Macintosh
Latest
Xcode 4 Preview 2 available for download
Have I mentioned how much I adore Xcode 4? I would marry it, bear its children and clean up after it -- that's how much I love it. But Xcode 4 hasn't been readily available for general use. Until now. As of this evening, you can download Xcode 4 Preview 2 and throw yourself into its exuberant yum. At least you can if you're a member of one of the paid developer programs. Yes, all that Xcode 4 goodness is now yours to enjoy, whether you went to WWDC or not. So point your browser over to Apple's developer site, log in with your Mac or iPhone paid developer credentials, and download yourself a big hot steaming pile of IDE yum. It's like the chocolate lava volcano cake of development tools. Thanks, Luke Rhodes
Computer History Museum makes original MacPaint source code available to public
With all the tricky Photoshoppery we do 'round these parts, it's easy to forget that once the only way to get Justin Bieber into a shot with Steve Jobs and Bill Atkinson involved an X-Acto knife and rubber cement. For a peek into that dark and distant time (the 1980s) check out the Computer History Museum website, which has recently posted the source code for both MacPaint 1.3 and the QuickDraw graphics library. It's pretty amazing to consider that software this cutting edge consisted of a single, 5,822 line Apple Pascal file (in conjunction with another whopping 3,583 lines of code in assembly language). If poring over twenty-six year old code isn't your bag, the museum's website also contains an oral history of the development of MacPaint and more. Hit the source link to check it out.
Grating cheese on a G5
Ah, the once mighty Power Mac G5. It used to be the envy of film editors and art designers everywhere. With a 1.6 GHz CPU, a whopping 256MB of RAM, and an 80GB hard drive, it was once the tower-iest of PC towers. Just seven short years later, it's reduced to grating cheese in some nondescript office environment. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Actually it's just the case doing the grating -- you have to admit, with all of those tiny holes for ventilation, the case works pretty well. It does make a mess, though, and there's quite a bit of cheese still left on the unit. It may not be able to run 10.6, but the old G5 will spruce up your salad if you so choose. Thanks, sivil!
iPad makes itself right at home inside Macintosh Classic (update: keyboard)
An iPad stuffed inside an iBook not your cup of tea? Then perhaps this Macintosh Classic mod will be better suited to your more discerning, old school tastes. As you might expect, there's not a lot involved in this one -- just some gutted internals and an opening on the side that lets you slip in an iPad, which magically fits just where the old CRT used to be. Head on past the break for the video, and hit up the source link below for a peek at some of the possibilities offered by the mod. Update: What would a Mac be without a keyboard? Wonder no more -- just hit the break for video number two. [Thanks, Sapan]
In defense of Dan: Why Lyons has a strong point about the Mac
Chris Rawson and I like to tag-team, and this time I pulled the counterpoint to his "Mac ain't dead" point. I'm going to enter into this conversation delicately because, like Dan Lyons, I don't think the Mac is dead. Yes, you read that correctly, I agree with Lyons when he writes, "To be sure, Apple won't kill off the Mac."[1] And that's because both Lyons and I recognize that the Mac has an important role both internal and external to Apple. You need a Mac to compile (unless you're into serious jailbreak mojo -- which Apple is not) with Apple's internal IDE and tool creation suite. You need a Mac to create professional graphics and video suites. You need a Mac for high-end publishing and so forth. So all of us agree: The Mac lives and OS X for the desktop is not imperiled.
The Mac is far from dead
Over at Newsweek, Dan Lyons, formerly famous as Fake Steve Jobs, asks the question: Does Apple's iPhone 4 signal the death of the Macintosh? He goes on to answer this question in his article with lots of attention-grabbing phrases like, "RIP, Macintosh," and "You've been dropped. Dumped. It's over." Of course, later on in the article, sandwiched in between several paragraphs of hyperbole, Lyons also says, "To be sure, Apple won't kill off the Mac." Well, okay. What exactly are you trying to say then, Fake Steve? Reports of the Mac's death may be exaggerated, but it's not hard to see why some might think it's on its last legs. As Lyons points out, Jobs didn't discuss the Mac at all during the recent WWDC 2010 keynote, instead spending all of his time discussing iPhone 4 and iOS 4. Apple also dropped its Apple Design Awards for the Mac, which meant others had to step in and take up the slack. Apple's party line on the iPad is that it's the future of computing, and eventually the only people who'll need to use a traditional computer are users doing highly specialized tasks that the iPad doesn't and might never be able to handle. But even with all that, the Mac is far from dead. Read on to find out why the Mac isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
Valve celebrates Half-Life 2 for OS X with a nod to Apple's '1984'
Apple's "1984" commercial has become the stuff of legend -- a symbol of breaking free from what was then an IBM-dominated market. But in a stroke of irony, Valve has released its own parody of the ad to celebrate the launch of Half-Life 2 on OS X (praise be to Steam), about five and a half years after the highly acclaimed game originally debuted on PC. Better late than never, we suppose, and like always, Valve's marketing hits just the right pitch. Video after the break, along with Apple's original and another parody near and dear to our hearts.
