Software

Apple Releases Tiger Patch. So soon?
Just 17 days after releasing its ‘Tiger’ OS X 10.4 operating system, Apple has issued a sizeable bug fix update after growing gripes from customers.
The hefty 37MB patch delivers upgraded graphics card drivers and fixes at least 35 bugs in the operating system, including problems with bundled applications such as the Mail client, Safari browser, iCal, Mail client, iSync and iDVD.
Almost immediately after Tiger was launched, customers were posting up on Internet bulletin boards detailing problems varying from networking hassles to applications that would crash under certain circumstances.
Upgraders weren’t too pleased to discover that Safari would “unexpectedly quit” when right clicking on some PDF files or graphics or that iDVD would commit hari-kari when hiding it while burning a DVD or saving a disc image.
Russians were also most annoyedski to find the iDVD player bombing when the operating system was set to their home language (something that affected a host of other languages too).
A security fix included in the update disallows files, applications and Web pages from automatically opening at the password prompt, appearing whenever a user wakes the computer from sleep or stops a screen saver.
Apple’s support site claims the patch also improves the reliability of the operating system’s Active Directory plug-in.
Talking to vnunet.com, senior analyst Joe Wilcox at Jupiter Research commented: “The quick update really shows how responsive Apple tries to be in respect to its operating system.”
But there was a sting in Wilcox’s praise, as the analyst pointed out that releasing such a man-sized patch just weeks after the launch revealed a flaw in Apple’s development process.
“A lot of things [at Apple] are pretty secretive; there aren’t necessarily as many eyes looking over the products as there could be,” said Wilcox, commenting on the company’s decision to use a limited group of beta testers looking at the code.
“Apple has a developer programme that catches a lot of things, but certain problems won’t be uncovered until a whole lot of people have the software,” he added.
The 10.4.1 update can be downloaded manually from Apple’s Web site, or retrieved automatically from within the Tiger OS using its Software Update feature.
About the Mac OS X 10.4.1 Update
Apple download page
vnunet.com
19 May, 2005
Nintendo Revolution Console Details Revealed: E3
After the high profile launches of Microsoft’s next generation consoles, Nintendo disappointed razzamatazz-seeking visitors at the E3 show by serving up a rather understated presentation.
Beginning with a talk about their plans for their other consoles, Nintendo revealed their upcoming Game Boy Micro and the “Nintendo WiFi Connection”, a free worldwide gaming service for the DS.
Of course, what the assembled hacks really wanted to know about was the new Revolution console, but Saturo Iwata, Nintendo’s main man, was coy on specific details, offering a black prototype box with a blue front-loading disc drive.
This, Iwata explained, was still only a prototype and the small size – about the same as three DVD cases stacked on top of each other – may become even smaller by the time the Revolution hits the shops.
A few facts did emerge: the Revolution will come with 512MB of internal RAM, an IBM CPU, ATi GPU, an SD slot, built-in WiFi, wireless controllers and a selection of USB2 ports.
The expected whizz bang, jaw-dropping demo videos were not in attendance, although Itawa assured the audience that the Revolution’s graphics will “wow” gamers when they finally get an eyeful of them.
Not everyone is convinced about these claims, with some industry pundits predicting that the Revolution’s processing power will be but a mere squeak compared to the mighty powerhouses lurking inside the PS3 and X360 consoles.
But Nintendo’s success has been built on gameplay not sheer grunt, a fact highlighted by Itawa, “It is the game experience that will most separate Revolution from its competitors.”
Nintendo’s new machine will be their first console capable of playing standard storage DVDs, but they haven’t forgotten their old-school fans, with the Revolution able to accept Ye Olde Gamecube discs.
Impressively, the company has ensured that backward compatibility goes all the way back to the dawn of time, offering support for every single game that has ever been released for a Nintendo home system – including N64, SNES and NES consoles.
Nintendo teased the crowd with talk of a new online content delivery service, although actual details were thin on the ground.
Unlike Sony and Microsoft, Nintendo were unable to roll out an all-star glittering cast of big name game partners, although Itawa was able to confirm several games under development for the Revolution including Metroid Prime 3, The Legend of Zelda, Mario and Donkey Kong.
The Final Fantasy series is also expected to appear onto the Revolution as Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicle.
