Andrew Pavey

The traditional start to the Apple year is the San Francisco MacWorld. This year there were little in the way of new hardware announcements, just the XServe RAID and the Mini-iPod. The Mini-iPod won't be available till April, and will only aim to extend Appl'es already dominant position in the MP3 player market. Software news was a little more exciting with new upgrades of the now venerable iTunes and iPhoto. The big excitement was the addition of GarageBand to the iLife package. Initial excitement which faded as people started to play with it and realised it barely runs on a mid-range G4. To get the most out of it you really need a G5. Surprise Apple is in the business of making those!

This issue carries several articles on MacWorld announcements. I thought you'd like to see it from several perspectives. I;m trying to balance issues of MACinations up with a articles about hardware, software and how-to articles and the odd basic information about your Mac. Let me know what you'd like to see covered. email to macinations@clubmac.org.au.

We had the website go down in early February. The root cause turned out to be a mal-functioning ADSL router, but it took quite a long time to track that down. I remind members that the club is run by a very small band of volunteers. We try hard but we can't guarantee continuity of servce like a full sized ISP. If you need reliability and 24 hour help desk facilities you have to pay for them via a commercial ISP.

Pohl's Law. Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere will not hate it.

MACinations February 04