Apple pulls the plug on 'Get a Mac' ad campaign
There's been rumors that Apple had ended its long-running of "Get a Mac" ad campaign ever since Justin "Mac" Long said he thought they might be done last month, and it looks like that's now finally been confirmed by Apple -- the company has pulled all the ads from its site and is instead redirecting folks to its new "Why You'll Love a Mac" page. Of course, the move doesn't exactly come as a huge surprise considering that Apple hasn't produced a new one since its Windows 7-challenging ads last October, and Apple has certainly had plenty of prime material since then. Head on past the break for look at one of the more recent highlights, and hit up the more coverage links below if you feel like reminiscing a bit more. As for what's next for Apple, we can only guess. A triumphant return of Jeff Goldblum, perhaps?
Analyst: Apple selling more iPads than Macs, at the moment
So there's no question that Apple is selling a ton of iPads, but would you have guessed that it's actually selling more iPads than all Mac sales combined? That's the case, at least at the moment, according to RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky, who says that Apple is currently moving about 200,000 iPads per week, compared to 110,000 Macs -- though it still trails the iPhone, which is apparently racking up sales of 246,000 per week. Of course, we are just talking about analyst estimates here, and things could potentially swing back into the Mac's favor once the quarterly totals are added up. If true, however, it'd sure be a whopper of a milestone -- one that we'd no doubt be hearing plenty more about in, say, three weeks time.
Flickr Find: iPad in a Macintosh
Flickr user mapgoblin accomplished this (did he just stick it in the Mac, or did he cut a custom-designed slot for it to sit in?), but however it was done, just the act of combining the two devices gets a salute from us. Here's a thought: just get yourself an aquarium app, configure it to show on the iPad's screen correctly, and you've got a no-water-or-fish required Macquarium. Meanwhile, mapgoblin is off finding out where else the iPad will fit. [via Unpluggd]
Twelve things to do with an old Apple computer
As I type this article on my MacBook Pro, I can't help but glance over at my poor PowerBook Lombard G3 with its awesome translucent bronze keyboard, sitting in its dusty laptop bag. The battery is long toast. When I last booted it up, the clock thought that the system time was close to 1970 thanks to the internal clock battery no longer holding a charge, and thanks to the fact that it's capped at OS X 10.3.9, I can't get a new version of Firefox on it. In short, it's seen better days. However, for all its faults, it's still got a decent hard drive and nearly a gigabyte of RAM, so it can't be totally useless. This makes made wonder, what can I do with this old 'Book (or an even more ancient Mac)? Here are a few possibilities: First of all, if you have an older but still functional laptop (like me!), you could strip off the plastic, keyboard, etc. and turn it into a hanging digital picture frame on the cheap. Use it to surf the web, old skool style, with Contiki. Yes, surprisingly, even the old Apple IIe can surf the modern internet, though only in text form. Turn it into a Personal Webserver. Of course, your newer Macs can serve up web pages using Apache. Personally, I've had great success in getting my server up and running (along with MySQL and PHP to boot!) using XAMPP, but if you want to really be different, turn that old Macintosh SE/30, IIci or LC into web server.
Over a dozen uses for old Macs
So let's say you finally decided to let that strawberry iMac go into the great off position in the sky (probably because you bought an iPad, right?). You're not going to unceremoniously dump that thing in the garbage, are you? You may not know it, but there's a healthy modder community for Macs, plus an avid collection and re-purposing community. We've written about clever uses for old Macs before, but here are two takes on what to do with old Macs. One is for Macs that still have some computational life in them, and the other is more geared to Macs who can't power on, but their cases are still useful. 12 Things You Can Do with an Old Apple Computer 10 Cool Ways to Reuse an Old Apple Computer
Cool ways to reuse an old Mac
Most Mac users will be among the first to tell you that they can be a little overprotective about their hardware. Of course, Apple has a great recycling program for older computers. But for some, sending off their old Mac that way would be a little like sending off your old faithful car to cash for clunkers. Sure, there is a benefit, but the idea of what happens to that old reliable friend once it's out of its owners hands inspires shudders. Of course it would be entirely possible to make good use of your old Mac if something predictable, like a media center, or a server for extra storage. Heck, even a reliable little Mac that still works at 10 years old could be put to use as a kid-friendly Internet-free computer for your child's bedroom. Even more fun would be using the ROM disc from an old Apple II to run an emulator for those old classic games that you still love on your shiny modern Mac. And all of these would be good uses, and in the case of the latter a fairly fun one. But, in true Mac geek creative style, some users have put their old Apple computers to even better use -- or at least more creative use.
