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Bitchin’!
Fluid 0.7: ”
Freeware utility that lets you create your own ‘site specific browser’:
Using Fluid, you can create SSBs to run each of your favorite webapps as a separate desktop application. Fluid gives any webapp a home on your Mac OS X desktop complete with Dock icon, standard menu bar, and logical separation from your other web browsing activity.
(Via David Heinemeier Hansson at 37signals; they’ve got icons you can use for Basecamp, Backpack, Campfire, and Highrise.)
“
(Via Daring Fireball.)
First impressions, having just read the spec.
For the record, I like small laptops. And I mean, I REALLY like small laptops. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a sub-notebook I’d actually consider purchasing, be it Mac or PC.
And I can’t see that changing with the announcement of the MacBook Air.
I’m using a 1.83ghz Core2 MacBook with 1.5gb RAM at the moment.
An entry level MacBook Air is running at 1.63ghz and shipping with 2gb RAM.
While there’s not a lot of difference here, it is worth noting that the Air has 4mb of L2 cache on the chip (versus 2mb on the MacBook) and an 800mhz FSB (versus 667mhz on the MacBook). I’m unsure as to how much of a performance increase we’ll see from this. Have to wait and see.
Interesting to see a PATA instead of a SATA hard disk in the Air.
Multi-touch trackpad is a nice feature too. Looking forward to playing with that!
The Air certainly looks the part. It’s small, it’s light, spec is pretty good, looks amazing. Couldn’t ask for more.
Until…….
A: No Firewire.
B: No removal/upgradeable memory.
C: No optical drive as standard (available as an option)
D: No removable battery.
E: Hefty price tag
Any one (or maybe even two or three (at a push!)) of these would be acceptable, but all five really makes me shy away a bit, which is a real shame.
I was really hoping Apple would release a sub-notebook and not the iPhone-esque tablet thing that everyone’s been praying for, so I was really excited to see the MacBook Air release news.
I’m a little disappointed on initial inspection. That may change when I actually have one in front of me.
I’ll let you know when that happens.
Following my post about the excellent Multi-Safari:
Multi-Safari is broken in Leopard, but fear not!
A fix is available from Thomas Aylott.
Nice one!
How many more times are we going to have to endure this kind of crap?
It’s really starting to grate on me.
Amusingly, according to Macworld:
The ad was created by Omnicom Group’s TBWA\Media Arts Lab, but unfortunately has caused some browsers to crash, leading some sites to pull the ad from their online properties.
No mention of which browsers crashed though……
Apple REALLY need to stop doing this.
There’s been a lot of press about the hits and misses in Leopard. But my two fave features seem to be quite low on the list!
1: Airport in the menu bar.
Yes I know it’s been there forever, but it sucked before, and now it doesn’t! Proper realtime updating of available networks, including security status. It should have been sorted a long time ago. Thankfully, now it is!
2: Finder and mounted shares.
This was my most loathed part of all previous incarnations of OS X. Mount a remote volume, put your Mac to sleep and wander to another location. Open it up and watch and wait for the spinning beachball of doom to do it’s thing.
If you’re lucky, you may get a “volume disconnected” message, albeit eventually. You may however have to forcefully reboot your machine to sort it.
This behaviour is now no more, and it’s a joy! In fact, I really like the way Leopard deals with remote servers. Authenticate to the machine, and you instantly have access to all the shares on the machine. No more multiple ‘Command-K’ing to connect to the same server.
It may seem like small fry against the behemoth Time Machine or the instantly cool Quick Look, but in terms of usability, it’s the little things that make all the difference.
I really hate reviews that misinform, and while the Macworld review of Leopard is mostly accurate, there are some gross inaccuracies!
First, if the Dock is on the bottom of the screen (where a lot of people tend to keep it), a stack will display as a curving column of icons or as a rectangular grid, depending on how many items are in the folder.
While this is true of the default behavior, it is easily rectified with a right click -> view as -> grid. Problem solved.
Interestingly, this choice is not available if the dock is positioned on the side. It’s grid or nothing!
For folders where the number of items changes regularly (such as Downloads), you never know which display you’re going to get.
Wrong again. Once again, right click invoked context menu has the answer, which happens to be the same as above!
Furthermore, stacks displayed as columns sort items alphabetically beginning at the bottom of the stack, while stacks displaying as a grid sort items alphabetically beginning at the top left.
Someone really ought to invest in a two button mouse. Context menus are a wonderful thing.
