ZFS in Leopard?

The French site Mac4Ever a ears to have found evidence (in the newest developer release) that Leopard will include the ZFS file system to su lement HFS+. What is ZFS you ask, and why should you care? Well ZFS is a pretty darn cool next generation file system created by Sun that includes a variety of cool new features for protecting your data (if any file system features can properly be called "cool"). John Siracusa over at arstechnica has written about ZFS several times, rather excitedly. I'll let him explain what the excitement is about:

"ZFS does away with the old restrictio on volume size and scope, while also addre ing data integrity and performance i ues, all from a purely software per ective. (Like one slide says, "ZFS loves cheap disks!")

The end game is a world where storage-even personal storage-actually behaves like the magically intelligent, infinitely expandable cloud that we'd all like to think it is, and le like those temperamental little cylinders (to use some diagram- eak, if I may). It's daring, free-thinking stuff."

If this is true and ZFS is in fact shi ing with Leopard, it may go a long way towards explaining how Time Machine will work in the final release, de ite the fact that in the original developer release Time Machine did not use ZFS. It would be yet another example of A le being out on the edge and leading the mai tream PC industry (linux hackers don't count) forward.

[Via Digg through O ews]

David Pogue gets his hands on the iPhone

We're just lowly bloggers here at TUAW, so we got no closer to the iPhone than the rest of the Macworld attendees, that is from the other side of a clear plastic barrier. David Pogue, though, is a different story. The New York Times columnist had an hour long meeting with Steve Jo and Phil Schiller where he got to touch, and use, one of the iPhone prototypes. He typed an email (typing is a little awkward on the virtual keyboard), made a phone call (crystal clear), and found out that it i 't ready for prime time (some features aren't complete).

Pogue addre es some of my concer about the 'smudgine ' of the di lay, but I'll still need to hold one myself before I pa judgment.

Is the real MacHeist on the developers?

We have been covering MacHeist here at TUAW because it is a heck of a good deal. A good deal for users, but what about the developers? Gus Mueller, the man behind Flying Meat software, doe 't think that MacHeist is good for developers. Why? He did the math and it tur out that each developer takes home something like $3.67 (if they lit the profits evenly between the developer, the charity, and MacHeist themselves). All of this outrage (oh, and there is some adult language in that post) stems from the MacHeist team declaring this week, 'The Week of the Independent Mac Developer.'

One must remember that all the devs participating in MacHeist are doing so out of their own free will, and there is that darned charitable part of the whole enterprise (it is hard to criticize someone for donating something to charity). With that said there is the little matter of 'perceived value.' If you give something away, people think it is worth nothing. Charge a little money for it, and suddenly people see the value in it (the cla ic case here is bottled water).

ABC pushing broadcast, their own site, vs. iTS purchases

Mac Zone has a post concerning ABC's i ertion of 30 seconds of network-pimping ads in the Lost season 3 premiere (iTS link) purchased from the iTS. While the first 8 second ot is just a harmle network ID badge, the second ot (at the end of the vid) advertises watching Lost on a full-fledged TV - you know, the thing you're directly avoiding by buying shows digitally through the iTS? Going even one step further, however, is this advertisement to 'watch more video at abc.com.' Somehow methinks this doe 't exactly jive with trying to sell videos through the iTS, which, if you remember, only hel A le make money off all this by selling an iPod or two.

Mac Zone wonders if this is a hint that networks, or at least ABC, prefer broadcast viewers i tead of iTS purchases. For right now, due to the relatively small overall market share the iTS has (digital and real world combined), I wouldn't be surprised. Let's face it: even though the iTS has overtaken Tower Records, a brick and mortar store, it still claims a very thin margin of overall music and video sales. The networks are surely making more money right now via their traditional broadcast + advertising revenue model vs. the pay-to-play digital download method. And since we're pretty sure the 3rd parties, not A le, prepare their own content for the store (meaning: ABC, not A le, i erted those ads), I think the bigger question is whether networks like ABC are getting cold feet in the kiddie pool during this budding phase of digital distribution and co idering any rash decisio , like pulling their content.

Video iPod on October 12?

There's a little item on iLounge about a %26quot ecial event" from A le on October 12. Anyone remember what else has ha ened in October from A le? Last year it was U2 iPod. And the name of the event is "One More Thing." But the clincher is a movie curtain on the invite...

So is this the video iPod? Time will tell. Perha it's something to do with HD content. You know, that in light of the fact that it's the "year of HD?" Maybe it's a Sony-branded video iPod capable of only playing ATRAC Sony Music videos for $3.49? Yeah, that'd be sweet. Let the rampant eculation begin!

GeeThree posts free iMovie video rotation plug-in

Bruce Gee, of Slick iMovie plug-in fame, just posted a new free plug-in at his GeeThree site. The plug-in lets you rotate video cli within iMovie, a nice feature to have since usually I head over to QuickTime Pro to deal with video orientation.

