Spencerian writes "I've become quite accustomed the depth of co-author Dave Taylor's writing on UNIX in previous books such as Teach Yourself UNIX in 24 Hours . As you can note from Dave's recent writing credits, his experience and knowledge of UNIX is vast and varied. That said, I was mildly disappointed with this latest offering that discusses the UNIX underpinnings of Mac OS X." Spencerian explains the logic underlying that conclusion in his complete review, below.

MrFreak writes "Have you ever wanted to grab a sound from DVD Player or record a RealMedia stream to AIFF? It's previously been impossible to do this digitally, but the folks at Rogue Amoeba have released a piece of software called Audio Hijack that allows you to record audio from any OS X application. Additionally, it can apply live audio effects to any application, so you can add an equalizer to MAME or play Quake 3 with a live echo or flanger effect."

A user writes in that Aladdin Systems has announced that StuffIt, versions 6.5.x and earlier for Mac OS and Mac OS X, "may contain a flaw that would cause expanding certain maliciously crafted .zip archives to execute unwanted instructions or code." Aladdin notes that no such "trojan horses" have been reported. StuffIt Expander 7.0 is, as with previous versions, free to download and use.

Graff writes "This was found on SiliconValley.com. In an article for the Mercury News, Dan Gillmor talks about how Apple is still standing firm against the Digital Rights Management (DRM) efforts which the entertainment industry is trying to force on the public. There's also another article on the fight for our digital rights in Congress."

Untimely Ripp'd asks: "Satellite broadband has been available to PC users for half a decade, and still is not trivially available to Mac users. It can be done, but it's always an unsupported hack, or it requires buying expensive extra hardware and software. I cannot understand why Hughes and the other providers would refuse to spend the relatively few dollars necessary to develop a couple of device drivers and glue libraries. Time after time, the vendors have said, 'it's coming,' but it never does, and the promise eventually goes away. (Earthlink's FAQ page no longer says that Mac software is being developed, for example). I'm not gung-ho on conspiracy theories, but the only explanation I can figure is that they're either being paid or bullied. Does anyone know of any serious tech hurdle that would make it cost more than $100K or so to develop the necessary software?" this article mentions one-way Mac service coming online from OWC in a future expansion, along with nationwide service. A comment from that story does mention a simple solution, but why is it that Satellite service, even one way satellite service, depends on Windows-only software? What other solutions have Mac users resorted to when they wanted their Macs connected?

netphilter writes "Apple is trying to "close the operating system to tweakers" according to this story on Wired. The addition of the BSD kernel and the command line left me thinking that they were trying to open the OS a bit more to tweakers, not close it. I'm not a Mac user, but I have been thinking about trying out OS X. However, if Apple is trying to CLOSE the OS (contrary to the impression that I had) then I'm not going to waste my time." Jamie adds: life may be harder for them, I guess, but many developers are still tweaking Mac OS X.

Stigmata669 writes "Over at MacSlash the editors have managed to schedule an interview with Jordan Hubbard, Engineering Manager of the BSD Technology Group at Apple to answer questions about BSD, and Darwin in the context of Mac OS X. The interview is being conducted in the Slashdot style, so comment and in a week they will have the highest moderated comments answered. The specific article is here."

Anonymous Coward writes "gnuPod 0.2 has just been released. It's the first GPLed program that allows you to use your iPod under Linux. It has support for playlists and stores information in a XML file, so it's very easy to edit the data or write a frontend. Still a bit 'beta' but its ready for every-day-use and it works well together with iTunes. A mac-ipod2win-ipod howto is also included."

OrangeHairMan writes "iSync, 'the cutting-edge synchronization software from Apple,' has been released in beta, with support for Bluetooth phones, iPods, Palm OS-based handhelds, and .Mac (for synchronizing multiple Macs). Now only if I had any of these products... ;)"

vi-rocks writes "A new O'Reilly book is due for release in October: Mac OS X for Unix Geeks. Brian Jepson and Ernest Rothman are the authors. Details about the book (including a sample chapter) are available on the website. Note the sash on the top right hand of the cover reads 'Switching to Mac OS X.' They say you can't judge a book by it cover -- HUMBUG!, I've already pre-ordered :)" The sample chapter information on NetInfo has helped me already.

