Linux vs Windows vs Mac

Mac gamers should be pleased to find out that Blizzard Entertainment unveiled Diablo III for Mac.

"It’s just before lunch in Paris, and city of lights has been invaded by hordes of Blizzard fans, eagerly flowing into the Porte de Versailles Exposition Center," reads a Gamasutra piece. "They’ve come from across Europe to the Worldwide Invitational, and during the opening ceremonies, they witness an announcement that the billion-dollar-a-year developer will be releasing a new PC and Mac title, Diablo 3."

Mike Morhaime, president of Blizzard, said: "I know you’ve been wondering if we have any big news for you at this event. Well… as it turns out… we do." During the presentation, the lights turned red, while an acoustic guitarist came up to perform the theme from Diablo II. As a fan, you’re probably getting the tingles just by reading this. Soon after, "a rich cinematic trailer" for Diablo 3 began.

As soon as lead designer Jay Wilson was introduced, he demonstrated gameplay footage from the title, beginning to show off the Forgotten Tombs level. The gameplay is "exceedingly atmospheric" while the "user interface is clean," Gamasutra points out.

Another exciting new aspect is that environments are now destructible, while Wilson confirmed that "Diablo 3 will be filled with more story and quests than any Diablo before." Well, no one would have less, I’m sure.

The game has also been confirmed as a co-operative title, which introduces a new class, namely the "Witch Doctor." Wilson stressed out that some of these details (and the smaller ones we left out in this article) are subject to change, should Blizzard encounter difficulties with the development of the title.

Jay Wilson also noted that Diablo III would be "one of the first games to… have a lot of replayability through randomness." Wilson asked: "Is there randomness?" He answered his own question confidently stating: "absolutely there is," weighing in on random monster encounters and items. Wilson claimed this was actually a key feature of Diablo III.

"We could just make Diablo 2 again – and the fans would probably be happy with that," Wilson went on explaining why they took so long to make the announcement. He went on saying that, "in order to be worthy of Blizzard and worthy of the fans, the game had to be a significant step forward," Gamasutra posts.

Lastly, Diablo III should be seen "as an extremely fast-paced combat game," Blizzard’s designer concluded.

The first patch for the free office suite, NeoOffice 2.2.4 Patch-1 it’s out!

If you are wondering what is NeoOffice, then we can tell you that is a full-featured set of office applications developed especially for Mac OS X. It includes word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing and database programs and it’s based on the OpenOffice.org office suite, with native Mac features. It has the ability to import, edit and exchange files with other office programs. Most Microsoft Office 2007 Word, Excel and PowerPoint files are supported, as well as Excel VBA Macros.

With the release of NeoOffice 2.2.3, the app suite offered QuickTime video support for the first time (but only for Mac OS X 10.4.x and higher), with the ability to import images from scanners and cameras, for different types of projects. NeoOffice 2.2.3 also brought command-clicking on window title bar and Mac OS X Leopard grammar checking support.

NeoOffice 2.2.4 adds native floating tool windows and magnify & swipe trackpad gestures for MacBook users; horizontal scroll wheel support has also been added in 2.2.4.

Fixed bugs by the first patch for NeoOffice 2.2.4:

• an issue where clipping of background images failed when printing
• a problem where Fontwork was missing or banded when printing
• possible crashes at startup or when editing a form in Base due to preferences corruption

Note: NeoOffice 2.2.4 Patch-1 requires a full installation of NeoOffice 2.2.4 or NeoOffice 2.2.3 with NeoOffice 2.2.4 Patch-0 and will not install on any version of NeoOffice 2.2.2. Patch-1 includes all fixes and additions of previous patches.

Steve Langasek has announced the availability of the delayed first alpha release of Ubuntu 8.10, code name "Intrepid Ibex":

"Welcome to Intrepid Ibex Alpha 1, which will in time become Ubuntu 8.10. Alpha 1 is the first in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Intrepid development cycle. The primary changes from Hardy have been the re-merging of changes from Debian and the upgrade of the Linux kernel to a pre-release version of 2.6.26.

As with the beginning of any development cycle, the Intrepid one has seen the merge floodgates open once again. This merge not only brings in lots of new version of various packages, but also a fair number of totally new applications." Read the release announcement and release notes for further details. Only the "alternate" installation images have been made available with this release; download them from here: intrepid-alternate-i386.iso (698MB, MD5, torrent), intrepid-alternate-amd64.iso (697MB, MD5, torrent).

Also released: Kubuntu 8.10 Alpha 1 and Xubuntu 8.10 Alpha 1.

Good news for Apple fans, as is expected that the Mac will continue taking share from traditional PCs as users become more familiar with Apple products and enjoy the enhanced media capabilities.

With new products  for 2008, like the iPhone 3G, MacBook Air, Mac Pro, iTunes Movie Rentals, and major software upgrade and developer platform for the iPhone 3G, Apple has a bright future. The new iPhone3G should drive increased share of the smartphone market.

TV show downloads comes in iTunes Australia with attractive pricing.

If you’ve had an Apple TV or a video-capable iPod at home since March 2007 and wanted to find genuine local content for it you’ll be happy to find out that Apple Australia introduced TV shows to the Australian iTunes store.

If you log on to iTunes you’ll notice a big yellow sign that says ‘TV Shows Just Added’. Clicking the link takes you to the new TV Shows section, where I found 29 different TV shows ranging from international hits like ‘Lost’ to popular local shows like ‘We Can Be Heroes’. Pricing for all TV Shows is $2.99 (compared to US$1.99) and seasons range in price from $65.78 for 22 episodes of ‘Scrubs, Season 6′ to $15.99 for 6 episodes of ‘Sleek Geeks, Season 1′. Also you get a slight discount when buying some season packs, but not on all.