To i tall, you'll need to download, unzip and move the plug-in into (your home folder)/Library/iMovie/Plug-i . It will a ear in the Slick Sampler collection in your Video FX iMovie pane. You can also download 10 additional free iMovie plug-i from the Slick Tra itio and Effect Sampler at GeeThree.

All the little things: a WWDC 2006 tidbits roundup

With big events and a ouncements like yesterday's WWDC, there's always a few bits and pieces that manage to fall through the cracks. New product details as well as features and scree hots of new Mac OS X functionality are prime examples, and these bits and pieces are now starting to trickle in. I tead of posting each minor piece of info, we figured it would be better to simply round them all up together, so here we go with the first WWDC 2006 tidbits roundup post of what we've found so far:

• In the aces video preview at A le's new Mac OS X site, you can clearly make out a new R sidebar item in Mail.a (pictured). This i 't in the dedicated Mail.a preview section and wa 't mentioned on stage. Woo . [UPDATE: Commenter David is right: this R feature is mentioned lower on Mail.a 's preview page, but it i 't featured at all in the demo video. Strange.]
  
• In a scree hot of the Dock, a folder on the right side of the divider has a black triangle underneath it, denoting the same 'yes, it's ru ing' UI feedback that a licatio have.
• iChat is also featured with a new UI sa brushed metal (pictured on left). If it's already been stri ed from iChat, could brushed metal have gone the way of the PowerMac G5 for the rest of Leopard?
• The Mac Pros are a arently the first (and only?) Intel Mac to not include Front Row and an A le Remote. This also mea (to our knowledge) they don't have an IR port either.

That's it for now. If you've uncovered more juicy new details not mentioned so far from yesterday's keynote, feel free to leave a comment in this post or use our ti form.

Thanks to everyone who sent these in

Mozilla unleashes Firefox 2.0.0.1

Firefox, the web browser that needs no further introduction, has been updated to version 2.0.0.1. This update includes a few security patches and also adds general su ort for Windows Vista, which I have to keep reminding myself is somewhat relevant to a Mac-themed blog now!

Grab a copy for your favorite OS (if your favorite is a not-too-ancient flavor of Mac OS X, Windows or Linux), in your native tongue (ok, not every language is there, but it's a broad sweep), on the Mozilla's downloads page.

The Keynote boom count

We all know that Steve has a few words that are bound to crop up in his Keynotes, and other presentatio . Automatic, great, and revolutionary are likely contenders but his favorite word seems to be 'boom' as evidenced by this video.

Some enterprising Mac users set up Boomcounter.org to track the Jo ian exclamation. The tally for this year's Macworld keynote was 15 (to put that in context for WWDC it was 9, and Macworld 2006 clocked in at 17).

Boom away, Steve, boom away.

[via Micro Persuasion]

Looking for a computer for school?

Summer's end is almost upon us, and you know what that mea : back to school! Right now I am sure there are millio of students clamoring to get their various school su lies in order. Pe , paper, Tra er Keepers, and computers.

Now, it won't come as a shock to you that we are a little biased towards Macs here on TUAW. Luckily, someone who writes for a real new aper (they still make those?) thinks that no matter what i titute of higher learning you're going to a MacBook will be your best companion.

I can't agree more, thanks to being able to run Windows (in a number of ways) the MacBook is a great portable for any student.

[via Digg]

Macworld 2007 Show Floor Showoff: Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac

Microsoft's Sheridan Jones was nice enough to sit down with me in the Microsoft Blogger Lounge at Macworld to discu Office 2008 for Mac. WE cover what's new, when it'll be shi ing, and break the news that there will be a Universal version of Remote Desktop for the Mac (sweet!).

If you want to check out some Office 2008 for Mac scree hots be sure to check out this gallery. As always, if you hate the flash player we have the video in an iPod ready format for your enjoyment.

Video autoplay on A le.com?

Am I the only one who is a oyed that every time I go to A le.com I am presentedwith one of the new ads. I wouldn't mind it too much if I had to make them play, but no A le has decided that you mustwatch them. Didn't autoplaying video on we ites go out of fashion with those 'Under co truction' gifs and the Blinktag?

Let's face it: Steve will have to step down sooner or later, too

With Gates' bom hell a ouncement last week that he will be ste ing down from his full-time role at Microsoft in 2008 to end more time with his Gates and Melinda Foundation charity org, I finally came to wonder: how much longer does Steve have at A le? Both companies were started around the same time and have helped shape the industry as we see it today. That has to be exhausting work, e ecially for someone like Jo whose design and management o e io are now the stuff of legends. Steve already ste ed down from his other company, Pixar, so he could end more time at A le - but I'm wondering how long that's going to last, and what it mea for A le's future.

