News

T he following story is fiction. I tell you this story to illustrate a point which I promise to make abundantly clear. Any resemblance of the characters in this purely fabricated tale to any real person is by coincidence only. I was surfing the iNet using a friendis PC when a pop-up ad appeared on…

metaobject releases BookLightning, a lightweight imposition program for booklets and simple magazines With BookLightning, you can create booklets for stapling or folding from any PDF file, or even directly from the Mac OS X print panel. It arranges the pages of a PDF files on sheets of paper in such a fashion that they will…

Q uickTime is pretty slick, especially if you have the Pro version that offers more control and allows you to put together movie clips and photos. The problem with QuickTime Movie Player is that it lacks a nice interface that will allow you to organize your clips or give more than basic information about the…

M icrosoftis business, at least in the UK division of MSN, is apparently in the toilet. Literally. Keep in mind that there are roughly 1,726 other jokes we could have made, but that one seemed the safest. In any event, WebUser UK is reporting that MSN is preparing to release the iLoo. Now, a "loo"…

T wo Apple patents issued on April 29, 2003. Apple filed for a patent application for a "Methods and apparatus for handwriting recognition" on May 23, 1996 — relatively eons ago. The abstract states: Method and apparatus for handwriting recognition system for ideographies characters and other characters based on subcharacter hidden Markov models. The ideographies…

M icrosoft. Weill wait until the hisses and boos die down. Itis funny how that one word can elicit such a rainbow of reactions; from unbridled admiration ("I love Microsoft so much that I want to name my first born Billy-Gee!"), to abject disillusionment ("Oh gawd! Is there naught but Word I can use to…

A pple has posted another QuickTime sales pitch for the upcoming World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC). The WWDC is Appleis annual gathering for Mac developers, and this yearis event effectively has what used to be QuickTime Live! rolled into it. That means that QuickTime gets a much bigger light to shine at the WWDC than…

I n a column today, I took JetBlue to task for “standardizing” on Windows and Microsoft software. A good many Observers then took me to task, largely telling me to get over myself. Having been doing this as long as I have, such criticism is not in the least unexpected, but when I got a…

A pple was granted three new patents yesterday by the US Patent and Trademark Office. These patents were all applied between 1999 and 2001, and all are programming patents. The first was for a "System, apparatus and method for spatially sorting image data in a three-dimensional graphics pipeline." Filed: August 20, 1999 Granted: April 22,…

A pple has ever so quietly revved the iBook line to 900 MHz, without so much as a press release making the announcement. Eagle-eyed Observer Stephen Joiner was on the ball, however, and let TMO know about the revision. The new iBooks sport 800 MHz and 900 MHz G3 processors, 32 MB ATI Mobility Radeon…

While continuing to push the envelope with products like the Eddy Award-winning Default Folder X for Mac OS X, St. Clair Software also realizes that there are still many users running Mac OS 9. With this in mind, St. Clair Software today released version 3.1.5 of Default Folder, their 5-mouse-rated enhancement for Open and Save…

A ppleis hot new Safari now sports tabbed browsing and other cool features, and many a Mac now sports Safari as the default browser. Safari is fast, lean, and is giving more established browsers and real challenge for the hearts and minds of Mac users; something that should bring a slight smile to S. J.is…

Maxprog is proud to present a new release of iCash, new version 1.2, available now in English, German, French, Italian, Dutch and Spanish on Maxprog website with several interesting improvements, new features and bug fixes. iCash is a tool intended to control your personal finances, keeping track of incomes, expenses, credits, debts and Banks transactions…

I n the outside-Apple department, we noted that Sony has decided to rev the PlayStation 2, at least in Japan. The consumer electronics giant is adding support for DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, and DVD+RW discs. Apple currently offers DVD-R support in its SuperDrive equipped Macs. The new support for these formats in the PlayStation 2 is…

I f you buy computers for a large organization, your job may not be an easy one. It may sound like the ideal occupation for the gadget-freak guy or the woman with the urge to purchase. There is a lot to consider, however, before plunking down the company credit card in the local computer store,…

If our objective is to maximize economic growth, are we striking the right balance in our protection of intellectual property rights? Are the protections sufficiently broad to encourage innovation but not so broad as to shut down follow-on innovation? Are such protections so vague that they produce uncertainties that raise risk premiums and the cost…

Oh, I donit yammer at any old thing, so your toaster and your easy chair are both safe from me. Usually the objects (literally) I direct my one-sided conversations to belong to me, and they are normally items of convenience. Like my Cube, for instance, and the 12″ PowerBook I intend to buy soon. I…

A nother security vulnerability has been reported with Microsoftis line of server operating systems. While such news is nothing new to long-time Microsoft watchers, the difference between the new issue and past ones lies in the response from Redmond. According to an article published in the Register, Windows XP and 2000 users need to install…