der Kopf writes "Jeff Raskin, one of the creators of the Macintosh and inventor of the click-and-drag interface, states in an interview for the British newspaper The Guardian that "the Mac is now a mess. A third party manual (Pogue's The Missing Manual) is nearly 1,000 pages, and far from complete. Apple now does development by accretion, and there is only a little difference between using a Mac and a Windows machine."" While I think Raskin has some good points, I think there's a far cry between the Mac & XP.

bfl writes "The BBC is running a story about Lowry Digital Images and how they used 600 dual G5s and 400 TB of storage space to clean the dirt off of the old Star Wars reels, and upgrade the resolution to get them ready for their DVD release."

GlenLow writes "It's amazing what some Apple Design Award winners do in the name of science. This one subjected his to a cone beam CT scan and revealed Apple's design sense extends even to a competition trophy. What's with Mr. Jobs and the cubes, cubes, cubes anyway?"

the_webmaestro writes "Macintouch.com is covering the "opener" malware, a new and potential vulnerability which affects Mac OS X. If true (it's not on HoaxBusters yet), this could become a Mac user's worst nightmare... Worse even than Microsoft Word macro viruses (heretofore the only real 'viruses' which threatened Mac users)! Normally, when ever I'd see virus alerts, I'd revel in the fact that as a Mac user, I was immune (except for the slow-down of the net, the loss in productivity of my colleagues, and the increase in SPAM--often coming from my friends and colleagues). [Sigh] Perhaps, my days of telling friends and family that there are no viruses for Macs may be coming to an end. There have been stories."

Sandor writes "Apple's G5 is selling well and this seems to have helped the development of the Linux kernel on the ppc64 platform: shortly after the shipment of the dual G5 with the new liquid cooling system, it seems that Linux kernel is going to support it really soon."

EccentricAnomaly writes "If you can't wait until next spring for the official release of next version of Mac OS X, Apple is offering a Tiger Early Start Kit to those willing to pay $500 for an Apple Developer Select Membership. And if you don't want to spend the money, they've also added a developer overview page describing some of the guts of Mac OS X v10.4."

dave writes "Forbes is carrying the story that U2 and Apple will be releasing a custom black iPod that comes preloaded with the band's new album as well as portions of the band's 25-year back catalog. The custom iPod will be made available the same week as the new album, which is slated for release in the U.S. November 23rd. The article also talks about the larger deal which included the advertisement for iPod/iTunes and exclusive rights for iTunes to sell the album online for the first few weeks of release." skyshock21 adds a link to this article in Revolution Magazine.

Aspyr Media and EA put out a joint press release yesterday announcing Aspyr's conversion of The Sims 2 to Macintosh. Information on the game is available via Aspyr's site, and will soon be available for preorder. No information yet on when the game will be available on the Mac platform.

vasqzr writes "Apple has announced new iBooks. New features include G4 processor up to 1.33GHz, built-in wireless networking capability, a DVD-burning SuperDrive and up to 1.25GB of memory. G5 PowerBooks can only be closer...They also show a single processor 1.8GHz G5 PowerMac desktop for $1,499"

CherryBS writes "The CherryOS emulator, claiming that it could seamlessly run Mac OS X at 80% the speed of the host computer on standard x86 hardware (covered here previously), has created some controversy about stolen code. It turns out that CherryOS's emulation engine is nothing more than that of PearPC, an open source GPL project to create a PowerPC motheboard emulator." Read on for more details.

Thoro writes "There is an unusual interview with the authors of the five major RSS clients for OS X: NetNewsWire, NewsFire, NewsMac, PulpFiction and Shrook. Safari RSS, Apple, the hype around RSS and the role of the news aggregator in the future are discussed. It's also hinted that the performance problems of RSS may be overblown. It is a breath of fresh air to see so many competitors come together to talk civily and not to better gang up on another."

