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Reality News Is Updated Every Monday And Thursday
$75 Million Dollar Net Income
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1)Apple Posts $101 Million Dollar Profit |
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| Mac StarCraft: An Exclusive Inside Look |
With every passing day Blizzard Entertainment undoubtedly losses potential sales on the Macintosh version of their latest real-time strategy game, StarCraft. It's not just a matter of being second best, it's lost interest that kicks in over time. Sure we here at Reality planned to purchase Diablo (another Blizzard title), but by the time it hit the shelves we no longer felt like digging deep into our pocket for a game nearly 12 months old. It's all about larger markets, managing resources and financials, but Mac users live in the same world as PC users; we should be treated no different.
You can't blame shoppers for leaving the countless cartons of outdate milk on the shelves of their local A&P, so how can corporations expect Macintosh users to run down to their local CompUSA and purchase games months after their introduction on the opposing platform, especially when their PC counterparts have long grown tired of the game.
Putting this all aside, sources who've come in contact with the latest beta of the Macintosh version of StarCraft call it a definite 'smash'. From the comments we've read it seems as if Blizzard has produced yet another winner. Expected to ship later this year, Mac StarCraft is currently in the beta stage and shipping to testers in the form of a 225MB CD.
StarCraft runs in SVGA mode at 640x480 according to Blizzard's FAQ, but the resolution implies standard VGA. StarCraft runs at 256-colors. The game requires a PowerMacintosh with 16MB of RAM (though the current beta has a suggest allocation of over 40 megs), and a dual speed CD-ROM.
Mac StarCraft Beta
With many thanks to our gaming sources, who will for all purposes remain anonymous, we're able to bring you a sneak preview of the Macintosh version of StarCraft including dozens of screenshots from the latest build. [The screens shots have undergone compression for faster download times, actual game screens are crystal clear]
Sources noted an option to adjust the speed of scrolling during the game both for keys and the mouse; this is especially helpful for PowerMacintosh G3 owners since scrolling seems to simply fly on the new machines. All options and controls within the game are graphics based. A macintosh window or dialog box is nowhere to be found in the game. Sources also noted that most game-play options have key command equivalents, and commands can even be queued.
Network play is available via IPX Network, modem to modem, direct cable connection, Apple Talk Network, and of course Battle.net. Our sources only had one major gripe - certain creatures throughout the game are quite tiny, more like Command and Conquer than WarCraft II, making it difficult to differentiate them from their surroundings, or notice them in the midst of a large army. On the other hand, the maps contain incredible detail.
There is no doubt about it, StarCraft for the Macintosh is going to be a blast, allowing for endless hours of game-play. Lets just hope Blizzard delivers before the snow starts falling.
View Our Mac StarCraft Screenshots...
If for some reason you are having trouble viewing these images, please try back later this afternoon or during the evening.
If you have any further information on this subject, please inform us.
| Games and the YellowBox |
Recently members of the Reality team stumbled over the notes published below. John Carmack, lead programmer and owner of ID software is the author. It looks like Apple's future with games may turn out to be better than we originally thought.
Name: John Carmack
Email: johnc@idsoftware.com
Description: Programmer
Project: Quake Arena
Last Updated: 07/16/1998 02:57:05 (Central Standard Time)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7/15/98
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I have spent the last two days working with Apple's Rhapsody DR2, and I like it a lot.
I was dissapointed with the original DR1 release. It was very slow and seemed to have added the worst elements of the mac experience (who the hell came up with that windowshade minimizing?) while taking away some of the
strengths of NEXTSTEP.
Things are a whole lot better in the latest release. General speed is up, memory consumption is down, and the UI feels consistant and productive.
Its still not as fast as windows, and probably never will be, but I think the tradeoffs are valid.
There are so many things that are just fundamentally better in the rhapsody design than in windows: frameworks, the yellow box apis, fat binaries, buffered windows, strong multi user support, strong system / local seperation, netinfo, etc.
Right now, I think WindowsNT is the best place to do graphics development work, but if the 3D acceleration issue was properly addressed on rhapsody, I think that I could be happy using it as my primary development platform.
I ported the current Quake codebase to rhapsody to test out conix's beta OpenGL. The game isn't really playable with the software emulated OpenGL, but it functions properly, and it makes a fine dedicated server.
We are going to try to stay on top of the portability a little better for QA. Quake 2 slid a bit because we did the development on NT instead of NEXTSTEP, and that made the irix port a lot more of a hassle than the original glquake port.
I plan on using the rhapsody system as a dedicated server during development, and Brian will be using an Alpha-NT system for a lot of testing, which should give us pretty good coverage of the portability issues.
