John Moltz

Cool!

Some acquaintances of mine - Wil Shipley, Mike Matas and Drew Hamlin - who put out the totally bitching Delicious Library made the local news.

Looking good, gentlemen!

Wrong

Wrong.

I think Apple gets more users per product sold who believe the company should be giving things away out of the goodness of their hearts than any other company in the history of capitalism. I'm pretty left wing, but even I don't think Apple should have to just toss in a mouse and keyboard at the same price point.

Sorry, Bill, but you need to brush up on this classic CARS post.

Bill also suggests throwing in a PS/2 adapter. Jeez, I can't even remember the last time I saw a PS/2 mouse. Seems kind of a pointless expense to capture a sliver of luddites.

Also, Bill spends a great deal of time on the eMac, which has essentially become superfluous with the introduction of the Mac Mini. He does point correctly to one problem however. You can't get a complete Mac Mini solution from Apple. I think they should have an option to bundle a cheap monitor, keyboard and mouse, even if it's restricted to the Mac Mini.

But even more wrong is this post over on the Apple Blog. You can read my comments over there, but the post is so poorly defended it doesn't really even deserve the dignity of a response. It's so bad that I'm seriously left to assume that it's flame bait, which is a shame from an otherwise enjoyable blog.

I believe each of these guys is wrong about each product. I'm quite certain Apple is going to sell a bazillion Mac Minis. I have no need for one and I've already spent time pricing out different options and trying to convince myself that I do need one. I've been less certain of the iPod shuffle's success, but the word on the street is they're flying off the shelves. I think there's a substantial backlog of people who've wanted an iPod that more fits their budget. Well, here it is.

I'm not always right, but I was right about the iPod mini. And in that post I mention what was wrong with the Cube which is exactly what's right with the Mac mini.

Apple's on a roll.

Deja vu

A number of Mac news sites have reported this week that OpenOffice.org is no longer actively developing a native Aqua version for OS X.

Um, yeah, I think I've seen this episode a month ago.

NeoOffice is the ongoing effort to make a native Aqua version of Open Office for the Mac. I'm fairly certain this made the rounds around Christmas, just before we left for China. I'm not sure why this is news again.

Another Apple-related note: I took my 12-inch G3 iBook to China and when I first started using it again regularly I thought, I really like the compact form of this machine compared to my 15-inch PowerBook. But when we got home and I first fired up the PowerBook, I remembered why this is my machine of choice. The screen real estate is exquisite compared to a 12-inch machine. It's like driving on an open five-lane highway after being stuck on a one-lane road.

Oh, la-dee frickin' da, I work for Apple!

If anyone needs a reason to hate Albert McMurry and Lane Dunlop (or Phil Schiller for that matter), here you go.

Bastards.

The company I work for gave me a thermos once.

Macworld Reaction

My thoughts on Apple's Macworld announcements:

• iLife and Tiger - Yay. Good stuff here. Being able to group items in the side column in iPhoto is great and so is the calendar. Spotlight is still cool and so is Dashboard, even if you think they ripped off Arlo Rose, which I don't think is really accurate.
• iWork - Hmm. I really wanted more. Keynote's great, but I have no use for it. I like the look of Pages, but as many have noticed, it's more of a page layout application than a word processor. I need a word processor, a spreadsheet and an easy to use database application. iWork does not let me do my work.
• Mac Mini - Very nice. I actually think they'll sell a boatload of these suckers even though they need more RAM at the very least, and are likely to need the things you're supposed to bring - the monitor, keyboard and mouse. What happened to making the whole widget? I do prefer a three-button mouse and ergonomic keyboard, and while I dearly would love to own a Cinema Display, they're too expensive for me. Overall, though, *I* prefer the expandability of the Power Mac, so I'm unlikely to get a Mac Mini. But it does fill a need, just not mine.
• iPod Shuffle - At first I was very put off by this. Then I remembered when I owned a Rio MP3 player before the iPod came out. It was flash-based (held about twenty songs) and the order and selection of songs was controlled from iTunes. The only two things the Rio allowed me to do the the Shuffle doesn't was see the name of the song that was playing and scroll down a list to select a particular song. Well, I usually know the name of the song that's playing so that doesn't seem like a big deal. Being able to scroll through the list and select a song is a big deal to me, but if I had an appropriately sized playlist that had all my favorites, I probably wouldn't care that much. Plus, this can be controlled from the ordering of the songs in iTunes. It does completely shift the interface from the iPod to iTunes, but that's largely how my Rio worked. So, call me cautiously optimistic about the iPod Shuffle. The price is completely right and combined with the size, how it plugs right into the USB port and the ability to use it as a flash drive, I think it'll fly.

Note that I've also turned comments back on. I'm headed home the day after tomorrow! It's been great, but we're ready to get back.

Be still, my foolish heart

Think Secret talks about the possibility of an Apple Works replacement called iWorks.

Sheesh, it's about time.

