Link Archive: June 2004
Links Around the Web
- Opinion: The .mac
gap, Eric Bangeman, ars technica, 06.30. "Many of those who use
.Mac primarily for the e-mail will be tempted to cancel their .Mac
account at renewal time and get a free account somewhere else with
much more storage."
- Opinion:
iBook reflections at 18 months, Charles W. Moore, Road Warrior,
Mac Opinion, 06.29. "...this G3 iBook is doing a great job, and I
have no real regrets about buying it. I just wish it were easier to
get at that hard drive."
- Apple: Apple cuts
AirPort Extreme pricing, MacMinute, 06.29. "Apple has quietly
lowered the price of its AirPort Extreme Base Station with modem
and antenna port to US$199 . . . [and] the AirPort Extreme Card to
$79."
- OS X: Tiger
Primer: Everything and the kitchen sync, Jason Snell, Macworld,
06.28. With OS X 10.4, the functionality of iSync will be built
into the OS and available to third-party developers.
- Macinschool: A gaggle of
LC IIIs, part 3, Steve Wood, View from the Classroom, 06.25.
"As time passed, we found that reading, math, and writing skills
were . . . positively impacted by supplying home computers to our
students."
- Tech: IBM: PowerPC
G5 to go mobile, Mark Hachman, eWeek, 06.25. "...the same chip
that IBM uses for its desktop machines can also be used comfortably
within future PowerBook notebooks through a power-management
technique called 'PowerTune.'"
- Analysis:
3GHz PowerPC G5 eludes IBM, Mark Hachman, eWeek, 06.25. "The
issue today in most modern fabs is not whether it works or not but
whether it yields effectively at a marketable speed."
- Opinion: A dark
journey through the world of wireless routers, Gene Steinberg,
Mac Night Owl, 06.25. "I had always regarded Apple's Wi-Fi
networking products as overpriced compared to the
completion...."
- Opinion: A
dusty Palm, Marc Zeedar, Less Tangible, Mac Opinion, 06.25.
"...while I found PDA technology to be surprisingly powerful and
occasionally quite useful, I just as often ran into severe
limitations."
- Opinion: The
Apple Tech Support Report: The best in the industry?, Gene
Steinberg, Mac Night Owl, 06.24. "I guess those tight profit
margins for PC box makers don't allow much room to provide a
properly run support department."
- .mac: Apple's
.Mac email now offers 'Email Aliases' and 'Spell-Check'
features, MacDailyNews, 06.24. You can create multiple aliases
for your .mac account, enabling and disabling them as you wish. You
can also spell check when composing .mac email on the Web.
- OS X: Don't
get impatient!, Gene Steinberg, The Tiger Report, Mac Night
Owl, 06.23. Apple will preview OS X 10.4 on Monday, and just what
improvements we'll see remain under wraps.
Rights:
Microsoft,
Apple snub consumer freedom coalition, Andrew Orlowski, The
Register, 06.23. "This new alliance, the Personal Technology
Freedom Coalition has fairly modest goals - seeking to restore some
fair use provisions that will be lost if DRM is accepted...."- News: Euro iTMS
sells 800,000 songs in first week, Bryan Chaffin, Mac Observer,
06.23. "After selling over 800,000 songs during its first week,
iTunes is Europe's top online music store."
- Spam: Big
six unite to can spam, John Oates, The Register, 06.23. "Some
of the world's largest ISPs and email providers are joining forces
to fight spam by using existing technology and best practice rather
than just looking for future technical solutions."
- Dark Side: Hotmail
bins email accounts on hearsay, Tim Richardson, The Register,
06.23. "Hotmail has been caught closing down email accounts accused
of spamming without carrying out proper checks first."
- Macinschool: Dell
wants a bigger piece of the school pie; how badly does Apple?,
Dennis Sellers, Macsimum Perspective, 06.23. "While 14 percent
sounds pretty good compared to the 3-5 percent figure touted as
Apple's overall worldwide market share, that 14 percent could
easily continue to slip...."
- Review: Checking
out Gmail with OS X browsers, Charles W. Moore, OS X Odyssey,
Applelinks, 06.22. Google's Gmail is still in beta, and while it
supports most OS X browsers, iCab, Opera, and OmniWeb are left out
in the cold.
- OS X: Your
Tiger wish list, Jason Snell, Macworld, 06.22. Suggestions for
improving OS X include tabbed Finder windows, improving Open and
Save, including MySQL tools, and giving OS X full FTP support.
- Review:
PB FixIt PowerBook teardown guides, Charles W. Moore, Road
Warrior, Mac Opinion, 06.22. "If you're planning on doing some
do-it-yourself PowerBook servicing or repair, I would
enthusiastically recommend purchasing one of these guides."
