Next Monday, Halo 2 developer Bungie will release a brand new update for the super-popular FPS title via Xbox Live - as well as addressing the ongoing battle with bugs and glitches, the update will also continue the gameplay balancing and tweaking Bungie have deemed appropriate. In the biggest of the three Halo 2 updates to-date, this patch is said to overhaul the multiplayer weapons balancing in a bid to make play more entertaining.

"The scale of the auto-update gave us a unique opportunity - a chance to implement balance changes on certain weapons to smooth out the Xbox Live and System Link experience, and in a couple of cases, we feel, subtly improving the overall feel of the game," Bungie's Frank O'Connor stated.

"Now if someone charges too closely with dual SMGs, you can melee them and actually kill them faster than they can kill you," added designer Jaime Griesemer. "You have viable options again."

What if I told you that as well as enjoying the benefits of steadily improving software development, the PSP would, at some stage in the future (and without any modification), become capable of a hardware performance increase of fifty percent? That would be somewhat surprising, wouldn't it?

The PSP's CPU and bus have software-configurable clockspeeds. The CPU core is currently locked to a maximum clockspeed of 222MHz, and the bus (typically operating at half the CPU speed) is locked to a top speed of 111Mhz. The GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) operates at bus speed, in other words, up to the 111MHz cap. The advantage of having configurable clockspeeds in a portable device is that power consumption can be controlled by adjusting the clockspeed to the demands of the software at any given moment. When the PSP is rendering complex in-game graphics at around 222MHz it will necessarily chew up more power than it would need to when displaying a simple menu screen running at say 5MHz.

The PSP CPU's top clockspeed is 333MHz and the bus and GPU's top speed is 166MHz. See what's going on? Sony have deliberately locked the PSP's operating speed at exactly two-thirds of it's actual potential. They have an extra fifty percent of it's current performance ability simply waiting in reserve to be unleashed at a later date.

As I pointed out in my PSP Lowdown back in January, the graphical performance exhibited in PSP's launch titles looks like it's somewhere between PSone and PS2 standard. Now I understand why. The PS2's Emotion Engine (CPU) runs at 294.912MHz and it's Graphics Synthesizer (GPU) runs at 147.456MHz. While the PSP is clearly a more powerful device on paper, it's currently being restricted to a sub-PS2 standard of performance.

Delivers improved compatibility and reliability for Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther" and is recommended for all users.

Improvements include:
- file sharing and directory services reliability for mixed Mac and PC networks
- Mail, Safari and Stickies application reliability
- compatibility for third party applications and devices
- previous standalone security updates

For detailed information on this Update, please visit this website.

For detailed information on Security Updates, please visit this website.

Apple Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" is the strongest OS X release yet and a worthy competitor to Windows XP. Though it is marketed by Apple as a major release, Tiger is in fact a minor upgrade with few major new features for end users (though developers will be interested in some of the low-level work Apple has done with Core Image, Core Audio, and other technologies). That won't stop Apple fans from flocking to Apple Stores on April 29 and standing in line to buy it, even at its inflated $129 price. That's fine, I guess: Tiger performs well, looks great, and offers many modern OS features. Tiger builds on the rock-solid foundation of previous OS X releases, adds a few major new features, and applies a nice spit polish to hundreds of other small features. Tiger may lack some of the niceties that make Windows more appealing to new users, but it does reward those with existing computer skills with a minimalist yet elegant user interface that, as advertised, "gets out of the way" and lets you get your job done. If you can look past Apple's corporate bravado, you'll see that Tiger is one impressive cat. And unlike Longhorn, it's shipping now. What a concept.

I took the Apple OS X Tiger Tour on Tuesday, right after Apple announced a firm ship date for Tiger. While I was impressed with all the eye candy I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why so many people are calling this the greatest operating system of all time. It might even be true, but when you think about it it’s the same old thing, only dressed up.

What made the Apple GUI so innovative was that it introduced the first GUI that made it easy to normal people to use. (I acknowledge that Xerox was the inventor of this GUI, but it was Apple that made it real). After Apple bought this kind of interacting with the computer to the masses Microsoft soon followed with their own copy of the Mac GUI. For all the differences between Mac and Windows, from System One to OS X Tiger and from Windows 3.1 to Windows XP Pro, they are all basically unchanged.

Pull down menus, point n click, folders, icons, and trashcans, these things have been a part of the operating system of both Macs and Windows for more than 20 years. Isn’t time we moved beyond this ancient method of interfacing with a computer?

Take a look at these two images, one from the original Mac 128k and one from OS X Panther. After a generation we are still interacting with our computers in the same way we did in the beginning.

