New & Noteworthy: OS X Installers; MacInstruct tutorial;

Library building; Apple vs. Gateway; more

Installers in OS X--The Good and The Guilty From Workingmac.com: "Some time back, I wrote a reasonably well-received rant about installers, and the bad habits of some installer builders. Having done that, I thought I should point out some people who are doing things right, and some more who aren't." More.

MacInstruct Tutorial - Troubleshooting 101: First Response An excerpt: "The first thing you need to do when you have a problem is often the hardest: stay calm. When something goes wrong and at a very bad time (and, according to Murphy, that's exactly when it will happen), it is very difficult to approach a problem in a positive state of mind. Try to have faith in the fact that, even though it may take you a while to find the source of the problem, when you do, because it's a Mac, it will probably be fairly easy to fix." More.

A Library as Big as the World From BusinessWeek: "Brewster Kahle has the technology to assemble the ultimate archive of human knowledge. What's stopping him? Restrictive copyright laws Brewster Kahle is tackling a big task. And despite some looming clouds, he's pretty darn excited about it. Kahle, a 41-year-old serial entrepreneur, is building the Digital Age's equivalent of the ancient library of Alexandria." More.

Apple's latest desktop or Gateway's 500SE: Which wins? From the LA Times: "To answer that question, I've spent the last couple of weeks using a new iMac alongside another new, low-cost computer: Gateway's 500SE, which runs Microsoft Windows XP." More.

Crooner Uses [Mac] Computers to Replace Sheet Music From the New York Times: "His patented idea came to him one day several years ago when his big band was playing outdoors and the sheet music was blowing around. Why not, he thought, have all 16 band members read their music off computer screens instead?" More.

Dual chips give Power Mac the edge From AP: "A few weeks after launching the revamped iMac, Apple upgraded its line of Power Macs designed for professionals. Atop the list was the company's first machine to hit the 1-gigahertz threshold." More.

Unix on Rise? Mac's OS X May Mark Spot From Computerworld: "In the several months I've been using OS X, I've returned to the days when computing was fun for hobbyists. That's not an endorsement, needless to say, for a general-purpose platform, where the main requirement is that it should just work. But to the extent that software innovation might revive after a long dry stretch under the thumb of the Redmond monopolist, the industry could be in for a new phase of innovation, especially since this is one platform Microsoft doesn't control." More.

Sonicblue's Rio Riot Can't Beat Apple iPod on Speed, Ease, Size From the Wall Street Journal: "If I had never seen Apple Computer's revolutionary iPod portable music player, I would think the new Rio Riot music player from Sonicblue was pretty cool. But I have seen the iPod, and so the Riot looks and works like a larger, slower, predecessor product, when in fact it has just gone on sale this week, nearly four months after the iPod." More.