I'm supposed to go out and have a bunch of meetings at apple next month to cover games, graphics, and hardware. Various parts of apple have scheduled meetings with me on three seperate occasions over the past couple years, but they have always been canceled for one reason or another (they laid off the people I was going to meet with once...).
I have said some negative things about MacOs before, but my knowledge of the mac is five years old. There was certainly the possibility that things had improved since then, so I spent some time browsing mac documentation recently. I was pretty amused. A stack sniffer. Patching trap vectors. Cooperative multitasking. Application memory partitions. Heh.
I'm scared of MacOS X. As far as I can tell, The basic plan is to take rhapsody and bolt all the MacOS APIs into the kernel. I understand that that may well be a sensible biz direction, but I fear it.
In other operating system news, Be has glquake running hardware accelerated on their upcoming OpenGL driver architecture. I gave them access to the glquake and quake 2 codebases for development purposes, and I expect we will work out an agreement for distribution of the ports.
Any X server vendors working on hardware accelerated OpenGL should get in touch with Zoid about interfacing and tuning with the Id OpenGL games on linux.
While questions about Apple's future OS strategy still remain, many are having a change of heart, this is just one. It's great to see that Apple is seeking out the leaders in the PC gaming industry and showing them that Apple does have a future... and it's very bright.
If you have any further information on this subject, please inform us.
| iMac CompUSA Roll-Out to be Huge! |
An anonymous source made a post to the MacMarines mailing list last night detailing CompUSA's plans for the iMac roll-out. As previously noted, CompUSA has apparently upgraded its order from 60,000 iMacs to 100,000. Check out the blurb below.
The iMac roll-out is going to be BIG! I mean HUGE! CompUSA and Apple are planning a huge roll-out for these things, we're talking, bigger than Windoze 98 big! Also, we're taking pre-orders on the iMac now, get your name on the list. Next weekend (July 26th) we'll be advertising the fact that, for only $250, you can reserve an iMac and you'll get $800 in rebates for various iMac peripherals. Most CompUSAs should be getting one or two iMacs to demo in the next week or so.
FYI, I've sold four iMacs in the last two days. Two of them were to people who hadn't even heard of an iMac, not bad for a computer we don't even have yet. Ya know, Apple just might sell a few of these things...
Slap down another one for Mitch over at Apple Retail. Once consumers get a glimpse of these machines in real life, they'll fall madly in love. The iMac is going to be big...and the coupons (rebates)...consumers just love those thing.
If you have any further information on this subject, please inform us.
Sources report that Apple has seeded the first external beta of Allegro, Mac OS 8.5b2, to its internal servers as well as its CQF (customer quality feedback) servers. At this point Mac OS 8.5's feature set has undergone freeze mode- all energies will now be focused on performance and stability of the OS.
At just under a beta revision a week, the Mac OS 8.5 beta test should take somewhere around a month to six weeks to complete. Apple then may or may not issue final candidate builds. A Golden Master is expected sometime in September.
We'll have a full report on beta 2 in the coming week.
In the meantime, MacEvolution has posted a new image of the AMP, stolen from Apple's top-secret AMP lab. Scroll down to July 14th.... ;) On a related front, our AMP prototype is on the way, according to friends at Apple. Each set-top-box Apple ships will come with a box of jiffy pop... You're choice of flavors. We chose extra butter. I guess you can just call us original.
Looking slightly ahead, we'll have some juicy topics to discuss on Monday. In the mean time, don't forget about our message boards and Chat Room (which is once again functional).
Also, an open arms welcome to Peter Tamte, Apple's new senior director of consumer marketing.
If you have any further information on this subject, please inform us.
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Go Back To Reality's Main Page
Monday, July 13, 1998
| Mac OS 8.5 a9: Next Stop - Beta |
High-Ho, High-Ho, It's Off to Beta We Go
Mac OS 8.5 alpha 9 was seeded to developers just prior to Macworld - on the Friday to be exact. This was the same build demonstrated by Steve Jobs at the keynote on Wednesday, and discussed elsewhere at the conferences during the expo. Though Apple representatives referred to it as an "early beta", we assure you they were speaking of none other than alpha 9. Sources close to the project have stated that alpha 9 should be the final alpha build seeded to developers before the system goes beta in the third week of July.
Iron Mac Tyson
The installer has finally been updated to represent the 8.5 numbering, and the installation process has also been sped up quit a bit. Performance on PowerBook G3 systems is greatly improved, and according to some sources, is 'flawless'.
