lwbecker2 writes "Patrick Norton, from the TechTV show 'The Screen Savers', and an admittedly loyal Windows/PC user, recently borrowed a iBook from Apple and has written an article about his three-month experience with 'The Switch'. It seems like a well-though-out review and IMHO provides some balanced coverage of the potential issues and experiences involved in switching from Windows XP to Mac OS X."

CrezzyMan writes "Today is the five year anniversary of Apple's cancellation of the Newton platform. In spite of this, the Newton community has remained stronger than ever: it has even been the subject of academic research. In just the last few days, an IrCOMM stack and a new connection library have been released, on top of OS X syncing and 802.11b support."

novocastrian writes "As reported at PlayMyth, Myth II has been Carbonized and will be released to owners of the game on the 15th of March. The work was done entirely by dedicated followers of the game. The disappointing Myth III has also undergone a major overhaul and will be soon be hosted on a popular player-based server." J adds: Myth II will not support hardware rendering in OS X. But as I recall, software rendering gave an almost-playable framerate even on my 604/250, so on modern machines it might not be bad. Myth I and II were great tactical combat games. I'm itching to play Mudpit again!

Bare Bones has released TextWrangler, a new editor that fills the need for users who want the power of BBEdit, but don't do software development. It is available for Mac OS v9.1 and Mac OS X v10.1.5 and up, and retails for $49, while BBEdit sells for $179. It has the core text-editing functionality of BBEdit, but not the software development features (except a few, for integration with Project Builder). Seems like a nice tool to have around if you don't have BBEdit, or for using on machines that you don't do development on.

reidconti writes "Ever wanted to control your Mac remotely? Now you can, with the Sony Ericsson Clicker by Jonas Salling. Play MP3s or DVDs, command Keynote and PowerPoint presentations, all from your Sony Ericsson Bluetooth phone. Nifty proximity mode lets you pause your music when you leave the room and automatically resume when you re-enter." It uses AppleScript, to control whatever AppleScript can control.

Hungus writes "The Mac OS X Server 10.2.4 Update delivers enhanced functionality and improved reliability for the following applications, services and technologies: AFP, SMB and NFS file services, DHCP, NetBoot, Open Directory, QuickTime Streaming Server, Sendmail and Workgroup Manager. It prevents Xserve drives from being unmounted while locked, provides digest authentication for WebDAV, management of Energy Saver settings, and supports NetBoot images greater than 2 GB in size. The update also provides the latest Security Updates. It's available via Software Update or for separate download."

blamanj writes "The Apple Developer's site has an article about Javascript compatibility. They rate the 6 Mac browsers for feature-completeness in the Javascript arena. For those who don't read articles, Mozilla wins by a nose."

ollie_ob writes "Seems a bit too good to be true: Apple listening to its community and implementing the features most requested? Apparently a build (v62) of Safari has been leaked into the wild, and has tabs -- though not fully implemented yet -- and primitive support for autocomplete in forms. The Think Secret rumor site has the scoop." It is not merely a rumor, I've confirmed it. It works nicely, too, in a brief test. Then I, uh, deleted the copy I looked at.

gsfprez writes "Its been a while ... and strangely, the world almost seemed empty without the constant drumbeat of how Apple is on the verge of going out of business. If you're a fan like i am, then you're in luck, because this Canadian tech journalist didn't get the memo that Apple's been going out of business longer than most tech journalists have been in business. And besides, someone needs to let Robert Thomson know: when writing a story on how Apple is about to die, you have to call them "beleaguered". Come on, that's Tech Journalism 101, people. In any case, he brings up no new points to bolster his argument: he confuses his personal inability to use third-party software that works fine for most of us with legitimate bad third-party support, and uses this to draw his illogical conclusion. Illogical because it's the same reasons/unrealized conclusions that were the staple of tech journalism from 1985-1999."

mpath_lamp writes "Today Apple issued an exchange program for all owners of the Mirrored Drive Doors Power Mac G4. It's meant to resolve the incredibly loud fan noise in the current power supplies of Power Mac models that began to ship in August 2002. The program requires a $20 shipping charge and the return of the old power supply. Apple will begin shipping the kits on March 10 in limited quantities and the kit consists of a 360-watt power supply, system fan, allen key, and installation instructions. A big thank you can be directed to the guys over at G4noise.com for the continuous support in trying to get an official response from Apple."

