State of the Mac

My Appologies

As always happens when I rely on my university's modems, they don't work (I think it could be university policy or something). Due to these frequent problems (and probably my own miserliness) I haven't been able to update my section here at Suite101.com for a while. This should now be over (I'll have a new ISP soon) and the weekly updates of this page should now take place every Sunday (US time).

Redesign at MacGaming

Mac Gaming has redone their interface in a way reminiscent of other Internet gaming sites from the PC side (looks very nice, but not to my personal taste). For those that, like me, wish to get straight to the meat of the site (its daily Mac gaming news) the news is all kept at http://www.macgaming.com/news/index.shtml.

MRJ 2.0 Released

Apple has released the latest MacOS Runtime for Java (MRJ). Version 2 includes support for the full features of Sun's Java 1.1. Includes JavaBeans and much more.

Users of Internet Explorer 4 (IE4) gain full access to all of MRJ 2's features for their web browsing too as IE4 uses MRJ as its Java engine. This is also useful to people who own 040 based 68k Macs, as IE4 with MRJ 2 is the only way to get Java 1.1 compatibility due to Netscape's decision not to support Java in its 68k versions of Navigator and Communicator.

MRJ 2.0 requires at least a 68040 processor (or PowerPC) and MacOS 8 to run. It is available free from Apple's MRJ homepage.

Apple October 14 Event

A page on the Apple site is promoting a Steve Jobs' "Apple Event" for October 14 where Apple will announce its fiscal fourth quarter results, large scale data results on who is buying the iMac and "a major new release of the Macintosh Operating System."

I'm interpreting this to mean that Apple made a profit last quarter, and probably for the year as a whole. That plenty of new users and wintel converts are buying the iMac and that they are going to announce the release date of MacOS 8.5. But hey, turn up and watch at the listed venues. Knowing what Steve Jobs is going to say has never stopped people enjoying a Steve Jobs presentation before. Steve Jobs always likes to spring surprises on people - it's all in the presentation, after all.

AltiVec

Motorola is introducing new technology into the PowerPC processor, AltiVec. Now most people will see this as an attempt to outdo Intel's MMX technology, and it is to some extent. But it is so much more. MMX is used to

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