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Brian Eno, or as he is known to many in my office, "God," has released his second iPhone App. A followup to Bloom, this one is called Trope and supposedly creates darker music. You create music by drawing shapes on the iPhone's screen.

MojoKid writes "Engineers from Apple have applied for a patent on an 'emergency' mode for cell phones that would squeeze every last drop of energy out of the batteries. The phone would recognize emergency calls when the user dialed an emergency number, such as 911 in the United States. But another number could also be stored as an 'emergency number' on the phone (a spouse, child, or parent, for example) or the user could manually put the phone in emergency mode. The process would do a variety of things. It would disable 'non-essential hardware components' and applications on the phone, reduce power to the screen and potentially reduce the phone's processor speed. It also would make it harder to disconnect the call and enable 'emergency phrase buttons' on the phone."

mr100percent writes "Apple rejected the iPhone aggregator app Newspapers because of a topless photo in one of the app's subscribed-to papers. In the rejection message, Apple noted that Parental Controls have been announced for iPhone OS 3.0, adding that it 'would be appropriate to resubmit your application for review once this feature is available.' Rumor sites are speculating that Apple will relax their content restrictions once the 3.0 update puts parental controls in place. This may mean that apps like NIN will be allowed in the future."

99BottlesOfBeerInMyF writes "Yesterday Apple quietly slipped out an update to their Safari Web browser to version 3.2. The notable feature is that it finally adds anti-phishing technology, an area where Safari has lagged behind competitors. Aside from that, it provides some security fixes, improved JavaScript performance, and a slightly newer version of Webkit, pulling their Acid3 score up to 77." Apple forums across the Net are reporting frequent crashes in Safari 3.2, some possibly caused by 3rd-party add-ons, others perhaps related to the anti-phishing feature.

Just as you were getting used to 3.0, those Mozilla guys have announced 3.1's Alpha release. FTA "Built on the pre-release version of the Gecko 1.9.1 platform, Shiretoko includes a variety of new features. Called an 'early developer milestone,' the release includes bug fixes, improved Web standards support, Text API for the Canvas Element, support for border images and JavaScript query selectors, and improvements to the tab-switching function and the Smart Location Bar." You can download it if you dare.

recoiledsnake writes "The new Safari 3.1 for Windows has been hit with two 'highly critical'(as rated by Secunia) vulnerabilities that can result in execution of arbitrary code. The first is due to an improper handling of the buffer for long filenames of files being downloaded, and the second can result in successful spoofing of websites and phishing. This comes close on the heels of criticism of Apple for offering Safari as a update for approximately 500 million users of iTunes on Windows by default, and reports of crashes. There are currently no patches or workarounds available except the advice to stay clear of 'untrusted' sites." Further, Wormfan writes "The latest version of Safari for Windows makes a mockery of end user licensing agreements by only allowing the installation of Safari for Windows on Apple labeled hardware, thereby excluding most Windows PCs." Update: 03/27 17:23 GMT by Z : Dave Schroeder writes with the note that the license has been updated to correct this mistake.

Ant writes "MacNN reports that the thin design of Apple's MacBook Air is causing some confusion for the technically ignorant, according to one blogger who says that the ultra-portable caused him to miss his flight. When going through the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) airport security checkpoint, blogger Michael Nygard was held up as security staff gathered around his MacBook Air, trying to make sense of the slender laptop/notebook. One of the less technically knowledgeable staff points out the lack of standard features as cause for alarm..."

g-san writes "Some Mac users are having problems with the latest 10.4.11 update, yours truly included. The problem seems to be caused by the presence of a Boot Camp partition and renders the Mac unable to reboot after the update fails. Note the Geniuses at the Apple stores are recommending a full disk wipe; but data can be recovered via Firewire." MacNN has a note up that if you fall victim to this "known issue" and need to reformat the disk, you can't reinstall Boot Camp because it is no longer available to OS X 10.4 Tiger users.