Rumours persist that Nintendo may have a surprise up their sleeve for the end of the expo, but so far reaction to their presentation seems a little muted.
The Revolution faces fearsome competition from Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3 as manufacturers move to create digital entertainment hubs rather than simple video games consoles.
“They are all pursing strategies that really play to their own strengths,” said P.J. McNealy, a senior analyst at American Technology Research. “At this point it is primarily marketing and position, that’s the main goal here.”
Nintendo
18 May, 2005
Llamasoft Visualiser Built Into XBox 360
Wooargh! The lights! The shapes…the colours….all that swirling…and moving…have I gone back in time to a chemically assisted squat rave?
Sadly not: instead, I’m being mesmerised by Jeff Minter’s Llamasoft graphics, a cutting edge music visualisation system designed for Microsoft’s Xbox 360.
Based on Neon, Llamasoft’s proprietary graphics technology, the Llamasoft Visualiser comes pre-installed on Xbox360s and it’s “capable of generating anything from soothing ambient swirls to strobing multicolour explosions.”
The mind-melding visual feasts are driven by beat detection or joypad control, letting users take interactive control of the camera, patterns and effect generators, to create their own psychedelic wig-outs.
The results are pretty damn amazing, with the silky smooth, rock-solid rendering engine creating a brain-troubling swathe of swirling, abstract, multi-layered psychotropic imagery.
The effect is so convincing, that all you’d need is some 2,000 watt techno blasting out, a floor covered in spent beer cans, a few ‘funny’ cigarettes and you could recreate the perfect rave in your bedroom.
We’ve liked Jeff Minter’s stuff ever since the days when an Amiga 1200 (RIP) with 4meg of RAM was considered positively ostentatious. Even then his Llamatron was streets ahead of the competition, so it’s great it see the spliff-consuming, loveable hippy still producing such great work.
“Without giving any secrets away and getting myself into trouble with Microsoft,” enthused Minter, “I can tell you that the Xbox 360 can bring to bear an absolutely staggering amount of computational power on each and every pixel, and never drop below 60 frames a second.”
And he’s still got his principles too, writing on his bulletin board: “And we haven’t sold our souls, or our IP, to Microsoft either. We’ve created for them an interactive visualiser for the Xbox360, and we’ll not do a visualiser for the rival consoles for this coming generation. But if someone were to ring me up tomorrow and say “Blimey Yak mate, that Neon’s a bit tasty, any chance of a bit of that for the next “not_a_console_visualiser_app” I could quite legitimately say “abso-smegging-lutely!” and we could be delivering working code in a few weeks. We can use it in games on *any* platform. The engine is small, efficient and portable.”
Bless him.
Llamasoft
Jeff Minter’s forum
18 May, 2005
Game Boy Micro Launched by Nintendo
Although Nintendo’s Revolution launch yesterday was a bit thin on detail, the company have now released full details of their itsy-bitsy addition to the Game Boy family, Game Boy Micro.
Sizing up at a diminutive four inches wide, two inches tall, and 0.7 inches thick, Nintendo are billing the Game Boy Micro as the “smallest and sleekest Game Boy product” they’ve created, claiming that it will fit comfortably into the pocket of your “tightest jeans.”
We’re not quite sure that they’ll find space in the straining waistband of Billy “20 Pints” McQuaffer, but it is a wee thing with dimensions only slightly larger than an iPod Mini and weighing just 2.8 ounces (“the same weight as 80 paper clips” as Nintendo bizarrely informed us).
The Game Boy Micro offers the same processing power as the Game Boy Advance SP models and plays all the same titles while, apparently, lending you an air of “industrial-hip cool.”
“We’re making the gorgeous Game Boy Micro for image-conscious folks who love video games, the ones who want the look of their system to be as cool as the games they play on it,” waffled George Harrison, who has one of the longest job descriptions we’ve seen for a while: Nintendo Of America’s Senior Vice President Of Marketing And Corporate Communications.
But Harrison (NOASVPOMACC) wasn’t quite finished with the ludicrous marketing tosh: “Because of its diminutive size and industrial-hip look, Game Boy Micro immediately identifies the person playing it as a trendsetter with discriminating style.”