- Opinion: Mac
OS X - when it doesn't "just work", Matt Evans, Matt Evans's
Weblog, 06.21. What a Unix geek learns while trying to get OS X
working again.
- Rights:
New DRM lies of biblical proportions, David Farber, Interesting
People, 06.21. "iPod-owning Velvet Revolver fans cannot transfer
the music from their CDs to their pods unless they violate DMCA and
hack their CDs." Ditto for iTMS downloads!
- News: Apple again
expands iBook logic board repair program, Peter Cohen,
MacCentral, 06.21. "The cost of repair and shipping is covered by
Apple, and users who have already paid for an eligible repair can
contact Apple to be reimbursed...."
- Advocacy: Apple needs to jump on
the bandwagon with email storage, Bill Palmer, BillPalmer.net,
06.21. "Yahoo recently bumped up its free email service to offer
100 MB of storage due to Google's 1,000 MB offering. ...when will
Apple jump on the bandwagon?"
- News: Apple Remote
Desktop 2 speeds up, adds 50 features, Peter Cohen, MacCentral,
06.21. "...admins can also see what's going on with individual
desktops by using real-time screen sharing. Screen sharing works on
Macs, as well as Windows and Linux computers using [VNC]."
- Advocacy: Apple
needs a new 'Mac LC' for market growth, Anthony
Frausto-Robledo, Architosh, 06.18. "What Apple realized in the
original Mac LC was an ability to edit the product wisely. The
company hasn't been able to do that since then with any great
success."
- Opinion: Are you
stuck with Microsoft Word?, Gene Steinberg, Mac Night Owl,
06.18. "If the other word processors hope to capture a percentage
of the market in the publishing business, they will have to devise
a way to seamlessly interpret Track Changes."
- Opinion: End of an Era:
Apple's personal desktop computer business is dead, Sudhian,
06.17. Lots of misunderstandings and misinformation, but Apple
really does need something attractive between the eMac and G5.
- Analysis: Half of potential
Mac customers choose Apple, Blane Warrene, MacNewsWorld, 06.17.
That means half don't choose Apple, but instead go with a Dell, HP,
Compaq, Gateway, Sony, etc.
- Opinion: A
portable portable, Marc Zeedar, Less Tangible, Mac Opinion,
06.17. "Anyway, for a long time I've been drooling at the idea of
having a little 'junk' iBook to throw around. Something that's not
expensive...."
- Low End: Word
refuseniks: Never upgrade, Leander Kahney, Wired, 06.17.
"Microsoft's brand-new version of Office for Mac OS X has been
highly praised in reviews, but for many users it can't hold a
candle to the 13-year-old Word 5.1."
- Opinion: Where
should you buy your next Mac?, Gene Steinberg, Mac Night Owl,
06.17. "...authorized Apple resellers rarely cut the price of a new
Mac by more than a few dollars, but manage to save you money by
tacking on the extras."
- Opinion:
Rodney O. Lain: Still knocking 'em dead, Bryan Chaffin, The
Back Page, Mac Observer, 06.16. "This is the kind of thing that
Rodney lived for.... Here was a white supremacist site linking to
comments praising a column by Rodney Freakin' O. Lain. How rich is
that?"
- Review: Mozilla
Firefox 0.9 Web browser, Charles W. Moore, Applelinks, 06.16.
"A number of key improvements in this release make this the best
time yet for users to reload their browser experience and migrate
to Firefox."
- Advice: Bruise on the
Apple, Seth, Mac Move, 06.16. "...the fact of the matter is
that Apple routinely sells machines with the absolute minimum
amount of RAM that they can get away with."
- Analysis: iPod now has
insane 52 percent marketshare...just like Steve planned it,
Bill Palmer, iPod Garage, 06.16. In six months, the iPod has gone
from an impressive 31% of the MP3 player market to 52%. Looks like
the iPod isn't overpriced.
- Analysis: Europeans
pay more for iTunes downloads, Gene Steinberg, Mac Night Owl,
06.16. UK users pay 79 pence (US$1.43) per track. In France and
Germany, users pay 0.99 euro (US$1.20). Why the difference?
- News:
Xbox successor in late 2005, IGN, 06.15. "'I heard [Apple CEO]
Steve Jobs found it pretty ironic and funny that Microsoft has been
shipping Apple systems to developers,' one studio source joked to
IGN on the subject."
- OS X: It's
too complicated!, Gene Steinberg, The Panther Report, Mac Night
Owl, 06.15. "For an operating system that's so reliable, why do you
need all this information to keep you out of trouble?"
- Upgrade:
Hotrodding the Pismo phase 6 - FastMac 4x SuperDrive expansion bay
module, Charles W. Moore, Road Warrior, Mac Opinion, 06.15.
