TidBITS#735/28-Jun-04
=====================
Apple kicked off WWDC by announcing new Apple Cinema Displays -
including a 30-inch monster - and previewing Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.
Adam and Jeff run down the important details. Also this week,
Glenn looks at a potentially useful merging of technologies to
fight spam, and Tonya relates how she came close to becoming a
rock chick thanks to Jeff Tolbert's new "Take Control of Making
Music in GarageBand" ebook. And we note the releases of WorkStrip
3.2, Peek-a-Boo for Mac OS X, and Vonage's software phone for
the Mac.
Topics:
MailBITS/28-Jun-04
How GarageBand Made Me Feel Young and Hip
Apple Introduces New Aluminum Cinema Displays
Major ISPs Coordinate Spam, Spoofing Policies
Put a Tiger in Your Tank... in 2005
Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/28-Jun-04
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MailBITS/28-Jun-04
------------------
**Strip My Work and Heat My Menus** -- Softchaos has released
version 3.2 of WorkStrip, the Dock-like launcher prized for
such features as multiple workspaces, document previews, and
ingeniously arranged hierarchical menus that navigate folders
and associate recently opened documents with their applications.
Most notable in this revision are "hot menus," keyboard shortcuts
that display a menu wherever the mouse happens to be; among these
are a menu of running applications and their windows, a menu of
running applications and their recent documents, and a menu of the
contents of the folder(s) currently selected in the Finder. Some
behaviors are also made faster. Version 3.2 is a free update for
WorkStrip 3 users; WorkStrip is $40 (or thereabouts, depending on
the pound-dollar exchange rate), with a 30-day trial available as
a 2 MB download. [MAN]
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06935>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07266>
<http://www.softchaos.com/products/ws3/new32.html>
**Vonage Adds Software Phone for Mac** -- Last week, the voice-
over-IP (VoIP) service provider Vonage added a software option
for its subscribers to place and receive phone calls to the public
telephone network from their Macintosh. A "soft phone," as Vonage
calls its VoIP software, costs $12 per month, including fees, for
500 minutes of outgoing local and long-distance calls. Additional
minutes are 3.9 cents each in the U.S.; international rates are
fantastic. The soft-phone service has to be added on to an
existing Vonage line, which costs as little as $15 per month
before tax. The service uses software from Xten, a British
Columbia firm that makes the best-looking and best-functioning
software phone for Mac, Windows, and Linux.
<http://www.vonage.com/corporate/press_index.php?PR=2004_06_24_0>
<http://www.xten.com/>
I've found that the soft-phone service works terrifically, and
was able to make my first call from a landline to my Vonage soft
phone number within two minutes of adding the service to my
account. But I recommend using a USB or microphone/headphone
headset: the built-in speakers and mikes on some Macs cause
feedback and echoes. [GF]
**Peek-a-Boo, I See Your CPU** -- Clarkwood Software's Peek-a-Boo,
one of my favorite utilities under Mac OS 9 and before, has now
been rewritten for Mac OS X. Peek-a-Boo is a process watcher;
it displays the applications and Unix processes running on your
computer, along with lots of data about them. Unix geeks and Mac
OS X mavens may be tempted to dismiss Peek-a-Boo as merely a
graphical front end to tools like "top" and "ps," or a partial
duplicate of Apple's own utility Activity Monitor. But graphical
front ends are good, and Peek-a-Boo does make it easy to do tricky
things such as constructing a running graph of an application's
CPU usage over time, or changing an application's priority
("renice"). It would be great if Peek-a-Boo could do even more -
for example, it might show an application's open files ("lsof")
or disk activity ("fs_usage"), graph memory usage over time, and
so forth - and it's a pity that Peek-a-Boo is itself something
of a CPU hog. But users may still find it a useful addition to
their bag of Mac OS X tricks. Peek-a-Boo is $20 ($10 for previous
owners), and a fully functional demo is available as a 565K
download. [MAN]
<http://www.clarkwood.com/peekaboo/>
How GarageBand Made Me Feel Young and Hip
-----------------------------------------
by Tonya Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I've never been musically inclined. In my grade school, singing in
music class marked one as being uncool, and although I eventually
had a few piano lessons and a small singing part in a ninth-grade
production of Fiddler on the Roof, by high school, it was clear
that I lacked much in the way of musical talent. Being one of
those people who focuses on the things I know I'm good at, I
never picked up other instruments or pursued additional musical
opportunities of any sort.
