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Thursday, February 5, 1998
Reality News Is Updated Every Monday And Thursday
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Allegro Surfaces: A Look At Its Many Features
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News Index Allegro Surfaces: A Look At Its Many Features Allegro Report Part 2 Allegro Images? Dessert, Bill? The New Apple Commercial 2400 Gets Mighty Overseas Power Express - The Aftermath Apple Invests In Multimedia Chipset! PowerBook XXX Update Return To Reality |
MacOS List View Enhancements
MacOS list views are now fully customizable. Users can adjust the size (width) of the columns. This is done by placing the cursor over a column break, a size adjustment cursor will appear, click-hold and dragging the cursor will adjust the column width in real time. Also, users can adjust the order of columns in list views, excluding the "Name" column which must remain the first column. This feature is accessed by click-hold and dragging the column titles to the desired position. While you are adjusting the column position, the column will appear exactly as an icon would if you were dragging it (faded). Under the HiTech Allegro theme, list views appear in a light blue and the active column and icon arrows take on a mild shade of midnight blue. Icon windows under the HiTech theme have a solid light blue background. Being that the appearance control panel is only 2/5s of the way done, we weren't able to tell if the user will be able to set window background colors or patterns in this release. It doesn't seem unlikely.
Find 2.0: V-Twin?
Among other things, Allegro sports a new find application, entitled "Find 2.0". Version 2.0 of the Find application appears to be a cross between the original Find application and the V-Twin enhanced Find which appeared in Copland and the original Harmony (MacOS 7.6). The find application now contains two tabs (Apple is making great use of tabs in Allegro), one for the basic find functions we have been used to, and one for "Find by content". Find 2.0 can also search for visibility, locked files and so on. Unlike the original V-Twin enhanced Find, search results are displayed in a separate window like Find 1.0. However, the interface is totally revamped. Search results appear in a view almost identical to the Finder's list view. A 3-D process bar scrolls across the bottom of the search results window, indicating how long the display process of all the results will take. Each file is displayed with its custom icon and results can be formatted exactly the same as a Finder list view, using columns and the alphabetical listing switch.
Search by content works a little differently. There is an "Index Volume" option, where the find application will index all the content on a selected drive, or every drive. The user can even set schedules for when drives should be auto-reindexed. Search by content allows searching of the desktop only, as well. The new Find application also takes advantage of the MacOS's multithreading capabilities and allows the user to conduct a second fine while an results from an initial find are being displayed. Yes, this also means that Find 2.0 allows you to have numerous search results windows instead of just one like Find 1.0.
Another V-Twin enhanced Find original feature, the "Save Find" option is one of Find 2.0s many features. Save find will save a find to secondary storage, i.e. your HD, in the form of a Find 2.0 file. When the user double clicks on a saved find file, the Find application is launched and the results are displayed. This differs from the original V-Twin Find which actually saved all the find data and their original locations. Find 2.0 saves the search string and researches the drives when called. Also appearing in Find 2.0 is a mysterious "preferences" menu option which has not yet been implemented. We will keep you updated when we learn more about Find 2.0.
Themes
Also, as we predicted, Allegro currently contains 3 themes to go along with the updated appearance control panel. The 3 themes are the Apple Platinum Theme (default), Apple HiTech Theme, and the Gizmo theme, otherwise known as the kids or children's theme. In the release tested by our sources, it was evident that the theme files themselves were far from complete and contained none of their custom icons. The Platinum theme is furthest along because it basically uses the appearance settings built into the appearance manager.
The theme files are are stored within the system folder inside a folder called "Themes" (duh!). When excess themes are made available the user needs only to drop the files into this folder, as the appearance cdev calls on the contents of this folder to recognize its options. Switching themes can be done a number of ways. To switch themes the user may use the new "Themes" CSM (control strip module) or by using the "options" tab in the new appearance control panel. It has yet been tested if double clicking the theme files will produce any effect. In addition to choosing themes, the user will still have the option to select accent colors for a couple of things.
Those of you familiar with the BeOS will be fond of the text anti-aliasing used throughout the system. The MacOS will now have this option via the "Smooth all text on screen" option of the appearance control panel under the "Fonts" tab. Note : this does not smooth Finder icon names, but rather menu text and window title text.
Right now none of the themes have their own utility pattern (it would look really nice if the HiTech theme had a pitch black utility pattern, but then black text would have to be dealt with). The control strip also retains the platinum appearance no matter what theme is active, this looks a little out of place and we hope it can be dealt with. A lot needs to be complete in the realms of MacOS themes, so we'll keep you updated.
