Slashdot Mirror

So we may see single G5 iMacs and eMacs some time between now and WWDC, as the PowerMacs will most likely be all dual-processor machines.

If AppleInsider is anything to go by, then Apple also seems to be developing an iPod with these sort of features. See story: Apple readying 4th-generation iPod. Apple already learnt their lesson, circa 1990, whereby standing proud, simply give the competition time to catch up - in that case it was MS catching up, and bypassing, with MS-Windows. If Apple is smart, they will keep one step ahead of the game.

According to an Apple Insider article, Apple is already ahead of this game. They will deliver sooner, at a lower cost, and very likely a better product. Guesses (aren't they always with Apple?) include an intro around April 28 for the first anniversary of the iTMS.

Sources: Apple readying 4th-generation iPod

(snip) While sources could not pin-point a specific day or month of introduction, they said the soon to be released player would boast a 50GB hard disk capable of holding 12,500 songs and carry an approximate cost of $499.

Unlike the recent capacity-centric revisions to the iPod line, the 4th-generation iPod will host a number of architectural advancements and new features. Most apparent, sources say, is the presence of a 2-inch color screen for displaying photos stored on the pod, from the palm of your hand.

The player will reportedly also adopt a video output jack that will allow users to connect their iPods to television sets, sources said. Meanwhile, no mention was made in regards to an output jack capable of relaying audio to a home entertainment center. (/snip)

There is a more recent article here.

There were rumors of apple buying 3dStudio back in December 2003. I couldn't see that happen because there is no current OSX Port. For apple to add that software to their Pro apps it would take quite a bit of development before being able to add that feather to their cap. That rumor must have confused 3dstudio with Alias Maya???

The 2GB model, according to the rumor sites, was suppose to be priced between $99-$129 while the 4GB model was suppose to be $149-$179.

If you follow the second link into some depth, there's a claim that the new mini-iPod will be flashed based instead of HD based.

http://www.appleinsider.com/news.php?id=334

There are rumours that a future version of Mac OS X will have virtual desktops. For example, see this AppleInsider article.

As mentioned in the article, Panther already has an early iteration of this functionality, but it's currently very buggy and only spawns one extra desktop. The article describes how to activate this feature, right now, for those that can't wait for Apple to officially implement it in a future OS revision. We probably won't have to wait very long for that, though, because Apple is probably aware of the popularity of CodeTek's VirtualDesktop and they'll want to jump on that bandwagon as soon as possible.

D.

Personally, I am a fan of Eugene's Half arsed Napster 2.0 rundown over at the Apple Insider message board.

Screw 10.2.8, Panther has been declared Gold Master!!!

From Apple Insider

that Office will certainly be last. That's still a good source of revenue.

Many of my predictions are indeed based on a number of different rumor sites, but not copied directly. Some of the rumors I've read I disagree with, and some I agree with.

For example, I think it was Mac OS Rumors that said the G5 will not be called the G5, and I disagree with them. This issue was also mentioned by As the Apple Turns, who said that according to AppleInsider, it would be called the PowerMac G5. I agree with them. That doesn't mean my prediction is based on theirs, merely that we both made the same prediction.

The nature of the PPC970 chip, and that Apple will use it at all, is based largely on a couple of articles at ArsTechnica, but they didn't say anything about when it would ship.

The 1.4, dual 1.6 and dual 1.8GHz clock speeds are consistent with Mac OS Rumors, although I'm sure I've seen other speeds suggested elsewhere. I believe I've heard 2GHz suggested, and I don't agree with that (not for WWDC). I forgot to mention pricing, but I predict the low-end and mid-range models will be $1499 and $1999 respectively; this is based on Apple's current pricing, not on any rumor site.

USB2 support I heard somewhere, but don't remember where (it had to do with motherboard specs). Bluetooth, FireWire 800 and Airport Extreme are currently shipping features.

I've heard about the 15" Aluminum PowerBook from a few sources I think. The PowerBook G5 has also been mentioned in multiple places including this Slashdot article, but I don't expect to see it until next year, possibly announced at MacWorld San Francisco but probably not.