My lack of musical inclination came into sharp focus during the
San Francisco 2004 Macworld Expo, which brought the introduction
of iLife '04 and GarageBand, Apple's ultra-hip software designed
to let anyone make digital music. Immersed as I am in the mode of
being a working mother, I hadn't even heard of the obviously cool
John Mayer (described on the iTunes Music Store as a "chart-
topping wonder"), who Steve Jobs asked to demonstrate GarageBand
to the keynote audience. At the time, the whole GarageBand thing
made me feel old and terminally uncool.
<http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07500>
Judging from the applause in the keynote, not everyone felt the
same way, including Seattle musician and designer Jeff Tolbert.
When Jeff's not doing cutting-edge illustration or Web design
(thus proving the adage that real musicians have day jobs), he
has played in numerous bands with hip names like the Goat-Footed
Senators. GarageBand's introduction may have made me feel
completely out of touch, but Jeff bought iLife '04 immediately,
picked up new gear to use with the GarageBand, and sent me email
to see if I'd be interested in publishing a Take Control ebook
about GarageBand.
<http://www.jefftolbert.com/>
Figuring that if Jeff could hook me into using GarageBand, he'd
be able to do it for anyone, I asked him to draft a few pages that
would help me create a decent-sounding tune. Jeff wrote the draft,
I followed the directions, and, amazingly enough, I was able to
combine several loops in interesting ways that sounded (at least
to my ear) like a real song. Feeling ever so slightly cool, I gave
Jeff a contract, connected him with one of our editors who has
more musical experience than I (the estimable Caroline Rose, best
known for writing and editing Inside Macintosh Volumes I through
III at Apple, being the editor in chief at NeXT, and returning
to Apple for a while as editor in chief of "develop, the Apple
Technical Journal"), recruited TidBITS Technical Editor (and
professional studio musician) Geoff Duncan to help with a
technical review, and we were off.
<http://www.differnet.com/crose/>
<http://www.quibble.com/geoff/tunes/>
A while later, Jeff and Caroline turned in the 68-page "Take
Control of Making Music with GarageBand," which helps novices
like me open the door to the world of digital music while offering
sufficient depth to help those with real musical backgrounds and
some GarageBand experience. It explains not just how to use
GarageBand's built-in loops, but also how some of the music theory
I missed in school can be employed in GarageBand to make truly
cool songs. (Note that it does not cover recording music via MIDI
devices or adding vocals to your tracks; those are topics for
later titles.) The part of the ebook I most enjoyed was playing
with tricks like panning the sound from speaker to speaker. The
tune I created sounds reminiscent of Pink Floyd, and speaking as
someone who graduated from high school in 1985, if that's not
cool, I don't know what is. Maybe I can still hope for a second
career as a rock chick, though I won't be giving up my day job
publishing Take Control ebooks anytime soon.
"Take Control of Making Music in GarageBand" is now available for
sale for $5, and along with the usual Take Control goodness like
full-text searching, internally linked cross-references, and free
updates, it includes links to clips in the iTunes Music Store that
illustrate points Jeff makes, along with links to audio examples
of the two songs Jeff helps you create (we tried embedding them
in the PDF, but they played only in Acrobat 6.0 and caused Preview
to crash on launch). Whether you're already a hip musician or a
self-admitted wannabe like me, I hope you'll check it out.
