Apple

Apple and IDG Negotiate Over Macworld Expo 13

CableModemSniper writes "According to Siliconvalley.com: 'Apple Computer opened negotiations Monday with IDG World Expo about how to ensure Apple's participation in the Boston Macworld trade show in 2004.' So maybe Apple will actually be at Macworld." Apple threatened to stay away from Macworld East, so IDG threatened to block Apple from Macworld West. Now IDG has lifted its threat. Wheee.
Programming

Mac OS X Built For CISC, Not RISC 82

WCityMike writes "One of the programmers at Unsanity, maker of haxies, recently posted a rather shocking relevation on the company's weblog. He says that Mac OS X's Mach-O runtime ABI (Application Binary Interface) comes from a NeXTStep design for 68K processorts, and is not designed for the PowerPC architechture. Had they used the latter, things would have been approximately 10-12 percent faster. And supposedly, they can't fix it now without breaking all existing applications." The developer mentions there are workarounds in the newest GCC, but only for newly compiled programs.
Apple

Apple Macworld Snub a "negotiating tactic" 66

Nick dePlume writes "Apple Computer's decision to not endorse the move of the east coast Macworld Expo convention from New York to Boston is a "negotiating tactic," albeit a shockingly public one, reports Think Secret. Sources believe Apple had firmly endorsed the move, which was announced today."
Apple

Apple Won't Be At Macworld Boston 311

analog_line writes "Apple apparently is none too pleased about the decision to move Macworld to Boston from New York in 2004. So much so that they have said that they 'will not be participating in Macworld Boston.' They are also considering pulling out of Macworld New York 2003, though they say they will be at Macworld San Francisco."
Movies

The Nation of Macintosh? 514

Devon Avenger writes "A new short British film has been released according to this article at Wired depicting a cult of Macintosh fanatics who are organised in a manner reminiscent of the Nation of Islam."
Apple

TiBook Wi-Fi Range Hack: New Card 250

eggboard writes "Apple likes the profit margins on its internal AirPort card (still $100 three years after introduction), but the Faraday cage that is the Titanium PowerBook keeps the AirPort card and the TiBook's internal antenna from achieving the same range as the plastic-cased white dual-USB iBooks. Wired News reports today on Cliff Skolnick et al's hack, which is simply to use a 200 mW PC Card coupled with OS X-compatible drivers. The cost winds up less than an AirPort Card, and you can get a model with an external antenna jack, too."
Apple

Mac OS X to Get Journaling FS 691

overunderunderdone writes "According to eWeek, Apple Computer is planning to introduce a new journaling file system code-named 'Elvis' with the 10.2.2 release. Supposedly it will run on top of HFS+ and will be turned off by default. Though it will cost you 10% to 15% performance penalty the article says it is more extensive than NTFS and is on par with BeOS's 64-bit journaling file system. Not surprising since it is being developed by the same person - Dominic Giampaolo." I've been super impressed by OS X having used it as my primary laptop for the last couple weeks. It really is a great unix box- and this is one of the important missing puzzle pieces.
Portables (Apple)

Translucent Red Apple iBook Custom Mod 47

Anonymous Coward writes "There is a beautiful translucent red iBook mod that has surfaced on eBay, and the creator's homepage More and more of these mods are around lately.. pretty incredible." Update: 10/15 23:34 GMT by T : Anonymous Coward writes "Just a little note about the iBook Red Mod. The Ebay link has changed. And the author has posted a tutorial on his site."
Networking (Apple)

Fitting Slashdot Into Your Schedule 16

droleary writes "Looking for more ways to fit the new iCal into your life, or just a way to check web site updates without it looking like you're not working? Well Subsume Technologies has just announced a cool new way to do it: wCal. You can subscribe to frequently updated calendars that are headlines of (hopefully a growing number of) web sites, including a constant-refresh-ending Slashdot: Apple calendar (the press release has the subscribe link)." I first heard of this idea from Morbus Iff back on Sept. 11, and am still not convinced of the utility, but it's an interesting idea. Maybe it will catch on.
Microsoft

Microsoft Tries a "Switch" Campaign 1224

Twirlip of the Mists writes "There's a new page on Microsoft's web site that tells the first-person story of an unnamed 'freelance writer' who made the switch from the Mac to Windows XP. The author of the page -- who never identifies herself, and who could very easily be fictional or a composite sketch -- says 'Windows XP gives me more choices and flexibility.' How, you ask? Why, through Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, and modern operating-system features like separate accounts for each user and easy access to the Internet, of course. Maybe somebody should email Microsoft and let them know that the Mac has had all of these things for years now ... nah. It'd just embarrass them. Anyway, it's an entertaining read that's good for a laugh." Update: 10/14 21:12 GMT by P : Apparently, Microsoft has taken the page down, but Google has it.
OS X