On a side note, I missed a golden opportunity to snap a picture of what had to be a copyright violation here today. We sped by a store called "Apple Music Shop" (or something close to that) with a red Apple Computer logo next to the name. The font was not Apple corporate standard and it looked like there were CDs in the window.

Perhaps this time I should call Apple legal instead of the other way around.

iPods, but no Macs

Through a hi-larious mishap that I won't go into in order to protect the innocent, our Sony MiniDV camcorder has bitten the dust, just days before we meet our son.

After having battery trouble with our Minolta digital camera and quickly buying a backup camera (which we did NOT get a good deal on, but c'est la vie), we went back to the electronics store to get a movie camera.

Our guide was not with us this time, and communications with the staff were minimal. They did their best, though (actually, everyone has been great, except the hustlers selling crap outside the temples) and after much humming and hawing we realized we needed to buy the cheapest available option. None of the sales people knew what a Mac was - one of them thought it was some kind of microphone. Not forty feet away there was a case full of iPods surrounded by Windows machines, but no Macs.

I managed to ask them if the cameras used i.Link (Firewire) and they indicated that none of the cameras they had did - all were USB 2.0. I thought that was weird and probably unlikely - perhaps they meant they just didn't have any of the cables.

Finally we just jumped on the cheapest option - a $400 Panasonic - figuring we will at a bare minimum be able to convert the video to VHS and have some record of this important moment in our son's life.

After getting the camera back to the room and being a little put off that it has European-style power plugs, I noticed a DV out port that looks exactly like the DV out port on the Sony that I use to connect to my Firewire port. So, it does look like they were just talking about the cables.

Anyway, I have to say, I'm not impressed with Apple's penetration into the Chinese market. Seeing five sales people looking at the Mac logo and scratching their heads was not impressing the Windows-using couple that was with us.

AAAAGH!!! MY EYES!!!

Here to ruin your Christmas, via Tom Tomorrow, it's the Holy Grail of crap, the Star Wars Holiday Special.

But what shocked me the most about it is that the most horrible holiday special ever contains what must be the genesis of Apple's highly successful iPod ad campaign!

Check it out...

And it's quite possible that the whole thing was in turn inspired by gay porn because... dude... that microphone...

Blame Canada

You may now officially hate Lane.

Mini Apple Store

I happened to make it up to the Southcenter Mall today to check out the Mini Apple Store that just opened. It was small but impressive. I think they made a mistake with the white floor, though, because they had a guy there continually wiping up scuff marks. The automated check-out looked interesting and I think it's a cool idea, but I did watch a clerk fumble with it a bit and say "I'm still getting used to this." If there's any kind of learning curve, that's going to be a problem.

I also got my first look at the new iMacs and allow me to just say...

...glaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh....

Rumors of new iBooks this week, according to the Unofficial Apple Weblog. So, naturally, I bought a new iBook.

Not really, but that would be just like me.

One more

I've been a long-time user of the free version of NetNewsWire, NetNewsWire Lite. But its author, Brent Simmons, just inspired me to buy a license for the full application.

Just get a frickin' Mac, already

What?! A non-political post?! Yeah, yeah, just keep your pants on.

John Gruber posted yesterday about an article I can relate to.

My wife knows my usual deal. Mac-using friends get whatever free technical support I can provide. Windows users...

Well, as I like to say, I use Macs at home even though I use Windows at work because you can only pay me to use Windows.

Anyway, she asked me to do her a favor last week and provide some advice to someone she works with who's got a spyware problem on how to edit registry settings. Gruber talks about the proliferation of malware on Windows, a proliferation that is unheard of on Linux and the Mac.

I gave my wife's coworker a quick primer on editing registry settings and only suggested using a browser other than IE as he didn't seem to be able to consider buying a nice new Mac right now.

So, let's see... Macs are cheaper (link also via Daring Fireball) and they have none of the loathsome problems that plague Windows.

I'm just sayin' is all.

Get yer DemoRat liberal jibber-jabberin

Right off the iTunes Music Store.

Cool!

Because I can't think of a CARS story to write...

I saw this...

EyeTV 1.5 brings in support for TitanTV's remote programming feature, which allows you to schedule recordings from any computer with Internet access...

and I literally made this noise:

Oooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhh... Aaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeheeheehee!

And I'm downloading it now.

And now I'm thinking about just blogging my whole damn day.

I'm going to get some more coffee.

The Walkman it ain't

Sony unveild 20GB iPod rival

Wow... uh...

Words fail me.

Oh! Wait!

BLECH.

There we go. That was the word I was looking for.

And you need a color screen on an MP3 player because... uh... well... because... Well, you just do, OK?

It's a two-fer!

Apple's Jobs advising Kerry on economic issues

It's not just Buffett, it's Jobs, too! (Uh, hey, how about donating some money, Steeeeeeve???)

Looks like I picked the wrong week to not publish. And to stop sniffing glue.

