Four tech giants have drawn a line in the sand over which next-generation DVD format they plan to support. -- c|net.
Consumers who buy a Mac mini this week may or may not end up with a machine that's faster than the desktop Apple Computer was selling in prior weeks.
The company confirmed to CNET News.com that it has started offering machines that in some cases have improved processing powers and other enhancements. However, Apple is not labeling the new machines in any special way, so buyers have no way of knowing if they are getting the more capable models.
Bradford Networks today announced that it has expanded its Bradford Campus Manager Security Management Application, an Endpoint Compliance tool that helps ensure all devices connecting to a network meet minimum security policies, to include Macintosh and Linux platforms.
Seldom is it possible to have so much fun with a Mac application. Econ Technologies has their act together with the latest version of ImageCaster; web cam software that makes your Mac a live video center. More or less. -- Mac 360.
So, you have a black nano and now realize that you should have purchased a case or a cover for it. But, it's too late now, it's already covered with barely visible scratches and marks that you can only see under a 500-watt lamp. Oh no! What will you do? Never fear, I put my nano at risk for your sake. I had read on Slashdot and a few other places that Brasso can restore an iPod to like-new condition, but I didn't believe it myself, and I was a bit worried that it would have some sort of bad reaction with my iPod, such as melting it. After all, a $4 can of Brasso can't compete with $20+ third party creams and polishes, can it? -- Todd Dailey.
Since their initial creation of a magnetic logic gate in 2002, an international team of researchers from Durham University, Imperial College, London and the University of Sheffield team has created a number of further "logic gates" and created interconnecting structures using magnetic "nanowires," which can now reproduce the logic functions of a conventional computer. -- PHYSORG.COM.
Tim O'Reilly built an empire on user-friendly computer manuals and conferences. Along the way he became the guru of the web's "architecture of participation." -- Wired.
The main risk is that confidential information could be accessed and changed as a means of carrying out fraud, but the tendency of employees to send bogus or prank e-mails is also noted. The latter can have potentially serious legal consequences. [Of course the 'Windows' PC itself is a risk both attended and unattended. It is only safe when it is off. --mam] -- TechWorld.com.
Bill Gurley is in the process of getting a new Intel computer to run Linux and his head is spinning trying to decide about processor choices. Philip Mucci tries to help:
If your planning on doing any sort of computation, you will always win with a dual-core vs. hyperthreading. (In case you didn't know, my field is performance..icl.cs.utk.edu/papi/)
Hyperthreading helps you if you're just using your machine for a desktop or otherwise bound by memory latency issues when running multiple processes.
Dual core really is 2 CPU on one die... Hyperthreading is merely running 2 threads (processes) on different portions of the same CPU. (one using the FPU, one using the integer unit..)
Both appear as dual cpu's to Linux... although linux knows the difference between HT and DC.. as it always tries to schedule processes on different physical CPU's first and then goes to logical CPU's (HT).
Of course, in scientific computation, memory bandwidth reigns supreme, and as such, nothing can match the opteron, as each chip has a dedicated and very low latency memory bus with no northbridge in between..
If you're just running open-office and a Linux desktop, than you can probably get away with either HT or DC..
Educators quickly realized the power of Flash. Interactive tutorials, assessments, games, simulations are just few examples of educational products created with Macromedia Flash. However, special efforts are needed to make the Flash content universally accessible.
To ensure the accessibility of Flash products:
Below are a few articles devoted to Flash accessibility.
An AppleCare Knowledge Base article states that some 1.8 GHz models of Power Mac G5 (Late 2004) computers may experience any of the following symptoms:
These symptoms only occur with the 1.8 GHz model of Power Mac G5 (Late 2004) computers. Apple Engineering has identified the cause of these symptoms and is developing an update to address the issue. At this time we can not provide a specific date when the update will be available, but this document will be updated as more information becomes available.
A ZDNet article asks "What hat exactly was the supporting and undisputed evidence?" that Symantec cites in its latest "Internet Security Threat Report" indicating a false sense of security and stability of the Mac operating system, OS X in particular.
Earlier in this series on Macintosh security, Ryan Faas discussed how to physically secure workstations within an infrastructure (see "Workstation security: Lock down that Mac") and how to use the various Open Firmware modes in modern Macs to keep hostile users from bypassing security by booting from an alternate start-up disk (see "Open Firmware Security for Mac Workstations"). He continues his discussion of workstation security by describing a number of ways you can configure individual workstations to make their local resources and data (and, thus, your entire infrastructure) more secure. -- Computerworld.
[As with all security issues 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's new iPod Nano has thrown the market for flash memory into a tizzy, forcing prices up for other manufacturers and driving prices down for consumers. -- New York Times.
MIT's Technology Review names its winners for "Innovator of the Year" and "Technology in the Service of Humanity" awards.
Greasemonkey, a plug-in for the Firefox browser, allows you to run "user scripts" - Javascript programs that tweak other people's Web pages after you've loaded them. (In theory you could pull this same stunt with Internet Explorer, but no one's offered the software yet.) Most commercial sites already have Javascript programs nested inside that turn menus on and off or respond when you press a button. Google Maps is a great example - it's more program than page. -- Slate.
Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit, aka the MacBU, just released the long - awaited Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Office 2004 Macintosh. In recent months, they announced their commitment to not only the next version of Office, "Office 12" for the Mac, but also to supporting the new XML formats that Office 12 on Windows will have. -- bynkii.com.
Apple acknowledges the iPod nano LCD cracking problem (it's the LCD vendor's fault) and announces an exchange policy. -- Ars Technica.
Technical book publisher O'Reilly on Tuesday announced the publication of Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition, a 520-page tome that covers the ins and outs of switching from using a Windows computer to one running Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger." Authors David Pogue and Adam Goldstein note: "When it comes to their missions and ideals, Apple and Microsoft have about as much in common as a melon and a shoehorn."
Topics covered include: moving software, settings and peripherals to the new computer; finding Internet settings in Windows and entering them on the Mac; and how to become a "power user." Two appendices handle troubleshooting and installation, while a third explains Mac keystrokes.
Macromedia today announced the availability of the Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7 Updater, a free, incremental release adding new platform support for Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" and Mac OS X Server 10.4 "Tiger".
Here's what I think will quickly become Mac OS X's most glaring technical limitation, and what could lead to another Copland-style disaster if Apple isn't careful. Here's what Mac OS X is missing today that will be very difficult to add later without causing big problems for existing software and developers. -- FatBits.
A recent report gives Apple high marks for its efforts in the Enterprise storage and server markets. While Apple is best known for its iPod and Macintosh product lines, analysts say the competition is starting to take interest in what the company is doing in Enterprise market. Apple also boosted its presence in the scientific community on Tuesday by updating their workgroup cluster, adding several third-party applications. -- Macworld.
At least one company hopes to outlaw software that unlocks your phone so you can use it on a competing network. But since when is consumer choice a crime? -- Wired.
Darwin provides the underlying foundation for Mac OS X. In this article, Matthew Russell takes you to the core of Apple's OS and explains how it powers your Mac. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
John Gruber over at Daring Fireball revisits the AppleScript bug he wrote about two weeks ago, where System Events returns the wrong folder in response to a path to command asking for a special folder in the user domain.
The new Mac mini is designated PowerMac10,2 following the previous model's PowerMac10,1 designation. It also features an updated Boot ROOM version, 4.9.4f0 from 4.8.9f4. -- Think Secret.
In the battle over which format will be the successor to the DVD, Blu-ray currently looks to have a leg up. Does Blu-ray make sense from an economic standpoint? An industry insider looks at the dollars and cents of Blu-ray and HD DVD. -- Ars Technica.
The Apple Developer Connection (ADC) has launched its new ADC Bookshelf Service, a subscription-based program that gives developers access to almost 1,000 technical titles.
A new feature of iTunes 5 is the ability to store song lyrics in the ID3 tag of the song file. But iTunes can't automatically get lyrics for your existing songs. So here's an easy way to do just that. -- Mac OS X Hints.
It has been reported that some users are having issues with the Mac OS X Keychain after applying Security Update 2005-008.
In most cases, users report that they are prompted for their keychain password after log-in subsequent to applying the update, only to have their valid entries rejected. In some cases, running Keychain First Aid (accessible through the application menu in Keychain Access --a program located in Applications/Utilities) provides relief from this issue, but in other users receive the message 'Verification terminated unexpectedly' when attempting repairs.
A tedious but usually successful workaround is to simply delete the current user Keychain be selecting "Delete keychain ()" from the File menu in Keychain Access. This will require you to re-establish any previously entered passwords, certificates and any other Keychain information, but should prevent the impenetrable password prompt at login.
A BusinessWeek review of the iMac G5 concludes that users would do well to consider a Mac purchase before the Intel transition.
If you were using Mac OS X 10.4.2, then performed an Archive and Install of Mac OS X 10.4, then updated to Mac OS X 10.4.2 again via Software Update, some Apple applications may not be properly updated or work as expected. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
Justin D recently installed 4x400GB drives into his G5 using the Sonnet Tempo-X 4+4 card, and says it's fantastic. Using a G5 Drive Bracket, in under 30 minutes he was running with 1.2TB of internal storage - the price he paid was his G5's fans coming on more frequently, but for him that's not a big deal. He used Disk Utility to configure the 4 drives as RAID 0, with 128k blocks, and it flies.
You may want to save money by rolling your own external SATA RAID - pick up 4x of whatever SATA drive suits you (Hitachi's 400GB drives have good prices at the moment), a Tempo-X 4+4 card, and an enclosure. To get it to look good aesthetically with your G5 check out Kano's X-SPAND enclosure.
Scientists and engineers in the United States and Japan plan to test the world's highest-resolution videoconferencing system on Monday evening over a 9,000-mile optical network linking the University of California, San Diego, with Keio University in Tokyo.
