News Archive for 04/04/14

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Strong iPod sales draw attention

04/14, 10:45pm

iPod sales

Several analysts have commented on Apple's announcement today of stronger than expected iPod sales. The iPod sales "blew my numbers out of the water," said Michelle Gutierrez, analyst with Schwab Soundview Capital Markets in San Francisco. She had expected a seasonal decline of 20 percent instead of the 10 percent surge from the December quarter. Investors liked Apple's results, sending its shares up $2.36, or 9 percent, to $29 in after-hours trading, reports CBS MarketWatch, "iPods continued to shine, as the digital music players made up $264 million in sales."

Tech: phishers; Gmail changes; Amazon...

04/14, 8:55pm

Tech: phishers...

Evening tech news: EarthLink has developed a program to fight 'phishers' -- phony Web sites designed to deceive e-mail users into providing personal information such as passwords and credit card or Social Security numbers; Internet search company Google is considering changes to its Gmail e-mail service amid criticism over privacy concerns, the company's president said; Amazon's A9 subsidiary quietly launched a test version of its new search tool, hoping to challenge Yahoo and Google in the lucrative search market.

Event news: MACFest and MovieFest

04/14, 7:20pm

MACFest & MovieFest

The Houston Area Apple User's Group has announced the second annual MACFest, to take place Saturday, May 1st. The event will feature speaker Bob Levitus. Meanwhile, the annual Delta Campus MovieFest is scheduled to take place April 19 at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. The student movie-making event started as 'iMovieFest' by four students at Emory University, has grown into "the world's largest student movie festival."

Splinter Cell goes beta; C&C update...

04/14, 6:05pm

Splinter Cell beta

Aspyr today announced that its Mac version of Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell has hit beta. The strategy and spy game is now available for pre-order at $50. Aspyr also released an update to Command & Conquer Generals Mac Demo that fixes stability issues with some ATI Radeon video cards (in particular 9000 models), addresses multiple monitor cursor controls, and increases performance of in-game movies.

Apple posts $46M profit, iPod sales up 909 percent

04/14, 4:30pm

Apple posts $46M profit

Apple today posted a net profit of $46 million, or $.12 per diluted share for the second fiscal quarter of 2004--up from the net profit of $14 million, or $.04 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Revenue for the quarter was $1.909 billion, up 29 percent from the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 27.8 percent, down from 28.3 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 43 percent of the quarter's revenue. The quarter's results include an after-tax restructuring charge of $7 million. Excluding this charge, Apple's net profit for the quarter would have been $53 million, or $.14 per diluted share. Apple shipped more iPods than Macs in the quarter and raised both revenue and EPS estimates for the third quarter.

FireWire Depot offers forensic drive products

04/14, 3:00pm

Forensic drive products

FireWire Depot today announced five new products, including its FW2ATA-WP, a FireWire (IEEE 1394a)-to-ATA storage equipment with read-only (write protect) functions. Designed for forensic applications, it allows ATA/SATA storage devices to be connected to a 1394 serial bus and supports 2.5" and 3.5", both ATA and SATA, PCMCIA HDD, MicroDrive, and Type I/II devices. The non-write protected FW2ATA model is also available for $400 as are the USB 2.0 read-only U2ATA-WP ($460) and read/write-enabled U2ATA drive ($400). FireWire Depot also released IDE-SATAMT01 ($50), a removable drive tray for Serial ATA 3.5" hard drives that can be used with several removable drive systems.