FuriousBalancing writes "MacNN is reporting that Canadians may soon pay a small tax on every legal music store download. This fee is the work of a measure proposed by the Copyright Board of Canada. About two cents would be added to every song downloaded, with 1.5 cents being added to album downloads. Streaming services and subscriptions would also be taxed, to the tune of about 6% of the monthly fee. Most interesting - the tax would be retroactively applied to every transaction processed since 1996. 'The surcharge would help compensate artists for piracy, according to SOCAN's reasoning. The publishing group draws similarities between this and a 21-cent fee already applied to blank CDs in the country; the right to copy a song from an online store demands the same sort of levy applied to copying a retail CD, SOCAN argues. The tax may have a significant impact for online stores such as iTunes and Canada-based Puretracks, which will have to factor the amount both into future and past sales.' The full text of the measure is available in PDF format."

pete314 wrote to say that "Electronic Arts had broken its WWDC promise to launch games for OS X on the same day as the Windows version." Thankfully, the company has come through, with four new titles now available for order: Battlefield 2142, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Need for Speed Carbon, and Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars . Thanks to mr100percent for the update.

Torrey Clark writes "MyMacGames is preparing to launch a new 'games on demand' service for Mac users ($8-20 per month) in the third quarter of 2007 that will feature roughly 100 games at launch. They are currently offering a free beta."

zackmac writes "For over two weeks domain registrar GoDaddy has been serving blank pages to Safari and Opera users who attempt to access sites using its domain forwarding and masking service. GoDaddy is blaming Apple as the source of the problem, and with nowhere to turn, Mac users are flocking to Apple's support forums to discuss the issue in-depth. Apple has so far been unresponsive and GoDaddy has directed affected customers to contact Apple Support. An inconvienent workaround is to open the website first in Firefox or Internet Explorer and then the page will load in Safari or Opera. Speculation abounds as to the cause of the problem and how to fix it. The current belief is malformed headers, an invalid 302 header with a bogus location and a redirect loop."

Slashfan writes "It has been widely reported all over the Internet that it is extremely easy to get the Intel port of Mac OS X to run on regualar PC boxes. Some of the hackers are running the tweaked version of the operating system on their PCs natively." Pardon my skepticism ;)

Steve Jobs announced at the WWDC keynote today that Apple is switching to Intel processors. MacNN has live coverage. The bottom line is that Mac OS X for the last five years has been running on Intel, the switch is expected to be complete in two years, and Rosetta will allow PPC apps to run on Intel-based Macs, transparently. If you're using Xcode, it is small changes and a recompile; otherwise, you might be seeing a lot of work ahead of you. You will be able to order the 10.4.1 preview for Intel today.

RustNeverSleeps writes "Apple has just lowered prices on certain build-to-order options on the Mac mini. The combination Bluetooth and AirPort Express option has gone down to $99 from $129, 1 GB RAM upgrades have been reduced to $325 from $475 and the price of an upgrade from a 40 GB hard drive to an 80 GB hard drive has been reduced to $50 from $90. Also, the original 4x SuperDrive has been upgraded to an 8x drive for the same price. Interesting that they dropped prices so soon after release. Perhaps Apple actually listened to people complaining about overpriced upgrades."

An anonymous reader writes "MacNN reports: 'Apple has released Mac OS X 10.3.7 via the Software Update utility. Key enhancements include improved AFP support for saving documents with long file names, improved OpenGL technology and updated ATI and NVIDIA graphics drivers, improved FireWire device compatibility, updated Preview application, and improved compatibility for third party applications. The 10.3.7 update is recommended for all users of Mac OS X 10.3 'Panther.' It also includes all previous standalone security updates.'"

CherryBS writes "The CherryOS emulator, claiming that it could seamlessly run Mac OS X at 80% the speed of the host computer on standard x86 hardware (covered here previously), has created some controversy about stolen code. It turns out that CherryOS's emulation engine is nothing more than that of PearPC, an open source GPL project to create a PowerPC motheboard emulator." Read on for more details.