The high-speed network will feed the data to a state-of-the-art Sony video projector that displays so-called 4K digital video, with images that are about 4,000 pixels across. When it is uncompressed at the receiving end, the video stream contains more than six billion bits per second. -- New York Times.
The AppleCare Knowledge Base provides an article that answers some basic questions users have about podcasting.
Grim and gritty. Full of insurmountable barriers, frustration, sweat and toil relieved only by the occasional but incontrovertible realization that you have built something that works and works as you wanted it to. -- Network World.
Phishing is hooking more victims as the e-mail fraud attacks become more sophisticated and prevalent. -- InfoWorld.
Microsoft Corp. and Intel Corp. have decided to back HD-DVD, the next-generation DVD format being developed by the DVD Forum, the companies said in a joint statement on Monday. -- Macworld.
I noticed what seemed like a minor screen marking the day after I bought my iPod nano. But, now I wonder if it is a screen issue or something else entirely (at least for my particular unit)... -- O'Reilly Developer Weblogs.
Brian King on the O'Reilly Network writes about FireFox; The Evolving Web, Firefox and Web Standards, The Extension System, New Features and the 1.5 Release and The Future of Firefox.
The folks at MySQL are pleased to announce the release candidate for MySQL 5.0. This version has been in development now for three years. We have worked to add update-able views, ansi stored procedures, and triggers. In addition we have added a number of fun features that we are experimenting with and resolved issues with bad data inserts. We look forward to feedback on the candidate and will show some love for bug reports.
To provide a little extra motivation, we will be giving away Apple iPod nanos, and even full conference passes to our 2006 MySQL Users Conference, to those who deliver the most valuable feedback.
I just read this article at thefabricator.com about job burnout. Although it's a year old, the points seemed valid. The nutshell of the article is that job burnout is caused by lack of the sense of accomplishment, working for a narcissistic boss, and a conflict between the employers and employee's values. Is it really better working for a company that cares about your satisfaction? Are there any companies like that and (more importantly) are they hiring?
Ecclesiastes 1:9
"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun."
Why should a transistor radio from 1954 be causing a buzz online? Could it be part of a realization that, amid talk of invention, no novelty is completely new? -- BBC.
By integrating a high-performance cluster based on Xserve G5s and Mac OS X with Harvard's Structural Biology Grid, Dr. Piotr Sliz created a uniform computing environment that gives researchers everything they need on one system. -- Apple PR.
The full list of AppleCare Knowledge Base documents changed within the last seven (7) days.
The commonwealth of Massachusetts has finalized its decision to standardize desktop applications on OpenDocument, a format not supported by Microsoft Office. -- c|net.
In my August 12, 2005 column I reviewed several aspects of the systems preferences specifically associated with Tiger. I would like to again pick up that topic, but today's preferences discussion will be more general OS X related. -- The Mac Observer.
An older MacInTouch Reader Report discusses HTML editors for beginners, and Nvu is one good, cross-platform candidate - free of charge from the Mozilla organization.
The iPod and iTunes were awarded top honors at design event INDEX:. "iPod together with Apple's iTunes software is truly changing the way people experience their music," the group explains.
The Business Online, UK discovered hundreds of protests on the customer bulletin board of Apple's website at the weekend. Nano buyers complain that the music player's color screens have become so scratched they are impossible to use. Customers want the device recalled until the flaw can be corrected.
In this article I'm going to show you how to set up Backup 3. There's a lot more to this new version than a brighter red umbrella icon. Apple has made substantial changes to the software, and in my opinion, has created a workflow that's truly useful. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
I'm not one of the OS X zealots who instantly assumes that all criticism of the system is wrong or unfair. Several of Beattie's points hit home, fair and square (such as the sigh-inducing awfulness of the Finder, or general system slowness, or the high cost of .Mac). That said, I can't stop myself from answering back on just a handful of Russell's comments, ones I either don't understand, or simply can't agree with. -- O'Reilly Developer Weblogs.
Macworld looks at a couple ways to make your use of the Terminal more efficient. None of what follows is super advanced, as this tip is based on some standard Terminal features that not everyone may know about.
Over the last few years, I've helped businesses of many sizes migrate to enterprise Voice over IP (VoIP), the extensive family of equipment and software standards that replaces old-school PBX (Private Branch Exchange) phone systems with a next-generation IP network that can carry voice calls. Old-school PBX systems, and home phones for that matter, use a plane of the global network called the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network), but the industry is moving everything to IP, and eventually, I envision the global network having just one plane--the IP plane. One network will do data communications--the same network that does voice. -- O'Reilly Network.
An IBM article examining the role that older workers, experienced with legacy systems, should play in system maintenance. From the article: "Many enterprises still execute critical business operations ... via older software systems that run on large, mainframe computers rather than individual PCs. To meet changing business needs, these companies continually update, extend, and integrate their systems. Paradoxically, many of these companies also have policies that threaten the single greatest source of knowledge about their older systems: their most senior personnel. Although the aging workforce represents a vast pool of talent and experience, these businesses neither actively recruit senior workers nor provide incentives to retain those on staff.1 Instead, they mistakenly assume that they can hire younger, lower-paid people to perform the same tasks."
For anyone that has been wishing to switch to Apache 2 on their Mac, this is the time to do it. PHP 5 has also recently been updated and this tutorial describes in detail, the best method to both build and install these programs on your Mac. -- PHPmac.com.
It's a hit with tech-savvy city dwellers, but New York and San Francisco transit officials want to put the brakes on a website offering downloadable subway-system maps for the iPod. -- Wired.
The key to understanding how languages evolved may lie in their structure, not their vocabularies, a new report suggests. Findings published today in the journal Science indicate that a linguistic technique that borrows some features from evolutionary biology tools can unlock secrets of languages more than 10,000 years old. -- Scientific American.
Delivers a number of security enhancements and is recommended for all Macintosh users. The updates include changes to ImageIO, LibSystem, LoginWindow, Mail, QuickDraw, QuickTimeJava, Ruby, Safari, SecurityAgent, securityd, and SecurityServer.
Should all songs cost 99 cents, or is it OK to charge more for the really good stuff? Steve Jobs, music execs are at odds. -- c|net.
Businessweek reports on a market research firm's analysis of the iPod nano - taken apart. According to iSuppli, the components of the 2GB iPod nano costs $90.18 in materials and $8 to assemble, leaving Apple a 50% margin before marketing and distribution costs.
Adobe has released InDesign CS2 4.0.1, working to address a number of the performance issues that have been reported on MacFixIt in the past few weeks. Adobe also issued InCopy CS2 4.0.1 update, the collaborative editorial component of the CS2 suite, which the company says likewise "provides key fixes in the areas of text and fonts, inline graphics, German hyphenation, performance, and others.
Apple Computer Inc.'s agreement to purchase a major portion of Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.'s NAND-type flash memory output in 2005 for use in iPod nano MP3 players is unlikely to impact DRAM pricing or supply in the near term, iSuppli Corp. believes. -- EE Times.
Conversations about Web browsers are like conversations about religion or politics-there are some strong opinions out there. Our review looked at five browsers, each clearly different. Between RSS reading, pop-up ad handling, search features and compatibility with your favorite Web sites, there's no lack of variety. -- Macworld.
AppleTalk Australia is running a story on running KDE on Mac OS X. For those that don't know, KDE is a graphical desktop environment used to access your computer's files. Finally, Mac users have a free (as in speech) approach to their file system.
New publications, experiments, and breakthroughs in information technology -- and what they mean. -- MIT Technology Review.
Scientists at the Technical University of Denmark have invented a technology which may be an important step towards the hydrogen economy: a hydrogen tablet that effectively stores hydrogen in an inexpensive and safe material. -- FuelCellToday.com.
Searching for the perfect RSS reader for Mac OS X? Look no further than this review, which covers six dedicated RSS readers along with the built-in newsreading capabilities of a couple of Mac browsers. --- Ars Technica.
Mozilla has released an update to Firefox to fix several serious security flaws, including a recently disclosed bug that could let attackers secretly run malicious software on PCs. -- c|net.
MacFixIt has a report on an issue where users experience a stall in Safari or other Web browsers when accessing certain Web sites that usually leads to a complete system freeze accompanied by the unending "spinning beach ball" progress indicator. They identified several fixes for this issue.
Backup 3.0 represents a major overhaul for what is seen by many as the key component of Apple's .Mac service. Providing critical OS-integrated offsite backup capabilities and now a host of additional functions like incremental backups and easy preservation of essential system settings, Backup has matured as a strategic tool but remains lacking in some areas. -- MacFixIt.
MacFixIt is reporting some lingering issues that were not fixed in the most recent Office 2004 service pack (SP2).
eWeek reports on a new Xserve-based supercomputer to be created along Europe's Internet backbone. The high-performance network will be installed along Europe's Internet backbone, startup Omneta plc. said. According to Omneta Chief Technical Officer Tony Clark, the startup, Apple and the European network powerhouse Interoute in October will stage a proof-of-concept cluster involving both Xserve servers and Xserve RAID arrays. If successful, the trial will be extended over the coming year to involve servers placed within Interoute's facilities, possibly involving as many as 150 data centers across 60 EU cities.
Giles Turnbull writes for O'Reilly about a Steve Jobs Message regarding Apple's control of Mac X86 software.
Edward Eigerman profiles Apple's Tim Cook, whom he sees as Jobs's "heir apparent" within the company.
Apple's chief executive Steve Jobs gave an exclusive interview to Bobbie Johnson of The Guardian about his drive to make technology simple. Jobs said Apple makes products for "people who don't want to read manuals, people who live very busy lives."
This week, I have been mostly getting annoyed by email software. There's a pattern to it. Mail does something annoying, like taking 20 seconds to delete a message, and in frustration I rush off and download some other client, install it, set it up, try it out, and soon discover it does something else equally, if not more annoying -- O'Reilly Developer Weblogs.