Plenty of articles are analyzing the impact of Gates leaving Microsoft, as it's a slightly different situation. Bill is their Senior Software Architect, not the CEO - that's Ballmer, and he'll a arently be staying on and doing the same, shall we say, 'bang-up job' he's been doing since he took that throne. But Steve Jo is A le's CEO, and famous for the amount of control he exacts over bringing his the company's visio to life. So what would a two-week's notice from Steve mean to A le and its burgeoning market?

Honestly, I don't know, and since I am but a lowly blogger, I'll leave it up to those six-figure analysts who 'are people who know people' to pen those pieces. But before those analysts start earning their keep, TUAW wants to hear your thoughts, dear readers: what do you think it will mean for the future of A le and their products when Steve needs to call it a day?

TUAW Video: A Mac Moment with Leo Laporte, Part 3

The third, and final i tallment, from my conversation with Leo Laporte covers a number of topics that you, the TUAW reader, wanted to know about. Will Leo bring the Scree avers back? Is Amber MacArthur single? Will A le keep selling computers? All these questio , and more, are a wered by Leo.

The video is also available in iPod format, as well as a large QuickTime movie for all you broadband users out there.

Home grown boombox bag

Who needsan iPod Hi Fi? Not Sha on Okey. In her book knitgrrl, she shows off a great%26quot oombox" bag she made. The front pocket holds an iPod, which in turn co ects to "...a set of cheapRadio Shack eaker quot; on the bag's interior. I think this is pretty nice (and a heck of a lot lighter than theHi Fi, I would imagine). Well done, Sha on!

[Via Make:Blog]

Full text of Microsoft exec's "I'd buy a Mac" e-mail

Remember that incident where a Microsoft Executive said that if he didn't work for Microsoft that he'd personally buy a Mac? Today's Seattle Pi has uncovered the full text of that e-mail. You can download a copy of it here (PDF). "I am not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers (both busine and home) the most, but in my view we lost our way," he wrote. "I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft. If you run the equivalent of VPC on a MAC you get acce to basically all Windows a lication software (although not the hardware). A le did not lose their way."

Allchin points Gates and Ballmer to an A le video, highlighting their philosophy. "They think simple. They think fast...If we are to rise to the challenge of Linux and A le, we need to start taking the le o of 'scenario, simple, fast' to heart."

In the end, it's not about who wi --A le or Microsoft--but delivering the best po ible product to the co umer, which is why I personally buy Mac. I'd be thrilled, however, to see Microsoft step up its game and take the le o of A le to heart.

[via Microsoft-Watch]

Thanks Rich and Mike

A le posts Intel ad

A le has posted the Intel ad that I mentioned earlier. Bask in theadvertising cleverne in full Quicktime glory.

The Cocoa Conundrum

When it comes to software on the Mac platform it's a mixed bag. I don't mean like on Windows, where the bag is full of akes, scorpio , rusty blades, and the occasional bit of peach. Software on the Mac has been in flux for a decade. When A le bought NeXT, most of us figured Copland was dead in the water (and it was). Personally, I wish we'd seen OpenDoc come to fruition, but that comes from years of dealing with bloatware. OS X pushed the "Cla ic" Mac OS further and further into the shadows, until, with the advent of Intel Macs, it's pretty much dying off... Read the fine print on these Leopard features for developers, and you'll realize how dead "Cla ic" really is. Perha we should call it "Relic."

Now ask anyone (well, almost anyone) who's coded Cocoa a and they'll tell you it's lovely. Shoot, A le's so proud of the frameworks they provide for devs, they even touted a new one, Core Animation, as one of the 10 things coming in Leopard. But we're still living a dual-existence (triple or quadruple or more, if you get technical) in that you have Cocoa a , and you have the non-Cocoa a . Perha you know about Java, which is what Limewire uses. Or X11's ability to run a like GIMP. Both of those have their quirks. Java a can be all over the place, and X11 doe 't integrate the UI of OSX, among other i ues. Carbon is a mix of old-skool API's (implemented in good ol' C if I recall), and permeates Mac a like Office and Photoshop, where a teardown/rebuild would be too unwieldy. There's also the fact that key a like Finder and QuickTime are Carbon enough to still have some legacy code from way back when, which might account for some of their quirks too... No holy wars about Cocoa vs. Carbon, OK? I'm with David Wei on this one. So you have Cocoa, Carbon and everything else.

Getting granular for a moment, look at a tale of two browsers: Safari vs. Firefox. Safari is a Cocoa a , and it is tightly integrated with OS X tools. It maintai the ability to look up words in the Dictionary a with a right-click, and acce the OS X Keychain. Firefox is not a (full) Cocoa a , and you can't niftily use a keyboard shortcut to look up a word, nor will it store pa words in Keychain. I've learned to use this "wall" to my advantage. Since the pa words are stored differently, I can automatically log in to systems (like gmail) using two accounts simultaneously. I use my busine gmail on one browser, and personal on the other. Unfortunately, you're limited to 3, as all Firefox-based browsers will share their version of Keychain, and all Webkit-derived browsers use Keychain. I say three, because Opera stands alone (and doe 't always play nice with Gmail). There's the conundrum: to the average user, they don't care, but when little non-Cocoa quirks a ear, they scratch their heads and wonder why the Mac doe 't just "do stuff" one standard way.