CherryBS continues "PearPC developers who have seen CherryOS have confirmed it is a fraud, while others remaining anonymous have posted the 'strings' output that CherryOS and PearPC share, showing many function names, warning/informational message strings that exist verbatim in PearPC. Additionally, now-pulled screenshots of CherryOS, mirrored in the long thread at pearpc.net, show CherryOS's boot process revealing variable names and missing or incorrectly emulated hardware in such a way as to be specific to PearPC. Arben Kryeziu, the developer of CherryOS, claims that no code has been taken from PearPC whatsoever, and that he will release a trial version this week. However, with the amount of deception on the part of the company, and considering this wouldn't be the first time he's violated the GPL, it's hard to believe they're telling the truth. Additionally, Kryeziu now claims the "trial" may "disable modules like sound or drag and drop"...likely because PearPC itself does not support such features. To further add to the tale, someone who was likely Arben was specifically asking for video server load testing for their vx30.com video codec/server product, even specifically mentioning slashdot as a great candidate, and in the days following the CherryOS story unfolding, went back and deleted the posts. The first day, all that was left online were two videos, one of which was subsequently removed because of PearPC-specific strings in the boot process shown in the video..."

MacNN writes "John Gruber says the origins of Apple's Dashboard technology, announced as part of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger earlier this week, are not with Arlo Rose's Konfabulator, but with Apple's original Desk Accessories and that Apple's Webcore-based implementation will allow many more developers/designers to create 'gadgets' much more easily and that Dashboard's 'gadgets' will offer much better performance: 'Dashboard is not a rip-off of Konfabulator. Yes, they are doing very much the same thing. But what it is that they're doing was not an original idea to Konfabulator. The scope of a 'widget' is very much the modern-day equivalent of a desk accessory.'"

frequnkn writes "The Mac News Network reports that Intego has anounced an update to their anti-virus app for snagging the first Mac OS X Trojan horse, MP3Concept (MP3Virus.Gen), which exploits a weakness in Mac OS X where applications can appear to be other types of files."

MadMirko writes "MacNN quotes an article from Money Magazine titled Why iPod can't save Apple, which says 'the buzz on the digital music player and "swank" storefronts are masking an ebbing bottom line, noting reduced CPU sales (resulting a shrinking marketshare), decreased profits (in part due to the lower-margin iPod and little-to-no profit at the iTunes Music Store), failure of the iPod to drive CPU sales, failure of the retail stores to increase marketshare, hidden retail store costs, no operational income, and little value in the stock.'"

fmorgan writes "No big surprise here: when Apple introduced the G5 at 2003 WWDC, it become more a question of 'when' Pixar will move to G5s, than 'if'). At the same conference, Apple showed a new codec for Mac OS X named 'Pixlet,' developed with Pixar. In last year O'Reilly's Mac OS X conference, there was a presentation on how Pixar moved their desktop/office environment to Mac OS X. Now it seems it's the main production work: 'Apple's Don Peebeles said that Pixar has used Linux and Intel-based architecture in 2003, but that Pixar was switching to Mac OS X and G5 workstations for its production work: Peebles went on to say that this switch was "a move that no doubt made common CEO Steve Jobs very happy."'"

Wacky_Wookie was only one of many who wrote in with a mention of Apple's "leak" of specifications for a new line of PowerMacs to be dubbed "G5", apparently running the new PowerPC 970 CPUs. No offense, but anyone who thinks it was a mistake or leak doesn't understand marketing. :) Update by J : In case those linked sites get taken down too, try MacNN.

spathi writes "After a long wait, Apple has finally started shipping the 17" PowerBook. This thread over on the MacNN Forums shows a few people have received their tracking numbers. It seems Apple hit it's deadline of 7-10 weeks after all"

burgburgburg writes "We all recall Microsoft's last attempt to emulate the Apple Switch ads. Well, it seems they're at it again. MacNN reports that Microsoft has sent out emails to those who have recently registered MS products, looking for candidates for their 'Sensible Solutions' campaign, which will 'highlight computer professionals that have recently converted from Apple Computer products to Microsoft based systems.' Do you qualify? You must be 'a US resident with a minimum of 3 years experience as a computer professional. You must have used an Apple Computer product and a Microsoft based system as part of your work'. So when does it just stop being the sincerest form of flattery and just become utter, pathetic laziness?"

