Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Top Stories
Apple To Slow Pace Of Mac OS X Tweaks
Apple plans to continue rapidly bringing out new verions of Mac OS X, but it won't continue at quite the pace it's maintained in recent years.
News
Apple Centres For Middle East
The distributor of Apple products in the Middle East is seeking to set up the region's first chain of Apple Centres.
Mac EverQuest Canned
Sony Online Entertainment has confirmed that it has discontinued development of EverQuest for Mac.
Mac SE Alive And Kicking On Web
In act act of selfless cyber preservation, a pair of German Web designers has created a working simulation of Apple Computer's classic Mac SE on the Web.
Apple Investigating "Extremely Critical" Flaw
Apple says it is taking the Mac OS X security vulnerability "very seriously" and is "acitvely investigating this potential security issue."
Mac Attack
The iPod has made Apple a tech darling, but other new products may be music to investors' ears.
iTunes: China's Latest Import
Obtaining distribution through a Chinese vendor is an important step for Apple, and gaining that traction is crucial.
Opinion
Thanks For Nothing — The Grouch's Apple Woes In China
Apple's zealousness in its support of copyright protection has gone too far. Frankly, it doesn't owe the music industry anything.
Review
From VHS To DVD: Give New Life To Old Movies
Transferring old film and video to DVD can be a time-consuming process — but it's well worth the effort. This step-by-step guide will show you how to get set up and what to do with the movies once they're on your Mac.
Adobe PageMaker Plug-In Pack: Basic Add-Ons To InDesign CS Enhance Its Functionality For Diverse Users
PageMaker Plug-in Pack will prove useful to many InDesign users. It adds long-established PageMaker automated-bullet and -numbering tools, as well as options that simplify access to InDesign's various functions.
LaCie Bigger Disk: Four Drives In One ENclosure Equals Massive Capacity
If you need one huge volume to organize your data, the LaCie Bigger Disk is a clean, simple solution.
Color Laser Printers: Six Models In The $1,000 Range Feature Enhanced Speed And Print Quality
Any of these printers would be an acceptable choice for printing heavy text and occasional color graphics. But we recommend the Lexmark C510n for its generous RAM configuration, expansion options, great print quality, and rapid speed.
Love Macs? Then Learn To Love Macsurfer
It does a bang up job of providing the Apple community with interesting reads day in day out.
Tutorial: Now You See 'Em, Now You Don't: Invisible Files In Mac OS X
Even though you can't see them, invisible files are ciritcla to the operation of your Mac.
Integrating Xgrid Into Cocoa Applications, Part 2
GarageBand And Pasting
What happens when you select notes in one of GarageBand's Software Instrument tracks and paste them into an existing track?
Dark Horizons: Lore
In its current state, Lore is quite competent. However, it seems to lack the extra hooks needed to really start reeling in players.
Sidetrack
We're Going Slower On OS Updates
"We're slowing that (pace) down a little bit... becuase that's not a sustainable rate. But you'll still see us go really fast," said Avie Tevanian.
My read: the first sentence sets the expectation that Tiger might not be released this year as many people (including me) have guessed. The second sentence is meant for damage control; after all, Steve Jobs have claimed that one of the strength of Mac OS X is that the operating system allows Apple to rapidly add new features.
Of course, Apple can prove me wrong by announcing Tiger's Fall availability during WWDC, and sell it at US$19.95 for those who bought a new Mac on or after WWDC just to laugh in my face for buying a new iBook one month before WWDC.
Oh, you didn't know? I just bought a new 12-inch iBook G4 this past weekend, to replace my aging Pismo. Going from a 400MHz G3 to a 1GHz G4 is an overwhelming experience. Plus, the smallness, the lightness, and — more importantly — the quietness are really great too.
In fact, the iBook G4, the cheapest Mac I've brought in my entire life, makes the 2.6GHz Dell laptop a downright wimp.
Why is the metal interface of iTunes on Windows so much better-looking than QuickTime Player on Windows?
Julio Ojeda-Zapata: [Apple] now lets .Mac members create HomePage web pages on PCs running WIndows XP and Internet Explorer 6... Looks like iTunes and the iPod for Windows were only the beginning...
It's not exactly usable yet, but, yes, it can be installed.
Wasn't Trained? Wasn't Trained?
One of the comments on the Iraq prionser abuse that I hear often on BBC World Service is that the prison guards wasn't trained for their role, as if this will lessen the guards' alleged crimes.
I, on the other hand, find this justification somehow absurd. If, say, the guards aren't performing in their job capacity — maybe some prisoners escaped, for example — then, yeah, one can use the excuse that they aren't properly trained. But, to abuse prisoners (allegedly)? Does one need training in order to know that you are not supposed to stack naked prisoners as a human pyramid?
Wintel
A First Look At Longhorn
In this article, I will walk you through some of the features in the most recent build of Longhorn.