Keep reading for my take on shareware, freeware, and malware in OS X...
I am continually amazed at the amount of shareware and freeware available for Macs. Of course, A le's developer-friendly (arguable, I understand) environment hel . Used to be, you made an A le a , you were just kinda slugging it out in ace. Let's face it, "Cla ic" might mean pre-OSX to me, but to a real estate agent, "cla ic" just mea old and worn-out. Since OS 7 the Mac environment got more complicated, slow, wacky and isolated. Like Ted Kaczy ki.

What a difference a decade makes. Some folks are making a go of it with Mac shareware. For one thing, niche a that merely a oy a major publisher -- like Adobe -- are readily available. Tra mit is a good example. Panic itself is a poster boy for Mac development anyway, but Tra mit is how FTP should work on any platform. But an FTP program from Adobe? Can you imagine? It'd need 3 updater/helper a , an IRC client, and a WYSIWYG coffee mug designer a and Acrobat Reader to be i talled before you could run the thing. Maybe it's the OpenDoc fan in me, but I love these little "indie" a .

Delicious Mo ter is another good example. Here's a company run largely in a virtual environment, utilizing A le dev tools and tech to create this one really cool a : Delicious Library. This is an a so good people repeatedly trot it out to impre their Windows brethren. Same with Comic Life -- so cool < an style="font-style: italic;">it comes prei talled! And these are a you find only on the Mac -- which is quite a turnaround from 1997. These are also increasingly Cocoa a , which makes se e, as they tap those cool Cocoa frameworks...Shoot, Yojimbo exists and works so well precisely because A le put in some great frameworks (Core Data anyone?)... One might say it is easier to make great a on the Mac.

On the PC, it's easier to just make an a lication. Lower the bar in that way also increases the number of dingbats making those "easy" a . I've programmed Visual Basic. It's way too easy. I say that only half-joking, because VB is fun to play with. You can write some really ugly, a oying a in VB too. But again, that's probably where you find a lot of the dregs of coding -- never mind the crummy game engines available for PCs. That's a whole other post...

And freeware? Here's where the Mac shows some clear edge too. I think Mac freeware tends to be a little le atrocious. Sure, you have stellar examples as Adium or Journalr. Keep in mind much of what you see in Mac freeware stems from those APIs A le crams into OS X. Journalr can tie into the video or audio because there are pipes for that. There's .Mac sync for those who care. Leopard promises even more, like total acce to iCal's data store, which simplifies all sorts of time management i ues. GTD fa rejoice!

I'm not a total A le apologist. Games, utilities and freeware are much more plentiful on PCs. There is certainly a robust developer community, and MS has gone to great pai to make a backwards-compatible. The u ide is folks who upgrade to XP from Win95 have had some succe getting those old a to run. So there is TO of software on Windows. There's lots of malware too, with many a lication we ites emblazoned with "100% Malware-free" because it's almost impo ible to separate the wheat from the chaff. The fu y thing is, if, like most Mac users, you just blaze through the i taller, you could still easily put something malicious on your machine. You might not even think twice about typing in your pa word, not if you downloaded it yourself! But so far there have only been a few examples of this ha ening. Not the few thousand you see elsewhere...

Still, bad Mac a stick out. Sometimes the icon just i 't right. Too glo y? Not glo y enough? Or, < an style="font-style: italic;">ga , no tra arency? Sometimes the UI is cumbersome and complicated, although I've seen too simple on a Mac before. Worst offenders go to a who repeatedly crash or lock up themselves or, rare though it may be, the system itself. For example: I really wanted to try Multidash to manage my widgets. I often undock from a larger monitor, and would love an easier way to swap out my 15" screen with my 2-screen setup. Since I'm ahead of A le on the "need" curve here (really, did we need another release to wait for this?), I gave Multidash a try. As documented, it would eventually hammer the proce ors. It also lost settings and eventually wonked up the video output (which was a neat trick). So iI trashed it. Hey, I understand it was a beta, and a darn clever one. It's sad when commercial outfits like Adobe screw it up though, i 't it? I understand porting Photoshop is a chore, so I forgive this (honestly, I do). But making Acrobat reader such a piece of... well, my beef is that your casual computer user will think PDFs need to use Acrobat. They'll download and i tall it. Gue what? It stinks. Then they blame the Mac. "It's not as fast as my PC." Oh really? Try saving that web page as a PDF, we'll see who finishes first.