Oh, heck, who am I kidding? I could never stop sniffing glue.

Uptime

So, I realized that there were a few software updates out there I hadn't grabbed and I got into Software Update to take a look. iChat, iDVD, iPhoto, OS X 10.3.3...

Then I looked down at the Konfabulator widget that shows me how long it's been since I've rebooted.

32 days.

Wow. In OS 9 I used to have my machine reboot every day automatically just to clear memory of accumulated garbage.

I read an interview with Jef Raskin a few days ago and he said he had to reboot in OS X several times a week.

What's he doing wrong? Sure, maybe an interface guru needs to do some bizarre things to his machine, but if you're doing weird shit anyway you shouldn't be bitching about how many times you have to reboot. Particularly when someone such as myself, who plays games, does some coding, and runs the occasional sudo command can keep his system up for 32 fucking days.

Anyway, I thought, fuck it, and quit out of Software Update. I'm not loading anything.

Why screw with a good thing?

For those of you who thought the iPod mini would bomb...

... I suggest a Chardonnay to go with that crow.

iPod mini sells out

Of course, it's perfectly possible that Apple (again) just can't keep up with the initial demand, but I think the cheapest iPod is a winner.

Suck-ahs!

Just got this email from the system admins at school:

If your work or home computer is running any of the following versions of Microsoft Windows, you must act now to secure your computer from possible attack and keep your UW network connection:

o Microsoft Windows NT 4.0
o Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0
o Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
o Microsoft Windows Server 2000
o Microsoft Windows Advanced Server 2000
o Microsoft Windows XP Professional
o Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
o Microsoft Windows XP 64-bit Edition
o Microsoft Windows XP 64-bit Edition Version 2003
o Microsoft Windows Server 2003
o Microsoft Windows Server 2003 64-bit Edition

If your work or home computer is running any earlier versions of Microsoft Windows, or any other Non-Windows Operating System, including but not limited to

o Windows 3.x
o Windows 95
o Windows 98
o Windows 98 SE
o Windows ME
o MAC OS 9 and below
o MAC OS X, Jaguar or Panther

you are NOT vulnerable at this time and do NOT need to apply the patch.

Sometimes it's nice being in the minority.

Blogger and Safari

I don't know if this is new to Safari 1.2 or if it was in there before, but Safari not only works with Blogger, it presents an entirely different interface than I see with Camino (although apparently the same one as in the Mac version of IE).

Now if it only worked with my bank's website, I wouldn't need Camino anymore.

Darwine

Via Inessential:

Darwine is WINE for OS X—running Windows apps without Windows. Holy cow.

Ooooh...

Some Apple notes

An iPod disaster was averted yesterday by a handy solution on the Apple message boards.

Walking across the street, I dropped my iPod from about chest height. As I screamed "Nooooooooooooo!" in slow motion, it bounced twice and came to rest, dinged on two corners. It still showed the last song played on the screen so I thought it weathered its first accident with nothing but cosmetic damage.

But when we got back into the car and I went to start it up again, it wouldn't respond.

Oh, nooooooooo...

I did have a glimmer of hope since I knew the unit wasn't totally dead. When I got home, I found it connected to iTunes fine, it was just the buttons that didn't seemt to work. Checking the message boards I found the suggestion to see if the white plastic part was misaligned from the silver backing. To my surprise I noticed it was slightly misaligned. I applied pressure in opposite directions and POP! The front and back audibly came back into alignment!

That's why Apple's message boards are the first thing I check.

On Saturday I stopped into the University Village Apple Store and picked up an Apple professional keyboard. It's quite nice - I really like the feel of the keys. I'm working on getting my 400 MHz Power Mac G4 to be more serviceable (particularly with iPhoto) and ordered an extra 512 MB of RAM for it from MacMall. A processor upgrade to 1 GHz may follow, depending on the results.

Also at the Apple Store, I picked up a copy of Halo. It wasn't until the drive home that I realized that I had just shattered a 10-year streak of not putting any money into Microsoft's coffers!

Ah, well. So far it's an incredible game and I don't regret it at all.

Apple and letting users be users

Steve Gillmor on the difference between Jobs and Gates, as exhibited in their recent announcements of home music products:

The GarageBand move is more than a little reminiscent of the arc the Beatles rode in the '60s.

...

The Fab Four (with George Martin's assistance) broke the back of the record business's lock on the creative process of the day. They wrote, performed, recorded, filmed and marketed their material—and leveraged each new wave of success to bootstrap themselves into more and more control over each stage of the business process.

At CES, Gates showed what he hopes is an iPod killer, the Portable Media Center. It is only a prototype, but a raft of hardware partners promise to deliver products in the second half of the year. But Microsoft's DRM model tends to limit (rather than inspire) the kind of next-gen content made possible by the iPod platform of tools and add-ons.

...

Users are converged. Jobs may see it. Gates may not.

