mcockerill writes "Oracle just posted a development version of their latest RDBMS (Oracle 9i release 2) for Mac OS X (300+megs of it). It requires Jaguar to run. No fancy installation wizards or GUI config apps as yet; the whole thing is command line only for now. But still, this is a major development as far as serious use of Mac OS X in a server environment is concerned. It's long been rumored to be on the way -- after all, Ellison is on Apple's Board -- but frankly I never thought I'd see the day."

hype7 writes "The reviews on Apple's new Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar" are starting to come through. The New York Times (free reg required) heaps on the praise: 'Mac OS X 10.2 is the best-looking, least-intrusive and most thoughtfully designed operating system walking the earth today.' MacCentral is positive: 'From what I've seen Jaguar is leaps and bounds ahead of Mac OS X 10.1 in both speed and functionality.' MacWorld has also chimed in: 'for most users, there are a lot of important improvements in this upgrade: performance boosts, improved printing, and interface enhancements will be immediate benefits. And over time, Mac OS X 10.2's new technologies (including Quartz Extreme and Rendezvous) will make the update even more valuable.'"

sg3000 writes "A friend asked me a question about setting up shared address books with Mac OS X, but I have no idea how to solve this. He wants to set up an address book that can be accessed by different user accounts on the same Mac or by different Macs in the same household. This would be useful for having a single place to put contact info for family and friends. His first thought was to move the Entourage user folder to the Shared folder in Mac OS X and just move aliases of that folder to each of the users' folders. This way when they open Entourage they would see the same address book and both can make changes to it. The downside? Well, you're stuck with Entourage, it will work only on a single machine, everything is shared between the users (all contacts not just a subset, calendar, email, to-do list, etc) and it won't work with other mail clients. I know with the new Mac OS X 10.2, you can share calendars between people using iCal. Is there some way to do this with the new address book for Jaguar too? Since 10.2 is basically shipping now, you can throw NDAs and caution to the winds!"

spid writes "Tim O'Reilly posted an interesting article about people switching from other OSes (Mac OS, Windows, Linux) to Mac OS X. The resounding consensus is that most folks appreciate how, compared to these other OSes, Mac OS X 'just works.' O'Reilly also makes an interesting point that UNIX/Linux users, rather than Windows users, would be the best target niche for Apple's 'switch' campaign."

bcassell asks: "I just recently (a few days ago) purchased an iBook. It's the base model (600mhz, 12" screen). After playing with it for a while I decided to plug it into my nice 21" Dell CRT, only to find that the iBook ONLY supports display mirroring (so I'm stuck at 1024x768). Well, knowing that the video card in my iBook is an ATI Radeon mobility which, by ATI's specs, supports monitor spanning, I decided to do some research. I found several discussions about the subject, and one person who even claimed to have monitor spanning working on his iBook in Mac OS 9. So does anyone know of a way to get monitor spanning to work on an iBook in Mac OS X? Or, if not, where would a very proficient coder/hacker like myself, who has very little Mac OS X experience, find information to attempt a hack like this?"

eggboard writes "In the Seattle Times, published right across the lake from Microsoft headquarters, I argue that Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU) has produced some wonderfully engineered Mac OS X software, but they're generating most of the resentment they get because they miss the details: no Palm sync months after it should have come out; six-year-old broken features in Word; no common format for mail among Outlook, Entourage, and Outlook Express. If the MacBU could fix things as well as they write new features, their Mac customers would have a much better outlook." Tim O'Reilly recently had his own thoughts after meeting with people at MacBU, and meanwhile, MacBU also released Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac OS X. What's the real future of Microsoft on Mac OS X? MacBU's marketing director told O'Reilly to reserve judgment: "Watch us for another six months."

Adam Q Salter writes "A Boston Globe article quotes many scientists and engineers who have switched to Apple workstations or have immediate plans to do so. Craig Hunter, an aerospace engineer at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia, said 'OS X, I think, is the best Unix I've seen come along, ever.' Scott Sneddon, a senior scientific fellow at Genzyme, is quoted as saying 'OS X is a better Unix development environment than Linux or Silicon Graphics Irix.'"

Prozy.G3 writes "Mac OS X Security Update 2002-08-20 includes updated components (OpenSSL & Security) which provide increased security to prevent unauthorized access to applications, servers, and the operating system. Mac OS X Security Update 2002-08-20 is available either through the Software Update application (System Preferences) or at the Apple Knowledge Base." According to the Knowledge Base, it is for Mac OS X 10.1.5; are these components already in Mac OS X 10.2, or is another update forthcoming?

