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Apple May Release Snow Leopard Early Next Year
Snow Leopard to pounce in Q1 2009?
Leopard Runs Very Nicely on PowerPC Macs
Every Working Computer Is Useful to Someone
Parallels 4.0 Not Quite Fully Baked
NVIDIA Brings Supercomputing To The Desktop
Nvidia pitches Tesla GPU-as-CPU tech 'personal supercomputer'
Follow the Somali Pirate Scourge Via Google Mashup
Lame Mac Trojan Limps Into View
Microsoft Saw Apple's Anti-vista Campaign Coming
Apple's New Challenges
Apple, music labels talk DRM-free songs
Should Apple Acquire Sun Microsystems?
Macy's Prepares for World-Famous Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with FileMaker Pro 9
PC Mag: Tech Firms Use Social Media to Reach Consumers
The Mac Night Owl: Will Snow Leopard Arrive with the Snow?
Apple May Release Snow Leopard Early Next Year
AppleInsider reports:
An Apple director has inadvertently broken word that his company may be planning to release Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard three months earlier than expected.
Speaking at the Large Installation System Administration (LISA) conference in San Diego last week, Apple's director of Unix technology Jordan Hubbard ran a series of slides [PDF] as part of his presentation, which have since been linked off the conference's website....
In addition to all past releases, it pencils in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard for a release during first quarter (Jan - Mar) of 2009......
For the full report visit here:
http://tinyurl.com/67aya9
Snow Leopard to pounce in Q1 2009?
MacUser's Dan Moren reports:
You probably don't know Jordan Hubbard. Heck, before about an hour or two ago, we couldn't have told you if he was a B-movie actor from the 1920s or the barista at our local coffee shop. Now, however, we can say with reasonable certainty that he's the Director of the UNIX Technology Group at Apple.
Why, you're wondering, is that so great?
Well, last Thursday, Hubbard spoke at LISA '08 (don't get excited, it's not a conference for aficionados of the Apple Lisa, but rather for Large Installation System Administration).....
.....Which, ordinarily would be pretty boring, except for the fact that he lists the release date for 10.6 Snow Leopard as Q1 2009.....
For the full commentary visit here:
http://www.macuser.com/software/snow_leopard_to_pounce_in_q1_2.php
Leopard Runs Very Nicely on PowerPC Macs
Low End Mac's Simon Royal says:
There has been lots of talk on various Apple discussion websites and Mac mailing lists that I subscribe to about how Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" is not geared towards PowerPC Macs and was developed with Intel Macs in mind. I disagree with this.
A fellow group member had Leopard installed on a 1.67 GHz PowerBook G4 and claimed it was unusable, so much so that he reverted to Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger", something I found very strange. I have seen Leopard running on a number of G4 Macs. I even have it installed on my 1.25 GHz eMac with 1 GB of RAM, and it runs lovely; even when it had 512 MB of RAM, it was very much usable, and maxing it to its 2 GB limit will make it a very snappy machine....
For the full commentary visit here:
http://lowendmac.com/ed/royal/08sr/leopard-on-powerpc.html
Every Working Computer Is Useful to Someone
Low End Mac's Allison Payne says:
....surrounded by creative professionals of every skill level in the birthplace of supercomputing, hearing about bleeding edge software features, and I couldn't help but laugh. "1,700-person years went into the upgrade from CS3 to CS4," according to the rep.
I laughed because, while the new suite is impressive, the clients I normally deal with will probably never need any application from Adobe (with the exception of Acrobat or possibly Elements), and watching the parade of high-end features was so foreign to my everyday experience. Note that I said my clients will probably not need CS4. That doesn't stop people from wanting the latest version of Photoshop, even if they'll only take 200 digital photos in their entire life and have no other use for an image editor.
Adobe, like Microsoft, has become so dominant that it's filtered down into the consciousness of even the most basic computer user.
Do I Need It?...
More and more, thanks to open source software, the answer to the latter question is "No!" But in addition to that is a resource that a lot of people overlook: used computers.....
