Apple(R) today announced that this year is the lst year the company will exhibit at Macworld Expo. Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, will deliver the opening keynote for this year’s Macworld Conference & Expo, and it will be Apple’s last keynote at the show. The keynote address will be held at Moscone West on Tuesday, January 6, 2009 at 9:00 a.m. Macworld will be held at San Francisco’s Moscone Center January 5-9, 2009.

Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com websiteenable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.
Apple has been steadily scaling back on trade shows in recent years, including NAB, Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo and Apple Expo in Paris.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

Evernote, a free application that allows users to capture information in any environment making it accessible at any time, has been updated to version 1.1.5. The software is still in beta, but now adds AppleScript support, as well as support for exporting and importing notes to and from XML.

Evernote lets you capture stuff like webpages, whiteboards, scribbles, to-dos, even photos and music. As soon as you add a file to your account, you can assign it a name, or a tag, or more names and tags, and you'll be able to find it later on without any trouble, even if you can only remember a few characters. It brings up everything you might have once stored for safe keeping using tags and even text recognition. All you have to do is just search for an inside Evernote just like you remember it. The text recognition technology allows you to search for text within images, even handwritten text. If there's but one thing you can remember about a certain item, you'll most likely get to it as Evernote is an expert at narrowing down a search. Best of all, the service is available for all your devices, Mac, PC and mobile phone, as long as you can connect to the Internet with them.

Evernote 1.1.5 Beta brings the following new enhancements:- Support for exporting and importing notes to and from a well-defined XML format.
- AppleScript support.
- Fix a bug where note parsing errors could overwrite note content with the error message.
- When plain-text is pasted into a note it is no longer surrounded with a tag.
- List, Mixed and Thumbnail view should all remember their layouts between application launches now.
- Fix a bug where creating a tag with just a double-quote (") for the name would cause a crash.
- Some spiffy new toolbar and sidebar icons.

A native iPhone client for Evernote has also been released via the iTunes App Store. Evernote for iPhone is location-aware, it lets you send e-mails from within the app, it securely decrypts notes and it provides to-dos and clickable URLs and e-mail addresses. Evernote for iPhone is currently at version 1.3 and can be acquired here.

To upgrade your desktop client, use the link below.

Evernote 1.1.5 Beta for Mac (Free Download).

Plextor launched the latest update to its external DVD Rewriter family ? the high end Plextor PX-830UF.

This 20x drive comes with both USB2.0 and FireWire connectivity and thus, it is compatible with both Mac and PC systems.

Built upon the external PX-810UF 18x DVD ReWriter, the PX-830UF offers plug&play connectivity and is capable of reaching the following DVD/CD speeds:

- DVD±R 20x
- DVD±R DL 12x
- DVD+RW 8x
- DVD-RW 6x
- DVD-RAM 12x
- DVD-ROM 16x
- CD-R 40x
- CD-RW 32x
- CD-ROM 40x

The drive is fully compatible with Microsoft Vista and the latest Mac OS.In addition, the drive comes with a software package suitable for all users - Nero 7 Essentials (including Nero Express 7).It will be available from end of October 2008 at Plextor?s network of dealers. It is covered by Plextor?s Fast Warranty Service (2-year warranty in the EU, Norway and Switzerland (Collect & Return); other countries 1-year carry-in).

Apple today officially unveiled an all new MacBook family that feature all-metal enclosures and pro-performance with prices starting from $700.

The new MacBook and 15-inch MacBook Pro both have a precision unibody enclosure crafted from a single block of aluminum, resulting in thinner and more durable designs. In addition, every member of the new MacBook family includes NVIDIA graphics, instant-on LED-backlit displays and new large glass Multi-Touch trackpads that offer almost 40 percent more tracking area and support more Multi-Touch gestures.

"Apple has invented a whole new way of building notebooks from a single block of aluminum. And, just as important, they are the industry?s greenest notebooks," said Steve Jobs, Apple?s CEO. "The new MacBooks offer incredible features our users will love ?like their stunning all-metal design, great 3D graphics and LED backlit displays?at prices up to $700 less than before."

