Brand: MacNews

Macworld UK has published a follow-up to its recent article that covered the lack of native scanner support under Mac OS X. An Epson representative told the publication, “[We are] wholeheartedly committed to OS X, and will release scanner-driver support in the next few months.” Meanwhile, Canon said, “Development is underway to deliver OS X-native support by April or May 2002, to coincide with the introduction of several major OS X applications.”

One MacMinute reader notes some confusion at his local Apple Specialists regarding Apple’s recently launched PowerBook G4 Combo Upgrade Program. “I have visited two local Apple Authorized service centers here in Kansas City — CompUSA and Micro Center — and they claim to have no clue of the drive upgrade program. Both of these locations are on the Apple Specialist list in my area.

MacMinute reader Matt Fago notes that Apple recently released its developer note for the new PowerMac G4 towers, which offers a plethora of detailed information regarding the new systems.

eWeek columnist Matthew Rothenberg tackles Apple’s new Power Mac G4s in his latest piece, discussing the quiet roll-out of the new systems and speculating that the bump to 1GHz is just a drop in the bucket compared to what Apple has in the pipeline for pro users.

Apple and Genentech have partnered to develop an accelerated version of the Blast sequence alignment algorithm that takes advantage of the PowerPC G4 processor. The accelerated version can make homology searches of chromosomes over four times faster, according to GenomeWeb, as noted by MacSurfer.