With the introduction of the latest instalment of Macromedia's suite of web design applications, Studio 8, comes an updated, Flash Player 8.

Although, most Flash-enabled sites usually sport Flash Player Detection Kits to alert viewers to the fact that they need to install a Flash player to view the site, you can pre-empt the hassle by getting your copy of Flash Player 8.

Though, we don't normally feature comedic sites or pages here, we came across this one -- the world's longest startup sound. Guaranteed to leave some geeks in stitches.

Some of the guys are now looking into hacking the startup sound for our Macs...

Since its introduction the alluminium PowerBook series has gone through several revisions. This article attempts to detail the revisions and take a peek at what's on the horizon.

Hopefully, providing future PowerBook buyers with some insight into the time frame of the PowerBook development life cycle and the 'best time' to purchase.

In addition to enhancing the Apple Pro line hardware, on 19 October 2005, Apple also introduced Aperture, the first all-in-one post production tool that provides everything photographers need after the shoot. Aperture offers an advanced and incredibly fast RAW workflow that makes working with a camera’s RAW images as easy as JPEG. Built from the ground up for pros, Aperture features powerful compare and select tools, nondestructive image processing, color managed printing and custom web and book publishing. This comes as a timely solution to work and manage RAW files.

“Aperture is to professional photography what Final Cut Pro is to filmmaking,” said Rob Schoeben, Apple’s vice president of Applications Marketing. “Finally, an innovative post production tool that revolutionizes the pro photo workflow from compare and select to retouching to output.”

“Until now, RAW files have taken so long to work with,” said Heinz Kluetmeier, renowned sports photographer whose credits include over 100 Sports Illustrated covers. “What amazed me about Aperture is that you can work directly with RAW files, you can loupe and stack them and it’s almost instantaneous—I suspect that I’m going to stop shooting JPEGs. Aperture just blew me away.”

For details, check out Apple's Aperture page.

19 October 2005, is a date to put on your Apple landmark calendar. Its the day Apple introduced its first quad-core processing PowerMac G5. Providing quad-core processing with two 2.5 GHz dual-core PowerPC G5 processors. All Power Mac G5 models now feature dual-core processors, a new PCI Express architecture and higher performance graphics options including NVIDIA’s Quadro FX 4500, bringing the industry standard for workstation graphics to the Mac.

A quad processor is to apply quadruple the processing power and solve problems in one quarter the time.

Quote from Apple's press release:

"With two 2.5 GHz dual-core processors, each with 1MB of L2 cache, the Power Mac G5 Quad delivers breakthrough performance on applications used extensively by creative professionals and scientists. For example:

• Final Cut Pro® 5 encodes SD video content up to 60 percent faster on the new Power Mac G5 Quad when compared with the Dual Processor 2.7 GHz Power Mac G5;
• Adobe Photoshop runs a series of 45 commonly used filters and actions 43 percent faster on the new Power Mac G5 Quad when compared with the Dual Processor 2.7 GHz Power Mac G5;
• Adobe After Effects renders video effects up to 69 percent faster on the new Power Mac G5 Quad when compared with the Dual Processor 2.7 GHz Power Mac G5;
• LightWave 3D renders animation up to 59 percent faster on the Power Mac G5 Quad when compared with the Dual Processor 2.7 GHz Power Mac G5; and
• The scientific benchmark Bioinformatics Benchmark System (BBS version 3) completes a comparison of genomic sequences up to 39 percent faster on the Power Mac G5 Quad when compared with the Dual Processor 2.7 GHz Power Mac G5."
  
  For details, surf over to Apple's PowerMac G5 page.

Apple introduced an enhanced line of PowerBooks on Wednesday, 19 October 2005. Increasing the battery life in the 15" and 17" PowerBooks by up to an hour. In addition, every PowerBook ships with a DVD burning SuperDrive and higher-resolution displays.

