November 29, 2007

According to a story out today, the CEO of AT&T has said that the 3G iPhone with UMTS and HSDPA broadband data rates will be available next year. Speculation is that it will be priced at $599 and come with 16GB of flash memory.

August 7, 2005

According to a number of news sources, Amazon.com is getting ready to launch a service to rival Apple's iTunes Music Store. All this speculation is based on a job listing posted by Amazon.com earlier in the week.

August 6, 2005

Macworld has published an article detailing the new features in Mac OS X 10.4.2. These include enhancements to iChat AV, Safari, RSS management, Mail, and more. The biggest feature is an updated Disk Utility and new Disk Management framework that features enhanced disk repair functions.

June 8, 2005

MacDevCenter has published a two-part article explaining how to build powerful and interesting dashboard widgets for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. Dashboard widgets use HTML and a special set of JavaScript functions to access many features of the Mac OS X 10.4 operating system. Widgets can run any Unix command, interact with programs like iTunes, draw on the screen using the Quartz API, make use of Internet plugins, and more. This article includes several dashboard widget source code samples to get you started.

June 8, 2005

We all know that many of the first reviews of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger were rather shallow, and really just versions of Apple's marketing literature. Now that reviewers have had some time to really use the operating system, a new wave of reviews is hitting the web. These look at Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger at a much deeper level and point out things that previous reviewers simply missed. Here are several of the new reviews of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.

June 7, 2005

AnandTech, MacDevCenter and CNET have provided detailed coverage of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 2005). Among the news items discussed are Apple's move to Intel processors starting in 2006, iTunes 4.9 with support for Podcasting, QuickTime 7 with H.264 for Windows, Xcode 2.1 with universal binary support for both Intel and PowerPC chips, the Rosetta binary translator for running PowerPC applications on Intel CPUs, hints about Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), the business side of the Apple/Intel partnership, and more. In addition, a streaming video of Steve Jobs' keynote is available in QuickTime format from Apple's site.

June 4, 2005

According to Computer Business Review, Citrix Systems' GoToMyPC division is looking at launching a GoToMyMac version of the service sometime soon. It would operate in the same way as GoToMyPC, but allow remote access to Macintosh computers, as well as support 24-bit color rendering.

June 4, 2005

MacDevCenter has published a two-part article exploring all of the features of Safari RSS in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. See how you can easily manage your feeds and customize the RSS functionality in Safari to make it even more useful.

June 4, 2005

According to a CNET report, Apple Computer will announce on Monday that it is planning to move away from using PowerPC processors to using Intel and/or AMD processors in future computers. According to sources, Apple will first move lower-end computers to Intel chips in 2006, and then move their higher-end models to the new chip in 2007. ArsTechnica provides additional commentary.

June 3, 2005

Analysts are predicting that Apple will soon announce a Mac based on a dual-core Power PC 970 processor, known as the PowerPC 970MP. Some are saying that this announcement will be made at the WWDC conference next week, as competitive pressure from Intel and AMD dual-core offerings continues to increase.

May 25, 2005

MacDevCenter has published an article looking closely at the Spotlight search technology in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. This article looks at how Spotlight works, the role of metadata, ways that Spotlight can make your life easier, considerations when saving documents, integration with Safari bookmarks, advanced searching in Finder, using Smart Folders, adding Spotlight comments, privacy issues with Spotlight, and much more.

May 24, 2005

Apple has announced that it will support and organize podcasts in version 4.9 of the iTunes software. Users will be able to find and subscribe to podcasts from within the iTunes interface, without having to use third-party software or web sites. The update is scheduled to be released in about two months.

May 21, 2005

MacDevCenter has published a three-part article showing you how to get useful things done in the Terminal application of Mac OS X Tiger. For Mac users not familiar with Unix shell commands, this article is a great introduction to getting behind the scenes of Mac OS X.

May 14, 2005

MacDevCenter has published a nice article showing twenty cool features of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger that most people don't know about. These include many hidden gems in Spotlight, Dashboard, Safari, Mail, Finder, iPhoto, Preview, TextEdit, Dictionary, iChat, iTunes, and more.

May 11, 2005

MacDevCenter has published an in-depth look at the recently released QuickTime 7 media framework, which is built into Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, available as an update in Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, and will soon be available as an update in Windows XP. Among the new features are the powerful H.264 video codec, "live resize" capability, live recording from webcams and microphones, enhanced player controls, and much more.

May 11, 2005

An article over at CocoaDevCentral explains how to build Mac OS X applications using the Core Data framework. With Core Data, you can build 90% of a sophisticated data management application without writing a single line of code. If you already use Objective-C and Xcode, Core Data makes building database applications in Mac OS X easy and fun.

May 11, 2005

An article over at Datamation looks at several new administrative security features in Mac OS X 10.4 Server. The most important of these features are Access Control Lists (ACLs) and Access Control Entries (ACEs). Apple made their implementation of ACLs compatible with Windows ACLs and Active Directory. In addition, ACLs in Mac OS X Server can operate on files as well as system services such as AFP, SMB, Printing, and more. Mac OS X 10.4 Server also supports Kerberos and NTLMv2 two-directional authentication for Windows clients.

May 10, 2005

It appears that users of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger are concerned about how easily third-party widgets are distributed and installed in the new operating system. Clicking on a specific link is enough to get one installed. Many are wondering how long before malicious widgets appear, and asking Apple to make it more difficult to install widgets.

May 7, 2005

MacZealots.com has published an article for those interested in getting started in Mac application development. Although the article mentions AppleScript, Java, and Carbon, it is primarily focused on Objective-C development with Cocoa, using Xcode and Interface Builder. If you are at all interested in developing serious applications for the Mac platform, this article provides valuable information as well as pointers to useful resources.

May 7, 2005

eWeek is reporting that the Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger operating system has problems with SMB file sharing and authentication with Active Directory servers. The problem occurs with both Windows servers and Linux Samba servers. These problems have forced many IT managers to delay deploying Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. In addition, there are other incompatibilities with existing third-party software and hardware.