[12/30] Commentary--Finally, a Headless iMac? There's not much news during the holidays leading up to Macworld Expo 2005, the week of January 10th in San Francisco, so one might expect that rumors will begin popping out all over. Yesterday morning, the entertaining Mac rumor site Think Secret broached the "headless iMac" rumor again, claiming that one will be announced at Macworld with a price tag of less than $500.

We have no knowledge of this possibility and wrote "again" because the "headless iMac" clammor has been around since well before Apple marketed the Power Mac G4 Cube in 2000. Many, including us, have argued for a long time that Apple should produce one at a low-to-mid consumer price point. Just a few years ago we pointed out that if Apple excised the most expensive part of the iBook, i.e. its 12" LCD screen, and took out the keyboard and trackpad that it could have a very nice inexpensive consumer desktop in a 9x11" by 1" thick form. If Apple placed the optical drive and mother board in parallel it could produce a slightly thicker but smaller desktop, maybe about the size of a cable/DSL modem box in a variety of interesting forms.

Of course, the issue is not whether Apple could produce a low cost "headless iMac" but whether it should do so. Apple's long-term prevailing opinion as voiced by its CFO Fred Anderson was that Apple was not interested in marketing commodities. In fact, Apple's current CFO Peter Oppenheimer said essentially the same thing earlier this year when questioned about a sub $800 Mac. Apple's economic thinking might have been that since Macs are sold primarily to existing Mac owners, a low cost headless iMac with a very thin profit margin would simply cannibalize more expensive eMac, iMac and iBook sales, a no brainer if true. In addition, Apple's cultural thinking might have been to snub the scruffy consumer low end, except for the education market.

So what might have changed in the world to make Apple reconsider its long-held position? The success of the iPod, of course. Apple has sold millions of iPods at $250-600 each and the majority of them have been sold to PC users. iTunes and iPods work well on a PC and have introduced millions of PC users to Apple's cultural core of elegant simplicity. Cheap PCs are utilitarian at best, have little-to-no useful software and are fraught with constantly increasing security issues and complexities that many people don't care to deal with. The question is would enough of them see a neatly designed little white box running Mac OS X, AppleWorks, iLife and the rest of Apple's free applications to fork over $500 or so to make marketing a headless iMac worth the cost of some cannibalization of eMac, iMac and iBook sales?

If Apple is finally going to market a sub $500 headless iMac, it has to be confident that there will be a net benefit and that leveraging its sales off the iPod sales to PC users will be successful in providing a majority of it. If Apple does this, we would look for Apple to fortify this leverage by also adding some additional innovative ties between the iPod and the headless iMac.

Needless to say, we would love to see Apple market a headless iMac. In addition to being a computer, it would make a great silent server for the home or small business. Maybe Apple would even "think diffferent" about the server paradigm for use in the home for music, images, automation and security and produce simple-to-use extensions to the iLife suite for these functions. Just maybe.... [Bill Fox]

[12/29] 2004 Productive Year for Internet Media Streaming Alliance: The 15th Internet Media Streaming Alliance (IMSA) Forum in Hawthorne, NY, concluded with IMSA's 2.0 specifications internal review completed and going out for public review, a new digital rights management working group established and other accomplishments noted in this Digital Webcast article. Apple chairs IMSA and he concluded:

“This year has been extremely active for the streaming media industry,” said David Singer, ISMA Chairman and Apple’s QuickTime Engineering Ecosystems Manager. “We see early engagement and lively participation from companies in a variety of categories including content creation, digital rights management (DRM), encoding/decoding, server /cache technologies, media players, and service providers.”

[Dana Baggett]

[12/29] Free Envision Web Show of the Week--Modern Art by Roy Lichtenstein: This week's free Envision Web Show of the Week from Open Door Networks features creations by pop artist Roy Lichtenstein. For those of you attending the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco next month, the SF Museum of Modern Art (right next to Macworld) is featuring an exhibit of Lichtenstein's work. Envision will be displayed at Open Network's Macworld booth (#649), January 11-14. The Envision Web Show of the Week can be downloaded from the Show of the Week web site. There is an archive of previous Shows of the Week. [Bill Fox]

[12/29] Apple's First Quarter Financial Report to be Webcast on Jan. 12th right in the middle of Macworld Expo week in San Francisco. The webcast may be watched via QuickTime streaming from this Apple web page. [Bill Fox]

[12/29] Ron Avitzur's Amazing Graphing Calculator Story Now on Wired. Laast week we posted a note on Ron's story of working free "for" Apple nearly 24/7 for 6 months to produce the Graphing Calculator app. Wired News picked it up on Monday. If you missed it, it's worth reading Ron's original article. [Bill Fox]

[12/28] Nisus Writer Express 2.1.1 Sale--10 Per Cent Off: Nisus extended its "Festivus" sale on the latest version of Nisus Writer Express 2.1.1 until December 31st. Nisus Writer Express is an inexpensive word processor ($59) that claims full M$ Word compatibility. See Nisus' web site for details. They also have gift packs of 2 for $80 and family packs of 3 for $100. [Bill Fox]

[12/27] Hands-On Report--Knocking Down Spam with Sp@mX at Week 2: Our spam problem had become overwhelming, over 600 spam messages per day that occasionally surpassed twice that. We had been tackling it with our web host's server level filter, Spam Assassin, that marks spam as JUNK before we download it and with Apple Mail's Junk filter. If we could just delete the result, we would still have the problem while traveling of having to download all that spam through a slow dial up connection. But we can't even delete the filtered spam because Spam Assassin and Apple Mail occasionally make mistakes and filter out mail we want, like 5 or so per day. So we have had to manually scan through 600+ spam messages before deleting them, a very time-consuming process and not 100 per cent accurate either.

