macOS Archive

"Resistance is nearly futile. Three years after Apple introduced OS X, smaller newspapers have hard decisions to make: upgrade to Apple’s OS X, stick with software that is becoming more outdated by the day or move over to a Windows environment." Read the article at NewsAndTech.

Set up a computer cluster in your lab with just a few clicks, using Xgrid. At ADC read how scientists & mathematicians like Xgrid's power and easy setup, which lets them focus on problem solving.

Apple is now officially endorsing OpenAL and has provided a new branch of Mac OS X code which is now in OpenAL's CVS (it requires to install Apple's latest CoreAudio SDK before compiling).

Macworld goes undercover to reveal 40+ Mac OS X 10.3 Tips and Tricks here. Elsewhere, if you work in an environment where you need to manage a large number of Macs (such as in a classroom), you might want to take a look at Apple's Remote Desktop. Using this pricy but effective software, you can easily control and manage all of the Macs on the network. Also, MacOSRumors details some of the planned features and marketing points for Mac OS X 10.4 (preliminary code-name "Merlot").

Apple has released Xgrid Preview 2, the latest version of its powerful computational clustering software that turns a group of Macs into a supercomputer.

What is the big picture when it comes to Apple security? Is OS X safe enough to be a viable contender for running public Web sites and general enterprise applications? Read the article at NewsFactor.

Apple's recent announcement of Spoken Interface has moved speech recognition to the forefront. However, Mac OS X has included speech recognition and synthesis technologies for quite some time, and in this article MacDevCenter delves into the often misunderstood world of talking to your Mac.

Apple is developing a major upgrade to Remote Desktop, the company's desktop management and screen-sharing software, Think Secret has learned. Sources said Apple Remote Desktop 2 will boast standards-based reporting, task scheduling, VNC support, and other new features.

Apple released MacOSX 10.3.3 via the Software Update pref. panel. More info & changelog here.

One of the features geeks really miss on OSX's Unix environment are the virtual screens. Apple tried to address this need with the introduction of the excellent Expose, but all things fair, Expose doesn't do the same thing. CodeTek is the main company which has addressed this need on Mac OS X for two years now. Recently, they released their third major version of VirtualDesktop in two flavors, Pro & Lite.

Apple has introduced many improvements that goes beyond small incremental improvements to existing technologies (think Quartz Extreme, Rendezvous etc.). They have succeeded in integrating complex technologies without the complexity.

The (unconfirmed) info says that Mac OS X 10.4 will go "further than anticipated", introducing not only a "database-driven" new Finder (possibly similar to BeOS' Tracker) --although the file system itself will still be HFS+-- but also a wide support for file metadata. Please note that both the BeFS (and quite possibly this Apple implementation) is not similar to Longhorn's WinFS (apples & oranges). All this is not a surprise for us, as the people who were behind the same realization on BeOS --Dominic Giampaolo and Pavel Cisler-- today work at key positions at Apple Computer in the file system and Finder areas respectively. Pavel is also known for the Gnome Nautilus work while Dominic's legendary book "Practical File System Design with the Be File System" was recently released for free as a PDF. Enjoy!

The two updates, available from the system update preference pane, add support for more Symbian OS smart phones and the iPod mini, as well as stability improvements and they provides enhanced stability for Bluetooth connections to some Symbian OS mobile phones. On other Apple news, the OmniGroup released the second public beta of their popular web browser OmniWeb 5.0.

"I got my new iBook a couple of days ago, and finally tried this “Mac OS X” thing for the first time. After doing all the software updates, this is what I found." Well-known usability hacker Mattew Thomas (mostly of Mozilla fame) gives his two cents on Mac OS X.