Veerle's blog

I came across an interesting read this morning on MacOS Rumors. So yes this is still speculation but certainly something to think about for a minute. I’m talking about the rumor that Apple is maybe considering making a web design application. First thing that pops into my mind is a consumer based app (ala PageMill), easy to use but not for us pros ;-)

None of our Macs at Duoh! have joined the G5 world yet, but that’s now about to change since we have ordered an Xserve G5 to replace our aging G4 server. The server has been on order since the beginning of February. Yesterday Apple released a press release that they started shipping the Xserve to customers. I have no clue when it will arrive here in Belgium since the US will probably be first. The Virginia Tech cluster has ordered 1.100 of these and I can imagine that Apple will make that a priority. I know that my dealer Macline has several Xserve’s on back-order. It seems that this is a much wanted item.

The server will be used for file, print and web development. It will also host our company’s extra-net. With Apache on it together with MySQL and PHP this will be a great new toy to play with ;-) I’m already curious in its speed and how cool the packaging will be, because as most Mac users know, unpacking is part of the fun if you buy a Mac.

It could very well mean that even this blog and [url=http://www.duoh.com]http://www.duoh.com[/url] will eventually be hosted on a Xserve in the future.

A while ago there was some turmoil about somebody who dismantled his G5 internals to replace it with PC parts. It turned out to be hoax.

According to the rumor mill Apple is still facing some heavy red tape in bringing the Music Store over to Europe. The original target was to get it in place in the first half of 2004. The European Union wants us to believe that Europe is one unity but this proves them more then wrong. So what’s the hold up? Well, Apple wants a European-wide deal to provide a consistent and uniform Music Store. However, regional licensing fees and distribution of those fees remain to be an obstacle. In other words everybody wants to fill their pockets and nobody sees the greater good.

In the mean time they’re still losing money. A few months ago Apple past the 30 Million mark in the US alone, so are those decision makers really that blind? It should be clear that regional stores are not the answer here. A lot of songs in the US store are interesting for me, like all those great songs from the 80’s. I love the 80’s btw. A direct result of all this is that the launch-goal may fall as far back as August 2004… but this remains a moving target. I am ready to buy and I think a lot of others too but this is becoming a joke isn’t it? 

When I run software update on Panther this morning I saw that Safari 1.2 is out (7,7MB). Safari 1.2 improves compatibility with websites and web applications by providing increased support for standards (yeah!), adds support for personal certificate authentication, and works with Java 1.4.2 to enable websites that rely on LiveConnect for communication between JavaScript and Java applets.

This update also provides improved application stability, full keyboard access for navigating web pages (when you press option-tab, Safari cycles through links on a page, highlighting them in a manner similar to Internet Explorer), and the ability to resume interrupted downloads. So guys and girls go run Software update if you’re on Mac that is ;-)

Update: This Safari is only available if you have Panther (10.3). Users of 10.2 still have to use Safari 1.0. Apple, don’t forget about those users!