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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.

Okay, I may be wrong in this (too lazy to check the article which I read yesterday), but I think the original article merely talks about moving away from Motorola.

The implication, of course, is a move to OS X, but I think it's much more likely that Apple will turn to IBM's PPC chips instead. IBM (the other part of the AIM triumverate) has been a supplier of Apple's chips for a while, and they're poised to release the processor's Apple needs well before Motorola (which can't seem to get their act together.

Try http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1357 or the Thursday, 7/11 update here.

IA-64 seems more likely than IA-32 to me, but some people have suggested Apple could move to IBM's Power4 line, which is closely related to PPC. How about ARM Processors? MIPS? Sparc? Alpha? Transmeta? Anybody have any other ideas?

Apple is just hurting itself. Their rabid fans/sites have kept them alive through software & hardware droughts. This policy won't keep the big boys from publishing rumors and I doubt it will have any effect on the rumor sites

Apple has reportedly demonstrated a 112Mbps version of its Airport wireless networking technology for educators in certain West Coast US locations, in anticipation that the new standard, which is up to ten times faster than the current Airport and can sustain original Airport speeds at distances upwards of 50% greater than today's devices. Release dates vary between reports, but the general consensus is Apple will release at least a partial implementation of this technology at Macworld New York this summer, just in time for the 2002-2003 school year buying season.

Spymac sucks... they're as bad as MacOS Rumors.

Think Secret and As the Apple Turns are the only reliable (heh) sources for good rumors.

MacMinute usually gets it right the day of the keynote.

Maybe because it's because of this problem...

Quick tidbits:

This product has had the mac world biting their nails for the past week or so.
Two of the most popular mac news sources, MacSlash and MacOS Rumors, are currently down, and MacNN has been slowed to a crawl.
The official announcement from apple is expected to happen at 10:00AM PST.

MacOS Rumors has some information here which details how secretive it is (under heading similar to, and along the lines of, 'non-project workers kept in dark until Monday').

MacOS Rumors has some information here which details how secretive it is (under heading similar to, and along the lines of, 'non-project workers kept in dark until Monday').

...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.

This isn't a good site, many people will remember when someone doctored a shot of a new Nokia product and Meader ran it as "Top Secret iPhone revealed by our Apple sources", or the whole UMA-1 vs UMA-2 bullshit that he's been plying for years.

What he has called UMA-1 in the past was really called Core99 and Apple has even used this "codename" in public, and yet when Apple finally moved the January2001 iMac to a new architecture, where "UniNorth" (north-bridge) and "KeyLargo" (south-bridge) were combined into Pangea he didn't even notice!

You seem unaware that trolling MacOS Rumors is a popular pastime among knowledgeable Mac users, and alledgedly even Apple staff?

This isn't a good site, many people will remember when someone doctored a shot of a new Nokia product and Meader ran it as "Top Secret iPhone revealed by our Apple sources", or the whole UMA-1 vs UMA-2 bullshit that he's been plying for years.

What he has called UMA-1 in the past was really called Core99 and Apple has even used this "codename" in public, and yet when Apple finally moved the January2001 iMac to a new architecture, where "UniNorth" (north-bridge) and "KeyLargo" (south-bridge) were combined into Pangea he didn't even notice!

You seem unaware that trolling MacOS Rumors is a popular pastime among knowledgeable Mac users, and alledgedly even Apple staff?

G4 AGP was codenamed "Sawtooth" raise your hand!

There was a story on mosr.com a few months ago about how Apple planned to combine certain technologies from its defunct Newton division with its powerbook line, producing a hybrid pda-laptop beast which would behave like a laptop but have a pen and hand-writing recognition. I can't believe IBM would steal such an idea from Apple instead of having its own true innovation, like a touch-controlled built-in laser pointer for lecture presentations or a three-dimensional external talking wordprocessing assistant. The nerve!

Carbon under the public beta is so slow because there is so much debug code in it. MacOS Rumors is just reporting on the latest build, noting that Photoshop runs about 25% faster because of removed debug code and further optimization for the G4. I checked with a developer friend who does have the latest build, and he says on his machine it's closer to 30-35%.

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IBM chose not to include Altivec with their version of the G4 initially, then later licensed it from Motorola after Apple screamed for more chip volume and Motorola couldn't keep up with demand for a 500 MHz chip.

Come July/August, Motorola is still having severe yeild problems with their manufacturing process. IBM OTOH, has, if both you and I recall correctly, a much better yeild of higher MHz G4's. I'm sure Apple would love to have them, but IBM's agreement probably stipulates they can't speed bump Motorola.

So, until Motorola pulls their manufacturing process out of the doldrums, we're stuck for a bit. See the archives at MacOSRumors for some completely unsubstantiated background. BTW, this post assumes they *aren't* fabricating their site.

"The post mentions something about a dual processor G4 Cube. This simply isn't true. The G4 cubes come with either a 450 or 500mhz G4 chip. One lonely chip."

Well, he's confused between the G4 Cube and the non-cube G4, both of which have varying options: Should he have read the article before posting he'd have seen that they don't claim the existence of a dual-processor Power Mac G4 Cube:

"the PowerMacintosh G4 Cube (see it on Apple.com!). Fanless, with a well-concealed sloat-loading DVD-ROM drive (on top of the box!), 450MHz ($1799) and 500MHz ($2299) versions will be available soon."

They do however mention a dual-processor Power Mac G4.

