New & Noteworthy: Consumer portable; Avid apology; more

Consumer portable due by the fall A Reuters article contains an intriguing quote from Fred Anderson, Apple's chief financial officer. He stated that "the December quarter would be the first quarter in which Apple would have all four product lines shipping in volume." This implies the consumer portable, due to be announced at Macworld Expo, will ship by October.

Avid apology In an "An Open letter to Avid's Macintosh Customers" (posted on the Avid web site), Avid's CEO states: "The blizzard of NT announcements and some of our own rhetoric obscured the fact that we are also continuing to support the Mac. That was wrong and we want to correct it."

Trade up to a G4 XLR8 announces full compatibility with future CPU designs [e.g., G4 processors] through its new XLR8 Performance Trade-Up Program.

Planet Earth 2.1 is the latest update to this 3-D Earth simulation. It increases the resolution and update frequency of the cloud image. The resolution is four times more detailed and the frequency of cloud updates has been increased from 4 times a day to 24 in some areas.

The Applefritter web site documents Apple prototypes, Apple II and early Mac clones,various hacks, and the Compubrick computers.