The G5 shipping with 10.2 was a possibility I had been considering, but was confirmed by ThinkSecret and eWEEK. Same source for gcc 3.3. Pricing is based on Apple's history.

The multiple simultaneous users feature I heard from a few places quite some time ago; I don't remember where. Apple's WWDC material says Panther and WebCore will be demonstrated at WWDC; that's no secret. As for PAC and WPAD, I haven't seen that suggested anywhere.

In any case, a rumor is "A piece of unverified information of uncertain origin usually spread by word of mouth." Many of my predictions are based on rumors. The sites I got the rumors from are mostly just passing on rumors they've heard. I don't feel that not citing sources was inappropriate, since these are MY predictions, BASED ON what many others have said, not simply a copy of someone else's predictions. I would expect others to be able to make similar predictions, based on overlapping sources.

While it's true that a LOT of people have defected to Adobe InDesign, there are also quite a few shops that still have all of their workflow built around Quark. These shops have been holding back on getting new Mac hardware because a lot of the new stuff can't boot into OS 9. Now we have a native version of Quark in one week, plus the much-rumored announcement in two weeks of PPC 970-based Macs at WWDC, and suddenly we have quite a bit of pent-up hardware demand combined with some compelling new hardware. Looks like a good sales summer for Apple.

1) Export your bookmarks from Chimera 2) Import them into IE 3) Trash your Safari items from the Library folder and Preferences folder (a com. item, I believe). 4) Launch Safari again to re-import your IE bookmarks.

Over at AppleInsider There has been much talk of IBM using an on chip integrated memory controller. This would be good because it would be FAST, but bad because it would probably use a proprietary form of RAM. So I guess we'll see.

Before you pre-announce, create a device that can transmit your discovery. Perhaps a cellular-enabled computer in a rugged enclosure. Bury it. Not just anywhere, mind you. Find a place where erosion is predictable. The marshlands of Louisiana come to mind, but drilling into an iceburg would work well too. The device should be designed to float to the surface and transmit the data when it is freed.

Another option is to release some silly Outlook trojan that has the data encoded within. Set it to go active when the time on time.windows.com matches some pre-set time. (This avoids incorrectly set clocks, and is the sort of network query one would expect from a windows box.)

Get a programmer with a wireless phone manufacturer on your side. Hide the code in the firmware for a wireless phone. The phone will transmit your data to both the owner and anyone else in the phone book. To avoid an overload, the phone should wait a unique time, perhaps based on a number derived from the owner's calling habits.

Hide it in a mass-produced media product. Many films and albums have used a password based web component for extra hype. (Swordfish and Wu-Tang Forever come to mind) Why can't the next Brittney CD have an ECD with several hidden features, each unlocked with a password... Including your little innovation.

Have Steve Jobs announce it at MacWorld. Oh wait nevermind.

Apple Insider has a story on this, as well.

It's true that this has been rumored for quite some time, and nothing has come of the rumors. The key reason that Apple Insider seems inclined to believe it this time is essentially that:

It's no surprise that a major change to the iMac is coming. What has been difficult to nail down is exactly what will be changed, and when these changes will occur. What has precluded this product from being introduced is component availability and prices: AppleInsider sources have revealed, however, that the prices of key components has reached an acceptable level at which Apple can sell the new iMac at a price palatable to consumers and still retain profitability on its most popular line.

We'll see...

I'm really still incredibly confused by what's going on in the wierd little apple-ibm-motorola triumverate that is the PPC platform, but nearest i can gather Apple has been mostly having Motorola manufacture its chips exclusively for some reason, possibly (but probably not) that IBM doesn't like altivec and apple really needs altivec (because if you are going to be rendering the entire screen in PDF then having a powerful SIMD vector processing unit becomes really really helpful..). And according to some rather shady sources, Motorola has been having horrible problems with manufacturing-- which, if these shady sources are to be believed, can explain why the Mhz levels of the chips Apple has been using have stayed constant for a really long time now, and why there aren't enough 733 Mhz chips around to make dual 733 machines possible. So apple and motorola are just kind of wandering off to the side and getting lost while IBM sits alone in the corner and does really cool things with the POWER4 chips.