Information about DRM restrictions on iTunes TV shows in Australia are still unknown (we’ve contacted Apple but haven’t had a response). However, if the restrictions are the same as the US store expect to be able to transfer your TV Show purchases to as many iPods or Apple TVs as you like, and like music, you can watch your TV Shows on up to five authorised computers. That means you can legally share your purchased content with up to five friends or family members who have iTunes, but you won’t be able to burn them to DVD. According to Apple, all TV shows are available in 640 x 480 resolution (VGA) — roughly DVD quality. You can preview them for free to see the quality of each series.

Except for iiNet (which offers uncapped iTunes downloads on all their plans) other ISPs include iTunes downloads in your data quota, so you need to be careful when downloading TV Shows. For example, with shows running around 500MB for an hour show, downloading fourteen episodes of Lost will cost you around 7GB of data - more then most basic plans offer.

TV Shows might just be the stimulation that Apple need to reduce local pricing on Apple TV - which is currently costs nearly $200 more in Australia than in the US.

If you’re interested in downloading TV shows from iTunes, now is definitely the time to stock up on iTunes credits. Apple is currently engaged in a price war with BigPond Music and is selling

Microsoft released the first update for Internet Explorer 8 through Windows Update. Terry McCoy, Program Manager Internet Explorer Security said that the Microsoft had started serving the Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 June Security Update through Windows Update.

"If you are using IE8 Beta 1 for Developers, we encourage you to download this security update through Windows Update or the Microsoft Download Center today," said McCoy. The update was released on June 10, 2008, concomitantly with the company’s monthly patch cycle, and the IE Cumulative Security Update for June 2008. The release was pushed through the Download Center and up for grabs for the various versions of Windows which support Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1.

The links for the IE8 Beta 1 update via the Download Center as well as the associated Knowledge Base article are no longer functional. In this regard, IE Beta 1 end users that have not manually downloaded and integrated the update with the latest iteration of the Internet Explorer browser will have to turn to Windows Update for the refresh.

The IE8 Beta 1 June Security Update offers the bulletins designed to address security vulnerabilities including the Critical HTML Objects Memory Corruption flaw, and the Request Header Cross-Domain Information Disclosure hole rated as Important. Another modification aimed at web content developers and designers is also provided via a meta-tag set up to instruct IE8 to render a website’s content as its predecessor, Internet Explorer 7.

Intel has decided against upgrading the computers of its own 80,000 employees to Microsoft’s Vista operating system, a person with direct knowledge of the company’s plans said.

The chip manufacturer made its decision after a lengthy analysis by its internal technology staff of the costs and potential benefits of upgrading to Windows Vista, which has drawn fire from many customers as a buggy, bloated program that requires costly hardware upgrades just to run smoothly.

Intel is testing and deploying Vista in certain departments, but not across the company.

Intel’s decision is certain to sting Microsoft because the two companies have worked closely to align hardware and software from the earliest days of the personal computer; the corporate duo is known as “Wintel” in the PC industry.

Intel is hardly alone in its reluctance to embrace Microsoft’s latest operating system, which was available to corporate customers in November 2006 and later to consumers in January 2007. Large companies routinely hold off a year or so after a new version of Windows is introduced before adopting it, waiting for initial bugs to be eliminated and for applications to be written.

His Gartner colleague, Michael Silver, said that about 30% of corporate customers skip any given new version of Windows. But the percentage will be higher for Vista, Mr. Silver predicted. Gartner’s corporate clients that plan to skip Vista, like Intel, do not see value of this upgrade, particularly since it requires new PC hardware at the time when the economy is weak and corporate budgets are tight.

Still, Microsoft doesn’t seem to be affected too much from the resistance to Vista by some large corporations. Microsoft says there are more than 140 million copies of Vista installed on machines all over the world. Consumers and small businesses simply get the operating system that is on a new machine when they buy a PC, and that is Windows Vista.

Office 2008 for Mac SP1 prevented documents with some very old file types from opening when you double-click the document or when downloading the document from a Web site.

This problem occurs after you install the Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.1 Update. The Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.1 Update blocks users from opening older Word for Mac documents. This is because these documents may pose a security threat.

To work around this issue, open the document from an earlier version of Word for Mac by using the Open command on the File menu in Word 2008 for Mac.

This issue affects the following Word for Mac file types.

Microsoft has releaseda new update for Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac to version 12.1.1. The update contains several improvements to enhance stability and performance.

Latest update for Mac users of its office app suite reveals that it fixes charting problems, Entourage crashing when the computer wakes from sleep and Open XML converting issues.

This update fixes an issue that causes Office 2008 applications to exit unexpectedly when you open or use Office 2008 applications,  an issue that causes the dates in a chart to change unexpectedly when you open a Word 2008 document or a PowerPoint 2008 presentation that contains a chart

Before you install the Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.1 Update, make sure that your computer is running Mac OS X 10.4.9 (Tiger) or a later version of the Mac OS X operating system,  and Microsoft Office 2008 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Update (12.1.0) before you proceed with installing the Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.1 Update.

Open source promoter and Tux fan, Canonical has now released a developer version of the upcoming Ubuntu Mobile Internet Device (MID) Edition 8.04. Available for download in couple of flavors, the operating system is a joint effort of the Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded community and the Moblin.org community. Built upon the foundation of the desktop version of Ubuntu, Ubuntu MID Edition features applications modified to work with a mobile internet device’s smaller screen, a specifically-designed MID browser based on Gecko, lots of customization options, touch screen support and more.

Set to be freely available, Ubuntu MID Edition is expected to be installed onto MIDs arriving before the end of this year. For more info on the MID-friendly operating system check out this page.