FileMaker Inc. may announce the release of FileMaker Pro 8.5 and Pro 8.5 Advanced - its first release as a Universal Binary for Intel processors - on Monday. According to its maker, FileMaker Pro 8.5 runs up to 91% faster on Intel-based Macs than on PowerPC systems.

FileMaker v8.5 also features a Web Viewer where information on Web pages can be downloaded directly into FileMaker databases. The upcoming v8.5 already includes MapQuest/Google Maps, Google Search, Google Finance, FedEx, and Wikipedia in its address book. Web integration has also been expanded to Web-enabled applications.

Other additions will include an online Learning Center with over 30 QuickTime-based video tutorials, sample databases, documentation, a searchable Knowledge Base, and other resources. Upgrade to FileMaker v8.5 will cost $99.

Intel is just about ready to launch "Montecito" - the dual-core Itanium 2 processor for servers - sometime within this month according to sources close to the company. Montecito is widely seen by industry observers as Intel's attempt at regaining its technological dominance in the server space. Montecito is expected to offer improved performance with less power consumption. However, some analysts are unsure whether Montecito will make any difference in Itanium sales because three out of the four largest server vendors either have no Itanium products or any plans of manufacturing Itanium-based products. So far, Intel declined to confirm the date.

iPartition is an application that repartitions your Mac's HD without reformatting it. This way, you don't lose valuable date or spend a lot of time backing them up. With its intelligent partitioning, there is no need to manually reorganise your HD to make space to enlarge a partition.

iPartition supports all types of hard disk, including removables like Zip disks and external FireWire or USB disks. It also works with Apple and GUID partition schemes with the ability to convert between the two schemes.

iPartition reorganizes the HD for:

• Installing other operating systems
• Performing a rolling operating system upgrade
• Separating data and applications
• Limiting disk space usage

System Requirements for iPartition:

• Mac OS X 10.3.7 or later (including Tiger), 450MHz PowerPC or better or Intel Mac, 512MB RAM.

iPartition is available via download for about $50.00and comes with the iDefrag Lite disk compaction tool. It is compatible with Boot Camp on Intel Macs and won't break bootable OS 9 partitions.

Although the OLPC project's $100 laptop seems so enticing at times, maybe we should just let those who really have less in life use it and we should just move on to something else.  Recently, Apple released the $899 iMac for the education market which replaces Apple's CRT computer - the eMac.

The for educational-purposes-only iMac has a 17-inch widescreen display and a 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo processor. It is also packed with a 512MB DDR2 SDRAM, 24x Combo drive, 80GB hard drive, built-in iSight and wireless networking, microphone, and speakers.

However, the new iMac ships with the integrated Intel GMA 950 graphics chipset instead of the usual and more powerful ATI X16000 found in the consumer versions of the new iMac Core Duo. The new education-only iMac configuration is available immediately from the educational Apple store.

If you're into model railroading, then you would surely have a blast with this Mac application. RailModeller rids you of the hassle of using cumbersome pen and paper or hard to decipher CAD applications to design your model-railroad trackplans.

It lets you build layouts by simply dragging the tracks from its extensive library of more than 160 tracks of many major manufacturers, to the plan. Tracks magnetically snap to free track-segments on the trackplan, automatically rotate to the correct angle, and can optionally be colorized automatically to match the color of the segment. You can view your masterpiece in 3D, giving you a better idea of how the actual thing will look like. It is available for $30 USD.

Changelog:

• Improved print dialog with "Fit Worksheet" option for single page printouts and customizable footer
• Several bugfixes
• New and updated libraries (now more than 160 libraries included)

System Requirements:

• Apple Macintosh (PowerPC or Intel)
• Mac OS 8.6 - Mac OS X 10.2 - 10.4
• 15 MB available disk space
• CarbonLib 1.6 (or better)
• QuickTime 4 (or better)
• when running Mac OS 8.6/9 optionally an OpenGL extension

Download: [RailModeller 2.3.4 Free Trial]

When the infamous MacBook Pro was released to the masses back at the start of the year, it was housed in a very fetching aluminium case, gained somewhat from its predecessor. When the MacBook was released recently, that too supported a 'newish' case, which gained popularity thanks to its slimline appearance, and its choice of white and black. We have now learned that the new release of the PowerMac will be housed within a newly designed case.

The new case will be different enough to allow instant distinction between the PowerPC and Intel Core Duo variants. Together with the cases, there will be a few choices on which processors to adopt. The new Intel Core Duo will be available for the PowerMac with 2 chips, A.K.A. Quad-core platform. It is not known whether the PowerMac will adopt the soon-to-be released Core Duo 2 chip, codenamed Conroe. The mobile variant is not expected till Fall.

