Ex-Be/Palm Executive Rejoins Apple; Should Apple Embrace USB 2.0?

  Submitted by Yves R. Crevecoeur Apple 56 Comments
The Mac Observer has posted a reader poll and commentary on the topic of whether Apple should embrace USB 2. Commentary at AppleLinks. In other Apple news, Apple is preparing on launching an online music service. Also, longtime hardware developer Steve Sakoman, a former Palm and Be executive, has rejoined Apple Computer as a vice president. Mr Sakoman was involved in the Mac II development and was the main guy behind the creation of the Newton. At Be, he designed the first generation H0bbit-based BeBox, the one that had 5 AT&T CPUs, back in the early days of Be. He later left and when he came back became Be's CTO.
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Windows Server 2003 Supports AMD x86-64

  Submitted by Dennis Baptista Windows 13 Comments
"An even bigger endorsement comes from Microsoft Corp., which will begin shipping a 64-bit Windows server operating system for Opteron ahead of the chip's launch. And in a break from the company's traditional hand-in-hand relationship with Intel, Microsoft execs are talking up Opteron. They say the AMD chip helps companies that want to move at their own speed. "With 64 bits, some customers are going to want to ease into it," says Bob O'Brien, group product manager for Windows Server 2003." Read the article at BusinessWeek.
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Reading The Apple Patent Tea Leaves

Apple 85 Comments
"Apple has been busy patenting everything under the sun it seems, and some of those patents may promise interesting things to come. Others might make you stop, scratch your head and ask "huh, you can do that?" If you want to see the full list of Apple's published patents and pending patent applications, just visit the US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO). For those that don't crave reading through hundreds of patents, here's a quick patent round-up of user interface, program, hardware, and otherwise interesting developments from Apple." Read the article at MacObserver.
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Hyperthreading Technology and Digital Multimedia

Intel 32 Comments
Digital media applications are unique in that they can generally consume all the performance they can get. Unlike other tasks that execute in a few seconds, the rendering of stills, audio and video can take several minutes or even hours. Applications in the digital media space can translate increases in performance to increases in end-user productivity, and it is therefore beneficial for them to take advantage of the latest platform technologies.
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LindowsOS 3.0 Review

Linspire 15 Comments
"Publishing this article has been avoided for quite some time. The emotions behind LindowsOS is simply too great for objectivity to be used for both Tux Reports reviewers and for readers. We've witnessed flame wars in forums, mean-spirited posts in response to positive statements regarding LindowsOS, and we've fallen prey to our own biases regarding this distribution. However, after using the product we now believe that we can give a brief look at some of our experiences in relation to our expectations and then help others sort out some of the underlying controversy they may have read on other sites." Read the review at TuxReports.
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LynuxWorks Releases First Complete Solution for DO-178B RTOS

OS News 1 Comment
"LynuxWorks today introduced LynxOS-178, a commercially available DO-178B level A certifiable (FAA standard), real-time operating system (RTOS) that meets the stringent standards for safety-critical systems. LynxOS-178 originated from a partnership between Rockwell Collins and LynuxWorks. Rockwell Collins made several enhancements to the original LynxOS product and created the Rockwell Collins' Virtual Machine Operating System (VMOS)." Read the rest of the press release here.
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Linus Torvalds: The Benevolent, Brilliant Keeper of the Kernel

Linux 35 Comments
"The Linux kernel project is growing up. New contributors, job delegation, and a source code control system have changed the way the kernel gets hacked. The guy at the center of it all -- Linus Torvalds -- has changed, too. Gone are his days as poster boy for Open Source. He doesn't do Comdex keynotes anymore; he's not on the covers of business magazines; and he rarely gives interviews. No, these days, Linus is all about what he does best: hacking the kernel and keeping a sure and steady hand on the rudder of everyone's favorite project." Read the interview at Linux-Mag.com.
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QT 3.1.2 and QT# 0.7 Released

Qt 7 Comments
Maintenance release of the multiplatform toolkit, QT, was released, version 3.1.2. Also, a maintenance release of QT# was released also, version 0.7, and it works with Mono, GNU's Portable.NET and Microsoft's .NET. The main improvements over 0.6 are an easier build system, improvements in the demo apps, unicode support, and support for slots that take a QString parameter.
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Update on the 12″ Powerbook Review; Altitude Problems?

Apple 110 Comments
OSNews featured two reviews of the new 12" Powerbook from Apple last month. Using a machine and more fairly evaluating it, is a continuous process, so when new facts emerge, we should be reporting them back. So, what I discovered this weekend is that my 12" Powerbook doesn't like... the mountains. Read on, it is an interesting issue. Update: The issue is now logged at Apple's tech support db.
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FreeBSD 4.8-RC1 Available

FreeBSD 25 Comments
FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Murray Stokely announces that FreeBSD 4.8-RC1 i386 mini ISO and FTP installation directory are on ftp-master. He says that the Alpha release will be available shortly. The plan is to make FreeBSD 4.8 available only for i386 and alpha platforms. Subsequent 5.1+ releases will have FreeBSD available for all platforms including sparc64, ia64, etc. Read the announcement at BSDForums.org.
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McNealy: Sun Reduces the Complexity

Oracle and SUN 12 Comments
Recently, Sun Microsystems Inc. hosted its annual analyst conference in San Francisco. The company faces high-end competition from IBM Global Services and low-end competition from companies including Dell Computer Corp. offering clustered systems running the Linux operating system. While not dismissive of the threats posed by the competition, Sun President Scott McNealy in a one-hour interview with eWEEK Editor-in-Chief Eric Lundquist and Labs Director John Taschek contended that the company is poised to capitalize on the research and development efforts launched over the past several years.
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The Very Verbose Guide to Updating and Compiling Your Debian Kernel

Debian 59 Comments
If you are reading this, I assume you already know what the Linux kernel is and why you may want to update it. However, if you are accidentally reading this walkthrough, just happen to be running Linux, and have no idea what the kernel is or why you would want to update it, the next two paragraphs are for you (if you are looking instead into a less verbose and more generic way of updating your kernel on any Linux distro, read here). In a neophyte nutshell, the Linux kernel is the brain of the Linux system. It tells your system which file systems, hardware, protocols, etc. are supported. There is a lot more to it than that, of course, but I think that diminutive description will suffice for now.
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Hyperthreading Moves Into Mainstream In 2003

Intel 21 Comments
Hyperthreading moves into hyperspeed throughout 2003, with the Canterwood and Springdale chipsets forming the backbone of Intel's desktop roadmap. According to Intel roadmaps seen by ExtremeTech, Intel's desktop processors will extend up to and possibly beyond 3.6-GHz by the beginning of 2004, with Celerons cresting 2.5-GHz by the same timeframe. Await soon an article regarding hyperthreading, here on OSNews.
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