Apple Revised the Offerings from Five of their Hot Deals Retailers
The Apple Store for Business has a new offer titled, "Pro Editing. Instant Savings." The way it works is simple: Buy any Apple CPU and Final Cut Express through September 25, 2004 and get an instant savings of $200.
CDW|MacWarehouse has great deals on essential Mac products, including the Samsung CLP-500 Color Laser Printer, MicroNet Platinum 160GB External FireWire Hard Drive, Fantom Titanium 8X DVD-RW Drive, Kanguru MicroDrive 2.0 with $20 mail-in rebate, MacAlly IceKey USB Slim Keyboard, NEC 1760N-BK-1 17" Flat-Panel Display, Nikon CoolPix 5700 Digital Camera, and much more.
MacConnection has fantastic prices on top quality Mac products, including the Nikon D-70 Digital SLR Camera Outfit with Nikkor Lens, Extensis Suitcase X1/Symantec Norton SystemWorks Bundle, Pantone ColorCue, Canopus ADVC300 Analog to Digital Video Converter, iGo Juice Combo Power Adapter, Belkin TuneCast II Mobile FM Transmitter with Mobile Power Cord for iPod, and much more.
MacMall has money-savings deals on your favorite Mac products, including the Nikon Coolpix 5700 Digital SLR Camera with $150 mail-in rebate, Eagle Games World Championship Poker, Apple Final Cut Pro HD with FREE 512MB PowerBook RAM, M-Audio KeyStation 49E USB MIDI Keyboard, Microsoft Office X 2004/Symantec Norton AntiVirus Bundle, and much more.
ClubMac has huge savings on essential Mac products, including the Sony DCS-P73 CyberShot Digital Camera, Aspyr Media Battlefield 1942 Deluxe Edition, MacAlly iPod Waistband Carrying Case, Smart Modular 17" Flat Panel Display with $60 mail-in rebate, Lexar 1GB 40x High Speed CompactFlash Card with Write Acceleration Technology, Griffin iTrip Mini FM Transmitter, and much more.
-- Holiday Weekend, July 3-5 --
Apple Revised the Offerings for One of their Hot Deals Retailers:
O'Reilly has new exclusively Hot Deals discounts on many of it's most popular Mac titles, including "Mac OS X Panther Hack," "GarageBand: The Missing Manual," " Mac OS X Panther in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition," "Inside .Mac," "Cocoa in a Nutshell," and more.
-- TGIF, July 2 --
Wednesdays are Pro Days at Apple Stores--July's Schedule: Each Wednesday the retail Apple Stores offer free workshops and demos for business professionals. July brings an all-new lineup of workshops and demonstrations. Here is the schedule of presentations for July:
7/07 Server Solutions for Your Business
7/14 Managing Your Data with FileMaker 7
7/21 Increase your Productivity with Microsoft Office 2004
7/28 Manage your Finances with QuickBooks Pro 6.0 for Mac
Presentation times do vary by store so check with the Apple Store near you.
Virex 7.2 DAT File Update is Available via the eUpdate feature in the application or from this McAfee web page. Virex 7.2 is distributed to .Mac members. The new virus definitions update is dated June 25, 2004.
Apple Announced New iMacs Coming in September with a note on the online Apple Store. Apple has stopped taking orders for the current iMac so there will be about a 60-day or so gap as the final supply gets sold. Here is Apple's statement:
"Apple has stopped taking orders for the current iMac as we begin the transition from the current iMac line to an all-new iMac line which will be announced and available in September.
We planned to have our next generation iMac ready by the time the inventory of current iMacs runs out in the next few weeks, but our planning was obviously less than perfect.
We apologize for any inconvenience to our customers."