So there you have it: any hopeless buffoon walking around with a Micro will automatically be transformed into a style icon….
Back in the real world, Nintendo are well chuffed with their new two-inch backlit screen – “the best Game Boy screen ever” – which lets users adjust the brightness of the screen to adapt to indoor lights or outdoor sunshine.
Wrapping up the feature list, the Game Boy Micro comes with a built-in, rechargeable lithium-ion battery, supports standard headphones and comes with a removable face plate for that all-important customisation thang.
Game Boy Micro is expected to be released this autumn.
Nintendo
18 May, 2005
MSN Search Toolbar Required For MSN Desktop Search
Microsoft has released the final version of MSN Desktop Search, offering new features based on extensive user feedback and boasting extended support for file types.
Along with Internet Explorer, search toolbars reside in Windows Explorer and Microsoft Office Outlook, with desktop searches available via a toolbar in the Windows taskbar.
The free 5.5Mb download (in contrast to Google’s 700K) can index over 200 types of files, ranging from Office 2003 documents to Outlook contacts, calendar files and emails including attachments, with add-ins available for specialised files, such as PDF, DWF and ZIP files.
The new toolbar has ramped up multimedia file support, including GIF, JPEG, Adobe files and MP3, with browser-style “search as you type” input fields to speed up searching.
It’s now possible to select which items should be indexed, with a dialog box letting users choose specific files and locations.
These advanced indexing options also let users specify file types to be indexed as text, create a list of file types that should not be indexed, decide the location of the index file and boost the priority of the indexing process (although this may cause some PCs to run as slow as a tired sloth on Mogadons, but at least it can be turned off).
The new version lets users customise how the program sorts different files — by date, size, author or sender etc – with Justin Osmer, product manager for MSN Search, gleefully boasting, “You can really slice and dice the results any way you want.”
Search results are now accompanied by a preview pane that displays a summary of a selected results with the option to launch the targeted file’s native application.
As with the beta release, the MSN desktop search application positively demands that the MSN Search Toolbar be installed, with the product parking itself inside Internet Explorer.
Although users must have MSN Search Toolbar installed to use MSN Desktop search, it’s possible to select which features are enabled on the toolbar, and to hide MSN navigation links to services such as Hotmail, Messenger etc.
Conveniently, users can also change the default search engine from MSN Search to any other search engine.
As is the norm with search toolbars, there’s a pop up blocker and form-filler installed, although there’s still no Firefox-style tabbed browsing on offer, although MSN says it will be added soon.
MSN also is launching a new Web site, addins.msn.com, serving up a selection of third-party developer additions to the desktop search toolbar.
The competition for the desktop search market is getting hotter than Justin Timberlake’s underpants, with Google and Yahoo already off to a flying start.
Although Microsoft’s offering may not have enough features to tempt those using rival services, it may prove perfect for regular users of Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer.
MSN Desktop Search
17 May, 2005
PS3 Launching Spring 2006: Sony At E3
Sony has unveiled prototypes of their new Playstation 3 console at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles.
Not so much a games console as a mo’fo’ media machine, the PS3 contains a veritable beast in the box, with the Cell processor – jointly developed by IBM, Sony Group and Toshiba – capable of producing two teraflops of computing power. That’s twice that of the Xbox 360.
Like the XBox, home entertainment convergence is the big story here, with the PlayStation3 offering high quality TV output and the ability to play digital music, Blu-ray high-definition DVD, as well as show off home movies and digital pictures.
The powerful new microprocessor allows many of the functions to be carried out at the same time, allowing gamers to record TV shows or listen to music while playing a game.
Sony’s curvy silver unit comes with more connections than the StereoMCs, serving up six USB sockets; Ethernet and Wi-Fi wireless technology; BlueTooth support for up to seven wireless controllers and a removable hard drive.
The new BD-ROM (Blu-ray Disc ROM) offers a thumping great 54 GB (dual layer) storage capacity providing ample space for storing full high-definition (HD) quality movies with two HDMI high-definition sockets allowing games to be played on one screen and video conferencing on a second.
With an almighty 2 teraflops of computing power on call, the box should be capable of rendering landscapes and virtual worlds in real-time with super-smooth characters and object motion.
