News Archive for 01/01/16

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Macworld Expo SF draws record crowd

01/16, 7:30pm

Macworld Expo SF draws record crowd

More than 93,000 individuals packed the Moscone Center last week for Macworld Expo San Francisco, according to numbers released by IDG World Expo. The figure makes San Francisco 2001 the most popular Macworld Expo ever. Additionally, more than a 250,000 users across the world tuned in via Webcast for Apple CEO Steve Jobs' January 9 keynote.

iTunes downloads top 275,000

01/16, 7:15pm

iTunes downloads top 275,000

Apple today announced that in its first week of release its free MP3 application, iTunes, received more than 275,000 downloads.

First impressions: Radeon PCI

01/16, 7:05pm

First impressions: Radeon PCI

MacNN Reader "Dev-Em" offers his first impressions of the ATI Radeon PCI Mac Edition which recently began shipping. The comments cover performance with specific games such as Diablo II, DVD playback and 2D scrolling speed.

OSP 0.99r Released

01/16, 6:48pm

OSP 0.99r Released

OSP 0.99r is the latest release of the popular mod for Quake III: Arena created by Orange Smoothie Productions. The new version adds dozens of bug fixes and minor new features; a full list of changes is available online.

GNN: Tropico Interview

01/16, 6:43pm

GNN: Tropico Interview

Gaming News Network has posted an interview with PopTop Software President Phil Steinmeyer on Tropico, the company's building/strategy coming to the Mac, PC and Dreamcast later this year. "[Tropico] was loosely inspired by SimCity," remarks Steinmeyer. "I thought - Being mayor is great, but I'd rather be the absolute boss of a whole country - the dictator."

Parsec Thesis Posted

01/16, 6:27pm

Parsec Thesis Posted

Markus Hadwiger, a member of the development team working on the massively multiplayer online 3D space combat game Parsec, has posted his master's thesis, "Design and Architecture of a Portable and Extensible Multiplayer 3D Game Engine", in both PDF and Postscript formats. The thesis describes the inner workings of the Parsec engine and will be the core documentation of the forthcoming Parsec Software Development Kit (SDK).

Macromedia reports record earnings, merger

01/16, 6:05pm

Macromedia reports record earnings, merger

Macromedia today reported a profit of $16.2 million for its third quarter, a 97 percent year-over-year increase, on revenues of $103.3 million, a 61 percent increase. The company also announced that it will merge with Allaire, an e-commerce content management company. Meanwhile, Handspring reported a narrower-than-expected loss of 7 centers per share on revenue of $115.62 million. Wall St. had expected a loss of 12 cents per share.

WS4D/eCommerce 3.318 posted

01/16, 6:03pm

WS4D/eCommerce 3.318 posted

WS4D/eCommerce 3.3b18, a single application that includes a Web server, shopping carts and order/customer tracking, is now available for Mac and Windows. This version adds support for PayPal, support for LinkPoint HTML for credit-card approval and different price levels based on quantity ordered. The company is also offering WS4D/Banners, a new optional integrated module that rotates banners and tracks impressions and clickthroughs.

'Misfits' learn computers on Apples

01/16, 6:00pm

'Misfits' learn computers on Apples

Reuters has published an article about The Access 2 Technology Project, a program that for teenage "misfits." In one such class, one-third of previously trouble-making kids discovered they were good at computers "once they started touching parts and reconstituting old Apple Macintoshes."

Tropico Character Highlight: Female Factory

01/16, 4:45pm

Tropico Character Highlight: Female Factory

The Female Factory Worker is this week's Character Highlight for PopTop Software's building/strategy game, Tropico. "As any good dictator knows, you'll need plenty of healthy, skilled workers to keep the factories running strong.  You can either please them or control them; just don't think you can ignore them."

Mindless: WWII Online Interview

01/16, 4:40pm

Mindless: WWII Online Interview

MindlessGames.com has published an interview with Cornered Rat Software's Chris Sherland, Producer on the upcoming massively multiplayer online war game, World War II Online. "All our vehicles, including tanks, trucks, ships, and aircraft will be multi-crew-able," notes Sherland. "From a two man R35 to many many players parachuting out of a Ju52."

XGR: Red Faction Screenshots

01/16, 4:34pm

XGR: Red Faction Screenshots

XGR has published 15 new screenshots from the Playstation 2 version of Red Faction, the first-person shooter also in development for the Mac and PC at Volition and expected for release on the Mac by GraphSim in July.