The new MacBook line features the new NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, a new 3D integrated graphics processor that features 16 parallel processing cores and delivers up to five times the 3D graphics performance as previous MacBook and MacBook Air designs.The new smooth glass Multi-Touch trackpad on the MacBook and 15-inch MacBook Pro gives users almost 40 percent more tracking area than before, making it even easier to use Multi-Touch gestures like pinch, rotate and swipe. New gestures allow users to activate Expos? or switch between applications at the touch of a fingertip. The entire trackpad surface is also a button, allowing users to both track and click virtually anywhere on the trackpad. Users can easily enable multiple virtual buttons in software, such as right-clicking.

Every member of the new MacBook family features an LED-backlit display for instant-on performance that uses up to 30 percent less energy than its predecessor and eliminates the mercury found in industry standard fluorescent tube backlights. Every display in the new MacBook line uses completely arsenic-free glass.

The new MacBook delivers the top three features that MacBook customers have told us they want in a new MacBook?an all metal enclosure, high performance 3D graphics and LED-backlit displays?at an entry price that is $700 less than the $1,999 price of the MacBook Pro. At only 0.95-inches thin and weighing just 4.5 pounds, the new 13-inch full featured aluminum MacBook is a compact and durable notebook starting at just $1,299. Featuring the new NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor, MacBook delivers outstanding 3D game play on a consumer notebook, with up to five times faster graphics performance than the previous generation. The new MacBook is available in two models: the 2.0 GHz MacBook with a 160GB 5400 rpm hard drive, and the 2.4 GHz MacBook with a 250GB 5400 rpm hard drive and a backlit keyboard.

The new 15-inch MacBook Pro at only 0.95-inches thin and weighing just 5.5 pounds. Starting at $1,999, the MacBook Pro uses the latest Intel Core 2 Duo processors available, running up to 2.8 GHz, and a new graphics architecture that allows users to switch between the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics processor for better battery life and the powerful NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT discrete graphics processor for higher performance. The new MacBook Pro is available in two models: a 2.4 GHz model with a 250GB 5400 rpm hard drive and a 2.53 GHz model with a 320GB 5400 rpm hard drive.

Today Apple also updated MacBook Air and the 17-inch MacBook Pro. MacBook Air, measuring only 0.16-inches at its thinnest point, 0.76-inches at its maximum height and weighing just three pounds, now includes new NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics and a faster architecture. Starting at $1,799, MacBook Air is available with a 120GB 4200 rpm hard drive, a 50 percent increase from the previous generation, or a new 128GB solid state drive. The updated 17-inch MacBook Pro keeps its original aluminum design, and now comes standard with a high resolution 1920 x 1200 LED-backlit display and a larger 320GB hard drive or an optional 128GB solid state drive.

The new MacBook, 15-inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air include a next generation Mini DisplayPort to connect with the new Apple LED Cinema Display featuring a 24-inch LED-backlit widescreen display with a built-in iSight video camera, mic and speakers in a thin aluminum and glass enclosure. Part of the next-generation DisplayPort industry standard, the new Mini DisplayPort delivers a pure digital signal that can drive up to a 30-inch widescreen display. The Mini DisplayPort is ultra-compact at just 10 percent the size of a full DVI connector, perfect for the sleek design of the new MacBook family. Adapters are available for using the MacBook?s Mini DisplayPort with older generation VGA, DVI/HDMI and Dual-Link DVI displays.

The new MacBook, 15-inch MacBook Pro and 17-inch MacBook Pro are now shipping and the new MacBook Air will be available in early November through the Apple Store (www.apple.com), Apple?s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers. An updated 13-inch white MacBook featuring 2.1 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processors, a 120GB 5400 rpm hard drive and a slot-load 8X SuperDrive is now available for $999 (US).

For more information visit Apple

The third major installment of OpenOffice.org's suite of applications has reached its final version. Probably one of the most important aspects surrounding OpenOffice 3 for Mac is that it now runs natively under Mac OS X, meaning no more X11, meaning faster performance, a standard UI and an increased overall reliability.

Being the major update that it is, OpenOffice 3 does many extra tricks, like reading documents saved with Microsoft Office 2007 or 2008 in .docx, .xlsx, .pptx and other new formats. This feature alone is enough to bite some of Microsoft Office's market-share, and upset some high-ups over in Silicon Valley. The suite can read and write documents in standardized OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.2 as well.