Two weeks ago we began a trial of Sp@mX, now at v3.0.7 by hsc. It's a $20 application that automatically, more or less, reports spam to the server admins that handled the spam on the way with copies to the FTC and the California Dept. of Justice. It relies on server admins to take action to block the spam based on the reports. Here is our review.

We provided a progress report at week one of our use of Sp@mX. Our spam messages had decreased to an average of 360 per day, a remarkable 40 plus per cent reduction.

During week two of our trial we processed a total of 1,640 spam messages or 234 per day for a 35 percent reduction below the week one rate.

During week one we received 75 Mail Return Errors from the spam reports. During week two we also received 75 despite the reduced number of messages processed.

During week one we received 191 server acknowledgements of our abuse reports on 2,523 spam messages processed. During week two we received 213 on 1,640 spam messages.

So far Sp@mX seems to be working as advertised, with a 40+ percent reduction during the first week and an additional 35 percent reduction for the second week. Next week we'll post the results for the third week. [Bill Fox]

[12/27] From the Dark Side--Merry Xmas PC Users, 3 New Security Holes in Windows XP were reported on the weekend by USA Today according to this Excite News article. [Dana Baggett]

[12/25] MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!

-The Gang at MacsOnly.com

[12/24] Apple Revised the Offerings from Two Hot Deals Retailers:

Sweetwater has fantastic deals on a wide range of audio products for your Mac, including the Tascam US-122, Bias Soundsoap, Samson RH-100 Professional Headphones, Studio Projects C1 Large Diaphragm Condenser Mic, FXpansion BFD, Gary Garritan Personal Orchestra, Edirol MA-20D Monitor Speakers, and much more.

Apple's new Clearance Section of Hot Deals, dedicated entirely to end-of-life and clearance Mac and Mac OS X products from all of your favorite retailers, boasts some newly added offers, including TDK 48x Certified 700MB CD-R Discs, M-Audio FireWire Audiphile Compact Audio/MIDI Interface, DAZ Productions Victoria 2.0, PCUSA 4-port USB 2.0 Hub, Alps Photo Quality 4"x6" Paper, and much more.

[12/24] The Apple Developer Connection Published A New Article--Developing 64-bit Applications: Check out the latest installment of the Tiger Developer Overview Series from the Apple Developer Connection. The article, titled "Developing 64-bit Applications," covers what 64-bit computing means to developers, and explains how Mac OS X Tiger breaks the limitations of 32-bit computing and allows developers to work with mind-blowing amounts of memory.

[12/23] The Graphing Calculator Story--Only at Apple: The amazing story behind the Macintosh Graphing Calculator, as told by Ron Avitzur the Graphing Calculator's principal engineer, is now available in electronic writing on his Pacific Tech web site.

The Graphing Calculator is one of the most amazing apps that has ever been made for the Mac OS running on the PowerPC CPU. Enter almost any equation, click "Graph" and The Graphing Calculator provides an instant 2D or 3D visual rendition. Incredibly it was distributed free with every Power Macintosh using the Mac OS from System 7.1.2, we believe, through 9.2.2. We have version 1.3 that came with Mac OS 9.2.2 that we have used in Classic Mode. We previously noted that Ron recently released a beta of the free version 1.4 for Mac OS X. Pacific Tech also markets a commercial version 3.x.

As amazing as The Graphing Calculator itself is, the story behind its creation as told by Ron is equally as amazing. Here is an exerpt,

"It's midnight. I've been working sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. I'm not being paid. In fact, my project was canceled six months ago, so I'm evading security, sneaking into Apple Computer's main offices in the heart of Silicon Valley, doing clandestine volunteer work for an eight-billion-dollar corporation."

...only at Apple. Ron Avitzur just posted the full story on his company's (Pacific Tech) web page. According to his note to us, it is the first written account. [Bill Fox]

[12/23] The Financial Times Compared Apple with Bloomberg and likened both to a walled garden, a closed system where every aspect of the product is controlled by one company. They survive by being at least just enough better than the alternatives. The article provides an interesting look at the similarities of both companies and their founders. [Dana Baggett]

[12/23] iPod Called "Cabbage Patch Doll" of 2004 Holiday Season in several publications (here and here) but is it? Of course, they mean that the iPod is a "must have" purchase or gift and that demand is so high that they are virtually impossible to come by. We vividly remember belatedly, desperately, relentlessly and unsuccessfully searching South Florida for a Cabbage Patch Doll for our young daughter before Christmas Day in 1983. iPods are not that scarce, at least not yet. There are news reports of iPod shortages here and there but the UTC Apple Store in San Diego still had a bunch yesterday afternoon. We also hope that the iPod will have greater staying power than the relatively short-lived Cabbage Patch Doll madness. [Dana Baggett and Bill Fox]

[12/22] Apple Sues Three Over Illicit Tiger Distribution: Tiger is the upcoming version of Mac OS X 10.4 that is due for release in the first half of 2005 according to Apple's announcements. However, Apple distributed an early version to developers at Apple's Worlswide Developers Conference this past June and has released several updates since to developers, all under a confidential non-disclosure agreement. According to this Reuters article, Apple has sued three developers for sharing the early releases through an internet file-sharing network.

