AnamanFan writes "Apple has released an update to the iPod with: 'audio playback and user interface improvements, equalization presets, shuffle by album, track scrubbing, Contacts, and additional languages: Korean, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese.' Size is 2.1MB and is available by Software Update or at the iPod download page."

DavidRavenMoon writes "MacCentral reports that Pixar technologist Dr. Michael Johnson says Linux, Sun and Windows-based systems are being replaced by Mac OS X. 'The studio's entire team uses Mac OS X not only for creative work, but for workflow and custom application development.'"

Frogbeater writes "Apple keeps on keeping on with the anti-copy protection crowd by using their technical info database as a platform for denouncing the artists who are getting on the bandwagon." I like this line from the technote: You may be unable to eject certain copy-protected audio discs, which resemble Compact Discs (CD) but technically are not. Indeed.

Arkham writes "Tim O'Reilly gave a speech at WWDC called 'Watching the Alpha Geeks: Mac OS X and the next big thing', in which he suggested that Apple is doing the right things to be a big success. Specifically, Apple should continue to 1) adhere to standards, 2) keep things small and modular, and 3) document as you go -- man pages and RFCs. Anyone who has used Mac OS X can see that Apple is trying hard to be a good open-source citizen (for example, the new zero-config Rendezvous technology). The question is, at what point will these efforts pay off (more users, and thus more money)?" What is this "money" you speak of?

EccentricAnomaly writes "Apple has announced the winners of this year's Apple Design Awards. And the winners are: Best New Mac OS X Product: Toon Boom; Most Innovative Mac OS X Product: Watson; Best Mac OS X User Experience and Best Mac OS X Technology Adoption: OmniGraffle; Best Mac OS X Open Source port: TeXShop; and Best Mac OS X Student Product: MacJournal." The last one appears to be down, due to "excessive bandwidth consumption." Maybe the Apple Design Awards people should've gotten together with the Apple iTools HomePage people.

jonerik writes "Wired News has an article today on the last Apple holdout on Capitol Hill, Ngozi Pole. Pole, the office and systems administrator at Sen. Edward Kennedy's (D-MA) Boston and Washington D.C. offices, argues that the Senate Office of the Sergeant at Arms (SAA), which makes technology recommendations to senators, wants to make its job as easy as possible by pushing Windows-based applications as much as they can. According to the article, 'The SAA allocates $250,000 per six-year term to each senator. The department had hoped Pole would use the budget to replace aging Macs in Kennedy's offices. Instead, Pole will spend the remainder of his budget through 2003 filling Senator Kennedy's Washington office with new flat-panel iMacs.' Unsurprisingly, the SAA declined to comment."

xWeston writes "Apple accidentally released this online about a week ago, but now this is the official deal. iPhoto 1.1.1 is released! Apparently some of the new features are being able to adjust brightness, contrast, set as the desktop pattern, and my personal favorite. 'Email photos via mail.' I'm not too sure how emailing through the normal mail works but I'll give it a try." I also like that exporting QuickTime includes fades and music, so it looks just like the slide show.

Anonymous Coward writes "A review with a lot of screenshots of the latest beta seed (6C37) has been posted. The latest advancements look pretty promising. I, like everyone else, am itching for a release." I don't know if it is more pretty, or more promising, but it does look cool. Dock improvements, iChat, search the disk from Finder windows, QuickTime 6, Digital Hub section of System Preferences, Firewall preferences, major Speech improvements ...

An anonymous user wrote, "Digital Video Editing ran some tests to compare the Dual G4 with the Athlon MP in After Effects. They didn't use the fastest Athlons, but the results are pretty clear anyway. This is especially interesting after Apple announced that they would be killing Shake for x86 platforms. If Apple really wants to position the Mac as an alternative to x86 on the film / video effects market, they are going to need to improve their hardware, especially with AMD's 64-bit CPU just around the corner. From the article: 'Not one of the objective tests we conducted using After Effects bore out Apple's claim of Mac superiority. In fact, in most of the tests, the Mac was left lagging far behind.'"

lopati writes "O'Reilly Network is running the first of a two part series about the intertwined histories of Apple and NeXT, and more specifically NeXTSTEP and the foundations of Cocoa. Nothing really new, but a nice overview of Mac OS X and a quick rundown of how old missteps (no pun intended :) evolved into the present product and company. I thought this was an interesting tidbit: 'But NeXT wasn't just a software company -- Jobs was also obsessed with building hardware. And this proved to be the company's downfall.' Ironic, because this has been Apple's salvation, or portentous, because history is doomed to repeat itself? You be the judge!"

colaboy writes "As of today, the folks at OpenOffice.org have successfully built OpenOffice.org 638c for Mac OS X using the X11 windowing system from XFree86.org. It works. They need, more than ever, help to finish it, so that it uses OpenOffice.org 1.0 and Aqua, and is bug-free. Download it now, and join the project and mailing list. Hunt for bugs; test features; make suggestions. They have proven the concept: OpenOffice.org can run--and it looks beautiful--on Mac OS X."

