MacMinute Executive Briefing: October 11
October 11, 2003 - 06:00 PDT   MacMinute's Executive Briefing for October 11, 2003 -- a recap of all the news we have posted over the past week -- is now available. If you think you may have missed something, here is your chance to catch up.

Week in Review - 10/06/03-10/10/03

Apple this week announced that Mac OS X version 10.3 "Panther," the next major release of the company's operating system, will be available on Friday, October 24, beginning at 8:00 p.m. for US$129 at all Apple Stores and Apple resellers. Apple says Panther "delivers more than 150 breakthrough new features including a completely new Finder that provides one-click access to a user's favorite files and folders; Expose, a revolutionary new way to instantly see all open windows at once; and iChat AV, a complete desktop video conferencing solution for business, education and consumers." The company also announced that Mac OS X Server "Panther" would be released at the same time.

As part of its "Mac OS X Up-To-Date" program, Apple is offering purchasers of new Macintosh systems (on or after October 8, 2003) and owners of Power Mac G5s (regardless of date of purchase) the ability to upgrade to Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther" for $19.95. The program ends on December 26, 2003 -- further details are available from Apple's site.

The Detroit Free Press reported that Apple and Dell are both going after a $156 million laptop order for Michigan's schools. The deal will involve 130,000 laptops for every sixth-grade student in the state -- and that's just for the first year. Representatives from Dell and Apple have visited the state to try and woo educational leaders. "Apple probably has the edge, based on the much-publicized success it has had with the nation's two most-watched educational experiments with wireless laptops," the newspaper says. (Henrico County, Virginia and the state of Maine.) The decision on which company to select will be made in November, with the first districts getting their laptops in time for the January semester to start.

Apple plans to open a new retail store at the North Point Mall in Alpharetta, Georgia, according to the mall's Web site. This will be the second Apple Store in the state -- in May 2002, a store was opened in Atlanta at the Lenox Square Mall. In addition, Apple will open a new store at the La Encantada shopping center in Tucson, Arizona, according to the Arizona Daily Star.

Rock bands Thursday and Thrice, will perform on Wednesday evening, October 15th at the Apple retail stores in New York City and Santa Monica, California, respectively. Thursday will take the stage at the Apple Store SoHo in New York City at 7:00 p.m. ET, and Thrice will open up at the Apple Store Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica at 7:00 p.m. PT. Both events will be videotaped, and the content will be streamed in Quicktime and available from Apple's site. In addition, an iPod digital music player will be given away at each event.

Apple began airing a new television commercial that features the concept of the popular print campaign, but brings the medium alive with motion. The ad features black silhouettes with iPods dancing in front of vibrant colors to "Hey Mama" by the Black Eyed Peas. It concludes with: "iPod" then "Mac or PC" and finally the Apple logo. It was spotted during NBC's "The West Wing."

Apple could possibly take advantage of a new processor-cooling technique announced this week by Cooligy, a Stanford University spin-off company. In fact, the company said it has already prototyped the system with Apple, Intel and AMD. "Cooligy's approach -- called Active Micro-Channel Cooling (AMC) -- involves scoring hundreds of tiny channels into a silicon layer placed on the upper surface of the chip package, reported The Register. "Water -- or any other fluid, for that matter -- circulates through the channels drawing heat away from the core... The Apple connection is interesting since Cooligy's could play a major role in allowing the company to ship G5-based PowerBooks. The 64-bit CPU requires a major computer-controlled cooling system in its desktop incarnation, rendering it effectively useless for mobile applications."

Apple should have adopted Intel processors when it had the chance, former Apple CEO John Sculley said Tuesday. "That's probably one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made, not going to the Intel platform," he said. "In the late-1980s, when Apple was using Motorola Inc. 68000 series chips and considering its next step, Intel co-founder Andy Grove tried to convince the company to migrate to Intel chips, Sculley told a standing-room-only crowd at the Silicon Valley 4.0 conference," reported IDG. "An experienced team from Cupertino, California-based Apple studied the idea but turned it down."

FirewireDirect announced the Spark 800, the latest addition to the company's line of FireWire 800 storage products. The Spark 800 is a FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 equipped portable 2.5-inch hard drive, available in configurations up to 80GB. It is housed in a compact, silver chassis "barely larger than a deck of cards," and ships with Intech's Speed Tools for the Mac. Pricing starts at $299.95.

Griffin Technology announced that the new iTrip FM Transmitters for third generation iPods have started shipping. The new iTrip is similar to the original iTrip, but offers an even sleeker body style, new power saving features and a red LED light to match the new iPods red backlight. The new iTrip is priced at $35 and is available now. Also released today are over 100 new international iTrip frequencies that are compatible with both original and new iTrips. Two new packets of frequencies are available now to download from Griffin's Web site.