Apple has also recently sued unnamed individuals for releasing confidential information on an upcoming product and subpoenaed source information from three Mac web sites--PowerPage, Think Secret and AppleInsider--according to this CNet article. [Bill Fox]

[12/22] Good Review--Apple 30" Cinema Display: We gave Apple's 30" Cinema Display a highly favorable review but, for some reason, some others have panned it as a professional display. We don't agree with their criticisms but we are not graphics professionals. So here is an ecstatic review by a professional on Digital Video Editing, one who agrees with us. [Dana Baggett]

[12/22] Free Envision Web Show of the Week--Letters to Santa: This week's free Envision Web Show of the Week from Open Door Networks is based on scenes from Operation Letters to Santa. It is available from this web page. Previous Shows of the Week are available in the Show of the Week archive. If you are attending Macworld 2005 in January, stop by Open Door's MacWorld booth (#649) to see Envision. [Bill Fox]

[12/21] Hands-On Report--Sp@mX at Week 1: A little over a week ago we reviewed this spam-fighting application that is new to Mac OS X. Sp@mX, now at v3.0.7, automatically searches the headers of email that you designate as spam and then contacts the services that handled the email on its way to you, queries them for their abuse address, sends a complaint to that address and files a complaint with ther FTC. Friday night/Saturday morning marked our first week of use. So how is it doing?

The general answer is surprisingly well. Prior to our use of Sp@mX we got over 600 spam messages per day, sometimes up to double that amount. During our first week's use we got 2,523 spam messages, an average of 360 per day. That represents at least a 40 per cent reduction from 600 but it is actually more than that. On Saturday and Sunday we got another 505 spam messages, an average of 252, so the number of spam messages has continued to decline.

We did inadvertently report several list subscriptions as spam, got removed from their servers and had to re-subscribe. We also accidentally reported one client as a spammer because both Apple Mail's Junk Filter and Sp@mX thought her message was spam. It's difficult to carefully cull the spam folder with hundreds of messages in it. Fortunately, our level of spam is finally getting low enough to permit eliminating such mistakes.

This week we also began automatically reporting each spam message to the FTC (spam@uce.gov), a new feature that was added last week to v3.0.7. We'll report on the second week's results next week. [Bill Fox]

[12/21] Apple AirPort Extreme Firmware 5.5.1 for Mac OS X is Out and available for download from this Apple web page. Here are the improvements that the new firmware brings:

• Hard reset behavior is improved. With this firmware version pressing and holding the reset button for more than 5 seconds will cause the LED to flash rapidly. This visual feedback lets you know you’ve held the button long enough to trigger a hard reset
  
• Resolves a potential problem with PPPoE configurations when updating from 5.4 or earlier
  
• Improved reliability of WDS networks when using WPA security. If you had a WDS network secured by WDS and then removed any of the WDS nodes, this could cause a memory leak resulting in the need to reboot your WDS network nodes
  
• Resolved an issue with inbound passive FTP to a port-mapped computer on the network
  
• Resolved an issue with certain printers which were no longer recognized by the base station after the 5.5 firmware update was installed. With the 5.5.1 firmware these printers are again recognized by the base station.

We installed the firmware update on our Extreme Base Stations with no problem. Fortunately, we didn't have any of the issues that the firmware update fixes. [Bill Fox]

[12/21] Apple AirPort Express Firmware 6.1.1 for Mac OS X is Out and available for download from this Apple web page. Here are the improvements that the new firmware brings:

• Hard reset behavior is improved. With this firmware version pressing and holding the reset button for more than 5 seconds will cause the LED to flash rapidly. This visual feedback lets you know you’ve held the button long enough to trigger a hard reset
  
• Improved reliability of WDS networks when using WPA security. If you had a WDS network secured by WDS and then removed any of the WDS nodes, this could cause a memory leak resulting in the need to reboot your WDS network nodes
  
• Resolved an issue with inbound passive FTP to a port-mapped computer on the network
  
• Resolved an issue with certain printers which were no longer recognized by the base station after the 6.1 firmware update was installed. With the 6.1.1 firmware these printers are again recognized by the base station.

We installed the firmware update on our several Express Base Stations with no problem. Fortunately, we didn't have any of the issues that the firmware update fixes. [Bill Fox & Dana Baggett]

[12/21] Apple Delayed Delivery of its Xsan Software to Early 2005 according to this CNet article. Xsan was supposed to have shipped this Fall (by today) but Apple delayed it until early next year without comment on what caused the delay. Xsan is Apple's new $999 storage management software. [Bill Fox]

[12/20] Macs OS X 10.3.7--How Fast Is It? As long-time readers know, using a stock 450 MHz G4 Cube we have benchmarked nearly every version of Mac OS X starting with 10.0. The exceptions are 10.3.1, a quick fix, and 10.3.5 since our Cube was packed away for our move west. We have benchmarked Mac OS X because its speed has been the source of the biggest complaint about it.

Along the way, Apple made some speed progress with a couple of 10.0.x updates and with 10.1 and 10.2. But, as we noted in our last Jaguar benchmark, all of the Jaguar versions through 10.2.8 were basically the same speedwise. Our speed test of Panther (10.3) in October of 2003 concluded that it was much faster in some very important aspects than the last version of Jaguar, 10.2.8. But through version 10.3.4, Panther has been basically the same speedwise, at least using our test computer.

Panther's latest update is version 10.3.7. It came out last Wednesday, so just how fast is it?

Test Computers. Our longterm test computer has been a completely stock 450-MHz G4 Cube, i.e. stock except for its 704 MB of RAM. However, Apple moved to another performance level with last year's release of the Power Mac G5. Our stock G4 Cube is not only getting "a little long in the tooth" but many of the improvements in Mac OS X 10.3.6 and 10.3.7 are aimed at the much faster G5s with much faster graphics cards. So we also tested Mac OS X 10.3.7 versus 10.3.6 and 10.3.5 with our dual 2.5-GHz Power Mac G5. It has been upgraded with 1.5-GB RAM and an Apple OEM Nvidia 6800 Ultra DDL graphics card that drives Apple's new 30" Cinema Display.

