In a non-announcement, the Apple Store is now listing a "Cluster Node" configuration for the Xserve product that includes no video card, no second gigabit Ethernet card and no additional drive space, but costs only 2/3 of the price of the entry level 1.33GHz dual-processor configuration. It appears …

According to an article in Wired, the Army has but one Macintosh deployed for the war in the Gulf. It was an uphill battle to get it there, but the Macintosh PowerBook G4 (15.4 inch, most likely) is doing duty handling reconnaissance data.

People who are conversant with UNIX won't be that surprised about this, but there certainly are some strange places to find "Switcher" ads on the 'net. This morning, on Slashdot, I found a pointer to this commentary. Much to my surprise, it's not some magazine press release or some such …

An article in the New York Times is touting the Maine statewide laptop program as a success so far. Maine began the program a year ago with an agreement for Apple to provide thousands of laptops each year so that 7th and 8th graders throughout Maine could have laptops as …

Apple Computer has released the March 2003 security update for MacOS X. As usual, it fixes a number of security issues, including the recently discussed SSL man-in-the-middle and the Sendmail bug discussed by the new Homeland Security department.

In the beginning, Apple created iPod, and it was good. You could play your music on it wherever you went and there was great sound, manageable size, and plenty of space. Then Apple said, "let there be Contacts and Calendars", and so you could access your friends, family, and events …

An article in BusinessWeek is suggesting that Apple should consider Bochs as their next foray into the Open Source software inclusion on the Mac. Bochs is an open source program (served off of SourceForge) that provides X86 emulation for free.

For those of you who haven't heard of PerversionTracker, it is one of the most amusing software review websites ever devised. Named after VersionTracker, a site that keeps you up-to-date on your ever- changing Macintosh and Windows software packages, PerversionTracker reviews software that... well... shall we just say it's not …

Apple Computer yesterday released a software package that allows .Mac users to access their iDisk folders directly from a Windows XP desktop. The software is available as a free download, but requires that users have a .Mac account to use it.

Yet another ridiculous, useful, and decidedly cool piece of software for the Macintosh. Sony Ericsson Clicker allows you to use a Bluetooth phone as a remote input device for a Macintosh with a Bluetooth adapter. Great if you need an impromptu controller for Keynote.

For those who work with PDF files under OS X, there's a cool little feature in version 10.2.4 and later that allows you to do some post-processing on the PDF files after they've been "printed". This article from MacOS X Hints details how to get the menu to …

The folks at MacRumors have created a new Buyer's Guide aimed at giving Mac users (and would-be Mac users) a quick view of which models are getting long in the tooth and which ones are ripe for the picking.

In an article on O'Reilly's Macintosh Development Center web site details a method for getting Python and Objective-C to inter-operate directly.

Sometimes, the gnu readline stuff is useful. To install it: Download the latest readlines source A mod must be made to compensate for a file location change in 10.2 which affects the 4.3 makefile. To fix this, edit support/shobj-conf to change line 151 from SHLIB_LIBS='-lSystem' to …

I've been doing some pretty serious python work as of late and have recently had the need to parse some XML. To my delight, I looked into the /usr/lib/python2.2 directory (included with OSX) and found that the xml directory is in there... cool, I thought, they've included …

For those of us who have the occasional need to add Python pieces to our systems, there is a small problem with the Makefile that comes with OS X 10.2. In particular, there is an unnecessary '-arch i386' in the targets line immediately preceding the '-arch ppc' (which is …

Apple has today published the XML format for the files used by Keynote, their new presentation package. This publication was announced by Steve Jobs at MacWorld in San Francisco four weeks ago and is expected to open the door to automatic updating of presentations by external software.

X11 is now at 0.2.1. (Note: Developer's kit is still at 0.2, as released 2 days ago) Safari is now at 0.6.

In a stunning revelation this week, the February 17th issue of ESPN Magazine contains a picture of the gigantic basketball player Yao on an airplane playing a heretofore unidentified computer game on a computer that is clearly not a Macintosh.[Picture in full article] Although reportedly a player of some …

Check out this picture recently from a Gateway ad.