No details on the new iMacs were available. We expect that the new iMacs will have a G5 CPU, maybe two at the upper end, to really spark sales of this consumer model. [Dana Baggett]
Are the Courts Sufficiently High Tech? Maine is Running Mac OS X: Long time readers know that our New England Editor, Dana Baggett, was the administrator for the Maine state court system when they became computerized. He chose to install Macs and they are still using Apple's technology according to this Iowa Law article. It states in part:
One of the most interesting state technology systems we discovered was in Maine. It does not have electronic filing; it has geographic challenges, it needs more bandwidth, and it must deal with the usual misconceptions regarding what technology is and is not suitable for. But a conversa?tion with Warren Armstrong, the information technology director for Maine's state court technology systems, reveals a solid concept with measured risks: The state's desktop/laptop system is based on the Mac OS X platform. Microsoft Word is used for word processing. On the server side, Oracle databases are used for case management.
"The judges in Maine have used the Macs for many years," Armstrong says. "In the spring of 2001, the tech committee had several long meetings to decide if we would stay with the Macs or go to Windows.
"Previously, I was an IT director for a project [involving the U.S. Department of Justice]. We supported 400 U.S. attorneys and paralegals in a single office building. ... I had between 15 and 30 people.... In Maine, I have 14 people to support the same number of people, but now it is spread over 42 courthouses in a 35,000-square-mile state."
Armstrong says trade reports in 2001 about coming problems with viruses, worms and other vulnerabilities in Windows led him "to conclude that switching to that platform simply would not be possible without adding at least two more desktop technicians to my staff. At the time, OS X was still new, but based on my earlier experiences with UNIX, I felt that if Apple could deliver a stable platform, this would be the way to go.
"There were and are members of the committee who would prefer us to move to Windows," Armstrong says. "This is due to the numerous legal software packages written for this system. But the ease in functionality of Windows has, from my viewpoint, been trumped by its lack of security."
Apple to Mark 100 Millionth Song Sold from iTunes Music Store: Today, Apple expects the 95 millionth song to be sold from the iTunes Music Store, either in the U.S., U.K., France or Germany. The count-down to 100 million songs will be marked at each subsequent 100,000 songs sold with a free 20-GB iPod for the lucky 100,000th song purchaser in either of the four countries. The customer who buys the 100 millionth song will get a 17" PowerBook G4, a 40-GB iPod, a gift certificate for 10,000 songs and the opportunity to create a playlist to be posted on the iTunes Music Store. Here is Apple's press release.
Tiger Chat Tonight on the Mac Night Owl LIVE: This week, host Gene Steinberg and his son Grayson will talk about the next great version of Mac OS X, Tiger. They’ll be joined by Macworld’s Editor-in-Chief Jason Snell and Macworld Contributing Editor Christopher Breen. Tune in to the broadcast from 6:00 to 8:00 PM Pacific, 9:00 to 11:00 PM Eastern.
-- Thursday, July 1 --
[4p EDT] Speck Products Announced Skin-Tight Armband for iPod Mini: The Skin-Tight iPod Mini Armband includes the armband and an iPod Mini Skin. The iPod Mini is housed in the skin and then snapped onto the armband so the iPod Mini is fully protected. The armband attaches to itself with velcro for a comfortable fit and it includes cable clips to keep the cords out of the way. The armband with skin sells for $29.95 and will begin shipping on July 3rd. [Dana Baggett]
[11:45a EDT] PowerLogix Reduced Prices on G4 CPU Upgrades Added 1.1 GHz Model for beige and blue & white G3s according to a press release that was sent to us by PowerLogix. Priced at only $349.00 and operating at 1.1 GHz, the all new PowerForce G3 ZIF offers up to five times the original clock speed of original G3 Power Mac computers. It's the fastest processor ever designed for PowerMac G3 Beige and "Blue and White" computers. The PowerForce G3 ZIF 1.1 GHz is now shipping and is compatible with OS 9 and OS X.
Prices have also been reduced across the board by $40-$150 on PowerLogix G4 CPU upgrades. Models are available in both single and dual CPU configurations and based on the most advanced G4 microprocessor, the PowerPC 7457.
Here is the press release.