In my opinion, the tech world won’t be a healthy one until the three major desktop Operating Systems (GNU/Linux, Mac OS X and Windows) have a more balanced market share. I therefore tend to follow OS statistics quite closely. After reading about Morgan Stanley’s positive projections for the Mac platform in 2005/6, I decided to plot the number of Mac units sold since 2001. Unfortunately, I haven’t plotted the industry-wide stats in order to compare with the sector at large (which is what really matters). But here it is anyway. The data comes from www.apple.com/pr.

1,200 improvements create slick, easy-to-use computing experience

In past lives, Lindows/Linspire was a good-to-fair operating system. Good for computing beginners; fair for knowledgeable Linux users. For instance, version 4.0 was hard to configure but was better than version 4.5 in handling the hardware on my laptop. I found that annoying and a possible deterrent to computing neophytes. I’ve found no such problems with Linspire 5.0. It takes the operating system to new heights.

5-0 sports more than 1,200 improvements over version 4.5, including a revised graphical interface, laptop and hardware support, Internet optimization, and dozens of enhanced software applications. Linspire uses Linux kernel 2.6.10 and includes the KDE 3.3 desktop, the Open Office software suite, a Mozilla browser, plus upgraded e-mail clients, instant messaging and lots more.

For the record, Linspire 5-0 can handle many of your favorite Internet, office and media file types including QuickTime, Windows Media, Flash, Java, Real, .doc, .xls, .ppt, .mp3, .pdf, .mpg, etc.

Linspire calls their product the world’s easiest desktop Linux. I cannot disagree. Of the different flavors of Linux that I’ve tried in the recent past, Linspire is, hands down, the easiest to install, configure and use.

As for my experience, it took me a grand total of 21 minutes to boot my old Pentium III laptop, put in the Linspire CD, reboot, install 5-0, reboot again, adjust the time, date and sound level, and then start computing.

Everything worked out of the box. Picture, sound, everything. That was not the case with previous versions. What really amazed me was that Linspire 5-0 not only knew I had a Wi-Fi card in my laptop, but it had it working before I told it the name of my wireless network. This is a first for any Linux distribution I’ve ever played with.

Linspire 5-0 still features the wonderful, optional CNR (Click and Run) software downloading warehouse. For a yearly subscription price, you can download and try hundreds of software titles that automatically install on your computer with one click of the mouse. It also keeps track of any software updates and invites you to download them. There are also some pay-for software titles on CNR like Star Office 7, VirusSafe and SurfSafe (for parents and kids).

The digital version of 5-0 sells for $49.95.

The updated Mac operating system will impress techies and novices alike. But new features may not be enough to significantly boost sales right away.

"This is one of those rare occasions when a major software release is actually early," Apple Chief Executive Steven Jobs joked in an interview with BusinessWeek.

In the short term, Tiger may not provide that much of a boost, says Tim Deal, an analyst with research firm Technology Business Research. For starters, it's hard for a software release to gain much attention when new hardware such as the Mac mini and iPod shuffle are already turning heads. Also, convincing non-Mac owners of the new software's benefits can take time. "Honestly, I don't think new consumers are going to get really excited about it," says Deal. "They have to see the immediate value [to go out and get a new Mac], and it's hard to communicate that in TV ads."

Apple's second-quarter earnings topped Wall Street's estimates by 10 cents a share, and the company offered an earnings outlook that was better than expected. But investors weren't impressed, selling off the stock.

Despite the strong results, analysts on a conference call found a number of items to quibble with. For instance, the company's third-quarter guidance -- while above the Street's estimates -- implies that sales will be flat compared with the second quarter and earnings will decline, several analysts noted. Some also observed that Apple's share count ballooned 13% in the quarter, diluting earnings.

That the quarter may be flat sequentially has to do with the company's normal seasonality and with a pickup in lower-priced computers for the education market, Oppenheimer said. Also playing into the company's projected third-quarter results are recent price reductions on the company's popular iPod digital music players, he said. Factoring into the projected decline in earnings, the company expects to see an increase in operating expenses, partially due to costs associated with developing the next version of its operating system, he said.

"We don't think our revenue will continue to grow at these levels forever," he said.

On a unit basis, [iPod] sales also topped Apple's first quarter, which covers the holiday period. In that quarter, the company sold 4.6 million iPods, worth $1.2 billion. The total revenue generated likely declined, because Apple introduced a discount-priced, flash-based digital music player in the quarter.