I especially love introducing families who have kids in elementary school to the slot-loading, all-in-one iMac G3, starting with the first FireWire model. The selling points are compelling: for somewhere in the vicinity of $100 and with minimal upgrades to the stock configuration, you can have a compact, fairly rugged machine capable of running Mac OS X.4.11 (and OS 9) that works with almost any printer, can go online wirelessly, can play a wide variety of educational games made between 1995 and 2005, and is virtually immune to viruses and other malware.....
For the full commentary visit here:
http://lowendmac.com/ed/payne/08ap/useful-to-someone.html
Parallels 4.0 Not Quite Fully Baked
Before it was fully released, Parallels 4.0 was not open for wide scrutiny as a public beta. That's too bad, writes The Houston Chronicle's reviewer Dwight Silverman, because the finished product appears to have serious issues when it comes to upgrading. Besides that, though, the Windows-within-a-Mac app has some great features, and it uses up fewer resources than its predecessors.
You can check it out at:
http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/65195.html
NVIDIA Brings Supercomputing To The Desktop
AFP reports:
US technology firm NVIDIA rolled out high-performance "personal supercomputers" Tuesday that let desktop workstations handle mind-boggling tasks once far beyond their capabilities.
Computers built with innovative NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs) are capable of handling calculations typically relegated to expensive supercomputing "clusters" -- a technology breakthrough the company says could soon bring lightning speeds to the next generation of computers aimed at the consumer market.
NVIDIA's Tesla Personal Supercomputers deliver approximately 250 times the processing power of current computer workstations for similar prices, according to the California-based company.
For the full report visit here:
http://tinyurl.com/6rctwy
Nvidia pitches Tesla GPU-as-CPU tech 'personal supercomputer'
The Register's Tony Smith reports:
Nvidia has introduced a desktop computer architecture based on its Tesla graphics chip and it's calling the system the first "real" desktop supercomputer.
The typical spec comprises an AMD four-core Phenom processor plus a trio of Tesla C1060 two-slot cards and a Quadro FX card to take the GPU total to four. The Quadro handles the graphcs while the three Teslas combine with Nvidia's CUDA GPU-as-CPU software to crunch numbers.
For the full report visit here:
http://tinyurl.com/5domfs
Follow the Somali Pirate Scourge Via Google Mashup
The Register's Lewis Page reports:
The world's media continues to follow the long-running piracy problems in the Gulf of Aden, with interest stimulated by last week's fatal shootings by Royal Marines off the Yemeni coast and the reported sinking of a buccaneer "mothership" by the Indian Navy yesterday evening. Meanwhile, other seaborne raiders in the region successfully hijacked five merchantmen including a 300,000-ton supertanker loaded with crude oil.
According to the International Maritime Bureau's weekly piracy summary, eleven ships were attacked in the Horn of Africa area in the week up to Monday. There were only four incidents in other areas around the world.
In the meantime, fear not - the Reg will not be bulking out its coverage with any more non-digital piracy stories unless something out of the ordinary happens. One reason we won't is that anyone who'd like to keep track can do it for themselves very simply.
We particularly recommend the IMB's Google-mash "Live Piracy Map", weekly summaries and Alert page.
For the full commentary visit here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/19/pirate_roundup/
Lame Mac Trojan Limps Into View
The Register's John Leyden reports:
Security researchers have uncovered a rare example of a Trojan that affects Mac PCs.
Lamzev-A creates a backdoor on compromised Mac OS-X systems. The malware typically disguises itself as video codec on dodgy websites. Mac users hoping to watch a clip from a grumble flick get infected instead, a trick carried out by the earlier RSPlug Mac Trojan.
Few have fallen for the bait. The malware is notable as a rare example of a malicious agent capable of infecting Apple systems rather than any threat that it poses, which is minimal.....
For the full report visit here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/19/mac_trojan/
Microsoft Saw Apple's Anti-vista Campaign Coming
Appleinsider's Katie Marsal reports:
Microsoft officials were concerned about the performance of Windows Vista and the way it would be compared to Mac OS X long before Apple zeroed in on the problematic software with its humorous "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" advertising campaign, internal emails show.
For the full report visit here:
http://tinyurl.com/6jfobw
Apple's New Challenges
Apple 2.0's Philip Elmer-DeWitt says:
I've long been fascinated by the shifting circles in the New York Times' "sector snapshots," those charts in the Business Section that show the relative sizes of companies in a particular field — and which ones are leading, slipping, lagging or improving relative to the S&P 500.