Sony are currently collaborating with the world’s leading tools and middleware companies, to provide developers with extensive tools and libraries to make the best of the Cell processor and enable efficient software development.
As is now the custom, every new product has to represent a ‘new era’ in something or another. Last week, Microsoft was describing their XBox launch as “a dawn of a new era in entertainment.”
Ken Kutaragi, President and CEO, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc was ready to go a little bit further: “Empowered by the Cell processor with super computer like performance, a new age of PLAYSTATION 3 is about to begin. Together with content creators from all over the world, SCEI will accelerate the arrival of a new era in computer entertainment.”
Sony’s announcement came with a long, long list of partners enthusiastically effervescing about the new Playstation. We can sum up their opinions thus: “We think it’s great!”
Consumers will be able to find out for themselves when the PS3 launches “in the spring of 2006,” although old-school gamers will be pleased to learn that PS3 will offer backward compatibility for the 13,000-title strong PS and PS2 back catalogue.
With the two big guns XBox and PS3 showing their hands, all eyes are on Nintendo’s next-generation machine, code-named ‘Revolution,’ which will be revealed at E3 later today. We’ll be filing a report shortly.
Watch the amazing PS3 technical demos: 1UP
Sony Playstation
17 May, 2005
OneCare From Microsoft Gives Live PC Health Check
Microsoft has announced that it would begin testing OneCare Live – a PC-health care fix-it all application – with a general release sometime next year.
Battered by Window’s less-than-glowing reputation as the des res of choice for viruses, Trojans, spyware apps and a host of other lurking undesirables, Microsoft is trying to soothe the worried brows of its consumers and make home PCs safer.
Microsoft says that OneCare, a security-software product, will do more than just battle against malicious attacks that flood inboxes with spam and spawn screenfulls of evil pop up ads.
The company intends to make it a preventive tool that will keep personal computers healthy with an easy-peasy automated system that takes all the guesswork and hassle away from the computer user.
As well as virus, firewall and spyware protection, the program will include performance and reliability tools offering automated maintenance tasks such as disk cleanup, hard-drive defragmentation and file repair.
Windows OneCare will also offer backup and restore capabilities, enabling automated backup of files by category on CD and DVD
“Customers don’t differentiate between security issues, maintenance issues and support issues,” observed Dennis Bonsall, Group Program Manager for Microsoft’s Technology, Care and Safety group. “They just want someone to take care of it.”
OneCare is a separately sold subscription-based service designed to work as a mainly “hands-off” application, quietly doing its good deeds in the background while sending security updates to users’ computer systems without them having to download or install the fixes.
From this week onward, Microsoft will begin testing the OneCare service amongst its own employees, before launching an invitation-only beta version for consumers in the summer
You’d think that the entry of the world’s biggest software maker into the anti-virus and security market would send feathers flying amongst established big names like McAfee and Symantec, but McAfee President Gene Hodges was all chilled out: “For people buying security software, it’s typically all about trust. Who do they trust to secure their computers and do this on a reliable basis? Microsoft, even though it’s a huge, powerful company, is going to have to prove to people that it can build good products and do the job well.”
Symantec were quick to throw an equally nonchalant shrug, issuing a statement last Friday saying that it was ready to compete with Microsoft, while confidently pointing out “the strength of the relationships we have with tens of millions of consumers around the world.”
We remain a little less-than-convinced that Microsoft haven’t the potential to seriously torpedo the profits of the current security big guns, and Van Baker, an analyst at researcher Gartner seems to agree,
Commenting that the Microsoft product could be attractive to less tech-savvy users, Baker opined; “Symantec, McAfee and Trend Micro all offer a fairly complex offering and customers don’t know what else they need to worry about,” Baker said. “Microsoft is simplifying what is right now a mess, and in addition to protecting you, it’s also going to make sure that your computer runs well.”
Windows OneCare Live
16 May, 2005
XBox 360 Launched on US MTV. UK Tonight
Xbox 360, Microsoft’s successor to their popular Xbox gaming console, will be “unleashed” tonight at a celebrity-packed launch broadcast on MTV, which shows at 8pm in the UK. It was launched on US MTV last night.
With a press release positively hyperventilating with hyperbole, Microsoft breathlessly extols the virtues of their new games machine, dramatically waffling on about “a dawn of a new era in entertainment.”