The ability to use GarageBand to create your own songs, turn them into MP3s and listen to them on your iPod or play them for others, is the same empowerment (for lack of a better word) that iMovie has made possible in video. The same empowerment that made things like the MoveOn.org Bush in 30 Seconds spots possible. It's a user-driven solution - letting users be as creative as they want to be - not a corporate-driven solution that's more concerned with stopping the few people who might abuse the system in the record industry's eyes.

The iPod mini

As I noted over on Eat Your Vegetables earlier, I think at $50 more than flash memory-based MP3 players and $50 less than the base iPod, the iPod mini is priced reasonably.

Despite all the whining (I'm not talking about you, Lane, I'm talking about others).

Now John Gruber has weighed in and notes that it's really a nice piece of engineering and, because of its size, a slightly different product than the "traditional" iPod.

I like Chris Breen quite a lot but, Chris, you were apparently out to lunch when the memo went around that explained that there is no iPod priced lower than the iPod mini.

The major complaint to date has been the iPod's price. Its capacity has not been an issue since the original 5 GB model came out. Here we have a model that costs less, has enough capacity to keep listening to fresh music for three days straight, and is significantly smaller.

The problem with the Cube was... it was the Cube. It was not expandable like the Power Mac and it was expensive compared to the iMac. The iPod mini is at the bottom of the line. And it's at the bottom of the line that everyone wants to buy.

This has got to be one of those instances that drives Apple absolutely batty. If the rumor sites hadn't been predicting $100 iPods for weeks, $249 probably wouldn't have gotten applause, but it probably wouldn't have "sucked the air out of the room".

ADDENDUM: Jonathan Crowe has a good post about the same issue. He notes the Rio 4 GB device is the exact same price as the iPod mini.

Which one looks better? Which one has a better interface?

Apple's offering a better device... at the same price.

Since when do Apple customers not have to pay a premium?!

I'll do it this afternooooooon!

Since Lane suggested I might blog about tomorrow's Apple keynote, I suppose I probably should. I mean, Apple is the crunchy cluster in the cereal that is this weblog.

It might also be considered a crunchberry, if you're more a Cap'n Crunch type than a Honey Bunches of Oats type.

Of course, I will be blogging the keynote Crazy Apple Rumors-style tomorrow (LIVE from the University of Washington Tacoma library! Stop on by if you're around!), but that's hardly measured speculation. So, as a respected Apple pundit (COUGH!), what are my thoughts on what Apple might unveil tomorrow?

I think speed-bumps in the G5s and a G5-based Xserve are fairly certain. I'd put some good money on those. But everything else is mere speculation.

Cheaper iPods have been talked about perhaps the most. It is a possibility, but I have to wonder about the completely bad timing of coming out with the ultimate stocking stuffer two weeks after the Christmas shopping season ended. I haven't priced out 2 GB and 4 GB hard drives so I don't know if it's even possible to put together a $100 iPod. John Gruber, of course, has effectively put down the idea of a flash memory-based device, while making an attractive argument that the only place left for Apple to go with the iPod is down (who has a music collection larger than 40 GB?).

Dori's noted some set-top box speculation and, if you read my comments on her post, you'll note I'm very sceptical (as are Dori and Tom). I just don't see how you can get a 120 GB hard drive and a SuperDrive into a $400 machine, along with a bunch of other components and a Mac OS Lite operating system and new versions of iTunes and iPhoto and... It just reads like someone's fantasy device.

What would I like? I'd like an iPod-based system that replaces my stereo. I never play CDs any more since I have my iPod hooked up to my tuner (which is now over 20 years old!). I could use a tuner and high quality speaker combination that can take an iPod's input and accepts streaming from iTunes. It doesn't need to be a TiVo and connect to my toaster.

Tom Yager hopes to see a new version of AppleWorks. That's on the top of my list as well, as it is the lurching troglodyte of the Apple pantheon of software. Either cut it or update it already.

Apart from that, I hope to be surprised by the fine folks in Cupertino.

Wow

OmniWeb 5 looks wicked boss. (Link via Hack The Planet.)

Even though I like Safari, I've got to give that a try. I think I'd would even I wasn't eligible for the upgrade price.

Mike Matas, who's linked to over on the left, is a high school student who contracts for Omni. Omni's president told me Mike walked right up to Steve Jobs at Macworld and told him Omni was going to kick Apple's butt in web browsers.

Keep an eye on that kid.

(Disclaimer: Omni Group has been an advertiser on CARS in the past and they treated me to dinner at their offices once.)

(Don't accuse ME of being like George Will.)

David Winer singing the same tune

The first time I read something written by David Winer, it was years ago when Apple was first releasing AppleScript. Winer believed Apple was doing the world a disservice by creating its own scripting language rather than relying on third-party developers. He seemed to believe that Apple should stick to the operating system and hardware and leave everything else to the independent software developers.

So furious was Winer, he took his company away from the Macintosh and over to Windows.

