Thursday, November 20, 2003
Top Stories
Apple CFO: Co. Has 'Really Strong' Music Position
Leveraging consumer products into sales of other Apple products is the strategy, he said.
News
Macworld Announces Best Of Show 2003
Macworld today announced the winners of the "Macworld Best of Show Awards," representing the most exciting new hardware and software products announced at MacExpo 2003 in London.
Virginia Polytechnic Institute And State University: Self-Service Math
Outfitted with nearly 550 iMac systems running Mac OS X, the Math Emporium has created a unique academic community in which students have control of their own learning.
Washington University In St. Louis: Art Works
Here's a look at why WUStL's School of Art went the Mac route, and the benefits that have been realized in the various majors.
Engineered Intelligence Brings Supercomputing To Power Mac G5 With Parallel Programming Software
District Given Technology Grant
Students at Alvarado, Barnard White and Csar Chvez middle schools will be spending a lot more time peering into computer screens this year.
iMac G4 1GB Memory Upgrades Available
Guitar.com Offers 'Great Apple Giveaway'
Apple Releases QuickTime 6 MPEG-2 Playback Component
QuickTime 6 now has the ability to play back MPEG-2 content via the QuickTime 6 MPEG-2 Playback Component. It is available as an add-on to QuickTime 6 for $19.99 in the Apple Store online.
Macintosh Users Join Kazaa Network
A new piece of file-swapping software for Macintosh computers is drawing thousands of downloads by offering peer-to-peer options previously available largely to Windows computers.
Poll: Innovation Defines Apple
Asked "What does Apple mean to you?", 36 per cent of Macworld Online readers said innovation was the company's defining characteristic.
Music Will Be Saved By Piracy Crackdown, Not iTunes: Study
Informa believes that online music sales will rise in the next five years, but will only represent a total of around 12 per cent of the market as a whole, with digital sales only making up 5.7 per cent.
Apple Crops Up In Windows World
What's a Mac person to do at Comdex? Well, although the annual trade show is a Windows-dominated event, there are a few signs of Mac life here.
Naxos: Apple Overcharging For iTunes Albums
According to Naxos, the correct pricing for their albums in the ITMS should be $6, not the standard $10 per album fee currently being charged.
Opinion
Singing A Different Tune
Although I do credit Apple for their cleverness in this venture, their timing deserves the most credit.
No, Virginia, There Is No Headless iMac
After five years of evolution, Apple's consumer offerings have reached a point where they've made the concept of a "headless iMac" as obsolete as the original bondi blue imac itself.
Linux, Microsoft And Mac
Whether Linux can overcome that accomplish what Apple hasn't in that regard remains an open question, at least on the corporate desktop.
Why Apple Is Tuning In
It seems the Big Five record companies are dragging out negotiations over the regional licences Apple needs to open download sites outside the United States. Why? It has to be money. Perhaps they see an auction developing.
Review
iPod As iGod
The iPod is fast changing the way people listen to music.
A Switcher's Story And His Review Of The New iBook G4
If you love Unix, and need a laptop that is light, durable, high-quality, quiet, has a long battery life, comes with OSX 10.3 Panther and is sheer eye-candy inside and out, then the new iBook G4 is the way to go.
Keynote's XML Connections
Keynote goes one step further than PowerPoint by making it easy to dynamically create presentations from within other applications.
15-Inch PowerBook G4s: Apple Hits The Sweet Spot, But Machines Have Inconsistent Quality
The new 15-inch PowerBook G4s are impressive pieces of engineering, with stunningly bright screens, plenty of power, all the right ports, and a solid feel. We hope that by the time you read this, Apple will have worked out the kinks in the consistency of its PowerBooks, so the laptop you receive will be the laptop you love.
FireWire Web Cams: Apple's iSight Goes Up Against Established Products
The iSight's overall picture quality was noticeably better than that of the other cameras. It almost always provided a sharp, crisply defined image and did the best job with movement and backlighting. The Pyro slightly edged out the iBot in image quality, but the two were closely matched. The Fire-i had the lowest overall picture quality, but it made up for this in other areas.