All iPod models have an internal, nonremovable, lithium-based rechargeable battery. A fully charged battery can provide anywhere from up to 8 hours to up to 15 hours of battery life1, depending on the iPod model and its use. After about 14 to 28 days of non-use, you will need to charge the battery. -- AppleCare
Seeing a great, big, vacuum in a market, MacScan has created the first anti-spyware app for the Mac platform. (Is it looking for something it can not find because it does not exist.) -- The Unofficial Apple Weblog.
The cost of a Mac system hasn't changed much over the years. Of course, you get a lot more for your money now than you did in the past, but one way or another you'll probably spend somewhere between $1,000 and $3,000 on a new Mac. That makes a Mac one of the most expensive items you're likely to buy in an average year, so you'll want to make sure you choose the right model. Here's how to make that choice.
Fortunately for OS X developers, integrating Google Maps into your apps is cake. In fact, I almost decided not to even mention it -- but I couldn't resist because I thought the broader context of it all deserved some discussion. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
New stable release of OpenOffice has been released. Download OpenOffice 1.1.5 from OpenOffice.org.
iTunes 5.0.1 allows you to browse and subscribe to podcasts from within the iTunes Music Store.
Running out of disk space? Ars takes a look at a couple of network attached storage devices, comparing their performance on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. -- Ars Technica.
Steve Jobs says the company is on track to deliver PCs with Intel chips by next summer. -- c|net.
Company expands subscription service so Mac users don't have to look outside Apple for group communications. -- c|net.
EnterpriseDB Corp. has added support for for Mac OS X Server v10.4 "Tiger" to its relational database management system EnterpriseDB 2005.
MacCentral provides a slightly more detailed report of the discussion session held with Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller at Apple Expo Paris.
RSS DreamFeeder 1.1 makes it possible to publish RSS feeds directly from Macromedia Dreamweaver without retyping content or entering RSS/XML code. The software acts as a Dreamweaver-integrated search engine, examining HTML, XHTML, and SHTML files, summarizing content from new and modified files, refining searches with ID, NAME, CLASS attributes, and more. This release adds support for Atom 0.3 and 1.0 feeds, support for dynamic pages built with ASP, JSP, or PHP, feed and story authors, rights notifications for feeds, recognition of Contribute Temp Files, and other changes. RSS DreamFeeder is priced starting at $49 for Mac OS X, Mac OS 9, or Windows.
Deutsche Bank has initiated coverage of Apple with a "buy" rating and $60 price target, according to Forbes.com. The analyst firm believes that Apple will continue to grow and gain share in both the digital music and PC markets and expects the company to drive strong earnings and cash-flow growth as it capitalizes on the growth of the MP3 market over the next three to five year.
Jeremy Hubert gives his list of OS X software he could not live without. Your mileage may vary.
I've always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with Apple's Backup software and its connection to my .Mac account. So when I read this morning's news that we now have Backup 3, I had to download it for a spin. If you're thinking about doing the same thing, I have a few quick tips for you. -- O'Reilly Developer Weblogs.
Apple's Developer Connection Web site (ADC) has published From PC to Universal Binaries with Xcode: SolidWorks Brings eDrawings to Mac OS X. SolidWorks ported their eDrawings Viewer CAD tool from Windows, and they made sure it was a true Macintosh application. As a result, the application shines on Mac OS X. Read this article to learn the benefits of doing it right.
I've often wished that there were some field of higher education between the theoretical computer science and the practical IT/IS degree programs for people interested in careers in software development. James Shore suggests five design skills that students ought to learn before they graduate. -- O'Reilly Developer Weblogs.
In this, the third installment of "Web Apps with Tiger," Morbus shows you how to install a wiki, which is a web application that allows users to add content, but also allows anyone to edit it. He'll walk you through MediaWiki and have you (and it) up and running in no time. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
Those of you waiting for a video iPod, an iPod with a radio in, an iPod with Bluetooth in...or in fact an iPod that does anything except play music and have a pretty-but-basic interface, you're likely to be disappointed. According to Silicon.com, Steve Jobs and the Apple crew insist that the iPod will remain simple for the time being.
Florida State University researchers have developed a system for gathering evidence against online predators and cyberstalkers. The Predators and Prey Alert (pdf), or Papa, system monitors all communications on a victim's computer and helps police gather evidence in online harassment and solicitation cases. -- Wired.
I just finished a vetting of MacVolPlace. I did a complete link check/update and reorganized the software page among others. It should help everyone find what they are looking for. Enjoy!
As you may remember UT is moving to consolidation all E-mail to Exchange. OIT has set up a web site to help. You should check it out. Guess who's article is being used on how to configure OS X Mail to access the Exchange Server? The latest addition concerns major project milestones.
Apple today announced a significant update to .Mac, the membership-based online service that combines the simplicity and elegance of the Macintosh with the power of the Internet to facilitate group communication and make sharing, storing and protecting digital photos and videos easier than ever. New features include: .Mac Groups, a service that helps members communicate, coordinate schedules and stay in sync with private groups of friends or colleagues; an updated version of .Mac Backup software that makes it easy for members to archive their iLife® and other important files; a four-fold increase in combined iDisk and email storage to 1GB for individuals and 2GB for families; and full French and German localization. -- Apple PR.
Reuters reports that at Apple Expo in Paris, Steve Jobs reaffirmed that Apple would be ready to ship Intel-based Macs by June of 2006.
Macworld.co.uk provides a more detailed description of the Q&A Discussion which Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller participated in at the start of Apple Expo Paris.
Sonnet Technologies today announced the G5 Jive, an internal drive mounting system for Power Mac G5 computers. G5 Jive enables Power Mac G5 users to add up to three additional Serial ATA (SATA) hard drives inside any Power Mac G5.
Opera today began offering its alternative Opera web browser for free, permanently removing the ad banner and licensing fee. The ad-free, full-featured Opera browser is now available for download.
Apple's CEO Steve Jobs vowed Tuesday to resist music companies' "greedy" demands for price increases on the iTunes music download site and warned that such a move would encourage piracy, according to Reuters.
Apple today released Backup 3.0, an update to personal backup software for .Mac users. Apple says that .Mac Backup has been redesigned from the ground up resulting in easier setup, quicker backups.
If you have a 4G iPod, you can follow these instructions from MAKE to run video with sound on your iPod! It's amazing at the progress Podzilla has made, especially as they have made a video showing off the bite-sized OS's capabilities.
The Design Museum of Britain posted a fascinating and in-depth interview with Jonathan Ive, Apple's Senior Vice President of Design. As you'll likely know, Ive is the man behind the look 'n' feel of Apple's most popular widgets, including the iPod, iMac and PowerBook. In short, he's the man making every other computer company eat Apple's dust.
The present invention provides both a peripheral device that regulates its own temperature by adjusting its power consumption, and a method to accomplish the same. -- Macsimum News.
Several news sources are running articles detailing the lack of computer security on all platforms. -- Slashdot.
Part five of Macworld's six-part series takes a look at Tiger's core communication tools: Address Book, iCal and Mail.
Microsoft Corp.'s Macintosh Business Unit on Tuesday will release Office 2004 for Mac Service Pack 2 (SP2). Targeted mainly to enterprise users, the new service pack adds new features to enhance Exchange Server support in Entourage. SP2 updates all of the applications in Office 2004, but does not deliver Spotlight support to Mac OS X 10.4 users. -- Macworld.
The new release includes enhancements for Exchange support in Entourage, which Microsoft says will enable better e-mail and calendar management, enhanced public folder support, and faster client-server synchronization. Users also can experience improved access to the Global Address List (GAL), including the ability to browse the entire contents of the GAL and see full organizational detail. In addition, enhanced delegate access enables new setup entirely through Entourage without having to go through the Outlook client on a PC.
SP2 also includes cumulative security updates and prioritized fixes for issues identified by Microsoft and through customer feedback.
Sometimes you really do have to take matters into your own hands -- at least I did when iTunes 5 still didn't offer continuous preview for albums in the music store. -- O'Reilly Developer Weblogs.
A whole new Web is emerging from the wilds of cyberspace. It's no longer all about idly surfing and passively reading, listening, or watching. It's about doing: sharing, socializing, collaborating, and, most of all, creating. Says Eckart Walther, Yahoo! Inc.'s vice-president for product management: "It's the second coming of the Web." -- BusinessWeek.
THE ENTERPRISE
by John L. Mariotti,
President & CEO,
The Enterprise Group,
614-840-0959
http://www.mariotti.net
We just wrapped up the Ninth Reunion Conference "A World of Change and Opportunity." This is an invitation-only roundtable event I started nine years ago. Many of the recipients of THE ENTERPRISE have either been invited in the past or have attended one or more conferences. At or near the conclusion of this year's conference, I was struck by a conclusion so important I decided to share it here.
THE REUNION CONFERENCE
I started hosting this conference planning to invite friends and associates, which usually yielded an eclectic mixture of practicing executives, former executives, owners/entrepreneurs, educators and consultants (many of whom occupied one or more of those categories during their career.) The purpose was to provide a brief but fun interlude and a stimulating/thought-provoking experience. For busy executives, it was an opportunity to stop, pause, think and seriously consider the important aspects of the their life and career--job, company, strategies, priorities and lives
This year we had fewer "practicing executives" than ever before. Several of those who fell into that category were the owners/principals of their companies--usually smaller companies than ever before. It seems that many others who were invited were too busy to take the time to stop and think about the direction they are heading. In his best selling book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey wrote about the P and PC balance. P was "production"--of desired results. PC was "production capability" or the preparing, learning, adding ability and assets that are instrumental in getting the results. If either one gets badly out of balance, the quality and quantity of a manager's performance declines. But how often do most executives even consider this concept?
TOO BUSY TO STOP AND THINK?
Covey also wrote about a related topic that changed my life forever. He wrote about how often we struggle to climb the ladder of success, never stopping to see if it is leaning against the right wall. And yet, managers and executives are too busy to take a break to actually think about their job, their company, their career, their country and their life. How sad it made me. And how grateful, that I was fortunate enough to be able to share the 2-1/2 days with 20 diverse and brilliant people--and how much richer I am for the experience.
