MacEdition Pro News : August 15, 2002: O'Reilly and X, More tastes of Ambrosia, Grilled Bott

by MacEdition Staff (feedback)

A Mac OS X conference, O'Reilly?

(Ed. Note: In case you haven't heard...) While Apple’s documentation on Mac OS X can at times be sparse, you cannot say the same for the plethora of third-party books, training courses, and conferences springing up everywhere. The latest is a conference being held by the folks at O’Reilly. The conference is in Santa Clara, California, running from September 30th to October 3rd:

O’Reilly & Associates is pleased to announce our first Mac OS X Conference. Mac OS X is one of the most exciting things happening in the industry today. It’s the confluence of three great traditions -- Unix/open source, Java, and the Mac – as: Carbon, Cocoa, Java * iPod hardware hacks, software mods, Pixo tricks, and more Featured speakers include: James Gosling, David Pouge, Jordan Hubbard, Tim O’Reilly (of course!), Adam Engst, James Duncan Davidson and a bunch of others.

For further information, check out: http://conferences.oreillynet.com/macosx2002/

And because we have no shame, don’t forget our own O’Reilly conference promotion!

Ambrosia Updates

The folks at Ambrosia have been busy in the last few weeks issuing updates to several of their games and utilities.

Firstly, there’s Snapz Pro X, which has been updated to Version 1.0.6. What’s been improved? Here’s the skinny:

Version 1.0.6 is a free update for registered users of Snapz Pro X, and boasts a number of new features:

Version 1.0.6

• Added support for Mac OS X 10.2 “Jaguar”
• Fixed some bugs with QuickTime 6.0
• Added the “ClearScale” technology, which makes scaled screenshots and movies look much better
• Added new window isolation borders for capturing windows cleanly
• Included some additional performance optimizations
• Fixed a few minor bugs

If your Mac came bundled with a free OEM copy of Snapz Pro X, you can upgrade to the latest version with a heavy discount at: https://secure.AmbrosiaSW.com/snapzprox/bundleup.html

("Upgrade" and "discount"? Now there’s two words we’d like to hear from Apple more often.)

Ambrosia has also released a "minor update" (the company’s words) for Diemos Rising to Version 1.0.2. You can get the update at http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/dr/addons.html, but there is a caveat:

This update works ONLY if you already have Deimos Rising 1.0.1. If you don’t, you’ll need to download the complete 1.0.2 package. This update does not work with the Apple bundled version of Deimos (we’re working on a solution to that currently). This update brings Deimos Rising up to 1.0.2, which fixes some bugs with the game controller implementation under Mac OS X, and has some other enhancements/changes.

So, if you only have the original release of the game, you’re looking at a big download for a small update. You can get the full version of Deimos Rising 1.0.2 at http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/dr/.

Last but not least, Ambrosia has updated Pillars of Garendall to Version 1.0.2. Aside from some minor bug fixes and enhancements it’s also released an updated version of Coldstone, the game-creation engine that Pillars of Garendall is based on. If you’re a budding game developer, but stuck for ideas on how to make games using Coldstone, Ambrosia has also released the source code for Trinity. Trinity is a Coldstone-based plug-in for Pillars of Garendall that expands the game.

Pillars of Garendall 1.0.2 can be downloaded at: http://www.ambrosiaSW.com/games/pog/

The Coldstone game-creation engine can be downloaded at: http://www.ambrosiaSW.com/games/coldstone/

The source code for Trinity is available at: http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/games/coldstone/addons.html

Dr. Bott has your audio covered

We’ve had a couple of recent missives from the folks at Dr. Bott, one for the Difusi Speaker Grille and the other for Koss Stereophones.

What’s the speaker grille for? Well, if you have a QuickSilver Power Mac and small children, you may have already noticed its front speaker is a tad exposed.

The Speaker Grille collection has been designed as an aesthetic enhancement and to provide protection from wandering children’s fingers, or other foreign objects inserted to the exposed speaker on the front of Apple Computer’s QuickSilver G4 tower.

[...]

The grilles are held in place by a patented gasket system that requires no adhesive and no glue, enabling you to switch between covers with relative ease.

This is only for QuickSilver Power Macs and the Speaker Grille collection is available for $18.95. For further information check out: http://www.drbott.com/prod/db.lasso?name=grille

On the topic of audio, and in case your small child has already permanently damaged your QuickSilver’s front speaker, Dr. Bott now carries the full line of Koss stereophones. Check out the range of headphones at: http://www.drbott.com/prod/db.lasso?vend=koss

Looking for old ProNews segments? Check out our index at http://old.macedition.com/news/. Do you have news releases or tidbits of interest to the Macintosh professional? Send them to pronewsnotes@macedition.com.