If you think Firefox could run a little faster on your Mac, then you might want to download one of BeatnikPad's custom builds of Firefox 3. "Minefield" (previously known as BonEcho for pre-3.0 releases) is Neil Lee's custom build of Firefox. He is currently offering custom builds for:

• Minefield (Firefox) 3.0 for Intel
  
• Minefield (Firefox) 3.0 for PowerPC G5
• Minefield (Firefox) 3.0 for PowerPC G4

Neil Lee has been offering custom builds of Firefox for many years now. They can make Firefox run a bit faster and smoother on older Macs. You can download them for free (though donations are accepted) from the BeatnikPad website.


[via IGM]

Along with the 10.5.4 update, Apple has just released Security Update 2008-004 for users of Mac OS X Tiger (10.4). According to Apple, the update "is recommended for all [Mac OS X Tiger (10.4)] users and improves the security of Mac OS X." You can download this update for the following systems:

• Security Update 2008-004 (PPC)
• Security Update 2008-004 (Intel)
• Security Update 2008-004 Server (PPC)
• Security Update 2008-004 Server (Intel)

The update is available through Software Update (Apple menu > Software Update) or by downloading the installer packages by clicking the links above for your system. Apple has provided a support article for more details on this update.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

It was just a couple weeks ago that Apple bought PA Semi, a custom PowerPC chip design firm. But now that a few details about the acquisition are leaking out, a new light has begun to shine on this subject. According to an EETimes post, Apple considered buying PA Semi back in 2005, prior to the Intel switch. Oh yeah, and one minor detail ... Apple has been an investor in the company since that time. When Apple started using Intel chips, that move sent a death threat to PA Semi.

Per the EETimes story, Apple came along to purchase a new chip from PA Semi. PA Semi didn't have enough investor funding to undertake a new project. So, what does Apple do? They pay off the investors and buy the whole company. Apple bought PA Semi for $278 million -- no pocket change, that's for sure. How important could this chip be for Apple to pay that much money? Well it might just be for a new tablet Mac (remember, you heard this rumor here first).

A MacRumors post suggests that the recently released, "Intel-only" iPhone SDK works on PowerPC Macs as well. According to the post, it worked fine on a iBook G4 running Mac OS X Leopard. The post did go on to say that Xcode displayed an error message upon trying to build a project, saying that the "target architecture does not match." Errors like these are to be expected, but at least those PowerPC-using developers can start to develop for the iPhone. There is no word yet on how the $99 digital certificate will work on the PowerPC Macs.

3by9's website has the full details on how to get the SDK running on your PPC Mac.


[original post by 3by9]

MacNewsWorld has a pretty good in-depth overview up about Mac gaming: where it's at and where it's headed. The basic story is that the three things that have historically held Mac gaming back behind PCs (the technology differences, the OS, and the smaller installed base) are slowly disappearing. With Apple's switch from PowerPC to Intel, the introduction of Boot Camp and increasingly easy development in OS X, and the growing popularity of the platform, gaming is actually bigger on the Mac than it's ever been.

But there is still a huge obstacle, and that is DirectX. Though there are ways around it (Freeverse actually mentions the Unity engine in the article), many developers are stuck developing in DirectX, and that leaves the Mac platform out of the loop. And there really isn't anything comparable to it in OS X, either. Graphics hardware remains a problem, but that just harkens back to the biggest problem of getting games on the Mac: support from Apple. Some developers say that there aren't games on the Mac because Steve doesn't want them there, and until Apple shows evidence to the contrary, PC will always be the gamers' platform of choice.

[Via IMG]

This blew by us earlier in the week, but in case you haven't grabbed it yet, the Joost beta 1.0 is now available for download to the public. So all of us plebians who haven't gotten invites to try it out yet can now inspect the groovy IPTV viewer that everyone's been talking about (and running on AppleTV) for months.

There is one catch that will trip up a few of us newcomers: Joost is still only for Intel Macs, so our PowerPC brethren are left out in the cold watching TV the old fashioned way-- on a television (and at normal quality with no lag-- whoops, low blow?).

The latest release also adds a few new features, including faster streaming for low bandwith connections (touche), and a few other interface tweaks. Joost is available for free, now to anyone, over on the website.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Attention people who run Ubuntu on your PowerPC Macs! Good, I think I have managed to get the attention of the 3 people that fall into that category. The PowerPC distribution on Ubuntu will be classified as 'unofficial' as of version 7.04.

What does that mean? It means that if there are any bugs in the Ubuntu code that really break things on the PowerPC side, the release will not be held up to fix them. Furthermore, the Ubuntu PowerPC Architecture Team will be responsible for supporting the codebase for the PowerPC distribution. If you would like more details about this decision check out the PowerPCReview page on the Ubuntu wiki.

I have fooled around with Ubuntu, and it is a nice, solid OS (heck, Peter Rojas loves it and that's gotta count for something) but I can't say this is a surprise. Apple isn't pumping out any PowerPC machines anymore, so clearly support for that chipset will wane over the years.