<http://www.tidbits.com/takecontrol/garageband-music.html>
Apple Introduces New Aluminum Cinema Displays
---------------------------------------------
by Jeff Carlson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The curious thing about computers is that no matter how
beautifully they're designed, you're always looking at the
screen. At this year's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC),
Apple improved the view by announcing three new Apple Cinema
Displays: updated 20-inch and 23-inch sizes, as well as a huge
30-inch model. For the benefit of the other people you work with,
each display sports a stylish new aluminum case design that
complements Apple's PowerBooks and Power Mac G5 computers.
<http://www.apple.com/displays/>
The 30-inch Apple Cinema HD Display supports resolutions up to
2560 by 1600 pixels, or approximately 4 million pixels overall.
It features a brightness level of 270 cd/m2 (candela per square
meter) and a contrast ratio of 400:1. Due to the increased pixel
count, the 30-inch display will work only with a Power Mac G5
equipped with an Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL graphics card; that
card will be available in August as a build-to-order option for
new Power Mac G5 purchases, or as a $600 kit for existing Power
Mac G5 owners. The card offers dual DVI connections in parallel,
and it will also support the use of two 30-inch displays. The
30-inch Cinema Display costs $3,300, and will be available in
August 2004.
<http://www.apple.com/displays/digital.html>
The 20-inch and 23-inch models may appear to be Apple's existing
displays in different cases, but the new screens add more than
just aluminum. The 20-inch Cinema Display, priced at $1,300,
still sports up to 1680 by 1050 pixels, but now has a brightness
of 250 cd/m2 compared to 230 cd/m2 and a contrast ratio of 400:1
instead of 350:1. Similarly, the $2,000 23-inch Cinema HD Display
handles up to 1920 by 1200 pixels, but features the same 270 cd/m2
brightness (up from 200 cd/m2) and 400:1 contrast ratio (up from
350:1) as the 30-inch Cinema HD Display. Both displays will ship
next month.
<http://www.apple.com/displays/specs.html>
The new Cinema Displays include two self-powered USB 2.0 ports,
two FireWire 400 ports, a power button, brightness buttons, and
a Kensington security slot. Apple is also introducing a magnetic
iSight mount that will be included with new iSight cameras or
available in a separate iSight Accessory Kit in the next few
months, as well as a Cinema Display VESA (Video Electronics
Standards Association) Mount Adapter Kit for connecting a display
to a third-party ergonomic mount.
The displays also abandon Apple's proprietary ADC (Apple Direct
Connection) connector found in previous displays, in favor of the
more common DVI (Direct Video Input) connection. ADC was an Apple
favorite because it reduced cable clutter and eliminated the need
for a power supply by routing power from the computer to the
monitor. The new displays also feature a single cable exiting the
display, though it splits off into power, graphics, USB 2.0, and
FireWire 400 connectors; the display's power presumably comes
from an external power brick. According to Apple, the 20-inch and
23-inch models will work with existing Power Mac and PowerBook
models. These two displays will also work with "Windows-based PCs
containing graphics cards that support DVI ports with full single
link digital bandwidth and VESA DDC standard for plug and play
setup," according to the specifications at Apple's Web site;
the 30-inch model will only work with a Power Mac G5 and Nvidia
G3Force 6800 Ultra DDL card. As with the iPod, this hardware
expansion out of the Mac bubble can only improve Apple's sales
to the large Windows market.
<http://www.apple.com/displays/specs.html>
Major ISPs Coordinate Spam, Spoofing Policies
---------------------------------------------
by Glenn Fleishman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Last week may be a watershed in the efforts to suppress spam
through efforts to eliminate the many illegitimate methods by
which spammers send and relay their email.
Earlier in the week, several major Internet service providers
(ISPs) agreed to some basic tenets on how to manage their own
networks and their customers' networks to avoid helping to
perpetuate or tolerate spam. Late in the week, Microsoft and
the developers of the Sender Policy Framework announced a merged
version of their two anti-spoofing proposals that would give
domain owners more control over which servers could process
their outbound email.
