Spittoon pointed out this ZDNet article claiming that development proceeds apace on G4 portables for Apple's PowerBook line, and that if all goes well, they'll be shown off at Macworld Expo in January. I could live with ads claiming that "The new PowerBook is a supercomputer" in exchange for knocking a couple notes off the price of a G3 PowerBook ;) Slot-loaded CD / DVD drives are long overdue in notebooks, anyhow, so I hope at least that part of the story pans out.

batwingTM asks: "Hey, I've have this old Mac Classic (the first computer that was completly mine) that I really wanted to do something with... It was suggested that I make it an aquarium (I remember After Dark for the Mac with "fish") but I also heard that it is possible to turn it into a simple terminal. I have a few Linux powered machines in the house and the thought of being able to access them from a terminal in the kitchen and/or bathroom seems appealing. So, I was wondering is anyone out there knows how this can be achieved?"

Ruddy writes: "According to this story at InsideMacGames and an even juicier one at AppleInsider, graphics card company ATi leaked sacred knowledge about Apple's soon to be unveiled products (the new G4 Cubes) in advance of the MacWorld announcements yesterday, effectively stealing some of Steve Jobs' coveted keynote thunder. The leaked info spread quickly over the Web during the peak of rumor-Cube-mania. In retaliation the Fearless leader apparently then pulled the plug on the Radeon's rollout at MacWorld, all but publicly spanking ATi for its indiscretions and replacing the Cube's flashy Radeon card with the more mundane and stale Rage 128 Pro (talk about spite and noses!)." This story just keeps cracking me up.

Ok, we mentioned this in the story below but apparently thats not loud enough considering this is being submitted about every 30 seconds *grin*. yes, the Apple Cube is real. There is more information about it on every mac site on the planet, including Apple's site. It looks nifty.

11223 writes: "MacJunkie has HTML coverage of the keynote." Cease and desist notes are being passed out like party favors ;) Actually they've officially announced the wacked out touchy mouse. The Cube is for real too: read more at Apple's Site

Margin Walker writes "AppleInsider doesn't seem to be scared of Apple's legion of legal representation. They've posted photos of the G4 Cube and nifty new CRT and flat-screen displays." The site is pretty hosed, so if some folks could get some mirrors up, that'd be bitchin'. Update: 07/19 12:11 AM by CT : The Mac Junkie has mirrors of the pics, and claims that they are frauds along with some good arguments to back it up. Update: 07/19 01:27 PM by CT : Apple Legal shut both of them down with Cease & Desist orders. Mirrors are all over the place.

kono was among the hoards of folks who noted that Tenon is gonna be releasing a tightly integrated X11 Server for MacOS X, which should greatly increase the potential for those of us hoping have a desktop that we could conceivably share with our graphic designer MacOS fanatic girlfriends.

Plastickiwi writes "The current issue of the online magazine Failure features an interview with Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak. Woz waxes humble about his role in founding the microcomputer revolution, claims there's no bad blood between himself and Steve Jobs, and weighs in on the Microsoft antitrust trial." Tons of interesting stuff: he also talks about Pirates of the Silicon Valley and other bits. As always, Woz is a joy to read.

Over at Infoworld, there is an article about Borland which announced at the Borland Developers' conference that JBuilder will be available next year for Mac OS X with support for the Apple's upcoming Aqua GUI. The article also mentions that Inprise/Borland is now commited to the developers community. Thoughts, anyone?

Arthropoid writes "Looks like Apple's legal department has been busy of late. After forcing Ad Critic to take down all its Apple commercials, they have struck again, forcing Mac rumors site Mac OS Rumors to take down two stories. Both stories reported on details of Apple's next generation computer and case, supposedly a cube like box (still translucent) with a third party PCI chassis attachable through a connection on the motherboard." I traded email with Ryan Meader at MOSR about this.