MYOB nnounced the release of the latest version of its small business management and accounting software, MYOB AccountEdge 2004 for Mac OS X. MYOB AccountEdge 2004 introduces a new suite of integrated business services, including credit card authorization and direct deposit of payroll checks. "We're bringing features to the Mac platform that only Windows users have had before," said Cynthia Mackewicz, General Manager, MYOB US, Inc. "MYOB recently introduced MYOB SurePayroll, the first online payroll solution that integrates with a Mac small business package, and now with fully integrated credit card processing, direct deposits and electronic vendor payments, this represents another first-to-market exclusive business opportunity from MYOB."

Computer Systems Odessa released ConceptDraw V, a major upgrade of its flowcharting and diagramming application for Mac OS X. Completely redesigned to facilitate charting and presentation tasks for business and technical users, the new version features ConceptDraw Basic, a built-in scripting language that enables developers to create customized visualization solutions based on the ConceptDraw drawing engine. ConceptDraw V is available in Standard and Professional versions. The Standard Edition ($149) is aimed at business users, managers and administrative staff. The Professional Edition ($349) is designed specifically for IT, technical users and developers. Current users can upgrade the Professional version for $99 and the Standard license for $79.

The Iconfactory on Thursday released iPulse 2.0, a new version of its popular Mac OS X system monitoring utility. Version 2.0 introduces over 40 new features including: pop-up windows that show info for the gauge under your cursor; the ability to load and save the application's appearance via iPulse "Jackets"; mobility gauges that monitor battery power and wireless signal strength; disk activity gauges; automatic and logarithmic scaling modes for disk and network activity; system hotkeys that show or hide the iPulse window at any time; reduced CPU usage; and Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther" compatibility. The Iconfactory has also launched the iPulse Jacket Gallery, where you can download Jackets to customize the look and feel of iPulse. The software sells for $12.95 and is a free upgrade for registered users of version 1.0.

Ableton said that Live 3, the new version of its popular sequencing instrument for Mac OS 9 and OS X, is now shipping. According to the company, the new version "brings a new world of possibilities to your compositions, loops and samples by giving you control inside of the sample." Among the new features are Clip Envelopes, which extend Live's "elastic" approach to audio by allowing you to achieve endless variations of a sample. The new version also offers MIDI key ranges, velocity sensitivity, a new Legato Mode, a new Consolidate command, new effects, and more. Live 3 is priced at $399.

Other Software:

• HomeGuardian 2.0 - update to the application that turns a Mac and a Web camera into a security system by integrating motion detection with reporting features.


• Retrospect 5.1 - new version of the backup software optimized for the Power Mac G5.


• iVCD 1.1 - update to the software that lets you easily create Video CDs and Super Video CDs.


• ComputerGuardian 1.0 - new utility that will monitor your computer and attached devices and report its location if the computer is stolen.


• MP3 Rage 5.8 - update to the popular MP3 tag editing software for Mac OS X and Mac OS 9.


• NetNewsWire Lite 1.0.5 - latest version of the easy-to-use RSS news reader for Web sites.

In this week's round up, the folks at MacFixIt report on Apple's potential replacement of some damaged PowerBook batteries; several Mac OS X 10.2.8 troubleshooting techniques; and a problem involving character conversion in Office across platforms.

Black screen problem acknowledged
Previous reports of a problem with OS X 10.2.8 (build 6R65) where running Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions on some Beige G3 computers and PowerBook G3 laptops would result in a blank/black screen have been confirmed by Apple. The company outlined the specific combinations of hardware that cause it to occur. According to Apple, the problem can occur on the following computers after installing OS X 10.2.8 (build 6R65): PowerBook G3 Series (Bronze Keyboard) with 192 MB or more RAM; Any other Mac or PowerBook model with an ATI graphics chipset and 192 MB or more RAM.

Troubleshooting minor Mac OS X upgrade issues
One technique we recommend for ruling out user-level files as the cause of problems in incremental Mac OS X updates is the creation of a "clean" account on your Mac. First, use the Accounts pane of System Preferences to create a new "clean" user. After creating this new account, log out of your own account and then log into the clean account. If the problems you've been experiencing are gone, then the cause of the problem is a file inside your normal home directory (/Users/yourusername). This means it's time to start looking at preference files, cache files, Login Items, or other user-specific files to find the reason for the problem, rather than looking to the recent update as the cause.

Characters cannot be transferred from Office XP
There is an issue affecting Microsoft Word documents created under Office XP and then opened in Office v.X for Mac OS X. It appears that some characters cannot be automatically translated. Word v.X apparently can't display the '1/2' '1/4' or '3/4' fraction symbols generated by XP. Instead of saying '1/2 cup flour', the Mac says '_ cup flour' Until another workaround is found, you can go to the Windows XP machine, access Tools > autocorrect, go to the autoformat tab and turn off "replace fractions with fraction character."

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