rgmoore writes "MacNN is reporting that Microsoft will finally make a full-fledged Exchange client for Mac OS X. Today, Mac users can only access the full range of Exchange services by using Outlook 2001, available only under Mac OS. Mac OS X users could either use Entourage, or they could run Outlook 2001 under the Classic environment. Microsoft is now promising to update Entourage so that it will be able to access all of Exchange's services, and they're even promising it will be available as a free update. Since many companies love to use Exchange and have made a big deal of Mac OS X's lack of a viable client, this is a big step forward for Mac users in a corporate environment."

gsfprez writes "It seems that the general consensus is that iMovie 3.0.1 really sucks bad. Compaints range from randomly splitting cuts when importing, audio/video syncing issues, random crashing, and most common - performance issues so bad that capture and playback at full framrate is unattainable - and that's on DP machines. My experience is all this and worse on my previously very useful iBook 800. One can only wonder how galactically awful iMovie 3.0.0 was. Can anyone give a positive report on iMovie 3.0.1?" It looks nice. I just wish I could use it without it crashing.

ducman points to the announcement of an encrypted hard drive running on the MacNN website. The drive features a DES 64-bit/ 40bit key strength and "is intended for use by banks, insurance providers, government agencies, and those individuals with sensitive digital intellectual property. It supports the IEEE 1394a connectivity standard, in addition to USB 1.1 and 2.0. It offers data transfer rates over FireWire 400 of 100, 200, or 400 Mbps. The SuperGuard is expected to be available February 7." Sounds great -- but the USB key stuck in the back looks like a likely point of failure.

drc writes "I http://www.macnn.com/feature.php?id=344noticed on MacNN that 'Maya 4.5 for Mac OS X was announced this morning when Steve Jobs revealed that the Maya update would offer feature parity in OS X when compared to other platforms. Jobs also mentioned that Alias|Wavefront has seen the Mac OS X version of Maya grow to 25% of their total market. I'm suprised that the Mac OS X version has such a market share in such a short period of time."

Mauro Notarianni writes in that the Danish Technical University (DTU) has developed the Scandinavia's largest dedicated Mac cluster. "Velocity-X" is packed with 32 dual G4/800's (200 Gigaflops), and will be turned on Monday. Its primary use will be studying the influence of proteins on cancer, and, more importantly, large film and animation projects. It can be rented for DKK 50,000 (about USD 6,500) per week.

flaneur writes "In light of Microsoft's recent anti-Unix ads and the end of the 5-year contract between Apple, it's pretty interesting that Apple is suddenly running print ads emphasizing the Unix core of Mac OS X. Under the headline 'Sends other UNIX boxes to /dev/null', the ads contain quotes from various journalists praising the OS. But the most interesting thing? There's no IE in the dock -- Netscape is shown instead! Hmmm..."

AnamanFan writes "MacNN reports that Palm has released the final golden version of the Palm Desktop 4 with features such as improved synchronization, privacy, vCard, vCal, and most importantly, Mac OS X native. A Mac OS 9 version also available. Japanese, French, Italian, German, and Spanish versions are available, but only as betas." Note, however, that most conduits need to be updated to work with version 4, so for now you can't use Vindigo or AvantGo with the new version. For now, I am sticking with the old version.

AnamanFan writes "MacNN reports that Palm has released the final golden version of the Palm Desktop 4 with features such as improved synchronization, privacy, vCard, vCal, and most importantly, Mac OS X native. A Mac OS 9 version also available. Japanese, French, Italian, German, and Spanish versions are available, but only as betas." Note, however, that most conduits need to be updated to work with version 4, so for now you can't use Vindigo or AvantGo with the new version. For now, I am sticking with the old version.

nbvb submitted what I'm pleased to say is our first apple.slashdot.org story. We'll be posting more news for our sizable Apple population there in the future. Anyway, He says "Apple today released Mac OS X 10.1.3. Be sure to click your "Software Update" and "Install" buttons! (Hey, if we can get an announcement every time a new point rev of a development kernel hits the FTP sites, can't we hear about Mac OS X?)" As usual, user reports of the new release have been both positive and negative.

The Infamous Grimace writes: "The folks at this Japanese web site have provided pics of the inside of an iPod. A quick breakdown of it in English is here. The FireWire contoller appears to be TIs TSB43AA82, the chip is PortalPlayers PP5002B w/ an ARM7TDMI-based core. Apparently it has encoding abilities as well. The hard-drive is Toshiba's MK5002MAL."