The MacBook Pro will also have a new case for its range. However rumour has it that this will not be released till the system adopts the Intel Core Duo 2 chip, codenamed Merom. We would hope that issues are fixed in the new case release including heat expulsion.

Call of Duty 2 is a worthy follow up to 2003's critically acclaimed Call of Duty. Developed by Infinity Ward along with Pi Studios and published by Activision, this game received a near-perfect review from the media and gamers alike.

You can play the game in Single Player mode and become either Private Vasili Ivanovich Koslov of the Red Army, Sergeant John Davis of the British Army, Tank Commander David Welsh also from the British Army or Corporal Bill Taylor of the US Army. Playing the game in Multiplayer mode, you can choose to be part of the American, Soviet, British or German forces.

A single-player demo has now been released by macgamefiles that features the mission entitled, The End of the Beginning, that takes place in November 6, 1942 in El Daba, Egypt. You are ordered to eliminate the German artillery crews at the docks as a member of the British infantry.

System Requirements:

• Mac OS X 10.3.9
• 1.8 GHz PowerPC G5/Intel chipset
• 512 MB RAM
• NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 or ATI Radeon 9600 or higher
• 64 MB VRam
• Supported Video cards: NVIDIA GeForce 5200, 6600, 6800, 7800 ATI Radeon 9600, 9650, 9700, 9800, X600, X800, X850, X

Download: [Call of Duty 2 Demo 1.0]

Adobe has now released the Public Beta or the pre-released version of Flash Player 9 software for Mac users. This content has been made available to developers and consumers alike to take it for a spin. The purpose of this beta is for the company to receive feedback to verify that the new player is compatible with existing content and for developers to get a chance to test their content and applications as well before the actual release of the product.

So far this product has garnered mixed reviews from those that has already tested it. There have been reports of unexpected quits starting from the installation process up to various browsers on wake-from-sleep when the Flash 8.5 beta is present.

Platform	Browser
Intel-based Mac OS X 10.4.6	Safari 2.03 or newer, Firefox 1.5.0.2 or newer , Opera 9 (build 3216) or newer

Download: [Adobe Flash Player 9]

It looks like a busy week for Intel. The Godfather of Chips is expected to ship its new Core Duo T2700, a 2.33GHz dual-core 65nm Yonah-based CPU for high end notebooks and desktop replacement (DTR) devices sometime this week. The processor should start showing up in high-end notebooks in the near future.

Intel's new, dual-core Yonah processor has been voted most likely to be the CPU found in the first Intel-based Macs. Early test-drives showed it was a fairly strong candidate to replace the single core Pentium M offering performance equal to that of AMD's Athlon 64 X2 without an on-die memory controller.

The company will also comically release its Core Duo U2500 ultra-low voltage (ULV) CPU. The U2500 is a 1.2GHz Yonah processor with 2MB L2 cache and a 533MHz FSB consumes only about 0.75 W during normal operation.

It seems that Mac developers and power users no longer have the capability to rebuild, replace, and alter the OS X kernel from source code. This means that Linux clearly has the upper hand in terms of openness -- the very same reason why it has become the second most popular OS.

What does proprietary mean? End users generally do not have the ability to run the software for any purpose, study and modify the software, copy the software and provide it to third parties, and make and release improvements to the software.

The Darwin open source Mach/Unix core shared by OS X Tiger client and OS X Tiger Server remains completely open for PowerPC Macs. If you happen to be a proud owner of a G3, G4 or CS Mac, you can hack your own Darwin kernel and use it to boot OS X. However, if you have an Intel-based Mac desktop or notebook, your kernel and device drivers are impenetrable...for now.

Although Apple is largely generous to the open source community by open sourcing internally developed technologies such as QuickTime Streaming Server and Bonjour zero-config networking, the source code required to make a personalized OS X kernel, however, is gone.

What does this mean to Apple users? This step back to a proprietary kernel means that all users must accept a fixed level of performance since they can't configure it by themselves. The default OS X kernels are built for broad compatibility rather than speed and throughput. That doesn't matter at present, because all Intel Macs are built on the same Core Duo/Core Solo 32-bit architecture.

Apple is afraid of losing hardware sales to software pirates. They do not want to face the possibility of dealing with the selling and distribution of cloned Macs in foreign markets with weak protection for intellectual property. They have all the reasons to be paranoid, but not paranoid enough to slam its doors to the open source community.