For those Macintosh OS X aficionados who are interested in putting more Unix- like services on their machines, this weblog entry on MacDevCenter (courtesy of O'reilly) has a good comparison of the current state of the art of the two big competitors in this area, Darwin Ports and Fink.

According to a transcript of an interview with a senior official at FWB, they are working on directly supporting 3D graphics cards in future versions of RealPC. The RealPC product has been out of the Mac picture for a few years, apparently due to an agreement with Connectix that expired …

An article in Wired tells of a comedian who likes to incorporate jokes about computers into his act. Not surprisingly, he is a bigoted Mac user. Says Scott Bruce, the comedian, "If someone says they don't use a Mac, I'll roast them. I give them a lot of crap. We …

According to an article on CNet, Opera has decided that they need to make a Macintosh browser after all. Citing a new cross-platform development architecture, they indicate it is now easy for them to make a Macintosh version, so why not produce one (which I believe is what we said …

Apple released Beta 2 (v73) of Safari today. It fixes a ton of stuff and adds a bunch of heavily requested features. Go get yours at the Safari download page

As promised when I did the initial review of my new 17" AlBook, I flew on an airplane yesterday. Not only was it a plane, but I was in coach and it was a Canadair Regional Jet (about the smallest plane that is large enough to use a laptop on …

Apple released 10.2.5 (client only, Server is in test, but doesn't appear to be out yet) updates yesterday. There were a ton of security-related fixes (many for things that were only made public in the last week), along with performance increases and some other fixes. I was particularly …

Some of you may have seen sporadic reports (mostly coming from the L.A. Times) that Apple is in the process of coming out with an online music service this month, along with the long-awaited update to iTunes and the new versions of the iPod. Today, an article on MacCentral …

Have you been looking for a way to do auto-fill with Safari? If so, this page can be used to create a button on your button-bar that automatically fills in the information for web pages that ask for standard personal information. At least when I went to the site, the …

I like Japan and I like Japanese anime, so I'm going to be inclined to like a movie like Spirited Away. And so, I wasn't surprised, and neither should you be, that I thoroughly enjoyed this award winning film (Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film, 2003). The animation was an …

Here is a good article on MacDevCenter about making virtual hosts using Rendezvous technology and the built-in Apache web server.

I've now had a few days to get used to the big boy of the Macintosh world, and I'm becoming used to it. However, it's still rather large. So, what does that mean from a practical perspective? When open for normal use (such as you might attempt to do on …

OK, it's big. I don't mean a little big, I mean quite extraordinarily big. OK, enough about the 17" G4 PowerBook's width (and, a bit more regrettably, weight). Let's talk about the other interesting features. This is just an initial set of thoughts, so expect a more considered discussion after …

According to an article on ThinkSecret claims that Apple resellers are balking at new provisions in the reseller contract that would limit Apple's liability and prevent lawsuits on previous year's legal disputes. Dealers that may have been affected include: Buy.com, Fry's Electronics, MicroCenter, Dell and Target.

An article by David Nagel explains why Adobe found the PC "Preferred", even when comparing against a dual-processor Macintosh. The complaint is that it is Adobe's flawed After Effects software that is at the root of the problems. However, it isn't the usual "the software just stinks" complaint, it's a …

Here's a fun site to look at for tricks to play on your other Mac friends tomorrow.

People are always coming up with interesting ways around seeming problems. According to an article on Yahoo! news, a small company called The Bioteam that does work with Biosciences companies. The company has been configuring clusters of Xserve computers to do Informatics Research. In order to get the machines bootstrapped …

Terrasoft Solutions has released an announcement that Yellow Dog Linux (YDL) version 3.0 has been released. Terrasoft has been providing YDL for a while and also sells Apple computers with Linux pre-installed and the Briq computer which is a G3 or G4 in a "shoebox".

Apple Computer has announced availability of the third beta version of their X11 for Mac OS X product. This version contains some more stability and performance enhancements as well as the inclusion of options to handle command-key equivalents for operations such as quit. Click here for the download page.

Apple Computer's PowerSchool software package has been updated to version 3.5 in time for administrators to consider it for the Fall 2003 school year. The product (acquired by Apple a couple of years back) provides online administration facilities for school districts with up to 10,000 students. The …