Fallen Earth gets a Mac client
Perhaps you've watched Shawn's recent Fallen Earth exploits in Choose My Adventure, or heard all about the post-apocalyptic fun on Massively Speaking. Well, the team at Icarus Studios have heard the call from the Apple-loving contingent for a client of their own -- and have just announced that they have a beta Mac-compatible client ready for you to download and try out! The new client is made possible thanks to the open-source project, Wine, which helps to create cross-compatibility for different platforms. The Fallen Earth Mac beta client works on Intel Macs, and is optimized for systems running under OS X 10.5 Leopard or later that have dedicated graphics hardware. No word on a Linux client at this time, but a connection with Wine is certainly a very positive first step if they do choose to open up further cross-compatibility to Linux users in the future. "The Mac OS X compatibility project is something we've been excited to see implemented for quite a while," said Brad Lineberger, Chief Technical Officer of Icarus Studios. "Our goal for the project is to allow Mac users to run all of our existing and future games in their native OS." All you have to do if you'd like to get in on the Mac beta is to head over to the Fallen Earth site and check out their beta FAQ page. Of course, you have to have an active Fallen Earth account, or sign up for a 10-day trial first, but for post-apocalyptic loving Mac fans, this is certainly some great news.
The Unreliable LISA
I missed the earliest Apples, having bought a NEC PC-8001 in 1981 and then a Convergent Technologies/Burroughs B20 in 1985. Both were clients of my ad agency; neither were bad machines, with color monitors and some graphics capabilities. The B20 drove a Qume daisywheel printer at about 20 characters/second. I was a victim of Apple's drive toward dominance with creative types. While today's G5 is highly regarded by creative professionals, this reputation was not established in 1987. When I joined Prime Computer in mid-1987 as a speechwriter, I inherited one of the first Lisas, with one 10 Mbyte hard drive, one floppy and a black-and-white display that was bit-mapped. I also had an alphanumeric terminal for a Prime system and a PC/AT with an Intel 80286 processor, a bit-mapped color display, and a link to a color printer. Soon I had a fourth computer, a Macintosh 4/40. Apple was not that special in 1987. The Lisa was a miserable machine, prone to crashes and some rather weird results on laser printers. A single page of text or graphics could be translated into a hundred pages of gibberish. I worked many 70-hour weeks due to Lisa crashes, and nearly got fired when one crash destroyed my boss's presentation a few hours before a board meeting. Yes, I saved regularly, but a Lisa crash usually destroyed everything, including the ability to read backup copies. The only way to reboot a Lisa was to pull the plug, wait a few minutes, and try again. It was that unstable. The Lisa died when I spilled a cup of coffee onto its keyboard at 8 PM, trying to finish a speech for the next day. I was holding the keyboard vertically over a trash can, trying to drain the coffee out, when the president walked in. He asked when he would see his speech. I shook the keyboard to get the last of the coffee out, and held it out to him. "Your speech is in here somewhere." I rewrote the speech on Prime's crude text editor, finishing at 2 A.M. Prime decided to acquire Computervision during the fall of 1987. The presentation for the board of directors was authored on a Macintosh, with MacPaint. I didn't understand MacPaint, and the original author didn't understand MacPaint. I sometimes wonder if anyone really understood MacPaint. Unfortunately, a computer support guy found a new keyboard for the Lisa. My workdays went from 12 hours to 16 hours, trying to undo/redo/edit the presentation. I loved the WYSIWYG bit-mapped text, which was revolutionary. I could bring a Prime minicomputer to its knees composing a four-page newsletter for output on a laser printer. If I made the tiniest mistake, I had to do it again. That meant the game Tetris slowed to a crawl: the highest previous score was about 6500; I gave up at about 65,000 playing Tetris while my newsletter was being processed. The Mac 4/40 ended that escapade. My boss and I considered throwing the Lisa out of his third-story corner office into the parking lot, except we knew the glass was too strong. So one day it went out of my office on a cart, destination unknown. The Mac 4/40, for 4 megabytes of memory and 40 mbytes of disk, lasted for many years. In spare time, I designed my house on it, with MacPaint, which evolved into Canvas. I used Canvas to design, and illustrate, my model railroad. I'm now on an original dual-processor G5, with a newer MacBook Pro when I travel. Apple's philosophy has won my heart, but it took quite a few years before I could say it was correct.