[12/16] Brief Hands-On Report--Mac OS X 10.3.7 Update for Client and Server: Yesterday, Apple released Mac OS X 10.3.7 update (Build 7S215) and it is available via the System Preferences Software Update pane or as a stand-alone for the client version delta updater (Mac OS X 10.3.6 to 10.3.7) or combo updater (Mac OS X 10.3.x to 10.3.7) and the server version delta or combo updater. The 10.3.7 Update delivers enhanced functionality and improved reliability for Mac OS X v10.3 (Panther) and is recommended for all users.

Key enhancements include:

• improved AFP support for saving documents with long file names
  
• improved OpenGL technology and updated ATI and NVIDIA graphics drivers
  
• improved FireWire device compatibility
  
• updated Preview application
  
• improved compatibility for third party applications
  
• previous standalone security updates
  

Here is a full list of enhancements:

Client Applications

• Allows TextEdit to open certain RTF documents that previously wouldn't open, resulting in a "TextEdit Open Failed. Couldn't open file" alert.
  
• Resolves an issue in which Safari, Mail, and other networking applications that use DNS lookups could experience intermittent connectivity issues with Security Update 2004-09-30 and Mac OS X 10.3.5 or later installed.
  
• Addresses an issue with Blizzard World of Warcraft in which the game's frame rate could drop considerably when in "Ghost mode," if the computer uses an nVidia graphics card.
  
• Resolves an issue in which enabling Vertex Shaders in World of Warcraft could lead to unexpected graphics issues when using an nVidia graphics card.
• Addresses an issue with World of Warcraft in which incorrect colors or unexpectedly flashing objects could appear when using an ATI Radeon 9600 graphics card, making gameplay difficult.
  
• Improves compatibility for Pacific Tech's Graphing Calculator 3.5—some 3D surfaces might not render in Mac OS X 10.3.6.
  

Client Other

• Addresses an issue in which a brief "flash of lines" may appear on the screen when waking the computer from sleep after the "Flurry" Screen Saver has run, if the computer uses an ATI Radeon 8500, 9000, 9200, 9600, or M9 graphics chip.
  
• Improves compatibility for FireWire-based audio interfaces, including the Edirol FA-101 FireWire audio interface.
  
• Enables E*TRADE PDF account statements to be viewed in Preview.
• An Apple Cinema 22" ADC display, when connected to certain PowerBook computers, no longer shows random "stuttering" or other graphics anomalies in the Finder and DVD Player.
  
• Addresses an issue in which shadowed text in a PDF file may print differently than it appears on the screen when printing to a raster printer.
  
• Filenames longer than 31 characters are no longer shortened when the file is saved on a server via Apple File Sharing.
  
• Resolves an issue with Mac OS X 10.3.6 in which some FireWire hard drives would not appear ("mount") on the desktop.
  
• Addresses an issue with Mac OS X 10.3.6 in which DVD Player might not open on some Power Mac G4 computers that use an ATI Radeon 9800 AGP video card.
  
• Resolves an issue that prevented printing to some Windows-based print servers.
  

Server

• improved reliability of AFP, CIFS and NFS file services, and network automounts
  
• enhanced Server Admin, Workgroup Manager and Network Image Utility applications
  
• improved Open Directory scalability and reliability, Active Directory integration and Kerberos support
  
• updated QuickTime streaming and broadcast services for compatibility with 3G phones
  
• added support for background rebuilding of RAID mirrors, and network VLAN tagging
  
• updated to Samba version 3.0.2 and MySQL version 4.0.18
  
• more reliable Rendezvous registration
  
• improved PostScript and USB printing
  
• added Fibre Channel Utility application and multipathing with support for bandwidth aggregation and failover
  
• additional support for FireWire and USB devices
  
• improved compatibility for third party applications and devices
  
• previous standalone security updates
  

We downloaded and installed 10.3.7 on several Macs, iMac G5 and PowerBook G4, with no apparent problems. Apple suggests that one disconnect any external FireWire drives but we didn't. [Dana Baggett and Bill Fox]

[12/16] Apple Pro Tip of the Week--Show Off Exposé: Wednesday's tip illustrates how to really show off the capabilities of Exposé. [Dana Baggett]

[12/16] Apple Revised the offerings from Five Hot Deals Retailers:

The Apple Store has updated it's selection of quality Apple Certified reconditioned products, including Power Mac Dual 1.8GHz at only $1,699, eMacs for only $649, 12" iBooks for only $1,099, and much more. But, hurry as supplies are limited. You can also find current Sale Products, Promos and Rebates on Apple hardware and software, as well as third-party accessories in the Special Deals section of the Apple Store. All details available under the "Special Deals" tile.

B&H Photo and Video has fantastic prices of superb products for your Mac, including Canon's EOS 20D Digital Camera with 18-55mm Lens and Lexar 80x 2GB CompactFlash Card, Altec Lansing inMotion Portable Audio Speaker System for iPod, Belkin Digital Camera Link for iPod with Dock Connection, JBL OnStage iPod Speaker System, Epson PowerLite S1P SVGA LCD Multimedia Projector with FREE DVD Player, and much more.

Apple's Clearance Section of Hot Deals, dedicated entirely to end-of-life and clearance Mac and Mac OS X products from all of your favorite retailers, boasts some newly added offers, including 128MB Secure Digital Card with $20 mail-in rebate, Dr. Bott ExtendAir Direct WiFi Wireless Antenna, Epson L-410 Digital Camera, Microsoft Optical USB Mouse by Starck with $5 mail-in rebate, M-Audio FireWire Audiophile Compact Audio/MIDI Interface, and much more.

Publishing Perfection has great deals on a variety of design and print products for your Mac, including Canto Cumulus 6, Eovia Amapi Designer 7, Comnet FoldUP!3D, AutoFX DreamSuite Bundle, SanDisk Cruzer Mini 256MB Flash Drive, Softpress Freeway Pro, Nik Multimedia Dfine 1.0, Alien Skin Eye Candy 5, Wacom Graphire 3 6x8 Graphics Tablet, and much more.

