reactions to Apple's new Mighty Mouse.
There have been several reports on the web of problems with Quicken 2006. Caveat Emptor! I think I am running 2004 and I have no reason to upgrade.
If you need proof that old Macs never die, consider the 68K Macintosh Web Server Directory, which lists web sites powered by 680x0 Macs ranging from the Quadra 950 (33 MHz 68040) down to a floppy disk-based Mac Plus (8 MHz 68000). I can attest that at least one 68K Mac server is running System 7 at a business right here in East Tennessee. I am sure there are others.
While you're busy upgrading your mouse, now seems a good time to look at that other stalwart of input, they keyboard. You might remember a fuss being made about the Optimus keyboard, a concept from a Russian company that used a miniature display for each key, allowing the key configuration to change when the user updates the keyboard mapping. Turns out that idea may have been a rip-off of the real thing. According to TUAW, another company in Russia is ready to launch with the same product. No matter who makes the thing, it looks pretty darned cool; it's one of those things that I suspect has uses beyond its original purpose as a multi-language keyboard.
Applications that use the Mac OS X spell-checking feature (such as Mail, iChat AV, and TextEdit), you can use advanced spell-checking options. To quickly get the definition of a word in Mail.app or Safari and other "Apple" applications, simply press 'command+control+D" and hover over the word with your mouse.
Additionally, if you press F5 in the middle of typing a word you get the proper spelling, and a list of similarly spelled words.
Microsoft says IE 7 won't pass the standards exam; rivals Opera and Apple say they'll meet criteria set by World Wide Web Consortium. [As yet no OS X browser (and I have 7) can pass the "acid" test.] -- c|net.
MacFixIt's monthly Troubleshooting Tools column, penned by MacFixIt Contributing Editor Dan Frakes, covers products that can help you maintain and fix your Mac. This month Dan talks about changing file settings: permissions, file types, extensions, or even obscure attributes such as visibility.
If you find that Spotlight is not indexing a folder or group of folders on your Mac here is a procedure that may help Spotlight to find them again:
This should force Spotlight to re-index the folder in question, and make it searchable again.
Cory Doctorow reports that people working with early versions of the forthcoming Intel-based Mac OS X operating system have discovered that Apple's new kernel makes use of Intel's Trusted Computing hardware. Cory writes "If this 'feature' appears in a commercial, shipping version of Apple's OS, they'll lose me as a customer -- I've used Apple computers since 1979 and have a Mac tattooed on my right bicep, but this is a deal-breaker." Trusted Computing is apparently the technology that is being used to prevent the Intel version of Mac OS X from installing on stock Intel PCs.
ComputerWorld has a series on Macintosh infrastructure security. [Don't forget to look at Mac OS X System Hardening: Guidelines for Faculty and Staff Desktops and NSA's Apple Mac OS X v10.3.x "Panther" Security Configuration Guide v1.1 (pdf)]
Apple today introduced Mighty Mouse, its next generation mouse with several innovative new features, including four independently programmable buttons, an Scroll Ball that lets users scroll in any direction-vertically, horizontally and even diagonally, and more. Mighty Mouse features the revolutionary Scroll Ball that lets you move anywhere inside a document, without lifting a finger. And with touch-sensitive technology concealed under the seamless top shell, you get the programmability of a four-button mouse in a single-button design. Click, roll, squeeze and scroll. Not everyone thinks the new mouse is so great.
Apple today announced that Dashboard, a widely acclaimed feature in its Mac OS® version 10.4 "Tiger" operating system, now has over 1,000 widgets available, with dozens more being added every day and many more available from other web sites.
Apple Developer Connection has posted a great overview of the open source scripting languages bundled in OS X. The article covers the various shell scripting language, and gives some examples of using Bash, the default OS X shell. The article goes on to talk about the scripting languages, including perl, Python, PHP and Ruby. There are links for additional info on each, making this a good ice-breaker for the beginner scripter.
Will Jobs really change his tune on the video subject? Probably not. While some expect the company to unveil a revolutionary new kind of iPod, designed specifically for playing video, chances are the company will simply fold some video capabilities into all future iPods. That means no separate product name -- and no big advertising blitz. -- BusinessWeek.
Hard drives turn to flash memory for faster boot times and longer battery life. -- PC World Magazine.
Between Friendster profiles, Flickr photo streams, LiveJournal blogs and del.icio.us bookmarks -- not to mention e-mailing, instant messaging and Skyping -- the much-ballyhooed "social web" can feel like a slippery slope to multiple personality disorder. But if a still-under-development service called the GoingOn Network lives up to its hype, our online selves may soon enjoy a long-overdue digital reintegration. -- Wired.
Ed Pegg did a survey of all available vector-based drawing programs, in anticipation of SVG in the next Firefox. He found 29 different vector drawing programs. Of these, 14 were free or open source. More than he expected.