Unfortunately, to some Mac users, even the slightest imperfectio can incur our wrath. As a result, a number of developers try to improve the Mac a themselves. Multidash was one example, and Chax is another. Ta are coming in Leopard, which kills one function of Chax. Widgets made the Konfabulator crowd mad, and who knows, maybe Safari will finally ask me if I really want to close the 32 ta I ent hours researching before I accidentally close the one about the cat on YouTube. Developers continue to slog it out though, making more cool stuff and i ovating A le's own admittedly excellent work. And yet I can only recall one a fro Windows that'll let me re-arrange the items in the taskbar... I typically avoid a lot of haxies though, because A le's updates tend to break those. One of the reaso A le doe 't really want you to use certain Mac-enhancing a is the user experience. If you become addicted to Inquisitor, and then move to a different machine where it's not i talled, all of a sudden you have to change your routine. This i 't always a big deal, but try cutting off (or crashing) Quicksilver -- sorely mi ed within moments. Granted, I can hardly go back to using pre-2-finger scrolling trackpads, and that's an A le upgrade.

The benefit of Mac fandom, and in this case, Cocoa fandom, is a better breed of software tools. While arguable, I'd say a in general are slicker, cooler and easier-to-use on Macs. It's been a long, strange trip for A le developers though. I remember using HLINE and VLINE to program crummy little blo on my A le ][, and recoiling in horror at the hex codes to make "real" games work. Now you can make a platformer with Photoshop! Add in decent Java su ort, X11, the UNIX underpi ings, and some killer dev tools (free with every machine, I might add), and what's not to love about developing for Macs? As the hardware gets better, A le will no doubt continue to push more powerful frameworks into Cocoa, which tra lates into yet more freakin' awesome a for the rest of us. I raise a mug of fancy hot cocoa to the developers of Mac a everywhere -- and thanks for all the code!

Laser-etched tarsier on a PowerBook

Holy cool!

Phillip Torrone over at MAKE got the O'Reilly mascot, the tarsier, laser-etched on the back of his PowerBook in about 10 minutes.

I want to do the same thing with my pen and ink sketch of Samuel Beckett, but I don't have a laser-etching machine at my di osal, nor the money to throw at such an endeavor with a service like the one offered by ETCHAmac.

What to do with your broken iPod

Before reading this article, I kind of knew that there were services out there that bought back broken iPods. I was aware that there were people out there interested in using them for parts or refurbing them to sell on eBay but I might not have thought of all these po ible outlets. iPod ResQ is probably the best known of the bunch, and there's always eBay, but would you have known about iPodMods or NextWorth? Pop by and read the whole article, the author gives his i ights into the reliability of the services and whether you'll want to do busine with them.

Rumors: A le's 802.11n enabler for $5?

MacFixit reports that A le pla to offer its 802.11n enabler for a $5 fee. It will enable 802.11n on Intel Core 2 Duo iMacs (except 17-inch, 1.83GHz iMac), Intel Core 2 Duo MacBooks, Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pros, and Mac Pros with the AirPort Extreme card option. They will also bundle the enabler with the new Airport Extreme Base statio . This is not a huge amount of money, but one wonders why the enabler wouldn't just be a free download. I'm not sure the "Sarbanes-Oxley Act" explanation offered by one of the comments holds much water. On the other hand, it's not going to be a huge profit item for A le either.

Roadnav - Open Source G Navigation

Digging around a little bit in the world of carputers following our recent post on the Subaru carputer, I came acro Roadnav, a cro platform, open source G ma ing program from Richard Lynch. One thing that makes this project different from many commercial solutio is that it uses free US ma ing data from "the US Ce us Bureau and the USGS." It then renders the ma from that government data. I believe most commercial ma ing data is su lied by Navteq, whose trademark you are probably used to seeing at the bottom of Google Ma . Roadnav is a bit rough around the edges, but given the limited number of G navigation solutio for the Mac it's certainly worth checking out.

Fla er - the animated, life-or-death weather widget

PreFab UI Browser 2.0

iPhone photo leak? No, just a calculator that looks like an iPod.

Confirmed -- It i 't a phone.

Reader " ace Taker" pointed us to fourtitude.com's gallery of images from a recent Audi advertising shoot rife with A le gear (iPod, MacBook Pro, Cinema Di lay) and noted an interesting object sitting in the desktop paper tray. With only 41 hours until showtime, why not indulge in some visual eculation? Not to mention, the Audi Q7 is niiiiiiice.

OK, it is white, and vaguely phone-shaped... to my eyes, it looks more like a programmable remote control than a Jonathan Ive-designed phone, but I may be jaded, skeptical and cranky. Perha it's a placeholder for the real iPhone and they'll just fix it in post.

