Tuesday, November 21, 2000
Top Stories
Should Apple Think Retail?
There's the question of how thin the company can stretch itself in the endless quest for vertical integration.
Resellers Skeptical, Curious Of Apple Retail Stores
"For Apple to make this a reality and not even tell local dealers near Palo Alto it is coming, is just plain unpressional. Period."
Netscape Goes Bonkers
The biggest single complaint about Netscape 6.0 revolves around the way they reimplemented every UI widget from scratch. Indeed, they felt that this was the only way to get cross platform compatibility.
News
Resellers Skeptical, Curious Of Apple Retail Stores
"For Apple to make this a reality and not even tell local dealers near Palo Alto it is coming, is just plain unpressional. Period."
Where Next For Corel?
A smarter bet for Corel could be to go back to basics, and capitalise on its foothold in the creative content business.
Apple Slices Price Of Dual-Processor PowerMacs
Apple Computer launched another set of rebates Monday, this time shaving up to $500 off the cost of its dual-processor PowerMacs.
Apple Ad Plays Off Florida Ballot Design
You gotta love the folks who design Apple ads.
Mac OS X Could Take Apple 'Places It's Never Been'
"Most Unix workstations aren't fun to use. iMacs running Mac OS X are."
Opinion
Chip Chat
To many of us, it looks as though Motorola is pushing Apple over the edge and into the abyss, hence the hue and cry for Apple to seek processing power from another vendor.
OS X Is A Big, Scary, Unknown Beast
Why does OS X scare me? Probably most importantly, it's still very unfamiliar.
The Windows 9x Witch Is Dead (Almost!)
Microsoft's move to the NT code base is important, but this doesn't mean that the company faces clear sailing; there's a huge installed base of Windows 98 out there, and the transition will not be without challenges.
Resellers Should Embrace Apple's Retail Foray
Increasing sales channels and boosting the Mac's profile through an Apple store will be a boon for all existing resellers. Some sales might be lost in the near term. But in the long run, everyone will benefit.
Review
LaCie PocketDrive
The PocketDrive excels in the details. From the well conceived power supply to the anti-skid outer covering, the PocketDrive includes many small features that make the user's life simpler.
Netscape 6
I'm disappointed that AOL chose to release as final a product that is so obviously not a final release.
Browsing Made Beautiful: IE 5 Refines Tools
If you aren't using Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 as your Web browser, you should be. IE 5 is as near-perfect a browser as you'll find on the Mac or Windows.
How Steve Jobs Came Back From The Brink
Although "Second Coming" focuses on the life of one extraordinary, visionary and quirky person, it also offers valuable insights into the culture of the computer industry, the kinds of beyond-the-envelope thinkers who are involved in it and how they are changing the way the world works.
Review: 10 Optical Mice
Because the core technology is identical, performance of each mouse is very similar. What distinguishes one from the other are the design, plastics, buttons, software, and price.
Sidetrack
Joel Spolsky: Netscape 6 is just not very usable because it violates many rules of consistency.
Netscape 6 is not a Mac application because it doesn't behave like one. It is not a Windows application because it doesn't behave like one. In fact, Netscape 6 is like Word 6 on Mac — only worse.
Hello? You mean you weren't dead yet?
The Industry Standard have some breaking Comdex news: Bill Gates blah blah Ellison blah blah post-PC gadgets blah blah taxi lines yada yada cell phones blah blah blah.
Wintel
European Commission To Merge Microsoft Investigation
A consolidation would not only speed up the legal process, it would also strengthen the commission's case against Microsoft, competition lawyers said.
P4, What's It Good For?
So what does all this mean to you? Well, on the most widely-used applications, probably very little.
Intel Swats Pentium 4 Bug
Chip maker delivers a fix before processor ships in PCs, tweaking a glitch related to how the chip handles certain instructions.
Who Will Be King Of The Game Consoles?
As Sony scrambles to ramp up production of the PlayStation 2, two new combatants in the game console wars are wooing software developers to lay the groundwork for an assault on the market next year.
Microsoft Bids For Entry Into Games Market
While at first glance Microsoft's entry into the game market with its Xbox console may seem to have little significance for corporate users, the Xbox will have important, long-term implications for the corporate and home pervasive-computing environments and for organizations marketing to those environments.
"Romeo And Juliet" Bug Spreads On Outlook
A new virus dubbed "Romeo and Juliet" is attacking computers in Europe and America, but it is not as dangerous as the romance-themed "I Love You" virus, say computer experts.
Early P4s Contained Software Glitch
Intel admitted that early shipments of its brand new Pentium 4 chip contained the wrong software code forcing a recall of those chips.
Intel's Pentium 4 Had Early Glitch
Intel's early shipments of its Pentium 4 chips contained the wrong piece of software code, though it was corrected before the chips reached consumers, according to a report citing the company.
The Fallacy Of Moore's Law
We want software that actually runs on our machines. We want computers that do not crash every time we hit the left mouse button too quickly. I'm telling you, we're mad as hell and we're not going to reboot anymore!
MS Responds To Europe's Move To Open Up Windows
Microsoft filed its response to the European Commission's "statement of objections" on Friday, but both sides are keeping quiet about the case, and it could be months before the next move is made.
Microsoft Dot 'Nyet'
Does anyone actually understand the Microsoft .Net initiative? The idea came out of left field at Microsoft, and it's surrounded by too many buzzwords and generalities to be understandable. I'm not sure the company knows what .Net is, or whether anybody does. It has the onerous smell of failure about it already.
Pentium 4: New Chip, Old Problems
With the Pentium 4, Intel has made the biggest update to its IA-32 processor line in many years. In some ways, this is good — the PIII design is running out of steam rapidly — but Intel's slavish devotion to ever-increasing clock speeds has resulted in some trade-offs that will disappoint the raw speed addicts.
Pentium 4 Fails To Outpace Athlon, Testers Say
Intel's initial Pentium 4 chips released Monday don't provide a real performance advantage and are often slower when compared with the fastest Athlon chips from Advanced Micro Devices, benchmark testers and analysts say.
Pentium 4 Computers Hit The Market
But just as important as new PCs is that Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel, along with several review sites, will release performance benchmarks for the chip that should keep analysts and computer enthusiasts busy for weeks.