"The FastMac 4x SuperDrive module for Pismo , which is the hands-on
subject of this review, is based on the same Matsushita UJ-8255
mechanism used in the Aluminum PowerBooks."
- Opinion: Mac OS
X: The best of times, the worst of times, John Droz Jr.,
Macsimum Perspective, 06.14. "It is completely unacceptable that a
person needs to have UNIX skills to be able to fully troubleshoot
Mac OS X."
- OS X: Apple makes
its case for security, Leander Kahney, Wired, 06.14.
"...security is very important to Apple. It's one of the key
perceived differences between OS X and Windows, which is constantly
battling viruses, worms and spyware."
- Opinion:
Woosh goes the credibility, ComputerWorld NZ, 06.14. Mac
frenzy: "'To work on something [other than a Mac] would be to marry
a woman you don't love,' says Terry Rossio, using a comparison
normal people might find hyperbolic, or even weird."
- Analysis:
Gmail spam test, Garrett French, Web Pro News, 06.14. "Aaron
Pratt wants you to spam his Gmail account. He wants to know a)how
long it takes to fill up a gig of space and b)how well Gmail's spam
filters work."
- Advice: Managing
your fonts with Font Book, Charles W. Moore, OS X Odyssey,
Applelinks, 06.14. Apple's Font Book lets you "preview, remove, and
disable fonts as well as installing them."
- News: Jobs: iTunes
to sell 5 percent of US music in 2 years, Peter Cohen,
MacCentral, 06.14. "...Apple CEO Steve Jobs says that his company's
goal is to sell 5 percent of the legally purchased music in the
United States within the next 24 months."
- Upgrade: MCE
slot-loading drive replaces original iMac drive, MacMinute,
06.14. "MCE Technologies is now offering an internal 24x
slot-loading CD-R/RW drive for replacing the tray-loading CD-ROM
drive in the original iMac (233, 266, and 333 MHz)."
- Review: iTalk voice
recorder for iPod, Marc Zeedar, Applelinks, 06.13. "Even
turning my iPod away from me and holding it at arm's length, it
recorded my normal talking voice perfectly, yet it didn't pick up
distracting background noise."
- Opinion: Apple can't
read its own data formats, Kellan Elliott-McCrea, Laughing
Meme, 06.12. "Someone in quality control over in Cupertino is
asleep at the wheel. [T]hey knew that people were keeping multiple
iPhoto libraries due to earlier versions of iPhoto's abysmal
perfomance..."
- Virus: So
Witty, John Gruber, Daring Fireball, 06.11. "Despite the fact
that Mac OS X is relatively secure, Mac OS X users should not grow
complacent. Witty devastated a target population vastly smaller
than the overall Mac OS X population."
- Advice: Control iTunes from
anywhere, Brian D Foy, O'Reilly Network, 06.11. webRemote lets
you control your iTunes remotely using a browser.
- Advice:
RAM Cram 101: How much memory do you need?, Bob Levitus, Dr.
Mac: Rants & Raves, Mac Observer, 06.11. "...many new Mac
owners don't know that an inexpensive RAM upgrade will almost
always improve a stock Mac's performance."
- Opinion: The Mac
System Migration Report: Maybe Apple listens after all, Gene
Steinberg, Mac Night Owl, 06.10. "Wouldn't it make sense, and maybe
I'm talking through my hat here, to add the capability of using
Ethernet for the file transfer process?"
- Virus:
The Witty worm: A new chapter in malwar, Bruce Schneier,
ComputerWorld, 06.02. "Witty was the first worm to target a
particular set of security products.... It infected and destroyed
only computers that had particular versions of this software
running."
- Rights: How
Liberty was lost on the Internet, Christian Ahlert,
Spiked Online, 06.01. "...the power an ISP has over content on the
internet necessitates a clarification of the legal and governance
framework."
- Apple: Apple:
no 3GHz G5 'any time soon', Tony Smith, The Register, 06.09.
"...the "challenges" of moving to the 90nm node have proved rather
less surmountable than they appeared almost 12 months ago when Jobs
made his prediction."
- OS X: New
Power Mac G5 models include "System Migration" feature; more
details, MacFixIt, 06.09. "The new Mac OS X setup assistant
helps you effortlessly move user accounts, system preferences,
documents and applications from an old Mac to a new Power Mac
G5...."
- Opinion: The
iBook's dirty little secret, Eric Schwarz, SchwarzTech, 06.09.
The iBook would lock up, wake up randomly while in its case, and do
other weird things. The solution was a $20 part.
- Opinion: Express
Air, Marc Zeedar, Mac Opinion, 06.09. "The AirPort Express is a
neat idea, certainly. It will appeal to many people. Unfortunately,
I'm not one of them."
