Year: 2001

According to Reuters, Apple’s vice president of finance and corporate controller, Peter Oppenheimer, told investors at a Prudential technology conference today that the company has no plans to initiate an aggressive buyback of its shares, explaining that it needs its $4 billion cash reserve to retain employees and reassure customers, particularly in the education market, that its products are a viable investment.

Buffalo Technology, a wholly-owned subsidiary of MELCO INC., has introduced AirStation 2x, a new line of wireless LAN products that offer twice the data rate of current 11Mbps products, including Apple’s AirPort. Using the latest WLAN technology developed by Texas Instruments, the AirStation 2x products add a 22Mbps data rate extension while still maintaining compatibility with existing WiFi-certified products.

Adrenaline Software, a small software company that debuted in 1995 with Adrenaline Numbers & Charts, has announced that it has ceased operations due to difficult current market conditions, as noted on the company’s Web site. In its parting letter, Adrenaline criticizes Apple for not aiding the company in transitioning its flagship product following the demise of OpenDoc, an Apple-developed technology that was leveraged heavily in Adrenaline Numbers & Charts. All current orders of Adrenaline Charts Pro will be filled.

In the second part of ZDNet AnchorDesk’s Mac OS X 10.1 experiment, Stephan Somogyi notes that some applications critical to his daily work are still unavailable in native form for the new operating system. The article also suggests a variety of ‘must-have’ utilities for improving rough edges and productivity in Mac OS X.

Corel Corporation has announced that procreate KnockOut 2, the latest version of the masking tool for Adobe Photoshop, will be available in November. Designed for OS 8/9 and Mac OS X, KnockOut 2 lets professional designers create precise masks of complex objects in record time. Liquid, glass, ice, hair, smoke or fire can be “knocked out” accurately while maintaining both transparency and the complex detail of the object, according to Corel.