We’re still fielding Macintosh conference news, as MacHack reaffirms its commitment to its 19-Jun-03 start date and IDG World Expo announces that Macworld Expo New York 2003 is now named "Create." Also this week, Adam reveals how to set up a print spooler under Mac OS X and details improvements in the Info-Mac Archive mirror network. In other news, we note the releases of Web Crossing 5.0, LaunchBar 3.2.10, and Apple’s Security Update 2003-03-24.
MacHack Stays Put in June -- Despite Apple's recent move of the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) to June in San Francisco, a single day after the MacHack developers conference, the MacHack organizers have announced that MacHack will remain in its originally scheduled spot from 19-Jun-03 to 21-Jun-03 in Dearborn, Michigan
Security Update 2003-03-24 Fixes Samba -- Apple has released Security Update 2003-03-24 via Software Update and as a stand-alone 4.5 MB download. The update fixes a hole that could allow unauthorized remote access to the system via the open-source Samba code that underlies Mac OS X's built-in Windows File Sharing (available from the Sharing preferences pane)
LaunchBar 3.2.10 Improves Help -- Objective Development has released LaunchBar 3.2.10, a minor update to the extremely useful launcher utility (see "Tools We Use: LaunchBar" in TidBITS-671 for a full review)
Web Crossing 5.0, Web Crossing Express 5.0 Debut -- Web Crossing, Inc. has announced a pair of new products, Web Crossing 5.0 and Web Crossing Express 5.0
Poll Results: Sport Utility Drives? In last week's poll, we asked how many of you have a utility hard drive for Macintosh maintenance and configuration tasks
IDG World Expo and Apple last week announced a new event called Create that replaces Macworld Expo in New York from 14-Jul-03 through 18-Jul-03. Macworld Expo centered around the world of the Macintosh; Create will instead focus on the creative arts: design, publishing, audio, and video
Since the dawn of the Macintosh (really!), a small group of volunteers has been toiling away to provide services to the Macintosh community. Known as the Info-Mac Network, this non-profit organization publishes the Info-Mac Digest, a moderated mailing list of all things Macintosh (currently on hiatus while the group works through some problems with digest scripts after moving to a new server) and the Info-Mac Archive, the oldest (and for many years the largest) archive of freely distributable Macintosh software and information.
In recent years, Info-Mac has had a hard time keeping up with the many companies who found they could make money from similar services via advertising - hence the rise of CNET's Download.com, VersionTracker, MacUpdate, Tucows, and others
As of this writing, my internal network has only Macs running Mac OS X. That's not to say that most of our Macs can't boot into Mac OS 9 when necessary, but the only reasons I've had to switch back to Mac OS 9 recently were to run Norton Disk Doctor to perform a media check on a hard disk with bad blocks, and to use the floppy drive in my PowerBook G3