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2005 second quarter ended March 26, 2005. For the quarter, the Company posted a net profit of $290 million, or $.34 per diluted share. These results compare to a net profit of $46 million, or $.06 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Revenue for the quarter was $3.24 billion, up 70 percent from the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 29.8 percent, up from 27.8 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 40 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

Apple shipped 1,070,000 Macintosh units and 5,311,000 iPods during the quarter, representing a 43 percent increase in CPU units and a 558 percent increase in iPods over the year-ago quarter.

To hear the newest Coldplay song right now, don't turn on the radio or flip to MTV. Instead, you'll have to download a 30-second track to your cellphone and set it as your ring.

In another statement of how technology has turned the music industry every which way, Coldplay's single "Speed of Sound" is available for download through Cingular Wireless. That's almost a week before its radio debut Monday and almost two months before the British alternative rock group's album X&Y is released by Capitol Records on June 7.

The idea of debuting a song as a ringtone and not over the airwaves may signal a big step for the music industry, given how heavily it has relied on radio and television. Its willingness to do so also gives more credibility to the ringtone market, which has returned wallet-bursting revenues.

Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday offered details about the compatibility of its Mac products with Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger." Apple announced earlier on Tuesday that Tiger will ship on Friday, April 29, 2005. According to Microsoft, it has worked closely with Apple to make sure that Office 2004 works with new Tiger technologies, and "will conduct final testing" on its Virtual PC product when Tiger is available.

"For example, upon installation of the new OS, Spotlight will be able to index Word, Excel and PowerPoint formats," read a statement offered by a Microsoft spokesperson. "Support for additional features such as sync services will be enabled by a future update."

Apple is getting ready to release a new version of its operating system on Friday 29 April.

The Apple faithful can line up at the company's stores and authorised resellers at 6:00 PM and hand over the company $129.

The operating system might have 200 improvements, it doesn't even come close to being "groundbreaking" or "the most innovative [...] desktop", as Apple's cheerleader Steve Jobs claims.

The most visible improvement is the Spotlight desktop search technology, promising to make it easier for users to search for text inside their emails, word documents and other data. Apple might be the first to ship a desktop operating system with such a search technology build into the OS, but Google and MSN last year beat the company to delivering such a desktop search technology.

Another year, another operating system with a few new features. If Microsoft would release a new OS every year (like Apple does) and charge users $129 for it, the world would be crying foul. But this is Apple. That company that loves its customers – and makes them pay for that love.

Apple today announced that Mac OS X version 10.4 "Tiger" will go on sale Friday, April 29, beginning at 6:00 p.m. during special events at Apple's retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers. Tiger has more than 200 new features and innovations including Spotlight, a revolutionary desktop search technology that lets users instantly find anything stored on their Mac, including documents, emails, contacts and images; and Dashboard, a new way to instantly access important information like weather forecasts and stock quotes, using a dazzling new class of applications called widgets.

"Mac OS X Tiger is the most innovative and secure desktop operating system ever created," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "Tiger’s groundbreaking new features like Spotlight and Dashboard will change the way people use their computers, and drive our competitors nuts trying to copy them."

Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger" will go on sale Friday, April 29, at 6:00 p.m. during special events at Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers. Tiger has more than 200 new features and innovations including Spotlight, a revolutionary desktop search technology that lets users instantly find anything stored on their Mac, including documents, emails, contacts and images; and Dashboard, a new way to quickly access important information like weather forecasts and stock quotes, using a dazzling new class of applications called widgets.

When this former Pepsi exec ran Apple from 1983 to 1993, he was known for walking around with his Newton handheld computer. Today he uses a PC (and no, he doesn't own an iPod). A venture capitalist at RHO Capital Partners in New York City, Sculley still focuses on technology innovation. What does he think of Apple's resurgence under Steve Jobs, the man he once fired? "They've made beautiful products, well thought through, with no compromises and great styling," he says. "And they've made a market for them."

The reader in question put some music together in Cubase and encoded it to AAC using iTunes (so far, so good).

Using Hotmail to send off the track to people brought the following response to the AAC attachment: namely, "A virus has been detected in the attached file."

Okay. Try MSN then: "This file has been blocked because it is potentially dangerous."

All right then. Decompress the AAC file and zip compress it on a PC: "Windows has blocked access to this file as it presents a potential danger."

MP3s don't present this problem. Is it an anti-iTMS, anti-iPod conspiracy?

Analysis: That got us wondering too. To be fair, Windows seems to block virtually everything that's not a .doc or .xls or .ppt file these days.

It's called paranoia.

Adobe Systems will restore Linux support for its PDF-viewing software with a version 7 release this week, CNET News.com has learned.