We'd also like to add that default platinum appearance now supports the full 3-D effect that was missed with the release of MacOS 8.0. We are referring to the the 3-D process bars and such which were fixed in the Aaron light extension.
Speed
Though our sources claim that they see no noticeable speed improvement during startup, they have made it quite clear that everything else is without a doubt very speedy. Working in the Finder and with Finder windows is said to be comfortably smooth and fast. Copying files and deleting the trash have also improved in the means of speed.
This is just the beginning of our report on Allegro. We have tons of information to compile and we will be updating with reports on Allegro. We will also be forming an Allegro information archive, which will contain all of our reports for your referencing pleasures. Stay tuned till Thursday...
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Miscellaneous System Enhancements
Allegro will ship with a new Apple Help Browser, currently in development version 8. However, are sources received errors while trying to run the new browser. We'll update you when we have word on a working version.
The energy saver control panel seems to have been updated. Its button icons have been changed to resemble smaller versions of the current appearance color and options buttons. The icons on these buttons have also been changed. In addition, Allegro will ship with a new Energy Saver CSM, which according to our source still needed some work.
The memory control panel has once again been updated, both internal and externally. Externally the memory control panel just looks a lot cooler with 3-D icons. Internally virtually memory code has been altered once again for better performance and a possible fix for the virtual memory/multiprocessing conflict may have been implemented.
The New Appearance Control Panel
The build of Allegro tested by our source was development version 8. Apparently, the Appearance cdev is only 2/5s of the way done, so far. The new control panel has 5 tabbed windows entitled "Scenarios","Options","Fonts","Desktop", and "Sound" respectively. Of these 5, only the "Options" and "Fonts" tabs are currently functional.
The "Options" tab contains 3 pop-up Menus and a series of radio buttons. The first menu, entitled "Appearance" contains a running list of the themes currently stored in the system folder. Selecting a theme from this menu will automatically apply it system wide. The second menu entitled "Highlight Color" was un-functional at the time of testing but will contain the text highlight colors, and will most likely have the color box to the left of the color name in the menu selections. The third menu, also un-functional at this time, will contain the accent colors for menus and window controls. Below the three pop-up menus are radio buttons for scroll arrows and the scroll thumb. Users can set double scroll arrows and make the scroll thumb proportional to visible content of a window.
The "Font"s tab now contains all the system wide font preferences. There are 3 Font pop-up menus in this tabbed window and an option to enable system wide anti-aliasing. The first menu entitled "Large System Font" will hold the font preference for menus and headings. The second menu entitled "Small System Font" will contain the font settings for explanatory text and labels. The third menu referred to as "Views Fonts" will hold the font preference for lists and icons. There is also a input field and increment/decrement buttons for the "View Fonts" size. Lastly is the Smooth all fonts on screen check box, which as we mention, will turn system wide anti-aliasing on.
Currently, these are the only function portions of the new appearance control panel, we will update you when new features are implemented.
The Internet Control Panel
As we mentioned in earlier reports, Allegro will ship with a brand new Internet control panel. This new cdev appears to be a sexier version of Internet configure with some added options. Users will be able to create multiple settings and edit these settings individually The Internet control panel can fold up to the size of web banner and can be expanded when editing needs to take place The editable settings fields are contained within a series of tabs. Currently there are 5 tabs, "Personal","E-Mail","Web","News", and "Advanced". The personal tab will contain the users personal information including their name, e-mail, and organization along with further notes and their signature. The E-mail tab will hold the users pop, smtp and such servers. The web tab will contain preferences for default home page,search page, download folder, color links, and browser preferences (either Netscape of Internet Explorer). The news tab contains the preferences for news groups and the users news server. Finally, the advanced tab contains a sidebar of icons each leading to their own preferences settings which will appear in the tabbed window to the right. Settings include, file mapping, fire walls, messages, hosts,fonts,helper applications, and so on. An Internet control panel "preferences" menu also provides quick access to the preference fields.
Finder Preferences
The Finder preferences dialog has been reworked into a set of 3 tabbed windows. The first tab entitled "General" contains the settings for spring loaded folders, grid spacing and the Simple Finder option. The second tab entitled "Views" will apply a specific setting to all folders which are currently set to use the standard view options. This window also contains a button to set all custom windows back to the standard view option. The third and final tab entitled "Labels" now contains the settings for the "Label" menu. The font settings have been moved out of the Finder preferences dialog and into their own tab of the new Appearance cdev.