The overall performance of the alpha 9 build is a tremendous step up from previous builds. The entire system has apparently been somewhat optimized, though not fully. According to sources, the overall stability has improved tremendously with this build, more than they thought possible. In addition, all theme files appear function properly, with no major bugs known at the time of this report. The tear off menu and floating windows still need some work with theme files, however.
Mac OS 8.5a9 Markup
Half Sized Image [50K] Full Sized Image [150K]
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall...
The new Apple standard desktop pattern has been implemented with this release. Labeled "Apple Logo Bondi", the pattern consists of solid bondi blue silk like fabric with imbedded Apple logos. [See image above.]
Apple Help Viewer icons imbedded in Finder dialogs throughout the system are now theme specific. Sources also stated that Finder themes now have specific Font settings, and a number of "bondi" blue highlight colors are now part of the system theme files.
Highlighted anti-aliased Finder text is now displayed properly under the Hi-Tech theme. Font smoothing in general is somewhat different and a bit improved; Geneva 10, Times 12 and other fonts that didn't look very smooth under a8 (even when they were set to be) look a lot better now. Unfortunately, the spacing problem that kept smoothed Geneva 10 from being a good small system and views font is still lurking in the garden.
The Apple custom icons, those icons with smaller icons imbedded on top, have now been converted to the sleek 16bit icons that debuted on the default platinum folder several builds before. The new icon set looks extremely nice, and directly mirrors the icons from the Rhapsody user interface. A number of smaller 16bit icons have also been implemented along with masks on some of the new icons; you can see the transparency in the little shadow of the "Copland"-style icons.
The Apple Platinum theme is said to be very clean and very crisp. Combined with the new 16bit icons, Mac OS 8.5 in the platinum theme will have the most attractive look of any system theme out there.
On a related note, the Allegro Easter Egg, which we have learned was actually a planned addition, now reads "About the Mac OS 8.5 Team", rather than "About the User Experience Team". As we mentioned in our Macworld Coverage, this Easter Egg is expected to make it into the final release as long as it does not sacrifice system performance or stability.
Security, Code 11 in Progress
Disk First Aid 8.2 now checks and repairs the hard disk before the boot process, if the computer crashed or was not shut down properly. As we've mentioned in the past, the 'done' dialog will time time out after a specific interval, allowing the boot process to continue if the user does not hit 'return'. The new disk repair measures are a tremendous improvement, and Apple should be praised for the steps they are taking, both with Disk First Aid and its implementation into Allegro.
Little Things Here and There
Sources also noted that Apple has placed an alias to the 'Modem Scripts' folder within the the main 'System Folder' directory. A system resources file also appears within the main 'System Folder' directory.
A Reset Column Positions function has now been added to the 'View' menu for list views.
On the bug fix front, a weird problem that caused popup windows that were created at the far left side of the screen to have weird widths, has been eliminated. Icon services (or the new QuickDraw) still has a tendency to mangle the occasional icon, as does live scrolling, but this should be hammered out during the beta run.
That's All Folks
It's a nice system... OK, it's a great system. As Steve mentioned during his Macworld keynote, it's the most important system update since System 7, or the original Macintosh. Find 2.0, and Internet integration continues to be improved. Sources who've been testing the build commend Apple's steps at attempting to make up for lost ground in the internet spectrum, and they apparently are succeeding quite nicely.
From the looks of things, and using common knowledge, it does not seem likely that CompUSA will have freshly stocked shelves of Mac OS 8.5 before early September, though when it arrives, Allegro will truly complete the next step in Apple's forward migration.
If you have any further information on this subject, please inform us.
| Sonata Will Fill Cracks Left By OS X |
Adding the chunks of information gathered at Macworld New York to the information already at hand, we're able to paint a clearer picture of Apple's OS strategy. Stepping back to Macworld, we confirmed that as of today Apple has no plans to support any of their logicboards prior to the PowerMacintosh G3, nevermind logicboards from third parties or clones. We've also learned that because of the decision not to support these logic boards, PowerPC based 60x systems upgraded to a G3 via a third party upgrade card will not be supported under Mac OS X.
These decisions are harsh and were by no means made while sipping margaritas on the Hawaiian islands, but they are decisions, and they needed to be made.
Apple Will Support Non-G3 PowerPC Macintosh Systems
This may sound like old news, but lets run through it once again. Sonata, previously deemed OS 9.0, though it is unclear what numbering Apple will place on the update, will be released during the same time interval as Mac OS X. Sonata will essentially be the last major release of Mac OS 8, as Steve would say.