Unlike the manly, chunky lines of the first-generation Xbox, the 360 has been given the ladyboy treatment, with smooth, concave lines covering the rippling muscle lurking below.
And there certainly is a beast in the box, with the unit powered by a custom-made IBM PowerPC-based three-core chip running at 3.2GHz, supported by 512MB of GDDR3 RAM – enough beefy brawn to keep up with even the nippiest modern PCs.
Graphics performance should be speedier than a rocket-assisted rabbit too, with an ATI GPU running at 500MHz, backed up by 10MB of embedded DRAM.
The Xbox will ship with a 12X dual-layer DVD-ROM drive – supporting progressive-scan DVD movies and a host of DVD and CD formats – three USB 2.0 ports, two memory unit slots and support for four wireless game controllers.
Users will also be able to stream media from portable devices or Windows XP PCs, as well as rip music to the Xbox’s detachable (and upgradeable) 20GB hard drive.
Networking needs are catered for with a built-in Ethernet port and support for 802.11a, b, and g Wi-Fi protocols.
“With the first generation of Xbox, our ambition was to change the way people think about video games,” said Robbie Bach, chief Xbox officer at Microsoft. “Starting today with Xbox 360, our ambition is to transform the way people play games and have fun.”
Microsoft – never one to understate their case – are claiming that they will “unleash the greatest game lineup in the history of video games” when the Xbox launches in North America, Europe and Japan over Christmas.
They’ve certainly persuaded a gaggle of major league gaming companies to come onboard, with initial releases including NBA 2K6, Call of Duty 2, QUAKE 4, Madden NFL 06, Need for Speed Most Wanted and Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 06.
“Xbox 360 marks the beginning of a renaissance in video games,” whooped Don Mattrick, president of Worldwide Studios for Electronic Arts. “The unbelievable Xbox 360 games in development at Electronic Arts will accelerate the industry’s mission to make video games the pre-eminent form of all entertainment.”
All the games are designed for high-definition, wide-screen televisions, although they’ll work on regular TVs.
Players will be able to access Microsoft’s free Xbox Live online service, which allows them to connect with friends through Xbox Live voice chat, send and receive text and voice messages and stuff their detachable Xbox 360 hard drive full of downloadable demos, trailers, new game levels, maps, weapons, vehicles, skins and community-created content
Gamers who shell out for the premium service, Xbox Live Gold, can join multiplayer online games and enjoy enhanced options for online game matchmaking and a greater ability to provide feedback on opponents.
Naturally, gamers love to customise their experience, so there’s a camera option to let vain players add their mugshots into games or even see their friends onscreen as they frag them to an inch of their worthless lives.
As is the current vogue, the appearance of the actual Xbox can be customised too, with a range of interchangeable Xbox Faces on offer.
Although the system is aimed at mad-for-it gamers, the Xbox is also a full entertainment system offering DVD movie, CD music and photo playback support.
So long as they’re equipped with a USB 2.0 port, MP3 players, digital cameras and Windows XP-based PC port can all plug into an Xbox 360 system to stream music and photos.
Xbox 360 players can also access recorded TV and digital movies, music, video and photos stored on Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005-based PCs through any Xbox 360 system in the house.
We’ve yet to get our greasy paws on a machine, but Microsoft have certainly raised the stakes with their new Xbox, although arch rivals Sony have yet to, err, unleash their PlayStation 3, a potentially more powerful box offering support for new high-capacity Blu-ray discs.
With both units enjoying enthusiastic support from game makers and gamers, some of the real bloody battles could soon be taking place off-screen.
Promo video for Xbox 360 (Windows Media)
If you thought Xbox 360 was just about gaming, skip to 3 minutes into the video to see how they’re transforming it into a media centre.
XBox
13 May, 2005
Windows Mobile 5.0 Unveiled By Microsoft
Microsoft has unveiled Windows Mobile 5.0, a new version of its Windows operating system for mobile devices.
The new OS includes features to make it easy for device makers to equip phones and handheld computers with typewriter keyboards and iPod-sized hard drives.
The announcement by Chairman Bill Gates at the company’s annual conference for mobile software developers in Las Vegas, marked the end of the distinct Pocket PC and Smartphone brands of the operating system.