The Start Centre has received a major overhaul, adding new icons and a new zoom control in the status bar. Chart boosts looks while Draw and Impress come with improved crop features. Writer adds a new notes feature and a built-in math solver component, and is also able to display multiple pages during editing. Workbooks now support up to 1024 columns in each spreadsheet. New sharing options have also been added, enabling multiple users to collaborate on a single workbook simultaneously.As for the Mac version of OpenOffice 3.0, for once, it brings some support for Visual Basic for Applications, which enables users to program macros customize their commands to great extent. Best of all though, the suite adds native OS X support for the first time. This means users no longer have to fire up that pesky graphical environment for UNIX applications known as X11. Thinking of Gimp's wasted potential on Macs, X11 commits a sin by simply existing. So, what does all this mean?

Well, for starters, you now have an office suite of apps that behaves natively, crashes less (or almost never); it blends in with the Aqua interface which makes it look and feel like any OS X app; it integrates with OS X's Accessibility API and is more accessible, fast and reliable.

OpenOffice 3.0 was uploaded to the organization’s servers at 10am (BST) on Monday, sources say. "The servers seem to have collapsed under the load," said OpenOffice.org's marketing lead, John McCreesh. McCreesh pointed out that the "vast majority" of downloads of the suite take place through local mirrors, but said "the fact that our central site can't even run the bouncer [to divert requests to those local mirrors] must mean it's… our biggest-ever download".

You may download OpenOffice 3.0 Final here.

It was only a matter of time before new alleged spy shots of a next-gen MacBook Pro emerged. This time around, new specs are being dished out as well, such as a black casing, and a more square-ish appearance, two aspects not at all consistent with MBP expectations.
Reportedly, Techno Minds is the source of these images. Submitted to modmyi to be made public, the shots allegedly come from an Apple staffer, close to the company's design team.
“We just received an email from a tipster Techno Minds who grabbed some pictures/images of the new Macbook Pro from a claimed Apple Employee working on Apple's design team,” writes cash7c3. “According to the source the above picture is the new Macbook Pro grabbed with a camera phone. Some interesting details about the Pro were also included,” the post reads.Those tidbits include a new magnetic opening/closing system, a glossy top “shell” (similar to the iPhone's), an aluminum bottom, keyboard that is similar to the MacBook Air keyboard, while the iSight built-in camera is hidden in the glossy frame. Another important piece of information the modmyi poster reveals is that the “Touchpad Dock” rumor is false. “If this picture is real the 'TouchPad Dock' rumor is killed, although the touchpad in the picture does look like it may be made with a different material than the past,” the poster explains.Also worth noting is that MBP does not sport curved edges, a feature widely believed to be implemented in the new designs – an aspect borrowed from Apple's ultra thin laptop, the MacBook Air.
But then there's always the possibility that these images are fake, which is why Engadget finds the promo mockup (image #2) “amazingly [...] less plausible,” suggesting that “rendering and photoshop artifacts [are being] unobscured by cameraphone fuzziness.”
And, while the publishers of these shots urge readers to “remember the source is on Apple's design team,” we sincerely hope this is not just another complete forgery, since we too noticed the missing power button on these babies. Source : softpedia.com

Expanding its portable storage offerings, Western Digital has introduced its new Mac-formatted My Passport Studio portable drives. The newest members of the My Passport family are designed for Mac users on-the-go and are equipped with both FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 interfaces, a capacity gauge, and include a soft drawstring carrying bag for protection from scratches and dirt. The My Passportstudio portable drives are offered in capacities of 320 GB and 250 GB.
Weighing in at less than 5 ounces, the My Passport Studio portable drives make it easy to carry office files, thousands of songs, videos or photos and back up a Macintosh laptop using Apple Time Machine backup software utility. With a silver metallic finish, these portable drives feature a shock-resistant enclosure to provide protection. Some unique features of the new My Passport Studio portable drives include formatted HFS+ Journaled for Mac compatibility, FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 interfaces and a capacity gauge that enables users to know at-a-glance how much space is available. These new drives also work with Apple Time Machine backup feature included in Apple's Leopard operating system.

"We designed the My Passport Studio portable drives to work seamlessly with Apple's Time Machine, making this drive an ideal storage solution for creative pros on-the-go who require high performance storage to back up and carry their massive amounts of digital content," said Sharad Srivastava, Director Sales (India and South Asia), Western Digital branded products and consumer electronics groups.

WD's My Passport Studio portable drives will be available with select distributors in India. MSRP for the My Passport Studio portable drives are up to Rs. 10,500 (depending on capacity).