Because... uh... Microsoft would never put something into the operating system that would drive a small developer out of business.

Cough.

Anyway, Winer is still hot on the issue, only this time he's taking his righteous anger (or just his self-promotion disguised as righteous anger) out on the Clark and Dean campaigns. Based on a Wired article about Clark's campaign going open-source, Winer says:

I find myself hoping they get their asses kicked, hard. I don't expect much of Bush, but I doubt seriously that he would undermine the mostly American software industry by competing with it with free software.

...

How sad to see two leading Democrats fall for, even feed the lie that they can create user-oriented software for free. Shame on both Dean and Clark. They went after the little guy. Who wants a president who does that. Not me. Still looking for someone worth supporting.

Winer's reaction to Apple is debatable. Personally, I believe the Macintosh operating system would be a lot less fun if Apple weren't around to make it anymore. It's applications like AppleScript, iTunes, iMovie and iPhoto that have allowed Apple to return to profitability - by making an out-of-the-box user experience that no other computer has.

But his argument that tools that drive democracy should not be open sourced comes from the narrow view of someone concerned more about enlarging his own pocketbook than about providing a level playing field for candidates. In this instance, he is flat-out wrong. As Jerome Armstrong notes on Daily Kos

This is bigger than making a buck.

If Clark and Dean can make free tools that can be used by candidates in the future to lower the costs of entry, organization and getting their message out, that benefits everyone.

But Winer is not interested in everyone. Winer is interested in Winer.

Keyboards

Recently my lower back has been bugging me, mostly because of my cyclical lack of exercise (I'll get to it! I'll get to it!), but also because my desk arrangement has been less than ergonomic.

I hope to have one of these before the holiday is out. In the mean time, my PowerBook is perched on my Panther box which is on top of my Jaguar box. Not exactly stylish, but it's higher and that's the goal, ergonomically speaking. My Kensington Studio Mouse is plugged into the lousy keyboard that came with my 400 MHz PowerMac G4 and that's plugged into the PowerBook.

Does anyone have any keyboard recommendation? I have an Adesso split-key jobbie that I use with the PowerMac that I like fairly well. Any other recommendations?

OK, one more thing on the iPod video

John Gruber's provided an excellent list of Alternative Stencil Slogans for the 'Neistat Brothers'.

Laziness on the Mac web

MacNN gets it wrong in its latest blurb about the iPod smear.

How can it be both a smear and a "problem with the popular music player"? Either the accusation is true or it's false.

And, as we know, the accusation is false. If MacNN did five seconds of research they'd know that. It's the laziness of sites that simply regurgitate press releases that results in misleading garbage like this.

UPDATE: Casey Niestat has a new message up on the web site offering further explanation and stating he thinks Apple's new policy is fair. Despite his experience, people DO replace their iPod batteries successfully with third-party options. Maybe his problem wasn't with the battery at all. Frankly, the manner in which this was presented doesn't lend him any credibility. Anyway, this will hopefully be the end of it.

Props

OK, so the kids probably aren't saying "props" anymore, but here are some post-Thanksgiving props I want to dole out:

• Believe it or not, I thought Bush's visit to Iraq was a nice thing for him to do and he even managed to get a funny in. Since I go off on him so often, I won't even mention how the Republicans will use it as a political prop and how the press has ridiculously portrayed it as some daring mission. Oops. Still, it was a good thing to do.
• Wired is positioning itself as the Daily Show of serious news - it's the one outlet that has consistently covered the debacles surrounding electronic voting and ran a prominent story on the GOP electronic break-in against the Democrats.
• SpyMac, one of those Apple rumor sites I like to poke fun at, is one of two sites (Bill Palmer's being the other) that have the goods on the guys who made the nigh-slanderous iPod video. In SpyMac's case, they linked to an email exchange that really highlights how these clowns are just looking to promote themselves and don't care how much it really costs to replace the iPod's battery. UPDATE: As Jonathan Crowe notes in comments, iPodLounge beat SpyMac to the punch on this one, so props to them. That's actually a great source for all things iPod. I'm still appalled at the sites that posted approving links to the video that haven't put up corrections or updates on the actual battery replacement options.

Gah!

The assinine complaints about the iPod battery non-issue touched off by that video continue to pop up. I've seen two Mac-centric sites link to the damn thing approvingly with "way to stick it to the man!" comments.

My little Crazy Apple Rumors jab at the dimwits who don't know how to Google "iPod battery replacement" was linked in comments at Kuro5hin. Read the replies to the guy who posted the link.

My sincere apologies to Stan Ng - I didn't think anyone would be stupid enough to think my story was true.

You'd think the Neanderthal who appears near the end might have tipped them off, if not the character known as "Angry Scotsman." I guess when you're that interested in bashing Apple for no good reason you tend not to notice details like that.

ADDENDUM: Bill Palmer gets to the likely real motive behind the movie. Hmmmm... I feel another CARS entry coming on...