Microsoft initially offered a single mobile platform based on Windows CE (short for ‘consumer electronics’) with the platform fragmenting into Pocket PC PDAs, “smart” cell phones, and then Pocket PCs equipped with phones.
By dumping the 5-year-old Pocket PC brand and the ‘Smartphone’ label, Microsoft is elbowing its Windows Mobile platform onto the same table as rival mobile device platforms such as Symbian and BlackBerry.
Although the underlying software code remains 90 percent the same as its predecessors, the new Windows Mobile removes some technological distinctions that gave the phone and PDA platforms different capabilities.
This means that integrated support for Wi-Fi will be available for smart phones rather than just Pocket PCs, and that Pocket PCs will now include “persistent” memory storage.
This preserves basic user information, contacts and personal settings when a device’s battery runs out of juice and was previously only available for smart phones.
The new Windows Mobile platform rather belatedly adds support for internal hard drives, with Microsoft hoping that device makers will design phones and organisers with enough storage capacity to take on the likes of Apple’s iPod
Other feature enhancements in Windows Mobile 5.0 include tools for “push-to-talk” and video conferencing, support for 3G and USB 2.0, and improvements in soft-key operation and landscape display orientation.
Swivel action business folks will appreciate updates to the mobile versions of Microsoft Word and Excel, with the software providing more consistent formatting of documents created on a computer and allowing charts to be created from a spreadsheet.
Windows Mobile currently generates the loose change in Microsoft’s voluminous pockets, with the combined software revenue from mobile and embedded devices totalling US$80 million (~€62.5m ~£43m) in the first three months of 2005.
Although this was up 31 percent from a year earlier, it only amounted to a piffling tenth of Microsoft’s overall revenue for the quarter – but things are likely to change with Microsoft’s forthcoming marketing blitz (rumoured to reach US$100 million [~€78m ~£53.5m]).
Microsoft execs haven’t given out exact figures, but Susan DelBene, a corporate vice-president of marketing for the mobile and embedded devices division at Microsoft said, “You’ll see a bigger marketing effort from us than you’ve ever seen in the past for Windows Mobile.”
At stake is a lorra lorra loly, as smart phones are one of the fastest-growing segments of the tech industry, with sales expected to increase 67 per cent this year (32.2 million units). Compare that to the single digit growth of the PC market and you can understand Microsoft’s enthusiasm to get their sticky fingers in the smartphone jam jar.
Windows Mobile 5.0
12 May, 2005
How-To: Sony PSP Internet Access
Looking for a review and background on the Sony PSP? Steve runs through the highlights.
Games developers have included Internet access in their products. The best example of this is Wipeout Pure, which includes a browser, allowing the user to download new game levels and features. Since the game has a browser built-in, it can be reasonable to assume that Sony have actually put all the code to access the Internet in the PSP itself (and made it available to developers).
Some clever users then looked at what the browser was doing (by monitoring the data packets that the PSP was sending across the Internet via their network) and it all looked pretty normal, i.e. it was just a standard browser. In order to access real sites they had to locally pretend to be the Sony servers that the PSP was accessing. This was accomplished by “spoofing” DNS (DNS is the system that maps names to numbers on the Internet, people like using names, but the Internet actually works by numbers i.e. it’s hard to remember something like 127.0.0.1 but easy to remember “localhost” as a name). The spoofing meant that the PSP would no longer go to the games servers to look for content, but rather a local server which could be configured with any content that was so desired, including a text box that allows you to enter another site name.
Rather than everyone set-up spoof servers, some nice people have done it for you, and these then point to a PSP portal which someone has set-up PSP friendly content. You can access the spoof DNS servers by amending your Internet set-up configuration (on the PSP) and leave everything to automatic except for the DNS settings, into which you enter the spoof server settings.
To complement the PSP portal, a PSP irc client has been written. This is actually a script run on a Webserver, but the output fits on the PSP real estate (screen).
There’s probably going to be a lot of copies of Wipeout Pure sold, purely for its browser capabilities.
Once updated versions of the firmware come out, or there are 3rd party applications, the system will have all the features to be a powerful media hub. It supports WiFi, has a decent screen and video capability now, adding other Internet capabilities will just add the finishing touches to a superb product.
9 May, 2005