David Patton wrote in to send us a link to MacCentral where you can read about a sort of Change of heart on the part of Apple. Apparently they are inviting the French Linux Association to demo LinuPPC and MKLinux and the Apple Expo in Paris.

Russell Mirabelli writes "MacOpinion has a great editorial discussing the use of Windows NT in the military, and proposing future directions for Apple's OSX as a response to potential fallout."

mrorange (aka Patrick Berry) writes "The iMac, which only sold for 15 days in August, may set a record for monthly PC sales. The final count isn't tallied yet, but the only thing that is close, according to the article, is a Compaq machine that sold last Christmas." I finally saw one a few days ago (I don't go outside much). I still want one, but until Linux is good to go on it, I don't really know what I'd do with it beyond run an X-Server on it :)

Larry Preston writes "Many of Macromedias employees and beta-testers are now confirming that Macromedia is shipping Authorware 5 on Sept. 1st as a Windows only product. This is big news for several reasons: 1. Authorware was originally created on a Macintosh for the educational markets. 2. Most Universities and schools are using Authorware, primarily for it's cross-platform capabilities. 3. Macromedia spent the last year or so at Mac conventions proclaiming to all multimedia developers that macromedia would continue to support Macintosh. 4. Macromedia's response so far: "we will continue to sell (but not support) the old version of Authorware for Macintosh" 5. The current version of Authorware does NOT support quicktime 3 "

Alex Prestin sent us this link which talks about how indepedent tests have shown that the G3 is actually only 10-30% faster then the equiv.-mhz PII. It goes on to say that it is actually slower in some cases. I have actually been really impressed with the G3 speeds - anyone else have any informatiom about this?

The fun just keeps rolling in with the iMac stuff so I guess I'll just keep posting it. The major notable is that LinuxPPC.org has a page up for the iMac/Linux porting effort. As we all know, the messy stuff is the USB support. Robert Petty sent us this link where you can read about the iMac mystery slot. Tom Drabenstott sent us a link comparing windows and Macs at various every day tasks. Finally Sean Harding sent us a link to a page dedicated to documenting the iMac firmware.

Martin-Gilles Lavoie writes "For all those pundits who keep arguing the lack of floppy in the iMac (while ignoring the fact that USB floppies are available), a German magazine (c't) has a cool tip on hooking up a regular floppy drive directly on the iMac motherboard Check it out. OpenSource/architechture winers can therefore grab a soldering iron and do it themselves! " In other news, Micah writes "Apparently, 15% of iMac buyers are purchasing their first computer, and 13% are replacing PC systems if this article is correct."

barrett conrad wrote in to let us know that news reports have already begun to circulate talking about how most of the iMacs have been sold, and that the stores' inventories are runing low. Good news for Apple, and good news for us. Not such good news for Bill and Intel.

Patrick Berry writes " LinuxPPC is gathering information to get the device drivers ready for the iMac. Maybe you can have one by Christmas running linuxPPC! " Update tons of people have submitted various speculations on the mystery port on the iMacs. Supposedly the slot is a Mezzanine socket for any sort of external devices (SCSI etc). Thanks to Roger A. Tetzlaff for sending that bit in.

Espen Koht writes "Its been reported several other places, but I thought it might still have some general interest. "The Parallel Macintosh Cluster for Numerically Intensive Computing" detailed on link becomes even more interesting when you add the other news of the day: the iMac. It has the processor and the networking is built-in, cutting the cost by a fair amount. Then ask yourself: what if these things were running Linux instead? The mind boggles. " Plug and play parallel processing. Must wipe drool off of me.

Today is the day that the new iMacs are supposed to be rolling. Jobs and Co. are betting big on this one, with Jobs saying this will "cause a revolution." Regardless of that, Apple is undertaking their biggest ad campaign ever, with a 100$US million dollar ad campaign. It will be interesting to see the results of this-and whether the PC converts return, like Jobs hopes.

Eric Davis sent us a link to some pictures at Apple showing the floors where iMac's are being built. No matter what you think about that iMac, it sure does look cool to see gigantic stacks of non intel computers getting ready for sale.

Matt Sherer sent us a link to A Wired Article where you can read their take on the whole Open Source Apple OS thing that has been fluttering around for some time now. Mainly its based on the modest proposal piece that Don Yacktman sent us on Saturday.

Don Yacktman writes "I've just made a proposal to Apple that they free up the source code to the Mach kernel and DriverKit which sit underneath Mac OS X. The proposal has been sent to several executives and managers at Apple. I don't know how they will respond, but I think that any other people interested in this topic should definitely take the time to let Apple know what they think about it! The full proposal can be seen here" And with Steve at the helm, I'm sure this proposal will go a long ways.

James Ratliff wrote in to tell us that the iMac's are now available. He sent a link to CDW where you can read the exact specs and cost. Considering that MKLinux DR3 announcement below, and the stunning speed of those G3s, all I can say is I want one bad. It would be interesting to compare Netwinders and iMac's as thin linux clients. Or I guess you could leave MacOS on it...

XosE wrote in to send us a link to the MkLinux Status File in which they announce that DR3 of MkLinux is up. CDs shall ship RSN. Existing users only need to download "new stuff" (25 megs worth). Sounds like a lot unless you realize the whole thing doesn't even fit on a single CD.

Tsk writes "A BeOS advocates has set up a page to send apple a petition for them to publicly release the specs of their Powerful G3 computers and of HFS+ their new file system. " With Steve at the helm over at apple, all I can say is Not Likely. But it would be cool.

Phyx send us this link which confirms some of the MS-Apple problems. While they aren't quite to suing each other again, it seems that the relationship has its share of problems particularly with multimedia issues.

work-deprived writes "Apparently, Steve Jobs has announced that Rhapsody will be available in the fall as a server under the name of Mac OS X Server. It will only be shipped for G3 processors, but promises better memory management, more reliable protected mode, and better performance [sic]. It will also include 100% native PowerPC code. I wonder if that will be a factor in its war with Wintel. Full story ". It makes me wonder if it will cost more, and if Apple is playing the "NT angle", letting servers get the "best", while consumers are stuck with what's left...

Apple, the company that couldn't, or more to the point, didn't, has posted a profit for the 3rd straight quarter. This is a good thing. With the Macworld Expo coming up, a slew of info on the profits and what's going on over there is available.