You open a Finder window in Cover Flow mode, then drag the lower-right corner of the window down to see more files. Oops! Watch instead as the Cover Flow icons grow to gargantuan size while the list of files you’re actually trying to expand remains the same size.
And you can then reduce the size of the icons by dragging the bar below them up, thus revealing more icons. 
For those who are a couple of generations behind in their hardware, the prospect of a Leopard world is bleak. For one, any Mac with a G3 chip is automatically left out. This includes all of the original translucent iMacs; you know, the ones that helped get Apple back on its feet.
Do what now?!
Other G4s that Leopard doesn’t support include Quicksilver and earlier Power Macs and Cubes released before January 2002; eMacs sold before October 2003; Titanium PowerBooks older than November 2002.
So, machines about as old as G3 hardware then…..
We were able to get an unsupported mini working that way, albeit slowly.
Which is possibly why they’re considered “unsupported”?
There are always going to be casualties in the bleeding edge market. Dropping support for the G3 was an inevitability. It struggled to run Tiger without loads of ram, and Leopard is a whole ‘nother beast.
From Macworld
Put the Finder in all Spaces: While Spaces is a very cool feature, one thing that can get annoying is how the Finder behaves—certain Finder-related events in certain programs may shift your active space to one showing a Finder window. You can avoid this problem by assigning the Finder to every space. In Spaces’ System Preferences panel, click the plus sign to add a new assignment. When the file browser shows up, navigate to /System -> Library -> CoreServices, click on Finder, then click the Add button. Back in the Assignments window, click the Space column next to Finder, and set it to All Spaces. Now you’ll see Finder windows in all of your spaces.
Well kinda……
Porn sites that offer free movies, but you have to install a “codec” to view them.
Sound familiar? All those setup.exe files are back but with a Mac flavour.
Once installed the trojan hijacks DNS and redirects popular purchase sites to sites controlled by the hijacker to extract credit card details.
Now I hardly think this constitutes “open season” on the Mac as Wired would have you believe. Fair enough it’s a development in the “viruses on the Mac” department, but, currently, you would have to be a bit of a muppet to get duped. Macs are not invincible, and they never have been. There’s been plenty of dodgy apps that do dodgy things once authentication has been given. This is nothing new.
And as for this pearl of wisdom from “security researcher” (?) Gadi Evron:
Apple’s day has finally come, and Apple users are going to get hit hard. OS X is the new Windows 98.
Ahuh……
Yeah, ok, I’m lame. Moving on…..
As a web developer working on a Mac and having to confess to running Safari 3 beta, this leads to a problem that I can’t test pages in Safari 2.0.4.
Til now.
http://www.michelf.com/projects/multi-safari/
Awesome!
UPDATE:Same thing for Windows and IE. Useful for me in Parallels!
http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE
Woohoo!
FLAC and Vorbis makes a welcome return to iTunes thanks to the lovely people at xiph.org. Hopefully this will remove the need to run 3rd party apps to listen to music encoded in these open formats.
Get it here.
*UPDATE* - Alas, still no support for native FLAC file format. Only Ogg FLAC, but at least it’s a step in the right directon.
From Apple’s PR website:
Nike and Apple® today announced a partnership bringing the worlds of sports and music together like never before with the launch of innovative Nike+iPod products. The first product developed through this partnership is the Nike+iPod Sport Kit, a wireless system that allows Nike+ footwear to talk with your iPod® nano to connect you to the ultimate personal running and workout experience.
This is a partnership I imagine most people won’t have seen coming, and I for one wish it hadn’t. Nike’s track record is dubious to say the least. It’s not too difficult to find information regarding their use of sweatshops in various parts of the world.
Apple itself have not been immune to some rather negative commentary, notably from Naomi Klein in her book “No Logo”, a discussion about branding and it’s impact on society.
In relation to this, an article on igorinternational.com states:
The company projects a humanistic corporate culture and a strong corporate ethic, characterized by volunteerism, support of good causes or involvement in the community. Nike blundered here. Apple, on the other hand, comes across as profoundly humanist.
Until now. Or maybe the ‘magic curtain’ has just been lifted, and I’ve seen a side to Apple that I did not want to see before. Maybe we’ll have Apple powered Starbucks WIFI spots next, or maybe even a range of Gapple clothing…….
I may not go as far as some people I know who are actually considering SELLING all their Apple equipment following the announcement of this “partnership”. I will have to think long and hard about my next Apple purchase though. The branding inbreeding is becoming too much to take.
Technorati Tags: Apple, Branding, Nike, iPod
Sorry. Couldn’t resist the title!