Quoting Apple's press release:

"The new higher-resolution PowerBooks provide significantly more screen real estate and include the 17-inch PowerBook with a 1680-by-1050 pixel resolution—36 percent more than the previous generation—and the 15-inch PowerBook with a 1440-by-960 pixel resolution—26 percent more than the previous generation. Ideal for business and creative professionals, the new 15- and 17-inch PowerBooks make reading text and viewing images even easier with brighter displays—up to 46 percent brighter on the 17-inch model. The 15- and 17-inch PowerBooks also provide up to an additional hour of battery life to get even more work done while on the road.

The PowerBook line includes three models: the 1.5 GHz 12-inch PowerBook with an 8X SuperDrive and the new 1.67 GHz 15- and 17-inch PowerBooks with an 8X SuperDrive with double-layer support. Both the 15- and 17-inch PowerBooks include ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics with 128MB DDR dedicated video memory and now feature built-in Dual Link support to drive Apple’s groundbreaking 30-inch Cinema HD Display as an external monitor, providing more than four million pixels of additional workspace."

Visit Apple's web site for details.

A few years ago, the world was ill prepared to receive a computer that didn't ship with a floppy drive. Nevertheless, Steve Jobs envisioned that floppy drives would one day be insufficient to hold the data that we now carry around in thumbdrives and iPods. The result? Floppy drives were removed from the Apple systems spec and although it took a while, as all major industrial transitions often do, most of us don't even recall what a floppy drive is these days.

Whilst we're still getting over how Apple has made the new iMac G5 flatter than it previously was, some of us may notice that its new found slimness could be attributed to dispensing of a dial-up modem as part of its standard system spec.

I guess, Steve is making another landmark transition in the personal computing world once again. Its beginning to look like we've unofficially entered the era of high speed Internet access and wireless connectivity.

On Wednesday, Microsoft and Yahoo announced their partnership to develop interoperability between their popular Microsoft Messenger and Yahoo Messenger by the second quarter of 2006.

Whilst America Online (AOL), pioneered and dominates the instant-messaging market, its user base is largely confined to within the USA. It is hoped that once interoperability is achieved between Microsoft Messenger and Yahoo Messenger, the combined user base will be larger than that of TIme Warner Inc.'s AOL outside the USA.

"If you leave the boundaries of the US, it's MSN and Yahoo. ... You don't find a whole lot of AOL," said Blake Irving, corporate vice president of MSN.

Yahoo and Microsoft estimate they will have a high percentage of the 275 million people who use IM services worldwide.

Yesterday, Apple premiered its latest digital offering. A new video capable iPod paired with new features to iTunes Music Store facilitating video sales thru the Internet. The newer iPod now features a bigger screen, more storage capacity crammed into a thinner package; 30% thinner and 50% more storage.

In an unprecedented agreement with Walt Disney, you can now buy the latest episodes of 'Desperate Housewives' and 'Lost', a day after their screening.

While full-length movies will not be available to download on the new iPods, iTunes 6 allows fans to download and buy 2,000 music videos, five Disney-owned television shows and six short films from Pixar Animation Studios for 1.99 dollars each.

Apple also revealed the next generation of its iMac G5, which seeks to make the iMac a better integrated multimedia solution. Among some of the new features, include a built-in iSight video camera for video conferencing and its brand new Front Row media system; a sleek six-button remote control that effectively turns a computer into a home entertainment system, allowing a user to activate content from iMacs, including iTunes songs, photo albums, videos, Podcasts and DVDs, from up to 6.6 meters (30 feet) away.

The iMac's appearance has also changed. The refined design of the new iMac G5 is now up to 1/2-inch thinner and 15 percent lighter than the previous generation.

In our quest to seek out an updated version of Lode Runner (see Diagram 1.0) that runs as a native Cocoa application in Mac OS X, we stumbled upon this site that's existence is dedicated to supporting and recognising the efforts of independant Mac game developers, globally.

MacGamesAndMore.com, based in Atlanta, Georgia in the USA, features shareware and freeware games for the Mac OS. From fully compiled Cocoa games, Javascript and even Macromedia Flash based games, its all there. Very reminisce of the times back in the day of the Apple IIe when games like Lode Runner and Rescue Raiders got us to gawk with oohhs and ahhs of amazement.