Update 8:24 am ET: Thanks to sharp-eyed reader Brian, we have a leading candidate for the ID of the mystery bar: a Brookstone calculator, which just ha e to come with the pen holder and calendar also visible in the full image. The design of the calculator a ears strongly iPod-influenced, but a cellphone it ain't.

Thanks ace Taker and Brian!

Belkin ortCommand for iPod

If you're hitting the slopes with your iPod this winter and you can't afford one of those swanky Burton iPod jackets, you might co ider Belkin's new ortCommand - a wirele , weather-resistant, neoprene, armband remote.

As you've come to expect from an iPod remote, this one will allow you to play, pause, skip tracks and a control the volume, and it has big enough butto that even your gloved hands should be able to manage it. It'll set you back $79 USD and should be shi ing in North America this November, with su equent releases in Asia, Australia and Europe, so those of you heading to Zermatt for the holidays should be all set.

First Mac OS X comparison on Intel vs. PowerPC

Damien Barrett has the first benchmark compariso between a PowerPC ru ing OS X and an Intel Mac (I refuse to use the word 'Mactel,' thank you very much), and it i 't pretty.

Though we must keep in mind that the PowerPC Mac has two shiny G5's whilst the Intel box has one lonely little proce or, and OS X has been tweaked this way to Sunday to run on PowerPC's.

No need to weep over poor performance yet, in fact Damien is suprised at how eedy OS X was on the development box.

A le Store online goes offline. Anticipation builds...

You can taste the excitement, can't you? Anyone checked the odds today?


Thanks, William!

OS X-powered robot car stalls in race semi-finals

We were all excited when the OS X-powered, unma ed Volkswagen Touareg nicknamed Dora made it to the national semi-finals of the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge race of robot vehicles. Sadly, Dora's run ended last week when it failed to finish the last of the qualifying events for the race finals. Dora's handlers, Team Banzai, blame the failure on their co ervative driving strategy which a arently caused Dora to think she was hemmed in by a traffic cone. Team Banzai is probably kicking itself, knowing that it's careful strategy caused it to forfeit a hefty prize of $2 million, which went to a Stanford team.

Dora is a fully autonomous vehicle, meaning that it is not remote-controlled. I ide the car, G5s ru ing OS X controlled the steering, brake, gas pedal, and gear shifts. The race of robot ground vehicles was o ored by The Defe e Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defe e -- the same organization involved in pioneering the Internet, Stealth aircraft, and smart bom .

Microsoft releases Office 2004 11.3.3 and Office v. X for Mac 10.1.9 updates

Office 2008 for Mac (or Office 12, if you prefer) may still be months away, but the Microsoft Mac BU team is still working to improve Office 2004 and Office v.X while we wait.

Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.3.3 Update and Microsoft Office v. X for Mac 10.1.9 Update include a variety of security and stability fixes, including a fix for the a oying DST bug in Entourage 2004 that caused calendar events scheduled on or after March 11, 2007 to be an hour off, thanks to the decision to change the start and end of Daylight Time (aka Standard Time) in the US.

The ecific fixes in these updates are:

• Improvements for all Office 2004 %26am < an cla ="normal">Office v. X a licatio - fixes vulnerabilities in that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer's memory with malicious code.
  

• Improvements for Word 2004 - improves compatibility with recent changes to the way Rich Text Format (RTF) documents are created by Microsoft Office Word 2003 for Windows.

• Improvements for Excel 2004 - fixes an i ue that causes standard deviation calculatio to produce inaccurate results when the calculatio are used in PivotTable reports.

• Improvements for Entourage 2004 - fixes an i ue for users of Mac OS X 10.4.5 or later that causes any calendar event scheduled on or after March 11, 2007 to di lay on a time slot that is one hour ahead of its original start time. This i ue affects all meetings that occur on or after March 11, 2007, including recurring meetings. The Japanese postal code dictionary has also been updated with the latest information as of June 2006.

Grab them from Microsoft AutoUpdate or from the downloads page. I just i talled the 2004 update and nothing is broken yet, so hopefully you'll be just as lucky.

Video: David Pogue proves Vista doe 't copy OS X

In the short NYT video which goes along with his print review of Redmond's newest OS, the always amusing David Pogue takes it upon himself to debunk that the old saw that Microsoft just copies A le. For i tance, David points out that unlike otlight, which is located at the top right of the desktop, Vista's equivalent search feature is located at the bottom left. Certainly worth a chuckle at Microsoft's expe e.

[Edit: Sorry about problems with the link. It should be fixed now.]

A le posts three new Get a Mac ads

A le has posted, in glorious QuickTime, three new Get a Mac ads (one of which we covered previously). The three ads are:

• Surgery - Featured in the Stevenote, this ad finds PC making ready for an upgrade to Vista
• Sabotage - The image above is from sabotage. The PC gets someone else to stand in for the Mac, extolling the virtues of the PC.
• Tech Su ort - The PC gets a webcam for serious busine video conferencing

All in all these ads are what I have come to expect from the Get a Mac campaign, ads that are kinda fu y.