Stefan MacGeek writes: "Nvidia, the manufacturer for 3D graphics chips has closed an OEM deal with Apple. Future Macs will use Nvidia graphics chips. Nvidia has recently presented the GeForce 2 MX, their first chip suitable for use in Macs. It is not yet known if Nvidia will take over as Apple's main supplier of graphics chips from ATI. Source: The German computer news site Heise " Here's a link to the story itself, und wenn Sie Deutsch nicht können, continue your scavenger hunt at Babelfish. This sounds great for Macs and their users. One thing to keep in mind though: the article cautions that it's unclear whether nVidia chips will be installed as full-fledged video cards, or integrated as in previous Macintosh models. [Updated 8 July 3:00GMT by timothy] An alert Bethor points to this MacCentral story in which Nvidia denies the whole thing, claiming that such news is at least months in the future.

martin writes: "Here's an interesting article on 32bitsonline writing up one of Apple's chief O/S engineers talk at Usenix2000 on how they produced Mac OS X. Interesting to see how the design elements of Mac OS have been merged into BSD to produce a hybrid of the the two OSs."

The Wookie writes: "Appleinsider have some pictures of the rumoured Apple buttonless, cordless mouse here." That is one weirdass looking little device. No clue if it's legit or not, but if it's for real, it'll be one billion times better than the horrible hockey puck.

Chris Buskirk asks: "I have been working with Macs most of my life. I have since expanded my view to Unix, and Linix. I also do NT for Pain and Profit. I have been a part of the Slashdot community for the past year now, and I have become convinced that open source is the best way to produce software. This week open-source software advocate Eric S. Raymond kicked off the 15th annual MacHack conference. Mac Week is covering the keynote address , and almost all of the responce to the article is negative. Surprisingly this is a departure from the recent mood among the Mac community which has been changing with the advent of OSX. So the question becomes, How do I convince a Mac geek to become an Open Source Mac geek?" I hope that OSX is the spark to ignite the fires of Open Source on the Mac. Or at least bring it the visibility it deserves.

Frymaster asks: "Eric S. Raymond gave a *five hour* keynote at this years MacHack. No surprise, he spent most of the time on the open-source soapbox and told the MacHack-ers that "service and support" is where the money is. I've been neck-deep in the Mac community for 10+ years and the most noticable thing about Mac developers is their commitment to making their software easy and obvious. The unspoken theory is that if the user has to look at the manual, the developer has to improve the interface. Even my dad can use a Mac without asking for help... not very good for "support" revenue. This raises the question: Does having a business plan that relies on support for revenue act as a disincentive for implementing ease-of-use features?"

Schemer writes: "Wilfredo Sánchez, the lead developer on Darwin has posted his usenix paper, 'The Challenges of Integrating the Unix and Mac OS Environments' on the Web. In it he describes the difficulties and solutions to the problems encountered while trying to adapt BSD Unix for use with MacOS X. It's a very good read, even if you aren't a fan of the Macintosh." The OS X team have been dealing with the serious complications of mixing one established, beloved interface with another -- this is a thoughtful look from the inside at how they've dealt with it, and a good explanation of some underlying assumptions and conventions of each OS.

JimRay writes: "A company called powerlogix has announced that they are offering a G-3 upgrade for those fruity iMacs. For a mere US$500, you can have an iMac running at 500mhz with 1mb of backside cache. Throw linuxPPC on that thing and you're ready to rock and roll. The press release is here and the specs are here."

aliya writes: "Microsoft has announced Office and IE5.5 for Mac OS X in mid-2001. Given that OS X is based on BSD, what are the ramifications for those trying to get these apps on unix? Seems like a generic OS X-to-unix API translation would be a lot easier than Win32 API-to-unix. Not that I'm a big fan of the MS Office monopoly or the broken IE5 implementations, but it seems like this is going to have major ramifications for any application ported to Mac OS X." Of course, Microsoft promised products before which have mysteriously failed to appear, but still...interesting.

PeterPan writes: "QuickTime for RealNetworks 'RealNetworks has licensed Apple intellectual property for streaming digital video and audio over the Internet in QuickTime. RealServer 8 now supports delivery of QuickTime content to QuickTime players.'" It'd be great to be able to actually watch high-quality QuickTime clips without either proprietary hardware / software combinations or jerky (or space-hogging) downcoversions.

memoryhole writes "According to this story from AppleInsider, Apple is coming out with a new kind of mouse. They will be wireless and optical - and without buttons. Apparently, the mouse responds to squeezing, tapping, and stroking - in what will be a programmable manner, a little like some trackpads." Just so long as it ain't a hockey puck (whoops! I've grabbed the wrong side again) but this sounds pretty sweet.