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Once again the 'balance sheet' references. So as part of the Apple (Mac) Community you had no power? I'd reply you have just about the same amount of power as part of any other computing Community. No power to save Cyberdog or OpenDoc etc? And so now as part of the Linux Community you can save Easel or Win4Lin etc? Come on.

You have to admit that since Jobs has returned to Apple, they're listening. Over 75,000 beta user responses in a few months and the most common suggestions implemented (eg. the Apple Menu returned, speedup in 10.1, spring-loaded folders in 10.2 just to name a few). It shows that they're paying attention again.

Again, I'm sorry you feel alienated - it's obvious from your posts. But I'm glad you found a Good Place with the Linux Community (I certainly did). But now I also have a new home in the Mac Community too. For me it's not an "either-or"

A real OS? Like GNU/Linux which has a whopping 0.24% of the marketplace?? Check your own OS before you complain about others! As a famous troll says: "Linux is dying!"

read about it here.

I saw this today and it had a very interesting tidbit of information. In the settlement, Microsoft is valuing the software part at $840 million. Apple contends that actual cost of that software would be more like $1 million and only 5%-6% of the value of the settlement would be able to be used to buy non-Microsoft technology.

I am ashamed that anyone would intentionally use my Slashdot account name to bolster the popularity and reputation of their sick virus. I'm sure the hackers who created this monstrosity were well versed in such hacker tools as Bonzi Buddy and Lunix. If they think I would come out and support such a destructive screen saver they are very, very wrong. If God wanted toasters to fly, he would have given them wings.

So, you hackers, where ever you are, Goner (of Slashdot lore) does not approve!

totally offtopic, but anyway, no mac laptop ever caught fire outside of a lab, but, one dell did. Dell had to recall almost
300,000 batteries. Whereas apple only had to pull about 1000.

There was a lot of talk about if Bungie would go to xbox only when they were bought by microsoft...

http://www.microsoft.com/PressPass/press/2000/Jul0 0/MacGamesPR.asp
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0007/20.haloma c.shtml

Bungie's promised Mac versions of Halo, but I haven't seen any definate promises of a PC version.

You can't copyright colours. Apple cannot stop me from using a total rip off of the OSX interface, so long as I don't use their logo,

Actually, that's not quite correct.

While you can't copyright colors, you must also remember that AQUA is not a color. But an overall design and functionality spec.

Now that you can protect, and it's called a trade dress.

A trade dress is a visual representation of an object that identifies a product to it's manufacturer.

Basically, this is what Apple used to defend it's iMac from cheap knock-offs, like what eMachine had with it's eOne.

Everyone loves to rag on Apple, especially over the PowerBook 5300 with defective batteries and other problems. Nobody seems to remember that less than five of these units were in customer hands when the battery problems surfaced, as opposed to the hundreds of thousands of affected units in customer hands when Dell and Compaq have done recent battery recalls.

And everyone is so quick to condemn Apple for the 5300, but nobody praises them when they do make things right. Like the 5300/190 Repair Extension Program, which fixed specific defects in the 5300 and 190 series PowerBooks, for free, for a period 7 years after they were discontinued-- I do believe it is still in effect.

And let's not forget the numerous times in the last 18 months or so that Apple offered people who still owned those machines trade-in deals to get much, much better PowerBook G3 units at reduced cost.

~Philly

This is a completely unfounded statement and just shows that you really don't know what you're talking about.

From maccentral.com
The shining star of Apple's product line is clearly the iBook. During a conference call with analysts, Apple CFO Fred Anderson was quick to point out that iBook sales in the education market had tripled in the fourth quarter. In fact, iBook sales were up overall -- way up -- both from quarter to quarter and from year to year. Last year, Apple moved a paltry 89,000 iBooks during its fourth quarter, and during the previous quarter, Apple moved about 190,000 iBooks. For this most recently reported quarter, that number was 251,000. Outside of the Power Mac G4, the iBook was Apple's biggest moneymaker -- it pulled in $334 million for the company.

Apple clearly knows where its markets are and what its consumers want.

...Any one of these critical flaws might doom the product - take them all together and you have another classic corporate farce.