Apps: ProximityMines, iChat Emotimaker, Comictastic

04/14, 1:45pm

ProximityMines, OsiriX

ProximityMines 1.0 ($15) is a new version of the classic Minesweeper puzzle game, written in Cocoa for Mac OS X 10.2. It features a 'Best Times' feature, minefields up to 32 x 24 in size, automatic pause (when you switch to another application), etc. [1.0MB]
iChat Emotimaker 1.0.1 ($7) and Safari Bookmark Exporter 1.0.7 (free) have been released from Ellipis Productions. iChat Emotimaker allows custom sets of smiles to be used with iChat; the new version adds support for creating Adium emoticon sets. Safari Bookmark Exporter allows users to easily export their Safari bookmarks.
Comictastic 2.2 ($15) is an application that grabs various comics from the Web, allowing them to all be easily viewed in a single application. Version 2.2 allows comics to be grouped by their category in the main comic list now, via the Subscriptions menu and fixes several bugs. [737KB]
MenuCalendar 1.7 is a free menu calendar for the menubar of Mac OS X. It now adds an alternative menu bar icon, improved day display alignment, a rearranged preferences window, a more space-efficient GUI, and new localizations for Dutch, Italian, Spanish, French, Swedish and Polish. [167KB]
OsiriX 0.2a is an open-source software for 3D medical imaging. The new version supports 3D volume rendering and 3D surface rendering for PET-CT, CT and MRI. It requires Mac OS X 10.3 or later as well as G4 or G5 processor. [6.2MB]
iconCompo 3.0 ($17) is a shareware utility that can combine images to create an icon. It offers a complete reorganization of major functions, an improved text drawing mode, more powerful settings, and finer adjustments for transformations. [1.6MB]
Fatsondo 2.0 ($90) is a VST instrument (and AudioUnit plugin) that "has been tailored made for the creation of fat sounds. And it has a built-in chorus, flanger, stereo delay, comes with 64 factory patches." Features include 3 oscillators per voice, a traditional resonant lowpass/highpass filter, Performance Keys, and built-in effects. [3.1MB]

Iomega clarifies Mac support for REV 35GB drives

04/14, 12:45pm

Iomega REV 35GB drives

Iomega told MacNN that the first shipments of its removeable Iomega REV 35GB drive system will be partially Mac-compatible, saying that the USB 2.0 version will initially offer read-only support using its native UDF file system: however, "writeable support with the HFS+ file system--at least support to get any significant performance--a user will have to wait until our Iomega REV drive FireWire version release for the Iomega approved system software." Iomega also said that the system software, which will be ready when the FireWire version ships, will also support USB devices on Mac OS X.

MySQL Cluster: open-source database clustering

04/14, 11:50am

MySQL Cluster

MySQL Cluster is a new open-source database clustering technology that combines the MySQL database with a clustering architecture to deliver 99.999 percent availability to mission-critical database applications. MySQL Cluster features the MySQL database coupled with a distributed, in-memory clustering architecture in which data is distributed over a group of inter-connected databases residing on multiple servers, or nodes. It is offered under a "dual license" business model: it will be free/open-source under the GPL and also available as a commercial license for software vendors and other commercial MySQL customers. A preview version is available now, while the production version is expected in Q3 of this year.

Australia government agency deploys 1200 iMacs

04/14, 11:30am

Australia goes Mac OS

Australia's NSW Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) will deploy 1200 G4 iMacs across 140 registry offices, according to Computerworld: "the G4s will be used as point-of-sale terminals for its counter staff to handle RTA customers transactions across 'prepared business applications' as well as for 'collecting data and payments and issuing licences, registration certificates and receipts for various transactions'. The move away from Wintel desktops also appears to reiterate the recent strong stand by the NSW government to seek alternatives to wholly proprietary operating system kernels - and the licensing models that go with them - where cost-effective and viable alternatives exist."

MacOSXLabs.org offers RsyncX webcast, case study

04/14, 10:40am

RsyncX webcast, case study

MacOSXLabs.org will offer a "RsyncX 2.0" WebCast on Tuesday, April 20 at 1:00 pm EST. The webcast will introduce version 2.0 of RsyncX, a suite of tools for file backup and distribution for Mac OS X. The event will also feature a case study demonstrating the functionality of RsyncX in an enterprise environment, which will be presented by The University of Michigan School of Art and Design.