In a nutshell, Sonata will be a major system update that will follow Mac OS 8.6, which is scheduled to ship in the first calendar quarter of 1999. Sonata, and this is where the 'support' comes in, will ship with the full set of Carbon libraries. This will essentially bump Mac OS 8, and PowerPC users of all kinds, into a modern OS, of sorts. Most importantly, all Mac OS X applications written for Carbon will run on Sonata, and may or may not be able to take advantages of the full set of advanced features including protected memory, advanced virtual memory, multitasking, multithreading, and so on. Most likely not. Sonata will not do the YellowBox and it will not have the underlying Mach 3.0 kernel.
Sonata will complete the transition from Mac OS 8, to Mac OS X, or as far as the transition will go for that matter. The release will incorporate a slew of new features, features which in turn will be folded into the Mac OS X release. From the adjacent perspective, Mac OS X will be the product of Sonata (Mac OS 8) and Rhapsody.
Sources who will eventually be working on the project have told us that the Sonata release will focus on optimizing portions of the system which have lagged behind in the past, as well as continuing the Internet integration process which begun in Mac OS 8.0 (Mac OS 8.5). Sources also state that Apple will perform a final wrap up of UE (User Experience) features originally planned for Copland, or any other system and implement those as well.
Of course the initial focus will be to deliver superior performance and stability over the previous release. Consolidation of individual system components will continue into Sonata, as well as an improved Finder. Sonata will also contain additional PowerPC code not present in the Allegro release.
Two Levels of OS
So yes, Apple will support the older systems, but in a different fashion. Think of Sonata as Windows95 and Mac OS X as WindowsNT, one is a consumer OS and the other is a high-end OS/Server. Essentially, Mac OS X will become both the consumer OS, and the server side OS, though consumers with older systems will have the option to prolong the life of their hardware with Sonata, rather than replacing it with a brand new Apple PowerMacintosh G3 to run Mac OS X, though this is precisely what will happen, in time.
If you have any further information on this subject, please inform us.
| 400MHz Copper G3 Upgrade Card? |
While we wined and dined on PolandSprings and sugar packets in press hospitality lounge at last week's Macworld expo, members of an exclusive list gathered in a nearby conference room to catch a glimpse of the big daddy of third party upgrade cards for the Apple Power Macintosh G3 systems.
Suddenly the cone shaped cups and sugar crystals loose their lust. It's just not as thrilling as watching NewerTechnology unveil a working 400MHz Cooper upgrade card to the likes of a chosen few. After all, they probably have donut holes and cold Pepsis to please their tummies. After a sighting such as that, they'll need something to slap them back into reality.
What is this?
A dual G4 with a ZIF Socket?
an image published at www.apple.com, but then immediately removed.
Set to shatter all previous bytetmark records, the upgrade card from Newer is nearing a production run. Positioned directly at Apple's Gossamer II base, Newer may make it to the battle line first. Copper; it's better, it's cheaper, it's more economically efficient. What could be better than that? Oh and don't forget the complimentary donut holes, they go a long way.
Pricing information and date of release were unknown by our sources, though the conference that was held at Macworld under NDA was a reality. Expect an announcement in the coming months.
If you have any further information on this subject, please inform us.
| Macworld Coverage Wrap-up |
If you missed any of our Macworld coverage, it can be seen at http://www.macnn.com/reality/macworld.shtml. We covered everything from Steve's keynote, to Mac OS X hardware support, to the iMac, to FireWire PC cards, to 6 PCI Macintosh Systems (which are not on their way). Below is the last of the news from the expo.
Lara Croft - The Tomb Raider Chick
OK, settle down everyone. We've gotten your requests for images of the Lara Croft model from Macworld New York. We've published a Lara Croft subpage, with several images of her. The models name is Nell McAndrew, she's 24 years old, and from the UK. "Lara" showed up on the show floor very briefly to take pictures with fans, and later made an appearance at the Apple party which was held that Wednesday Night at Webster Hall in New York City.
Click Here For A Full Sized Image Click Here For A Full Sized Image Click Here For A Full Sized Image QuickTakes from the Expo
We've published a handful of snapshots from the Macworld Expo, over. The images are of Sinbad, Jobs, and Gregory Hines, in that order.CyberStudio Walks Now Too....
click here for a larger image
Apparently, this is only a feature of the personal edition :).GoLive: CyberStudio 3.0
Macromedia, thanks for showing up. When sales of Dreamweaver start to decrease, you'll blame it on the 'declining' Macintosh market. You get back what you give in. If you don't have the decency to show up for Macworld, why should we buy your products? The same goes out to the rest of you who've let down the Macintosh community as far as showing up for an expo goes.