JSherman writes "Prosoft Engineering has released a client that enables Mac OS X to connect to a Novell network. The client is pure TCP/IP, and is not tied with AppleTalk. Its been possible for Macs to connect to Netware Servers for a long time by using Novell's Native File Access, but this is a much better method since it's an actual client that will remember your user ID and password when connecting to servers, and it allows you to browse the NDS tree. This is great news for all of us that use Apple computers in the Enterprise. Mac OS X progress marches on."

donkeyDevil writes: "Following the rule of 'i before e except before P,' rumors of an iPhone resurface in the New York Times (registration required). The evidence: OS features, foiled acquisition attempts, PIXO relations, and the genius of Steven P. Jobs. Unmentioned, Apple's tried phones before. PIE produced a nifty desktop phone design, Apple Europe produced some nice telephone-computer integration software."

EelBait writes "I'm surprised that few people have picked up on this, considering how much noise was made when Software Base Station was unavailable on previous versions of Mac OS X. But, as I was reading through the 'and more' section of the list of new Jaguar features, I came across the AirPort Software Base Station item. You'll need to scroll down to the Networking section. You'll also see things like IPv6, IPsec, PAM, and Active Directory." Bringing back this and USB Printer Sharing are two of the many good things about 10.2.

gwernol writes "Macintouch is running an interesting section on the end of HyperCard at Apple. The original discussion was on alternatives to HyperCard but several ex-HyperCard engineers have come forward to describe the 'Steve-ing' of the project. It's an interesting insight into the workings of this company and the fate of Bill Atkinson's revolutionary piece of software." And lamz writes, "Thousands of people still use HyperCard but it has stagnated under Apple's stewardship. Is it time for an Open Source HyperCard? Great article at Wired." My first Mac programming was in HyperCard. Those were the days ...

eggboard writes "According to Rob Art Morgan, who has tested this, the new Power Macs from Apple that use DDR (double data rate) memory -- like the Xserve rank-mount unit -- cannot access the memory any faster than the cheaper and slower SDRAM found in the previous system arch. A controller limits the data rate to 1 GB/s, while DDR could work more than twice as fast. Unfortunately, this makes mincemeat of the architecture, as it bus-/memory-bounds 2D and 3D graphics and rendering."

usermilk writes "There is a great article on the history of the Apple logo running at MacNYT.dk." The story's been translated into English, so no worries.

gsfprez writes "While chatting with some Apple employee friends (with .mac accounts and iChat), we were stumped why we couldn't see each other on AIM. It seems that AOL has decided to take the opportunity -- while integrating the .mac users 'into the fold' -- to modify their AIM protocols so that Open Source clients (like Fire and Trillian) can't see those with '@mac.com' IM accounts, and vise versa. Bottom line: you can't be seen by .mac IM users, and they can't see you, unless you get the crufty, single service AOL IM client. The only positive affirmation of this is from the Fire mailing list. 'Into the fold ... sorta' is more like it." Well, it's still early, this may merely be about bugs that need fixing, rather than intent to block .mac users. We'll see.

DietFluffy writes "According to this article, Apple Computer will offer a $199 5-user family license for Jaguar (Mac OS X 10.2). The article notes that the family license program depends on an honor system because unlike Microsoft, Apple 'does not put technical barriers in place to prevent people from installing software on more than one machine.'" It's likely that most families would buy only one license anyway, so Apple stands to lose little. Sounds like a smart move to me. (For those keeping score on today's game, that makes it Apple 2, Microsoft 0.)

Mark0 writes "In an article on MacCentral we read 'CryptoHeaven beefs up Mac OS X support'. This is great news for the Mac OS X community as there aren't many competing applications for the new platform. CryptoHeaven seems to be leading the secure email sector and also provides instant messaging and file storage!" You can never have too much security! Well, OK, you can, but CryptoHeaven looks kinda neat.

benh57 writes "Apple today announced the new Power Mac G4 towers with new faces, running at dual-867MHz (US$1,699), dual-1GHz ($2,499), and dual-1.25GHz ($3,299). All are running DDR, the two higher end models at 166MHz FSB with Radeon 9000, the low end at 133 w/GF4MX." Check it out at The Apple Store, and keep your eyes peeled for an appearance on the Power Mac G4 site.

DietFluffy writes "America Online released an update to their Mac OS X client. The built-in browser is powered by Gecko! However, America Online plans to stick with Internet Explorer for their Windows client. Will this make web designers think twice about tailoring their web pages to Internet Explorer? Or will they ignore this, given that the Windows client will still have Internet Explorer as the default browser?" And if this goes well, will the Windows version eventually use a Gecko-based browser, too?

dhovis writes "Do you think the Xserve is cool, but you wish it ran Linux? Well, MacCentral is reporting that Terra Soft Solutions, an Apple 'Value Added Reseller,' is now shipping Macs. They are offering several new Macs with Yellow Dog Linux preinstalled now, and are promising the Xserve will be available soon." They are currently shipping Power Mac G4s, iBooks, and iMacs, as well as AirPort cards. See the Terra Soft Store for more information.