Jackson Free Press

Only Apple can make something called the Worldwide Developer's Conference (WWDC) the sexiest tech-marketing showcase of the summer, but it looks like it'll happen, with a keynote by Steve Jobs over by the time you read this.

One thing that may be lost in the announcements (and subsequent business press hype of said announcements) is Cider (http://www.transgaming.com) a technology that is said to allow game developers to port Windows games to Intel-based Macs with little to no effort. As Mac gamers know, there's often a lag between release dates for big-budget games between Macs and PCs; that gap may narrow considerably if developers decide to take advantage of Cider—I imagine we'll see Windows and Mac versions of games in the same box.

And even if the developer doesn't opt to use the new-fangled Cider "wrapper," Apple's Boot Camp technology allows you to launch Windows XP on an Intel-equipped Mac and play Windows games at (reportedly) speeds better than many competing PCs. For Intel-based Mac owners who would like to do a little more gaming, it may be the best of both worlds.

This is supposed to be my back-to-school column, and, of course, computer games are the last thing on the minds of our American youths. So let's talk operating systems. Most American children are raised to be aspiring consumer drones, like their parents—but what if you want your child to think differently? You need to get them into open source in a hurry.

Linspire (http://www.linspire.com) is the Linux operating system and application suite that was original called "Lindows" until Microsoft sued their punny asses. Now called Linspire, this Linux variant offers a Windows XP-like interface (based on the popular KDE graphical interface to Linux) along with a Web browser, an IM/chat client, photo editor, OpenOffice, an iTunes clone (that can be used with the MP3Tunes service) and, you know, tons of other crap. The operating system is priced at about $50 when totally tricked out, and it'll run on a relatively anemic 800 MHz PC with 128MB of RAM. Yeah, it's a little like buying your kid those knock-off sneakers at Target instead of true Old Skool Vans (http://www.vans.com), but $50 for a whole suite of apps is pretty cool—and after a few weeks when they have to troubleshoot the darned thing, they'll be developing a marketable skill.

And if you don't want to spend the $50, you can download the Freespire (http://www.freespire.org) installation with many of the same features, all in an arguable less cloying package.

Got a school-aged PowerPC-based Mac user who needs some Linux cred? Try uBuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com), a PowerPC-based Linux that's actually freely available (you'll need to spend some time downloading it), but includes OpenOffice, FireFox, Evolution (an Outlook clone) and all sorts of multimedia tools. If you're not sure you can commit to Linux, you can download a CD images that lets you play with the OS before you make any rash choices.

Todd Stauffer is the publisher of the Jackson Free Press, progenitor of http://www.macblog.com and author or co-author of three dozen books on the Internet and computing. His latest is "The PowerBook and iBook Field Guide" (Wiley and Sons, 2006) with co-author Dennis Cohen