View Options
Allegro's view options preferences have been through the dry cleaner once or twice and have emerged looking a lot better than once before. View options now opens a dialog with a pop-up menu for "View as" settings. Regardless of what view the window is currently set to, the user can configure the settings for the three different kinds of views (Button, List, Icon) without actually changing the view. Above the pop-up menu of the preference dialog are two radio buttons enabling the user to select default settings or custom (this will enable the pop-up menu for the three views). The settings for the individual views have not changed since 8.0.
More to come on Monday. If anyone testing Allegro feels we have left information out on the topics we have already covered, then help us add to the report.
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Unfortunately, due to the Apple's rigid position on the topic of screenshots on Reality, we wouldn't dare post any of the numerous screen shots we have obtained, at this time. However, Jason over at the up and coming "Allegro Net" has posted a number of corresponding images from the d8 release of Allegro and has given Reality an open invitation to link over to his shots as part of our Allegro coverage. So without further or due, enjoy.
We know it isn't nice to take pleasure in others misfortune, though when it happens to Bill Gates you can't help but laugh and say he deserves it in some twisted way. Yup, Bill got whacked in the face with a cream cake Wednesday in Brussels. He was entering a building to meet with Belgian government officials.
The four to five people involved had a stack of cakes ready for Bill. A Belgian news agency says one person distracted Gates', while another threw the cream tart that hit Gates right in the face, leaving cream all over his glasses and suit.
Poor Bill. Rumor is he was a good sport about the whole deal. He was directed to a powder room where they washed him up, brushed off his suit, and off he went to the meeting. We have 4 picture of the incident. (Picture 1, Picture 2, Picture 3, Picture 4) CNN has posted a quicktime movie of the mishap.
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As many of you may already know, Apple aired a brand new think different commercial yesterday on ABC. For those of you that don't know, you have to see this. Apple has finally made a ton of people very happy. Including myself. The new commercial displays a Pentium II processor on the back of a snail as the snail slowly makes its way across the screen to some funky music. Then, a voice says something like "Some people think the Pentium II is the fastest processor in the world, but the processors inside the new Power Macintosh G3s are up to twice as fast" (shows a PowerMacG3 running some movies) and then the Think Different screen is displayed.
You can view the commercial in its entirety here .
It's a very powerful commercial which made me laugh and smile. I think Apple will begin to see some results for no holds barred advertising of this kind. Truly, a beautiful job on the commercial Apple. Keep airing it!
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Recent rumors of a 240MHz version of the PowerBook 2400 appear to be true, as a reliable source has confirmed that a number of these configurations have already been produced overseas. However, there is some bad news, in a way. Apparently, sales of the 2400 have been lower than expected (but Apple, what do you expect if no one knows about it?) and therefore it is said that the upgraded version of the 2400 will not be made available to the American public and instead will only be sold overseas.
The 2400/240, otherwise known as "Mighty Cat" will also contain a 4-5 GB Hard Drive and 32 Megs of RAM. Stay tuned, as we have some juicy information on Wallstreet, the daddy-mac of all PowerBooks :)
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Apple Invests In Multimedia Chipset!
Over the course of the past 2 weeks, Reality has been exposed to the rumors circulating around the future G3 machines and the multimedia leap Apple plans to make with their introduction. According to a single, yet very reliable source with great contacts in an electronic-distribution-corportation, Apple has already made a significant purchase from Philips TriMedia.
According to our source, a Sales representative and FAE from Philips Semiconductor recently visited this electronic-distribution facility to advocate some new material along with the TriMedia chipset. During the presentation of the TriMedia material, the rep mentioned that Apple was buying these TriMedia chips in enormous quantities right now. And to quote our source, "They said the amount being purchased by Apple was much TOO big for being a develop and or test batch". In other words, unless something drastic happens, we will be seeing the TriMedia Programmable Media Processor included in future graphic cards/systems from Apple.
The TriMedia chipset will provide for the higher levels of processor performance needed for realistic emulation of sight, sound, and speech. Specifically, the TriMedia chipset concurrently processes audio, video, graphics, and communications data for a true-to-life multimedia experience by delivering up to four billion operations per second. It contains a highly optimized VLIW central processor and on-chip audio, video and graphics I/O and accelerator peripherals. The chip contains a 132 MB/second PCI bus interface and a memory subsystem. On top of this, an integrated software development environment facilitates program creation in standard ANSI C and C++.