Regarding the new glossy screen on the Macbook (optional on 15″ Macbook Pros), John Sircusa offers the following:
Glossy displays have effectively taken over the entire laptop market. Why are they so popular? Here are three possible reasons.
They are better than matte-finish displays.
They are cheaper than matte-finish displays.
People are idiots.
Sounds fair to me.
The guys at Macserendipity disagree:
I have a Sony TFT at home with an Xblack glossy screen and I love it. The colors look vibrant and deep and switching to my Belina screen at work is frankly painful.
…
So maybe not having a choice is bad. People ( that are not idiots) should have a choice as some may not like the Glossy Screen. However some do. Those people including myself are not idiots they just have a preference.
Before I begin, I will say that I am NOT a fan of glossy screens. These “more vibrant colours” that are being spoken about and “higher contrast” make the screen almost unusable for getting an ACCURATE colour representation and are therefore fairly useless to anyone wanting to attempt some colour matching. Admittedly, this is something I do only rarely and is something that most people would not have any want or need to do, but it still annoys me! :-p
Anyway.
I’m sure a Sony XBlack TFT screen would look great in a lot of rooms. After all, indoors in a environment where you can control lighting conditions, a situation which is perfect (nay essential?) for these screens. Most showrooms, for example, are just such environments.
But the Macbook is PORTABLE computer. Thus, it would be preferrable to be able to use the laptop the conditions I happen to find myself, be it on a train, in the park having lunch, whatever…..
I should dictate where I use a portable computer, not the other way around.
As for John Siracusa’s argument about people being idiots, once you eliminate the first two options:
A: Glossy screens are better - Um, no they’re not.
B: Glossy screens are cheaper - Unsure, but can’t imagine there’s much in it. As far as I’m aware it’s only the finish that differs?
there aren’t many options left.
To say that people PREFER a glossy screen is to say that they prefer an inferior product (given A and B above), which isn’t unusual these days. As I’m oft reminded, people are entitled to their opinion, but then again, I happen to think most people are idiots anyway! :-p
From USA Today
Apple Computer Inc. is entitled to use the apple logo on its iTunes Music Store, a judge ruled Monday, rejecting a suit filed by Apple Corps Ltd., the guardian of The Beatles’ commercial interests.
Apple Corps, which contended that the U.S. company had broken a 1991 agreement in which each side agreed not to enter into the other’s field of business, said it would appeal.
Judge Edward Mann ruled that Apple Computer used the fruit logo in association with the store, not the music, and thus did not breach the agreement.
It is widely known that the Airport card that ships with a MacBook Pro supports 802.11b and 802.11g wireless networks. It also has support 802.11a networks, though this feature is undocumented and is not supported by Apple or Applecare.
Technorati Tags: apple, mac, macbook pro, network, undulattice
Apple have announced the addition of the 17″ MacBook Pro to their Intel based range.
Specs include Firewire 800 and a Double Layer 8x Superdrive, which were both missing in the 15″ MacBook Pro. It also has an additional USB 2.0 port.
You also get the option of up(down)grading from a 120gb 5400rpm hard drive to a 100gb 7200rpm hard drive. Personally I’d go for speed over space!
It’s expensive though, about £200 more expensive than a 17″ Powerbook (which have been discontinued and are no longer available from the Apple Store)
Technorati Tags: apple, mac, macbook pro, undulattice
Having just read a recent post on Daring Fireball regarding how Boot Camp will start an exodus to Windows, I have to go one step further than John Gruber’s “Jackass of the Week” description and label USA Today’s Andrew Kantor a complete idiot!
Firstly we have this……
Boot Camp isn’t going to propel the Mac into the mainstream. If anything, it will get Mac users to switch to Windows. Sure, it’ll be terrific for Mac fans not wanting to give up their machine of choice but find more and more they need to use Windows. But Boot Camp doesn’t offer any kind of compelling argument for PC users to buy Mac hardware.
From experience, I have found the exact opposite to be true. Since switching to Mac a few years ago, I have found it LESS AND LESS that I need to use Windows, to the degree that I no longer own a machine that is even capable of running Windows. Boot Camp offers PC users the chance to try OS X and still revert to Windows if they don’t like it. So why wouldn’t you?!
Followed by……
The Macs that can currently run Boot Camp are the Mac Mini, the iMac, and the MacBook Pro notebook. Price-wise, they can’t compete with PCs.
The Mini will set you back about $1100 for a machine with 512 MB of RAM and a 60-GB hard drive — that’s when you add in a keyboard, mouse, midrange monitor ($150), and a full copy of Windows XP.