O'Reilly has exclusively Hot Deals discounts for many of it's most popular Mac titles, including Revolution in the Valley, Adobe Photoshop CS - One on One, iLife '04: The Missing Manual, PowerBook Fan Book, Mac OS X Power Hound, GarageBand: The Missing Manual, and much more.

[Bill Fox]

[12/15] Free Macworld Expo 2004 Show Floor Passes are Still Available from many sources like Peachpit Press and Borders. [Brian Nakamoto]

[12/15] Maine's Gov. Baldacci Proposes State Funding for iBooks for All High Schoolers according to this MaineToday.com article. The $21 million program would start next fall for all 9th and 10th graders. The 12th and 11th grades would be added the following year. The state would pay 55 per cent of the cost for all 119 high schools. Gov. Baldacci also proposes to pay for it out of the Essential Progams and Services fund rather than as a stand-alone item, giving the program a better chance at geting the necessary funding from Maine's legislature. [Dana Baggett]

[12/15] Apple Ranked in Top Category of PC World's "Satisfaction with Reliability" Survey for both desktops and laptops according to this Yahoo News article. The survey's findings with regard to Apple are the same as those recently from Consumer Reports. Along with Apple in the top desktop category are: ABS, Alienware, eMachines and Medion. Only eMachines joined Apple in the top laptop category. But contrary to Consumer Reports which also scored Dell high, Dell scored in the middle "Average" category. HP and Compaq were relegated to PC World's bottom catefgory for both types of computers. [Dana Baggett]

[12/15] New ebook--"Take Control of Recording with GarageBand:" GarageBand users can learn how to create musical compositions from anything - vocals, guitars, MIDI keyboards, and even the kitchen sink - with the help of "Take Control of Recording with GarageBand," the latest ebook by Seattle musician Jeff Tolbert. Jeff helps readers get the most out of their gear (or buy appropriate new gear) while explaining how to plan a recording session, how to record with Software Instruments or Real Instruments, the best way to rerecord if necessary, and how to apply effects like a pro. The 106-page, $10 ebook also includes audio examples, numerous real-world tips and recording studio techniques, and two sample songs that demonstrate the techniques discussed. [Bill Fox]

[12/15] Exabyte Joins Apple to Market Mac/Xserve Tape Backup Systems according to this ByteAndSwitch article. Exabyte will offer FireWire desktop and laptop solutions as well as large fiber channel tape library solutions. [Dana Baggett]

[12/14] Apple iCal v1.5.5 Update is Available for Download via the Software Update System Preferences pane or as a stand-alone updater from this Apple web page. According to the Read Me file,

iCal 1.5.5 includes improvements in iSync synchronization on computers running Mac OS X version 10.2. iCal 1.5.4 or later includes security enhancements to help protect your computer when subscribing to calendars or importing events with alarms that open files or applications.

It would seem that if one is running Mac OS X 10.3.x and has installed v1.5.4, as we have, that v1.5.5 is not needed. Nevertheless, v1.5.5 showed up in the Software Update System Preferences pane for all of our Macs so we downloaded and installed it with no problems. [Bill Fox and Dana Baggett]

[12/14] O'Reilly Released "Home Theater Hacks"--The Insider's Guide to A Great Home Theater Setup:Sebastopol, CA--Perhaps it's the inconvenience and discomfort of waiting in long lines at the theater, or the four-dollar price tag on a small bag of popcorn. Or perhaps it's the lure of the latest technology that promises to deliver the ultimate cinematic-quality experience directly to your living room. Whatever the reason, t Want to set up a home theater? "Home Theater Hacks" (O'Reilly, US $24.95) by Brett McLaughlin distills the knowledge, techniques, and experiences of home theater gurus in one handy volume designed to boost the confidence of novices while adding to the expertise of the more advanced. The book covers home theater installation from start to finish, from purchase to experience, providing the sort of information that could previously only be found through laborious web searches, stacks of magazines, and water cooler conversations. [Bill Fox]

[12/14] Apple Revised the Offerings from Two Hot Deals Retailers:

CDW|MacWarehouse has great deals on cool Mac products, including Canon EOS Digital REbel with EF-S 18-55mm Lens, Belkin iPod Media Reader, Nikon D70 Digital SLR Camera, Sony Micro Vault 512MB USB Flash Drive, Epson PictureMate, Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac OS X, Intuit QuickBooks Pro 2005 for Mac, PalmOne Tungsten E, Kensington FM/Auto Adapter and Car Charger for iPod with FREE $10 iTunes Music Store Gift Certificate, and much more.

MacMall has fantastic prices on essential Mac products, including Griffin iTrip FM Transmitter for iPod with Dock Connection, Belkin TuneBase for iPod mini, Nikon CoolPix 5400 with $200 mail-in rebate, Hewlett Packard DeskJet 5650 Color Inkjet Printer with $40 instant rebate, SanDisk 1GB High-Speed Ultra II CompactFlash Card with $15 mail-in rebate, Lexar 256MB JumpDrive Sport High-Speed USB 2.0 Flash Drive, XtremeMac Sportswrap iPod Armband, and much more.

[Bill Fox]

[12/13] Hands-On Review--Sp@mX 3.0.5, Fight the !@#$%^&'s: Our search for the perfect spam solution led us to try Sp@mX for Mac OS X. It's new to Mac OS X but now at version 3.0.5 from Hendrickson Software Components (hsc). Sp@mX (not to be confused with another application SpamX) has been out for some time for the Windows and Linux platforms, hence it's 3.0.x version designation despite being brand new on the Mac. There are client and server versions of Sp@mX from hsc but we have only tested the client version.