- Opinion: The undead
zone, Clive Thompson, Slate, 06.09. "...humans are realistic,
but their facial expressions are so deadeningly weird they're
almost scarier than the actual zombies you're fighting."
- Hardware:
Hotrodding the PowerBook, phase 5 - Miglia Alchemy FW 800 PC
Card, Charles W. Moore, Road Warrior, Mac Opinion, 06.09.
"Phase 5 of my ongoing Pismo PowerBook hot rod project is the
addition of the subject of this review - the Miglia Alchemy FW 800
PC Card."
- Opinion: The
past, present and future of the Newton, Dennis Sellers,
Macsimum Perspective, 06.08. "It's been estimated that 20,000
Newton users are still active, about a tenth of what the system had
at its peak."
Rights:
Private
detectives get nasty Intel letter, Adamson Rust, The Inquirer,
06.08. "7Intel.com, based in the north of England, has received a
letter from lawyers at Intel asking that it cease and desist from
using those five letters as part of its name."- Tech: How
AirTunes works, Jason Snell, Macworld, 06.08. "Essentially,
AirTunes is a method of creating remote speakers for a copy of
iTunes, and sending data to those remote speakers via a wireless
network."
- Review: Recovering
hard disk space with Monolingual 1.2.4, Charles W. Moore,
Applelinks, 06.07. "Monolingual is a freeware program for removing
unnecessary language resources from Mac OS X, which allows you to
reclaim several hundred megabytes of disk space."
- Advice: Overclock your
eMac 700 MHz!, BigBadMac's Hakz, 06.07. This is for
overclocking the original 700/800 MHz eMac only and will void your
warranty.
- Review: iVCD Video
Compact Disk Authoring Utility, Charles W. Moore, Applelinks,
06.04. "iVCD proved simple and intuitive to use, and worked nicely
with the FastMac (Matsushita mechanism) SuperDrive module in my
Pismo."
- History: Celebrating ten
years of BeOS, Eugenia Loli-Queru, OSNews, 06.04. "Be had
started out around 1991 by ex-Apple employees (including Apple
executive Jean-Louis Gassée and Newton's inventor Steve
Sakoman...."
- Tech: Making an
operating system faster (10 things Apple did to make Mac OS X
faster), Amit Singh, kernelthread.com, 06.03. Ten reasons Mac
OS X - especially Panther - is so fast.
- Rights:
Microsoft
patents double-clicking, Bill Stiteler, Applelinks, 06.03.
Patent: "Still another function can be launched if the application
button is pressed multiple times within a short period of time,
e.g., double click."
- Review: USB 2.0
Hi-speed flash drive review, Matt Woodward, ars technica,
06.03. All USB Flash drives are not created equal. Some are faster,
some smaller, some better designed. Which is best?
- Low End:
Vive le Newton!, Leander Kahney, Wired, 06.02. "It's been more
than six years since Apple discontinued the Newton, but this week
the Worldwide Newton Association was launched 'to promote the
Newton computing platform.'"
- Opinion: Using
Macs at home, Windows at the office, Gene Steinberg, Mac Night
Owl, 06.02. "...there are lots of businesses out there where the
choice of Mac software is a non-issue, or simply not extensive
enough to provide a useful choice."
- Review: Shiira: The
best Safari based browser yet?, Charles W. Moore, OS X Odyssey,
Applelinks, 06.01. Beta browser is fast, stable, and just works.
"Heck, I like it better than Safari already."
- Benchmarks: Mac OS X 10.3.4 - How fast
is it?, Macs Only!, 06.01. "...the speed of the Mac OS X 10.3.4
update is virtually identical to that of 10.3.3 and 10.3.2 in all
tests."
- Upgrade: Sonata SD,
Sonnet Tech, 06.01. First new PCI video card for the Mac in ages
sells for just US$99, supports OS 7.5.3 and later plus OS X 10.1.5
and later, works with VGA or old Mac monitors, 16 MB VRAM.
- News: .mac
subscribers top half a million, Macworld UK, 06.01. At US$99
per year, that's $50 million for Apple, less educational and any
other discounts.
- Opinion:
The Mac is dead, long live iPod!, Gary Randazzo, iPontificate,
Mac Observer, 06.01. "Since the iPod's mandate is no longer to grow
Mac sales, but to sell more iPods, it only makes sense to separate
development and to stay focused in this new and potentially
turbulent market."
- OS X: iCook,
swieskoswski.net, 06.01. Utility allows user to control clock speed
of PowerPC 750fx processor used in some iBooks, although stability
may suffer at higher speeds.
- News: Sony exits U.S.
handheld market, Steven Bush, brighthand, 06.01. PDA market
down to two major players: HP on the PocketPC side and palmOne on
the Palm OS side.
-
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