Year: 2002

With the roll-out of Apple’s subscription-based .mac service, c|net examines the sentiment shared by iTools users who feel burned by Apple’s decision to charge for the service. Frustration is especially high among users who rely on their .mac email address, but little or none of the other services, and are facing the decision of paying $49 for another year of service or moving to less expensive alternatives.

Handspring has stopped shipping its Treo 90 and Treo 270 handheld devices after discovering a defect in the backlight assembly of some units, which has caused the screens to go dark over time. Free replacements will be given to customers with defective devices.

Chimera 0.4 is the latest version of the alternative, light-weight Mac OS X Web browser based on the Mozilla project. As noted by MacUpdate, the new version improves the browser’s download functionality and features many stability enhancements and bug fixes.

Shares of Apple today closed down 5.5 percent to US$14.36, their lowest level in more than 18 months. Shares had been down as much as 7.8 percent during the day.

Niemeijer Consult today released TouchStrokes 1.5, a free update to its virtual keyboard for touch-screens, server management and graphic tablet users. TouchStrokes now runs on Mac OS X (as well as Mac OS 9) and is priced at US$95. The company also posted KeyStrokes 1.1, an update to its virtual keyboard for Mac OS X designed for people with disabilities, which improves handling of international keyboard layouts and includes several other enhancements.