Phreck writes "Apple has announced an upgrade to its Power Mac line today. The new Power Macs all feature dual G5 processors, 512 MB RAM, and dual-layer 16x SuperDrives. On the low end is the dual 2.0GHz with 160GB HD and ATI Radeon 9600. The mid-range includes dual 2.3GHz processors with 250GB HD and ATI Radeon 9600. The top-end system has dual 2.7GHz processors with 250GB HD and ATI Radeon 9650. The processors are not the dual-core variety as has been rumored for weeks now."

tintub writes "New Zealander Russell Crowe has probably infuriated Apple by revealing the launch date of the iTunes store in Australia. Apparently it will be open as early as tomorrow (Thursday), selling tracks for AU$1.80 each. Personally I think this is too much, but I'm glad it's finally available in Australia. Now, when's Amazon coming?"

getling writes "Looks like Steve Jobs is almost as unhappy about personal details being publicized as he is with Mac secrets. The book publisher Wiley, who is releasing a new unauthorized biography of Jobs has had its entire line of books banned from Apple stores as a result of their unhappiness with the content of the book. Wiley, publisher of the popular Dummies series of books, as well as the Bible series, is quite surprised, due to the fact that they view the book to show Jobs in a largely positive light ..."

Thijs van As writes "The miniMate, MicroNet's new external disk drive and port replicator, is created specifically to complement Apple's new Mac mini. With available storage up to 400GB, 4 USB 2.0 ports and 3 FireWire ports, the miniMate extends the capabilities of the Mac mini. Looks impressive if you ask me."

boarder8925 writes "Engadget reports: 'In many places around the world, Mac fans and Apple distributors received a shipment they weren't quite expecting: Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger arrived at the door a full eight days ahead of schedule for some lucky folks who pre-ordered. Vendors PCMall/MacMall and ClubMac gave pre-order customers a treat by unleashing the OS ahead of schedule, quickly followed up by a 'recall' of the copies from PCMall.'"

Nicholas Roussos writes "Steve Jobs was outspoken at a recent annual shareholder meeting. He claimed 'They are shamelessly copying us', referring to Microsoft. Of course, Microsoft has done its share of pointing fingers as well." From the article: "Most telling, Jobs said is that Tiger, the next version of Mac OS X, will go on sale later this month, while Longhorn is still more than a year away."

rjw57 writes "There is an article on OSNews I wrote about how the guy behind Desktop Manager goes about reverse engineering APIs from Mac OS X with a brand new example not revealed anywhere else. From the article: 'I am often asked in email how I uncovered the API calls I use in Desktop Manager which are, unfortunately, undocumented. This article aims to give a little insight into the techniques I use to reverse engineer Mac OS X in order to provide extra functionality to users and extra information to third-party developers. In this article all the utilities I use are a standard part of Mac OS X's developer tools which are freely available.'"

AmigaAvenger writes "Finally a good use for all those old IMacs that many organizations have laying around collecting dust. We have set up a 5 node (4+1 controller) iMac beowulf cluster, which is appropriately named Skittles, and is running PPC Yellowdog Linux, with MPICH 1.2.6 cluster message passing software."

johnny.ihackstuff.com writes "NewsForge interviews the Bastille project lead Jay Beale about Bastille's cool new assessment feature, which reports and scores Linux security and -- as always -- makes Linux lockdown super-easy. Available for many distros and Mac OS X, too. Best of all, it's free and open source!" As Jay points out in the interview, the work was "sponsored by the U.S. government's Technical Support Working Group." An anonymous reader summarizes the new capability: "In essence, Bastille now does two things. In one mode, it locks down an operating system, tweaking the configuration for increased security, asking you about each step and teaching you along the way. In the new Assessment mode, it reports on what hardening steps have been taken and what could be taken."