AllInOne writes: "Despite Apple's claims to the contrary, Mac OS X runs just fine on older Apple hardware. Thanks to the Open Source nature of Apple's underlying Darwin system serveral clueful folks have written kernel extensions that allow "Old World" machines such as the 7300, 7600, 8500 etc to run OS X. They even support G3 & G4 processor upgrades cards as well. The best release (and free as in beer) is by Ryan Rempel. I just installed his Version 2.0b3 of Unsupported UtilityX on my old 8550 with a Newer G3 upgrade card along along with 10.1 and performance is quite respectable." And elsewhere along the OS price/performance front, Cinematique writes: "I was surfing around and came across this useful little tidbit for mac os x users. Apparently, apple included a way to compress the memory-hungry finder window buffer images, but didn't turn it on at the last minute due to a debuging issue. this turns the compression on, thus saving a sh*tload of memory."

fishboy writes "There are updates to apple's product line and, most significantly, a significant update to OS X-- 10.1 that features improved performance, dvd support and a seamless client for windows-based networking." Here is coverage of the keynote from macnn.com and info about OSX.1 on apple's site (quicktime required to read much beyond the homepage). Looks like wireless setup might be fixed up (hazah!) but mainly those speed improvements are needed.

fishboy writes "There are updates to apple's product line and, most significantly, a significant update to OS X-- 10.1 that features improved performance, dvd support and a seamless client for windows-based networking." Here is coverage of the keynote from macnn.com and info about OSX.1 on apple's site (quicktime required to read much beyond the homepage). Looks like wireless setup might be fixed up (hazah!) but mainly those speed improvements are needed.

gralem asks: "There is some frustration in the OS X community about Apple's release of updates. Apple has basically been releasing updates to OS X every 2-3 weeks. The updates aren't ground-breaking. They don't add all the features the users expect (CD burning ended up being only from within iTunes, instead of system-wide). They also don't fix all of the known bugs of the system. But I think Apple is doing the right thing by keeping lots of updates flowing. I haven't seen anything 'broken' by the updates, and each time the system runs faster and smoother. Does it matter that OS X is such 'new technology' as far as Apple is concerned, as opposed to W2K and Microsoft's update schedule?" Keeping the updates flowing is one thing, but forcing users to update every 2-3 weeks? That might be a bit too much. I don't know much about OS X, but if the upgrades system can be configured to the users taste, and said configuration done in a user-friendly way, then maybe monthly updates might not be a bad thing ...

"I can't remember how long Microsoft took to release W2K service pack 1, but I know there is still no service pack 2. Even Linux kernel (stable) releases are not commonly in the 2-3 week range. So is Apple doing the right thing to get SOMETHING out there? Or are they disenfranchising their user base by coming out with too little too fast?"

An embellishment to the above: as long as there are tools to tailor the upgrades of a system to the user's specific desires, who cares how often providers update their own packages? Such an updater would check the upstream package catalog and apply multiple criterion on each updated package which would determine if that update is applied. I would suggest that the two basic criterion one would apply for updates would be severity and duration. Couple this with forced inclusion and exclusion lists and an administrator would be able to configure the system to apply only those packages that they need upgraded at the appropriate time, and quite possibly without the need of administrator intervention (depending, of course, on how much the administrator trusts the upstream).

With such a system in place, who cares how often Apple, Red Hat, Debian, Microsoft or <insert vendor here> updates their software packages? You'll have what you need, as often as you need it.

How difficult would it be to adapt the existing updating systems to serve this purpose? Is someone close to putting this into place, now?

green pizza writes "Yesterday at Macworld Tokyo, Steve Jobs and John Carmack demoed the new nVidia GeForce 3 (73 GIGAFLOPS of power)... on a G4... running DOOM 3. Please excuse me while I pick my jaw up off the floor. You can get more details from MacNN." [michael adds: VoodooExtreme has screenshots of Doom 3 running on the new GeForce card; Shugashack has more. Looks like Doom 3 will be another game where the color palette is "shades of black". Sigh.]

zephc writes: "Apple has announced its iBooks, now with more RAM and DVD drive options, and (sweetness) Firewire (among other things)." Looks like it's at least three new models - and in other Mac Expo news, as promised OSX has been released in beta. Of course, it's a beta that costs $29.95 in the Apple Store, but whatever. MacNN has some coverage as well, as well as photos from the floor -- including the infamous flooding incident.

