Blake Patterson

Slashdot has posted a bit on an InfoWorld article that informs us that Inprise/Borland has officially pledged support to the forthcoming Mac OS X operating system. The company will release JBuilder (a Java IDE) for OS X that will fully support the features of OS X, Aqua, etc. The status of ports of other products is unknown at this time. This is excellent news for the Mac community,...

Slashdot has posted that quite a rumor is alive at the "sometimes somewhat less than reliable" Drudge Report. The rumor speaks of a merger between Apple, Pixar, and Disney. This one's been kicked around for a while now...but even so, we still can't quite picture just exactly what the end result would be. Check out the article. Here's a taste: "Steve will not sell PIXAR without...

Slashdot has recently posted a link to an article on heise online (in German) which states that nVIDIA has signed an OEM agreement with Apple to supply the company with GeForce2 MX 3D hardware. It was not clear whether or not this was an ousting of ATI as a major (currently the only) graphics hardware supplier to Apple (please, let it be so!). This seemed like great news... ...

Mac Gamer's Ledge has posted a link to a euro web site that has placed 6 smallish movies taken from the forthcoming RealMYST from Cyan (scroll to the bottom of that page or you might miss 'em!). RealMYST, which we've spoken of on several occasions prior, is basically the classic game MYST, done up in a full 3D, first-person-perspective environment offering the player complet...

Xappeal.org has updated their Carbon page, which lists all the latest known MacOS applications that have been (or are about to be) "Carbonized" so that they run natively under MacOS X as well as MacOS 9. (While "Cocoa" apps are MacOS X exclusive and take particular advantage of OS X's unique features--but don't run under any previous MacOS.) Happily, the list is...

In response to some recent comments from nVidia about the probability of supporting the Mac with one of their (not so cutting edge) 3D chipsets [see MacCentral article here], 3Dfx's Bryan Speece has made some "set the record straight" comments, which can be found on AccelerateYourMac. Interesting discussion--good to see 3Dfx get a little "worked up" about its future claim to the Mac...

LowEndMac has, once again, come through with a nice little nostalgia piece focusing on the venerable Macintosh IIsi. My recent setup of a PowerMac 6100 system has got me tuned-in to the redemption of "old friend" machines. Great fun to work...

AccelerateYourMac! has reported that there is a 3dfxgamers forum Q&A session on-line where 3Dfx was asked a series of questions (some Mac Voodoo related). Take a look at how it went. Still lusting after that MacVodoo5. ...

Businesswire has announced that S3 has begun shipping the Rio 600 MP3 player which, like the 500-before it, is USB-based and Mac-ready. Sporting half the memory (32MB on-board) of the Rio 500 before it, the 600 innovates by means of memory expansion "backpacks" which allow the future use of a variety of memory expansion formfactors, a new innovative design, the ability to play a number of...

CreativeMac reports that DigiDesign has recently released a rack-mounted PCI expansion chassis for the "B&W" G3 or G4 that adds 7 PCI slots to the system (they've been selling a 13-slot chassis for a while now, as well). That's a lot of slots! Their reason for offering these expansion systems is to facilitate the addition of a large number of their PCI-based audio processing boards to a ...

Thought we've touched on it before, Apple is now running a page that goes into the different, forthcoming MYST-related games. Pretty interesting stuff. realMYST is definitely the one I'm waiting for. Always wanted to see that island...in...

BareFeats has placed an article on-line that gets to the bottom of the cheap, high-performance storage issue and answers the question "What is the fastest Ultra ATA drive under $200?" With the new Macs' snappy UltraATA/33 and now UltraATA/66 drive cotnrollers, we Mac users can definitely benefit from some fast, cheap storage. Take a look at what they uncover. Poor SCSI--how long can it...

My dual-headed B&W G3 400, sitting at home, doesn't leave me wanting for anything--at home. The office is another matter. I spend my time in the office behind a PC coding VBscript ASP's--no Macs there to speak of, and that is a sad thing. So, I thought to myself, "why not build one cheap?" So I have. PowerMac 6100/66 (with CD-ROM, ethernet), OS 8.1, 24MB RAM, 500MB HD, 15" portrait...

In what really is a great (and nostalgic, for many of us) offering to the publc, Free Pascal is offering...free Pascal. They have created a Pascal compiler that is almost 100% compatible with the defacto standard Pascal environment, Borland Pascal, and released it under a modified GNU Public License. Currently it is available for DOS, Win32, OS/2, Linux, and AmigaDOS, but there's been "strong...

The most-used 3D gfx board in my b&w G3 400 is my trusty old Voodoo2. Notably better than my Rage 128 (rev. a) for games, this board served me well when it lived in a PC and even better in my Mac, with 3Dfx's freely-available GLide and OpenGL extensions. Getting initial functionality with my Apple Studio Display 17" was another matter, however. Of late, I've gotten a number of e-mails...

There is a good article on MacOS daily written from the perspective of a Mac-loving scientist who is rejoycing at long last with MacOS X on the way--an OS able to face the particular demands of intensive scientific applications. Some good points are made regarding just where OS X puts Apple in relation to the old, standby power Unix platforms: Sun, SGI, HP, etc. A good...

A MacGamer's Ledge contributing editor has written a Sneak Peek at Shadowbane, a forthcoming massive, multi-platform, on-line gaming extravaganza. (Maybe just what you've been waiting for!) Gives some detailed insight into what the game will bring to the MacOS (and Windows) gaming world. (I believe a port-to-Linux petition is still being compiled.) (See our previous article on ...

BrightHand, one of the more interesting handheld computing news sites, has placed some screenshots and links online that show what appears to be MacOS running on a Windows CE-based H/PC. It seems to be a product called FakeMac, which my rusty Japanese prevents me from knowing more about. Still, follow the links and see what you think from these developers on The Crossroads who have "respect for ...

LowEndMac's "Mac of the Week" this week is the original, 128K Macintosh. The interesting info and great number of resource links in this article, as well as the significance of this father-of-all-Mac's makes this a pretty worthwhile read. Check it...

Creative Labs have finally opened their Mac Info Page where Mac users can see the products that will soon be made available to us. Personal MP3 players, web cams, audio boards, etc.--definitely a win for the Mac community. I'm pretty excited about the SoundBlaster Live PCI board, which will provide enhanced hardware-assisted audio playback that should improve the...