A specific topic of discussion was a frequent lack of leadership (in a variety of settings) and the role of CEOs/Top Executives that we knew--and others we observed from afar. Unfortunately, few CEOs were there to defend themselves against criticism or to add their breadth and depth of perspective to the discussion. Perhaps next year can be different. For those who are interested in The Reunion Conference series, you can learn more about it at this site: http://www.shape-shifters.com/reunion.shtml If you think you might enjoy attending it, contact me by email and let's discuss that. Next year's date is not set yet, but it is likely to be in the 2nd or 3rd week of Sept., somewhere in Central Ohio.
I'd like to close this edition of THE ENTERPRISE with something you may have seen before, but was so good, and so moving, it bears repeating.
STEVE JOBS TELLS IT LIKE HE MEANS IT
Earlier this year, Steve Jobs spoke to the graduates at Stanford. His profound and moving comments are presented in FORTUNE (Sept. 5, 2005, pp. 31-32). For those readers who either don't get FORTUNE or didn't read this, I'd like to choose a few of the most memorable things he said. These are incredibly thoughtful words from a man whose life and career has both plumbed the depths of failure or despair and tasted the heights of great success.
Jobs relates three stories from his life. The first is about "connecting the dots" and figuring out what to do with his life. He recounts dropping out of college rather than waste his parents' life savings, and "dropping in on the ones [classes] that looked interesting."
"It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the 5-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk 7 miles across town every Sunday to get one good meal at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it."
He describes how dropping in on a calligraphy class influence him to add the beautiful font capabilities in the first Macs. But he also points out that you can't "connect the dots" looking forward-just by looking backward.
His second story is about how much he loved creating the Mac and the impact of getting fired from Apple-which he says,
"Sit turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could ever have happened to me". It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life." It was in this era that he started NeXT which ultimately was sold to Apple and was the basis for the current Apple renaissance. He also started Pixar, the first, and so far, most successful computer animation studio in the world.
His third story is the one that moved me. It is about facing death from pancreatic cancer just over a year ago. (It turned out to be a rare form of the cancer, which was curable by surgery. Most forms of pancreatic cancer are fatal.) Here are some of Jobs' words.
"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything-all the expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure-these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose."
He describes the emotions of realizing that he had what was likely a terminal cancer, then after a day of living with the diagnosis, the relief of learning that his cancer could be cured. His next words were moving and profound.
"This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you" No one wants to die. S And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. SIt is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new."
Clearly, his close brush with death caused Steve Jobs to be much more introspective, and it is this introspection that we can all learn from, as he goes on speaking.
"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma-which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
His final conclusion comes from a reflection on the final issue of The Whole Earth Catalog, a publication that he greatly admired.
"On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early-morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."
We are all tempted to do just the opposite: to stay secure and well-fed; to stay serious and responsible. I am certainly controlled by this conservative philosophy too much of the time. Every time I get thinking too much that way, I somehow recall the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay "Self Reliance."
"To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, -- that is genius." "What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness."
I guess that means I'd add a little to Jobs' advice: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Stay True to Yourself. Live, love and leave a legacy. You only go around once in this life. " And in the context of my comments on The Reunion Conference, "You owe it to yourself to stop and think about just how you are "going around" that one time."
It could change your life forever--for the better.
Best, John
Apple Computer Inc. has filed for a patent on a portable computer with a digital camera integrated into the latch mechanism. Will this mean integrated iSights in new Powerbooks and iBooks? -- Ars Technica.
O'Grady's PowerPage claims that Apple is prepping an update for the PowerBook line "that could arrive as soon as this week." The update is expected to be a minor speed bump but few details are available.
Also reported is that Intel PowerBooks are not expected until mid-to-late 2006.
Be sure to make regular backups of your music files (in your iTunes Music folder) by copying them to an external hard disk or other media. Otherwise, if your hard disk becomes damaged or you lose any of the music you've purchased, you'll have to buy any purchased music again to rebuild your library. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
What piece of software is missing from the Mac platform? What plug-in or addition to OS X would severely increase your productivity by eliminating a step in your workflow? -- MAB Blog.
University students who recently bought an iPod Mini have felt tech temptation coupled with resentment. -- Diamondback Online: The University of Maryland.
If the Apple Mac Mini has you curious about adding this to your setup or switching from a PC, you'll want to read up on Paul Ferrill's journey back into the world of Apple after a long hiatus. Here you'll get a personal tour of some features of OS X Tiger, to compare them to similar Windows functions. -- Informit.
In the past, we had television. Then there were computers. Then there was cable TV. Then there was a cable modem for the computer. Does anyone see a basic connection here and then a disconnect? For at least two years now I've been trying to get Apple (or anybody I can get to listen), to finally tie the two technologies together. The silence has been deafening. -- O'Grady's PowerPage.
Mac DevCenter is asking its readers to participate in its third online survey. They've sweetened the pot with a chance to win books and Make magazine subscriptions.
As research for a project (-cough- Delicious Library 2 -cough-) on which I'm slaving away, night and day, I did some timing tests to see how Apple's implementation of JPEG2000 performed, especially when creating a thumbnail image from a larger image (as compared to JPEG, which I've used a lot). -- Wil Shipley's Blog.
For years, he took comically extreme measures to correct flaws he heard in playlist randomizers. But turns out, expectations are the problem, not the algorithms. -- Wired.
Perhaps the world does not need another web browser -- but it may want Bart Decrem's. Decrem and a small cadre of programmers in Palo Alto, California, have spent this summer quietly readying Flock, an open-source browser, for an early October beta launch. Several members of the team, including Decrem, hail from the Mozilla Foundation, which produced the Firefox browser upon which Flock is built. -- Wired.
Hard drives are living on borrowed time and will be replaced with solid-state Flash memory, according to Samsung's semi-conductor CEO Dr Chang Gyu Hwang. Hwang's company has just launched a 16Gb NAND Flash chip using 50nm technology, something he used to make his prediction. -- Techworld
Some video cards may include support for display rotation in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. Look in Displays preferences; if you see a Rotate pop-up menu on the right side of the window, your video card supports display rotation. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
Downloading, installing, and removing Dashboard widgets has been greatly improved in Mac OS X 10.4.2 and later. For the best widget installation experience, be sure to update to the latest version of Mac OS X 10.4. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
New York Times columnist, as well as author of many Mac how-to books, David Pogue has weighed in with his thoughts on the iPod nano.
OmniWeb 5.1.2 beta 1 supports Fast User Switching. Having multiple copies of OmniWeb running on the same machine and under different accounts will not result in each version requiring its own license. It also corrects a problem where OmniWeb would fail to load XML it would have otherwise loaded, instead we would present a dialog about the document not appearing to be a news feed.
MacInTouch's Samson C01U review offers a detailed look at the innovative USB microphone, which offers a whole lot of performance and features for a surprisingly low price.
Users of Apple's new iTunes 5 for Windows are reporting a number of major issues with the software. The widespread problems have been identified on Apple's official discussion forum. Apple has stated that it is aware of the problems, but has yet to provide solutions for affected users.
One morning, about a year ago, a doctor told Steve Jobs that a cancerous tumour in his pancreas would kill him within months, and that it was time to start saying his goodbyes. Later that night, an endoscopy revealed that the tumour could be cut out. But for one day Mr Jobs, the boss of Apple Computer, as well as Pixar, the world's most successful animation studio, stared death in the face. -- The Economist.
Freesound so great: an online database of free, user-submitted, Creative Commons-licensed sounds, with audio and visual previews for all. -- O'Reilly Digital Media.
MIT researchers with the Mobile Landscape Projects have mapped a city based on cell phone usage. The article includes a map of Graz, Austria with a color-coded overlay indicating cell phone usage in various parts of the city. Using call origin and destination data, they are able to not only reverse-engineer a topographic map of the geography and landscape, but one of phone usage as well. The implications of the research have practical applications in law enforcement, emergency management, and traffic management. There are also, of course, privacy implications.
Workers are more likely to indulge in dangerous behavior on the Internet when they know they have an IT department to get them out of trouble, according to a study. -- InformationWeek.
Apple has launched support for video podcasting in the Podcast section of the iTMS. Ars Technica has a decent write up of the news along with speculation on what this means in the way of a video iPod and Apple's recent application for a patent on the phrase 'iPodcast.'
Before you donate your computer to charity, sell it on eBay, or give it to the kid down the block, take one easy step to protect yourself. Use SuperScrubber to truly delete all the information and files contained on your computer's hard drive or external drive.
Of course as I have said before, the same thing can be done with Apple's Disk Utility. Just select the drive (mounted in FireWire Target mode), click on the hard disk icon and click on the Security Options... button.
iTattle is exclusively for Mac OS X 10.4 or later. It places Network information for AirPort Extreme, and built-in Ethernet, as well as System information on your desktop. Very useful for administrators to gather system information.
MacGuru John McNair writes:
I'm perplexed. I just configured three Mac Minis with Panther and Active Directory authentication (against UTK-DS). I did the build on one machine and CCC'ed it onto the other two.
Now the two clones are working fine, but I can't login on the original build machine. My local admin account is OK but when I give A/D credentials all I get is the blue barber pole and "jmcnair Logging In..." (I left one trying overnight with no improvement or change)
I've fixed file protections. I've removed and readded the A/D container for the computer. I don't see any useful info in the log files. It's possible that I messed up something in the default user template but I don't know what. I've replaced it with one from the working machines with no improvement.
The one oddity I see in the home area created for me is a "Managed Items" folder that doesn't exist on the other machines. OK, where did that come from?
Any ideas or suggestions?