The iMac is about $1600 (with 512 MB RAM, a 160-GB hard drive, and Windows). The MacBook Pro, with an 80-GB hard drive, is about $2000 with Windows.(All these prices come from the Apple Store. I mention the hard drive sizes in particular because you’d need the space to load two operating systems and two sets of software.)
I don’t know which “Apple Store” he’s been looking at, but iMacs currently start at $1299 and MacBook Pros at $1999. Prices exclude a copy of Windows which we can safely assume most “switchers” already own.
And “two sets of software”? Surely the idea is to only use the other operating system when it’s absolutely necessary, so the second “set of software” is most likely going to be fairly minimal.
In contrast, a 3 GHz Gateway DX210 PC with 1 GB of RAM, a 160 GB hard drive, and the same monitor I suggested for the Mac Mini — that’ll be only $900.
In contrast, a 3GHz Gateway DX210 PC has a single core, single processor Pentium 4, no Superdrive, crap video card, and ships with Windows Media Center Edition. GREAT! Way to compare like with like!
Oh, and the whole “no viruses on the Mac” business? Besides the fact that it’s no longer true, you can get this neat stuff called anti-virus software.
Now I want to punch him. If we’re gonna be pedantic about it, let’s rephrase.
“No viruses on OS X”. Better?
And given that Windows can’t read the Mac filesystem, I think the “spreading” argument is effectively null and void.
The folks at Parallels.com, however, released “virtualization software” that they say allows OS X to run any operating system, including Windows, within OS X — no rebooting required. So that’s a step above Boot Camp right off, even if it costs $50.
Rumour has it that Leopard will have this feature built in. Certainly wouldn’t surprise me. Though it would be funny if Apple treats Windows the same way they treated Classic environment.
It may not be so bad — they might even enjoy the convenience of sharing a common platform with the other 97% of the world, brought to them courtesy of Boot Camp.
A million people are not smarter than one.
Technorati Tags: apple, boot camp, mac, OS X, PC, technology, windows
Now that the dust has settled on Apple’s landmark release (albeit public beta - strange how that bit gets left out……), time to reflect on what this means for Apple, Macs, and the computing community in general.
Firstly, the chasm that once existed between Macs and PCs has all but vanished. In fact, Macs have emerged in the aftermath as being undeniably more versatile machines. As John Gruber said in his Daring Fireball commentary
Instead of occupying a separate universe from that of PC hardware, it’s now a superset of PC hardware. Instead of choosing between a Windows PC or a Mac, you now get to choose between a computer that can only run Windows or a computer that can run both Windows and Mac OS X.
While this is true on initial inspection, there is still the obstacle of Apple reluctance to allow “non-apple” hardware to run on their machines. The situation has definitely improved over the last few years, but they still insist on having Apple specific firmware on devices like Superdrives and CD burners etc. Absence of this firmware does not mean that your drive will not work, just that it will not be “supported” by OS X. Obviously there are ways to make it work, but the point is that these are obstacles are unnecessary and only serve to annoy people.
Another issue that I think Apple need to address in the post-apocalyptic Intel world is support and warranty. Apple’s default warranty sucks. Plain and simple.
For example, a MacBook Pro costing £1429 comes with a standard 1 year warranty with the option of purchasing Applecare for an additional £279, bringing the total to £1708.
A comparable Dell laptop (not as nice as a Mac before you start flaming me) will come in as standard at £1549 including a 3 year warranty.
OK. So that’s about £160 so far. However, Apple’s standard warranty is return to base and usually takes 7-10 days minimum. Dell’s is next day AND on site! For some people, THAT is a deal clincher. Some people don’t mind paying extra for some peace of mind, but to pay less?! I’m convinced this is one of the main reasons that Apple’s share in the server market is so small. The hardware is great, the operating system is rock solid, but 1 YEAR RTB warranty just does not cut it when the equipment is mission critical.
Apple need to address this situation. They have traditionally always gone after the higher end of the market, which is fine when the market you’re talking about is Mac based. But as soon as the Mac and PC markets become one, these little problems could become the deal breaker for a lot of people.
Technorati Tags: apple, boot camp, mac, PC, technology, windows
The ongoing case of Apple Computers vs the Beatles’ Apple Corps record label.
Apple Corps say that Apple computers have broken a contract agreed between the two companies in 1991, in which Apple agreed not to move into the music industry, iPods and the iTunes Music Store being the major points of contention.
