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Friday, February 14th 2003 12:40 CDT

Update: 21:17--Every Size of Current PowerBook Compared in Gallery

Jamie Dresser, an employee at Other World Computing, has put together a photo gallery that features the 12" and 17" PowerBooks, but also compares four sizes of current Apple portables (12 iBook/PB, 15" PowerBook, 17" PowerBook). The photos appear to be taken at a Japanese sales meeting or user's group. Check it out here. Thanks to Accelerate Your Mac! for the link. Another detailed 12" PowerBook gallery can be found here.

You've got to hand it to Apple. The 12" PowerBook truly is a work of mechanical beauty, as the gallery above is titled.

Griffin Says iCurve Fits 12 and 17" PowerBooks

Griffin sent a press release to confirm that its iCurve "invisible" laptop stand is compatible with the new 12 and 17" PowerBooks:

Griffin Technology, Inc. today announced that internal testing has verified that their popular laptop stand, the iCurve fits the newest PowerBooks released from Apple Computer last month. Both the 12-inch PowerBook G4 and the 17-inch PowerBook G4 rest comfortably and securely on the soft rubber friction strips on the top of the iCurve. The iCurve is a clear Lucite laptop stand designed specifically for Applešs PowerBook and iBook notebooks. It raises the screen up to an ergonomically correct position, elevates the notebook over the desk making room for an external keyboard and mouse, plus it aids in cooling for optimum CPU performance. The iCurve is available for purchase now at http://www.griffintechnology.com/.

"The response to the iCurve laptop stand has been amazing. Our customers are deciding that the iCurve, combined with their favorite keyboard and mouse, allows a notebook to function perfectly as their full-time desktop computer. The addition of an iCurve gives them the best of both worlds ­ the portability of a notebook with the comfort of a desktop," said Andrew Green, Griffinšs vice president of Marketing. "The beautiful design and functionality of the iCurve complements Applešs newest line of PowerBooks perfectly."

When positioned on the iCurve, the new 17" PowerBook G4 screen is raised to a total height of 16.5 inches. The front edge of the PowerBook rests just below the tips of the arms, giving the impression that the PowerBook is floating above the desk. However the notebook remains securely at rest on the rubber friction pads directly underneath. When combined with an external keyboard and mouse, this configuration is the ultimate wide-screen desktop replacement.

The iCurve laptop stand is the ideal size for the new 12" PowerBook G4. When placed together, the width of both units is nearly identical. This gives the appearance of a perfectly matched compact desktop unit. The super-compressed 12" G4 notebook is kept running cool because the iCurve allows 360 degrees of air circulation at all times. The PowerBook is also given desktop mobility when the iCurve is used to rotate or re-position the entire setup.

10.2.4 Vastly Improves Lombard Video Performance?

Reader Philip marvels:

I have been playing around with 10.2.4 on my lombard, and as far as I can tell video acceleration is working without the 'Ragepro Patch', which I de-installed before upgrading to 10.2.4.

I can play full screen quicktime with no visible stuttering.

This is great, it finally looks like Apple has done good. I'm guessing that this was done to fix issues with 'Keynote' which was had problems working on the lombard even though the requirements stated that it works with macs with 8 or more megs of ram. I don't know if there is any 3D acceleration as I'm not sure how to check this...Maybe I'll try to play a 3D game or something.

Can someone else confirm this please as I hope I'm not wrong.

Safari, iPhoto, and Aqua for Windows

Try them at your own risk, but you can only try them on a Windows machine: AquaXP offers a Aqua GUI for Windows XP as well as links to what appear to be basically functioning Safari and iPhoto applications for XP.

Thursday, February 13th 2003 00:11 CDT

Update 16:53 CDT--Mac OS 10.2.4 Appears

Mac OS 10.2.4 is now available via Software Update. The 41MB download enhances a lot of areas of the operating system, which are listed here in the documentation.

17" Shipping Reports: It Still Looks Grim

Readers continue to send their 17" shipping reports. We're not going to paste them all because we're nowhere near any date that even the earliest quotes, so we don't consider them to be very firm estimations of the arrival time. The PowerBook 17" will be officially late on March 1st, as Steve Jobs did say "next month" at January's Macworld Expo.

However, it appears the earliest that anyone can expect their 17" PowerBook is mid-March with many reports quoting mid-April. We'll be posting more detailed reports as soon as we get closer to more believable shipping dates.

We'd like to remind everyone that we need their shipping reports! We can call and get the estimated ship time for new orders at the back of the line at resellers, but we cannot get information for those closer to the front of the lines, so we'd like to see your emails!