And as so often happens with John, he answers his own question:
You may remember I had a problem logging in :-)
Since I couldn't find my Disk Warrior disc, I dug up a copy of Tiger Cache Cleaner which seemed to be highly recommended on the net for fixing sticky problems. I used the demo mode and it cleaned things right up (not sure whether is was caches specifically or some of the other housekeeping options in the app. It says Tiger but works fine on earlier OS Xs.) I'll be sending some money along to those folks.
YMMV, but it helped me out and is really cheap.
The program committee is proud to announce the 2005 lineup of presentations. There are four main tracks that will each have eight presentations. There are also ten half-hour showcase presentations (most of which go along with one of the track themes) that deliver a lot of info in a short period of time. There will also be quite a few poster presentations, which has become a favorite session for many of us.
Conference attendance is limited and registration will close when full, so don't get left out. Early bird registration until September 30 is only $379. So register today.
The University of Tennessee, in cooperation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), and the TVA Office of the Inspector General, is proud to announce the First Cyber Security Alliance Conference in Eastern Tennessee. This conference will be held on October 19th and 20th, 2005 at the UT Conference Center in Knoxville, TN.
The theme is "Confronting Cyber Security Challenges." Its purpose is to promote a closer working relationship between law enforcement, higher education, and industry in identifying and dealing with cyber crime and related matters. The target audience is federal, state, and local law enforcement officers and private industry (IT Professionals/ System Administrators) as well as InfraGard members and academic/government employees involved in Cyber Security Management. The speakers at the Knoxville Cyber Security Summit feature leaders in information security efforts.
This is a break-even event. Therefore, the cost of the conference--which includes breakfast and lunch--is only $75.00 US.
In what could be construed as its latest attempt to make Podcasting proprietary, Apple this month filed for a trademark on the term "iPodcast." -- AppleInsider.
FileMaker guru Brian Dunning has released a free FileMaker Custom Function Widget for use with Dashboard in Mac OS X v10.4. Custom Functions are a feature found in FileMaker 7 and 8. They enable developers to define and use new functions not included in the database software's normal list of calculation functions. With the Widget, users can access the library of free Custom Functions found on Mr. Dunning's Web site.
Like many others, I want to use X11 apps occasionally without needing to start X11 manually when that is needed. However, I also don't want to get the automatic xterm that Apple launches when X11 starts. -- Mac OS X Hints.
MacFixIt has updated their Troubleshooting iMac G5 special report, incorporating several new sections and revising previously existing areas of coverage.
The first preview of Camino 1.0 alpha 1 has been released, adding numerous features over previous versions. This used to be my favorite browser but certain bugs crept in and it did not work well with my/UT. Those problems seem to have been fixed. I always its speed and interface. It still doesn't do RSS.
There are legions of Macintosh and iPod users for whom the elegance of the user interface begins with the bold graphics and sleek texture of the box the new machine comes in. It's in the smell and the way the box logically reveals each new component just as the user needs it. And, like the famously long-lived Apple Computer products they carry, these aesthetic outer wrappings have a habit of sticking around. -- Wired.
I would say that Microsoft is trying very hard to get Longhorn (or Vista, rather) out the door in a timely and organized manner, but in clear conscience, I really can't. I really just can't. Yesterday, there were a few screenshots posted on various sites of Office 12, running on Vista Beta. Needless to say, I'm starting to get very discouraged about the future of the Windows users interface. Think about how messy it is now, and imagine it about twice as bad. Wait, don't imagine, because here are a couple of screenshots. -- AppleXnet.
Microsoft showed a number of new Windows Vista features for the first time at its Professional Developers Conference here in L.A. on Tuesday -- including one that looked strangely familiar, in more ways than one. -- seattlepi.com.
The two articles above require me to republish the following from 1995:
Now that you have had some time to explore the world of Podcasting (see Podcasting 101), you are ready to do your own show. But where do you start? How do you record your own show? In this installment, Stephen Schleicher talks about some of the ways you can get your wonderful voice into a file ready for podcasting. -- Creative Mac.
Need an inexpensive dolly to capture moving footage? Want to have some fun turning digital video into Matrix-style symbols? How about learning a way to create text on screen? You'll find hacks that provide the answers to these questions, and more, in these excerpts from Digital Video Hacks. If you're a digital video addict, be sure to check out the book for more hacks you'll find you can't live without. -- O'Reilly Digital Video.
Using a Mac OS X computer, especially a PowerBook, as a development box is pretty dang spiffy, thanks to the built-in Apache web server. But wouldn't you like to create your sites and web apps without everyone else on your network able to access them? Here's one quick method to protect your Sites folder. -- O'Reilly Developer Weblogs.
Sometimes you just want your computer to behave the way you want it to. After all, you're the boss. The machine just needs reminding of that every now and then. Take some of the processes that Just Work in OS X Tiger, even if perhaps you might not want them to. -- O'Reilly Developer Weblogs.
A New York University student proves that just one bit can generate a robust sound. His homemade music player even passes the dorkbot test. -- Wired.
The Xsan Tuner application is used to test the data and video transfer capabilities of your storage area network and it's Xsan volumes.
Java 1.3.1 and 1.4.2 Release 2 improves functionality of J2SE 1.4.2 on Mac OS X v. 10.4 Tiger and updates J2SE 1.3.1 for better interaction with J2SE 1.4.2
Java Security Update delivers a number of security enhancements and is recommended for all Macintosh users.
Apple Tuesday updated its Xserve RAID storage system, a 3U high-availability, rack storage system to deliver a massive 7 terabytes (TB) of storage capacity at the industry's most aggressive price of just $1.86 per GB. Apple also upgraded its Xserve 1U rack optimized server with up to three 500GB drives, achieving a groundbreaking 1.5TB of storage. Prices for Xserve still start at just $2,999 and prices for Xserve RAID at just $5,999.
When you install Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and then restart your computer, the OS will automatically begin indexing your hard drive for Spotlight searching. Depending on how many files and Mail messages are on your hard drive, this can take anywhere from several minutes to a few hours. But once the process is done, searching for stuff on your computer using the Spotlight icon in the menu bar, or the Find command in the Finder, will take very little time.
While your hard drive is being indexed, your computer fans may run more than usual, your computer may seem "slow," and you may notice additional processor activity in Activity Monitor. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
If you're having connectivity issues with your Motorola ROKR E1 phone in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, iSync 2.1 or later, or iTunes 4.9 or later, this document tells you some things that you can do. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
Researchers at the University of Oklahoma have created a Mac Mini Robot. It is a four-wheel robot that uses a Mac mini for its brain and an iSight camera to view and hear its environment.
If you read Derrick Story's previous post, you know that he's pretty impressed with the iPod nano. Yet, he's read comments by others citing various nits about Apple's diminutive music player. He thought he'd pull those gripes together here and list them in the top ten format (starting with #1 instead of #10 because I don't know how to use the ol tag in reverse). -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
When it's time to burn music, photos, or movies to CDs and DVDs, many Mac users turn to Toast, which has just undergone a major overhaul from Roxio. Sure, this latest version bears some resemblance to Toast 6, but Toast 7 Titanium features some of the most substantial changes to the program in years. Peter Cohen gets his hands on Roxio's latest upgrade. -- Macworld.
Smith Micro Software subsidiary Allume Systems on Tuesday introduced StuffIt Deluxe 10 for Mac OS X, the latest major version of their data compression tool. The new version features Allume's vaunted JPEG compression technology and other new features. -- Macworld.
Last time, Drew McCormack took you through the changes that Xgrid has seen in Tiger, showed you how to setup a private Xgrid controller, and run simple jobs with the Xgrid command-line tool. This time he takes a look at XGridFoundation, a framework that allows you to integrate Xgrid into your Cocoa applications. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
How does Word annoy you? Let us count the ways: by "correcting" the already correct text you enter; by deciding unilaterally that you want a bulleted list or a table instead of what you've typed; by serving up a useless blank document each time you start it; by crashing and losing your work as a deadline surges across the calendar toward you; and in hundreds or thousands of ways in between.
You can write your own list; perhaps you already have. Here's a Top Ten list of the Word annoyances I've encountered or been asked about recently. -- O'Reilly Network.
WaveBurner 1.1.1 addresses reliability and performance issues that may be encountered with WaveBurner 1.1. Improves compatibility with Mac OS X version 10.4 (Tiger) and is recommended for all users of WaveBurner 1.1.
The QuickTime 7.0.1 reinstaller will remove QuickTime 7.0.2 from a Mac OS X and restore QuickTime 7.0.1.
Michael Robertson started MP3.com and Linspire. Now he's taking on Steve Jobs and iTunes with BadApple. -- c|net.
Company will release a cell phone that plays as many iTunes as an iPod, analysts predict. After all, it's already registered iPhone.org. -- c|net.
Time Magazine profiles the recently released iPod nano. The article provides some minor hints and details surrounding the development of the iPod nano.
Your list of Login Items can be seen by selecting the Login Items tab for your account, as accessed via the Accounts System Preferences pane. Last month, in Part 1 of this two-part tutorial, MacFixIt covered the basics of working with Login Items: what they are, how they work and why to use them. In Part 2, they explore some more "in-depth" and troubleshooting-related aspects of Login Items.
After upgrading to iTunes 5, if your music does not show up in iTunes, follow these steps to bring back your missing tunes. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
Make has some tips for customizing aspects of the iPod nano interface. "The new iPod nano is out and while it's not as hackable (yet) as it's older cousins, you can do a few things like change the text strings, mod the font -and- even change the graphics (sorta). Here's HOW TO mod a pod, a work in progress for the iPod nano.
Apple has begun its campaign against OS X for Intel pirates with a new release of its developer's testing OS software for Intel. OS X for Intel is now at version 10.4.2. It implements new ways to prevent piracy of the software. This follows numerous reports that earlier builds of the software have been released without authorization through file-sharing systems. -- Macworld.
On September 8, 2005, the US Patent & Trademark Office revealed Apple's patent application 20050198489 entitled "Server computer issued credential authentication'. -- Macsimum News.