New line of 2.5" DiskGO USB 2.0 drives launched

04/14, 9:35am

DiskGO 2.5\" USB 2.0 drives

Peripheral Enhancements today expanded its DiskGO! line of external hard drives to a new series of 2.5" ultra portable drives. The new drives feature a brushed aluminum casing with a USB 2.0 interface and are available in capacities of 20GB ($125), 40GB ($150), and 80GB ($260).

Norton Utilities, SystemWorks development halted

04/14, 8:45am

Norton

Symantec has halted development of future Mac versions of Norton Utilities and Norton SystemWorks. The move was reportedly a strategic decision independent of the products' success on the platform. Symantec has said it will continue to develop new Mac versions of Norton AntiVirus, Norton Internet Security, and Norton Personal Firewall. According to AppleInsider, which broke the story Monday, Symantec has also stopped development of Windows versions of Norton Utilities and Norton SystemWorks. Update: Symantec has confirmed to MacNN that it has not stopped development on the Windows platform.

Blackmagic delivers two new HDTV products

04/14, 8:30am

Blackmagic HDTV products

Blackmagic Design has announced two new products ahead of NAB: the DeckLink HD Pro, billed as the world highest quality uncompressed Dual Link 4:4:4 12 bit HDTV capture card; and the HDLink, a full HDTV resolution 4:4:4 monitoring solution with built in audio. The DeckLink HD Pro sells for $2,500 while the HDLink costs $1,300.

MP3Restore recovers lost audio files

04/14, 7:50am

MP3Restore recovers MP3s

SubRosaSoft has released MP3Restore 1.0, an application designed to recover music files that have been deleted intentionally or accidentally from an MP3 player or other media. The software sells for $25; a demo is available for ensuring compatibility with your device.

Apple Q2 earnings due after markets close

04/14, 7:30am

Apple Q2 earnings today

Apple will announce its second quarter fiscal 2004 financial results after the markets close today. Analysts expect the company to post a profit of 10 cents per share, or about $35 million, according to the Thomas Financial Network. Revenue is expected to come in at about $1.81 billion. Apple will stream its second quarter conference call discussing the results at 5:00 pm ET. According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple will disclose more information at that time surrounding iPod mini delays; the device now carries a waiting list from one to five weeks.

Apps: Trapeze, DivX.Ray, ImageCaster, SpamSieve...

04/14, 1:30am

Apps: Trapeze, DivX.Ray...

Trapeze 1.0 ($30) is Mesa Dynamics' new PDF text extraction utility, offering conversion of PDF files to editable RTF, ASCII and plain text with adjustable layout reformatting. Additional features include RTF optimization for either TextEdit or Microsoft Word and support for password-protected PDFs. [Download - 626KB]
DivX.Ray 3 ($36) is a user friendly MPEG-4 Encoder for Mac. With its new design, the latest version of the program "follows the principles of the iLife products from Apple." [Download - 3.8MB]
ImageCaster is a $30 solution for setting up a Web cam under Mac OS X. It is compatible with countless devices -- including iSight -- and can generate Web pages for live streams. [Download - 2.2MB]
SpamSieve ($25) is a utility that employs powerful Bayesian spam filtering to help block unwanted junk emails. New in Version 2.1.3 are new menu commands for easily installing the plug-ins and AppleScript support files, improved parsing of messages with 8-bit transfer data, added support for Outlook Express 5, and more. [Download - 1.8MB]
HSL and CMY are two new iMovie plug-ins ($2.50 each). HSL is an iMovie plug-in that allows direct color control via the hue-saturation-lightness model (as opposed to the more intuitive red-green-blue color model). CMY is an iMovie plug-in that allows direct color control via the cyan-magenta-yellow model. [Download - HSL, CMY]
DX Toolbox 1.6.0 ($20) is the latest release of Black Cat Systems' radio propagation / conditions analysis and forecasting tool for amateur radio operators, and other radio enthusiasts. This version adds a grid square calculator to determine grid squares from longitude and latitude, as well as a world map showing grid squares and time zone information. [Download - OS X, Classic]