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.

linux_penguin asks: "Recently I've been interested (as is everyone I suppose) in OS X. My girlfriend is currently studying desktop publishing, and is using Illustrator, PageMaker etc at tech. I'm thinking of buying her a powermac. This will allow her to study at home, and give me a chance to have some fun with OS X when it finally comes out. I've looked at the pricing of these things, and there appears to be large price jumps from one model to another, with only minor changes in spec. Not only that, but their monitors are *so* expensive... and thoughtfully, a large jump in spec. I thought it might be better to buy a mid-range powermac with no monitor or accessories, and upgrade it myself. My question is, is this a feasible thing to do? Do Macs support standard SVGA monitors? I know it supports USB devices, but could I upgrade the H/D, RAM or whatever with off-the-shelf components?"

Mad Browser writes: "Ars Technica has posted a review of the recently released-to-developers MacOS X DP4. Check it out." Rather than concentrating on Aqua, this article is typical Ars -- it gets beneath the surface to consider the mechanisms for printing, screen display and more. As the writer points out, DP4 is not itself OS X, but only a snapshot of OS X as it matures.

P-Rod asks: "With Apple reportedly about to announce multiprocessor G4s, many have been asking why they'd do so before OS X is released, since OS 9 doesn't have the multithreading that OS X has. What about a multithreading extension? Apple has been really good at allowing newer products to work with older ones and vice versa. Apple's ultra-smooth transition to the PowerPC chip back in 1994 is a great example. So is the CarbonLib extension, which lets you run Carbonized OS X programs on OS 8.1 and up. Is a multithreading extension feasible?"

Anonymous Coward writes: "One of the more significant statements of the session [at Apple's WorldWide Developer's Conference] came when Magee told the audience that the Mach kernel and the BSD layer which lays upon it are inseparable. "Every application [that runs in Mac OS X] is a BSD application," said Magee. "You can't keep the system running without the Mach kernel and the BSD layer." This quashes the public rumour that Apple will be able to ship a "lite" version of Mac OS X which will contain only the smallest possible bit of BSD, or another that questions Apple reluctance to move its tools to Linux."

firewort writes: "Someone sure got back from WWDC quick, and posted a review of Aqua, MacOSX DP4. Nice screenshots, too! " Fairly detailed overview of the UI changes. And with the BSD kernel, it looks like I may finally have an OS that my gf and I could agree on.

caligula writes: "Just saw this [macnn.com report]: 'Tuesday, May 17 updated 2:30 pm, top stories. During the hardware keynote of WWDC, which ended just minutes ago, Apple demonstrated a dual-processor G4 Power Mac running Mac OS X. Of note to developers is that Cocoa/Carbon applications do not need to be changed in any way to take advantage of multi-processors. Benchmark demonstrations ran roughly twice as fast on the dual-G4 system compared to the single-G4 Power Mac that was on stage. No mention was given as to when these multiprocessor G4s would ship, although it was stressed that it would not be happening any time soon but that they would definitely be out by next year's WWDC.'" JonahLee pointed out a related link on macosrumors.com, and migooch noted this slightly more informative ZDne t story. Mortals still must wait at least 'til January.

Mneme writes "Looks like Apple finally has the open source core of MacOS X up and running on Intel boxen. We'll have to wait until the WWDC is over before we'll get our hands on it, but it's still a very pleasing development. Check out a story about the demonstration, or click below to read the message from the Darwin Developer's list.

Otter asks: "I've been dabbling in C++ programming with Linux and Qt. I'm interested in trying Darwin or MacOS X development but am not sure where to start. Mac programming books only deal with traditional MacOS. I could use CodeWarrior and Carbon, but if I'm going to start out, I might as well use the NeXT/Cocoa methods that are the way of the future and, I've heard, a lot better. So, how do I get started? Apple's Web site is still oriented towards the traditional API's and the move to Carbon. Are there any books that would give me a good introduction? Any tutorials? Can I continue with C++ or do I need to learn Objective C or Java? Does Code Warrior support Cocoa development (in the IDE and/or in the documentation)? "

Mad Browser writes:"MacNN is reporting that Apple has delayed MacOS X again until January 2001. They are also reporting that a public beta of OS X will be available this summer. Jobs also said that WebObjects deployment licenses would go from $50,000 to $700. " QuickTime 5 is also tentatively going to be out this summer, as well.

Maktoo writes: "Well, this has been a favorite rumour in the Mac world for quite some time, but with the approach of WWDC (next Monday) things are starting to heat up. MacOSRumors, AppleInsider, and Go2Mac are all predicting MP G4s soon ... with Go2Mac actually claiming that CompUSA has SKUs for the systems. The keynote on Monday should be interesting. I don't see why Apple would release MP machines before MacOS X ... but we might get a demo at least. I'm excited enough that I'll be getting a copy of MacOS X Beta when I walk in the door ... but an MP G4 would be nice too."

Graymalkin writes: "Apple has finally released iMovie (the really easy video editor) for the non-iMac DV customers; the best part is that it's free. You can get it over at iMovie's Web site. I've used demos of this package and compared to professional packages like Premiere it really packs a punch. You need OS 9 and at least 64 megs of RAM (unless you want to do Web quality video, then 64 is fine). It's nice to see Apple responding to their customers (like myself) who wanted iMovie but didn't want to go out and buy an iMac to get it. fnord. "

Mr. Groove writes: "Hey foo, think your PIII is killer? Imagine running Photoshop on one of these!" Frugal or insane -- only you can decide.