After Effects 6.0 Professional: Titling And Keying Tools Provide Terrific New Core Capabilities
After Effects 6.0 is a terrific upgrade — especially considering the lower price — for its new type-handling features alone. We recommend it to anyone involved in dynamic media.
DVD Studio Pro 2.0: Elegant New Interface, Feature Refinement Streamline Authoring
DVD Studio Pro 2.0 is a spectacular update, but we recommend that veteran users ease into the new version of the program. By all means, buy the upgrade and start learning to use it. But as with any major upgrade, don't switch to it in the middle of a project, and don't make your first DVD Studio Pro 2 project a complex one that has a very tight deadline.
Toast 6 Titanium: A Good Program Gets Even Better
Toast 6 includes every feature you can reasonably expect from this type of app. It's ideal if you have an external DVD burner that didn't come with DVD-authoring software, or if you burn a lot of CDs and DVDs.
Pixels 3D 5.0: 3-D-Modeling And -Rendering App Blends Function And Low Price
Pixels 3D 5.0 doesn't provide the ultimate tool set for creating 3-D animations and still images. But at $399, it's certainly an excellent choice for beginners. And it may be a reasonable option for professional artists who don't need the elaborate features of high-end, and more expensive, 3-D tools.
Soundtrack 1.0: Apple's Flexible Music-Creation Application Is Fun And Easy To Use
Soundtrack won't instantly transform you into Mozart, but its easy-to-use workflow does make creating music a pleasure.
Chartsmith 1.2: Innovative OS X Charting Program Has A Few Rough Edges
Despite a few rough edges, Chartsmith is a highly capable charting tool that's easy to use once you learn its idiosyncrasies. It sells for less than half the price of DeltaGraph, and even lower educational pricing makes it attractive for students and teachers.
Reviews In Brief: 24U Email OSAX 2.2, Cookie Muncher 1.0.6, JumpDrive Secure, KidzMail 1.1.2, MacAstronomica 2.0.2, MacResponder 1.0.2, Mystical Lighting, PodQuest 1.0.1, TimeCache 5.1.5, WorkStrip 3.0, Zoom & Pan 3.0
The Game Room: Survival Of The Fittest
Mac Gems: More Fully Functional
Some of the best gems are those that let you do what you should have been able to do in the first place.
Verbatim Store 'N' Go USB Drive
Apple 'sudo' On Laptops May Let Local Users Execute Commands Without Authenticating
It is reported that the sudo application uses the graphical interface clock instead of the system clock. When sudo is executed via Apple's Terminal.app and then the laptop is placed in sleep mode and subsequently woken up, the laptop may take 10 - 20 seconds to update the graphical clock. As a result, a physically local user can wake up the laptop and execute sudo commands with root privileges without having to authenticate within the 10 - 20 second period.
Sidetrack
EXERCISE FOR THE DAY : Can somebody please go to the CompUSA store in Emeryville, CA, look for Mr. Ditson Garcia, and ask to buy a Mac. E-mail his response to me here. :-)
RUMORS DU JOUR : Second generation of Power Mac G5 is coming in March.
1 billion tunes from McDonald's, — the rumor is back.
iPod AppleCare, next week.
Wintel
Microsoft Re-Explains .Net Strategy
The software giant's elusive strategy — a hot topic a few years ago but overshadowed by other Microsoft efforts lately — was declared alive and well during a panel at the Comdex trade show.
Microsoft Settles Class Actions In Dakotas
Microsoft Corp. has agreed to pay as much as $18.33 million to settle class action lawsuits in North Dakota and South Dakota that alleged the vendor overcharged for its software.
Bill Gates: Unplugged
For two decades, Bill Gates has used his Comdex keynote speech to mark out his vision for technologies from the Internet to XML. This year he used the bully pulpit to make it clear that the industry is at one of its perennial crossroads.
Microsoft's New Security Mojo
Rather than address its own problems, Microsoft has decided to use creative marketing as a substitute for good security and software development. The problem isn't that virus writers are exploiting Windows; it's that Microsoft makes Windows easy to exploit by anyone with a modicum of programming know-how. Instead of accepting responsibility, the company is trying to pass the blame for such problems off onto others.