Beast Machines

ars technica has an in-depth review of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. There's more to 10.4 than simply search. However, Spotlight's genesis can be traced back to BeOS BFS (Be File System). That's no accident. Whilst I await notification that Amazon UK has dispatched my copy (presumably after 6:00PM GMT), there's nothing to stop me from playing with the all-new QuickTime 7 is there?

The latest iteration of QuickTime has undergone an extreme and timely makeover. From improved sound controls to creating multi-channel audio support (up to 5.1 surround sound). It's a bind that Apple insists on charging for the glossy Pro version, but that didn't stop me in 2002. The Batman Begins/Dark Water trailers marked the occasion. Here's a screen capture taken from the H.264 High Definition edition of the fourth Batman Begins trailer. Divine.



You'd be hard pressed to get more 'bang' for your money from the relatively modest outlay of £206.99 RRP (Tiger, QuickTime Pro, iWork and iLife '05). A decade ago anyone interested in non linear content authoring would have had to remortgage or sell the farm!

Woolworths' Revenge of the Sith merchandise has marginally improved. A veritable glut of Republic Gunships has arrived, yet no sign of the coveted ARC-170 Starfighter.

Master And Commander

iTMS turns two today. How's that for alliteration? No sign of an update or the feted Oz debut. Of course Apple could be holding off until next week as not to detract from tomorrow's Tiger launch, which financial analysts predict could gross a $billion in revenue.

The Apprentice

The OC has become a staple of my television viewing for a multiplicity of reasons, some of which I cannot elaborate on (need to know)! References to iPod and Star Wars are always an indulgent pleasure, but the news that George Lucas is to make a cameo appearance, in the penultimate episode of S2, takes the biscuit! Seth will make a 'choice' that will shape his destiny and the future of the galaxy... No, sorry wrong narrative!



Even the box art is cool.

Success! My site plays nice again with Firefox and its Mozilla Brethern - clear cache - the files were being sent to iDisk as application/octet-stream rather than text/html. By chance I noticed the update icon in Firefox and downloaded the latest Yahoo! Toolbar Beta. This includes a handy new feature called My Web. Grab some online candy.

PSPlayboy

Today SCEE announced that 01.09.05 is when PSP officially arrives! Mirroring the US pack-in, the initial offering will be the ubiquitous Value Pack priced at £179 (€249). Spider-Man 2 UMD is a bonus for early adopters. Better start scraping some pennies together.

60 Minutes special 'Star Wars' Goes To Hell was compelling viewing. Scenes of Anakin vs Obi-Wan were amongst the highlights along with a look at Lucasfilm's new offices. Francis Ford Coppola cropped up, not that he's in demand these days! George Lucas has become a billionaire based on a relatively small creative catalogue and has to be admired for his business acumen. He confirmed that there will be two Star Wars television series. The animated Clone Wars is be retooled (in 3D) for 30 minute episodes and a live-action show set between Episode's III and IV. Looks like Kenner's internal promo videos were indeed portentous. Should keep Hasbro busy.

Reign Of Firefox

At the weekend a Mac-owning friend (thanks Jim) alerted me to an issue with Firefox 1.0.3 and my site. The browser will no longer access any page other than the splash! Unable to find a successful workaround, I filed a report at Bugzilla. The response suggests that the 'fault' is with the html encoding. However, all other browsers work fine! Further detective work revealed that this is an issue with iDisk, and the workaround is to turn off local automatic synchronization and manually mount - drag and drop files. Fingers crossed.

Mad About You

Yes, Tiger fever has gripped me! Amazon UK promises delivery by May 5th. The big ticket attractions - Spotlight, Automator and QuickTime 7 - are mouthwatering. Xcode 2 will satiate the inner geek. The only fly in the ointment will be third party patches. Brad Oliver assures me that most Aspyr games should work, but even developers will not know for sure as they don't get to play with the GM until retail release. Check VersionTracker throughout the weeks ahead.

Compensation culture

The purported photos of Xbox 360 look cool and it stands to reason that Microsoft Game Studios would derive design inspiration from its SDK platform. The Macintosh.



How long before an ingenious hacker installs Mac OS X 10.4 on one of these? To amicably settle the case of the exploding Xbox, Microsoft should send disgruntled consumers something shiny and new.

Where's my C-3PO cereal?

Needed cheering up, so I purchased a box of Kellogg's Coco Pops Crunchers. Inside special packs promoting Revenge of the Sith you can find 1 of 6 Lightsaber maze games. To my delight Darth Vader's Lightsaber was in the box! The force is strong with this one.

Online Operatic Society

Press coverage of the Abode/Macromedia merger appears to have overlooked Opera! Opera's rendering engine is licensed by both companies and version 8 was released this week. Coincidence? The Mac version is in beta. Page rendering is faster than Safari 1.3 (still stalls on my machine) and the RSS interface is impressive, although the cross-platform GUI is creative potpourri. In an ideal world it would be preferable to use only one browser (fits all), yet you could do worse than the triumvirate of Safari, Firefox (blogging) and Opera in your applications folder. Incidentally, I've given up on OmniWeb (for site development and testing). The developers find themselves in a cul-de-sac!

Always with an eye for bargains and price reductions, last evening I noticed that Amazon UK had dropped the pre-order price of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger from £89.00 to £74.99. To avoid being over charged (as with iLife '05) I cancelled and ordered at the new lower price. With the advent of Tiger, Apple is making greater emphasis on gaming. Could Microsoft's G5 Xenon Development Kit environment (for Xbox 360) be the catalyst?

Nowadays everyone and their pet has a Yahoo! Group. Here's mine.

The Dark Knight Returns

Happy Birthday to Hayden Christensen. Only a month to Revenge of the Sith and to bridge the gap I've been watching Fan Films on TFN. Although mostly enjoyable, the majority of the spirited productions would benefit from judicious editing! Revelations suffers from overblown CGI and stilted performances that should have been cut around. George Lucas is always quoted as an advocate of the art of rapid cutting, I'd like to see a Fan Film subscribe to that notion.

Ironically, and I'm not going to engage in prevarication, it is the unofficial use of the Batman license that most impresses on TFN! Grayson, World's Finest and Batman Dead End combine superlative production values with taut direction. Really reminds me of when Michael and I submitted our teaser trailer for Terminator: The Series (1989). I must investigate whether or not that 'hidden gem' can be transferred from VHS, digitally restored and remastered for online distribution. The 'difficult' part will be capturing the raw data from VHS (using a DV camcorder) and the rest will be a piece of cake.



The third teaser poster for Batman Begins elegantly encapsulates gothic grandeur and vampiric myth. Sepia cool.