On the other hand, there were some better efforts on the show floor including Adobe, Connectix, ixMicro, MacSoft, and GoLive. Oh, and lets not forget the lunatic from Globlx. Yeah...What was he on?
Back to GoLive now, and their announcement of CyberStudio 3.1. CyberStudio 3.1 is one of the only applications that allows users to directly edit the QuickTime 3.0 HREF track, and assign QuickTime 3.0 video effects to existing movies. Users can easily assign links and targets to specific segments of a movie using GoLive's point and shoot tool, or apply QuickTime 3.0 filters to an existing movie for special effects.
CyberStudio 3.1 is also one of the first web authoring applications to support Apple's ColorSync technology. Using CyberStudio 3.1, users can create web pages with JPEG images whose colors will display correctly when viewers are using a ColorSync calibrated monitor and a ColorSync enabled browser.
CyberStudio actions are enhanced JavaScript actions that are fully editable and compatible with all major browsers. A fully-documented Actions Development Kit is also part of CyberStudio 3.1, and allows users to easily create and share their own libraries of GoLive Actions. Version 3.1 will ship with a number of ready-to-use actions not found in previous releases.
Among other things, CyberStudio 3.1 will be completely Mac OS 8.5 savvy, and in addition will fully support Navigation Services. Other improvements in the update include contextual menu support, direct ftp site import, improved site management, and updates to file mapping, the JavaScript editor, source code editor, web database, and link inspector. CyberStudio 3.1 is a free update to paying customers of version 3.0.
CyberStudio is now our web authoring application of choice. We're currently hard at work on our revised format, which we hope to reveal to you some time in the coming weeks.
DVD for iMac, the Official Word
What is the official word on DVD for the iMac? There is none. Representatives at the expo would not squeak in a clue, which leads us to believe that they really have no idea what the plans are. Apple would also not comment on whether or not a third party was working on a DVD solution for the iMac.
In related news, the iMac's CD-ROM drive looks strikingly similar to the PowerBook CD-ROM bay, though we were assured that the drive was internal, and not a media bay. Too bad, it would have been a great idea.
Mac OS X Hardware Support: Additional Details and Confirmation
With the help of some generous readers we've received additional information from some of the conferences that took place elsewhere on the expo show floor. Apparently Andy Gore interviewed both Avie Tevanian, and Jon Rubinstein during a Macworld live conference. Here's what we've learned.Mac OS X Will Not Support Third Party G3 Upgrades
Avie Tevanian, in response to an audience member's question, clearly stated that Mac OS X WILL NOT support 603s, COULD support 604s if Apple wanted to do some hard work and really pushed for it, but this is not likely at this time, since they only plan to support PowerMacintosh G3 logicboards. On the other hand, Avie clearly stated that Mac OS X WON'T, and will MOST DEFINITELY NOT support THIRD PARTY G3 PROCESSOR UPGRADES. This is from the Senior Vice President of Software Engineering at Apple and should therefore be taken quite seriously. Obviously, there may be some exceptions to this rule, and I'm sure we could listen to long technical explanations of why Mac OS X could possibly function with a third party G3 card, but the board which that card is installed, will not be supported, and therefore will not work.During the 'Ask the Experts: Mac Hardware Linda McNulty (Product Line Manager, Apple Desktops; Apple Computer) stated that APPLE WILL NOT create a six slot G3 Desktop computer. They are counting on expansion Chassis manufacturers to solve
this problem, and future plans include migrating many of the I/O technologies that currently require PCI cards to the logic board
eliminating the need for so many PCI cards. This confirms reports from months past.Linda also reiterated that OS X will only run on G3s, and not 601,603,604, or Third Party G3 Upgraded machines.
We have one suggestion, save your money and purchase an Apple branded PowerMacintosh or PowerBook system. It's the only way to protect your investment.
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| Reality's Message Boards Up And Running |
Reality Message Boards
We've finally gotten around to setting up our message board system at MacNN. The message boards are a venue for chat, questions (and hence answers), rumors, help, and interaction with the Reality staff. We encourage you to check them out. Please use the MacNN Reality section for all postings having to do with Reality.
Go to the message boards
To start a new topic: select the italicized 'New Thread in this topic' option.
To reply to a posting: select the 'reply' link found on the line directly following the email address and name of the person who published the message you are replying to.
If you plan to be a regular member of the message forums, please select the Login option.
Oh, and don't abuse the privilege. These boards are moderated, but we can focus more heavily on Reality content if we don't have to baby-sit the boards 24/7.
We hope you enjoy.
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