The world's most advanced operating system, according to its developer Apple, has been updated to Mac OS X Update 10.4.7 Intel. The updated version of the Tiger roars with 200+ new features all designed to make finding and accessing anything inside the Mac easier than ever. Whether it's Intel or PowerPC-based "youÂ?ll enjoy 21st century innovations before anyone else."

The updated Tiger is said to sport a breakthrough search technology, stunning graphics and media, unparalleled connectivity, an intuitive user interface and a virtual toolbox chock full of cleverly integrated features, and a rock-solid UNIX foundation. The result is the "most innovative, stable and compatible desktop operating system on the planet. Period." Which is possible if you're from Earth. If you're reading this from another planet, feel free to disagree.

Anyways, the best OS on this planet includes the Spotlight (Stop looking. Start finding.) where you can find anything from emails, contacts, images, and others on your computer as quickly as you type. Also in is a new Dashboard that checks the time, watches the weather, tracks flights, views stock prices and finds a local restaurant in an instant with a single click. The Safari RSS, which delivers all the latest news, information and articles from thousands of websites in one simple-to-read, searchable article has been squeezed in the update as well.

The 10.4.7 Update is recommended for all users and includes various fixes for:

• Preventing AFP deadlocks and dropped connections
• Saving Adobe and Quark documents to AFP mounted volumes
• Bluetooth file transfers, pairing and connecting to a Bluetooth mouse, and syncing to mobile phones
• Audio playback in QuickTime, iTunes, Final Cut Pro, and Soundtrack Pro applications
• Ensuring icons are spaced correctly when viewed on desktop
• Determining the space required to burn folders
• iChat audio and video connectivity, creating chat rooms when using AIM
• Importing files into Keynote 3
• PDF workflows when using iCal and iPhoto
• Reliable use of Automator actions within workflows
• Importing and removing fonts in Font Book
• Syncing addresses, bookmarks, calendar events and files to .Mac
• Compatibility with third party applications and devices
• Previous standalone security updates

You can get the Mac OS X Update v10.4.7 on Intel for $129 at The Apple Store.

On Monday, Intel, the largest chip manufacturer, took the sheets off its new dual-core Xeon Processor 5100 series. The chips, codenamed Woodcrest, are high-volume server and workstation chips which are capable of 135% performance improvement, and 40% power reduction over their previous server products. Power consumption will start at 40 watts for lower models, going up to 65 and 80 watts for the faster processors.

This is very important for Apple's view of things, aside from the obvious inclusion in future products, this would most certainly mean cheaper and lower prices for the current range of processors used in Apple machines.

The new Core micro-architecture is being implemented, which is based on the a power sensitive blueprint design. It is expected that this design will be used in two forthcoming chips for the desktop and notebook called Conroe and Merom. These are expected in July and August, but we all know about delays that can be involved. The 5100, will be shipped at speeds up to 3.0Ghz, with 1333Mhz front side bus and 4 MB of shared L2 cache. The chips are compatible with the current Bensley Platform, which means that they can be dropped in with the current pin format. The platform uses faster and more reliable memory technology, FB-DIMMs, Intel Virtualization Technology, Intel Active Server Manager and Intel I/O Acceleration Technology.

"Simply put, the Core micro-architecture is a technical marvel that is driving a new era of power efficiency without compromising on what can only be described as eye-popping dual-core 64-bit performance," said Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and general manager of IntelÂ?s Digital Enterprise Group.

Pricing will start at $209 to $851 in 1000 unit quantities, and Intel expect the family of processors to be the fastest-ramping ever. However, they are still loosing ground to the AMD range of processors, and are aiming to rectify things with Woodcrest, Merom and Conroe.

Flip4Mac WMV, the collection of QuickTime components that allow Mac users to play, import, and export Windows Media files, has just been upgraded to Beta v2.1.0.29. New in the latest release are:

• Universal binary support for Intel Macs
• Playback optimizations for Intel Macs
• Significant export optimizations for PowerPC Macs
• Multi language audio support in player
• Overlay when importing WMV content in trial mode
• Support for web authors to disable "save as" feature in embedded stream

A few improvements and fixes were also squeezed into v2.1.0.29. Support for MMS servers and live streams is one of those improved for this new version. Fixes include DCT blocking issue (progressive deterioration with increasing distance from previous keyframe) and encode errors when the audio bit rate is set higher than the video bit rate.

Since this is not yet the final release, there are still some things that are yet to see its inclusion in the Flip4Mac app. Among them are the updated user guide and the fix for 2-pass VBR green shift issue.

If this app strikes your fancy, feel free to download it below (it's compatible with mac Intel and Power PC OS X v10.3.9, 10.4 or later and QuickTime v6.5, 7.0 or later). After test driving it, help make the final issue better by filling up the feedback form here.

Download: [Flip4Mac WMV Beta v2.1.0.29]

Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2006 is to kick off on August 2006. The event will feature Steve Jobs as its keynote speaker. A preview of the Mac OS X "Leopard" will also be shown by Jobs come August 7, 2006 at the San Francisco's Moscone West.

During the WWDC 2006, there will be special sessions on performance optimization using the development tools of Apple software. The developers will also be receiving detailed information on developing applications that take advantage of the Intel-based Macs' performance.

