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August 16th thru 23rd Archives

Thursday, August 22nd 2002 15:49 CDT

Canadian Retailer Features Live Jaguar at 10.2 Release Event

Creative:

Every Apple reseller seems to have their own spin surrounding the launch of Mac OS X 10.2 codenamed ³Jaguar², but Mac Station of Vancouver, Canada (www.macstation.com) is pleased to announce an unique event.

The launch of Mac OS X 10.2 coincides with the Grand Re-Opening celebration of our Downtown Vancouver location, situated in the heart of the trendy Yaletown district, and now encompassing a 4,000 ft2 retail facility. The launch of Jaguar provides us with the opportunity to display our hip new store, styled in the spirit of the American Apple Stores, and featuring wood-grain display centres and soft halogen lighting that you¹d expect to see in a high-end furniture store. It¹s a far cry from the typically uninspiring décor of a traditional computer retailer.

While we¹ll be fully stocked with Mac OS X 10.2 retail boxes for sale, we¹ll have a number of in-store specials, and we¹ll be providing a catered lunch and in-store demonstrations of Mac OS X 10.2 like many other resellers, Mac Station¹s event comes with a new twist. We¹ll have a live Jaguar (yes, a real, live animal) on-site during the morning to assist us in our launch!

Visit us at 10am PDT at #2 ­ 1109 Homer St in Vancouver to be part of this special event!

Excited about tomorrow night's release of Mac OS X 10.2, code named "Jaguar", Mac users where shocked to learn today that as part of a promotional gimmick, Apple will be releasing real jaguars in every Apple Store. Located in the fine print of Apple's Jaguar release announcement is the footnote "*Includes the release of live jaguars. C'mon down!"

Tuesday, August 20th 2002 02:08 CDT

DVD Playback on Lombard 333 MHz Machines

Reader Philip has figured out something that was previously impossible: DVD playback on a 333 MHZ Lombard PowerBook:

I just thought I'd share something with you that I feel is especially cool.

I have a Lombard 333mhz (comes with no DVD hardware acceleration unlike the 400mhz version), but I do however own a DVD drive that I scored from a friends dropped Pismo 400mhz.

Recently I came across a program called VideoLAN Client for OSX. VideoLAN is decompression and playback software for streaming, DVD and MPEG media.

VideoLAN in conjunction with the rage pro fix for the lombard machine allows me to have quite decent (watchable) playback from my DVD drive even with my measly 333mhz G3 processor.

I'm very excited about being able to watch DVD's now. I was previously thinking about buying an apple PC card DVD decoder module until I discovered apple isn't supporting this in OSX.

Please share this with your readers as I know the DVD issue on older machines is something that has annoyed a lot of people and this may help appease many.

More on QPS Rebates

More than a month ago, we covered belated rebates from QPS for consumers who had purchased their products. Another reader chimes in:

I have not received my rebate either. It's been over 6 months now, and I just started looking into it.

The company that confirmed the rebate, wheresmyrebate.com was no help, referring me to QPS. After being disconnected from customer service 4 times, I finally spoke with someone there.

Apparently, the rebate center really messed up (sounds like they scammed QPS), and never sent any checks out. QPS has taken over the rebates directly now, but are only sending checks to people who call to find out what's going on. They didn't get any records from the rebate center.

I'm now on a list. They said my check should be to me by end of September.

Didn't get your check? Call QPS. 800-559-4777, ext 3. If customer service disconnects you, call again, and press 0 for the operator and have them connect you.

Entourage Tip

Reader J.S. sent in the following tip that follows up on the email from Sean Li yesterday:

Hi PBZone- Love the site. just a quick note. I read the report from Sean Li today about exporting from Entourage into Address Book in Jaguar. I figured this one out this morning: If you select all your addresses in Entourage and just drag them to a folder in the finder, they get exported as vCards, which can be easily imported into Address Book. Both of these programs should be better documented!

Special Deal on 40 GB FireWire Drives

We're trying something new with our stock of FireWire enclosures. Until now, we've offered the bare enclosure without a hard drive. Customers mainly used the enclosure to place their PowerBook's original drive when they replaced it with a larger one. A few readers have emailed saying they were interested in a complete package: an external FireWire enclosure with the drive included.