Roxen WebServer 2.1 for OS X Public Beta

01/16, 4:20pm

Roxen WebServer 2.1 for OS X Public Beta

Roxen WebServer 2.1 Beta is an open source web server for Mac OS X Public Beta, offering the ability to perform run-time server-side image processing such as on-the-fly Photoshop file conversion, the ability to render antialiased text, and apply filter-like effects on images. It supports HTTP 1.1, HTML 1.0, SSL 3.0, WML 1.0, Java 2, Java Servlets 2.2, Perl, Pike, JSP, Unicode, CGI, FastCGI, TTF and image formats such as PSD, TIFF, JPEG and GIF and is available under the Gnu Public License (GPL).

Pike 7 beta: open-source programming language

01/16, 4:15pm

Pike 7 beta: open-source programming language

Roxen has also released Pike 7 Beta, its open-source, general-purpose programming language for Mac OS X Public Beta with which developers can build applications on Mac OS X and deploy Pike server applications across existing server installations such as Mac OS X Server, Sun Solaris, Windows 2000, and Linux. Pike 7 will support Mac OS X when it is released in early 2001.

MWSF 2001: Photo Essay IV

01/16, 3:45pm

MWSF 2001: Photo Essay IV

Our Macworld Expo San Francisco coverage concludes with a final Photo Essay that takes a look at FWB, harman/kardon, Imation, MacAlly, MCE, iRez, Netopia, and Digital Playground.

Afternoon tech news: Motorola closes plant

01/16, 2:40pm

Afternoon tech news: Motorola closes plant

Afternoon tech news: Motorola has announced that it will shut down its Harvard, Illinois cellphone manufacturing plant and lay off 2,500 workers; Intel has divulged plans to increase production of its Pentium 4 chip to an expected 20 million in 2001; tech companies are teaming up to fight hackers by sharing information about cyber-attacks and vulnerabilities; and Sun Microsystems plans to throw a coming-out party today for the company's new Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE).

IMG: Brian Burke Interview

01/16, 2:18pm

IMG: Brian Burke Interview

IMG has published a short interview with NVIDIA PR Manager Brian Burke which covers such topics as NVIDIA's development of the hardware abstraction layer for the Apple DVD Player. "We worked with Apple to implement a hardware abstraction layer - a layer that removes the direct chip dependencies between the DVD player application and the underlying graphics architecture beneath it, which could be found in the previous version of the DVD playback utility provided by Apple," says Burke.

CGO: Myth III Preview

01/16, 2:13pm

CGO: Myth III Preview

Computer Games Online has published a brief preview of Myth III: The Wolf Age, the third title in the real-time strategy game series now in development at Mumbo Jumb Studios. "Our 3D unit models will be using a skeletal-based animation system, allowing them to react to their scenery (like move their head to watch an oncoming foe, or to lean into a slope as they walk up it)," explains Scott Campbell, lead designer. "We are planning for 3D generated foliage that will sway in the wind or deform with a wight's blast. Translucent water will allow you to see into the river, as real-time lighting will play over the scene like a sunset."

Riddle of the Sphinx 1.02 Released

01/16, 2:08pm

Riddle of the Sphinx 1.02 Released

DreamCatcher Interactive has released Riddle of the Sphinx 1.02, a new version of the company's 3D adventure game for the Mac and PC. The new version fixes more than a dozen bugs and tweaks some aspects of gameplay.

Open Door ships firewall advisor utility

01/16, 1:10pm

Open Door ships firewall advisor utility

Open Door Networks today began shipping "Who's There? 1.0" firewall advisor for analyzing and investigating access attempts. It offers advanced logging with automatic host name look-up and security risk level assessment as well as a database of info on most types of attacks. The $40 utility is available online as a demo.

Games: Women in Gaming Part 1

01/16, 12:55pm

Games: Women in Gaming Part 1

games.macnn.com has published Women in Gaming: Part 1, an interview with two renowned female first-person shooter gamers, which covers such issues as obstacles that women face in gaming, suggestions of gender-neutral games and how women can find a place in a male-dominated pastime.

Women in Gaming: Part 1

01/16, 12:52pm

Women in Gaming: Part 1

In part 1 of our Women in Gaming series, we interview "hepkitten" and "emmatheodd", two renowned female gamers in the first-person shooter gaming community. The interview covers such issues as obstacles that women face in gaming, suggestions of gender-neutral games and how women can find a place in a male-dominated pastime.

MacNN: Photo Essay IV

01/16, 12:48pm

MacNN: Photo Essay IV

MacNN has posted a final Photo Essay from its Macworld Expo San Francisco 2001 coverage which includes harmon/kardon's iSub and SoundSticks as well as MacAlly's new iShock II which includes force feedback support.

GC: realMyst and NFS: PU

01/16, 12:47pm

GC: realMyst and NFS: PU

We've added realMyst, the upcoming real-time 3D version of the best-selling adventure game Myst, and Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed, the upcoming first release in the popular racing series on the Mac, to our ever-expanding Game Center. Publisher, developer, expected release date, description, screenshots and in-game movies are just some of the items provided on each Game Center page.