Lisa writes "O'Reilly announced Monday, at WWDC, the O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference to be held in Santa Clara Sept 30-Oct 3rd. The call for papers has gone online if you're interested in presenting, and they're soliciting ideas for 'a panel discussion or a particularly provocative group of panelists that you'd love to see square off.' To submit your suggestions, send email to: macosx-idea@oreilly.com."

FunkDaddy writes "The MathWorks today announced its intention to make MATLAB, the industry's leading technical computing software, available on Mac OS X, with the next release of the MathWorks product line. With MATLAB on Mac OS X, users will be able to use powerful, sophisticated technical computing tools in a graphical and intuitive environment. You hear that mac-geek-scientist-guys? Rejoice!" It looks like perhaps that survey did some good.

Eugenia Loli writes "MacCentral has the up-to-the-minute updates on the Apple WorldWide Developer Conference. The first big news is that Apple drops Mac OS 9. 'It's time to drop OS 9,' Steve Jobs said. 'We can do things in X that we just can't do in 9... a hundred percent of what we're doing is X only. [...] Mac OS 9 isn't dead for our customers, but it is for developers. Today we say goodbye to Mac OS 9 for all future development,' said Jobs." We all expected this to happen sooner or later, more sooner than later. There's been no new Apple development for Mac OS 9 in some time; only maintenance updates. But I won't stop Mac OS 9 development. You can't stop me! Muahahahaha! Update: 05/06 18:31 GMT by P : More news from WWDC continues to roll in.

ZigMonty writes "Apple has updated their Kernel Programming docs (May 1st). They are a lot more substantial now (read: they say something other than 'don't')."

A user writes, "I help moderate a forum dealing with Mac OS X, and I'm having an awful time convincing a fair portion of our readers that logging in as root all the time is a Really Bad Idea. Worse, though, are the ones who try to convince others to log in as root all the time, claiming it's 'more Mac-OS-9-like,' or saying 'it's not really more insecure,' or even that 'a firewall should deter hackers pretty well.' I know all the standard arguments, but they're not working out. Does anyone here have some real-world anecdotes that I can point to?"

bootc writes "Last week we heard the news that Jordan Hubbard was leaving the FreeBSD Core Team. I received an email about the new OpenDarwin.org web site and had a look around, just to find that our friend Jordan was member of the OpenDarwin Core Team!" Apple has consolidated its Open Source web site, including Darwin, under its developer site, while the Internet Software Consortium is hosting the independent OpenDarwin.org, which will develop OpenDarwin with the developer community and collaborate with Apple to merge OpenDarwin technologies into Darwin and Mac OS X.

Rura Penthe writes "NothingReal, developer of Shake (a high-end video compositing application), was purchased by Apple in February. Until now the fate of Shake on Windows, Irix, and Linux was uncertain at best, but in an email sent out to Shake users, Apple has declared that Irix and Linux versions will be developed at least through 2003. However, the upcoming Windows version will be the last for that platform. Good news for Shake users with Linux render farms like Weta Digital, which used Shake for Lord of the Rings." (Reminder to Apple users: visit Slashdot's Apple section for more Apple-related news.)

NunDLess asks: "G4 PowerBooks have absolutely dreadful wireless range due, I've been told, to the fact that the internal antennas are underneath that slick Titanium case. Has anyone heard about a way to set up an external wireless antenna on a PowerBook? I've been looking for supported PCMCIA wireless cards, but haven't found one with Mac OS X drivers."

KeelSpawn writes in that Yahoo! has a story about the upcoming WWDC in San Jose, May 6-10. Apple will offer attendees the chance to "be the first to explore the powerful new capabilities of the next major release of Mac OS X," with over 100 technical sessions, including those on Darwin, changes in Carbon and Cocoa, and more than 25 sessions on Java and WebObjects. The WWDC Steve Jobs keynote begins May 6 at 1 p.m. Eastern, while the Mac OS X keynote begins at 5 p.m. Eastern.