[7/30] Add 3 Drives to a Power Mac G5 for 250MB/s Performance with MaxConnect Lite: MaxUpgrades announced the availability of MaxConnect Lite, a CPU Bay internal storage expansion assembly for G5 Power Macs. MaxConnect Lite is made of PolyAcetal, a ThermoPlastic known for its high strength and stiffness. MaxConnect Lite, aThe CPU bay internal storage expansion assembly enables three additional disk drives to be housed in the lower CPU bay. The MaxConnect Lite expansion assembly is $74, with power cables it is $79, with power and SATA cables it is $99 and the full kit with power cables, SATA cables and 4 internal port SATA PCI-X host card is $199--all without drives. [Bill Fox]

[7/30] Apple Revised the offerings from Two Hot Deals Retailers:

The newest entry to the Hot Deals family is the Apple Store Special Deals page. Here you'll find unbelievable deals on the hottest refurbished and new, unopened Apple products. Current offerings include eMac 1.25GHz with SuperDrive for only $799, iPod with Color Display starting at only $299, 23" Cinema HD Display for only $1,299, and much more. But hurry; supplies are limited and sure to go fast.

Publishing Perfection has great deals on a variety of design and print products for your Mac, including Eovia Carrara 3D Basics 2, StockLayouts Volume 1 for Adobe Illustrator, Allume Systems Internet Cleanup 4, ALPS MD-1000 Photo Realistic Finish Ink Cartridge, Microtek ScanMaker i900 Flatbed Scanner, AutoFX Mystical Lighting, and much more.

[Bill Fox]

[7/29] From the Dark Side--Microsoft Annual Wall Street Analysts Briefing Brings Up Apple/iPod/Halo Effect: We are dumbfounded. For the first time in 17 years of such briefings, M$ Founder Bill Gates did not offer a future vision of Microsoft. In addition, CEO Steve Ballmer noted that M$'s own executives are not buying M$ stock and that M$ will innovate by buying smaller companies. This was supposed to excite Wall Street analysts about M$?

Regarding the M$ relationship to Apple, NYT reporter John Markoff noted:

Many features shown today [in Widows Vista] are ones already introduced in Apple Computer's OS X Tiger operating system.

During today's briefing, Microsoft executives acknowledged that the popularity of Apple Computer's iPod music player had indirectly helped sales of Macintosh computers.

"The halo effect enabled them to go after PC users and sell them Apple products," said Will Poole, the Microsoft executive in charge of desktop operating system products.

Microsoft thinks the halo effect of the iPod is real. It's probably the lesser of two evils in explaining why Apple's Mac sales have soared. More... [Dana Baggett]

[7/29] Yahoo! Toolbar 1.0 for Firefox Web Browser is Out: Yahoo! joined Google, Amazon and Ask Jeeves in making a toolbar for Mozilla's Firefox Web browser. Yahoo!'s works with the Mac version of Firefox and has portable bookmarks, a resizable search box, open new tabs from Toolbar buttons. quickly add RSS feeds to My Yahoo!, instantly save and "re-find" pages with My Web and support for trunk builds, etc. It is available for download from this Yahoo! Web page. [Dana Baggett]

[7/29] Brief Hands-On Report--Opera 8.0.2 Released: A new version of the Opera Web browser, v8.0.2, was released and it is available for download from Opera Software's Web page. The Web browser is free with Google ads or $39 without ads. Here are some of the changes in v8.0.2:

Security

• Solved download dialog spoofing issue described in Secunia Advisory SA15870
  
• Fixed image dragging issue described in Secunia Advisory SA15756
  
• Prevented link hijacking issue described in Secunia Advisory SA15781
  

Mac specific changes

• Entries in Address Book are imported on first-run only.
  
• Improved window size handling for pop-ups.
  
• Fixed problems with window.print().
  
• Fixed a banner handling problem when using multiple windows.
  
• Cache files will now be saved on exit.

Opera is the fastest Web browser at loading javascripts and it doesn't botch them, e.g. Edmunds.com, like Safari does (click on the New or Used links to compare them). Our copy worked just fine on all Web pages that we tested. [Bill Fox]

[7/29] Syngress Published Stealing the Network: How to Own an Identity: Here's a wild one. Syngress Publishing, Inc., announced the publication of Stealing the Network: How to Own an Identity (ISBN:1597490067, 450p, $39.95), at the popular Black Hat Briefings. This is the third book in the bestselling Stealing the Network series from Syngress. The all-star cast of multiple authors--Timothy Mullen, Ryan Russell, Riley (Caezar) Eller, Jeff Moss, Jay Beale, Johnny Long, Chris Hurley, Tom Parker, Brian Hatch--tackles one of the fastest growing crimes in the world, identity theft. Johnny Long's chapter, Death by a Thousand Cuts,

"...follows, in part, a forensic cop's efforts to make a disc image of an iPod that was found at a crime scene. The trouble is, Apple's drivers spring into action whenever the iPod senses it has connected to a computer. If the driver activity changes anything in the iPod, all evidence on it will be inadmissible in court."

You'll have to read the book to see how this was solved. [Bill Fox]

[7/28] Charles Gaba's Mac/PC System Shootouts Updated--Review Henrico County's Decision: Charles Gaba's new comparisons include the Dell Inspirion 600m that Henrico County, VA, Public Schools chose over renewing its contract for Apple iBooks (see our previous note). The list of new system shootout comparions includes:

• $500 Desktops (Apple Mac mini vs. Dell Dimension 3000)
  
• $1,000 Laptops (Apple 12" iBook vs. Dell Inspirion 700m)
  
• $1,300 Laptops (Apple 14" iBook vs. Dell Inspirion 600m)

In addition, the following Special Shootouts have also been updated:

• Apple vs. Apple: 12" iBook vs. 12" PowerBook
  
• Apple Desktop Lineup
  
• Apple Laptop Lineup
  

[Bill Fox]

[7/28] Mozilla 1.7.11 Coming Out Soon: Final test builds of v1.7.11 of the Mozilla project's web suite, browser and email client, are available for download from this Mozilla server. Assuming there are no major problems found during current testing, v1.7.11 could be out any day now. We downloaded and tried the latest build and found no problems. [Dana Baggett].

[7/28] Paraglyph Published Degunking Your Mac/Tiger Edition: Apple's new operating system for Macs, Tiger, has been hailed by critics as a great OS, but this doesn't mean it's problem free. To help Mac users get the most out of Tiger, Paraglyph Press announced Degunking Your Mac, Tiger Edition (U.S.$24.99, 400 pp, ISBN 1-933097-05-1) by Joli Ballew. In her new edition focused on Tiger, Apple expert Joli Ballew provides scores of tips and tons of advice in every chapter. From fixing your Desktop to cleaning up your iPod, to straightening out the Dock, Finder and Menu Bar and getting the most out of Dashboard, Joli shows how anyone can clean up and degunk their Mac and take advantage of all the new features of Tiger.

[7/28] O'Reilly Released Home Networking: The Missing Manual: It all started when personal computers and peripherals became more affordable. Suddenly, the single Mac or PC household turned into a multiple computer household, with a myriad of peripherals. To connect everything and share resources has become a serious need. Throw in different operating systems and wireless technology like Apple's AirPort and the prospect can seem overwhelming. Fortunately, Scott Lowe has written a guide in Home Networking: The Missing Manual (O'Reilly, US $24.95) for anyone interested in setting up their own home network and reaping the rewards. The benefits of networking continue to drive this growing demand for the home from going wireless and sharing files and peripherals, to displaying digital photos on the TV and networking TiVo. [Bill Fox]

[7/28] Apple Revised the Offerings from Six Hot Deals Retailers:

The Apple Store and Apple Store for Education Hot Deals pages have just launched a brand new offer aimed and students and teachers. Until September 16, 2005, you can buy Microsoft Office for Mac Student & Teacher Edition for just $99.95 after rebate -- an incredible $50 savings.

ClubMac has great deals on essential Mac products, including SanDisk's 512MB Cruzer Mini Portable Flash Drive, D-Link 802.11G Wireless Cable/DSL Router with $25 mail-in rebate, D-Link 2.4GHz 802.11B Wireless Internet Camera, Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Standard Edition Upgrade, Sonnet Encore/ST G5 1.7GHz Upgrade Kit for Cube, and much more.

Mac Game Store has great deals on the hottest games for the Mac, including MacSoft Tropico 2: Pirate Cove, Sega Football Manager 2005, Legacy Interactive Zoo Vet, Shrapnel Games Salvo!, Sega NHL Eastside Hockey Manager, Logitech Z-5500 5.1 Digital Speaker System, Aspyr Star Wars: Battlefront, and more.

MacMall has fantastic prices on essential Mac products, including LaCie 160GB Porsche External FireWire Hard Drive, D-Link 802.11G Wireless Cable/DSL Router with $25 mail-in rebate, Alsoft DiskWarrior 3.0.3, Microsoft Virtual PC 7.0 for Mac with $30 mail-in rebate, Alien Skin Eye Candy 4000/Splat/Xenofex 2 Bundle, and much more.

Small Dog Electronics has great prices on top quality Mac products, including Mobile Edge Komen Microfiber 15" Laptop Tote, QuickerTek 5.5dbi High Gain Antenna for 15"/17" Aluminum PowerBooks, Canon iP3000 Color Photo Printer with $20 mail-in rebate, Small Dog iPod Tool Bundle, M-Audio Fast Track Studio, and much more.

[Bill Fox]

[7/28] FREE Envision Web Show of the Week--Voices of Civil Rights: This week's Envision Web Show of the Week is taken from a recently-concluded exhibit at the Library of Congress. Voices of Civil Rights documents events during the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. The Envision Web Show of the Week can be downloaded from the Show of the Week Web site. Previous Shows of the Week are available in the Show of the Week archive. [Bill Fox]

[7/27] Our Take on Apple's Upgraded Mac mini and iBook G4 Lines: Apple now offers Mac minis in three standard configurations and iBook G4s in two.

The base $499 1.25GHz Mac mini now simply gets 512MB RAM in place of 256MB, essentially a $75 saving. We don't know if the additional 256K on an entry level consumer computer is actually needed but Apple suggests 512K minimum for running Mac OS X 10.4.x so it's consistent. We'll find out but, hey, it's free so no one is going to complain are they?

The next level $599 1.42GHz Mac mini does even better as a result of the upgrade. It gets a free additional 256MB RAM, free AirPort Extreme card and free Bluetooth module over the previous $599 model and looks like the real value model even though it loses the 56K modem. The $100 over base now not only buys a 14 per cent faster G4 CPU and 40GB of additional hard drive space but AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth as well while giving up the modem. If you need the modem, it's only $29 but then why would you pay for AirPort Extreme?

The top level $699 1.42GHz Mac mini gets everything the $599 model has plus a SuperDrive. $100 is a minimal premium for Apple's DVD burner. Now a fully loaded Mac mini with 20" Cinema Display is a more reasonable $1,498 or $1,556 with mouse and keyboard. It now takes $243 more for the comparably-equipped but much faster 20" 2GHz iMac G5 at $1,799.

Wow, that was easy to go from $499 to $1,799! We are certain that Apple is hoping many shoppers will do just that.

The new iBook G4s all get a scrolling trackpad and a Sudden Motion (drop) sensor to protect the hard drive along with CPU speed, RAM size and graphics speed bumps plus built-in Bluetooth 2.0.

The 12" iBook G4 continues to get only a combo optical drive--there's no DVD burning at 12" unless one moves up the 12" PowerBook G4. Still, for the same $999 the 12" iBook G4 gains a faster 1.33GHz CPU, 256MB more RAM (to 512MB), faster ATI 9550 graphics and Bluetooth 2.0, a real bargain.

The 14" 1.42GHz iBook G4 with all the new goodies also comes with a SuperDrive for only $1299 so it is $200 less than its slower non-Bluetooth immediate predecessor. That's a significant change--substantially more capability for substantially less money! A combo optical drive is a BTO option for $100 less.

The new Mac mini and iBook G4 models offer significantly more capabilty at the same or even less price point depending on model. The most dramatic change is that the faster and more capable iBook G4 line now tops out at $1,299 for a standard configuration instead of $1,499. [Bill Fox]

[7/27] Brief Hands-On Report--Apple Released iPhoto 5.0.4: It is available from the Mac OS X Software Update or as a standalone updater from this Apple Web page. According to the Read Me file,

Recommended for all customers using iPhoto 5.0, 5.0.1, 5.0.2 and 5.0.3.

iPhoto 5.0.4 addresses an issue with browsing photos that have been auto-rotated by a camera.