PMG4 Poll Results; Oni Poll

01/16, 12:42pm

PMG4 Poll Results; Oni Poll

The results of last week's poll which asked, "Are you ready to buy a new Power Mac G4 with an Nvidia GeForce2 MX included?" have been tallied. 59.49% of participants are ready to buy a new Power Mac G4, 25.83% are not ready and 14.68% are undecided. Our new poll, available in our left sidebar, asks, "After playing the Oni Demo, will you be purchasing the game when it's released on January 29th?" Please take the time to place your vote.

Roundup: Cro-Mag Rally 1.0.7 and more

01/16, 12:38pm

Roundup: Cro-Mag Rally 1.0.7 and more

Yesterday Pangea Software released Cro-Mag Rally 1.0.7, id Software's Graeme Devine provided an update on the status of the Altivec-enabled build of Quake III: Arena and Quicksilver Software posted their latest Developer Diary for Master of Orion III. We published MWSF 2001: Photo Essay II which covers the gaming companies present at the show: Aspyr Media, Bunch Media, Game Studios, Graphic Simulations Corporation, MacPlay and MacSoft. Also, we added Monopoly, the classic board game from Parker Brothers recently released for the Mac, and Shadowbane, the upcoming persistent online role-playing game for the Mac and PC, to our continually growing Game Center.

The Fallen for Mac continues delays

01/16, 11:47am

The Fallen for Mac continues delays

IMG received word from The Collective's Doug Hare that the Mac version of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - The Fallen is being delayed by the incomplete nature of the game's MP3 playback system. "The Mac version of the game is complete apart from the music playback," says Hare. "We used the Miles Sound System on the PC which provided us with MP3 playback and unfortunately the Mac version of Miles is running late which is the reason for the Mac delay." The company hopes to enter final testing by the end of the month.

Ekim posts Pipeline 2.5 proxy server

01/16, 11:45am

Ekim posts Pipeline 2.5 proxy server

Ekim Software has released Pipeline 2.5, a proxy server application. It is fully configurable and can host SOCKS4, SOCKS5 and HTTP proxy servers in one application. This version includes SpeedLimit, a new feature that gives the ability to slow down the speed of connections.

DealNN: refurb iBook, $200 off on iMacs

01/16, 11:45am

DealNN: refurb iBook, $200 off on iMacs

Today's bargains at DealNN include a refurbished iBook G3/300 for $1,000; $200 off on an iMac DV+ or iMac DV SE; a PowerMac G3/500 PCI upgrade and FireWire for $400; and the Complete National Geographic on 31 CDs for $10.

Apple: MWSF Games Wrap-Up

01/16, 11:39am

Apple: MWSF Games Wrap-Up

Apple summarizes the Gaming Area at this year's Macworld Expo San Francisco with "2001: A Gaming Odyssey". The article highlights the games which appeared and were announced at the show while also offering a short video of some games being displayed including Escape from Monkey Island, Summoner and Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim.

Utterer.com: NVIDIA Interview

01/16, 11:32am

Utterer.com: NVIDIA Interview

Utterer.com has published an interview with NVIDIA PR Manager Brian Burke regarding the company's new presence in the Mac graphics card market.

The Macintosh platform will have a separate unified driver that is derived from the Detonator driver, similar to our mobile strategy. NVIDIA's has the world's only true forward/backward, and top-to-bottom unified driver architecture. The same experience and effort expended in creating the stability and robustness of the Detonator drivers for the PC is being leveraged on our Macintosh drivers.

Updated Harpoon3 text resources

01/16, 11:29am

Updated Harpoon3 text resources

Jesse Spears has released updated text resources for Harpoon3 for the Mac which allows users to see important descriptive text in the Platform Display of downloaded scenarios.

Canto offers 2 options, MP3 Filter

01/16, 10:38am

Canto offers 2 options, MP3 Filter

Canto has released Cumulus PowerPoint SupportKit, which offers an extended feature set for managing single slides. The SupportKit is an option for the entire Cumulus product line. Another option available is the Cumulus DIG35 AssetStore, which allows for the efficient management of all assets that include DIG35 Metadata. The company is also offering its MP3 Filter for free. It automatically captures all metadata, such as title, artist and copyright notices, with any MP3 file.

OS 9.1 ResEdit patches available online

01/16, 10:36am

OS 9.1 ResEdit patches available online

"Jon's Mac OS 9.1 mods" is a collection of ResEdit modifications that add key commands to the Finder, enlarge old-style Open/Save dialog boxes, adds the ability to windowshade QuickTime and Sherlock windows, and more.

