Today's News On One Page

December 6th, 1999

[5:00 PM] Apple Stock Watch: The Mega-Rally Continues, Apple Climbs To Another New High on Price Target Upgrade by Wes George The Y2K melt-up in tech stocks continued as the Dow gave back some of its gains from Friday. Trading was reported as a "quiet", while the ongoing rally narrowed its focus. Most stocks outside a select group of technology leaders were down. Apple climbed 1 3/8 or 1.20% to close at 116 3/8 on slightly below average volume. Apple traded most of the day flat or down a fraction, then in the last 20 minutes of the trading session a surge of buying moved the stock higher. The Dow sagged 61 points (0.54%) to close at 11225, on a volume of 902 million shares traded. The unstoppable Nasdaq gained 25.37 points (0.72%) after Friday's big surge due to benign inflation data and much short covering by the big hedge funds. Volume was 1.35 billion shares traded. Today was another new closing high for the Nasdaq. Yawn. The S&P 500 lost 10.23 points (0.71%) to close at 1423.07 after setting a new closing record on Friday. The bellwether 30-year Treasury bond rose 4/32 to close at 98 10/32, the yield dropped to 6.24% from 6.26% on Friday. In Apple related businesses, Akamai rose 9 3/4 to close at 216 3/4. Adobe lost 3 9/16 to end at 63 1/8. Macromedia soared 4 1/16 to close at 80 11/16, a new high. Symantec was up a dollar to close at 52 1/16. Arm Holdings also hit a new high today, up 9 5/8 to 165 5/8. Apple's Power PC partners big winners , IBM blasted up 4 points, after Friday's 6 9/16 run, to close at 115 7/8, while Motorola gained 9 1/2 after Friday's 5 7/16 gain to end at 133 1/2, a new high. Apple's competitors were mostly down, Dell slipped lower as did Gateway, Intel, Hewlett Packard and Microsoft. Only Compaq beat the Wintel down draft today to close up 5/8 at 26 5/8 For full quotes on all the companies mentioned in this article, we have assembled this set of quotes at Yahoo! for your reference. We also have many of these same quotes reported live (20 minute delay) on our home page. For other stories regarding Apple's stock activity, visit our Apple Stock Watch Special Report. Apple

[Column] Monday's Mac Gadget - Take a Close Look at Your Fonts

[8:00 AM] Tis' The Season To Put Christmas Lights On Your Mac by Staff Tiger Technologies has released a new version of the holiday classic, Holiday Lights. Holiday Lights 5.0 adds some stability and performance enhancements, as well as a host of new features. Unfamiliar with Holiday Lights? The traditional description of Holiday Lights is, "...that a small (and well insulated) elf crawled into your computer and hung a sting of lights around the edge of your screen." According to Tiger: What is Holiday Lights? Holiday Lights is a shareware program that strings rows of Christmas tree bulbs around the edges of the user's screen, with festive music playing in the background. The colorful lights flash on the desktop while the user works, and the program also includes a screen saver with gently falling snow and other seasonal choices. Holiday Lights comes with more than forty different bulbs and songs for any season, and over 250 free add-on bulbs and screen saver animations are available from the Tiger Technologies Web site. Holiday Lights has become more popular each year since we created the original in 1993. One of our users recently wrote, "I just upgraded Holiday Lights, and you have even outdone the wonderful version that you had before... I didn't think I would enjoy it after Christmas, but I've continued to enjoy each month and change the bulbs frequently so it's never the same, and it never gets boring." What's new? Among other improvements, version 5.0 gives users the (optional) ability to display the bulbs on top of all other windows, adds new screen saver animations, and includes better-sounding MIDI music. Holiday Lights is available as shareware for US$19.95. Version 5.0 is free to registered users of any other version. You can find more information at the Tiger Technologies web site. The Mac Observer Spin: Several members of the staff love this program. For most of us, our Macs are a huge part of our lives. Using Holiday Lights, some seasonal desktop patterns, a few holiday alerts from Clixsounds, and a Kaleidoscope scheme, it is easy to decorate your computer for the holidays. Tiger Technologies

[8:00 AM] Phase 5 Enters US G3/G4 Upgrade Market by Staff phase 5 digital products, a name without capital letters, has thrown it's hat into the G4 upgrade market. The MACCELERATE series, a name with all capital letters, is available for older PCI Power Macs, while the G3 POWER BOOSTER adds G4 capabilities to the beige and Blue & While G3 series. Based in Europe, phase 5 also marks the beginnings of sales in North America. According to phase 5: phase 5 digital products is now shipping the first G4 boards from it's new G4 product line which had been announced earlier this year, and includes the Maccelerate! 7400 series for PCI PowerMacs, the G4 PowerBooster for PowerMacintosh G3 models, and now also G4 upgrades for PowerMac 4400, Motorola Starmax systems and UMAX C series machines. Also, starting with December ´99, phase 5 digital products has a new direct order page for North American customers on it's web site. All available products can be ordered from there, payable by credit card, and will be shipped directly from a US facility to the customers. G3 cards with 300MHz/1MB start at $269, the faster 400 MHz versions are available for as low as $299 (ZIF types) or $369 (for PCI PowerMacs such as 75/85/9500). The brand-new G4 cards with 350 MHz and 1 MB Cache start as low as $529. For a full price list, and more information, you can visit the phase 5 digital products web site. phase 5 digital products