It's nothing new that exciting new gizmos travel from the western world to India only on turtle back (where the turtle walks all the way here). That's been confirmed yet again!

Logitech has announced its first Mac-compatible Web cam featuring a 2 mega pixels sensor, premium auto-focus technology, and Carl Zeiss optics. However, the company doesn't know when the product will hit Indian shores.Logitech's QuickCam Vision Pro for the Mac claims to deliver image-perfect detail and clarity, and exceptional video calling with iChat and Skype. It is assisted by Logitech's RightLight Technology, which, the company says, enables the Web cam to intelligently adjust to dim or harshly-lit situations. When using this Web cam with iChat or Skype, it promises VGA-quality video at up to 30 frames per second. Moreover, Logitech claims that the video quality is four times as sharp, and twice as smooth as any other video-calling solution. The Web cam can also be used to record video clips in 720p high-definition (HD) video format (960-by-720 pixels).

The Web cam is a plug-and-play device, and it comes in a black-and-silver profile with a prominent built-in silver microphone. The QuickCam Vision Pro Web camfor Mac is expected to be available in the US and Europe beginning July. It will retail for approximately $130.

SecureMac is reporting that it has discovered multiple variants of a new Trojan horse in the wild that affects Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5.

The Trojan horse is currently being distributed from a hacker website, where discussion has taken place on distributing the Trojan horse through iChat and Limewire.

The Trojan horse runs hidden on the system, and allows complete remote access to the system. It can also transmitsystem and user passwords, and can avoid detection by opening ports in the firewall and turning off system logging.

The Trojan horse, named AppleScript.THT, can log keystrokes, take pictures with the built-in Apple iSight camera, take screenshots, and turn on file sharing. The Trojan horse exploits a recently discovered vulnerability with the Apple Remote Desktop Agent, which allows it to run as root.

Apple has released an update for its Mac OS X Leopard operating system here . The update is called Mac OS X 10.5.3, and includes general operating system improvements that enhance stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac. The patch is claimed to fix 70 issues related to the OS that affect applications including AirPort, Automator, iCal, iChat, Mail, Parental Control, Spaces, Time Machine, and Voice Over.

The patch fixes the following issues:AirPort
Improves 802.1X behavior and reliability.
Improves reliability when using Time Capsule.

Automator
Resolves an issue in which "New iCal Event" may not work.
Resolves an issue that prevents work-flows from being saved in the Finder's contextual menu.
Fixes an issue in which "Copy Files" does not reliably work when added from Automator's warning dialog.

iCal
Addresses reliability issues with meeting alarms, invitations, and attachments.
Resolves issues with reliability when restoring from iCal back-ups.
Fixes accuracy issues with auto-completion, availability of data and location names.

iChat
Addresses reliability issues with screen-sharing.
Resolves an issue in which saved chat transcripts may be reported as "still in use" after opening and closing them in iChat.
Resolves an issue with group chats not being indexed in Spotlight.

Mail
Resolves an issue in which Mail may prevent idle sleep when set to automatically check for new messages every minute.
Fixes an issue that could occur if two compose windows are open when dragging a file to the Mail icon in the Dock.
Fixes issues with certain Web pages appearing garbled when emailed from Safari.
Fixes an issue in which Sent, Drafts, and Outbox mailboxes incorrectly list the "cc" recipients in the "To" column.

Parental Controls
Addresses performance issues with Web content filters.
Fixes an issue with managed accounts in which iChat transcripts may not be created.

Spaces
Resolves an issue in which switching to a different space and returning back to the original space may reorder the application windows with a different active window.
Resolves an issue in which activating an application from the Dock switches to a different space, even if there is a window for that application in the current space.
Fixes an issue in which the Command Tab may incorrectly switch to a new space.
Addresses reliability issues with Spaces when syncing preferences over .Mac.

Time Machine
Addresses reliability issues when performing a full restore from a Time Machine backup.
Fixes an issue in which certain function keys may be disabled after using Time Machine.
Fixes a possible alert message that incorrectly states a back-up volume does not have enough space.

VoiceOver
Includes Braille Update 1.0, which enables GW Micro, HandyTech, HIMS, Nippon, and Papenmeier Refreshable Braille displays.
Addresses an issue with Braille dot 7 and 8 underlining.
Fixes an issue in which HTML page anchors may be ignored by the VoiceOver cursor.
Fixes an issue that prevents Hot Spots from being used in text areas.
Resolves an issue with spell checking in which VoiceOver may only announce the first misspelled word if there are multiple words spelled incorrectly.