Black & Bleu/Pro 3.0 adds more info, search

01/16, 10:27am

Black & Bleu/Pro 3.0 adds more info, search

Black & Bleu 3.0 lists 5,045 Mac OS error codes with Apple's explanation of each. Black & Bleu enhances Apple's explanation by providing explanations in plain English. Version 3.0 adds 661 new error codes, 31 more error groups and adds the ability to search your annotations as a separate option. The Pro version allows for exporting the detailed explanations to a file. The standard unlimited use electronic version is $30, with the update for $20; the Pro version is $130, with the update for $75.

New Power Mac, PowerBook developer notes

01/16, 10:20am

New Power Mac, PowerBook developer notes

Apple has updated its new Digital Audio Power Mac G4 developer note and the new Titanium PowerBook G4 developer note, which provide details on the specs of the new machines.

Keystrokes, 9.1 not compatible; v2.1 coming

01/16, 10:13am

Keystrokes, 9.1 not compatible; v2.1 coming

The current version of KeyStrokes is not compatible with Mac OS 9.1; Version 2.1, which will be released as a public beta and will be a free update, will be fully compatible with Mac OS 9.1 as well as improved features including function keys and a new type generator that makes the program 100% more responsive and now fully compatible with MS Word.

Chapura: No plan for Palm conduit for Outlook

01/16, 10:07am

Chapura: No plan for Palm conduit for Outlook

John Lascurettes notes that Chapura has no plans to deliver a Palm conduit for Mac users to sync Outlook with Palm OS devices: "We have investigated the possibility of an Outlook synchronization for the Mac, but currently have no plans. It is our understanding that Microsoft plans to include a Mac-to-Palm synchronization tool with [its] next release of Outlook for the Mac."

PADMaker creates app description files

01/16, 10:04am

PADMaker creates app description files

CG Software has recently released PADMaker for Macintosh, a free application for creating Portable Application Descriptions XML files.

Pix Lite 1.1 adds AppleScript support

01/16, 10:02am

Pix Lite 1.1 adds AppleScript support

SearchWare Solutions has released Pix Lite 1.1, a free update to the $15 shareware, QuickTime-based media viewing tool. This version adds more AppleScript support, improves performance and fixes numerous bugs.

Current WebTen incompatible with OS 9.1

01/16, 9:57am

Current WebTen incompatible with OS 9.1

Dave Alpert found out from Tenon that WebTen 3.04, an Apache Web server for Mac OS, "does not function under 9.1," due to the major Open Transport changes.

PPP utilities now all compatible with 9.1

01/16, 9:56am

PPP utilities now all compatible with 9.1

Sailmaker Software has updated all its PPP utilities for compatibility with Mac OS 9.1. Control PPP is now version 2.2. The Universal PPP API is now version 1.4. PPPquencer is now version 2.2. MacPPP QuicKeys is now version 4.3. Those who have purchased the source code for the Universal PPP API will be receiving an update by separate e-mail.

SmartScroll 3.7.1 works with OS 9.1, Classic

01/16, 9:56am

SmartScroll 3.7.1 works with OS 9.1, Classic

Marc Moini's Smart Scroll 3.7.1, which allows you to set your scrolling speed in all applications, adds support for Mac OS 9.1, runs under Mac OS X's Classic, and fixes a few minor issues.

iSynch 1.4b6 betas for both Classic and OS X

01/16, 9:05am

iSynch 1.4b6 betas for both Classic and OS X

Bluedays Software has posted iSynch 1.4b6, a tool to synchronize Web sites and FTP servers and your local folder. Also available are beta versions of iSynch Lite for Mac OS X and iSynch Lite for Classic.

UMAX updates scanner drivers

01/16, 8:45am

UMAX updates scanner drivers

UMAX has posted MagicScan 4.5 drivers for its Mirage, PowerLook and Gemini scanners.

Crescendo releases iTimer 2.5

01/16, 8:43am

Crescendo releases iTimer 2.5

Crescendo Software has released iTimer 2.5, an application for timing and regulating Internet use from one computer. The $20 software supports multiple users and is fully administrable. Site licenses are $800.

Thermograph 1.2.0 posted

01/16, 7:58am

Thermograph 1.2.0 posted

Jeremy Kezer has posted Thermograph 1.2.0, a $7 shareware utility that measures the internal processor temperature of any late-model G3 or G4-based Macintosh.

PowerBook G4 video available

01/16, 7:45am

PowerBook G4 video available

Apple has posted the 5-minute PowerBook G4 video that was shown during the Macworld Expo keynote last week, which features commentary on the system from various Apple and non-Apple personalities.

LinuxPPC gives away 1,000 copies

01/16, 7:40am

LinuxPPC gives away 1,000 copies

LinuxPPC has announced that it distributed more than 1,000 copies of the operating system free of charge during Macworld Expo. LinuxPPC can be ordered for $20, or with a getting started guide and T-shirt for $32.