A runaway fan problem what was just on the G5 seems to now have infected some G4s. -- Macsimum news.
7 undercover uses for Tiger's viewing application. -- Macworld.
As much as I like the iPod nano, the editor in me feels obligated to report the complaints I've culled from online forums, letters, and conversations. Here are ten nano nits with a bit of commentary. -- O'Reilly Developer Weblogs.
OK, looks like everybody has already blogged about this and the smoke from the mailing list fights has cleared a bit. Its a very fun piece, everybody involved with security in some shape or form must read it. However, do not treat the document as the "Revelations of St Marcus" :-) For example, his stance on hacking (combined with apparent lack of clarity in how he defines it...) will certainly raise same major league heckles. And, while being a visionary like Marcus Ranum does require you to step back from reality a bit, the step IMHO should not be too big... -- O'Reilly Developer Weblogs.
Alan Cox needs little introduction--most will know him for his long-standing work on the Linux kernel (not to mention his appreciation and promulgation of the Welsh language among hackers). Cox is one of the keynote speakers at EuroOSCON this October, where he will talk about computer security.
According to Alan Cox, we're just at the beginning of a long journey into getting security right. Eager for directions and a glimpse of the future, O'Reilly Network interviewed him about his upcoming keynote. -- O'Reilly Network.
Given the insatiable appetite for Apple rumors, analysis and speculation, SiliconValley.com has opened a week long roundtable discussion on the company's post-Intel future. Among those on the panel are Andy Hertzfeld, Tim Bray, Brent Simmons, John Gruber, Keven Krewell, Mark Gonzales and Leander Kahney.
Adam Engst revisits how he uses email to get things done. -- TidBITS.
HDTV sets are stunning--until you pop in a movie and are reminded that DVDs are not recorded in high definition. At 480 lines of resolution, they don't even begin to take advantage of a 720- or 1,080-line display. That will change later this year when Toshiba introduces the first high-def disc player for the U.S. market. -- PopularScience.com
With the help of his Macs, he's created posters for such blockbusters as "The Lord of the Rings," eye-grabbing covers for newsstand mainstays like "Wired" and "Newsweek" and unforgettable images for some of the world's top ad agencies. But don't peg him as a "digital artist" -- it's too confining a term. -- Apple PR.
When Apple announced the new iPod nano last week, we knew two things: we had to get our hands on one, and when we were done playing with it, we needed to take it apart. Read on for our iPod nano review, stress test, and autopsy. -- Ars Technica.
For the past few days, TMO reporters and editors have visited Cingular retail stores across the U.S. to play with the ROKR E1 phone and to say we are unimpressed with this phone and its capabilities is an understatement. -- The Mac Observer.
A ZDNet AU article opines that Mac users are taking Mac OS X's security for granted. The article also quotes a number of "experts" who claim that the first big Mac virus is on the horizon, and that Microsoft has "leapfrogged" Apple in terms of patching infrastructure.
Lauren Weinstein writes regarding problems with Apple's latest update to iTunes and QuickTime.
The User Agent Switcher extension adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of the browser. The User Agent Switcher extension is designed for Firefox, Mozilla and Netscape, and will run on any platform that these browsers support including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
MacMod just announced the winners of the The Great MacMod Challenge 2005. The competition was incredibly fierce this year with over 30 mods. These mods ranged from a Mac Mini installed into a Millenium Falcon to a hand painted hieroglyphics-inspired PowerMac to the world's fastest overclocked Bondi iMac. The winners were as follows: Mod of the Year - The Real Wood iPod, 2nd Place - The Millenium Falcon Mini, 3rd Place - Wallstreet Road Warrior.
iTunes 5 adoption isn't going smoothly. I haven't had any trouble myself, with installation or limited use of the upgraded program. Dana Blankenhorn at Corante reports widespread and serious problems, including general computer trashing in Windows machines, and cites Lauren Weinstein: "What's worse, rolling back [to 4.9] can be difficult or impossible." -- The Digital Music Weblog.
In part four of our introduction to Tiger Terminal, you'll learn how to tap the power of shell scripting to automate repetitive tasks. Mary Norbury-Glaser walks you through the process, step by step. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
Jim Dalrymple got one of the first ROKR phones sold from the downtown San Francisco Cingular location and couldn't wait to get back to the office and see how it worked. It wasn't long before excitement turned to frustration and anger as his Mac and iTunes failed repeatedly to recognize the ROKR. -- Macworld.
An editorial in The Guardian presents a good run down of what is wrong with science reporting today and tries to point out why this is. From the article: 'Why is science in the media so often pointless, simplistic, boring, or just plain wrong? Like a proper little Darwin, I've been collecting specimens, making careful observations, and now I'm ready to present my theory.'
The IT industry spends a huge amount of money on security -- and yet worms, spyware, and other relatively mindless attacks are still able to create massive havoc. Why? Marcus Ranum suggests that we've all been spending far too much time and effort on provably ineffective security measures. It may come as a surprise that anti-virus software, penetration testing, and user education are three of "The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security."
The initial reaction to the new window style in iTunes 5 seems to be mixed. However, just about everyone universally condemns it for introducing yet another style into an already inconsistent user interface. Personally, I think the sooner brushed metal is gone, the better. And so to further that cause, I present the secret to making your very own Polished Metal windows. -- Rogue Amoeba.
MacGuru John LaMacchia writes:
I am considering setting up a dual boot system with Ubuntu Linux and OS X Tiger on my 1.5GHz G4 Powerbook. The question: what is the most efficient way to save all my files AND my preferences in OS X before I partition the hard drive? Also, any advice concerning partitioning in general would be greatly appreciated.
First have a backup, Carbon Copy Cloner is the best for this.
Then you might use iPartition. iPartition is a disk partitioning utility for Mac OS X with the ability to resize Mac OS extended (HFS+) partitions while keeping their contents intact.
Of course you can use Apple's Disk Utility to make the partitions but that will require a restore. So iPartition will save time.
And MacGuru Mike Stanley replies:
Can't address dual booting and partitioning that combo, but I'd say the easiest way to safe all your files and prefs would be to just use Carbon Copy Cloner from Mike Bombich's website to make an image of your system on a firewire hard drive. Then you can boot off it (into the cloned system or into another system on it already), partition your Powerbook, and either restore the image or clone the FW HD back onto the PB's HD.
I've done this numerous times when moving from one machine to another and when needing to partition my systems to reallocate HD space. Should work for what you have in mind.
You could also clone your HD to a FW HD, then install Tiger fresh on your PB (say you didn't want all your programs or whatever) then use Tiger's Migration Assistant to bring everything back. You might even be able to dump the stuff ahead of time - never used it that way though.
You can use Motion to create animated graphics and video that can be used for a variety of purposes in DVD Studio Pro. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
Mozilla.org has released early preview of Firefox 1.5, the next version of the open-source browser. Firefox 1.5 Beta 1, now available for download, offers better support for Mac OS X, according to the developers.
Stephen de Vries of InfoSec Writers writes:
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger provides one of the most secure default installations of any desktop operating system. The operating system also includes numerous features and additional tools to help users manage the security of their data. The install follows the accepted best practice of disabling all network services unless explicitly enabled and the default security settings should suit the needs of most users in a workstation setting.
While the default installation provides a relatively secure system it may not always meet organizational security requirements. This guide is aimed at users in environments requiring stronger security controls in an operating system, making full use of the protection features offered by Mac OS X 10.4 It may also be of use to system administrators wishing to enforce an organization wide desktop security policy.
This guide is an updated version of the guide for Securing Mac OS X (10.3) Panther (PDF) and covers the new security features offered by Tiger as well as incorporating additional security guidelines that were omitted in the original guide.
And since we are talking about security don't forget:
Would you like to see how things looked inside Moscone West for the Sept. 7 Apple Music Event? Here's a collection of photos with a splash of commentary. -- O'Reilly Developer Weblog.
Think Secret is offering a small gallery of photos of Apple's new iPod nano, which the company announced just yesterday. The photos picture the iPod nano both standing alone and alongside the iPod mini and shuffle, for comparison.
Includes new iPod Software 1.0 for iPod nano. iPod Updater 2005-09-06 contains the same software versions as iPod Updater 2005-06-26 for all other iPod models.
With iTunes 5.0 you can now browse and subscribe to podcasts from within the iTunes Music Store.
QuickTime 7.0.2. Capture video in a single click. Share movies with email or .Mac. Get QuickTime Pro today for these features and much more.
Apple Wednesday introduced the iPod nano, a revolutionary full-featured iPod that holds 1,000 songs yet is thinner than a standard #2 pencil and less than half the size of competitive players.
Apple Wednesday announced iTunes 5, bringing new features and a refined look to the world's most popular digital music jukebox and online music store. iTunes 5 includes a new Search Bar to make it even easier for users to find what they're searching for; the ability to organize playlists into folders; Smart Shuffle, which lets the user change the "randomness" of shuffled songs; and the ability for Windows users to automatically sync contacts and calendars from Outlook onto their iPods.
Apple, Motorola and Cingular Wireless Wednesday announced the availability of the world's first mobile phone with iTunes, enabling music lovers to transfer up to 100 of their favorite songs from the iTunes jukebox on their Mac® or PC to their mobile phone.
Catherine Robertson
The Daily Beacon Thursday, September 08, 2005 issue
Students at UT now may only have to go to one place to answer any of their questions, ranging from "Why is my NetID not working?" to "Where am I going to practice my public persuasion speech?" These answers rest in what is now called The Commons.
Located on the second floor of Hodges Library, The Commons was designed by the Office of Information Technology and Hodges Library. They have teamed up in a mutual effort to help students with problems ranging from technology to research. The room that The Commons is now located was once called the Reserves, but according to Laura Purcell, Library Outreach officer, the need for Reserves help has changed, which led to the room being transitioned to The Commons.