Three new Gigabit networking solutions are now available from Sonnet. Users of older Macs still running Mac OS X 10.5.2 will be very pleased to hear that the adapters start at $80 and can offer improved data transfer speeds, even when connecting to multiple servers and/or networks, and
reduced overhead when transferring large files.

Sonnet's Presto Gigabit Pro PCI card ($100)

- improves file transfers dramatically;
- offers data transfers of up to 1000 Mbps;
- supports 9000 byte jumbo packet transfers (compared to 1500 byte standard packets) to support higher performance and reduced overhead loads when transferring large files;
- supports link aggregation with onboard Gigabit Ethernet ports and full duplex communication to achieve 2000, 3000, or higher Mbps transfer rates - the ideal solution for high-bandwidth video, audio, and storage requirements.It is compatible with Power Macintosh G3, Blue & White (Desktop, Minitower, Server), Power Mac G4 (except Cube) and Power Mac G5 with PCI or PCI-X slots, Xserve G4 and requires Mac OS X 10.4 or later.
Sonnet Presto Gigabit PCIe Pro Gigabit Ethernet adapter card for PCI Express ($100)

This here is a more advanced networking solution that supports link aggregation with your computer’s onboard Gigabit Ethernet ports and full duplex communication to achieve 2000 Mbps transfer rates.

It supports gigabit speeds over common CAT-5 cabling, according to Sonnet and, if you're already using an onboard Gigabit Ethernet, you can add a Presto Gigabit PCIe Pro for dedicated connection to a printer, AirPort Extreme base station, DSL or cable modem, or a video server. This way you will make sure that one port will always be available on your onboard Gigabit Ethernet controller.

It works with any Mac Pro, Power Mac G5s with PCI Express slots and Xserve (with PCI Express slots). It requires Mac OS X 10.5.2 or later.
Presto Gigabit Ethernet Pro ExpressCard/34 ($80)

- significantly improves data transfer speeds, especially when connecting to multiple servers and/or networks;
- compatible in MacBook Pro and Windows notebook computers with an ExpressCard/54 or ExpressCard/34 slot.

This particular Sonnet card supports link aggregation with your computer’s onboard Gigabit Ethernet port and full duplex communication to achieve 2000 Mbps transfer rates, but also supports 9000 byte jumbo packet transfers (compared to 1500 byte standard packets) to support higher performance and reduced overhead when transferring large files.

It Goes with any MacBook Pro running Mac OS X 10.5.2 or later.

All three networking products are immediately available for purchase.

One of the things that Apple has always prided itself over and promoted in no uncertain terms, has been the so-called 'robust security' offered by its OSX operating system. However this supposition of Apple's took a huge beating on Thursday when a team of researchers from Independent Security Evaluators (ISE) managed to hack a MacBook Air in just two minutes using a previously unknown security vulnerability in Apple’s own safari browser.
The people who did the 'hack' were ISE security researchers - Charlie Miller, Jake Honoroff, and Mark Daniel – who were participating in the "PWN to OWN" competition at the CanSecWest security conference, in Vancouver, British Columbia.In this competition there were 3 laptops, with different OS’s offered for being hacked into. These included an Apple Macbook Air running OS X 10.5.2, a Sony Vaio VGN-TZ37CN running Ubuntu 7.10 and a Fujitsu U810 running Vista Ultimate SP1. Anyone who could successfully hack or exploit these machines would win a $10,000 price from famous security company Tipping Point.

The first to go was of course the Macbook, followed by Windows Vista. Ubuntu stood strong despite repeated attempts.

For further details on this hack, check out this post here on Tipping Point.

Back when Leopard was released, we gave you our in-depth, but first-look, impressions. Now that we’ve been using Mac OS X 10.5, day-in and day-out, for over four months, we’ve got a better handle on what we really like and don’t like about the latest and greatest computer cat. Over the course of the week, several Macworld editors will be sharing their personal "long-term" views on Leopard. Here’s a run-down of my take:
The Good

Of all Leopard’s new (and improved) features, perhaps my favorite is Screen Sharing, both in the Finder and in iChat. I’ve used it for everything from providing family members with remote tech support to collaborating with my Macworld colleagues. I even use it—regularly, in fact—to work on my desktop Mac from my laptop.