Apple is the only leader of innovation in the computer industry. Intel just closed down its division of computer peripherals. Hp and Compaq have had to merge due to dwindling sales. Apple is the only computer manufacturer who's making money right now. And it's all due to knowing its markets and making high quality products, and being a forward thinker.

When was the last time Dell, HP, Compaq, Gateway, M$, etc. put out an entire line of products, both hardware and software that were part of a cohesive plan for tomorrow? Never.

According to Maccentral, Jobs said he would consider looking at Windows down the line, but right now iPod and iTunes are Mac only.

"We have thought than when we get a little spare time, we will look at taking it to Windows. We know the experience won't be as good, but we will probably look at that down the road."

FWIW.

Link here.

MacCentral coverage

The Apple Store

pretty neat stuff

"3 breakthroughs in iPod: 1. Ultra-portable. Ultra-thin hard drive. 1.8 inch hard drive is .2 inches thick. 5 Gigabytes. 1000 songs at 160K bit rate."

Apparently apple is releasing (no joke) an MP3 player. Runs over firewire (even recharges that way!) 5 gig ultra-tiny drive, the whole thing is the size of a deck of cards. Stainless steel construction.

http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0110/23.event. php

No pictures yet, unfortunately.

MacCentral coverage of the iPod. It is basically an ultrathin mp3 player. Here are the specs...

* Apple design -- stainless steel also a FireWire hard drive

* iPod is the size of a deck of cards. 2.4" wide by 4" tall by .78" thick 6.5 ounces

* One hour recharge, 10 hour battery capacity charges over FireWire -- no charging cable needed

* 20 minute skip protection FireWire built-in. fast -- entire CD download in under 10 seconds

* "To have your whole music library with you at all times is a quantum leap when it comes to music. And iPod fits in your pocket. Never before possible."

* 3 breakthroughs in iPod: 1. Ultra-portable. Ultra-thin hard drive. 1.8 inch hard drive is .2 inches thick. 5 Gigabytes. 1000 songs at 160K bit rate.

MacCentral iPod Unveiling

Essentially its a 1.8" .2" thick 5GB HD encased in a FireWire box, plays MP3s, fits in your pocket, and actually integrates with the Jukebox software (read iTunes)

I'm hoping it has airport ;)

Transfer a full CD in 10 seconds.

For the benefit of the humor-impaired...

To undersand the joke here it helps to know that Brian Billick is known for using his Powerbook and Excel98 to select plays during the game.

There is of course a fourth possibility, that this is really, really OLD NEWS!. Note the date on that article, August 10, 2000!!!!!

Honestly, loading up slashdot is like looking through a time warp. News for afghan cow herds, stuff that happened yonks ago and no longer matters!

This is old news for these two companies...

They have been sueing and counter-sueing for quite a while, i.e.:

Macromedia filed a countersuit against Adobe in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware that alleged the invalidity of Adobe's '528 patent, and claimed that several of Adobe's software products infringed upon Macromedia patents.

Macromedia's countersuit alleged that Adobe infringed three Macromedia patents:

5,467,443: "System and method for automatically generating derived graphic elements"

5,151,998: "Sound editing system using control line for altering specified characteristic of adjacent segment of the stored waveform"

5,204,969: "Sound editing system using visually displayed control line for altering specified characteristic of adjacent segment of stored waveform"

And so on...

Some good info:

www.cptech.com has some good info and links on the two sueing and counter-sueing.

macweek.com seems to indicate the the whole thing is over the fact that 'that Adobe Premiere violates two patents related to visual display and editing of soundforms. Macromedia also contended that Adobe's patents in the case are invalid and thus unenforceable.'

This seems to be a defense patent battle, in that both sides are trying to invalidate the other sides patents...

A few more links...

www.creativemac.com says 'Macromedia Fires Back at Adobe'

And an editorial by WebDeveloper.com... and I quote:

Adobe and Macromedia have been fighting for Web designers' patronage for years. Now that battle will be entering the court system, as Adobe accuses its rival of patent infringement.