As a bit of background, we get some 600-1200 spam messages a day at Macs Only!'s primary email addresses. This is because they have been posted publicly on our web site for a long time and they probably appear on every spammer email list in existence. We use Mac OS X's Apple Mail email client. Apple Mail's built-in junk filter is about 98% efficient at filtering incoming spam from our inbox. Deleting the remaining 2% is not a significant problem. We also have a server-side filter that deletes bounced messages created when spammers fraudulently use our email address as a return address. Fortunately, that one is close to 100% effective because at one time we were getting 1000's of them per day. So what's the problem? Aren't we effectively dealing with spam? Nope.

Unfortunately, some emails that we want/need, usually only about 5 or so messages per day, are miss-classified as junk by Apple Mail's junk filter and end up being sprinkled among the 600-1200 spam messages. Looking though that much spam every day and not being 100% efficient is time consuming and can be costly. In addition, we travel a lot and still get stuck in places where we have to use a dial-up internet connection. The sheer volume of spam takes a long time to download. So, now back to our review of Sp@mX.

Sp@mX uses a fight-back approach to dealing with spam, one that appeals to our ire over the lack of attention to this internet affliction by those who could easily end it if they really wanted to. Sp@mX's approach is to search the header that comes with each email for the owners of the servers and ISPs that handled the spam on its way to one's mail box, contacts them for their addresses to report the abuse and then sends a complaint to those addresses, all automatically. Sp@mX then relies on those entities to block such spam as a result of the complaints.

Does Sp@mX really work? Well, there are numerous testimonials on hsc's web site claiming remarkable results in relatively short periods of time. So we purchased a copy of Sp@mX from hsc for only $19.95 to see for ourselves. Besides, Sp@mX's fight-back approach will at least make us feel good for awhile.

We downloaded our purchased copy of Sp@mX, received an email from hsc with our validation code and installed it. Sp@mX works fairly simply. Spam messages are placed in a folder. That folder is linked to Sp@mX in the configuration window so the spam messages appear as a list in Sp@mX's application window. Then all spam messages may be processed with clicking a single "All" button or they may be processed in smaller batches by highlighting the spam messages and clicking the "Selected" button. The processing time, status and number of processed messages are displayed.

Sp@mX works easily with Outlook and Outlook Express email clients but at present it works less automatically with Apple Mail, something that has rapidly improved over this past week that Sp@mX has been out. The developer, Jeff Hendrickson of Arlington, VA, admitted to us that he was surprised by how many Mac OS X users use Apple Mail. He produced two updates to Sp@mX last week and Randy Padawer produced a free Email Text File Splitter to make using Apple Mail fairly straightforward. Jeff told us that the few extra steps for Apple Mail will be completely automated in a near future update of Sp@mX.

Configuring Sp@mX is relatively simple since it has a Configuration Wizard. It is also easy to configure Sp@mX manually. In the Configure window one just enters one's email particulars, the location of the folder where spam messages are saved for processing, the type of email client (Outlook, Outlook Express or Plain Text Email), the processing timeout (we left it at 10 seconds) and check whether or not to keep a log (we did). We created a folder in the Documents folder of our Home directory named "Spam" in which we save spam messages for processing. We chose "Process Email as Plain Text" for Apple Mail, at least through version 3.0.5 of Sp@mX.

Then we configured the "Do Not Send" list by adding the domain names (like Earthlink.Net) of our ISP and email hosts. The latter is important to avoid getting one's own email blocked by one's complaints so don't forget to configure it!

It is also possible to edit the abuse complaint. We left it the same as the default message.

Since we use Apple Mail (it's for Eudora too), we also download Randy Padawer's application, Email Text File Splitter (ETFS), from hsc's bulletin board. Configuring it consists of selecting Apple Mail or Eudora or Custom and setting the folder where spam messages are saved--Apple Mail and "Spam" respectively in our case.

Using Sp@mX is easy if not completely automatic for Apple Mail at this time. Here are the four steps:

1. Highlight all spam messages in Apple Mail's junk folder.

2. Save them in "Raw Message Source" format (cmd-shift-s) to the folder created to save spam messages. This saves all of them as one file that needs to be split into separate emails to work in Sp@mX.

3. Click the "Split Text" button on Padawer's ETFS application and choose the email file just saved.

4. Launch Sp@mX and click the "Process All" button.

It takes some 1-3 seconds, more or less, to completely process each message for most spam messages. In our experience, only about 10% or less of the spam can not be processed by Sp@mX for one reason or another or they timeout still unprocessed. Messages that use Asian or Eastern European characters do not process for us. Unfortunately, a very few get hung in an endless loop and for some reason do not timeout. The only solution so far is quitting Sp@mX. We have forwarded these spam messages to Jeff for analysis.

We also discovered another issue. After processing about 50-100 messages we get a DNS error message in Sp@mX's status window and processing the spam message hangs while Sp@mX retries the DNS lookup over and over again for this and every subsequent message. Jeff believes this issue is not a Sp@mX coding flaw. Indeed, if we quit Sp@mX, wait awhile and then try again, the offending message and subequent ones process just fine. Could it be that our own ISP's software is tabbing us as a spammer after processing a certain number of messages and then denying us access to their DNS lookup table? Maybe. Anyway, we have adopted the practice of processing no more than 50 spam messages at a time and we have mostly avoided the problem.

A final tip--if one has lots of spam and process it in batches like we do, be careful. We inadvertantly got ourselves deleted from a number of list servers that we subscribe to. In addition, one probably does not want to accidentally report one's grandmother as a spammer.

Has our spam decreased? Not yet, at least not significantly so that we can tell. However, we have been using Sp@mx v3.0.5 for just a couple of days. We do have abuse report responses from ISP's that total about 10% of the spam messages we have processed so far so we know that the complaints are going out. Jeff told us that it could take a few weeks to completely reduce our spam to near zero. We'll provide an update to this review after a couple of weeks. In the mean time, we'll have fun actively fighting back against the @#!$#^&*'s.

