InsanelyMac
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New iMac, Mac mini looking more probable after minute discovery
Rumors of a new Mac mini or iMac have been floated (and denied) for a while now, but one ferocious investigator's feasted his eyes on a few pieces of rather telling evidence recently. A poster on the InsanelyMac forums found some code in his new MacBook which referred to "iMac9,1 and Macmini3,1" which would seem to indicate that a newer version -- current iMacs and Mac minis are marked iMac8,1 and Macmini2,1 -- if both products are on the horizon. The new identifiers also list both as having "CFG_MCP7" chipsets -- the same NIVIDIA set used in the new Macbooks (current minis have Intel GMA 950 chipsets while iMacs have NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS GPUs). So... we'll see you at Macworld, then?[Via CNET]
Apple modifies Public Source License to thwart hackers
The InsanelyMac Forum has a post concerning an apparent modification Apple made to their Public Source License, the license that guards the open source portions of Mac OS X such as its Unix kernel, called Darwin. The changes the InsanelyMac Forum cite seem to have been made to set up another roadblock for those who are trying to hack Mac OS X to work on non-Apple hardware, though Apple's site for the license say the latest version is dated August of 2003. Semantics aside, the changes quoted in the forum reflect the application of another fine-toothed comb to what users are not allowed to do with the source they download from Apple's site. Too bad; with Vista receiving mixed reviews, I'm sure Michael Dell would still be interested in offering customers a better choice.
Insanely Mac's iAnnoyance challenge
Those nutty folks at Insanely Mac have announced a challenge to developers called "The iAnnoyance Challenge." Basically, they're giving code jockeys three days to "fix" some of the things about Mac OS X that they find to be irksome. They aren't fooling around, either. The winner of the premiere challenge will get $500US. Speaking of the winner...The "issue" they addressed this time around was the inconsistency of the red, yellow and green buttons that adorn each window in Mac OS X. I certainly hear where they're coming from. For instance, sometimes clicking the red button quits an application (GarageBand and Photo Booth), sometimes it does not (practically everything else). I can tell you that in my day job as a tech support guy, I see countless people who use Windows at home closing application windows with the little red button and assuming they've quit the application (then they can't understand why their computer is so slow, as they've got 11 apps open at one time). The winning utility by Andy Matuschak and his pal Joe Osborn is called "Stoplight," and it's available here. According to the authors, "Stoplight is a SIMBL plug-in that works via a Preference Pane. It allows you to change the windowing behavior for any and all Cocoa based apps." Now, before you download, install and experience something very bad, keep in mind: this was written over a single weekend, and should be considered beta (if not alpha) software. None of us at TUAW have tried it. Use a bit of common sense, ok?