While this is old news (lawsuit was filed in 2003) and to be expected in today’s litigation friendly society, it has turned up this choice quote from one of Apple’s lawyers.
“Even a moron in a hurry could not be mistaken about that….”
the distinction between the computer company’s iTunes online music business and a recording company like Apple Corps Ltd.
Made me laugh anyway!
MoRU - Advanced searching in OS X Tiger
Provides loads more functionality than Spotlight. Looks cool, but can you turn Spotlight off by default? Probably not.
From Daring Fireball
Technorati Tags: downloads, mac, os x
Well new apps to me at least!
This my first post using ecto, a “desktop blogging client for MacOSX and Windows”.
Initial impressions are good. The interface is clean and easy to navigate. Writing posts can be done in plain text (with html tags) or in rich text which is then converted to html.
Click to select categories for new posts, add your current itunes tunes, publish/unpublish/delete…….. all from one app. Nice.
Also new to my Mac today is Growl, a notification system for OS X.
Basically posts an alert on your desktop when a supported app does something, eg. Apple Mail receives a mail, new ICQ message, download completes, etc.
Supported apps on my machine at the moment include the above mentioned ecto, Adium (chat), Colloquy (IRC), Cyberduck (FTP), and Shiira (my new fave web browser). Growl is proving quite useful actually. It has certainly lessened the number of times I flick back to read my new ICQ “message” only to see an Emoticon! It’s worth it just for that!
Having read a lot of commentary on the new MacBook Pro (NYTimes , arstechnica) as well as comments about the brightness of the backlit keyboard and reports of unbalanced speakers, I was eagerly awaiting the arrival of a unit so I could see it with my own eyes.
And the first thing that hit me?
THE BOX!
It’s been totally redesigned to the degree that you look at it and think “They can’t fit a 15″ laptop in there, can they?”
But they have. Gone are the huge pieces of styrofoam that used to protect the Powerbook, replaced by a thinner styrofoam piece with circular indents and MacBook Pro embossed on the bottom. All the accessories (power supply, cable, DVI-VGA adpater) are now contained in the same section as the laptop, though separated into different compartments. First impression is a good one.
A new cloth covering protects the laptop. It’s not quite as durable as it’s predecessor, but I doubt it’ll get used too much after the first week! Clicking the lid release reveals the next new feature.
The screen catch. The single latch from the Powerbook has been replaced with a double catch system, very similar to the one seen in the 17″ Powerbook. Presumably, this has been introduced to make room for the iSight camera.
Which leads me to the top bezel.
It’s big. Very big. Probably about twice the thickness of the side bezels. It looks a little odd really, or maybe i haven’t quite gotten used to it. Personally, I would have preferred a thinner bezel and no camera, but hey……..
Minor point here.
The MacBook Pro logo at the bottom of the screen.
Why is it reflective? What possible function could having the midday sun emblazen “orP kooBcaM” across my face have?
Seriously though, I find it really distracting to have that little twinkle everytime a move my head slightly. Admittedly, I do have my back to a window when sat at my desk and am probably more likely to have a machine in direct sunlight, but i shouldn’t have to worry about such things when working on a portable computer.
Moving on.
The screen is lovely. A vast improvement over the last 15″ Powerbook revision which had nasty horizontal lines across it. It’s sharp. It’s bright. The light and colour are consistent. It’s just lovely!
The other new feature that has been getting some press recently is the MagSafe connector for providing power. Basically, the power connector connects magnetically to the machine. There are no pins sticking out, so when someone trips on your cable, it disconnects rather than dragging your machine to the ground. And it works too! It’s a lot stronger than I thought it was going to be, and it’s invertible. Status lights are provided on both sides so you can see when it’s charging or when it’s charged. Cool!
So far, pretty good.
A few points though.
The dual layer Superdrive has been replaced by a single layer drive. I believe this is due to a problem with the form factor of the laptop, which is slightly thinner than previous versions. Because of this, Apple had to use a thinner optical drive. unfortunately a dual layer Superdrive was not available in this configuration. I have heard rumour of their existence recently, so maybe it’s only a matter of time.
The lack of modem has had some people up in arms. Not really an issue for me. Dialup is effectively dead with the advent of fast and cheap broadband, though I do accept that some hotels are not exactly passing this saving on to their customers!
Performance? OS X feels quicker and more responsive on an Intel Mac. This is true of all the new Macs. Apps launch quickly and behave as expected.
I will have to wait to see how it performs in the real world.
I’ll keep you posted.
Technorati Tags: apple, mac, macbook pro