On-Scene Report--WWDC 2004, the Public Features: We've attended three days of sessions at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco that cover Apple's focus on scientific computing and new technologies like VoiceOver to be included with Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger". Unfortunately, the infomation provided in those sessions is proprietary and covered by an NDA so there's not much to write about except that we're very pleased with Apple's aggressive move back into scientific computing and the new Tiger technologies are very impressive. We hope that Apple's scientific computing focus will expand into fields other than genomics.
There are other things going on at the WWDC that we can report on: the gaming area, the exhibit fair, the O'Reilly Press sales booth, the DevDepot sales booth and the BMWs and Mini Coopers with an integrated iPod installation.
The gaming area is set up to show off the latest 3D games in multiplayer (LAN) mode and to demonstrate how well they play on the 20 Power Mac G5s with 23" Cinema HD Displays. Some have Bose headphones and some have Harman Kardon Creature speaker systems turned way down. The newest game is Battlefield 1942 but others I've seen running include Call of Duty (CoD), Unreal Tournament 2004 and Halo. While Unreal Tournament 2004 won the Apple Design Award for entertainment, the most popular game, as determined by the number of players when we've passed by the gaming area, is Call of Duty. CoD is followed in popularity by Battlefield 1942.
We managed to get a seat and try out Battlefield 1942. It took awhile to figure out most of the controls and maps since Battlefield 1942 is a fairly complex FPS war game. Some we have yet to master. A neat feature is that one's spawning point can be selected on the map at each spawning. This avoids spawning campers and gets one into the action of choice more quickly than having to run through the entire map since the geographical area of the maps is quite large.
The key feature of Battlefield 1942 is that one can hop into and drive, fly or steer various vehicles including tanks, battle wagons, jeeps, several aircraft, landing craft and ships and use their weaponry like in Halo but there are many more vehicles than in Halo. Multiple players can share riding in most vehicles as passengers and use the additional weaponry of the vehicle. It did't take us long to competently fly the two vehicles in Halo but in our short time at the table we were unable to master flying the various aircraft in Battlefield 1942, crashing right after takeoff most of the time or going into a wing-over death spiral soon after takeoff.
The realism of the player models in war FPS games keeps improving and Battlefield 1942 continues this development. The weapons are very similar to those in Medal of Honor (MoH). The scope on the sniper rifle has an unrealistically large field of vision like MoH's, but even larger, instead of the more realistic field in CoD.
Battlefield 1942 is a fun game.
The Exhibit Fair consists of stand-up booths about 6 feet wide, except for Sun Microsystems which has two booths set side by side. There are some 75 exhibitors, mostly dealing with application developments that, of course, are of interest to software engineers.
In addition, here are a few interesting things for non-engineers that we saw among the exhibts:
Brenthaven had it's great bags and backpacks on display. They are 10% off at the Apple Store up the street.
Dauger Research was displaying Pooch, software for easily creating clusters of Macs. They claim it just takes a few minutes to set up a cluster using ethernet cable and a 100bT or faster switch. Pooch costs $550 for the minimum 4 nodes.
Etymotic Research was showing off it's upcoming 6i earphones for the iPod. The 6i model supplements the iPod's bass response and are white in color. We tried them out on an iPod Mini and were impressed with their extra bass coverage. The 6i earphones will be out in late July with an SRP of $149 but will be widely available for less--use Google.
Fujitsu Ten Ltd. was demoing a great-looking speaker system for all Macs and iPods called the Eclipse TD Lulet 307/307PA-316SW. The TD stands for Time Domain. The systems are currently available only in Japan and Europe and may become available in the U.S. in the near future. The system looks and sounds great.
Griffin Technology was displaying their SecuriKey computer protection system. It consists of software and a USB token that looks like a flash drive. The SecuriKey must be inserted into a computer to use it thereby preventing unauthorized access to data if the computer is lost or stolen.