In addition to bottom-of-the-article footnotes, sidenotes (a.k.a. margin notes) can also work well on the web. Two recent implementations struck me as well-done. -- Daring Fireball.
HP has decided to break up one of the more high-profile and unlikely tech partnerships of recent times, as it has announced that it will no longer be selling iPods. -- Ars Technica.
Learn what kinds of memory you can use with your iMac G5 or iMac G5 (Ambient Light Sensor). -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
Some people have claimed memory or performance problems with Dashboard. In my case, I just don't use it, and dislike having applications running that I don't use or need. -- Mac OS X Hints.
As a general statement, bad things tend to happen when any of the core OS X fonts are disabled (or damaged or deleted). In some ways, Font Book actually makes it too easy to do this -- there have been lots of threads on various forums about seemingly bizarre system issues that are all eventually traced back to a missing system font.
A study of 3000 UK e-mail users ranks the top five gripes about email, with overuse of CAPTIAL LETTERS leading the list, reports Vnunet.com. Rounding out the top five gripes were overuse of abbreviations, blank subject boxes, being copied on every email, and "people being 'too friendly.'" Perhaps more alarming for email users, the study revealed that font selection may be a hidden danger.
Professor Ishiguro believes that it may prove possible to build an android that could pass for a human, if only for a brief period.
"An android could get away with it for a short time, 5-10 seconds. However, if we carefully select the situation, we could extend that, to perhaps 10 minutes," he said.
"More importantly, we have found that people forget she is an android while interacting with her. Consciously, it is easy to see that she is an android, but unconsciously, we react to the android as if she were a woman." -- BBC News.
There are at least three official Library folders in Mac OS X, and they all serve their own purpose. You should find a Library folder on the root level of the hard drive, in the System directory and in each user folder (that user's Home folder). -- San Antonio Express-News.
The first half of "podcast" implies that you have to have an iPod to listen to one. This is not true. You don't even need a portable music player, although it helps.
The "cast" part of the name at least hints that it is ubiquitous. This, too, is a falsehood.
The specificity of the name -- and the buzz around it -- implies that this is something new and unique. This is not really true. -- Chicago Tribune.
Laptop screens can have their own quirks to consider. A larger screen may not show any more detail than a smaller display with the same resolution; it will just make the text and icons on the screen look bigger and slightly duller. Apple's plus-sized 14-inch iBook is the prime example of this, with a screen that shows no more detail than the 12-inch LCD on its smaller sibling. -- Washington Post.
Imagine that every time you printed a document, it automatically included a secret code that could be used to identify the printer - and potentially, the person who used it. Sounds like something from an episode of "Alias," right? -- EFF.
Intuit on Monday announced the release of Quicken for Mac 2006, the newest version of the company's personal finance application. In addition to more than 50 enhancements in the new version, Quicken 2006 also includes some Mac only features such as integration with Apple's .Mac service. -- Macworld.
This month, Douglas Schweitzer celebrates an anniversary. No, not his wedding anniversary; that was last month. This anniversary marks his second as a Mac convert. Over the past two years, his Mac has lived up to all its promises and has never ceased to delight him. -- Macworld.
My last weblog post explained that anyone can podcast on a budget. Other than my laptop I managed to start with no initial hardware costs. Recently I upgraded my equipment to improve the quality of my show. Like an elite runner I couldn't finish a marathon in my best time wearing flip-flops (we call them thongs in Australia, and I probably couldn't complete one wearing a pair of those either). I'd also still look like an idiot with stockings wrapped around my noggin. -- O'Reilly Developer Weblogs.
A year and a half ago, I wrote an article on scripting Mac OS X. One of the most common feedback questions was how to manage complex Plist files with scripts. The defaults command, which is often used to manage simple values in Plist files, does not easily manage the nested arrays or dictionaries that are present in most Plist files. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
Several people have discovered that the new Intel kernel Apple has included with the Developer Kit DVD uses TCPA/TPM DRM. More specifically, it includes "a TCPA/Palladium implementation that uses a Infineon 1.1 chip which will prevent certain parts of the OS from working unless authorized. -- Slashdot.
People think Apple stole the GUI from Xerox, but it's much more subtle than that. Braeburn has posted a story about the development and birth of the Apple Lisa, the first commercial computer with a graphical interface. More on this subject is at Andy Hertzfeld's (one of the original developers of the Mac) Folkore.org."
My name is Darin Adler and my job at Apple Computer is managing the Safari and WebKit engineering team. I also do programming on Safari and WebKit. -- Surfin' Safari.
Last year's MacZealots Top 10 Shareware article went over so well that they decided to do it again this year. Software was chosen according to Affordability, Variety and Practicality.
