[12/05/2001]
Rumor mill, fire at will
AppleInsider and MOSR are once again flooding with rumors and speculation on MWSF, which is coming closer every day, with every day bringing new facts or non-facts with it.
Apple Insider's Forums on Future Hardware are an especially hot source for the latest chitchat on revised iBooks, new flatscreen iMacs, super-power G5 PowerMacs, and other more or less plausible rumors of what might be announced at MWSF early next January.
Currently the rumors that actually have some "official" support (i.e. which is being written about on websites, which are not forums) circulate around the G5 (MOSR) and a new iMac with TFT display and "Sahara" G3 chip from IBM. Read on for some awe-inspiring ideas.
the register also has some news to back up the rumor of LCD iMacs coming next month. Although it might also be an indication for larger TFTs for iBooks or PowerBooks. Wait and see...

[12/05/2001]
Motorola comments on G5 rumor
Macworld.co.uk has been adding to the already hot debated rumor of G5 PowerMacs possibly coming at MWSF by putting up an article summing up the rumors and asking Paul Clark of Motorola, what they have to say about it... Of course the do neither deny nor confirm anything, after all everybody knows the wrath of Steve Jobs, if something leaks out, that shouldn't.

[12/05/2001]
Console wars
Meanwhile the register reports on dozens of articles related to the competition between the current top 3 gamign consoles on the market: Xbox, GameCube and PlayStation 2. Who wins, which is good for what?
All I can say, is that I've had the opportunity to see a demo CD of some Xbox Games, including Halo, on an Xbox demo box here in Switzerland (some gray import I guess) and all I noticed, was that a: the Xbox couldn't read it's own demo CD first (had to reinsert), b: the demo movies it played actually stuttered whenever it had to load a new scene, c: the TV screen of the demo box is utter crap (very, very poor quality, all the visual brilliance is completely lost), d: Xbox is extremely loud. I guess it was the fan, but it was louder than my beige G3 with 3 extra fans (4 total). Conclusion: I'll gladly wait for teh Mac version of Halo and save 700.- (Swiss Franks, the price it will have here in March)

[12/05/2001]
G4 facts, G5 rumors (once more)
the register reports that Motorola has confirmed the Apollo G4 is progressing well and will ship early next year. MPC 7460 will have the usual amounts of L2 and L3 cache, but will have an internal 256bit bus, unlike the current top-model, the 7451, which only has 128bit. The 7451 btw was also just released a few days ago and sports only minor changes from the 7450, mainly lower power-consumtpion and msot certainly a few "errata" less. It's mobile brother, the 7441 also shipped a few days ago. the register had that story.

[12/05/2001]
VPC 5.0 released
xlr8yourmac reports that Connectix has released Virtual PC 5.0 which is the first version of VPC to support both Mac OS 9 and X, with the extra goodie of multiprocessor support under OS X (yummie). There are other useful changes and additions apart from that, surely making it a good deal.
Mike also reports on people successfully running dual G4 modules in Cubes and some other interesting stuff in the backlogs. Have a look.

[12/05/2001]
Mac OS 10.2 delayed until summer, aparently
the register states that sources close to Mac OS X development told them that Mac OS X 10.2, which is supposed to support 64bit CPU's (the 64bit G5), will be delayed until summer, with only minor updates being released until then. This is one more hint at the fact that Apple may be preparing to release the G5 next year, but not at MWSF, as generally predicted, but at MWNY or even later in the year. Instead launching out with a 64bit version of OS X and the G5 at once.

[12/05/2001]
All about the G5 (great!)
the register has one last, but very interesting article on the G5 rumors: A sum up of all the info that has appeared throughout the scene during the last several weeks. In fact there is so much info on the chip already, I wonder if people aren't mixing things up already. For example, Apollo (a G4 class chip) is already being adressed as "G5" by some, yet hopefully not by Apple itself. Read that article, it really will help you see the whole thing!

[12/05/2001]
Apple news
MacCentral reports that Apple has released Final Cut Pro 3 yesterday with a lot of cool new features and in more or less related news
Slashdot notes that Apple will be using the MPEG-4 standard for its future version of QuickTime. The original article can bet found at CNet.

[12/05/2001]
Tech news
TomsHardware has news from both AMD and IBM, who both "revolutionized" Transistors once again. IBM is prepping the "Double Gate" standard, which is said to doubel performance, while AMD is developping an ultra-fast transistor with ultra small gates (nothing new, just smaller and faster). Toshiba in turn developed something similar to SOI, only that it doesn't pack the Silicon on Insulator, but on Nothing at all.. Don't ask me how that works though. See SiliconStrategies.com for more on that.