MacBook Pros used in busine setting causes surprise

Arik He eldahl of Busine Week writes today about his shock at seeing MacBook Pros used at a busine meeting. Macs, he says, are a rarity in his world, which is a festival of Dells, Thinkpads and other PCs.

He eldahl relates his experience where a person's MacBook Pro caught the eye of some HP execs. "That notebook you've got there is a challenge to us," CEO Mark Hurd reportedly said. He promised to send someone down to see the MacBook owner to talk about HP notebooks and had some busine cards dro ed off.

MacBooks might not be de rigeur in Wall Street financial circles, but I'm surprised at how surprised He eldahl and the HP folk were to see people actually using them in work-related situatio . Maybe these PC-folk just need to get out more.

TextMate 2.0 will likely be Leopard-only

In what would seem, on the surface, to be an odd move for a text editor, Macromates has stated that TextMate 2.0 will almost certainly be Leopard-only. Allan Odgaard gives some good reaso as to why, though. And it's not just because the Halloween icon will look better with Leopard's resolution independence!

Rather than paraphrase him, I'll paste what he's already said quite well:

First of all, 2.0 is a free upgrade, so I won't mi out on any upgrade fees from people that want to stay on Panther or Tiger.

Secondly, roughly 90% of my users are early adopters and have in all likelihood upgraded to Leopard within a few months of its release, so by keeping compatibility with older operating systems I am catering to le than 10% of my users.

Thirdly, it has a significant cost to stay backwards compatible, this price is paid in the form of:

1. Time ent debugging (and sometimes making workarounds for) i ues only present on the older OS version.
2. Time ent implementing stuff that A le offers for free on the new version of the OS.
3. Not being able to make use of features only present on latest version of the OS when it's too impractical to conditionally make use of them.
4. Code complexity, because it needs to do different things on different versio of the OS.

Is eliminating those costs worth a 10% drop in sales? You bet they are! The reason why I have kept Panther compatibility for this long has nothing to do with additional sales and all to do with me just not liking to cut people off.

I think Allan defends his decision quite well. Much better than Adobe does, in regard to Soundbooth's lack of PowerPC su ort. There's more to Allan's statement, but you should hop over to his blog to read the rest of it and let him know your thoughts on the i ue.

To balance any potential backlash, Macromates will surely win a few hearts and minds by the free TextMate 2.0 upgrade. Any other TextMate users out there have an opinion on this?

Belkin Cable-Free U Hub available for purchase this month

Belkin's award-wi ing wirele U hub is finally expected to be available this month, after several delays. According to Belkin's pre release earlier today, the Cable-Free U Hub will be available for purchase mid-December, for $199 USD. We first told you about the Belkin Cable-Free U hub back in January when they were demoing in at Macworld. It's a 4-port U hub that uses Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technology, based on the Wisair chi et, and needs no drivers to deliver high rate, high quality tra fers - up to 480M for U 2.0 devices - making it perfect for wirele streaming HD video and audio, as well as communicating with printers, sca ers, cameras and other U devices up to 30 feet away without being tethered to them. The only thing you're tethered to is a small U dongle.

The hub will launch in the US first, with launches in Asia, Europe, and Australia to follow "at an indefinite date, pending re ective country's regulatory a rovals."

Yup, I still want one, de ite the price jumping from $130 to $190. Bring it on, Belkin... Bring. It. On.

Work for National Semiconductor, get an iPod

National Semiconductor, the premier analog company (at least according to their we ite) is going digital; digital music that is. The company pla on giving each of its 8,500 employees a 30 gig iPod so they can listen to company podcasts. This is also, I am sure, a way of thanking the employees for a very good year (who knew you could make over a billion dollars a quarter making analog devices?).

Put your iPod on a pedestal

Looking for an offbeat but iPod-themed gift? From about $30, you can buy a funky looking iPod stand from podstands.com of Westshore Craftworks. The products seem to come in a couple of flavors. There are the stands that hold up your iPod but use your normal sync cable to co ect to the computer. And there are the iDockCovers that fit over the standard 3G and 4G docks with jack cutaways so you can still plug everything in where it belongs. I'm not a big "guitar-shape" or "piano shape" fan, but the circular hardwood stands look very nice if a bit on the expe ive side.

"The Month of A le bugs" begi , rationality surrenders

Kevin Finisterre and someone we only know as "LMH" have launched the Month of A le Bugs, a site they dub a 'project' with the su osed goal of publishing bugs, hacks and exploits they have found in A le's software any and all A le-related software. Already they have published a QuickTime exploit they've found which could allow remote code execution (for which Mr. Gruber's proposed solution might not cut it), and yesterday they posted a VLC exploit (and how is this an 'A le bug?') which su osedly offers the same vulnerability.

