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11 July 2008 | No Comments

My favorite iPhone 2.0 feature

I absolutely love TedTalks. They’re perfect for viewing on the iPhone, and easy to obtain as podcasts. But the old iPhone treated them as audio files if you tried to move them into a playlist. You had to sync all the podcast episodes, and they can accumulate very quickly.
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2 June 2008 | No Comments

First prediction for 10.6

This might be a hope rather than a prediction. The icon for Energy Saver in System Preferences has long been a light bulb.

Energy Saver
When 10.6 comes, look for it to be a compact fluorescent light bulb.

28 March 2008 | No Comments

Photo: Early prototype of Zune

zune_prototype.jpg

22 March 2008 | No Comments

Say it ain’t so: Safari 3.1 support CSS animations

Seems like everyone is gushing that Safari 3.1, bless its little heart, is the first browser to support CSS animations. Whoop-de-doo—web developers can now add animation with a simple CSS tag. JavaScript not necessary! (Swoon!)

Personally, I think this development is dreadful.
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10 March 2008 | No Comments

Why AppleTV won’t have a Blu-Ray drive

Lately I’ve seen some wishful thinking about AppleTV sporting a Blu-Ray drive. I say, it ain’t gonna happen.
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15 February 2008 | No Comments

New Font Collection in Leopard

One of my favorite Leopard features hasn’t received much discussion; none in fact, as far as I can tell. It’s the new font collection that contains only fonts appropriate for the user’s preferred language.
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21 January 2008 | No Comments

iTunes movie rentals. I’m worried.

I’ve just watched a couple of rented movies via the iTunes store. This could become habit-forming.
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21 January 2008 | No Comments

Please stop saying that malware increases along with market share

I’m tired, tired, tired of reading self-proclaimed experts who insist that Windows has more malware because Windows has more market share, with the corollary that low market share is the main thing that keeps Macs safe.

This assumption is so wrong that I hardly know where to begin. As it happens, I recently found myself commenting on a particularly inane blog article, and that helped me to focus my thoughts.
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25 November 2007 | No Comments

Screen Sharing targets in a stack

I really, really loathe stacks in Leopard, but here’s one I rather like. Because Screen Sharing works so well, I find myself using it more often than Apple Remote Desktop. The Screen Sharing application lacks a way to configure a list of favorite remote hosts, so I made a stack of Internet locations. Here’s the screenshot:
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16 November 2007 | No Comments

Stacks: the solution

My little DockAppsMenu worked to restore the functionality of a hierarchical Applications menu in the Dock as a temporary solution until something better came along. It’s now here: Quay by Rainer Brockerhoff.

I’ve been trying out the beta and I can’t wait to send him seven euros for the release version as soon as it’s available. Quay gets it right. Folders sit in the right side of the Dock and look exactly as they do in a standard Leopard setup. But a click (not a right-click) reveals a hierarchical menu rather than those hideous Stacks. Read more »