In March, Adobe made a prerelease version of Reader for Linux available for download so that citizens in the Netherlands could meet their tax-filing deadlines. Now the final version of the 7.0 update is ready, Adobe confirmed on Monday.

The graphics software powerhouse said it plans to announce version 7 for Linux and make it available on its Web site on Tuesday. (Version 7.0 for Microsoft Windows shipped in November 2004.) Adobe Reader lets people read and print documents stored in PDF, or Portable Document Format, and the new version also enables people to fill out forms electronically.

"The rate of adoption of the Linux operating system among enterprises worldwide--especially among government and financial services organizations--is increasing," Eugene Lee, vice president of marketing for Adobe's Intelligent Documents group, said in a statement. "Our customers were asking for Adobe Reader 7.0 on Linux as they begin to support core enterprise applications at the desktop."

Amid increased growth in fee-based digital music experimentation and continued strong sales of portable MP3 players, the recent launch of a new generation of portable online music subscription payment methods may require substantial incentives to encourage broad consumer adoption, according to new research from global marketing research firm Ipsos-Insight.

When a new portable online music subscription service (which allows an unlimited number of songs to be transferred to associated portable devices) was introduced to the market scenario at $14.99 per month, the proportion of downloaders who would choose this method was 5%, one-third fewer than the 17% who would choose an a la carte method at $0.99 per song, yet greater than the 4% who would choose an on-demand PC-tethered streaming subscription service. This suggests a potential limitation in rapidly migrating current downloaders to this new method of fee-based online music acquisition.

"With all of the recent media attention surrounding this rapidly changing market, these findings indicate that many downloaders still prefer a transactional payment structure over one that is subscription-based," said Matt Kleinschmit, a Vice President with Ipsos-Insight and author of the TEMPO research. "This suggests that recently launched portable online subscription services may need to encourage broader adoption through ambitious pricing and promotional or incentive -based acquisition strategies, particularly among those downloaders who have previously only had experience with a la carte fee-based methods."

With its white-hot iPod device, Apple Computer Inc. sits atop the digital music world -- seemingly without a serious competitive threat in sight.

That lead may not last much longer. Apple will soon confront not just a new challenger but an entire $100 billion industry. Cellphone makers and wireless carriers are piling into mobile music, with an array of new services and phones that could radically change a game that until now has been defined largely by Apple.

Last month, SonyEricsson, the cellphone joint venture of Sony Corp. of Japan and Sweden's Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson, unveiled a Walkman phone, seeking to leverage the Sony Walkman brand in the music phone sector. The sleek white model is expected to be available in Asia and Europe in the second half of this year, and subsequently in the U.S., according to the company. Motorola Inc., the world's No. 2 cellphone maker, last month announced three new music phones, all capable of downloading songs from a user's personal computer, like the iPod does.

While their offerings may not be quite as trendy of those from Apple, at least not at first, they have one big advantage: People carry cellphones more than any other device. A recent survey by JupiterResearch showed that 76% of those asked said they carry a cellphone regularly, while just 7% said the same about a music player.

[Napster founder] Shawn Fanning is out to save the music industry. Again.

With his new company, Snocap Inc., Fanning hopes to catalog every piece of music, giving each song an acoustic fingerprint, so that record companies and other copyright holders will be able to track and sell its songs more easily.

According to a recent survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, about 18 million Americans, or 13 percent of Internet users, say they download either music or video files without using traditional peer-to-peer networks or paid online services. They swap music files via e-mail or instant message and download songs from blogs and other Web sites.

"It took 14 months for iTunes to sell 100 million songs," he said. "We were doing 100 million downloads a day on Napster."

A federal appeals court this week upheld a lower court decision that Apple Computer investors cannot sue the company over the fact that the Power Mac G4 Cube and other products didn't live up to Apple expectations.

The attempted class action suit, filed on behalf of those who purchased Apple shares between July 19 and Sept. 28 of 2000, also alleged that Apple knew some of its sales projections were false at the time they made them, a charge the appeals court said was not supported by the facts presented in the case.

The suit referred specifically to projections made in the summer of 2000 by Apple's then-CFO Fred Anderson that Apple sales would grow that quarter by 10 percent. It also cites comments by former controller and current CFO Peter Oppenheimer that a transition in Apple's education sales force was "progressing nicely." Apple later reported sales that fell short of expectations and said its sales force transition had been more difficult than it anticipated.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said Monday that companies are to be given leeway because forecasts are by their nature only estimates.

