Year: 2001

A former Apple employee, who worked as a Product Design Engineer for the company since November 1998, has filed a racial discrimination suit against Apple alleging wrongful suspension and termination as well as denial of promotions and stock options, as noted by MacNN. The lawsuit, filed on October 30, 2001 on behalf of the African-American plaintiff, alleges that the plaintiff’s work performance was above average and seeks general damages of US$40 million.

Hitachi has introduced the CML153, a 15-inch flat-panel LCD display that features a 1024×768 native resolution, VGA connector, integrated speakers, headphone jack and volume control, and support for wall-mounting with third-party mounting arms. The CML153 LCD display carries a 3-year warranty and will be available later this month for US$399.

Unsanity has released ShadowKiller 1.1, an update to its Mac OS X “haxie” that removes the drop shadows from windows, changing the look of the operating system while improving performance. The new version allows the software to work without having to run the application, and includes other enhancements.

Adobe today announced the immediate availability of Illustrator 10, the latest version of its vector-based graphics software. Among the new features is support for symbols and object-based slicing and support for dynamic data-driven graphics. Illustrator 10 is available for Carbonized for Mac OS X and sells for US$399; previous users can upgrade for $149.

Apple, in cooperation with LucasFilm Ltd., has released “Breathing,” the first trailer for the upcoming film Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, which is scheduled for release in May 2002. The trailer, which can also be seen in theatres prior to the showing of Pixar’s Monsters, Inc., is available in small, medium, and large QuickTime movie sizes. Following a recent trend at Apple’s Movie Trailers Web site, the large trailer can only be viewed using QuickTime 5 Pro, which costs US$29.95.