New & Noteworthy: Apple in Memphis; ProVUE Panorama; Wither Mac OS 9?; LEM reviews $799 iMac; Tony Hawk; SSSCA flaws; Copy

Apple to open Saddle Creek store despite sign battle From the Memphis Business Journal: "Apple Computer is going ahead with its plans to open its new retail store in Germantown's Saddle Creek shopping center, despite ongoing wrangling with the city's Design Review Committee over sign issues. The grand opening for the new store will take place on Oct. 13 at 10 a.m." More.

ProVUE Panorama 4.0.1 is a RAM-based relational database package. This update includes several new wizards, a new personal license that allows use on multiple machines, an enhanced image pack, and nudge guides for aligning objects on forms.

Why Apple Can't Pull the Plug on OS 9 From BusinessWeek: "The reason, as is often the case in life and business, is an issue of timing. Today, too many users -- and too many programs -- are still dependent on OS 9, the last version of the original Mac operating system. No doubt Apple would love to retire OS 9 now. The company has spent the better part of the last eight years trying to develop a successor to its classic operating system. It was a quest that became Apple's Vietnam, a quagmire that helped to topple the three chief executives." More.

Entry level iMac a good value for many From Low End Mac "Looking at the value equation, the cost of memory, the cost of external CD-RW drives, and the going rate for internal CD-RW drives (alas, not slot-loading at this time), the price difference between these two iMacs should be on the order of $120. At $200 less, the new iMac is a much better value than the $999 CD-RW model." More.

Tony Hawk: Mac user From Macworld: "When Hawk isn't on his skateboard, chances are he's in front of his Mac, doing everything from burning CDs to editing digital video." More.

Convergence indeed: Picking cotton for Bill This essay by Michael Fraase outlines a dark future if the proposed Security Systems Standard & Certification Act (SSSCA) becomes law. An excerpt: "Microsoft is in the sole position of being able to make its products, data format extensions, and protocol enhancements de facto standards for an entire market without regard to the quality of those products or technologies or the needs and desires of anyone who actually uses them."

Copy Protection Robs the Future From an essay by Dan Bricklin (co-creator of the original modern spreadsheet program, VisiCalc): "As human beings, we benefit greatly from the works of others. Artists, thinkers, scholars, and performers create works that we all enjoy, learn from, and are inspired by. Many works are timeless. Either standing alone or in the context of their time or other times, they are valuable periodically years after they are created."[Margin note: Like many longtime computer users, we have lost a file's contents because a data format was inaccessible after its associated application became obsolete. Imagine a world where user data is locked in copy-protected formats, some hardware based, expressly designed to prohibit export or copying.]

High Court Nixes MS Appeal From Wired: "Microsoft has been denied its best chance to overturn a court ruling that dubbed it a recidivist monopolist. On Tuesday, the US Supreme Court declined to hear Microsoft's appeal that could have prevented as-yet-unspecified penalties from being levied against the software maker. Without comment, the justices rejected Microsoft's petition, leaving the case in the hands of US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly." More.

Microsoft has one more chance to bargain in good faith From the San Jose Mercury News "The high court was sending a polite message Tuesday that it wasn't buying Microsoft's contention that a trial judge's legal judgments were poisoned by his contempt for the company's behavior. So the case goes back to a new trial judge whom Microsoft will undoubtedly irritate, given the company's continuing denial, contradicted by every federal judge it has faced in this case, that it is a lawbreaker." More.

AMD tries to wean PC industry from CPU-megahertz benchmarks From Semiconductor Business News: "Instead of measuring PC central processing units by the megahertz of clock speeds--as has been the industry's practice for nearly two decades--AMD today said it was launching an initiative to develop a new reliable metric to judge CPU performance in standard personal computer applications." More.

Another look at current events though the eyes of editorial cartoonists Including the final page from Herblock (1909-2001), who began drawing political cartoons when Herbert Hoover was president. More.