In summary, we are intrigued with Sp@mX's spam fighting technique and for $19.95 it's relatively inexpensive. Sp@mX works relatively easily with Apple Mail to process large quantities of spam. And we can't say too much about how responsive the developer, Jeff Hendrickson, has been in answering our questions and in updating Sp@mX to use with Apple Mail. Just ignore that the preferences are in a "Configure" menu rather than under the "Application Name" menu, that there's no "About" window and that Sp@mX v3.0.5 still lacks a Mac OS X Finder icon...we are sure that these cosmetics will come shortly. [Bill Fox]

[12/13] [Updated] Major Chip Technology Announcement Due Today from IBM and AMD according to Macs Only!'s sources. What advancement in technology it is, is being held very close until the announcement. IBM is expected to use the new technology in its Fishhkill, NY, chip plant which makes PowerPC G5 CPUs for Apple Computer. [Update: The new IBM/AMD technology is strained silicon which improves performance by some 12% according to this Reuters article.] [Dana Baggett]

[12/13] Firefox Web Browser Continues to Gain on Internet Explorer with over 10 million downloads in just over a month according to this CNet article. The use of Mozilla-based web browsers has increased to a 7.4 per cent share as people and institutions ditch IE and it's security headaches. [Dana Baggett]

[12/13] Apple's iTunes Music Store Now Accepts PayPal for Music Payments--Get Five Free Songs for setting up a new iTunes Music Store account using PayPal according to a press release issued by Apple last Friday.

The first 500,000 customers to open a new iTunes account in the US using PayPal as their form of payment before March 31, 2005, will receive five free songs.

We have used PayPal for five years to buy and sell things online, particularly on eBay which now owns PayPal. We have never had a problem. [Bill Fox]

[12/13] Apple Recently Opened Two New Web Pages--StartPage and Student Blog: The new StartPage provides near-daily Apple news and many other features. The Student Blog web page has loads of information of interest to students. [Bill Fox]

[12/13] Cool Mac Software--Calillona Updated to 2.0b2: Calillona is the Amazon.com catalog browser. The second beta is also freeware and includes the following changes :

• Add support for Amazon Japan
  
• New category added for Amazon USA : Magazines
  
• New main categories added for Amazon UK : Classical Music (Classical Instrumental, Opera & Vocal, Opera), DVD (Box Sets), Electronics (Digital Camcorder, Music & HiFi, Televisions), Health & Personal Care (Men's Shavers, Women's Shavers), Kitchen (Toasters), Music (DVD Audio, Disney, Singles, Imports, Box Sets)
  
• New main categories added for Amazon Germany : Classical Music (Sammelprogramme), DVD (Box Sets, Produktionsländer), Magazines, Music (Box Sets, Limited Edition, TV-Werbung & Compilations), Kamera (Filter & Converter, Fotopapier, Objektive)
  

[12/10] Apple Announced Second Dashboard Widget Contest on this Apple Developer Connection web page. Dashboard will be a new component of Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). It will run small applications called Widgets. Apple is offering a 40-GB iPod as a prize to the developer who produces the best widget in a contest that ends January 5, 2005. To enter, a person must be a member of the Apple Developer Connection and download the Dashboard Widget SDK. Making Widgets is relatively easy. The first Widget contest was held at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference in June 2004. [Dana Baggett]

[12/10] Apple to Buy Toshiba Flash Memory Chips Early Next Year according to this China View news article. The information is reportedly from a Toshiba executive and the article speculates that the flash memory chips are for the rumored Apple flash memory iPod. [Dana Baggett]

[12/10] Mossberg Lauds Apple and Mac OS X in his Wall Street Journal Column which blasts Microsoft's Windows lack of security for making PCs too difficult and burdensome for most consumers and small businesses. Read five of the last six paragraphs of Walter Mossberg's WSJ Personal Technology column for his Apple/Mac OS X endorsement. He even correctly slays the "Apple is more expensive" myth. [Brian Nakamoto]

[12/10] NAV 9.0 Virus Definitions Update is Available via the LiveUpdate feature in the application or as a stand-alone update from this Symantec web page. [Dana Baggett]

[12/9] [Updated] Beware--A Pop-up Window Phishing Flaw Affects Apple's Safari and other web browsers according to this CNet article posted late yesterday. CNet wrote:

The issue...could allow a malicious Web site to refer visitors to a legitimate site--such as a bank's Web site--and then control the content displayed in a pop-up windows. The issue affects Microsoft's Internet Explorer, the Mozilla Foundation's Mozilla and Firefox browsers, Opera's browser, the open-source Konqueror browser and Apple Computer's Safari....

The exploit has been documented for Safari and confirmed with v1.2.4 by Secunia on this web page. The exploit with other browsers also have been documented by Secunia. Here is Secunia's demo of the vulnerability. [Update: Numerous readers reported that the demo vulnerability in Safari is eliminated if you check "Block Pop-Up Windows" (Apple-K) under the Safari menu. We have confirmed this. ed.] [Dana Baggett]

[12/9] A Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 Getting Started Guide is Available from Mozillazine. Thunderbird 1.0, the Mozilla Project's stand-alone email client companion to their Firefox web browser, was released earlier this week. Now Mozillazine has posted a new guide for Thunderbird 1.0 by David Wang:

He wrote: "I have written a complete guide to help users of Outlook, Outlook Express, Mozilla, Eudora, AOL, and other mail clients to migrate to Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0. In the next few days, I'll follow up with articles on account management (e.g. setting up accounts) and mail management (e.g. custom view, and message grouping)."