We did not encounter this problem with previous versions of iPhoto 5.x. But we downloaded and installed iPhoto 5.0.4 on a number of Macs, several with a large number of photos. No copy of iPhoto 5.0.4 had difficulty with any auto-rotated photos. [Bill Fox]

[7/27] The Apple Developer Connection Published plasq Shows What a Small Team Can Do: Comic Life Is Media-Rich and Fun to Use: plasq is a small company with some talented developers. Using key Mac OS X Tiger technologies, they quickly developed a versatile and fun application that is so easy to use it seems simple, but in fact harnesses some of the most powerful technology available--Core Image, QuickTime 7, iPhoto integration, iSight image capture, and more. Built with Xcode 2.1 and Cocoa, Comic Life is a great app to use and a showcase for Mac OS X Tiger technologies. This article recounts how one programmer with a handful of buddies created an application that won the 2005 Apple Design Award for Best Product New to Mac OS X. [Bill Fox]

[7/26] Apple Released GarageBand Update v2.0.2: It shows up in the Software Update window if you have iLife '05 installed and it is also available for download as a standalone installer from this Apple Web page.. According to the Read Me file,

GarageBand 2.0.2 addresses issues with time signature handling, Apple Loops authoring, locking tracks, and improves compatibility with Mac OS X Tiger.

We don't use GarageBand much yet so we can not confirm the stated fixes. [Bill Fox]

[7/26] Hell Has Really Frozen Over Very Hard--Dvorak Praised Mac OS X and Apple in his recent note on the future of desktop computing. Arch PC apologist John Dvorak actually wrote:

Apple. Vista will open the door to what I believe will be a radical change in the computing landscape. The trends are clear. Once the new Mac OS appears next year it will gravitate toward the existing x86 community much more rapidly than anticipated unless Apple does some incredibly dumb things to stop it. Personally I cannot see what they can do or why they'd want to stop it. [...]

Right now, and as much as x86 users do not want to admit it, the Mac OS is already better than Windows in its modern look and feel as well as its functionality. I see too many smart people with Mac laptops nowadays.

[Dana Baggett]

[7/26] AssistiveWare Announced Release of Proloquo 1.0: Proloquo is a new and groundbreaking, according to AssistivewWare, multi-purpose and multilingual speech solution for Mac OS X that provides: (1) a full-fledged communication system (AAC) for people who cannot speak; (2) improves accessibility of Mac OS X for people with visual impairments; (3) provides speech feedback in any application while typing for children and people with learning disabilities; (4) can serve as a talking word processor; (5) provides text to speech for people who prefer listening to reading; (6) can be used as a tool to learn the pronunciation of foreign languages; (7) provides an advanced, multilingual speech engine for our KeyStrokes(R) on-screen keyboard and our SwitchXS(R) switch access solution. Check it out on AssistiveWare's Web site. [Bill Fox]

[7/25] Hands-On Review--Micromat's DiskStudio 1.0.1: Micromat is finally shipping DiskStudio, an application that creates and removes partitions on a drive without erasing the data on it. We saw DiskStudio demonstrated at Macworld in January and gave it high praise for its simplicity and utility. It seemed to work great at Macworld and it was scheduled for release in February. We are not sure why it took so long to come out but we are glad Micromat took whatever time was needed to ensure a bug-free disk utility. We ordered a copy from J&R Computer last week for $50. The Macworld pre-order show special had been $35--we are sorry now that we did not take Micromat up on the deal.

DiskStudio creates partitions on drives without disturbing the existing data by using the blank portion of the drive for the new volume or volumes. It also deletes partitions that it made or were made by Apple's Disk Utility, a utility application bundled with Mac OS X. DiskStudio also performs the standard disk functions of erasing a volume and erasing an entire disk.

One limitation is that it deletes partitions in the reverse of the order they were created from the intial volume, accumulating the free space into the next lower numbered volume. For example, if a drive is partitioned into three volumes and you want to delete the partition that created volume three, the freed space accrues only to the partition for volume two. Volume one remains the same size unless the partition to volume two is also removed. The data on a deleted volume is lost but not the data on the volume that receives the freed up space.

Another limitation is that DiskStudio will not delete the partition with a boot volume. So if you have a drive with two boot volumes on it, DiskStudio will not delete the partition and create one volume directly. One has to first erase the unwanted boot volume and then delete the partition. Actually, this is a minor inconvenience that protects one from accidentally deleting a boot volume's partition.

How well does DiskStudio work? In our experience, quite well. First, we deleted a 2GB test partition, the third volume on our G4 Cube's original 20GB internal hard drive. The first two volumes hold installations of Mac OS X Server 10.4.2 and Mac OS X Client 10.4.2.

We booted from the DiskStudio CD, a process that Micromat warns could take up to 10 minutes. In our case, the 450MHz G4 Cube booted off the DiskStudio CD in around two minutes. DiskStudio showed that the first two volumes were not partitionable because they are boot volumes but the third was. We selected the third volume, our test volume with a variety of old files and applications, and clicked the "Delete" button. Within a few seconds the third volume was gone and its 2GB of space had accrued to the second volume containing Mac OS X Client 10.4.2 where we needed more space. Both remaining volumes booted and ran our Cube with no apparent problems.

Then we deleted a separate Mac OS 9 partition from an original 12" 867MHz Powerbook G4. First, we erased the Mac OS 9 volume (number two) and then deleted the partition that created it. Our Mac OS X partition became a volume of 37GB after receiving the 15GB of space freed up by deleting the Mac OS 9 volume. We then created two additional volumes from the free space and deleted them to test DiskStudio's other functions. Afterwards, the PowerBook G4 booted and ran fine off the now single and larger Mac OS X 10.4.2 volume.

Micromat's DiskStudio is a handy disk utility. It is well worth $50 to be able to partition a drive without erasing the existing data and to delete an unused partition to create a volume with more space without disturbing the data on the now larger volume. Being able to do so saves an enormous amount of time reinstalling Mac OS X, applications and files. DiskStudio works great for us but heed Micromat's warning to first backup critical data on a drive before using DiskStudio on it, sage advice for using any disk utility. You never know what might happen. [Bill Fox]

[7/25] Details on How Apple iBooks Lost to Dell Inspirions in Henrico County (VA) High Schools: Apple rocketed back onto the frontpage of K-12 educational computing with a deal to supply tens of thousands of iBooks to the Henrico County (VA) Public Schools for daily use by students, teachers and administrators. This pioneering effort revolutionized K-12 education as many school districts across the U.S. and in Canada followed suit and supplied their students, teachers and administrators with laptops. But, like in all walks of life, success brings serious competitors. In the case of one-to-one classroom portable computing, Apple's success attracted Dell, the company that has been eating Apple's education desktop lunch for some time.

This year the four-year contract for high school laptops in the Henrico County Public Schools was up for re-bidding. Dell was awarded the new four-year contract over Apple (and CDWG) through votes of 9-0 by an evaluation committee and 5-0 by the school board. Apple retains the contract for elementary and middle schools, at least for now. But how did Apple lose unanimously at every stage in the high school contracting process?

Three principal issues were brought up by students, parents and teachers for consideration in designing the new contract: downtime for maintenance, the fees the schools charged parents and teachers and the desire for Microsoft Office. On the surface, none of these issues appear to be decidely in favor of Dell over Apple. In fact, the maintenance issue would seem to subtantially favor Apple and Mac OS X over Dell and Windows XP.

The iBooks' maintenance rate was 4-5 per cent of the laptops at any given time and Apple was 96 per cent effective at fixing things within 24 hours according to a school system report. This is actually surprisingly good performance to us, especially for laptops in the hands of high school students. Downtime could be reduced to near zero by having a small percentage of the laptops available as loaners as some school districts have done. Indeed, this is the approach taken by Henrico County and both Apple's and Dell's bids contained a 2 per cent overage for loaners. But, according to a school report, Dell also bid that it would increase the number to 5 per cent if that proved necessary. Dell appears to have been the smarter bidder by promising to cover the repair rate experienced with iBooks and appearing to offer a no downtime solution. But what if the Dells experience a repair rate that greatly exceeds the iBooks 4-5 per cent and fails to meet Apple's 96 per cent rate of repairs in 24 hours? The school district loses, of course. What data did Henrico County look at to determine if the Dells would have an expected repair rate lower than 5 per cent? The schools system's report does not say. The next four years will tell if the school system got bamboozled. We think they did.

The fee issue is partly an issue of how the laptop program will be paid for. But if eliminated, the fees are simply transferred to the cost of the contract and the county's school revenue sources rather than individual parents of students and teachers using the laptops. Doing so will also likely have the effect of increasing the repair rate since the damage waiver fee for students is an incentive to maintain the laptops. Henrico County kept the $50 student use fee but eliminated the $50 teacher use fee and the $100 student damage waiver. Care to guess which way the repair rate is headed?

Penultimately, there's the Microsoft Office issue. Dell's bid included Microsoft Office, of course, and Apple's included AppleWorks. As far as I am concerned, AppleWorks is perfectly fine piece of software and meets any possible actual requirement for high school use. But since the users expressed a desire for Microsoft Office, this issue is a no-brainer. If you offer people what they say they want, all things being equal they are going to take it, no? Even if all things are not exactly equal, an expressed desire is really an unwritten requirement that very definitely will be weighed in the decision, like it or not, especially when it is a voting situation rather than a strictly technical decision. Apple could have offered Microsoft Office but doing so probably would have increased the cost of its bid more than that of Dell's.

Finally, there is price. Dell bid $256 lower for each of 15,800 laptops than did Apple, i.e. $1,130 per 14" Inspirion 600m versus $1,386 per 12" iBook. The Henrico County Public Schools report did not include an estimate of the total cost of ownership. The report does mention a transition cost that it will bear in switching to the Dells but it did not reduce it to dollars for comparing the bid prices.

So, it looks like meeting repair rate expectations, Microsoft Office and price beat Apple. We think the first is bogus and Henrico County will regret its decision on this issue alone but only time and good, honest monitoring will tell. Microsoft Office, like it or not, is a monopoly just like Windows and the only way for Apple to win in situations where Microsoft Office is a desired element is to offer it. The only way that Apple can do that and come close on price is to license Microsoft Office for many if not all of its computers just like the Windows computer makers. It is curious that a base Inspirion 600m with 256MB RAM and base Microsoft Office sells for $1,610 on Dell's Web store while a base 12" iBook sells for $999 on Apple's Web store. On the surface, it looks as if Apple could have done better on price. Apple will have to do better on price or come up with some new killer innovations to beat Dell. We are betting on the latter. [Bill Fox]

[7/23] Cool Mac Software--Widget Maker X v1.0 Beta is Out and available for download from LAJ Design's Web site. Use this application to make your own widget easily or to modify one in Mac OS X 10.4.x Tiger. You have to know what you're doing but this application makes it easy. The cost is $16.50. A 10-day free trial version is available. [Bill Fox]

[7/23] Apple Revised the Offerings from Five Hot Deals Retailers:

CDW|MacWarehouse has great deals on cool Mac products, including Nikon D50 Digital SLR Camera Outfit, Epson Stylus Pro 4800 Color Inkjet Printer, Allume StuffIt Deluxe, Pantone ColorVision, Adobe Creative Suite 2 Premium, SanDisk Cruzer Micro 1GB USB Flash Drive, Altec Lansing inMotion iM7 Speaker System for iPod, Xerox Phaser 8500DP Color Laser Printer, and much more.

B&H Photo and Video has fantastic prices of superb products for your Mac, including Nikon D50 Digital SLR Camera with Nikor 18-55mm DX Zoom Lens, Speck Dock for iPod Shuffle, Canon CanoScan LiDE 60 Flatbed Scanner, Keyspan USB Wireless Presentation Remote with Mouse Control, Adobe InDesign CS2 for Mac, Kodak EasyShare Picture Viewer, DLO Jam Jacket for iPod Shuffle (3-pack), and much more.

AudioMIDI has fantastic deals on a wide range of audio products for your Mac, including Ableton Live 5, Sonalkiss SV315/SV517 Bundle, Miroslav Phillharmonik Orchestral Plug-In, Native Instruments Absynth 3 Tutorial DVD, Edirol R1 Recorder, and much more.