A reader writes "At his keynote at Seybold today, Steve Jobs announced that Mac OS X beta will ship on September 13th. More details at MacNN's site." This is the beta - but the Sept. 13th beta launch is the first day of Paris Mac Expo, meaning that it probably will happen. He also confirmed that they are on target for an "early 2001" release of OSX.

petard writes: "Law.com ran this article on how Adobe is suing MacNN over an article which appeared on AppleInsider with detailed information on and screenshots of Photoshop 6, currently in (non-public) beta. Could this be bad news for other rumor sites, and possibly even sites like Slashdot? Hope MacNN wins ..."

Anonymous Coward writes: "One of the more significant statements of the session [at Apple's WorldWide Developer's Conference] came when Magee told the audience that the Mach kernel and the BSD layer which lays upon it are inseparable. "Every application [that runs in Mac OS X] is a BSD application," said Magee. "You can't keep the system running without the Mach kernel and the BSD layer." This quashes the public rumour that Apple will be able to ship a "lite" version of Mac OS X which will contain only the smallest possible bit of BSD, or another that questions Apple reluctance to move its tools to Linux."

caligula writes: "Just saw this [macnn.com report]: 'Tuesday, May 17 updated 2:30 pm, top stories. During the hardware keynote of WWDC, which ended just minutes ago, Apple demonstrated a dual-processor G4 Power Mac running Mac OS X. Of note to developers is that Cocoa/Carbon applications do not need to be changed in any way to take advantage of multi-processors. Benchmark demonstrations ran roughly twice as fast on the dual-G4 system compared to the single-G4 Power Mac that was on stage. No mention was given as to when these multiprocessor G4s would ship, although it was stressed that it would not be happening any time soon but that they would definitely be out by next year's WWDC.'" JonahLee pointed out a related link on macosrumors.com, and migooch noted this slightly more informative ZDne t story. Mortals still must wait at least 'til January.

Mad Browser writes:"MacNN is reporting that Apple has delayed MacOS X again until January 2001. They are also reporting that a public beta of OS X will be available this summer. Jobs also said that WebObjects deployment licenses would go from $50,000 to $700. " QuickTime 5 is also tentatively going to be out this summer, as well.

Namaste writes, "As reported on MacNN. Connectix who after a recent legal victory over Sony has signed an OEM agreement with Red Hat in which Connectix Virtual Game Station (VGS) will ship bundled with Red Hat Linux. The press release can be found here. The Macintosh version has been out for a while and seems to be quite a hit. Both the Linux and Win2k versions with be shipping in March. " Update: 02/16 03:21 by H :OK, this issue got confused: Red Hat won't be bundling VGS with Red Hat. Instead, Connectix will be bundling Red Hat with their Virtual PC emulator. VPC is not released for Linux at this time. I'll make sure Rob gets some more coffee before posting again. *grin*

imac.usr writes "MacNN mentioned that Apple now has its own Web page describing Linux, the distributions available for PowerPC Macs, and links to them." But can you drag your hard drive to the trash to unmount it?

Wolven Spectre writes "AppleInsider has said and MacNN revealed that at over the weekend Apple purchased the rights to the MP3 Codec from Frauenhofer, the creators of the format, so theat the new Quicktime 4.0 will have a quantum leap up in audio quality, in an attempt to become a leading media standard again.

Wyatt Earp wrote in to tell us that macnn.com is reporting that Q3T is coming out this weekend for Macs first, then Linux and finally Windows according to Zaphod's Plan. According to Carmacks's Plan OS X is nice but "MacOS still sucks."Update: 04/25 01:36 by J : It's gone live. Go swap them servers.

Scott Stevenson writes "A News.com article describes a study which dings Linux for poor SMP support, access to only 1 or 2GB of memory, and lack of clustering. Of course, it doesn't say anything about NT's uptime issues on a per-machine basis." Also says that hard data isn't available on Linux being reasonably crash proof.