Don't you have something better to do?

Via BoingBoing, I see someone is engaging in an "anti-advertising campaign" (read: vandalism) because he doesn't think the iPod's battery is replaceable.

He's wrong of course. It can be replaced for between $49 and $99, which took me all of 45 seconds to find out.

Wonder how long it took him to make that movie?

Also, my wife's got the original iPod which I bought two years ago. It's still running fine, so they don't all die after 18 months.

In praise of older games

I recently got a copy of Myth III: The Wolf Age, which has been out for a while but I had never played. While not as satisfying as the previous two chapters of the Myth dynasty, it rekindled my interest in the series, perhaps the crowning jewel of the late, lamented Bungie. I'm not a huge gamer, but I consider Myth II to be my favorite game of all time.

Poking around on the web, I discovered that some enterprising souls at Myth Developers had created Carbon updates of both Myth: The Fallen Lords and Myth II: Soulblighter, so you can now run these games in OS X.

This might seem like a good thing, but after a hiatus from gameplay since completing Return To Castle Wolfenstein, I found myself hooked again on these ancient treasures. I've just finished The Fallen Lords, a game I first played in 1997. The Carbon version doesn't take advantage of OS X 3D drivers, but it was always the gameplay and the storyline that made Myth so compelling.

This is exactly why The Wolf Age was not as much of a success. The gameplay was strangely more difficult (although subsequent updates have improved it some) and the story lacked the understated sincerity, for lack of a better word, of The Fallen Lords and Soulblighter. The Wolf Age's more dramatic narration and acting reflect the failing of Mumbo Jumbo to "get" the appeal of the subdued tone of the original Myth titles.

I can go on for hours and hours like these things are great works of literature. They're not, of course, but they are great works of their own genre.

Albert also alerted me to an OS X port of another Bungie classic: Marathon. This was the game where Bungie really hit its stride. Pathways to Darkness was a good first foray into first-person shooter games for the Macintosh, but Marathon amassed a cult following. I haven't had much time to play with the OS X port, but it runs "actual size" in a small portion of today's much larger screens which can be a little annoying. It's still enjoyable, though.

Ah, the hours of potential productivity I wasted on that game...

Networkable game play and the ability to make your own maps gave these games a life of their own that continues even now.

Marathon was first released in 1994 and it's still got legs.

Tip o' the day

OK, I don't have a "Tip o' the day" so this is, uh, just... "Tip."

Pressing the F9 key in Panther activates Exposé. Tapping it three times gets Exposé to stick, so you can more easily pick a window.

Ah-haaaaah...

We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.

ADDENDUM: D'OH! Jeff Carlson (he of TidBITS fame), in comments, corrects me on my "Tip". Just tapping the F9 key ONCE makes Exposé stick! Well, sure, but it ALSO works if you tap it three times. And there's a dance you should do as well.

See, this is why I don't have a "Tip o' the day" feature. I'm an idiot. And THEN, to top it off, I get corrected by someone from TidBITS, which is just shy of having Steve Jobs drive over to your house and explain how it works. Ugh.

The carrot

A comment from Ross Olson in my Panther post below reminded me of another anecdote about how Apple's wooing people.

I use my PowerBook to take notes in my class that meets Tuesdays and Thursdays and a guy who sits in front of me uses a Dell to do the same. On Thursday the 16th, he and I were talking about Macs and I commented that iTunes had just been released for the PC and said he should try it. He said "Oh, yeah, I'll have to check that out."

The following Tuesday he told me he had downloaded iTunes and used it to burn a CD and really liked it.

On Thursday, a week after the first discussion, I saw him coming in wearing a pair of tell-tale white earplugs. He had gone out and bought a 30 GB iPod.

It's an anecdote, but I think it's telling.

Panther maniac

Albert and I picked up our copies of Panther last night and I am suitably impressed.

I installed it first on my old 400 MHz PowerBook and I was astounded at how much snappier it seemed. Software vendors will always say their new operating system is "faster!", but I think the average experience has consistently been that they get slower and slower, requiring faster and faster processors to run on.

In both Jaguar and Panther, Apple has managed to deliver OSes that are faster than their predecessors (in my experience, anyway, and Albert and another friend related the same experience). My 400 MHz PowerBook is downright zippy again.

I don't know the technical details, but I suspect that they're still wringing speed improvements from porting OS X from the Intel-based NeXT to the Power PC.

Exposé is a thing of beauty - I am going to be using that a lot - and I've been switching uselessly back and forth between users just to watch the cube effect.

I didn't realize they were going to have 10% off all Macs last night and I was sorely tempted to get my wife a new iBook. I wish I had. The G3 Combo Drive model was down to $899. I won't see that price again for a while.

Karen's been toiling away at a 300 MHz blueberry iBook for the past few years. She really only uses it for email, Internet and some light word processing, but OS 9 is so '90s and it pains me to watch her screen refresh rates. Pains me. After saying "It's fine. Don't touch it." for quite some time, I think she's finally on board with the upgrade idea.