We think it's a good idea and we're happy to offer a "full package" today. We've chosen a 40 GB IBM Travelstar "40GN" unit for our first batch of PBZone-brand drives because we know from extensive experience with this site that Travelstars are the "gold standard" of 2.5" hard drives.

As usual, our price is lower than anything that can be found anywhere else and it comes with all of the features of the regular enclosures: power supply, padded carrying case, high-quality FireWire cable, and user's guide. Most importantly, it comes with a one year warranty on the hardware and our service satisfaction guarantee. If anything's not to your liking, we'll fix it, guaranteed.

Our initial price for this batch of drives is $230. This is far and away the lowest price available. The drives will be shipping on August 25th, but everyone that buys today via PayPal at this link will receive free FedEx 2nd Day shipping (or USPS for addresses that require it). For those not familiar with PayPal, it's an easy, secure online payment service that allows us to easily accept all four major credit cards in addition to personal checks.

After today's free shipping deal ends, we'll have a regular ordering page with full shipping options at the same price as the bare enclosure.

Yet Another MacLinkage.com Plug

Until every last PBZone.com reader has checked out MacLinkage.com and made it a bookmark/homepage, we're gonna keep pluggin' the site over here. Around Noon, the day's links will be posted. Go check it out.

Monday, August 19th 2002 02:41 CDT

Apple Store SoHo: We Wuz Robbed

A month to the day after its grand opening, the Apple Retail Store in the Big Apple was robbed. Yesterday afternoon, a friend of PBZone in New York City tipped us off that the Apple Store SoHo had been victimized. Apparently sometime Saturday night, thieves with discerning taste stole Titanium PowerBooks and perhaps other merchandise from the store. While any other details are sketchy, the glass "bridge" on the second story may have been damaged. An image of the "bridge" can be best seen in this shot from the store's opening day a scant month ago

A MacDebate.com member saw at least some of the effects of the burglary and reported on them in a thread here. The store re-opened by 4 PM on Sunday, presumably after law enforcement had completed its evidence-gathering.

No print or online news coverage of the incident is available as of yet, so we'd be appreciative if anyone with further information could write in here.

Jaguar Report--Hong Kong

Longtime PBZone reader Sean Li sent in a quick summary of his experience with Jaguar:

One more data point for your Jaguar tracking discussion:

- New 17" iMacs have started shipping to stores in HK; they include Jaguar as upgrades discs.

Some early observations on Jaguar:
- The whole interface is more polished.
- It's noticeably faster.
- A tip for those who are trying to import their Entourage addresses into Address Book, you may need to do it via Palm Desktop (Address Book expects vcards, while Entourage doesn't seem able to export in any format except tab-delimited; Palm Desktop can import that, and then re-export as a vcard).
- Bluetooth works well under Jaguar. Don't be surprised if System Preferences doesn't initially show a Bluetooth preferences module, that will only be available if a Bluetooth adapter is plugged in.
- The upgrade itself requires over 900MB of disc space (!)

Will Serial Ever Die? Griffin Releases gPort OS X Software Version 1.2 Plus PowerMate SDKs

Griffin Technology sent a press release detailing their preemptive strike on Jaguar compliance plus developer SDKs for their PowerMate product:

New driver brings Jaguar compatibility to complete line of serial port adapters including g4Port, CubePort and the original gPort.

Nashville, TN ­ August 16, 2002. Griffin Technology, Inc. has released OS X Software version 1.2 for its entire line of gPort Serial Adapters, including the popular g4Port. Just in time for the international release of Apple¹s newest operation system OS 10.2, this release brings complete compatibility to the new OS and further enhances performance and stability of all gPort devices.

Griffin¹s gPort Serial Adapters adds an internal "board level" serial port to Apple PowerMacs, Cubes and CRT iMacs. This allows users continued access to their favorite serial port devices such as modems, printers, etc. The gPort OS X Software version 1.2 is a complete rewrite of the driver that provides improved stability and works more reliably when upgrading the OS.

The release of gPort Software version 1.2 for Jaguar continues Griffin¹s tradition of enabling users to advance to the latest computers and OS releases, while retaining compatibility with their legacy serial port devices. "Now, with our gPort Adapters, serial port users won¹t have to remain stuck using an out-of-date OS or slower hardware just to retain their significant investment in their vital serial hardware devices. We give control back to our users, instead of their hardware controlling them", says Andrew Green, VP Marketing.

