We all love South Park for its humor, satire, the vulgar words and the creative ways of saying the word "s**t" as often as possible in a single episode. Did you know that every new South Park episode is delivered right on the day it airs? Other than the sheer creative talent of the South Park production crew, the show credits its hectic production to Apple computers.

JJ Franzen, technical director at South Park Studios says, "We have very complex stuff that needs to be done very fast and we need to know that we can trust the machines to handle whatever we throw at them without crumbling. ThatÂ?s why we use Macs."

It used to be that the Studio used construction paper cutouts to play as Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny and the other characters. Such a method became too time-consuming, however; the Studio then decided to mimic the original look and feel of construction paper puppets using SGI workstations.

The animation crew uses Adobe Photoshop and Maya. They scan the original paper cutouts and backgrounds, and use these as textures in Maya. Using computers in producing episodes cut down the process from 3 months to 6 days. Recently, a new special-effects technique in producing the cartoon has been introduced: Motion, a graphics software from Apple, which allows snow to appear more naturally in South Park, Colorado.

After animation and audio, the editorial department cuts the episode for broadcast using Macs running on Avid. The team has custom-built the studio to include a 120 processor render farm, more than 30 Mac workstations, and almost 10 terabytes of Xserve RAID storage space.

Prior to using Apple, Maya was rendered on Windows workstations. But Maya would crash often, requiring the entire system to be rebooted. When Maya was released for the Mac, the team made the switch, and now, whenever the application crashes, only the application has to be rebooted - not the entire system.

South Park Studio says that their Mac workstations are fast and reliable. They're coupled with a 120-processor (AMD Athlon) Linux render farm, effectively doubling the amount of shots that the team could do. Macs could definitely keep up with the South Park crew's insane production schedule.

Frank Agnone, supervising producer at South Park Studios in Los Angeles, says that Apple's quick-to-master style is very useful. "Apple is known in the industry as being very user friendly and when youÂ?re making a big switchover, that factors in ... With Apple and Mac OS X, in-house production could make the transition easily."

So we told you before how the possible release of the Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard this Spring could be delayed. It turns out that this rumor holds no truth. Apple has responded to these reports, saying that Leopard will be released this Spring as scheduled and not on October, as previously thought.

We all know how risky believing in rumors is, but sometimes it's nice to dream. We guess the worth of the rumor must always depend on the worth of the sources. There were a lot of clues that eventually pointed out a Spring release for the Leopard. Besides, it's always safe to stick with the official announcements from the Apple people themselves.

There's been a lot of hype surrounding the Mac OS X Leopard as of late. It was initially expected by industry insiders to ship some time in mid-to-late March. Looks like the mavens struck out this time.

Anonymous Ars Technica tipsters are now pointing to mid-April as the possible launch period of the new OS, but even that is doubtful. According to other unnamed Ars sources, developers are saying "I'd say it's barely beta, not Final or Gold Master."

That could be quite a wait considering that the trend with Apple is that it usually picks up the pace in the final month and a half of the slated timetable then takes a couple of weeks more to manufacture the CDs, DVDs and packaging. This may very well push the Launch date as far as early June if all goes through the worst possible scenario.

Of course, there's a chance that Apple might be putting some of its departments under information blackout, and what the sources are seeing may indeed be the final version. "If what we have now is the final build, I am NOT buying Leopard," retorts one of the sources.

In related news, another Ars tipster revealed that Leopard will not have InputManager plug-ins, which essentially takes away hacks that make Safari plug-ins possible.

The buzz is on again as Apple announced some of the more important agenda in its June 11 to 15 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in which IT professionals from more than 45 countries are expected to attend.

The highlight will undoubtedly be the new Mac OS X leopard, which is geared at creating the perfect development environment to allow developers to easily integrate podcasts and other media to Apple applications.

There will also be a lot in store for developers new to the platform regarding Mac Essentials and other development tools. There's a significant amount of speculation that there will be more announcements regarding the much-hyped iPhone which is set to ship in June. Apple shot down the rumor by saying "we've announced it's releasing in June, and we're not saying anymore about it."

Click on the read URL to get all the details available.

Of course if it comes from NewsBiscuit, it is meant to be in good jest (unless you are that rare breed without a sense of humor), but if this were really to happen, Bill Gates would flip his flippin' top off. The hot topic of this laughable day on NewsBiscuit: the ever-helpful Paperclip from Microsoft Word has decided to clip himself to Steve Jobs' pocket protector.

Now that's a hot product for iLaunch to launch with.

Now, calm down, ye peasants at the gates with pitchforks: it's a joke, remember? Of course, when you think about it, Clippy's sorta "on loan" to Macs via Microsoft Office for Mac OS X. Or, as we in the gaming world like to call it - after deleting all the unnecessary and hurtful words from protesting fanboys, "multiplatform".

Clippy the "helpful" clip... Speaking of jokes, remember the one about the lost helicopter pilot and the Microsoft Help support staff?

Answer after the jump! You see, we're still afraid of the peasants with pitchforks.

 

Mac user Todd Lambert lists down four useful software for Macs. Some of us don't even know they exist, or that these great software could be had at absolutely no cost. Some of these software include the following:

1. WhatSize - WhatSize is a simple tool that allows the user to quickly measure the size in bytes of a given folder and all subfolders and files within it. It is nearly identical to Omni DiskSweeper except that it's free.

2. RSS Menu - A simple, menu bar based RSS reader. Kept very updated by the developer, super lightweight and takes up very little resources. Runs all the time, so you won't have to keep checking for news.