Ramjet has super low prices on RAM upgrades for your Mac, including 2GB DDR Kit for Power Mac G5, 512MB PC-2700 for Aluminum PowerBook G4, 1GB Module for Aluminum PowerBook G4, 1GB DDR DIMM for Mac mini, 512MB DIMM for iMac DV, 1GB DDR Kit for iMac G4, and much more.

Small Dog Electronics has great prices on top quality Mac products, including Microsoft Office 2004 Professional, Giga Designs G4 1.8GHz Dual Processor Upgrade for older Power Mac G4 Systems, Kensington TurboMouse 5.0, Smalll Dog iPod Car Charger with Dock Connector, EZQuest Pro Audio 120GB External Hard Drive, Adobe Photoshop CS2 Upgrade for Mac, and much more.

[Bill Fox]<^o))))><

[7/22] [Updated] Apple Released iMac G5 Sleep Light Update--Mystery Updater: If you have an iMac G5, the updater may appear in the System Preferences Software Update pane or it may not. No standalone updater is available at this time [11:30am EDT]. According to the Read Me file,

The iMac G5 Sleep Light Update adjusts the brightness of your iMac G5 sleep indicator light so it's not as bright during the evening. The daytime brightness remains the same.

This update is installed in Applications > Utilities and should automatically launch. Click Update and follow the onscreen instructions to apply the update.

Note: Once the update has started, do not cancel or interrupt it. The updater takes over one minute to complete. During the update, your computer fans will run at full speed, but will return to normal once the update completes.

It is not clear for which iMac G5 model the update is intended. The updater appeared in the Sofware Update preference pane of our early 1st generation 20" iMac G5 but not in our recent 2nd generation 20" iMac G5. Still, it would not launch and run on our 1st generation iMac G5. [Update: We checked Software Update again on our 1st generation iMac G5 and the update was offered again. This time a restart was required and it updated our firmware. Also, Charles Williams wrote that the updater worked on his 1st generation 17" iMac G5. Mystery solved.] [Dana Baggett & Bill Fox]

[7/22] The Sport of Tiger Hunting--WAPi July 23rd General Meeting: Washington Apple Pi (WAPi) is the Greater Washington DC AMUG and its next General Meeting is Saturday, July 23rd (aka day after tomorrow). WAPi members who have worked with Apple's Tiger operating system (Mac OS X 10.4.n where n is already up to 2) share their experiences and answer questions from the audience. The meeting will run from 9 to 11:30 am in the Forum of the Ernst Cultural Center at Northern Virginia Community College, 8333 Little River Turnpike, Annanadale, VA.

Some of the questions that might get addressed include:

A. CAN I upgrade to Tiger (will my machine accomodate it)
B. SHOULD I?
C. What precautions need to be observed when upgrading?
D. What special situations arise?
E. what are some of the important features?

This kind on interchange, with real people sharing real experiences, has proven to be exceptionally valuable in the past. [Bill Fox]

[7/22] Aspyr Released Battlefield 1942 Updated v1.6.1d: It updates Battlefield 1942, Road to Rome, and Secret Weapons (if installed). It's available for download from MacGameFiles.com. According to Aspyr,

This is an official update for Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield 1942: Secret Weapons of WWII for Mac OS. The patch will update the English, French or German versions of the game.

The two major additions this version of the game has are support for more mods, including the popular Desert Combat Final and Extended mods, and built-in support for Game Ranger for finding Mac-specific multiplayer games.

1.6.1 (Rev D) BUG FIX DETAILS

- Fixed the number of open files Battlefield could have, this enables the following modifications to work properly:

• Desert Combat Final 0.8 
  
• Desert Combat Extended 0.9
  
• Forgotten Hope .65
  
• Galactic Conquest .53
  
• Galactic Conquest Extended
  
• Eve of Destruction

- Added GameRanger support to Battlefield 1942, Road to Rome, Secret Weapons, Desert Combat Final, as well as other future modifications.

- Fixed the SetTeam bug where we were reporting the incorrect team to GameRanger.

We downloaded and installed the patch but we still get too many unexpected quits with this game to be much fun. [Bill Fox]

[7/22] Mozilla 1.7.10 Released: The Mozilla Project released v1.7.10 of Mozilla, the Project's internet application suite. It is a security update and is available for download from this Web page. Here are the release notes. [Dana Baggett]

[7/22] Firefox 1.1 Delayed, Re-Versioned to 1.5: Firefox 1.1 was fallling behind schedule and included more features, like scalable vector graphics, than originally planned so the release was re-numbered to 1.5 with the target of getting it out in September. A beta should be out in August. Firefox is the standalone open source web browser from the Mozilla Project. More... [Dana Baggett]

[7/22] The Apple Developer Connection Published Using Automator to Expand the Market for Your Software: Automator provides a business opportunity for developers who are creating Actions and Workflows. It's a great way to expose key features and extend applications, but there is also a growing market for Actions and Workflows as stand-alone products or as plug-ins for existing applications. This new ADC article informs developers about how building Automator Actions and Workflows can create new sales opportunities. [Bill Fox]

[7/21] Hands-On Report: DOOM 3 with New Patch v1.3--How Fast Is It? When DOOM 3 came out as v1.1 for the Mac everyone remarked on its stiff hardware requirements. We reviewed DOOM 3 in March using our dual 2.5GHz Power Mac G5 with the upgraded top-of-the-line graphics card, the Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL, and a 1.67GHz 17" PowerBook G4 and we also remarked on the need for heavy iron to play DOOM 3 at high quality and high resolutions. Our Power Mac G5 attained a mere 61 fps at 1024x768, high quality and shadows turned off.

In June, we posted a comparo between the best graphics cards for the Mac, the Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL (now discontinued) and the ATI Radeon X800 XT. The ATI card was even less impressive than the Nvidia card at DOOM 3.

On Tuesday of this week we noted that Aspyr Media had released an update for DOOM 3, patch v1.3. The significant changes were to add Punkbuster anti-cheat support and Surround Sound 5.1 beta support. Were any speed tweaks added? We promised our Hands-On Report to find out. So how fast is it?

To test the new patch we ran Doom 3 v1.1 and v1.3 on our dual 2.5GHz Power Mac G5, with each graphics card, and on our new 20" 2GHz iMac G5. For the Power Mac G5 we used the settings listed in our SpeedFAQ (a resolution of 1024x768), the same used in our June card comparo. DOOM 3 ran too slowly with these settings on our iMac G5 (17 fps at 1024x768) so we ran the speed tests on it using the game-recommended resolution of 640x480, medium quality and shadows off. Here are the results:

Speed Comparison of DOOM 3 v1.1 vs 1.3 (frames per second)

Computer/Card	Doom 3 v1.1	Doom 3 v1.3	% Change
.
D2.5 GHz Power Mac G5-Nvidia	61	53	-13
D2.5 GHz Power Mac G5-ATI	53	46	-13
20" 2GHz iMac G5	35	31	-11

Unfortunately, DOOM 3 with the 1.3 patch runs more slowly, some 13 per cent or so. The same is true at the higher resolution of 1600x1200 where the Nvidia card lost 8 per cent and the ATI card lost 5 percent. The Nvidia card is still faster than the ATI card at 49 vs 37 fps. [Bill Fox]

[7/21] Imation 2GB USB Micro Hard Drive is Shipping: Imation is making tiny USB 2.0 drives using the same hard drives found in iPod minis. The will come in 2GB and 4GB models. Only the 2GB model is shipping now according to the New York Times. Imation's USB Micro Hard Drive offers Magnetic Data Encoding and Error Correction, 128-bit encryption (to prevent unauthorized access), and innovative File Synchronization, which automatically creates a backup copy of your data. To protect files during transport, it's engineered with shock resistance up to 1000 Gs, so it's extremely durable. It looks like a small padlock since its short USB 2.0 cable loops over with the connector attaching back in to the case when not in use. The Micro Hard Drive is compatible with Mac OS 9.x and higher. The software, however, is only compatible with Mac OS X 10.2 and higher. The 2GB model retails for $159. [Dana Baggett]

[7/21] Tonight on The Tech Night Owl LIVE--Adam Engst, Ted Landau and Parliant: This week co-hosts Gene and Grayson Steinberg will talk about the future of Macworld Boston and other hot topics with Adam Engst, publisher of TidBITS. Ace Mac troubleshooter Ted Landau, founder of MacFixIt, will discuss Tiger and other subjects. You'll also hear about the Parliant PhoneValet Podcast bundle, which received a Best of Show award for the second year in a row at Macworld Boston. Tune in the internet radio broadcast Thursday night from 6:00 to 8:00 PM Pacific, 9:00 to 11:00 PM Eastern. In addition to the live show, an audio streaming archive and a podcast will be available subsequently. [Bill Fox]

[7/20] Cool Mac Software--Easily Bring Images/Chapters to your Podcast with Vizacast: DVDxDV.com just release a graphical user interface application, Vizacast, for Apple's Chapter Tool. So rather than using XML and a command line interface in Terminal, you can drag and drop images, web links and indexes into your podcast audio file. Vizacast requires that you first install Apple's Chapter Tool (scroll down to bottom of page). Vizacast is $25 and there is a trial version. [Bill Fox]

[7/20] Register for Apple's Live Webcast 7/28--Medical Practice Management and EMR on the Mac: Learn about the benefits that the Mac brings to medical practices, as well as two specialized applications that provide practice management and electronic medical records. The live webcast seminar is 7/28 at 9-10am PDT. Register early to ensure a slot. [Bill Fox]

[7/20] Mozilla Firefox 1.0.6 Browser and Thunderbird 1.0.6 Emailer are Out and available for download from the Mozilla Project's Web sites for Firefox and Thunderbird. Here are the release notes for Firefox and Thunderbird. They are our backup applications to Safari and Apple Mail and our principal internet applications when we are forced to use Windows.

We downloaded and installed both with no problems. [Dana Baggett & Bill Fox]

[7/20] Details on Security Update in AirPort 4.2: Apple updated its AirPort software to v4.2 last week as we reported on 7/15. Included is a security update. Here are the details:

Available for: Mac OS X 10.3.3 to 10.3.9 & 10.4.2
CVE-ID: CAN-2005-2196
Impact: Mobile users with the original AirPort card enabled could automatically associate to an malicious network
Description: When not connected to a known or trusted network, the AirPort card "parks" on a randomly generated network with a default WEP key. This can allow parked AirPort cards to automatically connect to malicious networks without warning. This condition only applies to AirPort cards and does not affect AirPort Extreme. The System Profiler utility can be used to indicate the type of AirPort card installed. This update addresses the problem by using a randomly-generated 128-bit WEP key instead of the default WEP key. Credit to Dino Dai Zovi for reporting this issue.

[Bill Fox]

[7/20] Aspyr Media Ships Star Wars Battlefront: According to MacCentral, Aspyr has shipped its latest game ported to the Mac, Star Wars Battlefront. The story line is:

Fight as a soldier on the front lines where every weapon and vehicle you see is yours. Take the Empire head on or crush the Rebellion - by yourself or with an army behind you! Pick your side - Rebels, Imperials, clone troopers or battle droids. Battle on unique planets from the entire Star Wars saga. Pilot over 30 vehicles and choose your weapon wisely - each soldier has different weapons and capabilities.

Aspyr's Web site is still showing SWBF as a pre-order. [Bill Fox]

[7/19] DOOM 3 v1.3 Update Released by Aspyr Media: The v1.3 patch is available for download from this MacGameFiles.com Web page. Aside from bug fixes the patch enables Punkbuster anti-cheat technology and a beta of Surround Sound 5.1 which requires a compliant sound card.

Here are the release notes:

• Warning! Using this update will reset your progress in whatever map you are currently saved in. When loading a saved game, the player starts at the begining of that map with their inventory intact.
• Warning! Using this update may reset the Nightmare skill setting. If you are playing in Nightmare mode before applying this update, you may to re-enable it in the console (g_nightmare 1). After enabling it in the console, the game must be relaunched in order for nightmare mode to show up as a selectable option.
• This update implements a preview version of Open AL support that provides full 5.1 surround sound. Use this feature ONLY with an Open AL compliant 5.1 sound card. To activate the OpenAL preview support, hold down the Command (?) key as you launch the game, then check the box next to the "Use OpenAL" in the Doom 3 Preferences dialog. You should also select "surround" sound from the in-game options menu. NOTE: Users may experience sound glitches or sound drops while using the preview Open AL option.