**Model for ISPs to Fight Spam In-House and Inbound** -- Some of
the largest U.S.-based ISPs issued a model policy document that
codifies best practices in shutting down spammers that use ISP
resources, whether hijacking their customers' computers (turning
them into zombies) or using open relays to send their spam. The
document was authored by the Anti-Spam Technical Alliance (ASTA),
which includes America Online, EarthLink, Microsoft, and Yahoo
among their members. You can download the document from any of
the members' sites.
<http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2004/jun04/06-22ASTAPR.asp>
<http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/3/7/
23779c05-d409-46ce-b9d6-c24908789d8b/ASTA%20Statement%20of%20Intent.pdf>
This document doesn't change the basic methods by which spammers
send or deliver their wares, but it does define a high standard
of performance that should be essentially the law for peer-to-peer
email exchange: if your ISP doesn't conform to the document, then
they're not participating fully in the necessary struggle against
spam. If the majority of ISPs made sure they implemented every
recommendation, spam wouldn't go away, but the volume would be
severely reduced.
Here's a summary of the recommendations in one paragraph:
Shut down open relays. Monitor well-known unintentional scripts
that forward email to arbitrary recipients. Make sure proxies
work in internal networks only. Discover if local machines are
compromised and sending spam, and figure out how to remove them
from the network through notification or by shutting down the
connection. Use authenticated SMTP. Change passwords on customer
routers, like DSL modems. Install reasonable limits on inbound and
outbound email for standard accounts. Don't allow instant account
access for new registrations. Turn off open Web redirectors.
Improve complaint reporting and handling.
The only part of these proposals that might raise fears are the
limits on inbound and outbound email. The proposal recommends
limits like 150 unique recipients per hour and 500 per day. Many
people would find these restrictive. This would unnecessary limit
many users' ability to conduct business, and would require storing
unique addresses, which could potentially violate an ISP's safe
harbor against illegal content, too.
**Spoofing, Revised** -- A second section of the ASTA document
deals with the prevention of email spoofing or forgery, which
also received a boost last week. As I wrote in "SPF Protection
for Email" in TidBITS-722_, a proposal known as Sender Policy
Framework would allow domain holders to state, via their domain
name service (DNS) records, which mail servers on the Internet
were legitimate to send email that includes their return address.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07596>
<http://spf.pobox.com/>
As noted in that article, Microsoft had a competing proposal known
as Caller ID that used a similar but distinct approach. SPF looks
at some basic information in the handshake that happens when one
mail server talks to another; Caller ID looks at the body of the
message, requiring more server load to figure out whether a
message is valid or not.
Last Thursday, the developers of SPF merged their proposal
with Caller ID into something called Sender ID, which was then
submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a body
whose proposals are typically turned into implemented realities.
Sender ID will combine the best of both proposals and will subsume
support for the SPF format.
<http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/twc/privacy/spam_senderid.mspx>
Version 3.0 of Spam Assassin, which just became an officially
supported project of the Apache Foundation - the folks who brought
us the Apache Web server, among other server software - is about
to be released with support for using Sender ID records as one
of the factors in scoring incoming email as spam vs "ham."
**Will Spam Slow Down?** It's easy to be cynical and look at both
announcements as more thumbs in the dike. The water level is
rising and Dutch boys and duct tape won't cut it, right?
I'm slightly more optimistic. The lengthy list of best practices
in the ASTA document do include some of the most egregious ISP
failures. It's unclear if ISPs are unaware of these techniques or
just choose not to devote resources to them. If the ASTA document
provokes ISPs to identify zombies more aggressively and shut down
their capability to send email out (i.e., block TCP/IP port 25)
while the ISP notifies the customer, that alone could reduce spam
significantly.