OpenOffice Beta for Jaguar/X11 Released 37

kaldari writes "After great work by the development contributors and astounding help from the new testing team, the X11 build is now stable enough for beta testing to begin! This build can run both on DarwinPPC 6.0 and higher and also Mac OS X 10.2 and higher with help from other open source projects. For more info, check out the OpenOffice site."
Apple

Apple Is Buyer of New 64-Bit IBM Chips 421

ohmygod2 wrote to us with a story from SF Gate that Apple, unsurprisingly, is going to be one of the purchasers of IBM's PowerPC 970. At this time, though, it's unclear where Apple is going to actually *use* said chip.Update: 10/14 15:53 GMT by H : Follow-up to Tim's story.
Programming

Write Pure Python Cocoa Apps 30

bbum writes "Today, Ronald Oussoren and I patched the PyObjC (PythonObj-C) bridge to allow for completely standalone Cocoa applications that are implemented in Python. My 11-Oct-2002 weblog entries provide more detail and includes a link to a PyObjC Cocoa app that can be downloaded and hacked upon (with the app, you can actually create other apps without using the dev tools at all!). As the days pass, I'll be updating the 'blog with new software, updates, etc. A Fink package will be submitted shortly. (In reality -- Ronald did the hard stuff in that he figured out how to subclass ObjC classes in Python!!)" Nifty. Note there is also a PerlObjCBridge module included with Jaguar, and there's also CamelBones for Perl-Cocoa; what other scripting frameworks for Mac OS X are out there?
OS X

Apple Offers Three-Year Upgrade Plan for Server 14

davidstrauss writes "News.com is reporting that 'Apple Computer is giving buyers of its Mac OS X Server the option of signing on for three years of unlimited access to software upgrades for the same price it charges for a single, onetime upgrade.' This sounds almost like a push in the direction of Microsoft's Licensing 6."
Apple

Which Coding Framework for Mac OS X ? 334

DrStrangeLoop asks: "I am in the progress of getting into coding for Mac OS X, and I am wondering which GUI framework/language i should focus on. Apparantly, there are at least three options: the Cocoa Objective-C API [I don't want to learn Objective-c, but it seems that's how Apple wants me to code], the Cocoa Java API [gets compiled to PPC binaries, lots of APIs available [think Google], but absolutely no decent documentation to be found] and Swing Java classes [look 'n feel of Cocoa, but portable]. However, the most important feature for me is a clean and easy IPC with BSD layer processes. I figure sockets will work with all options, but what about the other mechanisms? Any suggestions?" Update: 10/13 22:08 GMT by C :For those curious about the Cocoa/Carbon debate, you can find an article that discusses this very issue, here. Thanks to the folks over at Freenode's #macdev for providing the link.
Apple

Portable Scanner Solutions for Research? 446

Fished asks: "Lately, I'm finding that I need to do a lot of research in Libraries -- remember those? I'm tired of feeding dimes to the copiers, and would like to buy some kind of portable scanner to go with my Powerbook. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find one that will work. Back in the eighties, this were as common as dirt: they were small, four inch wide scanners that you could run over the page. Also, while I've found three portable scanners for PC's (from Antec and Pentax) even if I could somehow get them to work with Mac OS X, they are sheet-fed, which is useless for scanning pages out of books. Does anyone still make the old-fashioned Hand Scanners, and do they make them for Macs?"
Programming

Tuning Java Swing apps for Mac OS X 37

tarkin writes "Sven Van Caekenberghe just finished a tutorial article, 'Tuning Java Swing applications for Mac OS X', that explains how to tune standard Java Swing applications to conform to the Mac OS X User Experience and make them virtually indistinguishable from native Mac OS X applications. Topics include handling basic Apple events, packaging applications, adding a custom icon, file dialogs, about boxes, preferences, customizing the menu bar, supporting Finder drag-and-drop, standard help, and basic multi-document support, as well as using MRJToolkit and MRJAppBuilder. The PDF of the article, as well as a Mac OS X disk image with a binary version of the two demo applications and the source code can downloaded from his home page."
Apple

Macworld Expo Comes Back To Boston in 2004 38

analog_line writes "According to this article in Business Today, in 2004 the summer Macworld Expo will move from New York City and the Javits Center back to Boston, where it rightfully belongs! As a Boston area resident, I'm ecstatic! Can't tell you how much I look forward to not having to go to New York. ;-)" This was rumored a few months ago, and I am glad to see it happen.

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