This little program enables iPod shuffle users to finally get rid of all that iTunes or other complicated playlist management stuff. Due to the simple structure of the shuffle (compared to the »big« iPods), it is possible to use the player almost like any other USB flash MP3 player: You simply copy MP3 files onto it. You only need to run the Database Builder program after you added or removed files from the iPod. This approach has numerous benefits:

• You don't need iTunes, ml_ipod or GNUpod anymore. Simply copy some MP3 files into the iPod volume and start this teensy 8k program.
  
• You aren't restricted to store your music in the /iPod_Control/Music subdirectory. Build your own directory and filename structure. Your iPod, your rules!
  
• You may use the iPod on as many computers as you want.
  
• The actual iTunes database is left untouched, your iPod should still work with iTunes, if you like. (Note that this wasn't true for me; my iTunes installation now refuses any co-operation with my iPod. But I'm pretty sure that this is due to my experimentation with the iTunes database, and not a side-effect of using the Database Builder.)
  
• If you do not use the iPod_Control folder for your music, iTunes will not delete your files again without asking.

Here are some ways to unlock PSP capabilities that Sony neglected to tell you about, culled from various enthusiast Web sites.

None of these "hacks" involve modifying the hardware or installing unlicensed software on the PSP (which would void your warranty), though the last two require that you install software on your PC.

What was remarkable about the Windows 95 introduction was the acquiescence of customers, who participated so willingly in the spectacle. Microsoft arranged for retail outlets to open at midnight on the day the system would first be available, a stunt that proved as irresistible as klieg lights at a Hollywood premiere. One chain counted some 50,000 people lined up at its stores across the country.

These people were chasing an operating system, of all things - plumbing that serves a necessary function, to be sure, but of no more intrinsic interest than the pipes that snake below the floorboards of a house. In 1995, however, Microsoft managed to make the mundane appear life-changing. The Seattle Times quoted one happy midnight customer, standing with his wife, who predicted that "this is going to enhance our marriage."

These people [are] chasing an operating system, of all things - plumbing that serves a necessary function, to be sure, but of no more intrinsic interest than the pipes that snake below the floorboards of a house ... Apple [manages] to make the mundane appear life-changing.

As I wrote in this space just about two years ago, OS X took a while before it was ready for prime time in the audio and music arenas ... And yet, there are things about OS X as it stands today -- whether you call it Panther, Jaguar, Hyena, Hippopotamus or whatever -- that drive me absolutely nuts. I don't mean they're irritating: I mean they make me want to throw my computer out of a third-story window, which is a feeling I've had before about some equipment, but never my Macs.

The proliferation of library directories in OS X would make a pregnant sturgeon blush. There are libraries at the root level, libraries inside the system and libraries for each user account. There are ones for audio and ones for plug-ins and ones with different developers' names on them. How do we know what lives where? The answer: We don't! Not me, not the folks who write your support documents and, most dangerously, not the developers.

I'm told this is in the nature of UNIX. Well, guess what? I didn't buy a Mac to run UNIX and neither did 95 percent of the other Mac owners. And you know that, Steve: You've worked really hard to hide some of the more onerous aspects of UNIX behind all that groovy-looking Aqua stuff, so why couldn't you do something about this nonsense, too?

Who decided that from now on you can only move a window by grabbing its top? When you have as many windows open as I usually do, the last thing you want to do is go searching for a title bar when you're trying to move something out of the way.

And what's the deal about non-standard characters in file names? I know there are rules in UNIX about this -- how they can't contain slashes or question marks -- but why are they enforced so inconsistently? If I copy a bunch of old files from one disk to another, sometimes the process will stop dead when it finds a file -- inevitably, deep inside some sub-sub-sub-sub-folder so it takes five minutes to find it -- with a slash in it (I have a lot of these as I like to put dates on things), but sometimes it just pushes it on through like stewed prunes. And sometimes when I'm copying, the thing will hang up on some invisible file called "_Icon." What's up with that? If I can't see it and the system can't copy it, why the hell is it trying to?

And how about while you're wasting all that time with that "optimizing" thing you do, you take care of that "fix permissions" nonsense so I don't have to do it manually every time I start a studio session? Because I know if I don't, all of a sudden at a crucial point, I'll be denied access to some critical file and everything will grind to a halt. And why the hell do I have to deal with "permissions" in my home studio anyway? It's my machine, no one else uses it, so why can't I just do what I want with it?

Steve, I love your machines and I can't imagine life without them. And you know that I'll keep buying them as long as you keep making them. But a lot of us creative types bought Macs in the first place so we wouldn't have to deal with this horsesh#*, and for a good many years, we didn't. You'd make a lot of us happier if you could make it smell nicer or, better still, sweep it outta here.