From the Dark Side--Intel Comes Clean on Megahertz Myth

in selling its new Pentium M processor to be announced this week according to this Washington Post article. The new Pentium M will be much slower in MHz than its older Pentium 4 CPUs. Ironic but welcome. [Dana Baggett]

-- Weekend, March 8-9 --

[3/9] Ephemera 1.0, a Free Slide-Show Screen Saver: Stick Software announced the release of a new freeware product for Mac OS X, Ephemera. Ephemera 1.0 is a "slide show" screensaver containing more than 60 photographs. The photos are landscape and nature art photography, and are all in color. They were taken by Ben Haller, and are among many other photographs. They were taken at a variety of locations around the world, between 1999 and 2002. Ephemera joins Stick Software products such as Eyeballs, BigFoot, Measles, Issa and Fracture in making OS X more fun and more aesthetic.

[3/9] Positive iPod Review by CNet in an article on MP3 players illustrating why the Mac version of the iPod is so good. It's the smooth integration of hardware and software that only Apple can supply, plus the design of course. [Dana Baggett]

[3/9] Mozilla 1.3 Final Candidates available for download and testing before the final release of 1.3 that appears to be coming very soon. Mozilla is the open source, "Netscape" Gecko engine-based, fully-featured web browser. [Dana Baggett]

[3/9] iLife Up-To-Date Now Free for 12" PowerBook Owners according to Apple's iLife Up-To-Date web page:

Customers who purchase a 12-inch PowerBook G4 on or after January 7, 2003, that does not include iLife may upgrade to iLife for no additional charge. Just complete and mail or fax in this order form along with a copy of your dated, itemized sales receipt or packing slip (phone and online orders not available). Refer to "Terms and Conditions" on the order form for program details.

iLife is the CD/DVD collection of iTunes 3, iMovie 3, iPhoto 2 and iDVD 3. Formerly, the up-to-date cost for early 12" Powerbook buyers that did not include iLife was a nominal $19.95 despite Apple advertising that iLife was included. [MacSurfer]

[3/8] Apples Needed in National Interest. So, why is this the only one in the Middle-East theater and why did it take a special requisition to get it? Read about it in this Wired article:

"Frankly, lives are in the balance here, so the quicker I can get stuff done accurately, the better," Weed said. "The Mac makes this work simple, quick and efficient. The other laptops either can't open the files or lock up halfway through, losing whatever I was working on at the time, and then (I have) to restart the computer and start over."

The big question is why are there so few Mac's in government, especially in the Defense Department where security and reliability are huge issues?

[Dana Baggett]

[3/8] Game Developers Conference--NVIDIA Event photos with legends by Brian Nakamoto, our West Coast reporter. The third report in our series of GDC coverage, Brian attended the event unveiling of NVIDIA's next generation FX graphics processors at the Game Developer's Conference in San Jose, CA. He says that NVIDIA may recapture the graphics lead from ATI with the new chip series. In addition, he says that "It's also interesting and concerning that both NVIDIA and ATI are heavily touting DirectX 9-only features. For Apple's sake, I hope that OpenGL stays relevant to game developers and keeps up with DirectX in terms of features. I hope to snap some photos from the expo floor tomorrow. Sony Ericsson is supposedly showing off the successor to the T68i so that should be interesting." Here's NVIDIA's press release. Come back for report number 4!

[3/8] The Mac, A Blast from the Past: A web exclusive, Newsweek recently reprinted its original story from January 30, 1984 about Apple's then-new Macintosh along with present-day commentary. Read what the so-called critics had to say then. Among their "insights" were that the mouse and icons such as the Trash Can would never be successful. And, of course, neither would Apple. Some things never change. The hyenas are still yapping away and waiting for Apple to fall even today, nearly 20 years later. Read the blast from the past here. [Dana Baggett]

-- TGIF, March 7 --

[3/7] Safari vs Camino: The two web browsers are compared in this Mozilla.org article. Here's a quote:

"What is clear is that both Camino and Safari are wicked fast browsers. This is excellent news. In addition, Safari uses code and ideas from Gecko, and high quality ideas from the KHTML/Safari world will make their way back into Gecko. This brings benefits to both layout engines. The big picture question is the performance of open alternatives compared to that of the dominant Internet Explorer browser, and the open source community can share satisfaction as the open alternatives continue to improve."

[Dana Baggett]

[3/7] Camino (fka Chimera) 0.7 is Out and available for download. Camino is an open source, cocoa-native web browser for Mac OS X that is based on the Mozilla (Netscape) project. As of this release, Chimera is now called Camino. Here are the highlights of the changes and improvements that have been made since the Chimera 0.6 release.

• New Download Manager, with auto-download and auto-dispatch.
• Compatible with URL Manager Pro
• Page Text Encodings menu
• Global History in the sidebar
• Send Link menu item, and other new toolbar buttons
• Dragging of images and links to the desktop, and other applications
• Support for Shockwave Directory content
• Uses Rendezvous to show local FTP and web servers
• Supports Proxy Auto-config

[3/7] EverQuest for Mac Beta Registration: From Nathan Pearce, Director of Web Presence for Sony Online Entertainment, "Registrations are now being accepted to participate in the EverQuest for the Macintosh beta test. The first phase of testing is scheduled to begin soon. Check out the beta test website and see what you'll need and to fill out the application."

[3/7] Tonight on The Mac Night Owl LIVE: On this week's Mac Night Owl LIVE with Gene Steinberg, you'll learn the secrets of performing reliable backups with as little fuss as possible. Our guest will be Richard Zulch, CTO of Dantz Development, publisher of Retrospect. Listen in at 8-10pm Central Time.

[3/7] From the Dark Side--Lindows vs Microsoft: From Dana Baggett, "Following up on our previous note about the M$ v. Lindows trial, it turns out that there are more than 300 boxes of evidence that Apple Computer collected during its own, unsuccessful suit against M$ that will be turned over to Lindows."

"Perhaps more relevant to the trai outcome, a recent ruling of the US Supreme Court may have placed a heavy burden on M$. In a ruling just handed down in a seemingly unrelated trademark case, the court ruled that there has to be actual damage to the trademark holder to prevail. Details here."