[Dana Baggett]

[12/9] O'Reilly Released "Mac Annoyances"--How to Fix the Most Annoying Things About Your Mac: Anyone who uses a Mac will tell you that most of the time your Mac is your best friend. Without question, these machines can be immensely beneficial and delightful tools. But there are also those times--whether you're the proud owner of the very latest version or you're still tapping away on yesterday's model--when your Mac can show its dark side. And then, your best friend can also be a royal pain in the neck. Any way you slice it, Macs can still induce minor headaches at the most inopportune moments. John Rizzo is the author of the newly released "Mac Annoyances" (O'Reilly, US $24.95). [Bill Fox]

[12/9] Envision's Free Web Show of the Week--Hanukkah: Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, began this week. This week's Envision Web Show of the Week is of the Hebrew alphabet, a number of characters of which play a leading role in the Hanukkah game of dreidel. The show file can be downloaded from Open Door Network's Show of the Week web site. [Bill Fox]

[12/8] Macs are Making Great Inroads at Japanese Universities according to this Asahi.com article. The trend is a result of Macs being best for design and graphics plus decentralized purchasing, allowing schools and students to choose the best and most cost-effective hardware for their needs. [Dana Baggett]

[12/8] Apple Pro Tip of the Week--Quickly Switching Among Applications the "Big Way:" In order to switch apps among those open, hold down the Command-Tab keys simultaneously until the app you want is highlighted. It looks really cool. The details are here. [Dana Baggett]

[12/8] Giga Designs Also Announces 1.7 GHz G4 CPU Upgrades, Singles and Duals: Hot on the heels of the Sonnet announcement, Giga Designs also announced 1.7 GHz G4 CPU upgrades for Power Mac G4 models including the G4 Cube. The upgrades use the latest Freescale (ex Moto) G4 TM 7447A processors. They are rated at 1.6 GHz but can be clocked to 1.7 or 1.73 GHz. The single CPUs run $499 and the duals for Power Mac G4 towers only run $699 and they will be available this month according to the press release. [Bill Fox]

[12/8] Maine School Uses iMovie with their iBooks to Create: The 4-8 grade students at Adams School in Castine, ME, have learned all about the Ken Burns Effect and other movie-making skills using iMovie with their state-supplied iBooks as part of the Maine Learning Technology Initiative according to the program's latest story. [Dana Baggett]

[12/7] Apple to Increase Computer Production? Yes, according to the Taipei Times citing an un-named Chinese language newspaper. Apple increased the size of its Asian procurement staff and is expected to increase orders from $4 billion to $5 billion per year, the article says. [Dana Baggett]

[12/7] Apple Revised the Offerings from a Hot Deals Retailer:

CDW|MacWarehouse has great deals on cool Mac products, including the Canon EOS Digital Rebel with EF-S 18-55mm Lens, Kensington FM/Auto Adapter and Car Charger for iPod with FREE $10 iTunes Gift Certificate, Sony DVD±RW Dual Layer External Burner, XtremeMac Get Connected iPod Audio Kit, Battery Tech iPod Extended Battery Corel Painter IX, Samsung 19" LCD Flat Panel Display, Belkin USB Bluetooth Adapter, and much more.

[Bill Fox]

[12/7] Macworld Expo 2005 Early Bird Pricing Ends Friday--12/10/04: After this Friday, the prices for all events and packages will be going up. If you register online with PRIORITY CODE: B1102 by December 10, 2004, you can take advantage of Macworld Expo 2005's early bird pricing and save on the conference package of your choice or get an exhibit hall pass for only $20. [Bill Fox]

[12/7] After-Market Speed Shop Keeps On Trucking--Sonnet Today Announced 1.7 GHz G4 CPU Upgrades for the Power Mac G4 tower and the G4 Cube in their Encore/ST G4 line. The CPU has 512K of L2 cache like the current G4 CPUs in PowerBooks. The price is $499.95 and they are available now for the tower and later in December for the Cube. From today's Sonnet news release,

The Encore/ST G4 1.7 GHz for Power Mac G4 tower computers includes a factory-attached heat sink, and features advanced technology that automatically detects the bus speed (100 MHz or 133 MHz) of its host machine and configures itself accordingly. The Encore/ST G4 1.7 GHz upgrade for Power Mac G4 Cube features a 1.7 GHz processor card, and includes a quiet fan and all required hardware, tools and detailed installation instructions....

We are considering one of these bad boys for one of our Power Mac G4 Cubes. Sonnet also reduced the price of its other Encore G4 CPU upgrades by up to $100. [Bill Fox]

[12/7] Brief Hands-On Report--Freeware Calillona 2.0b1, An Amazon.com Catalog Browser: Calillona 2.0 Beta 1 from Trufsoft is a desktop application for Mac OS 10.3 that allows one to browse Amazon.com's catalogs. Version 1.x used to be a channel for Apple Sherlock. With version 2.0 Trufsoft is going further and Calillona is now a full desktop application. Calillona lets you browse Amazon's catalog in a different way. The experience, Trufsoft believes, is closer to the one you have while using the Apple iTunes Music Store. You can browse Amazon's catalog in different categories, like Books, DVD, Software, Camera, Computers, and more. Calillona 2.0 provides a new user experience for shopping online. With this version Trufsoft is supporting the following catalogs: Amazon USA, Amazon United Kingdom, Amazon Germany. Calillona is freeware.

We downloaded, installed and tried out Calillona on Amazon.com USA. It works well and has a very nice GUI--definitely cool Mac software if you buy from Amazon.com. It has a search box and one can sort the catalog entries by Featured Item, Best Selling, Customer Review, Price (up or down) and Alphabet (A to Z or Z to A). Calillona seemed very fast to us. Trufsoft told us that, "We will have a new version coming in the near future. We will be adding a few more categories for each catalog and we will add support for Amazon Japan too." [Bill Fox]