The only downside of these recommendations and proposals is that
they could lead to what is essentially a whitelisted Internet:
instead of blocking bad email, bad sites, and bad actors, only
"good" actors would be allowed to deliver email, for instance.
"Good" is always a hard quality to define, and there are reasons
to allow ambiguity - not over spam, but over identity for reasons
of privacy, sovereignty, and diversity.
Still, because these measures require unilateral participation by
large numbers of ISPs to succeed, it's probably better to view
them as more of the Internet spirit that allows decentralized
information exchange.
Put a Tiger in Your Tank... in 2005
-----------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Today's keynote from Steve Jobs at Apple's Worldwide Developer
Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco dished out the promised preview
of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and its bundled applications. In the
keynote, Jobs noted that over 50 percent of the installed base
of Macs are now using Mac OS X, which amounts to 12 million users.
That's up from the claim of 7 million users a year ago at WWDC,
and although I'm not quite sure what to make of that 12 million
number, it's not far from the 13.75 million Macs Apple sold from
2000 through 2003 (judging from the company's SEC 10-K filings).
Nonetheless, Tiger will be Mac OS X's fifth major release since
the operating system's introduction in 2000, and there's no
question that Apple has made significant changes over that time.
<http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/>
You won't see Tiger this year though, since Apple is committing
only to the first half of 2005 as a ship date. That could mean as
early as January 2005 (expect to see a big preview at Macworld
Expo in San Francisco, though I would be shocked to see Tiger ship
then) or as late as June 2005. My money is on sometime in between,
partly because it's the safest bet and partly because I believe
Apple would want to use WWDC next year to preview what's coming
rather than recap what just shipped. But software schedules are
notoriously difficult to predict, particularly that far out, and
particularly for an operating system, so there's no telling. The
cost will once again be $130.
As with Panther, Apple is again touting 150 new features, although
a few are more significant than others. Like everyone else, I'm
seeing this stuff for the first time, so rather than attempt to
repeat all the details here, I'll restrict myself to a short
description of (and commentary about) each major new feature,
along with a pointer to Apple's Web site, which you should read
for details.
<http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/jun/28tiger.html>
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/>
**Spotlight** -- With Spotlight, Apple aims to make it
significantly easier to find data already on your hard disk.
Spotlight won't just search filenames and content, as Mac OS X
can do now; it will also be able to gather and search through
metadata, much as iTunes and iPhoto can do with Smart Playlists
and Smart Albums. Spotlight will power additional smarts: Smart
Folders in the Finder (which could let you overlay different
organizational structures on top of the basic hierarchical file
system we have now), Smart Mailboxes in Mail (letting you group
the same set of messages in different ways), and Smart Groups
in Address Book.
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/spotlight.html>
It's good to see Apple acknowledging the need for more access to
metadata about files and other data objects in the system, since
as the amount of data we all accumulate increases, the more
difficult it becomes to manage. Apple's metadata search engine
will be able to extract some metadata from files automatically,
and developers will be able to add their own metadata as well,
making it possible to extend Spotlight's capabilities easily.
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/searchtechnology.html>
**iChat AV for Tiger** -- Immediately after iChat AV showed off
audio and video chats, users started asking if they could include
multiple people in an audio or video chat. Right now the answer is
no, but that will change once Tiger ships. Multi-party audio chats
will be limited to 10 participants; multi-party video chats to 3.
As you would expect, the interface for iChat AV for Tiger is
elegant, with a multi-party video chat showing each person an
almost three-dimensional display, complete with subtle reflections
on the "floor" in front of each person's picture. Multi-party
audio chats lack the whizzy graphics, but add helpful sound-level
meters, making it easy to see who is talking, even if you don't
recognize voices. That's a feature I'd love to have on normal
conference calls.