"Apple has announced the immediate availability of two dual-processor PowerMac G4s at 450 and 500MHz, with the low-end model sporting a single 450MHz processor."

You see, there are two distinct different products:
1). The Power Mac G4 which has the following processor options:

• single processor 400MHz ($1,599.00);
• dual-processor 450MHz ($2,499.00);
• dual-processor 500MHz ($3,499.00).

• single-processor 450MHz ($1799.00)
• single-processor 500MHz ($2299.00)

So there are dual-processor G4s, they just don't come in an eight inch cube. Hope this clears things up.

Shame on you Timothy... :)

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MOSR has posted the source to VGS!!!!

Click and enjoy!!!

More info can be found here.

send feedback to Ryan Meader.

More info can be found here.

send feedback to Ryan Meader.

MacOS Rumors as an example uses the "Open Content" license, with details at the bottom of their site. I think this is a possible answer for posters and readers, and it is indeed essentially a "GPL for Books".

MOSR is a great site; I've been reading it pretty much daily for about four years now, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone who's interested in what's going on with Apple and the Mac world. :-)

MOSR is a great site; I've been reading it pretty much daily for about four years now, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone who's interested in what's going on with Apple and the Mac world. :-)

I have heard that to many times, and for to many reasons to believe that OS x is the end all and be all of Operating Systems. There doesn't seem to be much information available on OS X, except that it crashes when to many threads are spawned(the apache server test I belive).

Yeah. That's Mac OS X Server, which has been shipping since March, is $500, and needs to run old Mac apps in a seperate virtual environment. It's a very different OS from what the general use Mac OS X and new versions of Server will be. It isn't even based on the same kernel (Mach 2.5 vs. Mach 3.0).

Information about Mac OS X is rather hard to find, because Steve Jobs loves suprises. There's plenty about OS X Server, but it really isn't the interesting one.

For information about Mac OS X Server, try Apple's web page on the product here.

You can get some information about the general version Mac OS X from the archives of Mac OS Rumors, but be aware that these are rumors.

Basically, what's known about it is that it's core is BSD on top of a Mach 3.0 microkernel. It has several APIs, including Carbon, which is an API mostly like the existing Mac API, but it fixes the issues that prevent current apps from working in a modern environment (so old Mac apps can be ported to OS X fast; apps like Photoshop take a week of work to convert to Carbon), Cocoa (formerly called YellowBox), which is mostly an updated version of the NeXT API (can be programed in Objective C and Java), and "Classic", which is really just a backwards compatibility environment to run old Mac apps. Old Mac apps will all run as one task in one memory space, but won't be able to hog CPU time from (or crash) Carbon apps, Cocoa apps, or the OS. Mac OS X will also have an advanced new graphics model called Quartz that's based on PDF. Unfortunately, it isn't a client/server architecture like X, but it does do some rather amazing things. And there should be full access to a complete BSD commad line.

Apple's focus with Mac OS X is to create a kick-ass modern OS that even hard core geeks can respect, but that won't alienate Mac fanatics.

The OS's entire core (all the Mach and BSD stuff) will be open sourced under the Apple Public Source License.

Current planned shipping date is "early 2000", whatever that means. Apple just seeded the second developer build of the OS last week, but everyone who has a copy in NDAed.

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Quoted directly from MacOS Rumors:

Working closely with our friends at Appleinsider, MOSR has confirmed two very positive developments in the ongoing effort to discern Apple's willingness to keep its professional computers upgradable:

Very importantly, it has been confirmed by reliable Apple sources that the company is planning to include fix for the G4 upgrade block installed with the latest Blue G3 Firmware. Apparently, the decision to develop the block code was extremely controversial within Apple, and even its proponents generally stated that their intentions were only to provide insurance that Apple was not "surprise attacked" by third parties shipping G4 upgrades before Apple was able to ship their own G4 machine.

Secondly, MOSR has confirmed that the recent confusion over whether the new Sawtooth-based G4s were processor-upgradable was caused by outdated diagrams of the board. Once more recent versions were uncovered, it was clear that the Boot ROM continues to reside on the main board, and there are no obvious barriers in hardware nor software for the new G4s to be upgraded for years to come.

In a related note, we were surprised to hear from several third party developers that not only had they succesfully used prototype multiple-G4 upgrade boards on Beige and Blue G3s...at least one has also completed a proof-of-concept test for a multi-G4 card that would support the use of the 128-bit, enhanced-performance MaxBus as a "backplane" bus for the processors and cache chips to use for incredibly efficient inter-processor communication -- but would still be compatible with all upgradable PowerPC Macs and their 64-bit "60x" bus protocol. MaxBus, which many insiders had previously not expected to be applied to the Mac until mid to late 2000, could offer dramatic benefits even in this only partial implementation.

Admittedly Apple has that "Oh Shit!" look of kindergartner caught with both hands in the cookie jar, but it does represent a positive thing for any computer company: Listening to your pissed off end users.

read today's MacOS Rumors.

it seems the debate about being able to upgrade or not is a tricky one. of course, if apple has gone out of its way to disable upgraes, the third parties will have to go to all new heights to work around apple. they've figured out how to put a g3 in a 6100 (pizzabox with a soldered 601) and the terminally non-upgradeable performas, so i think a little hardware trickery isn't going to deter them.

MacOS Rumors says it's solid. According to them, OS X has been pounded on and it stayed up (and didn't slow down); go there to read the full report.