Just after news that Macs are not the loners they once were in the enterprise market, a few prominent software companies (Parallels being the most well-known) have created the Enterprise Desktop Alliance to promote our favorite platform to organizations everywhere.
So how is the EDA planning to showcase the Mac's advantages and facilitate their integration into IT departments? For one, the various founding companies offer software that supposedly helps enterprises "achieve the same level of control, security, policy compliance, and services that they currently have with their Windows platforms". Also, the alliance plans to educate companies through webcasts and seminars.
All in all, this seems like an honest effort to push Mac acceptance in large corporations, which can only be good, especially for Apple-loving employees.
Open System Preferences. Click on Software Update.
Hit the Check Now button.
If you followed those Missing Manual-worthy instructions, you no doubt see that, among the other updates you have callously forgotten about over the months, is a new listing for Mac OS X Update 10.5.4, which Apple released today to hold us over until Snow Leopard viciously meows its way onto our Macs.
You'll want to download it, too, because 10.5.4 is loaded: It includes a slew of fixes for minor issues with AirPort (two fixes), iCal (seven fixes!), Safari (two fixes), Spaces (two fixes), and Exposé (one fix). There are also a few non-specific updates, like improvements to L2TP VPN reliability, an X11 installer fix, more RAW image support for several cameras, and more.
Among the gems is a new checkbox in iCal that "enables information-only calendars to be transparent from free/busy lookups," and a Spaces tweak that "addresses an issue in which switching from a space with a Finder window keeps the Finder as the active application instead of the application residing in the destination space."
The 10.5.4 upgrade also includes a new security update, which is available as a separate download for users of OS X 10.4.11, and 10.5 users who aren't upgrading to 10.5.4. (Doesn't look like it addresses these issues, though.)
You can view the full deets of the update at the 10.5.4 Knowledge Base article, as well as at this easily-digestible Mothership piece. Download it from Software Update using the instructions above, or as a standalone installer from Apple's site...once they post it. (We'll update this post with the link when it's available.)
You probably didn’t even know that your Mac could carry a tune (well, outside of your music playing app of choice). I mean, it’s not about to win American Idol or anything, but it’s got a few musical tricks up its sleeve that you can coax out of it with some well-placed terminal commands (you can accomplish these tricks using the Speech preference pane as well, but it’s actually little easier to just cut and paste).
The UsingMac blog gives an example of a few songs you can have your Mac sing, with the help of some extra Text-to-Speech voices that you might not know about (they’re accessible under Speech if you go to the drop down menu and select “Show More Voices”). They’re not like the hyper-real Alex voice that Apple spent so much time perfecting, so these probably aren’t the voices you want reading you your morning news feed—unless you’re a very special brand of odd—but they might be worth a moment or two of amusement in your otherwise dull and boring day.
Now if only my computer could vary its repertoire a little bit. Would it be too much to ask for the occasional track by The Who, or The Four Person British Band From Liverpool That Shall Not Be Named?
[via Lifehacker]
The march towards DRM freedom continues apace. Joining the ranks of Amazon, Napster, and parts of iTunes is Rhapsody (home to the country’s largest subscription-based service). The joint venture between Real Networks and MTV has finally launched their MP3-based store (first mentioned about a year ago, though they appear to have ditched the bleedingly awful “Rhapsody America” moniker in favor of the marginally less ridiculous “Music Without Limits”) with over 5 million tracks from all four major labels. Strangely enough, my first two searches for songs—AC/DC’s “Back in Black” and The Fratellis’ “Flathead”—yielded only bluegrass covers of the songs; perhaps it should be called “Music With Some Limits, But Not That Many, Really”.
Rhapsody’s plan to take on the iTunes Store comes in a number of prongs: they’ve partnered with Yahoo! Music, the iLike Facebook application, and Verizon Wireless. And, of course, adopting MP3 means that they can finally sell tracks that work with the bajillion iPods already out there. Not unlike Amazon’s store, Rhapsody is even including a Windows downloader application that’ll automatically add your download tracks to iTunes—Mac users can apparently download their songs as ZIP files (thanks, guys).