1.3 Update Changes

• Punkbuster support
  
• server provides pk4 file download URLS (http/ftp), client has internal download
  
• new class of pk4 files: 'addon paks' are only referenced when the map is loaded in
  
• pk4 downloads and addon paks come with a number of fixes to the 'pure server mode' filesystem code
  
• fixed ragdoll bouncyness
  
• fix how D3 detects LAN client vs internet clients
  
• LZW compression of render demos
  
• fix command line parameter passing

1.3 Update Changes MAC Specific

• Preview OpenAL support (5.1 Sound + External sound cards)
  
• Keypad keys are correctly handled
  
• Fixed Creator Code
  
• French Keyboard Fix
  
• Fixed crash when restarting using custom mods
  
• Fixed crash with vid_restart
  
• Fixed crash on 10.4 when canceling the startup dialog

Unfortunately, we are on travel and unable to test it for you today. Look for our Hands-On Report later this week. [Bill Fox]

[7/19] Speculation on a Music Video iPod Hits Fever Pitch: Following Monday's report in the Wall Street Journal of Apple having negotiations over music videos, the press is full of speculative reports on a video iPod like in this AP article.

We are way ahead in that game. Here is what we speculated last October 18 in advance of the October 26 event that announced the special edition black U2 iPod and the iPod Photo:

The iTunes Music Store now has video clips, at least one for U2's Vertigo (as a commercial), so our speculation is that Apple will offer video clips for download along with songs that will play in color on a new iPod. If so, will the video clip be free with the song? We can imagine other terrific uses for a QT video and audio player! Hmmm...we may just have to give up our iPod Mini. Calm down, it's just speculation....

Hopefully, Apple will now catch up to our speculation. [Dana Baggett & Bill Fox]

[7/19] Apple Released DVD Studio Pro 4.0.2 Update: It is available for download from this Apple Web page. According to the release notes,

DVD Studio Pro 4.0.2 Update addresses isolated stability issues. Most significant areas addressed are:

• Font size in PAL templates
  
• Menu duplication when Text Objects are active
  
• Simulation of long PAL MPEG2 stream with MP3 audio
  
• Isolated issue with recognition of certain media

[Dana Baggett]

[7/19] Registration Opens for the First O'Reilly EuroOSCON: O'Reilly Media has launched its first O'Reilly European Open Source Convention (EuroOSCON). EuroOSCON 2005 targets the specific needs of European developers, programmers, and systems and network administrators, helping them to deliver the benefits of open source technology in all its variations to their companies and organizations. Registration has just opened for EuroOSCON, which will be held at the Hotel Krasnapolsky in Amsterdam, The Netherlands on October 17-20, 2005. Discounted registration pricing is in effect until August 29. More... [Bill Fox]

[7/19] FREE Envision Web Show of the Week--Deep Impact Mission: Two weeks ago, on July 4, 2005, as part of the Deep Impact mission, NASA slammed a probe into the comet Temple 1. The goal of this mission is to learn more about the comet's composition, and, by extension, the composition of the early solar system in which it, and earth, were formed. This week's Envision Web Show of the Week features photos from before, during and after that event. The Envision Web Show of the Week can be downloaded from the Show of the Week Web site. Previous Shows of the Week are available in the Show of the Week archive. [Bill Fox]

[7/18] [Updated] Apple's iTunes Music Store Already Hit a Half Billion Songs: On Sunday, the counter on Apple.com's front page hit 500,000,000 song downloads from the iTunes Music Store.

Someone won 10 iPods of their choice to share with family and friends, an iTunes gift card for 10,000 songs and an all-expenses paid trip for four to see Coldplay on their world tour. Apple's announcement is expected later today. [Update: The 500 millionth song, Faith Hill’s Mississippi Girl, was purchased by Amy Greer of Lafayette, Indiana. More...]

Apple kicked off the promotion on July 5th with about 484 million downloads under its belt. It took just 12 days to get to a half billion. That's over 1.3 million songs being downloaded per day. [Bill Fox]

[7/18] Coming Soon--Mozilla Firefox 1.0.6 and Thunderbird 1.0.6: Hot on the heels of last week's release of v1.0.5 for both applications from the Mozilla Project is a brand new version of both. Apparently, v1.0.5 broke some of the API's. Mozilla did not reveal if any broken API's apply to the Mac OS X version. Version 1.0.6 could be out some time this week. The test builds are available from this Web page. [Dana Baggett]

[7/18] Cool Mac Podcasts--The Tech Night Owl LIVE Now Available: Gene Steinberg's Tech Night Owl LIVE is now available as a podcast from this Web page. One can also go to the iTunes Music Store's Podcasts area with iTunes 4.9, search for the Tech Night Owl LIVE and subscribe. We did the latter.

We often give the Tech (formerly Mac) Night Owl LIVE a plug on Thursdays because Gene has one of the best technical internet radio shows available today, informative and entertaining. He also has great guests like Dr. Mac, David Biedny and senior Apple staff members. [Bill Fox]

[7/18] Apple Revised the Offerings from Three Hot Deals Retailers:

CompUSA has money saving deals on a bevy of Mac products, including Roxio Toast 6 Titanium with $20 mail-in rebate, Acomdata 80GB External FireWire Hard Drive with $25 mail-in rebate, Samsung SyncMaster 930B 19" LCD Display with $20 mail-in rebate, Epson PictureMate Personal Photo Lab Printer with $50 mail-in rebate, and much more.

J&R has great prices on top quality Mac products, including Advanced Bridging iJet Wireless RF iPod Remote, Aspyr Media The Sims 2, DVForge The Mouse, Griffin AirBase Desktop Stand for AirPort Express, MacAlly IceCad USB Handwriting Digitizer Pad, M-Audio Black Box MIDI Interface, Microsoft Office 2004 Standard Edition, and much more.

Publishing Perfection has great deals on a variety of design and print products for your Mac, including Corel KPT Collection, Logic Arts The InDesign IdeaBook, AutoFX Mystical Lighting, Alien Skin Eye Candy 5: Impact, Softpress Freeway Express, Pyrus TransType Pro, Gluon ProPack Quark Xtensions, and much more.

[Bill Fox]

[7/15] Brief Hands-On Report--AirPort 4.2: Apple released Airport 4.2 for Mac OS X 10.4.2 and 10.3.3-to-.9 plus Windows. The updater also contains updates for the AirPort Extreme (to v5.6) and Express (to v6.2) Base Stations. According to the Read Me file,

AirPort 4.2 fixes connection problems and resolves security issues with WPA2 wireless networks.

According to the Apple Support pages,

This update fixes compatibility with Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA2) security software on AirPort Express and AirPort Extreme base stations. This update also resolves IPv6 link local configuration issues.

To update an AirPort Extreme or Express Base Station, launch the AirPort Admin Utility in Mac OS X's Utilities folder, select the Base Station, click on Configure and a dialog box will pop down to update the Base Station.

We updated Power Mac G5s, iMac G5s and PowerBook G4s without difficulty. Then we updated AirPort Extreme and Express Base Stations, also without difficulty. We don't use WPA2 or IPv6 so we can't explicitly check the fixes. [Bill Fox]

[7/15] The Apple Developer Connection Published Simplifying Data Handling with Uniform Type Identifiers: Uniform Type Identifiers (UTIs) are strings that specify abstract types in Mac OS X. For developers, UTIs can help you take advantage of Launch Services, Navigation Services, Pasteboard Manager andTranslation Services, and work more easily with Spotlight and Automator. This article is for those whose Mac OS X application creates or manipulates data that may be exchanged with other applications or services. [Bill Fox]

[7/15] Opera Web Browser to Get BitTorrent Transfer Capability: BitTorrent is a rapid file transfer protocol for transferring huge files that is based on the file sharing model. While its technology is used for illegal movie copying, it is very useful for publicly transferring large files legally. Opera plans to use it to distribute its next version of their web browser, v8.0.2. Users will be warned that they will be sharing the file they are downloading with others simultaneously. More... [Dana Baggett]

[7/15] Cool Mac Software--KeyStrokes 3.6 and SwitchXS 2.1 Extend Accessibility of Tiger with New Features: AssistiveWare today announced the release of KeyStrokes 3.6, SwitchXS 2.1 and the AssistiveWare Access bundle. KeyStrokes is an award-winning on-screen keyboard that provides virtually complete access to Mac OS X and all standard Mac applications for people who cannot use a keyboard. It also provides advanced PolyPredix multilingual word prediction that can be used with the on-screen keyboard, with the hardware keyboard and with SwitchXS 2.1. SwitchXS is a switch access solution that provides virtually complete access to Mac OS X and all standard Mac applications for people who cannot use a mouse or keyboard. It offers full mouse and keyboard emulation by means of a so-called scanning mode. There are lots of new features in both applications. [Bill Fox]

[7/15] More Cool Mac Software--News Reader Widget: Ben Kazez wrote that he hasI just released a widget called News Reader that lets you view RSS news from any number of sources in the same widget. You can download it from his Web page. [Bill Fox]

[7/15] FREE Envision Web Show of the Week--Fire Trucks: This week Open Door Networks shipped their new DoorStop X firewall. In recognition of that event, this week's FREE Envision Show of the Week is of over a thousand different fire trucks--cool! The Envision Web Show of the Week can be downloaded from the Show of the Week Web site. Check out the archive of previous Web shows. [Bill Fox]

[7/15] Mozilla's Thunderbird 1.0.5 Email Client is Out and available for download from this Mozilla Web page. It's an excellent standalone email client. Thunderbird 1.0.5 is a security and stability update. We use it as a backup to Apple Mail X and as our main email client when we use our tiny 1.75lb PC notebook unobtrusively for email and browsing in meetings, cars, trains, buses and other places where we need to use our Verizon broadband wireless card. We sure wish Apple's 12" PowerBook G4 had a PC card slot. We think Thunderbird is excellent. Here are the release notes. [Dana Baggett & Bill Fox]

[7/15] Apple Updated Many of its Pro Applications: We inadvertantly missed this announcement yesterday. Here are the links to the updates:

DVD Studio Pro 4.0.1 Update addresses isolated stability issues. In PAL menus, the font size no longer changes when applying the same template multiple times. Auto button assignment now works consistently in all templates.

Final Cut Pro 5.0.2 Update provides improved reliability. Final Cut Pro (version 5.0.2) is highly recommended for all Final Cut Pro 5 users.

Final Cut Studio Updates--The latest updates to all Final Cut Studio applications: Final Cut Pro 5, DVD Studio Pro 4, Motion 2, Soundtrack Pro, Compressor 2, Apple Qmaster 2, Cinema Tools 3, and LiveType 2.

Soundtrack Pro 1.0.1 Update gives audio and video professionals a powerful way to edit and design sound. Provides improved reliability and performance.

[Dana Baggett]

[7/14] Hands-On Report--Apple's New Top of the Line 2.0GHz 20" iMac G5, How Fast Is It? Apple recently (May 3) released updated iMac G5's with faster G5 CPUs, faster graphics cards, more RAM, gigabit ethernet, AirPort Extreme, Bluetooth and faster/larger Superdrives. The top-of-the-line is the 20" iMac G5 with a 2.0GHz G5 CPU. 2.0GHz is the same speed of the CPU in the original top Power Mac G5 which had two of them. Given the excellent included software bundle, the 20" iMac G5 is quite a computer for $1,799, especially its the outstanding all-in-one design.

So how fast is it? We ran our standard suite of speed tests on the new 20" 2.0GHz iMac G5. Our unit is stock in every way, i.e. right out of the box, with the exception that we updated Mac OS X from 10.4 to 10.4.1. The results are given below and are compared with a first generation 1.8GHz 20" iMac G5 and a dual 2.5GHz Power Mac G5 with upgraded graphics, an Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL.

2.0GHz iMac G5 Speed Tests (average* scores or secs).

Test	Computer
.	2.0 GHz iMac G5+	1.8 GHz iMac G5	D 2.5 GHz P Mac G5+
Benchmarks:
Altivec Fractal (GFLOPS)	4.9	2.3	12.9
Cinebench 2003 - Rendering	276	244	646
- OpenGL Hardware Lighting	1152	946	1801
Let1kWindowsBloom 1.0 (sec)	10	12	7
Xbench - CPU	139	128	241
- Threading	111	100	268
- Memory	232	234	376
- Quartz Graphics	332	209	521
- OpenGL Graphics	212	178	234
- User Interface Graphics	296	312	517
- Hard Disk	138	86	107
"Real World" Tests:
Startup (sec)	37	38	37
Shutdown (sec)	8	7	11
Launch Classic Mode (sec)	14	-	10
Dup. 700 MB Folder 3600 Files (sec)	53	-	62
Scroll 142p Acrobat Reader File (sec)	18	-	12
Encode MP3 in iTunes (sec)	56	-	52
Export QT FQDV Movie in iMovie (sec)	23	-	24
Quake III Arena 1.32 (frames/sec)	140	-	401
Halo 1.5.2 (frames/sec)	19	-	67
Call of Duty 1.4 (frames/sec)	56	-	86

*Average of 3 runs running Mac OS X 10.4.1. ⁺With Quartz 2D Extreme enabled.

The new 2.0GHz 20" iMac G5 does very well speedwise as one might expect, given that most of our speed tests are not dual processor aware and the iMac G5's CPU is only 20% slower than the Power Mac G5's. The iMac's hard drive tests faster than the Power Mac's (Xbench Hard Disk and Duplicating the 700MB folder), partly because it is new and less full. The iMac also does as well as the Power Mac in encoding an audio file as MP3 and exporting a QuickTime movie as full quality digital video. The iMac does fairly well in demanding 3D graphics performance. However, the high quality settings in our Halo test would have to be reduced somewhat to get an acceptable frame rate of over 30. [Bill Fox]

[7/14] Apple's Third Quarter Earnings Beat Analysts' Consensus by 19 Per Cent: Apple announced their Q3 financial results late yesterday, posting a net quarterly profit of $320 million, or $.37 per diluted share, and revenue of $3.52 billion. Analysts had projected earnings of 31 cents on revenue of $3.33 billion as we noted last Friday. Apple always, at least recently, beats the analysts' estimate. These results compare to a net profit of $61 million, or $.08 per diluted share, and revenue of $2.01 billion in the year-ago quarter, and represent revenue growth of 75 percent and net profit growth of 425 percent. Gross margin was 29.7 percent, up from 27.8 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 39 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

The really good news is that Apple's computer sales were up 35 per cent to 1.2 million. This is in addition to the growth in iPod sales of 425 per cent to 6.2 million.

Unfortunately, Apple no longer reports on sales by individual computer lines, only as desktops (Power Macs, iMacs, eMacs, Mac minis and Xserves) and portables (PowerBooks, iBooks). As a whole, desktop sales were up 13 per cent from last quarter and 65 per cent from last year to 687,000 units. Portable sales were up 7 per cent from last quarter and 8 per cent over last year to 495,000 units.

The only negatives are that sales continued to decline in the Japan region and the retail stores sales were flat with 3 per cent decline in revenue from the last quarter. Still, the retail stores did about 100 per cent better than last year in unit sales and revenue. [Bill Fox]

[7/14] Apple Released iPhoto 5.0.3: The iPhoto update is available via the System Preferences Software Update pane if iLife '05 is installed. A standalone updater is available from this Apple Web page. According to the Read Me file,

iPhoto 5.0.3 addresses issues with Tiger compatibility, Book and Print ordering, and Smart Albums. Requires Mac OS X 10.3.4 through 10.3.9, or 10.4.2 or later.

Specifically, iPhoto 5.0.3 addresses these issues:

• In Mac OS X Tiger, images no longer color-shift after editing (requires Mac OS X 10.4.2 Update)
• Book layouts do not change when you move an image on a page
• An issue causing some Book orders to be cancelled was addressed
• Smart Albums display correctly in other iLife applications

We downloaded and installed iPhoto 5.0.3 without problems. We opened iPhoto and our approximately 1000 images displayed virtually instantly. [Bill Fox]

[7/14] Tonight on The Tech Night Owl LIVE--David Biedny, Kirk McElhearn, Andrew Stone and Joe Wilcox: This week co-hosts Gene and Grayson will be joined by long-time Mac author Kirk McElhearn. You'll also get insights into Apple's latest quarterly financial report from industry analyst Joe Wilcox. Andrew Stone of Stone Design will tell you how easy it was to build one of the first applications that will run on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs. And you'll pay another visit to the "David Biedny Zone," where the unexpected is the norm. Tune in Thursday night from 6:00 to 8:00 PM Pacific, 9:00 to 11:00 PM Eastern. [Bill Fox]

[7/14] Apple Revised the Offerings from Two Hot Deals Retailers:

The newest entry to the Hot Deals family is the Apple Store Special Deals page. Here you'll find unbelievable deals on the hottest refurbished and new, unopened Apple products. Current offerings include iPod Shuffle starting at only $79, iPod with Color Display starting at only $299, Power Mac G5 starting at only $1,299, Apple Cinema Displays starting at only $699, and much more. But hurry; supplies are limited and sure to go fast.

ClubMac has great deals on essential Mac products, including Altec Lansing InMotion IM3 iPod Portable Audio System, XtremeMac Bumperz for iPod Shuffle, Ten Technology Navipod Wireless Remote for iPod, DLO iBoom iPod Boombox, Micromat Podlock, and much more.

[Bill Fox]

[7/13] Hands-On Report--Apple Mac OS X 10.4.2 Update: The long expected and extensive update (Build 8C46) is available via the System Preferences Software Update pane or as a standalone updater, delta (updates 10.4.1 only) or combo. We recommend the combo updater to be safe. According to the ReadMe file,

The 10.4.2 Update delivers overall improved reliability and compatibility for Mac OS X v10.4 and is recommended for all users. It includes fixes for:

• file sharing using AFP and SMB/CIFS network file services
  
• single sign-on authentication and reliable access to Active Directory servers
  
• autologin for managed user accounts
  
• AirPort and wireless access
  
• Core Graphics, Core Audio, Core Image, including updated ATI and NVIDIA graphics drivers
  
• Finder updates including finding on Kind and using Slideshow
  
• synchronizing your iDisk with .Mac
  
• installation reliability
  
• managing Dashboard widgets
  
• Address Book, Automator, iCal, iChat, Mail, Safari, and Stickies applications
  
• compatibility with third party applications and devices
  

The details of the improvements are:

AirPort

• With this update, logging out of Mac OS X automatically disconnects the computer from an AirPort network if it is using WPA Enterprise security settings (this does not affect WPA Personal WEP-secured networks).
  
• The AirPort menu extra displays more information when you enable a Software Access Point with this update installed.
  
• Adds support for AES encryption of WPA-PSK networks, which are supported by many wireless access points.
  
• The Try Again button behaves as expected when attempting to join a third-party, WEP-enabled wireless access point with this update.
  
• Improves reliability when associating with wireless networks after waking from sleep.
  
• Improves WPA2 wireless encryption support for AirPort Extreme cards.
  

Mail

• In Mail, if you retrieve and sort IMAP mail using multiple email clients, the counts of unread IMAP messages in mailboxes other than what's in your Inbox are more accurate with this update.
  Addresses an issue in which IMAP messages deleted in Mail could unexpectedly "reappear" after a few seconds.
  
• In some situations, a Mail message's attached graphic displayed as a small blue box with a question mark inside the message window, even though the attached file was just fine; this update addresses the issue.
  
• Mail no longer tries to print an HTML message's remote images if the "Display remote images in HTML messages" option is deselected—the message is printed without the graphics instead—after this update is installed.
  
• This update addresses an issue for Mail in which signatures with graphics were not appearing as expected.
  

iChat

• With this update, you can successfully send and receive AIM messages using iChat after changing network locations (without having to log out and back in)—from wireless to Ethernet, for example.
  
• If iChat is logged in to your AIM account in Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.4.1, logging in to the same account on a different computer disconnects the Tiger computer without warning—this update adds a preference choice to iChat to avoid this, if desired.
  
• iChat no longer states that the network is unavailable if you intentionally disconnect from the Internet using Internet Connect without first quitting iChat.
  
• Improves video framerate for iChat when certain kinds of background processes or applications are running.
  
• Resolves a situation in which iChat could incorrectly report "insufficient bandwidth to maintain conference," even though enough bandwidth was available.
  

Finder

• Addresses an issue in which the Finder could unexpectedly quit if Show Package Contents was chosen several times from the shortcut menu for the same package.
  
• The Finder slideshow feature should now always work as expected.
  
• If ACLs were enabled on an SMB volume, a Get Info window in the Finder wouldn't show the Details section when getting info on files stored on the volume—this update addresses the issue.
  
• Addresses an issue in which a supported burning device could unexpectedly be seen as "unsupported" by the Finder.
  
• The duration of MP3 files is accurately reported in Get Info windows in the Finder with this update.
  

Other applications

• With this update, many applications, including Safari, work better with proxy servers that require authentication.
  
• With this update, you can use Safari to log in to MyAccount on cingular.com.
  Safari pages scroll better with this update when scrolling with a scroll wheel (such as one on a third-party mouse or keyboard).
  
• Orange iCal calendars, with alarms that go off while iCal is not open, no longer change color after the alarm is snoozed.
  
• Addresses an issue in which Stickies.app notes could disappear unexpectedly if Stickies opens automatically during login (if it was set as a Login Item in Accounts preferences).
  
• Addresses an issue for Adobe Premiere 6.5 in which the application could unexpectedly quit when exporting a file.
  
• With this update, the Reduce File Size option in Preview works as expected when saving a file as a PDF from the File menu.
  
• Addresses a Keychain Scripting issue in which the "password" property of a key often could not be retrieved.
  

iDisk, WebDAV

• Improves .Mac iDisk syncing after changing network locations—an iDisk could incorrectly appear to be offline after switching networks, causing syncing to stop working.
  
• With this update, you can access iDisk or other WebDAV servers through HTTP and HTTPS proxies.
  HTTP/HTTPS proxy account and password settings defined in Network preferences are now used by the WebDAV file system as expected.
  
• Addresses some issues that could occur when saving files directly to an iDisk.
  

Networking

• Addresses an issue in which some Apple internal modems would not dial, and the PPP log would include a message such as "Failed to open /dev/cu.modem: Resource busy".
  
• Adds improvements to Active Directory support.
  
• Addresses an alert "Error code -8065" that could occur when copying a file through SMB to a Microsoft Windows-based PC volume a second time, if the file had previously been deleted from the PC.
  
• Includes other enhancements related to connecting to and using Windows-based file servers (SMB/CIFS).
  
• Allows Active Directory users with Mobile Accounts to authenticate without being connected to the Active Directory network.
  
• Allows Active Directory users to log in after a restart.
  
• Resolves an issue that prevented Active Directory users from accessing certain Kerberized services, such as ssh, on a Windows 2003 server.
  
• Active Directory users can be given local admin privileges on a client computer, with this update.
  

Other enhancements

• Software Update no longer unexpectedly quits in certain situations after upgrading to Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and changing Network Port settings, after installing this update. More....
  
• With this update installed, Disk Utility (and fsck) can better resolve "Overlapped Extent Allocation" issues that could appear when verifying or repairing a disk.
  
• Xgrid can now map multiple input files using the inputFileMap key, and retrieve results from multitask jobs using the command line.
  
• The Dashboard widget Unit Converter requires much less CPU usage after installing this update.
  
• Improves performance for the web-based Power School student information system (http://www.apple.com/education/powerschool/).
  
• Improves compatibility when using an HP Deskjet 5850 printer wirelessly.
  
• Improves compatibility for HP LaserJet 1320 printers.
  
• This update ensures that periodic background maintenance tasks as scheduled in launchd.conf.
  
• Addresses an issue in which custom installations from a Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Install disc that don't require starting up from the disc could cause Installer to stop responding ("hang") for a couple of minutes if the destination volume was write-protected (eventually, a "There is not enough space for this item" message would appear).
  
• External disks no longer unmount unexpectedly when switching users, if Fast User Switching is enabled.
  
• Addresses an issue in which after performing a NetInstall or restoring Mac OS X from a disk image, you may see certain files and folders at the root level of the Mac OS X volume that are not supposed to be visible, such as etc, tmp, and var. More....
  
• With this update, the ttys file can be edited in Tiger; for example, if you're creating a login hook.
  
• Addresses an issue in which the computer might wake from sleep with a black screen if it went to sleep while prompting you for a keychain password.
  
• Allows users to log in with Kerberos authentication when using an edu.mit.Kerberos file.
  These Automator actions are updated in this update: Add Files to Playlist, Add Songs to Playlist, Import Photos into iPhoto, New Mail Message, Run Shell Script.
  
• The AppleScript "do shell script" command has been revised.

Security Fixes

• Dashboard
  

CVE-ID: CAN-2005-1333
Available for: Mac OS X v10.4, Mac OS X Server v10.4
Impact: Users may install widgets that override Apple supplied
widgets
Description: Dashboard is distributed with Apple-supplied widgets,
and users have the ability to add new ones. It is possible for a
user to install a new widget with the same internal identifier as an
Apple-supplied widget. If this occurs, the newly-installed widget
will run in the place of the system widget. It may not be clear to
users that they are running a widget that they installed as opposed
to the Apple-supplied one. This update addresses the problem by
alerting users if they try to install widgets that would cause this
sort of conflict. This issue does not affect previous releases of
Mac OS X.

• TCP/IP
  

CVE-ID: CAN-2005-2194
Available for: Mac OS X v10.4, Mac OS X Server v10.4
Impact: A specifically crafted TCP/IP packet can cause a denial of
service
Description: A specifically crafted TCP/IP packet can cause the
kernel to panic due to a null pointer dereference and require a
reboot. Multiple conditions are required to trigger this problem.
The common practice of filtering source-routed and loose
source-routed packets on network infrastructure, ingress routers and
firewalls can prevent systems from being affected. This issue does
not affect previous releases of Mac OS X. Credit to Julian Y. Koh
and colleagues of Northwestern University for reporting this issue.

We downloaded and installed Mac OS X 10.4.2 on PowerBook G4s, Power Mac G5s, iMac G5s, a Mac mini and several G4 Cubes, some stock and some with CPU upgrades. We used a combination of preference pane and standalone combo updaters. All installations went perfectly. We ran the Automator workflow Maintenance 2.1 following each installation.

It appears that 10.4.2 fixed the problem of our iMac G5 connecting to our AirPort Express network automatically on startup. It has worked every time now.

The only issue that we've discovered so far is that the Scoreboard 1.2 widget's background doesn't extend when selecting to scroll all scores. The new Widget Manager is a bit rudimentary but it will make dealing with widgets easier. In addition, CPU usage by the wiget processes is way down. Each widget now uses some 10-32MB of RAM, a lot if you have a lot of widgets but less than before.

There are significant updates to Mail, especially IMAP account functions, the Finder and Safari. [Bill Fox & Dana Baggett]

[7/13] Mac OS X Server 10.4.2 is Also Out and available for download from the System Preferences Software Update pane or as a standalone combo updater or a delta updater. We recommend using the combo to be safe. According to the Read Me file,

The 10.4.2 Server Update delivers overall improved reliability for Mac OS X Server v10.4 and is recommended for all systems. It includes fixes for:

• file permission inheritance when using AFP network file services
• Open Directory password and single sign-on authentication services
• authentication in Windows Server 2003 Active Directory environments
• more reliable file system management operations
• editing a user's home directory location using the Workgroup Manager application
• compatibility with third party applications and devices

The server-specific improvements are:

Mail Services

• Upgrades SpamAssassin and ClamAV to include additional support for TNEF (winmail.dat) files and new detection mechanisms for JPEG-based exploits.
  

servermgrd

• Addresses an issue in which Product License Keys may be reported as invalid due to case sensitivity.
  

Workgroup Manager

• Addresses issues with the creation of custom home directories specified within a subdirectory of a sharepoint.
  
• Addresses compatibility issues for administration of a 10.3.9 server from a 10.4 system with 10.4 admin tools.
  

Xgrid Admin

• Addresses an issue which prevented the Xgrid Admin application from securely connecting to controllers that required Kerberos authentication.
  
• Addresses an issue which may have prevented controllers from sending files to agents.
  
• Improvements made for batch jobs sent through the command line.
  

Open Directory

• Addresses an issue that prevents systems from connecting to Windows 2003 Active Directory deployments.
  
• Addresses an issue in which systems stop authenticating through Active Directory.
  
• Addresses an issue in which Active Directory users who are set as computer administrators may not get admin access to a computer.
  
• Addresses an issue that prevents Mobile Accounts from authenticating with Active Directory.
  
• Addresses an issue where the DirectoryService process may stop after waking from sleep.
  
• Addresses an issue in which newly-created accounts may not be able to authenticate or appear in user lists.
  
• Addresses an issue where Password Server may stop working, causing authentications to fail when replicated Password Servers are used.
  
• Addresses an issue where kerberos authentications may fail after importing a large number of users (60,000 or more).
  

Apple File Services

• Addresses an issue where Apple File Services may pause indefinitely after experiencing heavy loads.
  
• Addresses an issue which prevented Apple File Services from setting inherited permissions in nested folders within shared volumes.
  
• Addresses an issue where multiple automounts from a single client would incorrectly count against 10-client Server licenses.
  

Disk Imaging

• Addresses an issue which may have caused failure reports when used with large volumes.
  

Managed Users

• Addresses an issue which prevented some Login Window management options from being honored.
  

NFS

• Addresses issues which may have caused the mountd process to crash when NFS is used to host HFS volumes.
  

SMB

• Improves handling of workgroup and file names when connecting and copying to shared SMB volumes.
  
• Addresses issues causing -36 connection failures when connecting to SMB shared volumes with an old keychain password.
  
• Addresses an issue that may cause kernel panics on multiple Xsan systems when unmounting Xsan volumes.

We downloaded the update via Software Update and installed it on our G4 Cube server without incident. [Bill Fox]

[7/13] Firefox 1.0.5 was Released by the Mozilla Project: It is available from this web page. Firefox 1.0.5 is a security update and there are some 12 security fixes listed on this Mozilla Web page. Firefox is our backup web browser to Safari so we downloaded copies to our Power Mac G5 and PowerBook G4. It installed and ran fine. [Dana Baggett & Bill Fox]

[7/13] DoorStop X Firewall for the Mac is Shipping: Open Door Networks Inc. announced that it is shipping version 1.0 of its DoorStop X firewall for Mac OS X 10.3 and later. Previously available as a public beta release, DoorStop X returns Open Door to a market it pioneered seven years ago. The DoorStop X firewall provides important Internet security features beyond those of the firewall built into Mac OS X, while at the same time being easier to use than any firewall on the market according to Open Door Networks.

To secure their machines, Mac users simply download DoorStop X and double-click the application. A built-in setup assistant walks the user through the basics of configuring and activating firewall protection. By default, the setup assistant blocks and logs all service-level access attempts to the user's machine. For users who wish to selectively but securely allow access to certain services on their machine, DoorStop X provides easy-to-use lists of most common Mac services. Other features of DoorStop X include:

• Ability to allow or deny service-by-service access from specific machines, Internet address ranges, or all of a user's home network
• Default settings for any service not specifically configured by the user
• Full logging of allowed and/or denied access attempts
• Optional blocking and logging of low-level "UDP" and other access attempts.

Although Mac OS X has included a basic firewall for some time, even Mac OS 10.4 Tiger's version of that firewall lacks the features required for many consumer and office uses. A free, fully-functional evaluation release of DoorStop X, along with additional details on the product and Macintosh firewalls in general, is available from Open Door Networks' Web site. Through August 15, DoorStop X can be purchased off the site for the special introductory price of $39, or $59 when bundled with Who's There? Volume and site licenses and educational discounts are also available. [Bill Fox]

[7/13] StuffIt Expander 9.0.2 is Out and available to download as a FREE part of StuffIt Standard 9.0.2 or as an updater from StuffIt Expander 9.0.1. For the latter, you must have StuffIt Expander 9.0.1 installed. Unfortunately, the version number does not increase from 9.0.1 to 9.0.2 after applying the updater or after installing StuffIt Standard 9.0.2. [Dana Baggett & Bill Fox]

[7/12] Brief Hands-On Report--Apple iSync 2.1: It is available via the System Preference Software Update pane or as a standalone file from this Apple Web page. According to the ReadMe file,

iSync 2.1 supports compatibility for more devices such as the latest Motorola, Nokia, Panasonic and Sony Ericsson phones. For a complete list of supported devices, please check http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/isync/devices.html

We downloaded and installed iSync 2.1 on various Macs (PowerBooks, Power Mac G5, iMac G5 and G4 Cubes) with no apparent problems. Installing iSync 2.1 required a restart. We then used iSync 2.1 to successfully update the contacts in our Sony-Ericsson T68i cell phone from the Address Book of one of our G4 Cubes. All went smoothly. [Bill Fox]

[7/12] Macworld Expo Boston 2005 Opened Yesterday--New Announcements: We almost for got about Macworld Boston since we have moved West and Apple no longer participates. We attended and reported on virtually every Macworld NYC when Apple participated and the CEO provided the keynote address. When the East Coast event was moved back to Boston, Apple withdrew. Still there is a lot to see and do at the conference and expo.

Some new announcements so far are:

Red Rock Software released DeltaGraph Automator Action for Use with Mac OS X, 10.4 Tiger, an optional add-on to Red Rock DeltaGraph 5.6 for the Mac which provides a simple solution for automating repetitive graphing and charting tasks. It is available as a Technology Preview. Red Rock is also offering a show special of a $100 discount on DeltaGraph 5.6.

MetaCommunications announced first intranet search and archive management system for creative workgroups. A powerful and intuitive product, Digital Storage Manager solves a few of the industry's most challenging problems - finding, tagging and archiving the myriad files used in the production process. MetaCommunications will demonstrate Digital Storage Manager July 11-15 in booth #414.

[Bill Fox]

[7/12] Macworld and Berklee Music Festival--Made on a Mac: One of the side events at Macworld is a music festival sponsored by Macworld and taking place on the campus of the Berklee College of Music in Boston. There are free concerts Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at the David Friend Recital Hall and Berklee Performance Center. The groups performing those days are Acid Reggae Xperience, Birdsongs of the Mesozoic and Katahdin's Edge. The Macworld connection is that the groups use Macs to produce and create music. More... [Dana Baggett]

[7/12] PhoneValet Podcast Bundle Released at Macworld Boston by Parliant: Podcasting high-quality audio of telephone interviews just got easier with the announcement of a new bundle called PhoneValet Podcast from Parliant Corp. PhoneValet Podcast is a software product extension to the PhoneValet Message Center 3.0 telecommunications hub for small businesses, homes and home offices being shown at MacWorld Boston.

The new PhoneValet Podcast bundle includes the VST edition of SoundSoap 2 and Peak Express from BIAS Inc. Including PhoneValet 3.0 hardware and software, the price of the PhoneValet Podcast bundle is $249.95. Existing PhoneValet 3.0 customers can upgrade to PhoneValet Podcast for $74.95. [Bill Fox]

[7/12] Peachpit Published The Little Mac Book, Tiger Edition: In the gentle, friendly, funny style that generations of computer users have come to know and love, author Robin Williams of The Little Mac Book, Tiger Edition, shows readers how to dive in and start working with the Mac and OS X 10.4 Tiger. Readers will learn how to find their way around the interface; use the desktop, Dock, Finder, and icons; control the mouse; manipulate windows; search with Tiger's new Spotlight feature; save and print documents; and more. Using straightforward, jargon-free explanations delivered in logical, easy-to-follow sections, Robin is a new user's personal guide, coaching and encouraging users as they learn their way around the magic of the Mac--The Little Mac Book, Tiger Edition by Robin Williams (Peachpit; ISBN 0-321-33534-1; $14.99). [Bill Fox]

[7/11] FREE Apple Online Seminars--July List: Apple provides FREE online seminars by Apple and its third part partners. These online events are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from any computer with internet access. They are designed to be no more than 30 minutes in length and offer a wide variety of resources and information for your review. Topics cover solutions using Apple and partner products and technologies. Here is the July list:

3D Modeling on the Mac with modo--Watch Brad Peebler, President of Luxology, as he provides a tour of modo and find out how you can turn your inspiration and creativity into amazing 3D models.

A Blueprint for Tiered Storage--Steve Duplessie, recognized independent expert on storage technology, discusses the practicalities of tiered storage & set-up of a solution that works.

Asset Management for Creative Workgroups: With Xserve G5 and Extensis Portfolio Server--Learn how you can better manage your photographs and creative assets with the winning combination of Apple Xserve and Extensis Portfolio Server.

Biotech is in our DNA--Michael Athanas, Ph.D., of The BioTeam will show how to install a fully provisioned informatics cluster on one or more Xserve servers using iNquiry.

Build High Performance Tiered Storage Strategies - With Xserve RAID--Join Alex Grossman, Senior Director of Server and Storage Hardware, and learn how you can implement a tiered storage strategy using Xserve RAID.

Change Your Infrastructure Legacy: Lower Costs and Simplify Server and Storage Management--Join Alex Grossman, Apple Sr Director, and learn how adding Xserve G5 and Xserve RAID to your IT infrastructure can help you meet today's business demands.