Ultimately, I would say this a standard battle of patents. Such things have taken place many a time, this time it just happens to involve software patents, and thus happens upon the radar of geeks and slashdot...

...for Apple, who is releasing some mystery device next week and getting back into the consumer hardware business. Hopefully it won't go the way of the Newton or Pippin...

But back to music ... pro studios use Macs ... period. Every Grammy winning album was recorded, mixed, edited, or mastered on a Mac.

I'm not sure how Linux would do, but Windows sucks for music. Just the latency issue alone makes it worthless.

Mac OS X has some real nice audio features built in ... the guy that wrote OMS now works for Apple and wrote the MIDI subsystem. Now we just have to wait for the native apps! M-Audio just released an OS X driver for the Delta cards (and the great Audiophile 24/96) that has only 1 ms latency times!

Audio in Mac OS X

Apple betting audio pros will like Mac OS X 10.1

I don't quite understand it all but it seems OS X is built for sound from the ground up.

Apple betting audio pros will like Mac OS X 10.1

Interesting article for those interested in professional audio under a well-supported non-Windows Unix-based OS.

As mentioned on MacCentral IBM just released some PowerPC G3 bundling all their recent breakthroughs and going up to 1 GHz.

"SOI and SiLK taken together with IBM's smallest 0.13-micron copper manufacturing process has resulted in a processor that typically dissipates 3.6W of power at 800MHz [...]"

Rhapsody is not OS X

Close, but not quite. Perhaps it's time for an Apple OS and Code Name refresher.

First off, and totally unrelated, is Apple's first unix OS from the mid 1980s, A/UX. This OS made its way thru several revisions, eventually ending up around 3.1. A/UX was available for certain 680x0 CPU based machines only and was never ported to PowerPC as at that time Apple had been hoping to move completely to Copland.
http://applefritter.com/ui/aux/

(The move from the 68K to PPC is also an interesting story, especially the small side storys of Apple's lab experience with later model 68Ks (68060, etc), the 88K, Alpha, 5x86, and MIPS CPUs.)

Apple's first attempt to upgrade and overhaul the Macintosh System software (Mac OS) was with Blue and Pink. Blue eventualy became System 7.0 and was a significant upgrade over previous versions of the OS, but still lacked many modern architectural features that were even present on the Lisa's OS in 1983 (in the Macintosh's defense, the Lisa had almost 10x as much RAM and cost 5x as much when it originally shipped). Blue was to be followed by Pink, a modern OS to be designed by Apple and a startup known as Taligent. Pink died a horrible political death and never saw the light of day.

Apple's second attempt was Copland, which was to be later followed by Gershwin, a heavily OpenDoc container based platform. Copland came close to being finished, Apple had released an early developer release (DR0) to select developers and had already started a Mac OS 9 marketing campaign. Copland was canned for a number of reasons, application compatibility (or the lack thereof) was a major factor.
http://product.info.apple.com/pr/press.releases/19 95/q3/950508.pr.rel.copland.html
http://www.bozosoft.com/copland.html
http://www.macworld.com/1995/04/news/550.html
http://www.macworld.com/2000/09/buzz/windingroad.h tml

Following the demise of Copland, Apple continued development of Mac OS 7.X (at the time at 7.5.X and 7.6.X). A version with some of the Copland features and appearance was developed as 7.7 but released and marketed as 8.0. Today this series is known as "Classic" Mac OS and is currently at 9.2.1. Since 8.0, Classic has undergone several major microkernel changes, driver architecure tweaks, and VM overhauls.

At the same time, Apple began a new OS search. Their options were to revive Copland, license Windows NT, or buy someone such as Be or NeXT. They decided to buy NeXT (which came with Apple and NeXT cofounder Steve Jobs).

Apple's most recent OS attempt, the the one that made it out the door, was Rhapsody. This project began at NeXT porting and updating their "OpenStep For Mach 4.2" (formerly NEXTSTEP 1.x - 3.3) OS to Apple PowerMacintosh hardware. The first devloper release of this was Rhapsody DR1 and came in three flavors... Rhapsody for Mac, Rhapsody for x86, and Rhapsody for NT (essentially a runtime framework to run Rhapsody apps atop Windows). Apps could be crosscompiled into a single fat binary to run on both platforms.