"A lot of the ideas (for The Commons) came from observing students and what they needed on a daily basis," Purcell said. She said library staff realized that students where coming into the Reserves not to get Reserve readings, which can primarily be done online, but rather to meet with groups and attend study sessions. Purcell said that students congregated in the halls of the library to work together, and the outreach program decided to move toward meeting the needs of those students.
"We decided to provide something more suitable for collaborative group activity," Purcell said.
She said library staff also noticed students pulling up chairs around one computer to see their group projects, and she, along with others at the library, wanted to help students be more comfortable when working together.
Mike Stanley, an OIT system administrator, said that they were told to observe the students and how they used the Reserve area in a given time period. He said that in less than a week they were able to understand what really needed to be done and were quite excited about the implementation of the idea.
"We were stunned over the need for collaboration," Stanley said.
He said that before The Commons was put together students used the computers provided in the area more than any other public computer room in the library. Now that The Commons is established, Stanley said there are more computers and nearly all of them are full all the time. Since the first week classes started, Stanley's records show that there have been over 3,500 student, faculty and staff logins, and the total logins from each of those users total almost 10,000.
Stan Pinkleton, executive director of Customer Technology Support, said that he wants to make certain that students understand the efforts of both OIT and the library. He said he wants students to realize that while The Commons does provide OIT and computer help, it is still a branch of the library and offers not only technological support but research and library workshops as well.
"It's really about a move toward collaborative work," Pinkleton said. "We want to provide more collaborative work areas."
Another unique part of The Commons is its extended hours, which coincide with those of Starbucks right next door.
This, according to many involved with The Commons, is only the first phase of a big project. The future plans for The Commons include smart boards like those found in most of the technologically advanced classrooms around campus, which can be used for lap top hook ups and Power Point presentations. They also include possible plasma screen TVs in the conference rooms with smart board inlays to help group research and projects presentations. The collaboration stresses student involvement with focus groups to help better understand the call for new programs and facilities for the students.
"We want to provide services students really want, a place that is comfortable and conducive to the needs of the students," Pinkleton said.
For more information of The Commons, visit http://commons.utk.edu.
And Mike Stanley replies:
Not sure I could have been more misquoted in so small a space, but the gist was mostly correct.
First of all, I was referring to the OIT Lab on the bottom floor of Hodges when speaking of the areas we observed, not Reserve. We couldn't monitor Reserve - we have no cameras there.
Second, I didn't use the word "stunned" - I used the word "thrilled". Stunned implies we had no idea this was going on, which is not the case. We thought it was happening, but were thrilled to see it happening so much.
As for the larger context, I was specifically saying that we'd been asked to observe patterns in our lab in G20 Hodges to look for groups forming. We expected to have to look through images of several days if not longer for the whole lab to get the kind of examples we were hoping for. What thrilled us was that from just one camera over a 24 hour period, we saw a great many groups forming. We also sampled other camera views over different days and saw that pattern repeated again and again.
So not stunned, but thrilled. And excited - this is cool stuff.
And I actually asked to be referred to as VolPrint Overlord, but she wouldn't do it. :)
Having been interviewed by the press myself on more than one occasion, I know how Mike feels. The same thing happened every time print media interviewed me for a story. The only time it did not was when I was interviewed by Bob Kessling for channel 10 news many years ago. Bob got it right.
Austin, Texas-based Applied Nanotech, in conjunction with six Japanese electronics firms, has created a prototype of a 25-inch TV that is brighter and crisper than the ones in stores today, thanks to carbon nanotubes. -- c|net.
You may delete and recreate a keychain file if the keychain is inaccessible (locked with a lost or unavailable password). -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
Wall Street Journal columnist Walter Mossberg has already seen the iPod nano, and he's "smitten".
Do you have a G3 or G4 tower that acts "flaky"? Does it crash a lot? Problems formatting your hard drive? Does it just boot into open firmware with some strange error, like "Default Catch!"? Well, then you may have a bad IDE bus. Don't throw out that tower or buy a new logic board just yet...
The IDE bus that the hard drive is plugged into by default can get "worn out" on a computer that is in use a lot of the time (work horse). I don't know if it's something to do with solder or what. The fix is to put your hard drive on the other IDE bus (the one the optical drive plugs into). You will have to do a master/slave setup to use both drives. I've also found that it can be very convenient, but a little tricky, to put the hard drive into the zip drive bay (if it's empty of course).
I've seen this hardware problem on three computers in the last three years -- a Blue & White G3, Graphite G4, & just recently on a QuickSilver G4. So I can't even imagine how many towers are out there with this issue. I have one of these "fixed" G3 Blue & White towers in my home today, and it has worked just fine for two years after this fix. -- Mac OS X Hints.
Apple has posted a Quicktime stream of their Media Event yesterday. Watch Apple CEO Steve Jobs deliver a special announcement from San Francisco's Moscone West. See the video-on-demand event right here exclusively in QuickTime and MPEG-4.
Disclabel 2.4 creates and prints CD/DVD labels and related materials. It can use predesigned or custom templates, import track/item lists from iTunes, iPhoto, and iDVD, and more. This release adds support for LightScribe direct disc labeling, CoreImage filters, Spotlight, and other changes. Disclabel is $29.95 for Mac OS X 10.2.5 through 10.4.x.
CEO Steve Jobs says among other practices, it's 'saying no to 1,000 things' so as to concentrate on the 'really important' creations" -- BusinessWeek.
Macworld's Chris Breen takes a first look at the brand-new iPod nano and is amazed at all the power they can pack into such a small package.
Questions about an iPod cellphone have been rife in nerd circles for months. So how is Apple's offering? -- New York Times.
Network video cameras let owners monitor their home remotely on the Web. The cameras offer much better video quality than in the past, come in wireless versions, and allow users to zoom in and scan a room. -- New York Times.
Since the early days of XSLT, many have asked whether it was possible to automate the creation of XSLT stylesheets. The general idea of filling out a form or dragging some icons around, then clicking a button and seeing a productive stylesheet generated from your input has always appealed to people. However, the problem of generating working XSLT syntax from the result of someone clicking on pull-down menus and radio buttons has not attracted many takers. -- O'Reilly XML.
Solutions to the podcast hosting problems of bandwidth and storage. -- O'Reilly .
In addition to standardizing on the OpenDocument file format, the state of Massachusetts has decided to shun Microsoft's Office XML format. Is Massachusetts committed to open standards, or is this just a bargaining chip? -- Ars Technica.
MacGuru Joe Biedlingmaier writes:
Do we have to use UT's provided Cisco VPN in order to connect to UT, or can we use the built-in VPN on our Mac's to connect? If we can use the built-in VPN, does anyone know how to configure it?
Check out OIT's VPN Client Distribution Page. It includes the software, a config file and instructions.
MacGuru Ray Adams writes:
Someone has implied that Eudora will work for the new UTK e-mail system. If so, What changes do I need to make to just keep on using Eudora?
Research says that it should work. You might try the following settings:
Email address: Your_UT_NetID@ecp.utk.edu
Incoming mail server: ecpet.ecp.utk.edu
Outgoing mail server: smtp.utk.edu
Outlook Web Access Server: ecpet.ecp.utk.edu
Check Use SSL port: 993
That said given the use UT plans for the new server you might look at moving to Entourage.
Under its digital music dominance, labels grow restless, and rival services and players are springing up. How can Jobs & Co. keep its lead? -- BusinessWeek.
Apple Computer is preparing a major announcement next week, dropping hints of something as critical to the company's future as the release of the original iPod in 2001. -- c|net.
The full list of AppleCare Knowledge Base documents changed within the last seven (7) days.
BusinessWeek thinks that Apple's Intel transition could be a catalyst for increases in market share that are already occurring. "Apple's computer sales are growing at a rate more than twice the industry average. In July, research firm IDC reported that Apple PC sales grew by 37% in the second quarter, compared with a 16.6% rate for the PC industry as a whole. That was enough to push Apple's share of the U.S. PC market to 4.5% in the same period, up from 3.7% in the second quarter of last year. The switch to Intel, if negotiated properly, could prove to be the turning point by enabling Apple to grab a larger slice of the PC market. But it won't happen without challenges. The changeover won't begin until next year and isn't expected to be completed until sometime in 2007."
Some schools are handing out laptops to every student, giving a boost to Apple. -- CNN/Money.
Apple has filed patents for a graphical user interface for browsing, searching and presenting media items and a data-driven layout engine. -- Macsimum News.
If you work on CSS using either of Bare Bones Software's text editors, you might be interested in my latest project: CSS syntax checking scripts for BBEdit and TextWrangler. They're a combination of Perl and AppleScript that allows you to syntax-check CSS files using the W3C's CSS Validation Service. Errors and warnings from the validation service are displayed in a results browser, very similar in effect to BBEdit's built-in HTML syntax checker. -- Daring Fireball.
We began this story by buying an older graphite 400Mhz G4 tower from ebay.de some months ago. After some trials and tribulations with the processor upgrade, we simply wanted to put this information out there to help who it may, after all we never enjoy seeing macs in the trash. -- Engadget.
From lost files to time savers to smart folders, Macworld's experts show you how to get the most out of OS X 10.4's potent search tool.
As part of a new wave of outsourcing to India, some tutors teach Americans using the Internet. -- New York Times.
Forget the tired "smiley curve" or the all-faders-on-stun settings most people use on graphic EQs. After this music fan posted his "perfect" EQ curve for iTunes, a recording engineer made it even better by turning it upside down. -- O'Reilly Developer Weblogs.
Automator provides an intuitive drag-and-drop workbench for quickly streamlining repetitive tasks. Here's a look at creating workflows and working around Automator's inherent limitations. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
You have a digital camera and have taken the typical shots of family and friends. Now what? Here are ten tips to make your next batch of digital images so impressive that people will ask: "Hey, what type of camera do you have?" Guess what? It's not the camera. -- O'Reilly MacDevCenter.