On Wednesday, the Times ran the snapshot I'd been waiting for - the one that shows where Apple stands vis a vis its competitors in technology hardware & equipment.
For the full report visit here:
http://tinyurl.com/6o9arv
Apple, music labels talk DRM-free songs
CNET's Greg Sandoval reports:
A year after iTunes began offering music without copy protection software from EMI, Apple is in discussions with the other three top recording companies about acquiring DRM-free songs, according to two music industry sources.
The talks are still preliminary and no deals have been finalized, but one source said one of the major labels is close to a final agreement. Rumors have been swirling on the Internet for a week that Sony would soon be offering music without the controversial digital rights management software. My sources could not confirm this.
For the full report visit here:
http://tinyurl.com/6m5wdt
Should Apple Acquire Sun Microsystems?
InfoWorld's Savio Rodrigues says:
Sun considered a merger or acquisition with Apple on three occasions in the past ... is it time for Sun to open that door again?
I thought I had a novel idea when I told a friend this weekend that Sun and Apple could make an interesting pair. However, it seems that this isn't a novel idea after all. In 2006 it was reported that Sun had tried to acquire Apple once and considered a merger with Apple on two other occasions.
How the times have changed. Apple, now with a 25 times higher market capitalization than Sun, would be in a slightly different bargaining position....
For the full commentary visit here:
http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/archives/2008/11/would_apple_acq.html
Macy's Prepares for World-Famous Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade with FileMaker Pro 9
[Press Release]
Macy's Parade & Entertainment Group is gearing up for next week's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City using FileMaker Pro 9, the best-selling easy-to-use database software for Mac and Windows. This year marks the first year that FileMaker Pro 9 will be used by the Macy's Parade & Entertainment Group to manage the myriad of information on the people, including the thousands of volunteers, and logistics required to ensure the smooth flow of all the magnificent helium balloons, floats, singers, dancers, performers and celebrities along the streets of New York City into Herald Square.
"With more than 5,000 people participating in this year's parade, our new FileMaker Pro 9 databases will bring together all the required functions for the parade into one manageable, networked solution," said Robin Hall, senior vice president, Macy's Parade & Entertainment Group.
Macy's Parade & Entertainment Group, including its fabled Parade Studio in Hoboken, N.J., will take advantage of a networked FileMaker Pro solution for a variety of tasks, including costume inventory and assignment, float and balloon inventory and location, and volunteer history and assignment.
Before FileMaker Pro was deployed, the database for the parade was originally built in Microsoft Access and its operation required programming knowledge beyond the basic consumer level. This caused delays and resulted in the need to export all work from Microsoft Access queries into Microsoft Excel documents to find specific information in a user-friendly manner.
"With our new FileMaker database system, time-consuming tasks such as assigning volunteers parade responsibilities have been reduced from about 10 days to just one or two days, and more important, we can better meet the needs and specifications of each individual, group and staff member," said Hall.
Future expansion of the Macy's Parade database will involve Web-published content, including online registration for volunteer participation in the parade.
FileMaker, Inc. is a subsidiary of Apple Inc.
PC Mag: Tech Firms Use Social Media to Reach Consumers
Recognizing the limits of traditional advertising, established technology companies are diving headlong into the sometimes chaotic landscape of social media to promote their products.
Companies ranging from PC maker Dell Inc to storage equipment maker NetApp Inc are increasingly turning to outside blogs, viral videos and websites such as FaceBook, Twitter, FriendFeed and Digg-and their tens of millions of users-to reach consumers.
To read more, go to:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2335007,00.asp
The Mac Night Owl: Will Snow Leopard Arrive with the Snow?
There are fascinating Mac rumors afoot these days, topped with the report that Apple's next reference operating system release may arrive sooner than expected, perhaps as early as the first quarter of next year.
Here's the URL for today's commentary:
http://www.macnightowl.com/2008/11/will-snow-leopard-arrive-with-the-snow/
Notes: You can also access our new RSS feed, available at:
http://www.macnightowl.com/rss
Or our new Atom feed at:
http://www.macnightowl.com/atom
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