Harman Kardon was showing off its new On Tour speaker system. It's white, about 4x6 inches and curved like a booze flask. The cover slides back to expose the speakers and audio ports. It was being demoed hooked up to an iPod and sounded pretty good. It will be out in mid to late July for $99.
RadTech, seller of PowerBook and iPod accessories, was demoing its MacTruck by CompuShell, an extremely rugged aluminum enclosure for PowerBooks. The enclosure is like a brief case with handle that the PowerBook stays in for protection even when open. The MacTruck is available for all three PowerBooks sizes and sells for $199-229.
Sony Electronics was displaying their Puppy fingerprint identifier security system. With the Puppy system there is no need to remember passwords or to carry around a key. The fingerprint reader authenticates the user and allows access. It is a small device that connects by a USB port. It worked very well for us. The Puppy costs $99 for the hardware and software.
The O'Reilly Press sales booth was jammed between sessions every time we passed by. By our guess they have some 50-100 titles available for sale at a show special price of 20% off.
The DevDepot sales booth has many Mac accessories for sale at special prices just like at Macworld.
BMW has a 330i convertible, a Z4 convertible, an X-3 and three Mini Coopers, two softtops and a hardtop, on display that have the built-in iPod adapter. All are playing music from the iPod through the cars' sound systems all day. They are quite popular among attendees as one might expect. The adapter consists of a single cable in the glove compartment to connect the iPod's power port with the stock radio controls on the dash and steering wheel. The adapter costs a mere $149 plus installation (supposedly less than $100) and tax. The setup needs a 3G iPod running v2.2 of the iPod software or an iPod Mini.
Brief Hands-On Report--RealPlayer 10b for Mac OS X is out and available for download. The new features since RealOne Player for Mac OS X are:
- Multiple playback windows
- Integrated browser windows
- In-video resizing
- Video adjustment controls
- Graphic equalizer
- Full-screen playback with on-screen controls, resizing, and multiple-monitor support
- New auto-update system
- New favorites editor
Last Stopped At indicator for recent clips
- Internet favorites shared via Rendezvous
- Real Media Package (rmp) download support
- Recent clips can be cleared when player quits
- Full-product Reset in Help menu
- QuickTime playback support
- Cocoa user interface
Known Issues
- Safari and the Finder sometimes hands off RealMedia files (.rm, .ram) to the wrong application. If Safari downloads a RealPlayer file and sends it to another application, find the file's icon in the Finder, select the file's icon with a single click, choose Get Info from the Finder's File menu, and change the Open With setting in the file's Info window to open the file with RealPlayer. Click Change All in the Info window so that future RealPlayer files will be given to the player.
- Control of the RealPlayer web browser plug-in via Javascript is not supported in this release.
We downloaded a copy and tried it out on several RealPlayer video feeds from News.com with no noticeable problems. As noted in the "Known Issues" we first used the File menu's Get Info window to change all .rm and .ram files to be opened with ReaPlayer since they are frequently interpreted by Safari as Adobe GoLive files.
New Web Browser Plug In Standard Under Development as an alternative to Microsoft's ActiveX used in Internet Explorer according to this News.com article. Microsoft's architecture has many security problems and is proprietary so everybody else who makes a web browser, including Apple, plus all of the web browser plug in vendors are getting together with Mozilla to create an alternative standard. [Dana Baggett]
M$ Antitrust Lawsuit Finally Ends with M$ the Clear Winner as the U.S. Court of Appeals yesterday rejected Massachusetts appeal for higher penalties than were contained in the settlement Microsoft obtained from the U.S. Department of Justice according to this News.com article. How sad. It seems the Sherman Antitrust Act is out of date and can no longer protect the market from illegal acts of monopolists. [Dana Baggett]
Apple Broadens Reach of Rendezvous to All Major OS Platforms according to this Apple web page. The platforms include Java clients, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD and Windows 2000 & XP (as a technology preview). Rendezvous is Apple's automatic network device and service configuration technology. It is an open protocol and Apple has submitted it to the IETF as part of the ongoing standards-creation process.
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