Rhapsody went thru several developer releases and was first publically shipped as Mac OS X Server 1.0, which had a GUI that resembled both Mac OS 8 and OpenStep. OS X server eventually reached version 1.2. 1.2 was codenamed Rhapsody 5.5. This can also be seen by doing a uname -a.

Later Rhapsody developer releases were known as Mac OS X Developer Previews, eventually gaining the Aqua look and perhaps most importantly, Carbon support. Previously, Rhapsody supported only two types of binaries -- Classic (non-ported Classic Mac OS apps running within a virtual machine, originally called Blue Box, later simply called Classic) and Yellow Box (applications specifically written for Rhapsody, based on the NS framework from the NEXTSTEP/OpenStep era. Yellow box is now known as Cocoa). Carbon was created to allow something no previous Apple Macintosh OS attempt had - an easy upgrade/porting path. Apple cleaned up the Mac APIs and supported them on both Classic Mac OS versions (starting with Mac OS 8.6) and on Mac OS X. The average developer now only had to modify 1% - 5% of his code to make it run on both Mac OS X and Classic Mac OS.

When Apple decided to release the source to the OS's internals, they replaced the Rhapsody name with Darwin. Today the current version of Mac OS X is 10.1, aka Darwin 1.3.1.

Rhapsody is not OS X

Close, but not quite. Perhaps it's time for an Apple OS and Code Name refresher.

First off, and totally unrelated, is Apple's first unix OS from the mid 1980s, A/UX. This OS made its way thru several revisions, eventually ending up around 3.1. A/UX was available for certain 680x0 CPU based machines only and was never ported to PowerPC as at that time Apple had been hoping to move completely to Copland.
http://applefritter.com/ui/aux/

(The move from the 68K to PPC is also an interesting story, especially the small side storys of Apple's lab experience with later model 68Ks (68060, etc), the 88K, Alpha, 5x86, and MIPS CPUs.)

Apple's first attempt to upgrade and overhaul the Macintosh System software (Mac OS) was with Blue and Pink. Blue eventualy became System 7.0 and was a significant upgrade over previous versions of the OS, but still lacked many modern architectural features that were even present on the Lisa's OS in 1983 (in the Macintosh's defense, the Lisa had almost 10x as much RAM and cost 5x as much when it originally shipped). Blue was to be followed by Pink, a modern OS to be designed by Apple and a startup known as Taligent. Pink died a horrible political death and never saw the light of day.

Apple's second attempt was Copland, which was to be later followed by Gershwin, a heavily OpenDoc container based platform. Copland came close to being finished, Apple had released an early developer release (DR0) to select developers and had already started a Mac OS 9 marketing campaign. Copland was canned for a number of reasons, application compatibility (or the lack thereof) was a major factor.
http://product.info.apple.com/pr/press.releases/19 95/q3/950508.pr.rel.copland.html
http://www.bozosoft.com/copland.html
http://www.macworld.com/1995/04/news/550.html
http://www.macworld.com/2000/09/buzz/windingroad.h tml

Following the demise of Copland, Apple continued development of Mac OS 7.X (at the time at 7.5.X and 7.6.X). A version with some of the Copland features and appearance was developed as 7.7 but released and marketed as 8.0. Today this series is known as "Classic" Mac OS and is currently at 9.2.1. Since 8.0, Classic has undergone several major microkernel changes, driver architecure tweaks, and VM overhauls.

At the same time, Apple began a new OS search. Their options were to revive Copland, license Windows NT, or buy someone such as Be or NeXT. They decided to buy NeXT (which came with Apple and NeXT cofounder Steve Jobs).

Apple's most recent OS attempt, the the one that made it out the door, was Rhapsody. This project began at NeXT porting and updating their "OpenStep For Mach 4.2" (formerly NEXTSTEP 1.x - 3.3) OS to Apple PowerMacintosh hardware. The first devloper release of this was Rhapsody DR1 and came in three flavors... Rhapsody for Mac, Rhapsody for x86, and Rhapsody for NT (essentially a runtime framework to run Rhapsody apps atop Windows). Apps could be crosscompiled into a single fat binary to run on both platforms.