QuickLook has also been a welcome improvement that's enhanced my productivity by letting me quickly preview items in the Finder. It means no more launching a seldom-used program just to take a peek at a file, and thanks to third-party plugins, I've given Quick Look the capability to work with many more types of files. The only problem is that I used the pre-Quick Look Finder for so long, I often forget Quick Look is there.

Time Machine is another of my favorite new features, although not for general backup purposes—for that I still use SuperDuper. What makes Time Machine so valuable to me is how easy it is to go back and grab a previous version of a file or folder, whether that version is from yesterday, last week, or several months ago.Like many people frustrated with Spotlight under Tiger, I’ve been enjoying Spotlight That Finally Works. In fact, Leopard's Spotlight is even usable as an application launcher; it’s so improved in this respect that I’ve been using it in lieu of LaunchBar, one of my “must-have” utilities, on one of my Macs. (Don’t get me wrong; I still use LaunchBar on my two main Macs. It’s just that for the first time, I’ve been able to use a LaunchBar-less Mac without feeling hamstrung.)

I also really like the new-and-improved folder-level file sharing, and although I thought I’d dislike the tiny text and inefficient use of space in the new Finder sidebar, the benefits of the new Shared area have won me over. Finally, my favorite “minor” feature is the new Path Bar in Finder windows, which lets me see, at a glance, exactly where I am in my Mac’s filesystem.
The Bad

One of the Leopard features I looked forward to the most has turned out to be Leopard’s biggest disappointment. Back To My Mac promised to let you easily access your Mac—via Screen Sharing or File Sharing—from another Mac, regardless of whether you were across the house or halfway around the world. And it occasionally does that. But more often than not, Back To My Mac has made me want to smack my Mac, which can’t be found no matter how I tweak my AirPort Extreme’s settings. (To Apple’s credit, I’ve found that Bonjour works better than ever in Leopard, which at least makes it easier to connect over a local network.)

Spaces has also been a bit of a letdown. As the editor who covered this new feature for our First Look and Inside Leopard pieces, I thought Spaces would bring considerable productivity gains to my day-to-day Mac use. But after four months, I find my self using it only occasionally. Not because the concept is bad—I’m a perfect candidate for a good virtual-desktops system—but rather because Spaces has numerous minor glitches that, taken together, make it too frustrating for me.
The Ugly

Prior to the release of Mac OS X 10.5.2, I would have led off any list of Leopard Ugly with Stacks and the original semi-transparent menu bar. But Apple listened to users and largely fixed these interface blights in 10.5.2. Unfortunately, we’re still left with the eye-candy-for-the-sake-of-eye-candy Leopard Dock. Visually, I find it to be a major step backward from Tiger’s version: the 3-D appearance is distracting, the active-application indicator is difficult to see, and the dandified appearance offers no tangible benefits over the simpler Docks of previous versions of Mac OS X. The first thing I do on any new Leopard system is switch to a 2-D Dock.

Finally, I have one other quibble that you could classify as either Bad or Ugly: Leopard is the first version of Mac OS X that has been less stable than the previous one for me—to various degrees depending on the Mac. Up until Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4), each major new version—10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4—has been considerably better than the one before it: fewer application crashes, less-frequent system freezes, and better memory management. But my Mac Pro has had more kernel panics in the past month than it had in a year and half under Tiger, and I experience, on all my Macs, application crashes a bit more regularly under 10.5 than I did under 10.4.
What makes the the former issue especially frustrating is that when I upgraded the Mac Pro to Leopard, I rebuilt it from scratch—the first time I've ever done so with a new OS version. I erased the hard drive, installed Leopard, and then painstakingly installed applications and transferred files and settings over, making sure everything was officially compatible and omitting many of the system tweaks I’d been using under Tiger. So I expected the computer to be more stable than before. Hopefully, Leopard—like previous versions of Mac OS X—will improve in this respect with future updates.

There may be no end to the number of digital photos you can snap, but eventually your photo collection will overtake the oh-so finite amount of hard drive space you currently have. Fortunately, the options for large external storage upgrades are plentiful. One candidate worthy of consideration is the Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus (750GB). Although blemished by uneven performance and software incompatibilities, the drive nonetheless provides an attractive solution for your storage needs. This black ziggurat-shaped drive is tapered toward the top, with scooped-in aluminum sides that serve as heat sinks for the hard drive mechanism within—the indentations on the sides also make for an easy grip when moving the unit. All connections—two FireWire 400 ports, a mini-USB connector, and the power jack—are positioned at the widest part of the case, at the bottom.

