Getting ready for tonight's upgrade to OS X 10.3 Panther -- or trying to decide whether to upgrade? Here are some tips for would-be upgraders:

Pros and Cons: IDC's Roger Kay complains to the San Francisco Chronicle that Apple's making users upgrade OS X too often. Worthwhile reading just to bring back warm memories of Apple talking about OS upgrades being "like getting a whole new Mac" -- haven't heard that expression in a while. Macworld's Jason Snell defends the OS in the same article. David Pogue in the New York Times has a great overview of why ...

Audio and MIDI functionality was one of the last areas of Mac OS X to fully develop: basic functionality was not available until OS X 10.1, and only with the debut of Jaguar 10.2 last summer was OS X truly ready for music and audio. The good news is, for the many users who have made the leap to Jaguar and have enjoyed this operating system's superior stability and MIDI/audio compatibility thanks to Core MIDI and Core Audio, 10.3 Panther is another step forward.

MOTU's press release minutes ago has revealed some details about improvements to Apple's underlying audio/MIDI support. Despite Apple's acquisition of rival Emagic, MOTU clearly remains close to the development process at Apple and is actually ahead of Emagic in terms of support for features like audio input names in its flagship ...

MOTU has posted new drivers and software for full compatibility with OS X 10.3 Panther, the Apple OS update shipping today. MOTU has updated drivers for all its FireWire and PCI audio interfaces, including full Panther support plus new features such as custom input and output names (a featured enabled by Panther) and control surface support for CueMix DSP (pictured), the monitor mixing feature in its newest FireWire and PCI audio hardware. DP 4.11 update is available for free download for all registered DP4 users, a required update for full Panther compatibility, which also boasts new features, including a synthesizer expansion card patch name customization utility, and TDM plug-in menus for Pro Tools hardware users with categorized sub-menus. MachFive is already Panther compatible and needs no upgrade. Unrelated to Panther: MOTU has a new USB MIDI driver, 1.2.1, for all users of Mac OS X 10.2 and later with performance improvements for FastLane users.

I sincerely apologize with all the people who had troubles running MiniTAPE. There is a major update downloadable that fixes all the bugs.
In the achive section, you'll find 2 versions of MiniTAPE: fullscreen and floating window version (for all the guys who do not have enough screen resolution).
Plus, the presets section has been enhanced and the audio driver starts when you open the application. I hope all of you will be able to have fun with Mini. If you find any other bug or you want to share your satisfaction, please mail me.

Focal-JMLab, one of the few french companies in the monitoring market, announced new digital monitoring systems, SM11 and SM 8, bundled with a PC/Mac software called "Focal Manager".

The SM11 is an amplified speaker (250 W – 150 W), mostly designed for numerical projects, and made to be integrated in 5.1 systems by adding dedicated speakers (SM11-C center and SM11-S subwoofer). The SM8 is SM11's younger brother, it has the same conception.