[via MacSlash]

Some corners of the Mac web aren't too happy about Adobe's choice to not support the PowerPC chip with their latest beta offering, Soundbooth. We've received a few comments on our original post, and Macintouch has a few posts from readers who are, let's say, 'somewhat upset.' To help bring some sense to the table, Adobe's John Nack (the product manager of Photoshop, mind you) has stepped in to lay down the company's decision on his blog. Long story short, John explains that support isn't being 'removed' from the product - while it's been dubbed as 'Audition Elements' by some, it's a brand new baby for both Mac OS X and Windows. In this context, Adobe made the choice of streamlining development (supporting one chipset) which favors focusing on things like features and performance, rather than trying to get a team of audio engineers who are used to working with Intel-based chips to start jugging a second architecture (PowerPC) which Adobe believes Apple is treating as "dead to us."

I think this is a really difficult position for Adobe to be in, and given the circumstances, I understand their decision. While the PowerPC architecture is by no means 'dead' just yet, it's getting up from the dinner table and making its way for the coat closet (don't forget, there's plenty of conversation and lingering while putting one's coat on and rounding up all the kids). Readers at Macintouch have cited that a fair portion of the Mac audio industry are still using PowerPC based rigs and probably will for quite some time, and I think that might also have been a significant factor in the decision: Soundbooth isn't competing with Pro Tools and professional workflows, it's a mid-range app (at least from what I understand). I am certainly no software engineer, and I know equally little about the intricacies of audio software, but if a company with Adobe's girth says that now is a bad time to start building PowerPC support into a brand new product - I'll listen. From the non-developer sidelines, it sounds like it's a lot easier for code ninjas who already had a PowerPC app to unite forces with Intel support (thanks in part to Apple's UB efforts), as opposed to getting Intel backgrounds (remember: Adobe's audio guys are coming over from Windows development on this one) to shake hands with PowerPC.

In the grander scheme of Adobe matters, however, they haven't shown this "abandoning" attitude in any of their other existing products, such as the entire Creative Suite (in fact Nack reminds us PPC hasn't gone anywhere in CS3), and even Lightroom Photoshop Lightroom, another recent beta offering for the pro photography crowd, is in fact a Universal Binary. I think Soundbooth was simply caught in the crossfire of this chip architecture migration, and Adobe had to make a hard decision that was ultimately tipped by looking ahead at the Mac platform, and realizing exactly where Soundbooth is going to sit on the ladder of Mac OS X-based audio editing.

ThinkSecret is saying that Apple will announce the Mac Pro and a newly designed enclosure at its World Wide Developers Conference next month. The Mac Pro is the rumored name of the Intel machines that will replace the PowerMac G5's.

According to the rumor site, the new Mac Pro's will come in configurations similar to the PowerMac G5, including single and dual processor systems. I suspect the new machines will be sporting the newly released Core 2 Duo Intel processors, however, what I am having a hard time visualizing is what Apple will do to the enclosure. With the MacBook and MacBook Pro, Apple has continued to distinguish their pro machines by their shiny aluminum exteriors. Will Apple stay with the monolithic cheese graters, or will they go with something more subdued and refined? Only time will tell.

A reader of macosxhints.com has posted another method for creating a bootable drive that is friendly to both PowerPC and Intel Macs. While it's a twelve-step process, macosxhints.com has called it 'simpler', so who are we to argue? If you've been hankering for a way to create a bootable drive that can play on both sides of the Mac CPU fence, this tip just might have you covered.

Intel Macs are so yesterday. I'm all about the "PowerPC G6 Macintosh," and it's only $499 to boot!

Engadget found a company (who might have already been threatened/litigated out of existence by the time you read this) by the name of Red PC who is selling a computer they call the "PowerPC G6 Macintosh." But wait - in addition to getting a supposedly next-gen PPC cloned Mac - there's more! Included in their Apple-defying price of $499 (along with this gorgeous case) is a hacked version of Mac OS X (it's reportedly a Pentium-based machine), Microsoft Office 2004 and - drumroll please - Photoshop CS2!

Nothing says "I'm feeling suicidal" like stepping on the toes of three of the largest players in the computer and software industries.

Hot on the heels of Firefox releasing a 1.5.0.3 security update, Camino has been bumped to 1.0.1 with mostly security and bug fixes which include:

• Fixed several critical security issues, including those fixed in version 1.8.0.3 of the Mozilla Gecko rendering engine.
• Upgraded the bundled Java Embedding Plugin (http://javaplugin.sf.net) to version 0.9.5 d
• Improved ad-blocking, especially of German ads
• Enabled the opening of local SVG files
• Fixed an issue where Camino on Intel-based Macs was unable to read Keychain entries stored by Camino on PowerPC-based Macs

As always, you can snag a copy from CaminoBrowser.org.

File this under: Rumor / I doubt it.

Tom's Hardware is reporting that Freescale Semiconductor, the people behind the chips in the current line of PowerBooks, began showing off the MPC7448, their latest high-performance PowerPC processor, which is "expected to offer speeds from 600 MHz to 1.7 GHz with the system bus running up to 200 MHz."

What do you think? Is there a chance of a 1.7GHz iteration of the PowerBook G4 before the switch over to PowerBook Mactels? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

[via O'Grady's Powerpage]