New producer's letter for Warhammer Online
As we approach the end of the year, which has been a pretty tumultuous one for Warhammer Online, it's not surprising to see a new letter from the producer. But this letter is also a letter from a new producer -- Bruce Maclean, who is apparently now taking on the duties as producer. There's no word on Jeff Skalski except that he is still "working hard" on the game. But we may as well focus on the positives, as the letter itself doesn't speak about the problems the game has had, instead focusing on the improvements that have come into Warhammer Online over the past year. The patch 1.3.3 graphical improvements are cited as a notable improvement, as are the many updates the game has seen over the course of the year and the launch of the Macintosh client for the game. There's also a brief discussion of what might be expected in the near future, which include useful weapons earned via RvR gameplay and a new scenario structure. How far in the future isn't mentioned, but they're hinted to be close, which could be excellent news for a game that's seen its fair share of ups and downs. As the letter says, however, now is the time to drink and relax and enjoy the game so far. Good advice, that.
OS Xbox Pro is the hottest hackintosh ever
Warning: some NSFW lyrics on the music in the video above. What do you get when you combine an old Xbox with OS X and some Mac Pro level hardware? This monstrosity. Built by Will Urbina, the OS Xbox Pro is a hackintosh casemodded into an original Xbox dev kit, with some crazy hardware under the hood, including a pair of 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550s, an NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT card, 8GB of RAM, an 16GB solid state drive, and four traditional hard drives -- one boots Windows 7, the other one does OS X (Snow Leopard, we believe -- he bought a copy retail), a Ubuntu install in there somewhere, and two other sweet hard drives for video editing. And here's the wacky thing: Total material cost of the system is under $1500. That, combined with the video above, almost makes me want to spend a month of weekends trying to do something like this myself (aside from, you know, fitting it into a dev kit Xbox thing -- although fitting it into an old Macintosh might be a fun build, too). At any rate, awesome build for sure.
Warhammer Online, now with 100% more Mac support
There have been some big changes in Warhammer Online of late -- that's undeniable. But the game is pressing steadily onward, making a major change that oddly hasn't altered a single element of the gameplay. No, this change is entirely targeted at the players, as the game has now launched the Macintosh version of its client. They've been hinting at it and talking about it for quite some time, but it has gone live and is available, complete with full support for the game's free trial for any Mac gamers still on the fence regarding whether or not they want to dive in. Certainly there's been some discussion among the game's community about whether or not the Mac client has been necessary or even desirable, with the common statement being "well, everyone can just run Boot Camp for it." But there's no doubt that a native solution is better than a workaround, and it makes the game more appealing to people who would prefer not to fuss around with Boot Camp. Take a look at the official question-and-answer page to see the details about the new client, or if you'd rather be a malcontent, start demanding Warhammer Online for Linux next.
Gartner and IDC agree: 3rd quarter Mac sales are up
Amidst the ongoing macroeconomic malaise (is it over yet? Can we come out from under the covers?), the PC industry's sales have been suffering as big corporations and cash-strapped consumers postpone those discretionary purchases of shiny new gear. The expectation, based on 2008's results, was that this quarter would be tough sledding. Results from analysts Gartner and IDC, however, both show an uptick in unit sales across the PC market year-over-year (2.3% higher globally per IDC, 0.5% higher per Gartner). Any pickup in sales comes as a surprise to Gartner, which had predicted a 5.6% decline in unit shipments. For Apple specifically, the news is also good: both firms predict a boost in unit sales and share percentage for Apple's CPU shipments, with US numbers up from 8.6% to 8.8% share (Gartner) or a blazing 9.4% share (IDC). For the unvarnished results, you can tune in this coming Monday, 10/19 at 2pm PT to hear Apple's quarterly earnings call. [via BrainstormTech]
WAR for the Mac gets a release date
While nobody could really argue about how pretty Macs are, it certainly isn't the platform of choice if you're interested in gaming. The sad truth is that there are nowhere nearly as many Mac-native games as there are for Windows. This means Mac users are often left to deal with running games in Boot Camp, emulators, or just having to do without. But in a gambit to open up their market a bit more, Mythic have been working on a Mac client for those wanting to get their RvR on. It seems that testing has come to an end as today they've announced a release date.Set to launch on October 28th, this new Mac version of Warhammer Online will be free to download for those who already have Warhammer Online accounts. For those North American players who have been waiting for the Mac release to take the plunge, you'll be able to snag a digital download copy at Gametreeonline.com for $19.95, which will include 30 days of game time. There is currently also a 10-day free (open beta) trial open for those of you of the Mac persuasion, if you're not sure if WAR is right for your shiny Mac.
