News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
A new report from market research firm DisplaySearch shows Apple’s worldwide notebook shipments grew 61 percent from the first quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2008. Shipments rose from almost 900,000 to just over 1.4 million. The growth puts Apple in seventh place in overall worldwide notebook market share with 4.6 percent.
Jim Dalrymple | Jun 28, 2008
The July Disc of the Month title is "Arcade Mania - Volume 01" which contains a collection of over 50 classic, retro and modern Arcade Games that will provide hours of fun for all ages. You can contact your nearest participating Macintosh User Group to purchase the whole disc or check out the AUSMAC Archive to grab individual files.
Nicholas Pyers | Jun 28, 2008
Just a week after Mozilla shipped Firefox 3.0, the open-source developer has proposed ship dates for the next version that, if approved, would produce an alpha release next month and a final no later than early 2009. According to a draft schedule discussed at a Tuesday meeting, Mozilla wants to have the first Firefox 3.1 developer preview, or alpha, ready by July, then move to a beta by August. The schedule slates final code delivery in the last quarter of this year or the first quarter of 2009.
Gregg Keizer | Jun 27, 2008
Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit released three updates for its Mac Office products. Office 2008, Office 2004 and the Open XML File Format Converter for Mac are all available from the company’s web site. Overall, Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.1 includes stability enhancements that should take care of problems causing the applications to quit when launched. There are several enhancements to individual products in the suite too.
Jim Dalrymple | Jun 25, 2008
SecureMac claims to have discovered several variants of a Trojan horse in the wild targeted at users of Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5. The Trojan is being distributed from a hacker Web site through iChat and Limewire, the company said. Distributed as a compiled AppleScript called ASthtv05 or as an application, the Trojan allows remote access to the system and can transmit system and user passwords. SecureMac also said the Trojan is capable of logging keystrokes and turning on file sharing.
Jim Dalrymple | Jun 20, 2008
William Goldman’s beloved story The Princess Bride was turned into a movie more than 20 years ago starring Cary Elwes and Robin Wright Penn. Now, at long last, the story has become a video game. The Mac version will launch on 30 Junew, following the PC version’s release on Wednesday. It costs $US19.99.
Peter Cohen | Jun 19, 2008
The media got a special sneak peek at the Sydney Apple Store this morning, ahead of its opening tomorrow afternoon at 5pm. The 215th Apple Store worldwide, it's the first in Australia with at least two more planned. And, according to visiting Apple executive Ron Johnson, it's the second-largest Apple Store in the world (after London's Regent Street store). So, now that the wraps are off, what can you expect when you stroll through the doors and under the floating logo? Read on.
Matthew JC. Powell | Jun 18, 2008
Imagine turning a movie into a game instantly, with the audience driving storytelling by defining the character. Advanced Micro Devices wants to make that possible in the future, with the company releasing new graphics chips that allow moviemakers and game developers to render three-dimensional images in real time. AMD on Monday said it was releasing Radeon 4000 series graphics cards, which deliver one teraflop of graphics performance to increase the level of realism brought to images. The products will be available starting next week, and companies including Falcon Northwest will develop systems based on the new graphics chips.
| Jun 18, 2008
LaCie on Monday announced the Little Big Disk Quadra 1TB, a one terabyte-capacity portable hard disk storage system. Australian pricing had not been posted this morning but in the US it is priced at $US660. The Little Big Disk Quadra encloses two 2.5-inch hard disk drive mechanisms configured together as a Level 0 RAID. It sports an external Serial ATA (eSATA) port, two FireWire 800 and one USB 2.0 interface, and includes a FireWire 400 adapter.
Peter Cohen | Jun 17, 2008
A technology that could help the environment by eliminating the need to ship a power adapter with every electronics device got a vote of confidence Friday from consumer electronics maker Westinghouse Digital Electronics. Westinghouse said it had committed to using a smart power technology developed by a start-up company, Green Plug, that aims to let people use a single "universal adapter" to power their laptops, mobile phones and other electronics gear.
James Niccolai | Jun 17, 2008
This morning Apple released a new version of its iPhone SDK for developers. iPhone SDK beta 2 includes Interface Builder, a component of Apple’s development tools that lets developers create the interface for their applications. That seems to be the only major change in the latest build, according to the SDK’s read me, which continues to list some known issues. Apple says “this second beta is known to be incompatible with installation folders other than the default /Developer.” Given the importance of UI on the Mac, Interface Builder is a pretty critical tool in the development process, and some developers had chosen to hold off on their efforts until the SDK was revised. Apple unveiled the iPhone SDK at a special event earlier this month, allowing developers to begin building applications for the iPhone and iPod touch. Several high-profile companies have already jumped onboard, demoing their applications at the event. Highlighting the demos was AOL with a native AIM client; other applications from Electronic Arts, Salesforce.com, and Apple were also shown.