How does this play with Rhapsody’s current subscription plans? In exchange for continuing to fork over their monthly fee, members get some nicer benefits—they can listen to an entire song before buying, for example. Non-members can, as usual, listen to a 30-second preview, though they also get 25 free full song plays every month. Most songs will go for $0.99 and albums for $9.99—Rhapsody also claims they’re “bringing back the album”—was the album really gone?—and songs are encoded as 256 kbps.
Rhapsody’s deal with Verizon allows subscribers of the mobile service to purchase and download music over the air to their handset—for a slightly pricey $1.99, admittedly—but they get not only the copy on the their phone, but a DRM-free version is downloaded to their computer as well.
Despite all of this, Apple’s not exactly quaking in their boots. Even with the rise of DRM-free music, iTunes still maintains an uncontested stranglehold on the market, due primarily to the ease of use, superior interface, and seamless integration between software and hardware. It’s going to take more than just a change to DRM-free music to get these other services to make up the market share they’ve lost in the last five years.
[via Macworld]
Dungeon crawlers, rejoice! Over the weekend, Blizzard announced plans to bring the latest game in its Diablo series, Diablo III to Mac and PC simultaneously—they’re just nice that way. So if you’ve been looking to dish out some damage to demons and fiends of the underworld, your time is nigh.
The long-awaited sequel to the much-ballyhooed Diablo II, chapter three picks up twenty years after the events of its predecessor. You can play through the action role-playing game as one of five distinct classes, only two of which have been revealed at present (barbarian, witch doctor) in your quest to defeat the nefarious hordes.
Pricing, availability, and system requirements have not yet been revealed. Me, I’ve never been a huge Diablo fan—I deal with plenty of demons, dungeons, and nefarious hordes every single day. Nothing new there for me.
If the results of Yankee Group's survey a few days ago was any indication, Macs are slowly, but surely, making their way into big business. So, as a way to hep make this transition move faster and smoother, a group of Mac-focused companies have formed together to make the Enterprise Desktop Alliance (EDA), with the purpose of The group, whose founding members include Atempo, Centrify, Group Logic, LANrev, and Parallels, plan on hosting a series of events, webcasts, and seminars, in addition to providing various paper resources, on how to incorporate Macs into a Windows-run IT system.
While this may seem like a very difficult task to undertake, it can't be denied that Macs are becoming more appealing in Enterprise. So, with any luck, you may begin to find that corporations around the world will begin to run on Xserve's Macs, and even iPhones.
One of the many casualties in the Office 2004 to Office 2008 transition was Solver in Excel. It was dumped from Excel because it depended upon VBA. Another great result from Microsoft’s decision to get rid of VBA.
Solver is used for data analysis and business modeling. While most home users don’t use it, it’s a very powerful tool and many businesses cried out for it’s return.
Microsoft has promised its return:
However, we have been hearing loud and clear from our customers – particularly in education – that the side-by-side solution is suboptimal. For many people, Solver is a critical and necessary tool for coursework, and they want to work with Solver natively in the Excel 2008 environment.
We definitely hear you, and we're working on it.
The Excel team is actively working to bring Solver to Excel 2008 as part of a future update. We have two distinct technical approaches and are exploring both. Once we have established which is the best option – and have code that meets our quality bar – we will announce a timeframe for availability here on Mojo.
Good, but it should have been included from the beginning.
[via Mac Observer]
The fingers of your correspondents will thank you: your .Mac email address is now--optionally--one character shorter.
MacRumors reports--and I can confirm--that (most) users with @mac.com addresses can now receive email from their new @me.com equivalents. Basically: send an email to yourawesomename@me.com, and it shows up in your yourawesomename@mac.com inbox.
This is just the kick-start step in the transition from .Mac to MobileMe. Your @mac.com addresses will still work once MobileMe takes over--sort of like an alias--but now that the @me.com names are up and running, it wouldn't be a bad time to start transitioning yourself.
You know, if you choose to.
I guess it depends on what you like more: your computer...or yourself?
Do you have a computer fetish...or a narcissistic personality?
Are you a nerd...or a diva?
Are you a fanboy...or an attention whore?
Are you a bragger...or...uh...
Well. You're a bragger either way.