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/ichat.html>
Apple also claims improved performance and picture quality,
and while those will be welcome, I also hope to see reliability
enhancements; the main reason I don't use audio and video chats
more often is that at least some of the time it turns into a
troubleshooting session via normal text chat for the first
five minutes.
**Safari RSS** -- Although Apple's Safari RSS page is
overenthusiastic about how RSS is a "new" technology, when in fact
RSS has been around for years, it's still a major addition for
Safari. RSS is a way of using HTTP to publish information, usually
article headlines and summaries, though full articles are also
possible, and in fact, you can read TidBITS Talk via RSS by
getting the URL from the XML button on our Web Crossing version.
You read RSS feeds using special programs like Ranchero Software's
NetNewsWire. RSS support in Safari won't be unique; Opera 7 and
the public beta of OmniWeb 5 both offer RSS features already, so
it will remain to be seen how Safari's RSS support will stack up.
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/safari.html>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/>
<http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/>
<http://www.opera.com/>
<http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/5/>
Other useful features in Safari RSS will include identity
protection when using public Macs, the capability to save Web
pages in an archive format and to email them directly, and to
search your bookmarks. My take is that Safari RSS will be a
nice improvement on Safari, but won't compete with the more
full-featured browsers like OmniWeb and Opera.
**Dashboard** -- Apple has hung signs in the lobby at WWDC
tweaking Microsoft's operating system group for the far-in-the-
future Longhorn (the next major release of Windows), including
"Redmond, start your photocopiers!" That phrase has come home to
roost with Dashboard, which appears to be a direct knockoff of
Konfabulator from Arlo Rose and Perry Clarke (see "Consider Me
Konfabulated" in TidBITS-717_), complete with calling its little
JavaScript-based applications "Widgets." Arlo and Perry are
furious at having Apple stomp their business, and the Konfabulator
home page now includes a "Cupertino, start your photocopiers!"
tagline.
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/dashboard.html>
<http://konfabulator.com/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07545>
Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but Karelia
Software wasn't flattered when an update to Apple's Sherlock
mimicked Watson, and the same is true for Arlo and Perry. Apple
has in the past purchased products or licensed code to include
in the Mac OS, and it's unclear why the company seems unwilling to
do that now, particularly given the open source underpinnings of
Mac OS X and all the effort that goes into using those projects.
The cost probably wouldn't be usurious, at least in comparison
to the ill will generated by copying the work of small independent
developers, both in the community at large and among developers
who are being conditioned to avoid creating anything Apple might
later take for itself.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06816>
The main consolation Arlo and Perry have is that Konfabulator
is available now, whereas Dashboard may not ship for up to a year.
In the meantime, you can enjoy Konfabulator even more with the
just-released Konfabulator 1.7, which adds Unicode support and
an Expose-like feature for showing all your Widgets at once on
the same layer, separated from everything else that's showing.
<http://www.konfabulator.com/info/relNotes17.html>
**Automator** -- Dashboard may be an obvious knockoff, but it's
less clear if Tiger's new Automator will threaten macro utilities
like Script Software's iKey or CE Software's QuicKeys. Automator
is a visual scripting environment for creating "workflows" that
are sequences of "actions." Although it sounds like a macro
utility when described like that (Apple calls it a "personal
automation assistant" and has given it a little robot icon),
the Automator Web page seems to point toward it having more of
a link with AppleScript and Apple Events. We won't know quite
where Automator fits for a while, but in the meantime, it's
decidedly interesting.
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/automator.html>
**VoiceOver** -- For many people, using a Macintosh is visually
difficult or impossible, and Apple is attempting to address that
with VoiceOver, a new technology built into Tiger. VoiceOver
enhances Mac OS X with a spoken interface that reads email and
document files aloud, audibly describes the workspace, and
provides a set of keyboard commands for navigating the entire
operating system. It's difficult to extrapolate from Apple's
description exactly how VoiceOver will work, but we can hope that
it will make the Mac more accessible to those with disabilities.
