[05/23/2000]
First of all...
I'd liketo excuse myself for not posting for such a long time. I've been very busy last week for school stuff and yesterday I helped my brother install and update a few things on his new G4 and it got a little later than I thought. So this update is going to be bigger than usual, have fun!

[05/23/2000]
xlr8yourmac
xlr8yourmac has had a lot of news during my off-time:

• IBM will be making copper Alpha chips for Compaq server systems
• IBM is shipping the first CPUs with integrated SOI (Silicon on Insulator) technology, which is expected to raise speeds by 20-30%. Others should profit from this too (MOT).
• ROM upgrades for beige G3s do seem to add master-slave compatibility, at least according to reader reports.
• Apple has various software updates.
• ...and various other bits.

[05/23/2000]
More on SOI
MacWEEK picks up the announcement from IBM about them having SOI ready to go and looks at what it may indeed bring us in the near future. Looks like some new portable machine is going to sport it.
What might be more interesting for some of you is what the thing actually does and what the plans at IBM are. There MacCentral might help. I'm really looking forward to SOIed copper G4e chips:)
Oh and ZDnet also has an article on that, of course. Just a little different from the other two, after all it's all the same anyway.

[05/23/2000]
New mouse?
MOSR notes on a rumor that Apple is working on a revolutionary new mouse without buttons. The new mouse is rumored to be randomly press and squeezable, while different areas will result in a different input, while combinations might exceed possibilities of even 5 button mice by far. But as of now, it's only just one of MOSRs "more reliable rumors".
AppleInsider thinks their new mouse will even be wireless. Duh, not another thing I'm going to lose in my mess here...

[05/23/2000]
The Navy dealing with Apple?
AppleInsider also notes that the US NAvy may be in talks with Apple to equip some of their computer-related "stuff" with Macs, something that has so far been impossible due to some stupid contract within the Navy itself or so. Of course having the Navy as a customer could only be for the good of Apple.

[05/23/2000]
The big issue
One of the most critically accepted announcements at this years WWDC was that Apple said there won't be any more GameSprockets support. Now MacCentral has a rather big article, asking developers what they think about that problem. It's too much to sum it up here, just read it yourself, it's interesting.
IMG has been posting several rants on the topic during the past few days, make sure to read them too.
The way it seems to me now, is that the changes may be good for 50% of the developers and bad for the other 50%. At least id software were very pleased with the performance and ease of development of the soon going to be released Quake 3 Arena for Mac OS X. It's 10 FPS faster than the OS 9 version...

[05/23/2000]
ProFormance 3+
MacObserver has a short review of Formacs latest member in their graphics card family, the ProFormance 3plus. The new card is said to be about 15% faster than the predecessor.