May 1, 2003
The big news is of course the new IPods, and the new Music store.
To use the new music store, you must have the updated ITunes 4, which now includes support for ACC which stands for advanced audio codec. Basically, at 128 bitrate, you get CD quality sound, and at 96 bitrate, it sounds better than a 128 mp3 file!
There are less restrictions on the downloaded songs than some CD's you buy in the store. Certain companies have decided to ruin your mac when you want to play music on them. Songs downloaded from the apple store can be burned onto cd, played on your IPod, and will work on 3 macs. If you try and play the song on a 4th mac, you must deactivate one of the first 3 macs. (of course you can always just make a cd, and play it in your 4th mac) One other restriction is it will only let you burn a certain playlist 10 times, but you can rearrange the playlist and burn it 10 more times. The CD you make is a standard, unristricted 'red book' CD!
The price is great, only $0.99 a song! AND, you can preview 30 seconds of any song they sell, (amazon will only let you preview certain songs) A whole album is $9.99, and that is a great price.
A mac user had little choice in what browser they used just a year ago, but now there are some great choices
Safari is widely talked about, runs great, and is wicked fast. It is a brand new browser and I have found that is rock solid. Features that are worth noting: It blocks Pop-up ads, and tabbed browsing.
Mozilla comes in many many flavors, but I personally prefer just plain mozilla. Most mac users like Camino better. Camino is a leaner meaner browser that takes advantage of the mac aqua interface. Firebird is what mozilla will be in a month or two. Firebird started out as a leaner meaner Mozilla for every platform except the mac (not to compete with Camino) Since Firebird will be the main browser after 1.4, they are working on getting it up to speed on the mac. Download Firebird
The leaner meaner mail client is Thunderbird but mac people will just have to use Mozilla 1.4 for mail until they make a mac version!
Advantages: Fast, blocks pop-ups, has great spam filters, and tabbed browsing.
What is X11? It lets macs run X Windows programs! X windows? that sounds like something microsoft would come up with... Microsoft is putting a X in front of everything and owns a patent on the name "windows", why haven't they sued the pant's off these people???
Well X Windows was developed at MIT a long time ago, and is used by universites and companies to make a great variety of programs.
Download X11 and get it working to get any of these other programs to work
The Open Office, is a full suite of programs that run under X11.
Abiword is just a word processor, but a very good one! More info
Gimp is a free paint program.
Note that X11 is not for the first time user, it's for the slightly advanced user who just wants to try things out, or needs to save a buck or two.