Rhapsody went thru several developer releases and was first publically shipped as Mac OS X Server 1.0, which had a GUI that resembled both Mac OS 8 and OpenStep. OS X server eventually reached version 1.2. 1.2 was codenamed Rhapsody 5.5. This can also be seen by doing a uname -a.

Later Rhapsody developer releases were known as Mac OS X Developer Previews, eventually gaining the Aqua look and perhaps most importantly, Carbon support. Previously, Rhapsody supported only two types of binaries -- Classic (non-ported Classic Mac OS apps running within a virtual machine, originally called Blue Box, later simply called Classic) and Yellow Box (applications specifically written for Rhapsody, based on the NS framework from the NEXTSTEP/OpenStep era. Yellow box is now known as Cocoa). Carbon was created to allow something no previous Apple Macintosh OS attempt had - an easy upgrade/porting path. Apple cleaned up the Mac APIs and supported them on both Classic Mac OS versions (starting with Mac OS 8.6) and on Mac OS X. The average developer now only had to modify 1% - 5% of his code to make it run on both Mac OS X and Classic Mac OS.

When Apple decided to release the source to the OS's internals, they replaced the Rhapsody name with Darwin. Today the current version of Mac OS X is 10.1, aka Darwin 1.3.1.

Two things are holding such people back from making more substantial contributions to OpenAL. First of all it is not entirely clear to me that the API is all that well designed. Modelling it after OpenGL was probably a mistake. In addition, there are certain fundamental assumptions put into the API that assume preemptive multitasking for some things to work well, most notably spooling file play. There was no thought put into using it for anything other than 3D sound effects for games. So, for example if you attempt to write a MOD player using OpenAL to hopefully be able to take advantage of their SoundFont technology and EAX in your MOD player's core and reverb functionalities, you are pretty much out of luck. OpenAL's source queues lack the functionality required for doing proper timing of various effects that you would need in order to pull it off.

The other problem is that the designers of OpenAL dont want to fix these problems, or let 3rd party developers do it for them. I have argued passionately for months for API improvements such as queue completion callbacks, defered object deletion and a more extensible API to make the library more generally useful for applications and operating systems other than 3D games on linux. I have been unable to convince them to make even the smallest changes to the spec. So, really until we can get some more flexibility and input into the API design, it is somewhat unrealistic to expect me or any other third party, including Apple, to be able to do much for OpenAL.

Apple will also be donating an iBook to each of these families with children.

...why is there only this one guy saying 10.1 will be payware? MacCentral doesn't have a story, nor MacNN, nor MacSlash.

Heck, this claim isn't even on MacOSRumors, and Ryan is a total weasel known to post ANY random crap that comes his way.

Maybe it's true, maybe not. But one guy on MacObserver isn't convincing.

It predicts firewire and usb will coexist, with firewire probably remaining dominant in audio/video.

The point-to-point aspect of firewire seems like a huge advantage for these applications, and it will be interesting to see if the predicted speed bumps of firewire 2 and 3 really are double and triple current speeds, as expected (and way faster than USB 2).

It predicts firewire and usb will coexist, with firewire probably remaining dominant in audio/video.

The point-to-point aspect of firewire seems like a huge advantage for these applications, and it will be interesting to see if the predicted speed bumps of firewire 2 and 3 really are double and triple current speeds, as expected (and way faster than USB 2).

I wouldn't bet on this guy's prognostication abilities since his history is so wrong.

"Michael Dull" us folks here in Austin calls him!

Oh yes they are. And computer types are usually the worst about it.

Take LCDs vs. CRTs for example. These days, most LCDs are hooked up using DVI connectors. Since the path from the video card to the display in such cases is all-digital, there are people who simply cannot fathom that there could ever be anything wrong with it. However, despite the fact that CRTs receive an analog signal, they typically have much better color accuracy than LCDs. This is a measurable, repeatable result. Get yourself a color meter and try it yourself. Even medium-priced CRTs will give you better results than the newest and most expensive LCDs on the market today.