My debacle with FedEx is over - the stuff was delivered this afternoon. If you have an iPod, I heartily encourage you to get the Belkin Voice Recorder. It's also a little speaker so you can actually listen to music (although I don't think you'd really want to for long). The neat thing (obviously in addition to the voice recording) is the ability to use the iPod as an alarm clock, one that wakes you up to your music.

So, again, kudos to Apple. You rock.

So pissed

My parents were kind enough to buy me some shiny new Apple products for my upcoming birthday. On Wednesday, FedEx attempted delivery and I wasn't home. I thought, well, tomorrow I'll be around most of the day.

4:30 rolls around and a van pulls up and stops in the street, blocking a lane. That's entirely unecessary, as we have a driveway right there, but whatever. The van is unmarked, but a woman gets out and goes to the back and starts digging through a bunch of boxes.

I see her throw one further back into the van. Regardless, I'm excited because I'm about to enjoy some sweet, delicious technology.

After a lot of rustling around, she finds the box, closes the van doors and starts first one way around the shrubs in front of our house and then the other way. Suddenly she stops and goes back to the van. She puts the box into the passenger's side, gets back into the driver's seat, buckles up and drives off.

Never to be seen again.

My jaw slack with sudden disappointment I say aloud to myself "What... what the fuck? What the fuck was that?!"

I called FedEx later. They have apparently sub-contracted home delivery in my area and - pardon my French but I'm pissed off if you remember the title of this post - the fucking bitch logged that as "Attempted delivery."

"Attempted delivery"? She didn't make it onto the porch! She didn't even make it onto the lawn!

"Considered delivery" is more like it. "Couldn't be bothered to haul fat ass around a couple of shrubs." "Suddenly smelled pork rinds." "Was going to deliver but remembered my shows were starting." But not "Attempted delivery"! No, sir!

Tonight Albert and I are headed up to Seattle to attend the Panther release festivities at the University Village Apple Store. That may assuage my anger somewhat, but probably not much.

Some Apple stuff

And how 'bout an Apple-related post? Haven't had one of those for a while and, actually, I think I'm going to rectify that. I'm not planning on cutting down on the political posts, but I might mix them up a bit.

So, does anyone know what's up with drag and drop of text in OS X, particularly browsers? Doesn't seem to work in Safari and doesn't seem to work in Camino. This is annoying as with today's weblogs and such, the browser is actually quite often used for text input and editing. Also, I wish someone could make an "Undo" for text editing done in a browser. I've lost a couple of posts by accidentaly deleting all the text when I meant to copy it all and the only way to get it back is to re-type it.

Also, if you are living on the moon, you might not have noticed that Apple announced new iPod features - voice recording and storing pictures from flash media - as well as iTunes and the iTunes Music Store for Windows. If you're using Windows, you want iTunes. It's the bomb.

Are the kids still saying "It's the bomb."? Probably not.

AAAGH! and Mmmm...

The weasels at VeriSign have decided to reroute unregistered domain names to their server (link via Mr. Barrett), screwing up... well, screwing up lots of things that shouldn't be screwed up.

If you do business with VeriSign, please don't.

On the more pleasant side of technology, take a look at these pictures of the Apple G5 (link via Splorp). Mmm... so, so sexay!

If you're not using a Macintosh, please do.

Dell hates its customers

An amusing tale linked to from Dan Gillmor's blog.

Apparently, Dell (Canada, anyway) has a startup screen on its computers that says you must read the licenses for the included software and then click a button to agree to the terms of those licenses in order to use the computer.

The licenses are sealed in the packages with the software CDs and the label says on the package "By opening this package you are agreeing to the license."

So, in other words, it's impossible to comply with Dell's terms. They don't give you a means to read the license without agreeing to it and you can't agree to the license without reading it.

Normally, like on Apple products, such startup screens contain the text of the license - so you know what you're agreeing to.

Dell, however, being run by a collection of dunderheads, has decided to force the user to be a liar.

Switch

Some Dean supporters have copied Apple's Switch campaign and created Switch2Dean (link via Dean's Blog for America).

They need to find a Janie Porsche.

Back in the lead

According to eWeek (no link as I read a downloaded version), Microsoft doesn't know when Longhorn is going to be released.

Panther will be out before the end of the year, according to my pals at Apple. As far as I'm concerned, Jaguar (Mac OS X 10.2) is already a superior interface to Windows XP (and, yes, I use both), so this means Apple will, by all reasonable measure, be firmly in the lead in the desktop interface.

So I don't want to hear any "Oh, there's no difference anymore..."

Well, anyway, I don't want to hear that after the end of the year.

Mac world entertainment

Following a link from Damien Barrett's site, I see famous Canadian Shawn King is now taking down scam artists.