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/voiceover.html>
**.Mac Sync** -- I've been tremendously disappointed in iSync,
since Apple neither opened it up to other developers nor extended
it to synchronizing files and other data between networked Macs.
With Tiger, that should change, since Apple is building
synchronization services into the operating system and opening
them up to developers. Apple seems to be making a big deal of
how Tiger's new sync engine will work with .Mac accounts to
let you synchronize contacts and calendar, although it's unclear
how that's different from what iSync provides now. Nevertheless,
I hope Tiger's sync engine will enable much more than iSync has
so far.
<http://www.apple.com/isync/>
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/sync.html>
**Tweaky Improvements** -- Last, but by no means least, we come to
the improvements that will primarily interest developers. Tiger
will offer 64-bit memory addressing for memory- and CPU-intensive
applications while retaining compatibility with existing 32-bit
applications. 64-bit addressing will also improve code portability
with other 64-bit Unix systems. Speaking of Unix, Tiger will
upgrade to the FreeBSD 5.x kernel, provide command-line access
to Spotlight, and offer access control lists for controlling
access down to the file level. Xcode 2.0 will enhance Apple's
development tools with visual modeling and design features, an
integrated Apple Reference Library, improved Java support, and
graphical debugging from remote machines. A pair of new
architectures called Core Image and Core Video will enable
developers to access the speed of the graphics processing unit
(GPU) built into today's video cards. My impression is that
Core Image and Core Video will basically enable faster and fancier
eye candy than ever before. And while we're on the topic of video,
Apple will be revving QuickTime to support H.264, a new MPEG-4
video codec (compressor/decompressor) that can display video on
platforms from cell phones to high-definition TV; iChat AV for
Tiger relies on H.264 for better picture quality without the need
for additional bandwidth.
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/64bit.html>
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/unix.html>
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/xcode.html>
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/core.html>
<http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/jun/23quicktime.html>
**Tiger Server** -- One more thing... As with previous Mac OS X
releases, Apple also has a server version. Along with the
improvements in Tiger, Tiger Server will include Weblog Server
for publishing a weblog, an iChat server for protecting the
privacy of internal communications (it will be compatible with
open source Jabber clients for various operating systems), a
variety of tools that aim to ease the process of migrating from
Windows-based servers, server-based home directories for mobile
users, a Software Update Server that lets administrators control
the availability of Apple's updates for Tiger, an Internet Gateway
Setup Assistant to simplify setting up Internet sharing services,
and Apple's Xgrid clustering software.
<http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/jun/28tigerserver.html>
<http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/tiger/>
Tiger Server shares the same amorphous ship date as Tiger
itself - the first half of 2005 - and it will retail for $500
for 10 clients of $1,000 for an unlimited-client edition. It
sounds good, and by adding services, Apple increases the
likelihood that those of us with Panther Server or Jaguar Server
will consider upgrading, something that's a good bit less likely
than with desktop systems.
Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/28-Jun-04
------------------------------------
by TidBITS Staff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The second URL below each thread description points to the
discussion on our Web Crossing server, which will be much
faster, though it doesn't yet use our preferred design.
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/>
**Random Eudora questions and comments** -- Our last poll about
email program usage prompts specific queries about Eudora.
(16 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2260>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/126>
**Atlassian's JIRA issue-tracking database** -- Java developers
comment on JIRA and other Java development tools. (4 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2259>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/125>
**iTunes Music Store in Europe** -- Readers note VAT prices with
the European stores and bemoan the lack of an iTMS in Canada.
(8 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2258>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/124>
**Comments on Word 2004** -- Matt Neuburg's review of Microsoft's
new word processor provokes opinions on improvements to the
program and whether or not they really are improvements.
(4 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2257>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/123>
**Commenting on the Email Client Poll** -- Although the poll asked
for readers to vote for a single email program, some people rely
on several methods of getting their email throughout the day.
(8 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2256>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/122>
$$
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