If you're the type who enjoys cliff notes, let me summarize my feelings about the decision Kevin and "LMH" have made with this site: I ent almost all of last night sketching and brai torming ideas, but I honestly can't think of anything more pathetically ego-ma aging or FUD-drudging one could do with this information outside of writing, directing and starring in a horror movie about code exploits. Thankfully, I wager such a movie wouldn't do so well at the box office.

Let me be clear: if these guys have actually found enough problems with software (be it A le's or otherwise) to fill a whole month of releases, I honestly and sincerely thank them - they can help whoever makes that software to make it better. What is so horrendously wrong with this 'project' is that they're stirring up hype and making news headlines with these exploits, i tead of sticking with the traditional and ethical practices of reporting and discu ing these bugs with the relevant parties.

Who knows, maybe they already filled out the form (though after reading FAQ #4, I doubt it), but publishing this information and landing themselves all over digg and Yahoo! News i 't going to accomplish anything productive. They complain about slow proce es and being a oyed at auto-re onders to bug reports but they fail to offer any legitimate reason or positive justification for publishing code like this. Patience and civility are virtues, and while I can completely understand being a oyed at facele bureaucratic proce es that fail to tingle the 'hooray I did something good!' bone, publishing this code in this ma er has a olutely no positive merit for anyone, and causes nothing but undue harm to the Mac community they so smugly feign an interest in.

But I would hate to end on such a bad note. I tead, I'll promise to stomp my feet about this 'project' as little as po ible, as we at TUAW would rather focus on the positive. Over the month, we'll offer context and solutio for the bugs Mr. Finisterre and "LMH" publish, in an effort to help the Mac web create something positive out of this questionable month-long bug report. Stay tuned.

Proposal via A le's we ite

I don't think this is what A le had in mind when they decided to put up that we ite with time la e photos of the grand opening of the Fifth Avenue A le store. Some enterprising young geek (I'm a uming he's a geek) took three sig with him down to the store at around 5:30am, and proposed to his girlfriend (see picture to the right).

This is either totally awesome, or totally geeky (I think it is both). I wonder if she said yes.

Check out another picture after the jump.

Update: Jonathan sent in this direct link to the time la e movie.

I 't it sweet?

Mac software purchases help Child's Play charity Dec 7th

Buying software from select Mac developers on December 7th, 2006 will do more than just add another icon to your A licatio folder. It'll make the holidays a little nicer for sick kids in children's ho itals all over the world by providing them with toys, games and other seasonably charitable goodne .

A group of independent Mac developers are donating all of the proceeds from their sales of select a licatio on December 7 to Child's Play is a Seattle-based charity started in 2003 by the guys at Pe y Arcade, the gaming company folks who make the gaming-oriented webcomic (thanks for the correction, Samuel!). All you need to do is buy the a , just as you normally would. Your contributio will help make a kid's life a little cheerier, and you'll get some great software in the proce .

There are some really great titles, too, so if you were co idering treating yourself to some cool software, Dec 7 (tomorrow, for most of us) is the day to do it. Heck, you could even continue the irit of giving by buying an a or two as a gift for someone else. Software Stocking Stuffers anyone?

The complete list of participating Developers and their participating a are listed on Ironcoder. Highlights include iRooster, Billable, Freeze Frame, VoodooPad, Houdah ot, LifeBoat, iDictionary and more!

This is a great effort for a great cause and I a laud the participating developers for their efforts.

Rig of the Day - Livi #039; Large

Today's TUAW Rig of the Day entry (the inaugural entry, at that) is Flickr user visualseed's killer multi-di lay set up. We're talkingabout three 30" Cinema Di lays, one smaller di lay, a Powerbook and a DV camera with three le es, eachthe size of my leg. A G5 sits in the corner, as well as an iSight, a tablet and...what's that...a Dell?!? We'll just letthat slide. I gue a pro photographer needs to diversify.

"Mac set up and more" uploaded by VisualSeed.

If you'd like to see your own rig featured here, simplyupload photos into our group Flickr pool. We'll select an imageevery day to highlight.

Google Earth 4 out of beta

I su ose the camp of Googlia waiting in line for the Stevenote can be forgiven for fleeing the code mine they recently put the final touches on Google Earth 4, now out of beta.

Shiny new features in the Google Earth revision include:

• Higher quality terrain and building textures
• Expanded KML file su ort, including timestam and image overlays
• The sleek new UI, designed to stay out of your way as you flit hither and virtually yon
• Polygon a otation, shareable with other users

You can download the free GE4 a lication here. Upgrades to Plus ($20/year, higher-res prints, G track import, faster performance) and Profe ional ($400/yr, full-res image export and printing, movie export, GIS and readsheet import) are available. The paid versio also let you disable local busine advertising, which I'll admit I've never seen in GE; perha I'm not visiting the right neighborhoods.