AC writes "According to DrunkenBlog which has the court papers, Apple will settle their case against Sunny (Vivek Sambhara) who was accused of taking a developer release of Tiger and putting it on a torrent site. Sunny was the student who gave an interview, and had Steve Wozniak donate to his defense. It is noted in the article that there is still a named defendant going to court and "a score of jon does"."

drenalin writes "After many months (years for some early adopters) of waiting, users are finally able to see the light of day for Markspace's, MissingSync for the HipTop. This is an iSync conduit which allows users to sync their calendar and address book over the Internet to their SideKick from T-Mobile. For many Mac users this is the one feature that now finally makes the SideKick a nearly perfect device."

Infonaut writes "The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article called When iPod goes collegiate, examining the iPods for students program at Duke University. It seems that while many students and professors find them valuable for classwork, this is America, so questions about intellectual property rear their ugly head: "Do they have permission from the person who wrote the lectures to share it?" asks one IP attorney, referring to lectures recorded on iPods."

markmcb writes "As Microsoft and Apple go back and forth about who came up with what idea first, it's been hard to tell who the real innovaters are. Michael Gartenberg and Jim Allchin of Microsoft give some fair opinions on the current desktop search battle. While they do give credit to Apple's iTunes for search inspiration and to Apple being first out of the box in the OS race, they both imply that Microsoft will provide more robust features with the release of Longhorn."

pmeunier writes "Apple's security stance is stunning. In the latest (10.3.9) update, Apple removed two capabilities because they pose security risks. One of them is the capability to run setuid and setguid scripts (the other was actually unused). Can other commercial OS vendors (how many are there :) adopt a similar stance? Will you be inconvenienced by the inability to run setuid scripts on MacOS X? Which other features/capabilities (in any OS) would you like to have removed?"

frostyboy writes "At the University of Illiois at Urbana-Champaign's Department of Computational Science and Engineering , a new high-performance computing cluster comprising 640 Dual G5 Xserves has completed benchmarking runs for the top500 list. The New Turing Cluster is a replacement for an old 208-node linux cluster. Preliminary results have it at about 4.6 teraflops, not too shabby. Slide Presentation and Photo Album"

macguys writes "Apple Computer has released updates to its media Pro applications. Among the new software released are upgrades to Final Cut Pro, Soundtrack (now called Soundtrack Pro), DVD Studio Pro, Motion and Shake. A bundle of all the new applications (except Shake) is available under the name Final Cut Studio."

An anonymous reader writes "If this hasn't already been posted, Apple set up a page listing, by software section, all of the new features for OS X.4, or Tiger. Given that every upgrade touts over a hundred features, it is interesting to see all of the enhancements to this upgrade to see what adopters get out of the box. There are a lot which are tweaks, some new non-Spotlight oriented features and a few that are interesting, mostly security related features. 2 words: stealth mode. "

alset_tech writes "Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails) has released the new single from NIN's upcoming album as a GarageBand file for fan remixes. Though by no means the first time a major-label artist has released a track to the public for remix, this is the first time such a project has been as open to the common user. The repercussions to 'traditional' IP views in music could be beneficial to all. Note that the license agreement does not allow commercial use of the included sounds. From the download text: 'What I'm giving you in this file is the actual multi-track audio session for 'the hand that feeds' in GarageBand format. This is the entire thing bounced over from the actual Pro Tools session we recorded it into. I imported and converted the tracks into AppleLoop format so the size would be reasonable and the tempo flexible.'"

OmniVector writes "Right after the Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger announcement just a few days ago, Apple has released an update to version 10.3.9 for Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server (both available via Software Update). The changes mostly include bugfixes with Stickies, Safari, and the Finder." The Server update also addresses issues with Open Directory, cyrus, AFP, and SMB, among others. Apple also updated iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, and iSight this week.

An anonymous reader writes "Led by the Apple iPod, Jupiter Research says that sales of DAPs are reaching a point where it will ignite an industry of support products and services. According to Jupiter analyst David Card 'Historically, any new device or medium that reaches a U.S. household penetration of 15 percent to 20 percent creates a critical mass of customers for other products and services.' The iPod already has a slew of peripherals out there and this is particularly good news for the paid download services like iTunes, especially with Apple announcing Wednesday they sold another 5.3 million iPods last quarter."