Crave speed? Crave FireWire? Apple has unveiled 500 MHz Power Mac G4s, 500 MHz FireWire enhanced PowerBooks, and revved-up iBooks. Crave games? An injunction against Connectix’s Virtual Game Station has been lifted – but now Sony’s suing over patents. Crave an alternative to FileMaker? Matt Neuburg examines the re-birth of the visual database environment Helix. We also note the releases of Eudora 4.3.1, GraphicConverter 3.8, and (ahem) Windows 2000.
Eudora 4.3.1 Replaces Version 4.3 -- After an initial abortive release of Eudora 4.3, Qualcomm quickly uploaded version 4.3.1, which fixes a bug caused by a single line of code being inadvertently removed in the final compile
GraphicConverter 3.8 Adds AppleScript, Bug Fixes -- Lemke Software has updated GraphicConverter to version 3.8, adding AppleScript support to the PowerPC version and numerous tweaks to its multipurpose tool for working with image files
Farallon Announces 11 Mbps SkyLINE Card -- Farallon Communications has announced a version of the company's SkyLINE 802.11 wireless networking card that runs at 11 Mbps instead of the previous speed of 2 Mbps
Microsoft Releases Windows 2000 -- Microsoft last week officially released Windows 2000, the successor to the company's enterprise oriented server operating system Windows NT
Poll Results: Ad-ing It Up -- Last week's release of Eudora 4.3 prompted us to ask what TidBITS readers thought about the option of applications displaying advertisements in exchange for enabling commercially available features
Poll Preview: Color Me Pretty -- Apple last week expanded the color palette of its iBook line to include a graphite-themed consumer laptop (see below), re-opening the topic of Apple's often-brash color selections for its computing products
During his keynote at Macworld Expo Tokyo, Apple CEO Steve Jobs rolled out enhanced versions of Apple's laptop and professional desktop products. The latest PowerBook G3 (known as the "PowerBook (FireWire)" in Apple's increasingly inane nomenclature) uses a case similar to the previous PowerBook G3 (Bronze Keyboard) and features speeds up to 500 MHz, up to ten hours of battery life with the dual-battery feature, room for an internal AirPort card, and two new FireWire ports supporting digital video, all for prices between $2,500 and $4,000
After the January 1999 release of Connectix's Virtual Game Station, an emulator that enables a PowerPC G3 or better-based Macintosh to play many games designed for Sony's PlayStation (see "Meet Me at the Virtual Game Station" in TidBITS-471 for a full review), Sony promptly sued to force Connectix to stop selling the product
For many years, FileMaker Pro has been one of my standard tools for storing and retrieving structured information: with FileMaker, it's easy to build yourself an address book or a guide to your music collection, and its thorough scriptability makes it splendid for exchanging data with other applications