Their work is a road map to what's hot in emerging technology--and their achievements will shape the world we live in for decades to come. Technology Review's top 35 innovators under the age of 35.
To help them understand the mystery of inherited diseases, Dr. Michael Barmada and his research team at the University of Pittsburgh have assembled the world's second-largest genetics cluster -- made up of Xserve G5s and Xserve RAIDs and managed with Xsan software. -- Apple PR.
Apple and Motorola are on track to launch the new iTunes phone this week, while Apple has some big changes planned for the iPod mini and Shuffle. And there's even news of Madonna. -- Ars Technica.
If you upgrade to Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger from an earlier version of Mac OS X, and continue to use an existing user account whose password contains high ASCII characters (those that can be typed using the Option key), Mac OS X 10.4 may start up to a blue screen if you have automatic login enabled. If automatic login isn't enabled (you get the login screen), you may be unable to log in if your password contains high ASCII characters. -- AppleCare Knowledge Base.
MacInTouch reader Art McGee raised a red flag about file-permission abuse by bad installers:
I have just examined the contents of the Palm Desktop 4.2.1 Revision C package installer, and I have come to the conclusion that either PalmOne is intentionally trying to damage our computers, or the software is a trojan horse that someone uploaded in place of the real software.
I am another very dissatisfy customer with Apple. Especially on this display problem regarding iMac G5, and the way they treat customer as a liability, when its them, who had serious problem with the quality assurance procedure. -- MacNN Forums.
You see computer prices dropping. You see specs improving. You start thinking it's time to buy a new machine. But lost in the numbers and the endless lists of features is what hardly anybody can bear to discuss for fear of apoplexy: the worst "out-of-box" experience since Pandora's. -- Forbes.
As you're probably aware, Apple recently released an update to Safari, bringing it to version 2.0.1 (for those running 10.4) or 1.3.9 (for 10.3.x users). But what you may not know is that this isn't actually the most current version of Safari. -- Macworld.
How to establish a VPN connection at startup?
If you have Internet Connect configured so that your VPN connection is the default, you could do it with this simple AppleScript:
tell application "Internet Connect"
activate
connect
quit
end tell
Save it as an application and make it a login item. When you next login to your account, the VPN connection will be established.
Recent Forbes/ article on SourceForge and the blog on SugarCRM's functionality differences between open source and pro versions raise interesting questions. If you are contemplating on a new open source venture - my recommendation is not to differentiate (functionally) between the commercial and open source versions. -- O'Reilly Developer Weblogs.
One of the features of Tiger that I've come to love is the Address Book syncing process that's supported through .Mac. It's stayed out of the public eye for a while, and that's a shame. -- O'Reilly Developer Weblogs.
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is the family of technologies that allow IP networks to be used for voice applications, such as telephony, voice instant messaging, and teleconferencing. VoIP entails solutions at almost every layer of an IP network--from specialized voice applications (like Skype) all the way down to low-level quality measures that keep those applications running smoothly. -- O'Reilly Network.
ZDNet is running a story that sheds new light on the decision by Massachusetts to switch to open formats for the commonwealth's official documents. Eric Kriss, Secretary of Administration & Finance for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, told CRN on Friday that Massachusetts had concerns about the openness of Microsoft XML schemas as well as with potential patent issues that could arise in the future.' The article also quotes a Microsoft executive on further reason that Microsoft's upcoming Office 12 will not support OpenDocument.
A new browser tool lets you rewrite anyone's homepage. -- Wired.
Well it seems that on the trivia test this is a pretty smart group with over 75% of you getting 16 or more right.
The new poll wants to know what you have added to your Mac.
ComputerWorld has a review of Apple's latest revision 14" iBook G4. "And while I know that iBooks are designed largely as consumer machines, I do have some quibbles about the screen and keyboard. In short, they don't measure up to the hardware used in Apple's PowerBooks. Call me spoiled, but as far as I'm concerned, there's no better laptop keyboard than the one used in all three PowerBook models. And while the screen on the 12-in. PowerBook is nothing special (it's essentially the same one used in the 12-i. iBook), the widescreen LCDs used in the 15- and 17-inch PowerBooks are bright and vivid."
Maplesoft released a Maple 10.01 update for all editions of its widely-used analytical computation software includes enhancements in a variety of areas, including: Export facilities for Maple T.A., RTF, and MATLAB, Conversion between 1-D and 2-D Math, Document mode, and Mac OS X performance.
Mac OS X Tiger makes it easy to create just the right Mac experience for everyone in your home. Its simple multi-user setup and powerful parental controls let you choose how much freedom to give each family member -- while protecting your little ones from things they shouldn't see.
Vicomsoft is delighted to announce the latest release of its flagship software, InterGate, for Windows and Mac OS X, including Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger).
Already an award winning product for e-security, network management and connectivity, providing firewall, content filtering and web caching, InterGate 9 boasts the new features below, call us today to book your personal online demo.
Secret shortcuts. Hidden helpers. Mysterious menus. You could spend months tracking down all the undocumented features tucked away in Mac OS X 10.4, Apple's newest operating system. But chances are, you're too busy using Tiger for more-important tasks--such as doing your job. So Macworld sent in a team of specially trained spies to uncover Tiger's deepest, darkest secrets.
If you've used a Mac for any length of time at all, you're probably familiar with the Color Picker. The Color Picker is a small floating window through which you can choose colors for text, objects, lines, and other objects (depending on which application you're in when using it, of course). -- Macworld
A punk kid let me know about a little experiment... He and some friends were going to put OS x86 on his Dell. He offered transportation to an undisclosed site where the grand plan would unfold, and I told him I'd check it out. -- The Unofficial Apple Weblog.
News of the first sign that hardware-level DRM was to play a meaningful role in modern operating systems probably raised sales of antacids to many pundits, Mac users, and Slashdotters, all of whom were fluffed up like a soufflé with a frenzy of angry comments. But I wouldn't be surprised if most of you said, "Huh?" -- ATPM.
This journal has become the Survival of New Orleans blog. In less perilous times it was simply a blog for me to talk smack and chat with friends. Now this journal exists to share firsthand experience of the disaster and its aftermath with anyone interested. Wired has a story about these folks.
I personally have used Windows since its 3.11 days, back then I was only a child and I thought Paint was great, but since then Windows has come a long way. For the past year or two I have been constantly thinking about Apple Macs and how much I'd like to have one. Well, recently I took the plunge and bought a Mac Mini. -- OSNews.com.
Although he's enthusiastic about Apple's switch to Intel processors, Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen has no illusions about the task ahead. In an interview with c|net, Chizen said Apple cofounder and chief executive Steve Jobs likes to "trivialize the process" and "make it seem easy." Not so, says Chizen: "moving the apps over is not that easy...Getting over to MacTel is work." Still, the Adobe chief is optimistic that in the long run, users will get better performance and greater value from the new Apple hardware.
Inexplicitly, Apple has silently nuked the 30-day, money-back guarantee that they unveiled just yesterday. Trouble at the Mac mini corral? -- Ars Technica.
A hidden user is a user that can login to the system, but the account will not be displayed in the Login Window, where all of the other accounts on the machine are listed. In lab or work environments, it's often desired to have a hidden user that has Admin rights for administrative functions and/or other special circumstances. -- Mac OS X Hints.
The Windows SuperSite compares the Microsoft Windows Vista Beta 1 with Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) in terms of aesthetics, functionality, and more.
Some websites are being overloaded, but the American Red Cross is helping victims of Hurricane Katrina, while c|net has a list of useful links and The Advocate explains how to help as a volunteer.
Pundits wonder if Creative's controversy is a joint attempt by the company and Microsoft to shake Apple from its perch. -- Forbes.com.
The alert named Apple Computer four times, noting that Creative Labs had applied for its patent well before Apple's iPod hit the market. The implication, as subtle as a freight train, was that Creative planned to assert its patent against Apple. -- Forbes.com.
First, this is not the VMWare hack, it was installed on the notebook, so presumably the source has access to a legit copy of the OS. Next, it supposedly installed without a hitch, and everything down to the wireless card worked like a charm. Lastly, it was an AMD64 model, from the look of it, and it is most likely this one. Hmmm, that is interesting. -- The Inquirer.
This holiday season, there will likely be a free-for-all as competing technologies, with old-school heavy (but sharp and cheap) CRT (cathode ray tube)-based big TVs going up against plasmas, LCDs (liquid crystal displays) and DLP (digital light processing)rear-projection models, as well as the new LCOS (liquid crystal on silicon)-based digital TVs. -- Forbes.com.
Jeff Adkins over at Low End Mac makes a case for Apple releasing Mac OS 9.2 as a free download.
A variety of Internet phone calling, called PC-to-phone service, is gaining momentum, allowing PC users with high-speed connections to make calls and receive calls from regular phones. A look at some of the offerings. -- New York Times.
Creative Technology, a maker of portable music players, has accused Apple Computer of violating a software patent covering the way users navigate music selections. -- New York Times.
If you've ever seriously tried to capture audio on your Mac, you've quickly noticed that it only has one real audio input channel - if you want more you'll need some hardware. -- O'Grady's PowerPage.
An app-by-app look at Creative Suite 2's most compelling new features. -- O'Reilly Digital Media.
The Inquirer reports that the state of Massachusetts has performed a modern-day Boston Tea Party, by dumping Microsoft Office in the proverbial ocean. According to the article, "every state document must be in PDF or using Open Office formats' starting in 2007."
Science Blog reports that U.S. and Israeli researchers have developed a method for enabling a computer program to scan text in any of a number of languages, including English and Chinese, and autonomously and without previous information infer the underlying rules of grammar. The rules can then be used to generate new and meaningful sentences. The method also works for such data as sheet music or protein sequences.
The inner-workings for a clever little plugin named Photon that enables photo export from iPhoto directly to Movable Type and other publishing tools (to create photo galleries like this) are now available for anyone to explore and build upon. -- StopDesign.
