Al Guerra wrote in to tell us that he has announced a preliminary version of Apokalypse, a Linux distribution for PowerPC-based Macintoshes. You can see it here or read the press release.

Clayton Wheeler writes "According to This MacWeek article, Apple is declaring Rhapsody 1.0 a dead end. Because of the Mac community's lack of interest in porting everything to Yellow Box, Apple is instead emphasizing MacOS X and the Carbon APIs. Yellow Box is relegated to being a long-term idea and "part of [Apple's] larger Java strategy." Development of Yellow Box for Windows will continue, but no Intel ports of MacOS or Carbon are planned. "

Jim Hall writes " InfoWorld Magazine reports in their 06/01/1998 edition that UMAX computer has ceased production of its Macintosh clones. UMAX was the last remaining licensee of the MacOS after Apple stopped allowing clones. This is too bad. I think clones were the way for Macs to become accessible to others. Competition among Mac vendors might have made the Mac cheaper to upgrade and to own. Oh well. "

A bit old, but the Taiwanese computer maker Umax has officially declared that it will be quitting the Macintosh clone market, after losing somewhere in the range of 1.1$TW billion (~40$US million). This announcement of the losses came 22/5, and the depature from the market has already come. It's too bad that in some ways Apple waited so long to do clones that it didn't make any real difference.

Greg Bodnar writes "Looks like a new Open Source project for Mac Hardware is floating around at InfiniteOS" It's pretty darn skeletal right now but I suspect that it'll grow quite a bit over the next few months.

Topher writes "You may have seen this before, it's certainly not new, but there's a site that tells how to make an aquarium out of an old Mac, including exactly where to drill and bolt and glue, and everything." check it out here. I wish I had an extra 20-30 hours a week so I could try to do this sort of stuff more often.

Chris Howard writes "This site says they have a POSIX layer on top of the MacOS. I'll download it tonight and give it a try. Sounds interesting. "

Graeme McLaughlin sent us a link to an interesting where Gil Amelio Speaks about Apple, and how Jobs is taking all the credit for Amelio's work. Sounds reasonable, but I'm still skeptical.

Paul Vallée writes "this linkhas a series of five full-screen shots authorized by Apple of Rhapsody DR2. They are fantastic, and blew me away. The screen-shots are also discussed. Cheers, Paul " Interesting meshing of the MacOS and NeXT stuff. They look pretty sharp...

Apple announced today at its Worldwide Developer Conference that MacOS and Rhapsody will merge. In 1999, Apple will release MacOS X, or MacOS 10. MacOS X will be able to preemptivley multitask and supports protected memory. In the interim, MacOS 8.5 (aka "Allegro") will ship.

Brian Kimball writes " link The rumor is that the mac look-and-feel is being ported to Linux. Supposedly this will be announced at the upcoming Apple developers conference. Steve Job says it's bogus; I'll wait and see. " Without the Macintosh's standard everything the Mac GUI would blow on Linux. But the article does claim that Apple does have some sort of Linux related announcement coming...

Ok folks after the recent hub bub on Slashdot over the iMac release (check out that story... 300+ comments) Benjamin Shive sent me a bunch of points in response to most of the criticisms that occured in the comments. I would consider one personally (it would end up being an X-Server in my living room :), but it would be nice if it was a couple hundred bucks cheaper. But these things are designed with a different audience than most of us hardcore techies. Anyway, Ben has covered the issues pretty well, so if you were partaking in the flamefest yesterday, it's probably worth reading this.

Well it's a new desktop line. Integrated Monitor/PC in a transparent case, 233Mhz G3, 4gig HD 32 megs of RAM, for $1300. No complaints from over here. You may want to swing over to Apple and take a look for yourself. Sure wouldn't be a bad little Linux box...

beleriand wrote in to tell us that something a bit crazy seems to be coming up in a few hours on Apple.com... Updated Well the big hype was a trippy, extremely cheap ($1300) mac. 233Mhz G3, 32 Megs RAM, 4gig HD- looks like a decent Linux box to me.

This is a sorta different thing for me to post, but bear with me. Curtis Wilcox sent us a note saying that "">Macintouch would like to hear from anyone successfully running Linux within Connectix's VirtualPC 2.0. Email them at notes@macintouch.com " If anyone has pulled it off, they definately should let them know. And if anyone has a lazy evening, maybe they should try to pull it off... Update Thanks to the 50 of you who warned me about the (now fixed) typo that was once above, all naked and exposed to the whole world *grin*.

Scott Millen (my coworker, and sparring partner in the OS war :) sent me a link to Mac OS Rumors, which is posting a Press Release from Al Guerra Enterprises, Inc, which apparently is stepping up to the plate to support MkLinux. They sell a service plan for $99 and up. This is a really interesting idea: the new Mac hardware is impressive, and a lot of MacOS users may be interested in giving Linux a shot. Apps like The Gimp certainly are a good incentive to try out a new OS.

An anonymous reader sent us a link to Mac OS Rumors where you can read a comment that Mach will actually be the muscle underneath most PowerMac products in the next 12 months. The scariest comment is about an experimental MkLinux kernel that runs Rhapsody DR2 and MMKLinux DR3 simultaneously. I always figured my next box would be an Alpha, but those G3s are looking better every day.

Lee Maguire writes "ZDnet is running this story about one of Apple's billboards being defaced. It's good to see that when Mac users vandalise, at least they use a little creativity".

John sent us this link where you can read about a G3/300 overpowering the Compaq box with a P2/400. The tests were just Photoshop, so that biases things somewhat, but its still pretty cool. Can't wait to try Linux out on one of those buggers. We should perform some of the same tests in the Gimp just for comparisons sake.

While the first release of Rhapsody should be in July, it appears that future versions of the MacOS will also be based on the Mach kernel, Rhapsody core OS and "Yellow Box".