3. Serverskine - A web development team designed this for web developers who need to keep track of information regarding servers, customer login information, and other daily details that can often overwhelm.

4. Gawker - Offers time elapsed videography. Lets you record every 5, 10, or 30 seconds, or any time value you wish. So good, distributing it with iSight will be a great idea.

Download: WhatSize 10.3.9
Download: RSS Menu 1.9.5
Download: Serverskine 1.0.5

Note: You may download Gawker by following the Via link below.

 

There are some who believe that the Mac OS X Leopard will be released some time around May. How do they come up with this predicted release date? These are some hints:

• At WWDC 2006 (August 2006) Steve Jobs announced a "Spring 2007" Leopard release
• Apple executives continue to highlight a "Spring 2007" release
• The latest Leopard Build (9A377a) was released to Apple Developer Connection members on March 4, 2007 - buzz in the Apple community is that the release is far from stable and not ready for release
• Steve Jobs's WWDC speech indicated Leopard had several "Top Secret Features" that could not be announced until a later date
• Macworld 2007 (January 2007) didn't disclose any "Top Secret Features"
• No details of any top secret features have emerged since then
• Mac OS X 10.4.9 Tiger has been released

Aside from these, some other factors that say that Leopard will be released in May: Spring begins March 21, and Summer begins June 21. In short, Leopard will be released between these two dates, given the "Spring release". The release dates of Leopard books also happen around May and June.

And lastly, iPhone will be released at the WWDC 2007. The darling of Apple products deserves a strategic release date, and many think that the release of Leopard will not coincide with the release of the iPhone.

It looks like Apple's working hard to patch all the security holes on the Mac OS X. Security Update 2007-003 is currently the seventh one for this year alone, including third party software like Flash Player, OpenSSH and MySQL.

Well, we all know what would happen if you leave your Mac unprotected. That's just like ringing the chow bell and bellowing, "Come and get it!" Vulnerabilities can range from gaining full control of your machine or crashing it, which by all means are both very bad. Here's a quick rundown of which problems Security Update 2007-003 addresses:

• ColorSync
• CoreGraphics
• Crash Reporter
• cups
• Directory Services
• DiskImages Framework
• Flash Player Plug-in
• Foundation
• gnutar
• OpenSSH
• Print Center
• QuickDraw
• sudo

If you have a Mac OS X v10.3.9 and Mac OS X Server v10.3.9, you'll need to download this megapatch. Owners of Mac OS X v10.4.9 can rest easy as this security patch is already installed within their version.

"The Efficient Mac User" at Low End Mac has listed 11 ways to optimize the performance of your Mac - whether it be a high-end or low-end unit. Yes, some items on that list are pretty simple and well-known, but they're all good basics that any Mac user should know, so we're putting them here as well.

The goal here is to save on RAM and processor resources - even by doing something as simple as turning off or removing unwanted applications and widgets.

QJ.NET also has a guide on troubleshooting OS X from July, 4, 2006 based on an article from Apple Matters. There is also an article on clearing up more hard drive space.

Remove unnecessary code. A significant number of recent software for the Mac are programmed to work with PowerPC processors and Intel processors. If you have a PowerPC processor and don't intend to migrate to an Intel Mac, or if you already have an Intel Mac, then you don't need the software code that lets your applications run on PowerPC! You can look for utilities like XSlimmer that will "slim down" the code on your software.

(For example, my friend Samantha has an Intel Mac, so she uses XSlimmer to strip away the PowerPC code in her applications - this makes her applications run faster. There's a bonus: it also reduces the size of the applications so she saves on hard drive space!)

Clean out startup items. Some applications entrench themselves in your Login Items folder, and that makes these applications automatically open each time you restart or login to your account. Go to Apple Menu > System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items to see a list of these startup items. Click on one item in the list and hit the minus button at the bottom of the list to remove that item. NOTE: Be careful about removing important or critical applications - just remove the ones you know you don't need.

Turn off Universal Access, Bluetooth, Speech Recognition, and Internet Sharing. If you don't use any of these, turn them off (go to the Apple Menu > System Preferences).

Clean out "Other" System Preferences items. While you're in Apple Menu > System Preferences, you can also remove Preference Panes in the "Other" section.

Know the build of your software. If you're using an Intel Mac, you may be better off upgrading your software or application (most likely there's a patch available online). For example, your software may be currently running on the Rosetta translator that lets PowerPC applications run on an Intel Mac. If your application has a patch that can upgrade it to an Intel or "universal" version, then your application won't need to call on Rosetta anymore.

Remove languages and translations. Utilities like Monolingual will remove language localizations that you don't need. As Ed Eubanks Jr. said in his article, chances are you're not using Catalan, Farsi, or Klingon.

More ways to optimize your Mac's performance - after the Jump.

 

If you're an independent software maker who has dreams of making it big as the next Apple developer, this is good news for you. The Apple Design Awards is already accepting entries. The Awards, well on its 12th year, recognizes technical excellence and outstanding achievement in the design and development of software for the Mac OS X.

The Apple Design Awards has seven categories, namely: Best Mac OS X Leopard Application, Best Mac OS X User Experience, Best Mac OS X Developer Tool, Best Mac OS X Game, Best Mac OS X Scientific Computing Solution, Best Mac OS X Dashboard Widget, and Best Student Application.

This may be your chance as Apple Design Awards not only recognizes the talent and excellence of developers in making software, but also their resourcefulness in thinking up newer ways to use the Apple Mac OS X. The winners of this prestigious award will be announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference.