Year: 2001

Apple has recruited FreeBSD founder Jordan Hubbard, according to a letter circulating within the FreeBSD community, as reported by Macworld UK. Hubbard will help Apple with its BSD efforts — FreeBSD is used at the core of Mac OS X. “Those who’ve been following my writings about, and enthusiasm for, OS X lately won’t be surprised by my going to work for Apple,” Hubbard said.

At NECC, Apple announced that three new school districts, Chicago Public Schools, the Archdiocese of Baltimore, and the Fremont Union High School District, will be implementing the company’s PowerSchool student information system. PowerSchool provides a myriad of services, from scheduling to attendance and report cards. Combined, the three school districts boast more than 700 schools and 475,000 students. Apple acquired PowerSchool earlier this year for $62 million in stock.

Margi Systems has added Mac support to its Presenter-to-Go Springboard module, which allows a Handspring Visor’s LCD to be displayed on a digital projector or VGA monitor. Presenter-to-Go can also be used to compress and load images from PowerPoint and other applications onto the Visor with the HotSync cradle, allowing users to tote just their handheld to presentations. Presenter-to-Go sells for US$299.

Brother has also introduced the MFC-4800 and MFC-8500 — two new multifunction laser printers that combine a fax machine and photocopying capabilities. The US$329 MFC-4800 delivers print speeds of up to 10 pages per minute with 2MB of memory while the $399 MFC-8500 can print up to 15 pages per minute and sports 8MB of memory. Both printers can print at resolutions of 600×600 dpi and offer optical scanning resolutions of 300×600 dpi; they will ship in August.

Brother today introduced its HL-1400 series of laser printers, consisting of the HL-1440, HL-1450, and HL-1470N, which replaces the HL-1200 line. All three printers deliver print speeds of 15 pages per minute at resolutions up to 1200×600 with USB connectivity. The US$299 HL-1440 features 2MB of memory (expandable to 34MB), supports the optional network adapter, and features a 250-sheet paper cassette.