Color Management for Your Digital Workflow--This free online seminar helps demystify color management and gives you the knowledge you need to incorporate it into your workflow.

Color Management: From Input to Edit and Print with Mac OS X Panther & ColorSync--Join Steve Upton, industry consultant on color, as he gives you an overview of color management from displays to applications and output.

Computational Clusters for Bioinformatics--Elizabeth Kerr, Ph.D., Director of Science and Technology Markets at Apple, moderates this informative webcast discussion of the Apple Workgroup Cluster.

Cost-effective Storage Deployments for Research Computing--Learn how to achieve better data accessibility and faster storage retrieval in a more cost-effective way with industry-leading solutions.

Deliver Simplified Workgroup Services--Join Douglas Brooks, Server Product Mgr, to learn how to deliver robust workgroup & internet services without straining your budget or stretching your IT staff.

Desktop Management Made Easy with Apple Remote Desktop 2--Join Apple Product Mgr Nader Nafissi to learn why Apple's new, easy to use desktop management software is the essential tool for any Mac system administrator.

Developers win with Mac OS X - Reap the rewards--Built on a rock-solid UNIX core and standards-based technologies, Mac OS X is hailed as the world's most advanced operating system.

Font Management for Creative Professionals--Join Brent Haley, Apple marketing mgr, for an overview of font management capabilities in Mac OS X and to see solutions from Extensis and Insider Software.

Getting Started with High Performance Computing--On-demand rebroadcast of the Dec 16, 2004 webcast discussion of the high-level concepts of high performance computing, issues & obstacles, and more.

Guitarists and the Mac: A Conversation with Pat Metheny--Join Pat Metheny in this free online seminar and learn how the Mac can help you take your music to the next level.

Improve Your Presentation Skills--Watch this free online seminar and find out how to improve your presentation skills.

Information Lifecycle Management--Steve Kenniston, an Enterprise Storage Group analyst will offer insights as to how to manage vast amounts of data while keeping your overhead low.

Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server for High Performance Computing--Learn about the technical underpinnings of Apple's latest OS, and how new features and updates will benefit users of Mac OS X-based clusters and grids.

Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger" for Scientific and Technical Computing--Join Apple in this densely-packed on-demand webcast rebroadcast on how each new feature in Tiger applies to Apple's scientific customers.

Managing Your Creative Assets--Join Brent Haley, Apple marketing manager, for an overview of the latest storage solutions from Apple and an intro to asset management solutions.

Maximizing Mac OS X Application Performance--Re-broadcast of the webcast discussion of the basics of optimization, how and why developers should turn a critical eye to the code they've just written.

Mobile Creative Studio, Portable Workstation, Office-on-the-Go--Join Gail Nishimura, PowerBook product manager, to learn about the latest advancements in the PowerBook G4 line and discover which model is right for you.

Mobile Field Editing with Journalist Dr. Bob Arnot--Join Dr. Bob Arnot to learn how the Mac can help you become a more successful storyteller and videographer by editing video on-the-go using tools from Apple.

Optimize Your Creative Workgroups with Mac OS X Server, Xserve, and Xserve RAID--Join Brent Haley, Apple senior marketing manager for design and print, and learn how you can remove barriers to creativity while streamlining mundane IT tasks.

Perfect Color Starts Here. With Apple Cinema Displays--Join the Apple Cinema Displays product manager to learn how adding an Apple display to your creative system can boost your color-viewing experience.

Perfectly Focused - Digital Photography on Mac OS X--This seminar will show you why you should take the plunge to digital--and how to get started with your own digital photography workflow on Mac OS X.

Powerful tools for 2D and 3D post production--Watch Daryl Obert of Alias and Charles Meyer of Apple as they explore ways you can bring new levels of integration to your post production workflow.

Pre-Visualizing and Presenting Your Ideas with StoryBoard Artist--Watch Jeff Walsh of PowerProduction demo StoryBoard Artist and find out how to convey your ideas with more depth, flair and accuracy than you thought possible.

The Ultimate Creative Workstation. Discovering the Apple Power Mac G5--Todd Benjamin provides a tour of the Power Mac G5, describing what makes them so innovative and how they will benefit your creative endeavors.

Third-party HPC Solutions for Mac OS X--Apple will be joined by representatives from companies who develop their software or hardware for the platform to talk about their products.

Unwire Your Business--Take this free online seminar and find out how Apple's wireless and mobile solutions let you take your computing environment with you wherever you go.

We have viewed a number of these seminars and all were informative and well done. [Bill Fox]

[7/11] New 7dbi Gain Wi-Fi Antenna for PowerBooks from QuickerTek: QuickerTek announced today a new antenna for Apple PowerBook Pismo, titanium and all 15- and 17-inch aluminum PowerBooks under 1.3GHz CPU speed. This new antenna features 7dbi of RF power, is omni-directional and is available for $49.95.

This omni-directional antenna is ideal for those users who regularly need the ability to work in various wireless network configurations and cannot predict the positioning of the AirPort Base Station or access point. Omni-directional antennas are designed to offer the best possible all-around utility for highly mobile PowerBook users in AirPort and AirPort Extreme networks.Unlike other omni-directional antenna designs, this one offers more power - almost twice as much - providing access to a larger number of wireless networks from a single point. When PowerBook users need a simple, reliable and easy-to-use antenna solution, this new antenna is the answer. [Bill Fox]

[7/9] Apple Revised the Offerings from Five Hot Deals Retailers:

MacMall has fantastic prices on essential Mac products, including DLO iBoom 4-Speaker BoomBox System for iPod, Nyko Technologies iPod Car Mount, Altec Lansing inMotion Portable iPod Speakers, Logitech S100 Speakers, Griffin iTrip Black FM Transmitter for U2 Special Edition iPod, Monster Cable iSplitter for iPod, and much more.

Small Dog Electronics has great prices on top quality Mac products, including Microsoft Office 2004 Professional, Rain Design iLap Stand for PowerBook, Kensington TurboMouse 5.0 Small Dog iPod Car Charger with Dock Connector, Micronet miniMate 80GB FireWire/USB Hard Drive and Hub for Mac mini with FREE MouseRug, and much more.

Sweetwater has fantastic deals on a wide range of audio products for your Mac, including Post Musical Instruments iPianos '05 for GarageBand, Zero-G Dance Pack for GarageBand, Ultimate Sound Bank SonicBoomBox, Tascam US122 USB Audio Interface, M-Audio DX4 Reference Monitor Speakers, and much more.

Ramjet has super low prices on RAM upgrades for your Mac, including 2GB DDR Kit for Power Mac G5, 512MB DDR DIMM for Power Mac G4, 512MB PC-2700 Module for Aluminum PowerBook G4, 1GB Module for Aluminum PowerBook G4, and much more.

AudioMIDI has fantastic deals on a wide range of audio products for your Mac, including Frontier Tranzport Wireless DAW Control, Ableton Live 5, Edirol R1 Recorder, FXpansion Guru, Cycling '74 Mode, and much more.

[Bill Fox]

[7/8] Apple Released DVD Playback Update 4.6.1: The update is available via the System Preferences Software Update pane and as a standalone file from this Apple Web page. According to Apple,

DVD Playback Update 4.6.1 addresses a disc validation issue some users may encounter when attempting to play a disc for the first time with DVD Player 4.6. This update is recommended for all users of DVD Player 4.6.

We installed the update on a number of Macs running Mac OS X 10.4.1 with DVD 4.6 without problem. We have not encountered the disc validation issue that this update fixes. [Bill Fox]

[7/8] Apple Q3 Financial Report--Analysts Predict $0.31 Earning per Share: According to Thomson First Call the consensus of analysts is that Apple will report earnings of 31 cents per share on revenue of $3.333 billion. If correct, this would represent a huge increase over the third quarter of last year which came in with earnings of 9 cents per share on revenue of $2.014 billion. However, Apple under Steve Jobs always seems to beat the consensus of analysts estimate, sometimes by a fairly wide margin.

Listen in for yourself. A QuickTime streaming audio webcast of Apple's Q3 financial report conference call with financial analysts can be heard from this Apple Web page on Wednesday, July 13, at 2pm PT (5pm ET). [Dana Baggett]

[7/8] O'Reilly Published Talk is Cheap, A Book on Voice Over IP Telephony:Sebastopol, CA-- Millions of people are saving money by switching from using their traditional phones to placing calls over the Internet. According to research firm IDC, the number of US subscribers to residential voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) services will grow from 3 million in 2005 to 27 million by the end of 2009. Talk is Cheap (Gaskin, O'Reilly, US $19.95) dispels the mysteries surrounding the different options and types of services and shows consumers how to get started.

"For the first time in history, you can control your phone service," states author James Gaskin. "And better yet, you'll save money doing it while benefiting from free features. In this book, I provide all of the information consumers need to feel comfortable upgrading to Internet phone services."

The book walks through information on how it all works, details on the different services, the right equipment, and how to place 911 emergency calls. Gaskin also includes a wealth of tips and tricks for advanced users. Talk is Cheap is written for consumers who are tired of paying more for traditional phone services and are curious about how Internet telephony can help them. [Bill Fox]

[7/8] New Google Toolbar for Mozilla Firefox Beta is Mac Compatible: Google released a new beta of its Toolbar for Firefox. This time the Google toolbar is compatible with Mac OS X 10.2 and higher and Firefox instead of just Windows Internet Explorer. The Toolbar for Firefox is available from this Google Web page. [Dana Baggett]

[7/7] Busted for "Stealing" Wi-Fi in St. Petersburg, FL: Here's a first as far as we know. A man, age 41, was arrested in St. Petersburg, FL, for logging onto and using someone's home Wi-Fi wireless network from the street. The homeowner noticed the man in an SUV parked outside his home using a laptop computer. The man in the SUV was charged with a third degree felony, unauthorized access of a computer network. It's not known if the Wi-Fi network was secured or not. Watch out if you plan to warchalk in St. Petersburg. More... [Dana Baggett]

[7/7] Tonight on The Tech Night Owl LIVE--Ihnatko, Dr. Mac and Borovay: This week co-hosts Gene and Grayson Steinberg will be joined by two of your favorite Mac authors and commentators, Andy Ihnatko and Bob "Dr. Mac." LeVitus. You'll also learn how Macs are used in theater and video on Broadway from noted designer Zachary Borovay. Zachary will also tell you stories about his grandfather, who was one of the inventors of the parallel port and the dot matrix printer. Tune in tonight from 6:00 to 8:00 PM Pacific, 9:00 to 11:00 PM Eastern.

In addition, podcasts of The Tech Night Owl LIVE internet radio show are coming soon! This is very good news for fans of Gene's show. [Bill Fox]

[7/7] HELIOS Server Suite Now Available for Mac OS X and Xsan: HELIOS announced today that its entire server suite, including WebShare, EtherShare, PCShare, ImageServer, PrintPreview, and PDF HandShake are all now available for Mac OS X and include full support for Apple Xsan. More... [Bill Fox]

[7/7] Cool Mac Software--FREE TextWrangler 2.1 Update from Bare Bones Software, the maker of BBEdit. TextWrangler 2 came out as a free product during January's Macworld Expo SF. Up until then, it had been a light but excellent for-sale text editor. Here is a long list of additions, changes and fixes in the 2.1 update. [Bill Fox]

[7/7] Apple Revised the Offerings from One Hot Deals Retailer:

CDW|MacWarehouse has great deals on cool Mac products, including Nikon's D50 Digital SLR Camera Outfit, Simpletech SimpleShare 250GB External Hard Drive, Markzware FlightCheck Pro 5.5, Xerox Phaser 8550DP Color Laser Printer, Epson Stylus Photo 1280 Color Inkjet Printer, Viewsonic VG910s 19" Flat Panel LCD Display, Logitech MX1000 Cordless Laser Mouse, and much more.