This annual developers conference will be attended by other Apple executives like Bertrand Serlet, senior VP of Software Engineering, Philip Schiller, senior VP of Worldwide Product Marketing, and Scott Forstall, VP of Platform Experience. The conference, which is to last five days, will cost $1600 per attendee.

UGS Corp said it is planning to add the Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" to their list of supported environments for its NX digital product development as well as its Teamcenter digital lifecycle management software solutions.  Already available for Windows and Unix/Linux, the software provides an integrated solution for a full range of development processes in product design, manufacturing and simulation with a suite of integrated CAD/CAM/CAE applications.

"We are proud to offer our products on Mac OS X in order to help even more companies transform their process of innovation," said UGS. "As the first major PLM supplier to offer its software products for Mac OS X, UGS can now give worldwide Mac users access to best-of-breed PLM solutions."

A limited edition version of NX is already out for PowerPC-based Macs under UGS' Early Adopter Program. The company will eventually add support for Intel-based Macs as part of a future product release. As for the Teamcenter Engineering Integration for NX, it will available for the Mac OS X in 2007.

If you missed out on Apple's previous offer of refurbished nanos and iPods, don't fret because Apple Store is back with an even more enticing offer of refurbished iPod bundles and Mac minis.

A $49 512MB iPod shuffle comes with a free iPod shuffle armband. Ok, that may be an offer you can refuse, but can you say 'no' to an external battery pack? If you're through with the shuffle, you can get one of those 20GB clickwheel iPod with free iPod Dock for $169. For just an additional $30, you can have a 20GB color display iPod.

Refurbished Mac minis powered by 1.5Ghz Intel Core Solo with 512MB RAM and 60GB SATA hard drive/Combo drive is offered at $519. If you want bigger storage capacity of 80GB, you can get it at a discounted price of $699. The 1.42GHz G4 with 512MB RAM, 60GB Ultra ATA hard drive, a Combo drive, and a  32MB ATI Radeon 9200 graphics card is a steal at $519. The 80GB with SuperDrive, DVI or VGA video output version is only $599.

Sealed with expert professional photographer's approval, the latest  version of the powerful image editing tool Aperture, now allows users to run it on both PowerPC-based and the new Intel-based Macs, including MacBook Pro.

Recent additions are an improved RAW image quality, you'll see the results in areas such as noise reduction, sharpening and highlight recovery. It also gives you the ability to retain the original 1.0 RAW decode to maintain the image integrity. Professional Project Management lets you import photos from a wide variety of sources and preserves the method you used to organize files when you drag folders from your hard drive. Enjoy powerful compare and select tools by automatically creating stacks, a full screen workspace, viewing images side by side and having your metadata on display.

Aperture is also built with nondestructive image processing by protecting your RAW and identifying them as digital masters. It also has versatile printing and publishing capabilities. You can print contact sheets, lab prints and custom designed books or share images on the web with its professionally designed Gallery and Journal templates.

This all-in-one post-production tool for photographers is available through the Apple Store for $299.00 and will arrive at your doorsteps within 24 hours.

For a select few, that is.

Most of those who installed Warcraft III in their Intel Macs experienced game crashes. Sometimes the Frozen Throne expansion crashes.

jlukas tells us how he was able to install Warcraft III and play it without it crashing. He had previously tried installing it but like most Intel Mac users experienced, the game crashed. He saw a notification message from Console.app saying that loading LiveType.component failed.

What he did was delete LiveType.component for Warcraft III to work. He also did some debugging and did these steps to make the game work:

• Navigate to /Library/Quicktime/
• Create and Archive of LiveType.component
• Delete LiveType.component
• Empty your trash

Hopefully this will work for some Intel Mac users dealing with the same problem.

I don't know about you but I like to keep tabs on my Mac. I try to keep it from burning up inside (which I usually don't have any luck with), and I like to restart my mac every 1000 hours or so. If you like to keeps tabs on your Mac then you should be using iStat.

iStat is a dashboard widget that keeps track of all your computer's important information like CPU temperature, memory usage, disk space, and run time. This new version supports CPU temp on new Intel macs (Now all I need to do is get one). And like all the greatest apps it's completely free.

Download: [iStat 1.5.1]

A Large Ion Collider Experiment, aka "ALICE," is a mega-project with a micro-objective - to explore the nature of matter at the smallest levels. This study will ultimately produce 10 petabytes of data every year - the amount of information handled by the entire European telecommunications network, or the equivalent of a stack of 750 MB CD's 20 km (15 miles) high.

The physicists at the CERN international particle physics lab in Geneva, Switzerland have chosen the new Intel-powered Apple computers to assist them in handling this massive amount of data.

"Now that Apple has moved to Intel processors, we see real opportunities to use the Mac as our main computational engineÂ?, says Federico Carminati, ALICE Computing Coordinator. Â?Apple is a very nice solution which offers two environments in one system Â? UNIX processing power and the world of office applicationsÂ?.

ALICE's computing framework has been under construction for many years. Because of the specialized nature of the research, the physicists must be able to design their own software. Data from the ALICE study will be stored in a mixed network of 40 computing centers located across the globe.