Right now, it is uncertain how Apple will plan to integrate the chips (Current architecture? Alongside Gossamer II logicboards? Graphics cards?). However, as far as we have confirmed, it is a done deal! We should see their presence in high-end multimedia machines around the fourth quater, judging from the massive order of chips which has already occured.
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Thanks to a number of connected viewers, we now have some new information on the PowerBook XXX, otherwise known as "Hollywood". Apparently, quite a few rumors state the project was dead in early 1996. This could never have been the case since it was first revealed in May of 97. And second of all, it wasn't a formal project, rather a design study. The two pictures we originaly though were from an overseas expo appear to have been taken in Cupertino at the May 97 product briefing for the AppleMasters group. All of the futuristic gear shown at the breifing were non-working plastic mockups that were part of a design study supervised by Jonathan Ives, Apple's head of industrial design.
Apple embarks on design studies every few years and this was merely a product of one of them. Once reader states "We were told that the product might be difficult to actually manufacture because of the wireless transmission issues." The whole concept sounds too good to be true, which leads us to believe The PowerBookXXX will probably never see the light of day. However, Apple, I urge you to try.
Our second image, posted along with the PowerBook XXX shot is apparently the screen module for Apple's new Flexible Display which is under development. Unlike the PowerBook XXX, this piece of hardware is expected to ship some time in the near future.
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As many of you are well aware, Apple recently scrapped its plans for a high-end 350MHz G3 system with 6 PCI slots; otherwise known as The Power Express. This leaves a wide gap in Apple's summer product line and in addition, poses as a problem for some large third-party developers, especially network servers and video-editing developers, who need six PCI slots for all their hardware. We have taken the liberty of addressing this problem and researching Apple's short and long term solutions to this problem, as you'll read below.
Welcome Back 9600
Currently, Apple has no plans for a six-slot G3 machine to replace the 9600. This was all but confirmed by Jon Rubinstein, Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering at Apple, in a recent interview. With this in mind, one of our more reliable sources as of late indicates to us that Apple is going to manufacture 25,000 9600's and salt them away in a warehouse for these third-party vendors. We really have no intention of speculating on the results this may bring. Nevertheless, it's good to see Apple do something about the situation while they work on a solution (read "What's Next?", below). There is also the possibility that Apple could throw G3 processor cards into the 25,000 9600's instead of the 604e's, making for an even better incentive; however, at the time of this report that was unheard of.
What's Next?
Apple continually declines to comment on when we will see a G3 machine with more than 3 PCI slots. (However, if you don't mind dwindling to clones, UMAX does in fact sell a G3 machine with 6 slots.) Not withstanding their silence on the issue of G3s and PCI, we do have some information as to where Apple will take the future of PCI slots. According to a very reliable source, Apple plans to reduce the number of PCI slots the user would need by integrating the appropriate functionalities onto the motherboard and then using expansion cards to augment that. Basically, in plain English, Apple wants to figure out what you use PCI slots for so they can incorporate those functions into the motherboard in an all-out effort to reduce the actual number of PCI slots needed, while simplifying the overall architecture. This makes a tremendous amount of sense, if you think about it. For you, the user, this means some extra standard features. For the high-end pre-press, this means a powerful solution to your problems.
Any further insights into the future of the G3 and PCI slots are always welcomed.
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This Week's Apple NewsYes, we have finally posted a formal Contact Page which lists the appropriate e-mail addresses for users to send news, rumors, confidential info, suggestions, and so on.
Here at Reality, we encourage viewers to interact with us. We read each and every e-mail and respond when appropriate and if time permits. We welcome all viewer mail, but from now on, please direct e-mails to the appropriate addresses listed on the contact page.
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Netscape "WOW"s The Crowd
-In a daring move, Netscape has announced it will publicly distribute Communicator and Navigator's source code, come DR1 of Netscape 5.0.
Rhapsody CR1
-Some reports state an April appearance, we are betting on late July.
Visual Page 1.1
-We'd like to point out that Reality is now a 100% Symantec Visual Page authored publication. Version 1.1 is really a great update. Spell checker and all! Great work guys! Please keep it up!
AppleShare IP 6.0
-AppleShare IP 6.0 is due out this summer and is expected to run on both Rhapsody and the Mac OS.
President Bill Bubba Clinton....
-WHAT WERE YOU THINKING??? Wait.... We don't want to know. No..., really Bill, that's OK!
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