Simple Neoprene Sleeves Available at ThePouch.com

Back in the day, the "wetsuit" was one of the most-sought-after items to clothe your PowerBook. Made of neoprene, the original model was imported from Japan. These days, the simple neoprene sleeve is back and it's readily available from ThePouch.com. They have sizes to accomodate the 17" and 12" PowerBook and every model of Mac portable inbetween in 7 colors. Prices range from $40 to $60 for the computer models. Readers should also check out the myriad of other "pouches" they offer for other tech gadgets.

"Beer for Bags" Sale Hits Crumpler Australia

Reader Gavin sent in a note on a bag company we've mentioned before. We're mentioning them again because of their newest marketing technique which is, alas, only available for Australian residents in the vicinity of Victoria. Why, you might ask? Well...you've got to be in the area to bring them the beer to trade for your bag:

I've got company for your PB bag list: Crumpler.

They're an Australian company but the bags are available in the US. The bags are bomb proof, great design, very cool and extremely well made. I highly recommend them!

Most couriers in Aus use Crumpler bags so they're designed to take a beating.

I've got the Crisp Suit... it's a bigun... carries my G4 plus other stuff comfortably on my back each day as I cycle across the Sydney Harbour Bridge to work. I'm tempted to get another smaller one for when I only want to carry my PB.

They do a full range of sizes... http://www.crumplerusa.com/products/laptop.html

also have a look at the Aussie site... tis very cool... especially the beer for bags contra deal! http://www.crumpler.com

Wednesday, February 12th 2003 13:29 CDT

Booq Announces 17" FoleeMessenger for Newest PowerBooks

Booq is quickly expanding its product line to meet the needs of the newest PowerBooks from Apple:

Booq, a fast-growing, innovative brand of laptop backpacks, carrying cases and accessories announces the introduction of its most innovative product to date, FoleeMessenger17.

Designed with the serious PowerBook user in mind, FoleeMessenger17 has room for some of the largest laptops on the market, including Apple's 15-inch G4 and the new 17-inch PowerBook. Made from extremely durable and lightweight 1680D ballistic nylon, the heart of this case is its innovative suspended laptop compartment. Neoprene-based and metal reinforced, this fully padded laptop compartment with non-scratch lining can be easily adjusted to custom-fit almost any size laptop.

FoleeMessenger17 incorporates a series of compartments, pockets and dividers to store virtually anything the serious PowerBook user might want to bring along, including large-format magazines or envelopes, iPod, headphones, power adapter, cables, media, sunglasses, cell phone or other accessories. On top of that, FoleeMessenger17 has room for an additional iBook or 12" PowerBook in a padded, zippered compartment.

Details like Booq's cool new zipper pulls, a high quality seatbelt-style 2" shoulder strap and the adjustable, padded shoulder pad made from tough breathable fabrics exemplify the benchmark Booq has set with their latest product.

With the addition of its full-featured FoleeMessenger17, Booq is bringing well-designed carrying solutions of the highest design quality and finish to a new generation of serious PowerBook users. Attractively priced at just $149.00, this full-featured carrying case may prove to be the prime choice of many PowerBook users.

Mac User Creates Aqua Themes for T68 Phones

A reader sent this link to a Mac user who has created a few themes that can be downloaded to your T68 phone. As you might recall, the T68 is the Bluetooth-enabled phone that made its debut (in regards to Mac compatibility via Bluetooth) at Macworld New York last Summer. There are four themes in all and they can be used as backgrounds or screensavers, apparently.

Apple Pays Jobs for Jet

According to this SiliconValley.com article, Apple has paid Steve Jobs $1.2 million for the use of the jet since the company bought it for him two years ago. In total, the jet cost Apple $90 million to purchase and Jobs received it in May of 2001. The company's most recent payment was $84,000 in the last quarter. Steve Jobs continues to draw a salary of $1, and we'd imagine all of his stock options are quite underwater currently.

Safari Updated

Safari has been updated to version 1.0v60. It adds the following, according to Software Update:

The Safari Update 2-12-03 improves the compatibility with popular web sites based on Safari user feedback, further improves the performance of loading web pages and Flash content, adds support for XML, increases standards conformance and delivers improved application stability. The update also enables access to web sites that offer self-signed security certificates.

Monday, February 10th 2003 00:01 CDT

So...What Ever Happened to that "Baked PowerBook" Story?