Also released today are two PowerMate SDKs for developers on Macintosh OS X and Wintel platforms. The two SDKs provide a complete set of instructions on how to access the PowerMate hardware, including capturing the data being sent from the device and setting the brightness of the LED. This enables programmers to easily invent and implement completely new and unique applications for the PowerMate.

gPort OS X Software version 1.2 is free and available immediately for download at http://www.griffintechnology.com/

Both PowerMate Software Developer Kits (SDKs) are available immediately. All interested developers may contact Griffin Technology by email at developer@griffintechnology.com and request one or both of the PowerMate SDKs.

Bookmark Now! MacLinkage.com

Just a reminder: around Noon every day (Pacific time), MacLinkage.com will post 10 or so links of the day's best Mac news. With its clean, fast-loading design, it's a great homepage, so bookmark it now!

Friday, August 16th 2002 01:57 CDT

Bluetooth Email Discussion List Announced

Eric Prentice of The Macintosh Guy sent notice that he's established a new email discussion list pertaining to Bluetooth technology on the Macintosh:

http://themacintoshguy.com/lists/Bluetooth-Mac.html

I'm pleased to announce the Bluetooth-Mac email discussion list.

Bluetooth-Mac is a forum for Macintosh users and fans of Bluetooth to discuss hardware, devices and software.

"It is exciting to see Apple on the verge of doing for Bluetooth, what they did for USB." Said Eric Prentice, Listmom of Bluetooth-Mac List, "With Mac OS 10.2 Jaguar now shipping on new machines and phones like Sony Ericsson's T68 readily available, the average user now can include Bluetooth technology in their daily lives. And anything involving new technology will always benefit from a support system like Bluetooth-Mac list."

The two-dozen discussion lists at TheMacintoshGuy.com now have over 17000 members and the list server pushes millions of messages each month. 

Sending a message to <Bluetooth-Mac-ON@lists.themacintoshguy.com> will begin subscription to the list. Or you can fill out one of the forms at:

http://themacintoshguy.com/lists/Bluetooth-Mac.html
http://themacintoshguy.com/lists/.

MacSpeech Delivers iListen 1.5 for Mac OS X

The guys over at MacSpeech have been busy beavers, turning out a substantial update to their speech recognition package:

Bedford, NH, August 16th, 2002: Macintosh speech recognition authority MacSpeech, Inc. today announced the release of iListen 1.5, the latest incarnation of its popular speech recognition program.

This is the first Mac OS X version of iListen, including its renowned TalkAnywhere dictation technology, which converts spoken words to text directly into almost any Mac application.

This release of iListen delivers several new features and in addition it runs on both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X. iListen is the only Speech Recognition product that allows you to share profiles between both operating systems.

We are also bringing a Productivity enhancement to the platform for the first time - Transcription. "Using a Digital Voice Recorder to record some audio for later transcription is an incredible time saver", said MacSpeech's Donald MacCormick. "iListen's ability to read audio from AIFF and WAV files and put the recognized text directly into almost any application is remarkable".

iListen 1.5 builds on its reputation for ease of use, by adding a new Dock Menu for Mac OS X that makes iListen's main functions just a single click away.

Another iPod Upgrade Report

Reader Russ checks in with a positive report:

Updated my 10 gig i-Pod yesterday to 1.2 and all went well. As previous reader states, 1.2 gives you a new screen when the i-Pod is plugged into the cpu saying "do not unplug", but this warning just means you need to unmount the i-Pod before unplugging it. The new features are great. Not to mention the update is free, would Microsoft ever do that? For anyone on the fence about plunking down the bucks for one of these babies, I gotta tell you, I waited for months to buy one, it just seemed like too much money for an mp3 player, but since getting mine, I haven't regretted a penny. I've got almost my entire 150 cd collection loaded on my i-Pod. Sitting in airports, planes, cars or going for walks has never been more enjoyable. Apple has truly engineered the perfect blend of technology and pleasure.

Reminder: MacLinkage.com

Many of you checked out MacLinkage.com yesterday and we're encouraging everyone else to take a look-see. Since it sorts through all the articles that are posted each day, the updates will be available around Noon Pacific time and early-afternoon Eastern time. Again, ML is a "homepage" style site that selects the most informative and interesting Mac news articles of the day and presents them in list form for the reader that doesn't want to sort through the reams of sometimes-mediocre content out there. Give it a look at MacLinkage.com.