Top Links: June2004

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Link Archive: June 2004

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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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