[03/01/2000]
Internet sales tax?
Shugashack notes that Mr. Clinton and the politics seem to be discussing the eventual introduction of a sales tax on items sold over the Web. If that happens, the Internet will become more expensive for customers in the US and maybe also for foreign customers, at least it's gonna be a big mess again. Live bureaucracy!

[03/01/2000]
Intel's tactics
the register reports that after the recent huge price drops on the Athlon chips, Intel now wants to face the competitor with their Celeron chips. The Celerons might mainly be failed CuMines, tweaked to run at Celeron Specs. While the prices may be adequate, the speed of those chips isn't anywhere near an Athlon. HOw about lowering the prices on the true high-end chips instead?

[03/01/2000]
iSub
iMac2Day notes that the iSub USB Subwoover for iMacs can now be ordered at the Apple Store. I hear those thingies rock, so go get one:)

[03/01/2000]
New high
MacCentral notes that Apple's stock has had a new all-time high yesterday, maxing out at 128.38$. If you consider that 2 years ago, the same shares were 13$ the piece and the dollar was much weaker then, you could have made over a 1000% of profits! And I didn't buy any back then, why only is bank business so complicated.

[03/01/2000]
Cebit influences
MacWEEK notes that although Apple is absent at CeBit, the colors of the iMacs can be seen everywhere. Talk about industry-wide influence!

[03/01/2000]
Interesting!!!
MOSR has some new rumors on IBM, PowerBook G4 and the iMac.
IBM has demonstrated a few prototype RS/6000 machines (which might soon need a new OS, supporting Altivec...hint,hint), running with 650MHz G4 (7400) and 800MHz G3 (750, Lonestar I guess) internally. According to the speaker of the show, those chips can't be shipped because Motorola is holding IBM back, most certainly only because of greed. Man, 650MHz G4s already!!!, 800MHZ G3, wooooww!!
For the PowerBook G4, they say it won't ship anytime soon, but will most likely skip the G4 chip in favor of the G4e (V'Ger), which will be about 1.5-2 times faster than a current G4 at the same clock speed (because it has twice the entire and altivec units + on chip cache). These will also consume about half the power of current G4s and run at around 700-850MHz for the beginning. The PowerBook should feature the already seen translucent case.
And last but not least the iMac is ecpected to get a speed bump in a few weeks. Most certainly 50MHz more for every line and 6x DVD or similar.

[03/01/2000]
Mac OS X-ML
Slashdot has a few details on Mac OS X's architecture and some extensive use of XML in the GUI. Might allow for easy scripting.

[03/01/2000]
More patents
Mac3D lists 5 new patents that have been grasped by Apple recently. Mostly OSX, QT and FireWire things.