Happy or Sad?
John Gruber notes that:
Windows Vista Help: Opening the Windows Vista box
“Even the packaging suffers from poor usability. Jiminy.”
because of that little help tidbit that describes how to open the Vista packaging. It’s sad if it’s “for reals” but I’m not convinved… could it be Microsoft’s attempt at help humour ala Apple’s How to pick up [...]
IE Meta: Gruber Nails It
I love this statement from John Gruber regarding Microsoft’s attempt to make all the other browsers pay for their past mistakes:
…I’m more likely to deliberately start blocking traffic from IE users than I am to add this bullshit tag to my markup. I want IE users to switch to another browser, so the last thing [...]
Canada Is Freakin’ Scary
Who in their right mind would live in this place?
We advise you to exercise caution and monitor developments that might affect your safety in Canada because of the risk of terrorist attack.
…
Petty crime such as pick pocketing and street theft occurs at tourist destinations, hotels and on public transport.
…
The wind-chill factor can also create [...]
The Trough of Disillusionment
Perhaps my favourite Wikipedia page of all time: Hype cycle
OS X 10.5 and the Case of the Stuttering Mouse
Got OS X 10.5 (aka Leopard)? Find that every now and then you’re mouse stutters and skips like Windows executing a networked file copy? Blame the Dashboard.
Steps to reproduce: put your machine to sleep. Wake. F12 to unleash the widgets. F12 to rein them in again. Commence stutterage (your steps may vary).
This thread on the [...]
MacBook Air: Batteries? Really? Honestly?
“What Bugs Apple Fans”, a mildly interesting article about Apple over on Forbes, claims that the non-swappable battery is the number one issue Mac fans have about the new MacBook Air:
Dive into the crowd at MacWorld gathered around Apple’s latest product, the MacBook Air, and they’ll quickly point out what could be the wafer-thin machines [...]
Lucene: A Tacit Admission of Fail?
Lucene claims to be a text search engine, yeah? That’s what they say:
Apache Lucene is a high-performance, full-featured text search engine library written entirely in Java. It is a technology suitable for nearly any application that requires full-text search, especially cross-platform.
So why is it when I go to the Lucene site the site-wide search is [...]
NetNewswire is Free - Oh Boo Hoo
An open letter to the Mac RSS reader developers.
Just a couple of days ago Brent Simmons et al. released the most-excellent Mac RSS newsreader NetNewswire for free. Completely for free. All features free. If you’ve got a Mac you really should go download it whether you have any idea what the hell I’m talking about [...]
Logitech Harmony Remote & Leopard
A couple of days ago I picked up a Logitech Harmony 550 universal remote control. I was impressed how well the web application worked in OS X - it took about fifteen minutes to get everything set up and now, to parrot the phrase, “it just works”.
I didn’t connect the dots between it and copy/paste [...]
Apple Has a Music Monopoly?
Evidently so, or so claims a lawsuit filed down in the States:
“Apple has engaged in tying and monopolizing behavior, placing unneeded and unjustifiable technological restrictions on its most popular products in an effort to restrict consumer choice, and to restrain what little remains of its competition in the digital music markets,”
Rather than jump to conclusions [...]