Tag: Mac

I’m a complete Photoshop novice, often getting FranX or Lee to walk me through stuff. One observation I thought I would share about Photoshop 7 running in OS X: when working on a JPG (and maybe any file), be sure to not have that file selected in the Finder.
I had clicked on the JPG in question in the Finder (column view), and the Finder was previewing the pic. Photoshop no likee this. As soon as I clicked to another pic in the Finder, Photoshop saved my changes to the JPG.

Looking for a little help from the retrophisch readership (all 3 of you): I’d like to create a slide show-style screensaver, like those that come pre-installed with OS X, but I don’t want to use the .Mac Slides Publisher to do it. I know I can just point the Screen Effects pane to a folder of pics, but it tends to limit the number of pics to five. And I’d like to provide the screen saver as a download to other OS X users.
Of course, I’m looking to do this cheap and easy, so recommendation on products such as iScreensaver Designer, PhotoCircus, or any others would be appreciated.

Hyok Ki Chung thinks so. Quoted on Macintouch, Chung analyzes a Korean news article:

While browsing a Korean Mac magazine site, I found this interesting article. It’s about the USB 2.0 controller chipset on [Power Mac] MDD 1.25 and 1.4 motherboards. According to this article, the controller is made by NEC, model number uPD720101.
The article is in Korean, but basically what it describes is the NEC USB 2.0 controller. It also mentions the driver, saying that Mac version is not available yet.
It looks like we already have USB 2.0 built-in. I guess it’s just matter of time. Hopefully Apple will add the driver to an updater soon.

Obviously, Apple doesn’t want to really push USB 2.0 right now, not when its own FireWire technology is picking up more steam, and the second iteration of that technology, FireWire 800, has hit the market on just-released systems.
Perhaps I have just bought the Apple line, but USB for me is for small peripheral usage: keyboards, mice, my CF card reader, my little Canon scanner that barely gets used. For the “heavy lifting”–my external drives, tape backup, iPod–FireWire is the way to go. Not to mention that you can’t use USB, 1.1 or 2.0, to boot a Mac as an external drive to another Mac, better known as FireWire Target Disk Mode.
UPDATE, 9:50 pm: Ric updated with follow-up from Kevin Purcell:

But examining the Apple Hardware Developer notes [Power Mac G4 Developer Note], you can see that these PowerMacs only expose two USB ports which means the USB 2.0 port in the chip is not connected to any PHY or external connector on the Power Macs. Only the low-speed/full-speed ports are connected. I don’t expect to see a software update. Apple probably just bought these because they meet their spec (an OHCI controller) and they needed a 2 or 3 port USB solution.

So, maybe wishful thinking…

Ric Ford notes that he is experimenting with a XML feed for his renowned Macintouch site. Plug this in to NNW, boys and girls:

http://www.macintouch.com/rss.xml

Apple released this morning the second public beta of its Safari web browser. You can download it here.
The official public release of tabbed browsing in Safari, as well as other improvements and additions, this release is v73, for those keeping score at home.

Gruber’s last two posts are right on the money. First is his PR-speak to English translation of Quark’s press release about QuarkXPress 6. Of note:

We are plowing full steam ahead under the delusion that our users want to use a print-oriented page-layout program for web design. By placing extra emphasis on these unwanted web features, we hope to distract your attention from a certain upstart page layout application, which is focused squarely and solely on page layout.

He really lays in to John C. Dvorak, though, on Dvorak’s latest rants regarding Apple and Intel.

This point cannot be emphasized strongly enough. Apple is a computer hardware company. Selling hardware is how Apple generates most of its revenue. Their operating system software may well be the best aspect of their computers, but that does not make them a software company. Anyone who claims that Apple could simply switch to being a software company and make up for lost hardware revenue by selling additional software doesn’t understand how the company operates.
During the brief period of time when Apple licensed the Mac OS to other manufacturers, their revenue tanked. Too many people bought cheap clones from PowerComputing and Umax instead of higher-priced Macs from Apple, and the licensing revenue didn’t compensate for the lost hardware revenue. The situation may well have been good for Mac users, but it was terrible for Apple’s bottom line.
No matter how badly people clamor for it, Apple is never going to release a version of Mac OS X that runs on standard Wintel PC hardware. Whether it’s possible or not, it isn’t going to happen. A frequent comment regarding this rumor is something like “I’d love a version of Mac OS X that ran on my PC.” Sure you would, you cheap bastard. Apple’s Switch campaign is an attempt to get PC users to buy thousands of dollars of Apple hardware, not hundreds of dollars of Apple software.

In addition, pay attention to the fact that Microsoft and Apple are indeed separate companies with separate goals, and thus should not be lumped in to the same industry “group” that analysts and reporters always lump the two in to.

Wired reports on John Fraser’s attempt to build a new pizza-box, or “headless” Mac, using replacement parts for older systems.
Good luck getting past Apple Legal, John.

The April issue of About This Particular Macintosh has been released. Check out Eric’s review of NetNewsWire, Lee & Darryl’s review of Studio MX, and Bob’s continuing saga on using your Mac to record your vinyl albums to CD.