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Filed under: Snow Leopard

Apple seeds new Snow Leopard 10.6.2 beta to developers

The betas of the next Snow Leopard update continue at a fast and furious pace. Apple has reportedly begun seeding a new build of Mac OS X 10.6.2 to developers, just one week after the previous beta.

The new potential release focuses on graphics issues, specifically relating to drivers, QuartzCore, and ColorSync, as well as hitting issues with the Dock. Apple has identified no outstanding issues with the build, though the company is asking developers to pay special attention to graphics drivers, TrackPad preferences, and virtual machines.

The company says 148 components have been addressed in 10.6.2 betas so far, including issues in Dictionary, Expose, File Sync, Front Row, iPhoto, MobileMe, Parental Controls, QuickTime, Screen Sharing, Spotlight, Time Machine, and USB.

[via MacNN, Apple Insider]

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, WWDC, Apple, Developer

EA, id back gaming on the Mac

Well how about that. Not a few days after I announce that I'm going to be posting news about gaming on the Mac, we get the biggest announcement about exactly that since Bungie released Marathon: EA and id both showed up at the WWDC Keynote yesterday to promote 3D gaming on Apple's computers.

id went so far as to announce and show a new game engine called "id tech 5" (usually engines are named after games, but apparently we're in uncharted territory here), and EA came on stage to say it was going to start selling its most popular franchises, including Need for Speed Carbon, which has never been seen on the Mac before. Apple Insider points out that this isn't necessarily what we were hoping for (that is, games running natively and uber fast in OS X)-- instead, the EA games will be wrapped in Transgaming's Cider engine, which means the games will have to run on Intel-only Macs.

Tuncer Deniz, who's been covering Mac gaming for a long time at Inside Mac Games, says this is both good... and bad (figures, right?). It's good because EA using Cider means we'll see Mac versions come out faster. But it's bad because whatever EA expects to sell of these games, it's probably not as much as they want to. Still, id's engine looks pretty-- if gaming is going to make a comeback on the machine we love, this is as good a chance as it'll ever have.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Rumors, Internet

Mac rumors are boring

I don't mean Apple rumors are conceptually boring -- I enjoy the Mac and iPod rumor mill as much as the next Apple geek -- they're just boring to read. Daring Fireball's John Gruber hit the nail on the head last month when he wrote about his dislike for Mac rumor site Think Secret. At the time he was talking about a rumor suggesting that Aperture was about to bite the dust. Of course, we all know it didn't, as we covered later on, but the inherent poor aim of rumor sites isn't the topic of this post.

What the Mac web really needs, ok, wants, is a rumor site that merges the style of Crazy Apple Rumors with that of Think Secret and AppleInsider. Like Gruber says, the "objective" style of TS and AI apes that of the Associated Press (read: dull) when it should be taking a page out of the much loved, but now-defunct, Mac the Knife column. That fundamental element of gossip, the "we know that you know that this isn't important, but we also know that you know that this is fun" tone is completely missing from sites like Think Secret, AppleInsider and even rumor aggregation site Mac Rumors.

We can understand why these sites pretend to be objective. It certainly *sounds* more legitimate if you write like the NYTimes (coincidentally this style makes it easier for us to pick apart the rumors, as you saw last week). However, this isn't the NYTimes. It's just a bit of gossip about our favorite computer company. Nothing more, nothing less.

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