On Tuesday of last week, we posted two quick links to galleries of photos of what appeared to be a PowerBook that had been baked for 20 minutes in an oven. The next day, the shop at which the pictures were taken added another gallery and a brief explanation of how the PowerBook became toasted.

There are some sketchy elements to the story. The contact we've had--and the author/owner of the Mac.com pages-is a guy named Aaron Steele, who appears to work at an Apple Authorized Reseller based on what he's sent to us in emails in addition to the business-like workspace pictured in the galleries. The parts that don't add up are how the woman in the story baked the PowerBook, who she is, and why she left the approximately $2,000 PowerBook at the reseller's without returning for it thus far.

So it appears this burnt PowerBook will just pass into the annals of Mac intrigue. We have a bunch of questions and no answers from the reseller's end. We do have one other thing to show you:

A reader at a government agency sent this images in to us. The only description of what happened was that it was a PowerBook "that was left running (closed) in a laptop case. No other details are available." If you look at the melted keys, they match the look of the keys in the burnt PowerBook story above.

The moral of the story: don't bake your PowerBook.

Switch Parodies Growing

Do you think Apple's advertising agency ever imagined the "Switch" campaign would spawn 47 parodies? Well, here are 47 examples hosted at Other World Computing. Enjoy!

12" PowerBook First Impression

Reader Jim sent in this experience with his new 12" PowerBook. We welcome other readers to send in their own commentary on tiny addition to the PowerBook line:

Well, i have it in my hot little hands and the first impression was how small the box it came in was. Then after looking at all the connectors and cds i pulled the top styrafoam thing off and there it was. It was tiny!. It is breathtaking. I need more time to get to know it better. But my first impression, I am not disappointed one little bit!! You need one of these!

One sad tale, I was unplugging my USB mouse and the cord was stuck under the back of the PB and the plug slipped out of my fingers and hit the top of the PB caising a little tiny dent near the apple logo. Oh well, it is a beauty mark! I love my PB12. I don't think I have felt so satisfied about spent money. I'll drop you a line if i can drag myself away from the PB12, i got lots of graphic design homework and this little baby is my ticket to freedom from the computer lab and my dorm room. Now i can design wherever i want to. Wahoo!

$40 Wireless Basestation/Router

TigerDirect offers a D-Link wireless 802.11b access point/router for $40 after rebate. Check out the details here. The original Apple base station ($299) cost more than seven times that when it was new.

Internal Screenshots Update II

We continue to receive emails about the Apple internal screenshots that ask lots of questions we feel we've answered, but they also inquire about some areas that aren't crystal clear. Here are a cross section of the questions we've received and our answers:

What where the screenshots of? Can you repost them? Can you email them to me?

We have a copy of the screen shots but aren't going to post them. We figure we'd receive an initial emailed "cease and desist" order from Apple within about 2 hours. However, we can describe each of the shots. There were 8 screenshots in all, posted in a directory named "Apple Internal" in the root of virga-x.adtn.net. They ranged from 154K to 234K in size and were all fullscreen shots of Mac OS X with various windows in the foreground. Here's a short description of each:

apple_internal.jpg: A shot of "AppleWeb," the internal network for Apple employees managed by the "IS&T" department, Apple's own IT department. The particular pane in the foreground shows software available to Apple employees under the company's license for use on company work. Specifically, there are proprietary apps from Apple like AppleVPN and Directory 2.0 and third party applications from the likes of Cisco and Bare Bones Software.

apple_vpn.jpg: A shot of Apple's VPN application that allows employees to securely sign onto the corporate network from remote, unsecure locations. Seen in this shot is the "attarian" login and a preferences panel, a VPN log panel, and a status panel.

case_detail.jpg: A shot of tech support notes in the "Vantive" application that Apple uses to manage each contact it has with customers. In this case, it's apparently the employee's own case file. There's a note that "customer is an Apple employee" in the file and "Customer Profile ATTARIAN" is seen. Vantive is an OS 9 application that runs under Classic.

cust_profile.jpg: this shot is of an entire Apple customer profile of the employee himself. His phone numbers and addresses are blurred out via a photo editing tool such as Photoshop. There are 16 separate contacts Apple tech support have had with the employee over about 16 months, mostly about Final Cut Pro 3. Included is all the Macs ever purchased by the customer and the serial numbers of the machines and their AppleCare plans.

hubbard.jpg: this is a shot of Jordan K Hubbard's Apple Directory listing. It shows Hubbard's department (Core OS), office address, office location, manager, and all the employees that report to him (7 in all). Blurred out are his office phone number and email address. We're told that Apple jealously guards its directory information because of concerns that headhunter organizations could use the information to more effectively "poach" Apple employees away from the company.

open_repairs.jpg: this is a shot of all the outstanding repairs under processing at the Apple Store Southpoint in North Carolina. There are 33 items in all, listing their repair duration (longest is 69 days, "ready for pickup," an iMac that someone apparently forgot about...the next longest is 19 days), RepairID, status, repair type (most are "in-store"), serial number, and the type of product. The last name, first name, case ID, and employee who entered each case are blurred out.

sword.jpg: this is a shot of an internal application of some sort used at Apple for quite some time--the copyright date is "1991-2001." The splash screen upon opening is depicted here. It says "Library Management System."