ArcticMyst asks: "In Mac OS X the responsibility of locking open files has moved from the operating system to individual applications. With the exception of Apple's most recent release of AppleWorks, I have not been able to find many applications written for Mac OS X that will lock a network resident file when it is opened. Not marking a file as locked allows more than one user to have a file open, then edit and save back to the original file. Even most of Apple's own applications fail to do this. Apple does provide information on how to make sure that open files are not edited while they are open. Why do so many applications fail to provide this security?"

An anonymous reader writes "OpenDarwin released a 'fixed' version of the Darwin 6.0.2 ISO (the OpenDarwin-20030213 Binary Release) for both x86 and PPC. It is currently installing, so I can't tell you all what works now, etc. Hopefully I can use my old PC box as a server with this..." Apparently, it is mostly a recompile, without local OpenDarwin modifications. It doesn't include perl, pending integration of perl 5.8 ... could this mean Mac OS X will finally have a current perl in the next Mac OS X release?

CoffeePlease asks: "Is anyone aware of development going on for iSCSI drivers for Mac OS X? I really need this but it's only out for Windows and Linux so far. I can't use the Linux drivers - they might run, but only as a command-line process, and I need other software to recognize the drives."

Squidgee writes "Arlo Rose, one of the developers who worked on Kaleidoscope, and the ill fated Eazel desktop environment for Linux, has come out with another potentially Mac-shaking app: Konfabulator. Konfabulator lets you run any program written in XML/Applescript/Javascript (It's own little hybrid of all three) in its engine, seamlessly placing the app onto your desktop. Examples of such apps are: A CPU Monitor, a Multi-Clipboard tool, a weather monitor, a battery monitor, etc. It allows for easy developement, beautiful apps, and unlimited functionality."

Oculus Habent writes "It may just be me, but 10.2.4 reset a number of settings on my computer, including icon sizes, window positions, and dock size and contents. Minor annoyances, but completely unnecessary. Is anyone else experiencing this?" As for me, Apple re-added some apps to my Dock and overwrote all my changes to httpd.conf (though it did back it up first) to add mod_rendezvous_apple. But those problems pale in comparison to some others: Anonymous Coward writes "If you upgraded your Mac desktop to 10.2.4 last weekend, check your date and time. Many users have suddenly found it to be 4:00 PM, December 31, 1969 again. Apparently, this happens whenever they are shut down or restarted, and resetting the motherboard and/or the PRAM doesn't fix it. Complaints have been piling up at Apple.com and prices for batteries have been skyrocketing - but relax. It's not your battery!"

usr122122121 writes "A Macintouch User has discovered that iTunes maxes out at 32,000 songs." I did test this myself (a one-liner perl script to give each file a unique artist/album/title), and it's apparently true. How much it matters is an exercise left to the reader.

ProfKyne writes "Looks like Chimera (the other white meat) is getting a name change. The article asks that you please don't chime in with your suggestions."

The Only Druid writes "Well, though we've all heard about Steve Jobs only being paid $1 per year for being CEO of Apple, it turns out Apple pays him in other ways. He gets $1.2 million for renting the jet to them -- a jet that Apple bought for Jobs."

SavoWood writes "In a realm which was (IIRC) SGI-only, a new tennant has moved in. It looks like the molecular biologists et al of the world will be able to send their SGIs off to the pasture and forget about the $500/yr. software updates, in favor of running their stereographic applications on Darwin/Mac OS X. A sales rep from Apple just sent me a press release with the link to StereoGraphics, a company that makes stereoscopic visualization products. Now, to send this message into the meat shredder of why you should do everything on SGI and how Darwin is just a playtoy... *GRIN*"

burgburgburg writes "We all recall Microsoft's last attempt to emulate the Apple Switch ads. Well, it seems they're at it again. MacNN reports that Microsoft has sent out emails to those who have recently registered MS products, looking for candidates for their 'Sensible Solutions' campaign, which will 'highlight computer professionals that have recently converted from Apple Computer products to Microsoft based systems.' Do you qualify? You must be 'a US resident with a minimum of 3 years experience as a computer professional. You must have used an Apple Computer product and a Microsoft based system as part of your work'. So when does it just stop being the sincerest form of flattery and just become utter, pathetic laziness?"