Jack Campbell has a rather sordid history in the Macintosh community and reading threads on Shawn's forum is not only entertaining, it's an education on hucksters and how they operate. The whole thing spans multiple threads and started over a month and a half ago, but my favorite part is here, where we learn that Jack's threatening with lawyers he hasn't engaged and lying about having spoken with them.

Oops.

Upgrades OF THE FUTURE!

I just opened Sherlock to look up something in the Phone Book channel and for a second a message appeared that said "You must upgrade to Mac OS 10.3 or later to use the Phone Book channel in Sherlock."

Fortunately, it then went away and I was able to use the Phone Book normally, but I think it would be better if they actually released 10.3 before they put those kinds of messages up.

I mean, is that Fair and Balanced?

No. It is not.

It's days like yesterday...

...that make me glad I own Macs.

I was at the office until 10pm helping the IT department go machine by machine to install patches to fix the RPC hole that was being exploited by the most recent worm. I finally left because, well, I don't work for IT anymore. But those guys were probably going to be there into the wee hours of the morning.

Somebody did go buy some sandwiches and Krispy Kremes, though. Damn those things are good.

Some Mac geek stuff

Gruber's got a keen post up about how to delete kernel extensions in OS X. I'm particularly glad to learn about receipts since the days of looking for changes in your Extensions folder or relying on Conflict Catcher are gone.

Speaking of Macs, I was over at Albert's last night and the Tacoma News Tribune's embedded reporter, Mike Gilbert, was there telling us stories of his time in Iraq. He wanted to show us the pictures photographer Peter Haley took there but whatever application he had been using to slide show them was shareware and the trial period had expired.

As you can imagine, this whole thing quickly devolved into geeks on parade.

Gilbert's iBook was running OS 9 and Albert's first thought was to delete the preferences for the app to see if the trial period would reinstate but that didn't work. Most savvy programmers wouldn't put that in the preferences file but it was worth a shot. I managed to find some digital camera software on the hard drive that would do a slide show and Albert got the idea to do video out to his wide-screen TV. For whatever reason, the iBook's desktop wouldn't show up on the TV (I suspect it was OS 9) so Albert grabbed a Firewire cable and copied the pictures over to his iBook which was running OS X. He hooked it up to the TV and imported the photos to iPhoto and showed them from there.

They were really quite exceptional and Gilbert had some interesting stories. One of them began "It was April 28th, Saddam's birthday, and we were playing wiffle ball…" As with any exceptional journey, good or bad, he said it was hard coming back. Even if it's the kind of trip where you were just happy to have a comfortable place to go to the bathroom, you get used to every day being an adventure.

Daring indeed!

This is why I like reading Jon Gruber's weblog:

When I last wrote about Andrew Stone, I accused him of dishonesty regarding his blatantly inaccurate anti-Carbon propaganda… But now, a few months later, I’ve come to a different conclusion: Andrew Stone is out of his fucking mind.

Mmm, important distinction! Thanks for the update! I think he's right, of course, but I'm sure I wouldn't have phrased it so... daringly.

It's been a few weeks now and I'm starting to miss making up Apple rumors. There really hasn't been much going on in the Apple world but I probably could have made something out of this.

Apple Registers On InfoWorld Poll.

Apple made a strong showing in InfoWorld's Reader's Choice Awards. Why is that surprising? Well, InfoWorld's primarily a magazine for enterprise technology users, and Apple's been counted out of the enterprise space for years. But Mac OS X 10.2 took Best Product (although, strangely, Windows Server 2003 took best OS - go figure) and the iPod was named Best Gadget, both by large margins. Apple and Microsoft were a statistical tie for Best Vendor.

More than the fact that Apple actually won a few things, this goes to show that folks in the enterprise do know about Apple, but I suspect that Apple is benefitting, again, from a strong core. Your average Windows user does not feel a strong bond with Microsoft and would look at a list of products and pick which ever one he or she liked the most. The average Mac user is going to look at the list and see if there's an Apple product on it. Chances are it's going to be their favorite anyway, but they might vote for it even if it weren't.

My mistake.

It's not Adobe. Something's screwed with application switching and the dock.

For example, I have Safari in the foreground and it still appears greyed out in the dock. No matter what application I quit, I get bounced back to BBEdit.

The only thing I can think of is the security update. This wasn't happening before that. Anyone else having this problem?

UPDATE: I logged out an logged back in again and that fixed it. Still don't know what caused it, though.

What the hell is wrong with Adobe?

I'm surfing around in Safari and I notice that Photoshop Elements is still open from when I used it last night. So I right click on its icon in the dock and select Quit.

Now, normally when you do this, the application will just quietly quit in the background. In Elements' case, however, all the pallets quickly pop to the front and then disappear as the application quits. When it's gone I find I'm in...

BBEdit.

Duh?

I'm not sure how it chose to dump me back into BBEdit instead of Safari, where I started this mystical journey, but I was rather surprised.