[8:00 AM] Are You A Nurd? by Staff Expanding the family of Mac-centric web sites, MacNurd launches this week. MacNurd will offer a unique perspective on the Mac community, along with the traditional array of, reviews, and other Mac news, MacNurd will focus on trouble shooting and how-to information. According to MacNurd: MacNurd.com is a web site for Macintosh enthusiasts, users, owners and prospective owners. We will be offering How-tos, product reviews, troubleshooting, upgrading and editorials as well as pages full of all sorts of Mac-related goodies. With this web site, we hope to develop a mass archive of useful Macintosh information and content which will be available on an ongoing basis so that visitors may always come back and look up the information they need, regardless of when it was published. You can visit the MacNurd web site for the full experience. The Mac Observer Spin: Welcome to the neighborhood, MacNurd! MacNurd

[8:00 AM] Book'em Danno! by Staff Everyday Software has released a new web browser bookmark management utility called Bookit. Bookit provides a host of powerful features, and promises to make organizing large numbers of bookmarks more simple. According to Everyday Software: Everyday Software is pleased to announce Bookit the next revolution in bookmark management. It is no longer necessary to have bookmark manager applications running constantly to have the same bookmarks between all of your browsers. Because Bookit creates new bookmark files for your browsers after the user has customized their "new" complete bookmark listing. Bookit is also a complete organizational tool. While customizing the bookmarks the user may: add bookmarks, add folders, add dividers, and move everything anywhere. Bookit is truly the ultimate bookmark management program. Some features of Bookit include: Compatible with all popular web browser's bookmark files (sorry Cyberdog). Organize user's bookmarks. Create new bookmarks, folders, and dividers when organizing. Combine bookmarks from all browsers into one common bookmark file. After using Bookit all of the user's bookmarks will be the same no matter what web browser is being used, because Bookit rewrites the users bookmark files from scratch. Supports Keychain, contextual menus, and other Mac OS technologies. Is less than 1/2 the price of other bookmark managing programs. Bookit is available as shareware for US$9. You can find more information and download links at the Everyday Software web site. Everyday Software

[8:00 AM] Put Some Eye Candy In Your PhotoGraphics by Staff Extensis has a special holiday offer on the popular Photoshop plug-ins, Alien Skin Eye Candy and PhotoGraphics. Eye Candy provides a number of professional quality filters, and PhotoGraphics allows easier access to superior text editing tools. According to Extensis: ALIEN SKIN EYE CANDY Sophisticated special effects are now incredibly easy! Eye Candy 3.0 is a collection of 21 timesaving filters for use with Photoshop and other graphics programs. The set includes spectacular effects like Fire, Smoke and Perspective Shadow, as well as frequently used production effects like Cutout, Carve, Drop Shadow, Inner Bevel and Motion Trail. Enhanced Preview Offers More Control. The most advanced preview of any filter set! You can use the preview to zoom in or out between 6% and 1600% of the original image size. Choose From Over 200 Presets or Save Your Own Settings. The filters in Eye Candy each come with at least 10 presets to help you quickly get acquainted with what each filter can do. That's over 200 effects at your disposal from the moment you install. Tight Integration with Photoshop. Eye Candy takes special advantage of Photoshop's most advanced features. All 21 filters are fully scriptable with the Actions feature in Photoshop 4 and 5, making complex or frequent effects easy to automate. EXTENSIS PHOTOGRAPHICS Extensis PhotoGraphics 1.0 puts your favorite illustration tools directly inside Photoshop by providing a full featured set of drawing and advanced text capabilities! No more switching into and out of 'illustration' programs to do text on a path, etc.-do it all within Photoshop! Complete Text Editing. Superior text controls let you create and reedit type on a path with the control you need and expect, right within Photoshop. Illustration Tools. Drawing tools let you illustrate within Photoshop with object-level fill, stroke, opacity and more. The full-featured set of drawing tools includes line, pen, rectangle, ellipse, polygon and starburst. Design with Productivity. Other editing features include layers, object-level opacity, color palette import and export, dockable palettes, rulers, guides and more! Until December 20th, the Alien Skin Eye Candy/Photographics bundle is available for US$219.95. You can find more information at the Extensis web site. Extensis

[5:20 PM] The Mac Observer Welcomes A New Family Member To The World! by Staff The Mac Observer is proud to welcome a new member of the family to the world! Skylar Jade Hamilton was born to Lisa Hamilton and our President & CEO, Dave Hamilton. Skylar is the Hamilton's first child and is a beautiful baby girl who weighed in at 7 pounds, 1 ounce. Born early on Saturday morning, Skylar is healthy and doing very well. According to Mr. Hamillton: I'm not sure what the big deal is, this didn't hurt me a bit. Still, it's good to have this over. Thank goodness Skylar looks like me. The Mac Observer was unable to speak to Mrs. Hamilton who was being sedated after punching her husband numerous times. Skylar's first sounds, after screaming her anger at Bill Gates for being forced out of the womb into a world dominated by Windows, sounded suspiciously like "Moof." The Mac Observer Spin: The truth of the matter is that Skylar looks like Mrs. Hamilton. It's great to have a new Observer in the world, especially one born to such great people as Dave and Lisa. We wish them all the luck in the world with their new baby! The Mac Observer offers them a big Mac Observer Salute! If you would like to send Dave and Lisa a congratulatory e-mail, they would love to hear from you.