But, umm, this is just my interpretation of things based on the scant material i have read. I wish i knew how accurate i was.

Umm, but anyway, My question is this: What happens in the little PPC world from here? Does IBM just kind of keep doing its thing with the POWER line and toss Apple/Motorola some patent liscenses from time to time while Apple/Motorola stay alone and try to get their shit together, or are IBM's new metal technologies going to convince apple to start moving toward them? Or.. umm.. i don't even know what i'm saying anymore. OK, just, either way, will we be seeing improvements in apple's PPC line anytime soon, and does this new IBM announcement mean anything to apple customers? Or is this all irrelivant, because this is just one of these things where the technology not ready to move outside the lab, and implementation of this technology in production chips is five years away at best or something?

Oh dear.. Uhhh.. i'm pretty sure just about everything i've said in this incoherent post has been wrong, but i'm posting it anyway in hopes that someone who is actually informed could step in and explain what is happening. That would be really cool :)

All i know is, i drool at IBM's chip technologies.. all of them, pretty much.

I'm really still incredibly confused by what's going on in the wierd little apple-ibm-motorola triumverate that is the PPC platform, but nearest i can gather Apple has been mostly having Motorola manufacture its chips exclusively for some reason, possibly (but probably not) that IBM doesn't like altivec and apple really needs altivec (because if you are going to be rendering the entire screen in PDF then having a powerful SIMD vector processing unit becomes really really helpful..). And according to some rather shady sources, Motorola has been having horrible problems with manufacturing-- which, if these shady sources are to be believed, can explain why the Mhz levels of the chips Apple has been using have stayed constant for a really long time now, and why there aren't enough 733 Mhz chips around to make dual 733 machines possible. So apple and motorola are just kind of wandering off to the side and getting lost while IBM sits alone in the corner and does really cool things with the POWER4 chips.

But, umm, this is just my interpretation of things based on the scant material i have read. I wish i knew how accurate i was.

Umm, but anyway, My question is this: What happens in the little PPC world from here? Does IBM just kind of keep doing its thing with the POWER line and toss Apple/Motorola some patent liscenses from time to time while Apple/Motorola stay alone and try to get their shit together, or are IBM's new metal technologies going to convince apple to start moving toward them? Or.. umm.. i don't even know what i'm saying anymore. OK, just, either way, will we be seeing improvements in apple's PPC line anytime soon, and does this new IBM announcement mean anything to apple customers? Or is this all irrelivant, because this is just one of these things where the technology not ready to move outside the lab, and implementation of this technology in production chips is five years away at best or something?

Oh dear.. Uhhh.. i'm pretty sure just about everything i've said in this incoherent post has been wrong, but i'm posting it anyway in hopes that someone who is actually informed could step in and explain what is happening. That would be really cool :)

All i know is, i drool at IBM's chip technologies.. all of them, pretty much.

Didn't Bill Gates get arrested in Albuquerque?

While I admit that this is rather interesting evidence, and I'm no fan of M$, when the apple powermac g4 cube was first rumored at, at least one website offered evidence that it was faked in photoshop (note that they have since removed their photoshop analyzation of the images of the cube). If apple users (notably image experts) can't really figure out if an image is faked, how can we expect others to?

I'm reading this thread using Mozilla 0.8 (2001021502) Wallstreet MacOS 8.6 vga out to a Dell monitor, and the widget works fine. Perhaps it's interacting badly with your video card &/or driver?

I want to know where the heck IE 5.5 went. It was demoed at MacHack last summer. I can only guess they postponed it until the OS X release party.

Ah, but iTunes is based heavily on SoundJam MP, which, according to AppleInsider, Apple bought, programmer and all. (Yes, it's a rumors site, but playing with iTunes easily confirms it.) So the good performance and quality are mostly inherited from SJMP.

Which probably means the end of the line for SoundJam, which is a shame because iTunes can't use skins, and it's not loading the SJ visualization plug-ins even though it has a folder for them.

Avi

And there's the new PowerBook G4 coming soon too.

----------------------------

Configurations for the new Power Mac G4 systems are shaping up as follows:

*Power Mac G4 450 MHz, 64 MB RAM, 30 GB, DVD, 56K
*Power Mac G4 Dual 500 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 40 GB, DVD, CD-RW, 56K
*Power Mac G4 Dual 600 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 40 GB, DVD, CD-RW, 56K

Here's the article

Configurations for the new Power Mac G4 systems are shaping up as follows:

*Power Mac G4 450 MHz, 64 MB RAM, 30 GB, DVD, 56K
*Power Mac G4 Dual 500 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 40 GB, DVD, CD-RW, 56K
*Power Mac G4 Dual 600 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 40 GB, DVD, CD-RW, 56K

Here's the article

MOSR is extremely unreliable. Try AppleInsider instead. Plus, you misread the blurb. It says OS X will be released at Mac World Tokyo.

from apples website:

...Researchers at the Ohio Aerospace Institute in Brookpark did exactly that, linking 15 Apple Macintosh G4 personal computers to tackle chores once the realm of Cray supercomputers ... Overall performance beats a commercial cluster of Silicon Graphics computers costing twice as much.

so the prerelease itaniums promise to do better in march? apple/moto arent sitting still either. faster g4s on faster buses are due in january. but id love to see performance numbers and an explanation when you can post them. post at appleinsider. thanks

more fun stuff at apple.com/g4

worker bee hung out at the Apple Insider Forums and was considered to be a unreliable source at first. This all changed after he was proven right about the new products at MacWorld NY.

He published the iBook specs, and then Apple pulled the plug on Mr.Bee.

Regardless of whether you think Apple was right or wrong, it is clear that after worker bee's leaks the information didn't really spread that far. Only after Apple started issuing dozens of subpoenas and publishing the information themselves via their PR people did their terribly confidential trade screts leak to a more widespread audience and the mainstream news outlets.

So when Apple takes Mr.Bee to court, are they going to fess up to the damages they themselves caused? Or blame it all on him? Probably the latter. I highly doubt the courts will pay attention to the large Apple Rumor community and the fact Apple themselves legitimized the claims and in the process, spread the information far and wide, causing the damage they were so hurt by.

CNBC today revealed on air that one of the John/Jane Does (most likely the primary John/Jane Doe) that Apple is chasing after in their suit is a message board poster named "Workerbee" who posted on the Yahoo APPL message board as well as AppleInsider's Future Hardware message boards, and who posted pictures (on a Geocities website which disappeared today) of Apple's multiprocessing mobo and an early version of Apple's new optical mouse long before either were announced. Louismg on Raging Bull's AAPL stock board compiled a list of links to Workerbee's posts earlier today which can be seen here. The accuracy of Workerbee's posts on a wide variety of Apple hardware projects (Mouse, keyboard, Cube, MPs, iMacs, etc.) leads to the obvious conclusion that he or she must be an Apple employee. In one of his or her last posts before disappearing, Workerbee confirms the ZDnet story that Apple has a cinema-screened Powerbook packing a G4 ready to roll soon, and might even have been the source for the scoop.

CNBC today revealed on air that one of the John/Jane Does (most likely the primary John/Jane Doe) that Apple is chasing after in their suit is a message board poster named "Workerbee" who posted on the Yahoo APPL message board as well as AppleInsider's Future Hardware message boards, and who posted pictures (on a Geocities website which disappeared today) of Apple's multiprocessing mobo and an early version of Apple's new optical mouse long before either were announced. Louismg on Raging Bull's AAPL stock board compiled a list of links to Workerbee's posts earlier today which can be seen here. The accuracy of Workerbee's posts on a wide variety of Apple hardware projects (Mouse, keyboard, Cube, MPs, iMacs, etc.) leads to the obvious conclusion that he or she must be an Apple employee. In one of his or her last posts before disappearing, Workerbee confirms the ZDnet story that Apple has a cinema-screened Powerbook packing a G4 ready to roll soon, and might even have been the source for the scoop.

They sued someone by the name of Worker Bee, and subpoena'd to Yahoo to identify the IP of a user who created a Geocities site that hosted the images. Here's an URL of what was posted at the AppleInsider forum back in Feb. 13th...

Was the comment about Cease and desist orders suppose to be a joke? or serious? Because this story on themacjunkie mentions receiving one early this morning. The article it refers to has a picture (which they presume if fake) of the G4 Cube. If you check out this story it says the picture was removed because of the Apple Legal department.

Are these are serious, or is this one big joke because of what happened a week or so ago?

---

Seems to me as if AppleInsider is indeed trying to go out with a bang. I'm sure that I'm not the only one who has noticed AppleInsider's title tag..."Causing Tens of Millions of Dollars in Irreparable Damages". And no matter how many threats they get, they keep posting new rumors/information, like they're dumping all their garbage before making a jump. -spikeovsky

Apperently they have.

These sites (AppleInsider, MacOSRumors, MacInTouch etc.) have a really lousey track record of posting half-truths and downright lies. Their quality control is really poor.

What's more, they can do real damage. I was involved in a product that Apple Insider leaked images of, two days before it was publically launched. As a result, we lost most trademark and patent rights outside the US. In most other countries, you cannot trademark and/or patent something that has already been released into the public domain.

So when you wonder why companies like Apple don't like these kind of sites and often seem heavy-handed in dealing with them, remeber that leaks like this can cost a company substantial amounts of money.

Quartz is based on the PDF format (see AppleInsider or Apple's OS X site), but nobody seems to mention the remote display possibilities. It seems if they could do it with display postscript they can do it with Quartz (display PDF?). Of course, I seem to recall that NeXTSTEP had a vulnerability with its remote display setup...

-- gf

As posted before, the second story is posted in the body of a message here.

MOSR is, to say the least, not highly regarded in the Mac community. Its stories generally turn out to be wrong, and it frequently retracts and modifies stories. As a result, very few people likely believed the MOSR articles. (Visit AppleInsider's Future Hardware forum to get a good feel for the average Mac user's feelings towards MOSR.)

Now, with MOSR's reputation in mind, put yourself in Apple's lawyers' shoes. MOSR has just posted an article about a cube-shaped Macintosh computer. If the article is false, then of course you don't do a thing. But if it's true, you also wouldn't do a thing. By threatening legal action, you would be confirming the product's existence, at least at the R&D level. Apple's lawyers would have to be brighter than that.

Then there's the whole issue of the fact that the lawyers have absolutely no legal ground whatsoever to stand on. MOSR is a rumors site. It is extremely unlikely that it obtained physical documentation of the computer's shape and specifications, especially when you take into account that MOSR was unsure whether the computer was an iMac or a PowerMac and that it changed its specifications at least twice, reducing the box from about 14" or 16" down to 12" at the last time I checked before the article was pulled. As such, I think I can say with confidence that they were not in copyright violation, and also that the information wasn't obtained by breaking an NDA. So Apple's lawyers would essentially be making an idle thread--something that could result in a countersuit yielding MOSR hundreds upon thousands of dollars.

It just doesn't add up. Perhaps MOSR did, in fact, receive an email, and perhaps the email really did ask them to be quiet, but that email could not have come from Apple Legal.

Here's a link on that particular one.

Here's AppleInsider's report on the merger rumor, from February 1999! And you think Slashdot is late with the news sometimes!

For example http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/9902/disney-t o-buy-apple.shtml

Just feed Apple Disney merger into any search engine for many previous similar speculations, all equally uninformed ever since Jos took over the helm back at Apple.

I seem to recall slashdot fetaturing it before as well ... here it is

--

AppleInsider is kind (brave? foolish?) enough to maintain an archive of past articles, so you can judge their credibility yourself.

(For those of you who aren't familiar with what Apple did when but want to play along anyway, try cross-referencing AppleInsider's hardware predictions with www.everymac.com.)

--

--

These guys just aren't having any luck are they.

...check out the page title at AppleInsider today.

It is blocked now. The new name is; http://AppleIn sider.com/articles/0005/legal-venus-in-furs.shtml. save

-d

Microsoft has asked Apple Insider to remove the article about Microsoft Office 2001 & Word 2001. Read it Here

You forgot the Image Ready Article here. N-joy reading.