An anonymous reader wrote to us with an article on Byte from Moshe Bar about flirting with using OS X. Taco and I are both strongly considering beginning to use OS X as a primary laptops - anyone else looking at doing this? And anyone from Apple that can get me a good price on super TiBooks? *grin*

clarencek writes "Apple has released Rendezvous as Open Source, as promised. Excerpt: Starting today, developers can download Rendezvous as open source under the Apple Public Source License. Rendezvous is part of a broader Open Source release today from Apple which includes the Darwin 6.0.1 operating system and additional Open Directory plug-ins. Together, these underscore Apple's commitment to making core protocols freely available as open standards and open source."

seek3r writes "Found this interesting article on BusinessWeek.com regarding Apple's potential switch to Intel chips. I wonder what the implications this might have for Apple with regards to market share and software support. Have Motorola's chips really lagged behind Intel?"

jmu1 wishes to get to the core of the following issue: "I run a medium sized lab of Mac OS 8.6/9.x machines. They all have (shudder) FoolProof as an attempt of keeping the systems usable. Unfortunatly, it is quite easy to bypass the software, or even to remove it using AppleScript, etc. What I want to know is, what is a usable solution for securing a lab of Macs?"

suzanne writes "A panel discussion was just added to the O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference, moderated by Dan Gillmor. He and Cory Doctorow, J.D. Lasica, Victor Nemechek, and Tim O'Reilly debate the expansive, pro-customer stance on DRM built in to Mac OS X. (Oh, and in case you don't have enough toys to play with yet, the complete conference schedule is available via iCal, Apple's latest groovy app.)"

Currawong writes "Apple has posted Security Update 2002-09-20 for Mac OS X 10.2 and above in Software Update, fixing a security hole in Terminal.app which could 'allow an attacker to remotely execute arbitrary commands on the user's system.' Apple also has a useful page listing all the security updates with a short summary and links to what they patch."

spacecowboy420 asks: "My company (with my persuasion) has decided to move from a Windows platform to a Macintosh. The issue that is slowing this move is one of software solutions - more specifically a Jave IDE and Sales Contact Management software. We have been using JBuilder and Act!. Jbuilder is available for mac but is pricey, but the real rub is we need an IDE that supports the JClass Libraries (which Jbuilder does, but we would like to consider an alternative). Act! also doesn't have a mac version, so I am in new territory when it comes to mac contact solutions. What solutions have the Slashdot community found to be the best? What are the thoughts on Power Builder (although I know it doesn't support the JClass Libraries)?."

Currawong writes "eWeek reports that IBM Microelectronics is working with Apple on a 64-bit PowerPC processor called the GigaProcessor Ultralite (GPUL). Unlike previous reports, eWeek now reports that Apple is testing the chip for use with future hardware. IBM apparently also plans to use the processor in linux-based servers. It's believed IBM will disclose some details of the processor in October at the upcoming Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, California. While this story is similar to recent stories about Apple using Power4-based IBM chips in future Macs, the GPUL, unlike the Power4, is smaller, runs cooler and consumes far less power, making it suitable for desktop machines and small servers. The processor is described as having the same 8-way superscalar design fully supporting Symmetric MultiProcessing." We had a previous story about these new chips.

jhealy1024 asks: "I was getting short of disk space on my iBook, so I got an external 100GB FireWire drive to expand my storage space. It works like a charm, and so my storage problems are relieved -- for now. Then I realized that my Linux server has several IEEE 1394 ports on it -- maybe I could use the drive to back up files from my Linux server as well! Unfortunately, after an afternoon of frustration, I haven't been able to do it. The problem seems to be that there are no (fully working) formats that both the Linux box and the Mac can use. HFS+ and UFS are supported by both machines, but write support on the Linux side is reportedly still in beta for both. I don't feel that I can trust it yet for backing up files. I've tried UDF, but the versions aren't compatible (Linux likes 2+, and OSX only goes to 1.5). Not to mention, Mac OS doesn't seem to like a whole block device formatted as UDF (mmm... kernel panic). The closest I got was by using FAT32 as the partition type, which does work on both machines. Unfortunately, the max file size is 4GB, which won't cut it if I use the Mac for DVD mastering or DV editing (20 minutes of video == 4+GB). I know I could just partition the drive, but I'd really just like to share files on one device (especially things like MP3s). Has anyone found a good way to share physical devices between Mac OS X and Linux?"

benh57 writes "Via Software Update: 'The 10.2.1 Update delivers enhancements and improvements to the following applications, technologies and components: Mail, Image Capture, Help Viewer, graphics, printing, networking, Rendezvous, Kerberos, USB, FireWire, SCSI device compatibility and includes additional Digital Hub peripheral device support.' Full details available in the KB Article that was previously leaked (not yet back up, currently)." Also separately available via Software Update is iTunes 3.0.1.