If he sent you the link, why did you say who he was?

We've gotten this question a lot. The employee did not send the link to us. Again, as best as we can determine, the link was found by Slashdot readers who poked around his site after a story linking to his site was posted on Slashdot. From there, we know for sure that it was pasted in a file-sharing IRC channel about mid-morning. From there, an individual took the link and sent it to us. At that time, we now know that at least four Apple employees also had the link. At 1 PM Central, we knew that these employees had contacted the leaker's boss and Apple's security department with the link and details about the screenshots. We published at 1:20 PM Central.

As for his name, the screenshots themselves, in addition to the obvious fact that they were hosted on the employee's site, were covered with his name. We counted approximately 8 separate places where "ATTARIAN" or "ADAM ATTARIAN" appeared on the screenshots.

Why did you "hack" into the employee's server to get these images?

We actually received more than one email that claimed we must've hacked his server to get these images. As you will see if you visit the root of his server here, you'll see that everything is a directory listing of the contents. The screenshots were available to the Slashdot readers in the root in a folder named "Apple Internal." The shots weren't hidden and were available to anyone.

This goes for the "personal information" posted as well. We identified the employee in question from the name that was on the screenshots using publically available means.

Why did you get him fired?

We feel this is the most important question asked of us. Again, we explained this yesterday, but want to repeat our position so there is no misunderstanding. We are not in the habit of posting articles without consideration of their ramifications. In this case, at the time we made the decision to publish the story on the screenshots and the employee who posted them, Apple's security department and his boss had already been notified by more than one Apple employee. We were not involved with these employees finding the screenshots. Therefore, we decided that going ahead with the story would have no bearing on the situation.

Also, at Apple, any violation of a NDA is grounds for immediate dismissal. There are two reasons for this. One, Apple obviously runs a tight ship in regards to any leaks for corporate reasons. Apple has been economically damaged by leaks before. Second, it's a morale issue. Apple employees work under stringent secrecy guidelines that are strictly adhered to daily as a part of their job. When they see a leaker ruin the secrecy of a project, they get demoralized because they see others not following the rules they promised via the NDA to uphold. If Apple didn't evenly apply the NDA rules, this whole system of deterrence would break down.

For these two reasons--that his bosses already knew he violated the NDA and that any violation of an NDA is grounds for dismissal--we decided to publish the story.

Saturday, February 8th 2003 23:30 CDT

Apple Screenshot Update

We've gotten a few emails on the story yesterday regarding the leaked Apple internal application screenshots. We'd like to correct a few misconceptions, fill in a few more details, and hopefully give a little more insight on why we went ahead with the story.

At 1 PM Central time, we were informed of the link from an Apple employee. Apparently, the link was also found earlier that day via a post on the Slashdot.org site, in addition to a file-trading Internet Relay Chat channel. The employee emailed his own boss, the leaker's boss, and Apple's corporate security department via email. At that time we made the decision that our post was newsworthy and would not make a difference in the employee's situation after the emails had already been sent. Thus, we posted the story around 1:20 PM.

Apple's Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) that is signed by all employees, from the lowest ranks at Apple Retail on up to Vice Presidents like Avie Tevanian and Jon Rubinstein, explicitly states that publication of proprietary materials is grounds for immediate dismissal. We're told that the applications, notations, and procedures used for tech support and repair programs are especially kept locked down by Apple.

We're also told that Apple's corporate security has reached new heights of stringency. Ever since Apple sued and then subsequently settled with an employee named Juan Guitierrez in August of 2001, the company has used the legal system to both punish leakers with more than dismissal and warn others not to leak. However, the company again resorted to a civil lawsuit just three months ago, when it sued a contractor previously employed at its Sacramento facilities. Each of these lawsuits named one or more additional "John Doe" unnamed co-defendants.

We encourage feedback on our stories and editorial decisions. Send any comments to info@pbzone.com.