[Bill Fox]

[7/6] iTunes Music Store Carries LIVE 8 Concert Recordings from London, Paris, and Berlin. LIVE 8 is dedicated to raising funds for and awarenss of the economic plight of Africa. 100 artists played for a million spectators and a billion viewers. The songs available from the iTunes Music Store include a special release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club and The Long and Winding Road by Beatle Paul McCartney backed by the band U2. Here's the list from the iTunes Music Store:

[Bill Fox]

[7/6] iTunes Music Store on the Road to a Half Billion Downloaded Songs--Win Free iPods: The number of song downloads stood at approxinately 483,000,000 at publication time and counting. At each 100,000 interval, Apple is giving the lucky purchaser an iPod mini and a 50-song gift card. The one who downloads the 500 millionth song will get 10 iPods of their choice to share with family and friends, an iTunes gift card for 10,000 songs and an all-expenses paid trip for four to see Coldplay on their world tour. [Bill Fox]

[7/6] Podcast Listening to Explode Over Five Years according to research conducted by The Diffusion Group. They are projecting some 60 million podcast listeners by 2010 as a result of their numbers doubling each year. They claim that there will be 4.5 million podcast listeners by the end of this year. More... [Dana Baggett]

[7/6] Mozilla Project Dropped Mac OS X 10.1 Support: Because Mac OS X 10.1 "Puma" requires specific code and test procedures, support for it within the Mozilla Project (Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird and Camino) has been dropped. Future versions of those products may not be compatible with Puma. However, support for 10.2, 10.3 and 10.4 remains, of course. This was announced by Josh Aas, Mozilla Project's Mac Chief. More... [Dana Baggett]

[7/6] Apple's Q3 Financial Report Webcast One Week from Today: A QuickTime streaming audio webcast of Apple's Q3 financial report conference call with financial analysts can be heard from this Apple Web page on Wednesday July 13 at 2pm PT (5pm ET). [Bill Fox]]

[7/6] FREE Envision Web Show of the Week--July 4th: What else! This week's Envision Web Show of the Week is a collection of photos from this year's July 4 parade in Open Door Networks' home town of Ashland, Oregon. They claim to have one of the best. The Envision Web Show of the Week can be downloaded from the Show of the Week Web site. Previous Shows of the Week are available in the Show of the Week archive. [Bill Fox]

[7/5] ATI Radeon "X850 XT" for the Mac--How Fast Is It? Two weeks ago we posted a shootout between the fastest available graphics cards for the Mac: ATI's Radeon X800 XT and the Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL. Our tests gave the overall edge to to Nvidia, especially for those who run Apple's 30" Cinema Display since we had trouble with several ATI firmware updates. For the popular 3D game Halo, however, ATI was clearly the best performer--it was also $100 less expensive and used only the graphics slot.

Several things have happenend in the past three weeks that have made our comparo somewhat obsolete. First, ATI came out with a new firmware update (A109) that fixed our problem with getting full screen output at resolutions less than the native 2560x1600 of the 30" Cinema Display. Second, Apple discontinued the Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL and replaced it with the slower 6800 GT model. Third, Apple began shipping the ATI Radeon X850 XT, a slightly faster card than the X800 XT, as a CTO option.

According to Bare Feats, the only performance-related differences between the Mac versions of the ATI Radeon X800 XT and X850 XT are the GPU clock speed (500MHz instead of 475) and the memory clock speed (550MHz instead of 500). ATI does not list any specs for the Mac version of the X850 XT. If these are the only performance-related differences (ATI's comparison of the Windows versions seems to confirm this), then we can use ATIccelerator II 1.0.5a to increase the GPU and memory clock speeds of our X800 XT to those of the X850 XT to simulate its performance. With this assumption, we updated the firmware of our X800 XT to A109, clocked it to equal the X850 XT's specs and re-ran our graphics speed tests.

Other Graphics--ATI X850 XT* vs ATI X800 XT vs Nvidia 6800 Ultra Graphics Cards (score or seconds)

Test***		Card
	"ATI X850 XT"	ATI X800 XT	NV 6800 Ultra
Cinebench 2003 Rendering	648	639	646
Cinebench 2003 OpenGL HW	1780	1844	1801
Let1kWindowsBloom	8	8	7
Xbench Quartz Graphics	472	471	521
Xbench OpenGL Graphics	296	297	234
Xbench User Interface	523	514	517
Scroll 142p File (sec)	14	14	12
Startup (sec)	45	53	37

*ATI X850 XT was simulated by increasing the clock speed of the GPU and memory of our X800 XT.
**Quartz 2D Extreme Enabled
***Blue is better in each card comparison

The Cinebench 2003 tests are still a wash given the variability between runs. The Xbench scores are also a wash except for the OpenGL test in which ATI is still much faster. Nvidia is still faster at Let1KWindowsBloom, scrolling the graphics-laden file and in Startup, although either the new firmware or the faster clock speeds allowed ATI to catch up a bit in startup time.

If Apple still offered the Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL, we would still very slightly give it the overall speed nod. But it has been discontinued by Apple in favor of the slower 6800 GT. Unless you have two 30" monitors, the ATI Radeon X850 XT now appears to be the better choice, especially if you are a Halo fan or want to save a PCI slot. The release of firmware A109 for the ATI Radeon X800 XT also fixed the full screen issue with the 30" Cinema Display.

But what about the near future? Will Apple release a graphics card based on the newest Nvidia 7800 GPU? We certainly hope so. [Bill Fox]

[7/5] Every Wednesday is Business Day at Apple Stores--July Focus: The July Business Day focus is Automate, Monitor and Simplify Your Business with POS*IM. And every Wednesday the Apple Stores' are available to schedule appointments with their business consultants before regular store hours.

Automate, Monitor and Simplify Your Business with POS*IM--Learn how a Mac and POS*IM point of sale inventory management software by Ensign Systems make it easier than ever to manage every aspect of your retail business. From complete inventory control, full featured point-of-sale and customer management to integrated credit card processing, POS*IM provides a simple, yet powerful, solution for your business.

Since Business Day workshop times and locations vary, check the Apple Store near you. [Bill Fox]

[7/5] Cool Mac Software--TinyBooks v3.0, Family & Small Business Accounting Software: TinyBooks is a simple, flexible, non-bloated, single-entry bookkeeping and accounting system for the Macintosh. TinyBooks is designed for Sole Proprietors, home and other small businesses, and family finances. What's New: ThisVersion 3.0 is a Major Update to TinyBooks. It adds a Professional Invoice Printer, Fully Automatic Account Charting, Budgeting Support, and more. Check out Ken Winograd's TinyBooks 3.0. [Bill Fox]

[7/5] Mozilla's Firefox Web Browser will be Ready when MacIntels Ship: There is already a port of Firefox to the version of Mac OS X running on an Intel CPU. With some help from Apple employees, Mozila Project has Firefox running on the developer MacIntel. More (with comments from Mozilla's Mac man Josh Aas)... [Dana Baggett]

[7/5] Playing 3D Computer Games has Redeeming Value After All! We admit to being addicted to several 3D games and spend much more time playing them than we should. We tell our clucking spouse that it keeps our reflexes up to par in a quickly aging body, just in case. And you know what? We were right. Well, kind of...according to research conducted at Washington University in St. Louis. Gamers are faster at spotting things than non-gamers. While that makes sense to us, in the real world we have real trouble finding anything that's not where we usually put it. More... [Bill Fox]

[7/2] Hands-On--Apple at NECC with Photos: Tim Holt was at the National Education Computing Conference in Philadelphis this past week. He wrote us,

Bill, here are some shots of the Apple presence at this week's National Education Computing Conference. My understanding was that there were close to 11000 attendees and Apple was everywhere in the Philadelphia Convention Center!

Apple Education had the largest booth in the conference, and when it was combined with Powerschool and Filemaker booths, they were quite a sight!

The door prize de jour was of course iPods, with almost every vendor offering some type of iPod as a prize at their booths.

Here are Tim's NECC 2005 photos. [Bill Fox]

[7/2] Cool Mac Software--3D-Space VFS 1.3 is Out and available from Marc Moini. 3D-Space VFS combines Launcher, Dock and Finder features with elegant 3D drawers to give you easy point-and-click access to all of your favorite files and applications, without having to dig through folders.

+ Easy visual launcher / dock.
+ Finder like features and navigation.
+ Instant access to hundreds of your favorite items in glorious, spacious 3D drawers!
+ Fast OpenGL graphics for a fluid user experience.

A flick of the mouse and a vast three dimensional landscape appears. You see all your favorite items, neatly presented and waiting for you to click the one you want. Never before has it been so easy to quickly access so many files and applications!

3D-Space VFS also lets you navigate from one 3D space to another, and open any folder as a new 3D space. Full drag-and-drop is available so you can perform traditional Finder operations such as moving, copying, deleting and renaming files and folders.All this and more from drawers that are always available and take almost zero screen space and CPU use while standing by. [Bill Fox]

[7/1] Apple Revised the Offerings from Five Hot Deals Retailers:

The Apple Store has an exclusive offer available only at the Apple Store. Put the power to control AirTunes in the palm of your hand. The Keyspan Express Remote allows you to control your iTunes music library remotely. Best of all, get an exclusive $20 mail-in rebate when you purchase the Keyspan Express Remote from the online Apple Store between June 28, 2005 and July 31, 2005.

The newest entry to the Hot Deals family is the Apple Store Special Deals page. Here you'll find unbelievable deals on the hottest refurbished and new, unopened Apple products. Current offerings include the iPod mini starting at $149, iPod with Click Wheel starting at only $249, Power Mac G5 Dual 2.5GHz for only $2,699, and much more. But hurry; supplies are limited and sure to go fast.

Small Dog Electronics has great prices on top quality Mac products, including Small Dog's Eskie 512MB Flash Drive, Rain Design iLap stand for PowerBook, M-Audio Radium 61-key USB MIDI Keyboard, Shure E2C Sound Isolating Earphones, LTA Projects iLugger II Solid Black iMac G5 Carrying Case, QuickTek Antenna for AirPort Base Station, and much more.

Mac Game Store has great deals on the hottest games for the Mac, including MacSoft's Tropico 2: Pirate Cove, MacPlay Luxor, Aspyr Media The Sims 2, Feral Interactive Family Fun Pack 2, Freeverse Big Bang Board Games, Logitech MX1000 Laster Cordless Mouse, Strategy First Vendetta Online, MacSoft Zoo Tycoon, and more.

Publishing Perfection has great deals on a variety of design and print products for your Mac, including Corel's KPT Collection, Gluon ProPack Quark Xtensions, SoftPress Freeway Pro, Microtek ScanMaker 9800XL, SanDisk 128MB xD-Picture Card, Allume Systems Creative Essentials, Comnet LogoSpruce, Curious Labs Shade 7 Designer, and much more.

[Bill Fox]

[7/1] Feedback--Mac Sales Dip or Not? The feedback to yesterday's commentary that we do not expect a sales dip due to the new MacIntels coming out one to two and a half years from now ran in favor of our view. While the number writing was not large, several pointed out that there might even be a sales boost from those who want a new Mac but may not need one buying now rather than later to get them to the second generation MacIntels. [Bill Fox]

[7/1] Apple Posted GarageBand Podcast Support Page: If you want to record your own podcast, Apple posted a Web page that tells one how to use GarageBand to do so. Apple has also published a specific podcasting Web page. Finally, Apple posted a "Chapter Tool" (bottom of this Web page) for inserting chapters into podcasts along with artwork, pictures and web links that will work with iTunes and the color display iPods. Chaptering will enable listening to long podcasts in segments.

Finally, Apple announced that there have been over 2 million subscriptions to podcasts via iTunes. [Bill Fox]

[7/1] iVault, a Case for the iPod Shuffle, is Shipping: Griffin Technology, Inc, announced that their iVault aluminum case for the iPod Shuffle is now shipping. Machined entirely out of aluminum, the iVault safely encloses your iPod Shuffle, while still allowing total access to the control wheel, audio jack, on switch, USB port, and LED. The front and back halves of the case are joined together by 4 small screws, so your iPod Shuffle is guaranteed to be secure. Lightweight yet strong, the iVault and the iPod Shuffle together weigh less than 1.5 ounces. The SRP for the Griffin iVault is $19.99 USD. [Bill Fox]

[7/1] Following Supreme Court Decision Against Grokster, RIAA Files 784 New Suits: Emboldened by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision that Grokster can be held liable for illegal peer-to-peer file sharing, the Recoding Industry Association of America filed new lawsuits against 784 individuals in CA, NY and VA. More... [Dana Baggett]

[7/1] This Week's FREE Envision Web Show of the Week--Patagonia: Last week it was beaches to celebrate the start of summer in the north. This week it's icebergs and glaciers to celebrate the start of winter in the south. This week's Envision Web Show of the Week is a collection of photographs from the Patagonia region of Argentina. Enjoy! The Envision Web Show of the Week can be downloaded from the Show of the Week Web site. Previous Shows of the Week are available in the Show of the Week archive. [Bill Fox]

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