News Archive for 03/11/08

Choose an article from the archive listing on this page or refine your selection using the controls in the gray box below.

Apple numbers questioned; analyst calls move a mistake

11/08, 12:30pm

Apple makes PR mistake?

Roxio is questioning the marketshare and download numbers quoted by Apple's press release this week that singled out the Napster service, while one analyst says that Apple's "mistake" lends unnecessary credibility to its competitor: "Roxio's Gorog questioned Apple's figures from Nielsen SoundScan, telling TechNewsWorld that those numbers did not include Napster's results. Gorog said Apple's claim of 80 percent market share is reduced to 62 percent if Napster's 23 percent is considered. Gorog, who also questioned how Apple could have had 1.5 million song downloads when SoundScan reported a total of 827,000 single downloads in the same period, said he does not know where Apple got the 1.5 million figure."

Archei sponsors free downloads of MacGIMP software

11/08, 5:40am

MacGIMP available for free

The MacGIMP project today announced that it has received sponsorship from Archei LLC, a new company dedicated to the "best of" open-source software. This week, the MacGIMP 1.2.3 packaged software (regularly $18) is being offered as a free download for all Mac OS X Panther and Jaguar users. The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. Update: The download link is now available as of 12:55 pm ET. [form]

Forums: Mac OS X 10.3.1, Panther mail, WMP 9....

11/08, 12:30am

MacNN Forums roundup

MacNN readers are discussing a yet-unreleased Mac OS X 10.3.1 update, the release of Windows Media Player 9 for Mac OS X, problems with Bondi iMac video, using the PDA/Phone Samsung i500 & Kyocera 7135 on Mac OS X, limited AirPort range on a iBook and lowered AirPort Extreme range under Panther, heat issues with the iBook 14" and PowerBook 15", using Cocoa or Swing for the UI of Java applications, discussion on muting the startup chime, and Panther mail problems.

Apps: Toast, MacVault, Default Folder, Burnz, TimeCache

11/08, 12:20am

Toast 6.03, Burnz 1.0

Roxio has posted Toast 6.03 updater, after offering details of the changes earlier this week. The update also includes CD Spin Doctor 2.0.2 and Motion Pictures 1.0.3 and supports English, French, German, Italian and Japanese. [21.3MB]
PandaWare has updated TimeCache 5.1.6, its $50 time and expense billing application. It fixes problems under Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) as well as other bugs. In addition, PandaWare has release DiskWrangler 1.0.2, a file launcher and browser for Mac OS X. [Download - TimeCache; DiskWrangler]
St. Clair Software has posted a new public beta version of Default Folder X, its utility for enhancing Open and Save dialogs in Mac OS X. Version 1.9.2b1 improves performance of its new hierarchical menus, corrects bugs that could cause it to crash, and resolves many minor problems. [Download - 3.7MB]
Postfix Enabler lets users activate Mac OS X 10.3's built-in mail server with "just one click." Although Postfix on Panther is not that difficult to configure using the command line, the developer says using Postfix Enabler is still faster than doing it manually. [Download - 174KB]
Chronopath today released MacVault 1.0.2, an update to its $15 data organization application. This version addresses legal issues regarding the prior product name. A limited trial is available. [Download - 1.5MB]
Burnz is a drag-and-drop disc-burning application ($13) is "at least twice as fast as the Finder on most Macs". It supports any burner and disc media supported by Apple (CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, etc.); supports pure ISO, RockRidge and Joliet discs; does not require a disc's-worth of free space on the startup volume; and supports rapid burning of multiple discs of the same data." [981KB]
Xupport 2.0b3 updates the all-in-one interface for Mac OS X with a new Pipe firewall log to ipfw.log (Mac OS X 10.2 and 10.3) and other bug fixes. The $20 shareware provides a clean GUI to configure many Mac OS X options, that are not or hard to configure manually, and much more. [408KB]
Apple's Java 1.4.1 update is being revised to "provide better compatibility with changes made in other recent software updates, according to Apple's Knowledge Base.