But try telling that to people who are automatically in love with all things "digital". They are incapable of understanding that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. DVI may be sending 100% accurate data to the display, but that does no good if LCDs are so inaccurate they never give you the right color no matter what number you feed them. LCDs are shit for color accuracy, but because they're "digital", people refuse to believe it.

So yes, people are dumb enough to buy into things just because they are billed as "digital". And I'm constantly amazed at how many technically literate people fall for that crap without ever bothering to get the facts.

Then again, maybe not.

Why Apple for it's FireWire and not IEEE for it's same 1394-1995 spec or Sony for it's i.Link (again the same)? Because Apple is the one that did the development and the popularizing of the technology thus their holding the majority of the patents & controlling the licensing.)

Why Apple for it's FireWire and not IEEE for it's same 1394-1995 spec or Sony for it's i.Link (again the same)? Because Apple is the one that did the development and the popularizing of the technology thus their holding the majority of the patents & controlling the licensing.)

When I'm toting my laptop, I need to carry a mouse and a power cord, among other things. I need my notebooks, pens, CD's, etc... If I carry this thing, not only will it not fit in my laptop backpack which I'll STILL have to carry, but now I've also lost one of my two carry-ons allowed on the plane. If I stuff my current Dell (or iBook) into my backpack, I've got everything I need plus room to spare, and I can also carry on a toiletries bag in case I get stranded.

If you want tough, go and buy a Miltope TSC-750 or any one of the rugged laptops from Niche. Besides, according to this article in MacWorld, the iBook is pretty tough as it is.

"Come to think of it, there already are a million monkeys at a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton

When I'm toting my laptop, I need to carry a mouse and a power cord, among other things. I need my notebooks, pens, CD's, etc... If I carry this thing, not only will it not fit in my laptop backpack which I'll STILL have to carry, but now I've also lost one of my two carry-ons allowed on the plane. If I stuff my current Dell (or iBook) into my backpack, I've got everything I need plus room to spare, and I can also carry on a toiletries bag in case I get stranded.

If you want tough, go and buy a Miltope TSC-750 or any one of the rugged laptops from Niche. Besides, according to this article in MacWorld, the iBook is pretty tough as it is.

"Come to think of it, there already are a million monkeys at a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton

I'll be interested to see what happens to Palm's stock after this. According to this article, JLG plans on liquidating all $11 million of stock ASAP.

It allows a low polygon model to look much more detailed without sacrificing frames per second. See this and this for an illustration of what truform *could* do.

It will be very interesting to see what this truform thing can do. Read more about truform here.

It allows a low polygon model to look much more detailed without sacrificing frames per second. See this and this for an illustration of what truform *could* do.

It will be very interesting to see what this truform thing can do. Read more about truform here.

It allows a low polygon model to look much more detailed without sacrificing frames per second. See this and this for an illustration of what truform *could* do.

It will be very interesting to see what this truform thing can do. Read more about truform here.

Sure, its graphics were primitive. And the low frame rate forced it to focus on puzzle-solving and plot rather than combat and reflexes. But that wasn't necessarily a bad thing; its plot was (and is) still better than almost anything else I've ever seen.

It remembered its roots, too; the plot borrowed heavily from Aliens and from 2001, and sure enough, there's a replica of Bave Bowman's suite, with a monolith inside, and many of the puzzles involve moving things around with a forklift that looked (and sounded) like the one Ripley used in Aliens. And the game contained a mini-clone of Battlezone (of course, the granddaddy of them all.)

Sadly, I think it'd be classified as abandonware now; I don't think Mindscape still exists. Does anyone have this game lying around? Particularly the color version, released soon after the Mac II came out? (Yep, it's that old...) I'd love to fire up a Mac emulator and play this again, with a decent framerate this time.

Sounds good, except you're wrong.

No it doesn't. The idea that CRTs are better than LCDs for color is supported by cold hard facts. Even a cheap-o CRT has better delta-E values than the LCDs in that test.

Next thing you know, we'll be saying CRTs have "warmer" color.

No, just considerably more accurate color.

--Volrath50

--Volrath50

--Volrath50

--Volrath50

--Volrath50