A user writes, "A company called Small Tree just announced the release of InfiniBand drivers for the Mac, for more supercomputing speed. People have already been making supercomputer clusters for the Mac, including Virginia Tech's third-fastest supercomputer in the world, but InfiniBand is supposed to make the latency drop. A lot. Voltaire also makes some sort of Apple InfiniBand products, though it's not clear whether they make the drivers or hardware."

An anonymous reader asks: "This question was posted on Ask Slashdot about a week ago: 'If Mac OS X Came to x86, Would You Switch?' This makes me ask why not have Windows run on PowerPC? Windows/PPC would not necessarily have to run on Apple hardware, or at least not exclusively on it. I'm sure their friends at IBM and Motorola would be happy to provide chips to anyone that wanted to make computers to run this new OS. Microsoft could dust off the code from NT4/PPC, add some code from Virtual PC to get Windows/x86 compatibility, and have it up and running in about the same amount of time it would take Apple to get Mac OS X running on common Intel hardware." An additional question comes to mind, however: If Microsoft made this move, how would Intel react?

theanonymousbrit writes "From the AppleInsider article: 'Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2004 fourth quarter ended September 25, 2004. For the quarter, the Company posted a net profit of $106 million, or $.26 per diluted share.' This profit (on a revenue of $2.35 billion) apparently constitutes Apple's highest fourth quarter in nine years. In terms of actual units shipped, over 830,000 Macs and 2 million iPods were sold over the quarter. The strength of the new iMac G5 is also credited. Pretty impressive figures."

jediboytj writes "According to the MacWorld Article, Cherry OS, does what Virtual PC does for Macs, only the opposite. PC Users are now able to run Mac OSX at G4 Speeds (Company claims 80% of the speed of your PC). It also includes full hardware support: hard drive, CPU, RAM, FireWire, USB, PCI, PCMCIA bus, Ethernet networking and modem. The software is being distributed through electronic download at $49.99 USD..." Note: it does not come with a copy of any Apple OS. Anyone in Windowsland tried it to provide a thumbs up (or down)?

reifman writes "Picked up a Griffin RadioSHARK (think TiVo for radio) at the Apple store this evening: It exceeds all expectations. The user experience is simple. The iPod synchronization is seamless. The RadioSHARK is a counter-attack on the recording industry and its draconian file sharing lawsuits. I'm glad to see Griffin had the balls to release this product. ."

thejoelpatrol writes "Bad news for Apple fanatics but good news for all the crazy slashdotters who want an iPod but feel dirty using Apple's DRM: the labels are getting together and insisting that online stores standardize their DRM methods. Being the providers of the music, the labels clearly wield a lot of power, but so does Apple: without iTunes, the online music business is next to nothing. Will Apple give in? Not if they can help it -- they're on top of the world. Before anyone messes it up, AAC is an open format, while the Fairplay DRM standard is not."

Hack Jandy writes "Anandtech - the PC hardware site - took the Apple challenge and tried a Mac out for a month. The result was the most indepth Macdate I have even seen. As quoted by Anand, 'In the end, Apple has developed a very strong platform.'"

xyankee writes "Apple is on the verge of releasing a 60GB iPod that will not only hold a ton of music, but also sport photo-viewing capabilities! Think Secret is reporting that the new iPod will also have a 2-inch high-resolution LCD display, video-out, and enhancements to iPhoto for synchronizing photos. The best part is it'll be just 2mm thicker than regular iPods. Does this mean that iPhoto for Windows might not be far behind? Also, as a note to all the rumor pundits, Think Secret nailed the iMac G5 specs a month before its announcement, so I'm inclined to believe them with this bit as well."

Bug-Y2K writes "Looks like storage giant EMC, is buying longtime Mac software company Dantz Develpment. Dantz, makers of Retrospect have been the leader in backup technology for the Mac OS since dinosaurs roamed the earth. Mindshare has been slipping of late but the product is known for being better at restores than anything out there. I wonder what lies in store for Retrospect now?"