The drive features a programmable push button on the front that can be used to trigger an immediate backup using the included Maxtor Manager software. In practice, we discovered that the version of software that came with the drive was not compatible with Leopard. Maxtor is currently updating the software to rectify the situation, and the new version is in beta now.

The MacBook Air was undoubtedly the highlight of Apple's Macworld conference this morning, but it wasn't the only item on the menu. Indeed, Apple had several other major announcements: a new wireless backup device called Time Capsule, a revamped Apple TV, the addition of movie rentals to the iTunes Store, and updates for both the iPhone and iPod touch.

Let's start with Time Capsule. Due next month, the device is built to complement the Time Machine automated backup and recovery software in Apple's latest Mac OS X 10.5 operating system. On the hardware front, it's basically a Wi-Fi router with a built-in hard drive. Pricing starts at $299 a 500GB model, and users can opt for a $499 version with a 1TB hard drive. The Time Capsule otherwise features 802.11n Wi-Fi support, three Ethernet ports, one WAN port to plug in a cable or DSL modem, and a USB port for a printer. Although it's meant to be a wireless backup companion to Time Machine, Apple says the device also works as a wireless hard drive for PC users. Moving on, Apple has added movie rentals to the iTunes Store. Folks can now rent movies in either standard definition or HD, and like other online rental services, viewers have a 30-day window to begin watching rentals, and 24 hours to finish once they've started. New titles cost $3.99 to rent in standard definition and $4.99 in HD, while older releases are priced at $2.99 in SD and $3.99 in HD. This new service ties in with the revamped Apple TV, which now lets users rent movies (and purchase music) straight from their couch. Apple has also updated the Apple TV's interface, dropped its price to from $299 to $229, and added support for Flickr photo album browsing.

Flashcards are one of those things that haven't been improved upon in recent history. In case you never had the wonderful opportunity to use flashcards during your academic career, they are simply pieces of card stock with a question on the front and an answer on the back that are used to memorize useless information that will never be needed again. It is even more likely that the information will be forgotten immediately following the examination the cards were made for. The technology really hasn't changed in my lifetime; from time to time I would use a flashcard application on a computer, but in the end I carried around a stack in my backpack. Not a great solution, but it worked.
If you are anything like me and enjoy solutions to things that aren't really a problem, then do I have a Mac OS X Hint for you: a process for putting flashcard information on your iPhone. It isn't particularly pretty, but in the end you have some pseudo flashcards to work with instead of a four-inch thick stack of cards that will be useless in a couple of days. While the process includes exporting slides out of Keynote and into iPhoto, the process would likely work exporting to iPhoto from another program as well.
There are a few downfalls to the process: you won't be able to edit cards after making them, you will have a bunch of flashcards in your iPhoto library, you won't be able to pile them into right and wrong piles, and you won't be able to make them into paper footballs when you are done. What you will have is never-ending capacity for flash cards in a device one half of one inch thick. If you have both an iPhone and organic chemistry this upcoming semester, you might want to look into this.

Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: JAVA) on Monday plans to announce several key enhancements to its StarOffice and OpenOffice.org office productivity software suites.

StarOffice 8 and the corresponding open version, OpenOffice.org 2.3, have both been updated with a variety of new features, including the ability to edit for blog servers along with enhanced charting capabilities and tools to reduce the size of presentations, Mark Herring, senior director of Network.com for Sun Microsystems, told LinuxInsider. The new server version of StarOffice, meanwhile, now includes the ability to convert documents in bulk into the Acrobat PDF file format.

"These new capabilities further affirm StarOffice 8 as an alternative to Microsoft Office, offering a full-featured office productivity suite that is affordable, flexible and compatible with Microsoft Office," Sun said. "These updates also enhance OpenOffice.org, the open source project building the world's most widely distributed open source multiplatform and multilingual productivity suite."

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OpenOffice.org is a free, open source platform designed to be interoperable with every major commercial office suite and compatible with the internationally standardized OpenDocument Format. It runs natively on Windows, GNU/Linux, Sun Solaris, Mac OS X and several other platforms, and is backed by the OpenOffice.org Project, an international community of volunteers and sponsors, including Sun.