Mr eel
Mac
You Pimped the Dock? Jesus Christ, Why!
Every release of the Mac OS brings changes that people don’t like. My tack it to try and live with things before I complain about them. Usually it’s just an adjustment. Sometimes however, there are choices in the OS that are sub-par.
Leopard doesn’t bring many dramatic changes — from the user’s point of view. It’s mainly tweaks and improvements. Pretty much every part of the OS has had a good spit and polish. I’m happy to see slightly ropey interfaces like the networking preferences get a good going over. The Finder is actually… still a bit crap, since it can’t decide if it wants to be a spatial browser or not, but at least it’s not a slow motherbitch anymore. Best of all, the Finder doesn’t hang when network drives disappear. Honestly, that last one was the only thing I looked forward to in Leopard.
By and large, it’s nice. It’s faster, neater and visually more coherent.
Except… except the dock is tacky junk. It’s totally at odds with Apple’s hardware design aesthetic. Rather than simple, attractive and usable, we get the UI equivalent of hub-cap spinners. Tacky and pointless.
Don’t get me started on stacks. They suck completely. Give me back my hierarchical menus.
I even liked the transparent menu bar at first. I’m a sucker for gimmicks like anyone else. However after using it for awhile, I’ve found it to be pointless and at times unusable. Pick the wrong desktop and it gets a bit difficult to read. Oops! Besides that, it often just looks ugly, with weird gradients derived from the desktop image and whatever filtering Apple has applied to the menu.
I find these poor choices particularly striking and disappointing because they are so far away from how Apple approaches it’s hardware design. I’ll live, but man it’s irksome.
I’m a Smooth-scrolling Motherbitch!
Coz I got a Logitech VX Revolution. Expensive, elaborate, huge and very nice indeed. This is the ultimate mouse. For something with 13 buttons it appears surprisingly uncomplicated. Very precise pointing and a beautiful smooth scroll wheel. It is also large enough for my oversized hands. I’ve been having problems playing first person shooters because I end up fumbling with the mouse. No more of that!
So, goodbye Mighty Mouse! You’re going onto the eBays. You’re pretty, but sadly just-don’t-work-proper. Actually while I’m gushing over the VX Revolution I’ll take the time to warn everyone off the Mighty Mouse. It’s expensive for what it is, the scroll-ball just breaks — constantly stops working because it gets dirty — and the fancy touch sensitive buttons are confusing for most people.
It’s a nice experiment but just sucks really. Oh and don’t get a Apple Bluetooth mouse of any kind. They’re laggy, heavy and batteries are a hassle to deal with.
VX FTW!
Pixelmator is Vaporware ZOMG!
Pixelmator is an upcoming image editor for Mac OS X. Looks interesting. As soon as it had been announced, John Gruber declared it vaporware. He has apparently taken upon himself to redefine what vaporware actually means. His version is dramatically different to what everyone else believes. Pixelmator was announced two months ago. It’s deadline has slipped. Happens sometimes. Hardly qualifies as vaporware. Does this mean John will now declare any announced software that isn’t available to download immediately as vaporware?
It seems he’s continuing to be a twat about it. Don’t worry though John, in this context I define twat as ‘totally reasonable and not at all unfair’.
Reggy - Nice, Tiny Regular Expression Tester
For a regular expression newbie like me Reggy has been super handy. It’s just a tiny regular expression evaluator for Mac OS X that runs against your sample text as you modify your expression. It doesn’t try to do anything fancy, but it’s a Cthulu send when you’re trying to figure out an expression.
iWoz - Woz Not I
Steve Wozniak now has a biography. That’s quite nice really. Steve is an interesting guy, who has done some interesting things. I must say though, I don’t think much of the cover or title. Firstly the whole mirror finish thing is becoming a cliché. Secondly, the title really irritates me.
The reasons for calling the book iWoz are pretty transparent. After all he is most well known for having founded Apple and Apple is best known for the iMac and iPod. I think it’s a pretty shit move though.
Steve Wozniak hasn’t been involved with Apple for many years, nor did he have anything to do with the iMac or iPod, arguably the most well known and successful products they have made. So really it’s a cash in on a company and products that he can take little credit for.
The full title also drips hubris; “I Woz: How I Invented the Personal Computer and Had Fun Along the Way.”
Yeh woz, and I invented the internet.
You Can Boot Windows On a Macbook Pro
Why in the god-damned hell would you want to do that!
I fail to see why people are excited about this. I can imagine installing Boot Camp, booting Windows, fiddling about a bit and thinking “This is a bit crap really. I don’t miss it”. Right after that I’d delete the partition and boot back into Mac OS X.
I use a Mac on a Windows network. It’s not perfect, but it’s hardly unusable. The arguments for having windows on your Mac are pretty thin. Virtualisation might be useful at times, but dual booting is balls.
Dear Apple…
I know we quarrel sometimes. But I love you. I really do.
Dear Apple…
Please fix Help. It’s still slow as shit. Thanks!
Dear Apple…
Please stop the finder being total arse.
And fix your fucking network code already!
Thanks.
That is all.
Apple Hobbling the Music Industry?
Well, that’s apparently true according to this article on Business Week. The core argument is that it’s difficult for other music stores like Napster to compete with the iTunes store because of the popularity of the iPod and the lock-in that results — music purchased from the iTunes store can only be played in iTunes or on an iPod.
Well, it’s certainly true that iTunes/iPod audio files (DRMed ACC) aren’t open and inter-operable, they aren’t stopping competitors from selling music that can be played on the iPod. They will quite happily play MP3 and AAC files from any company, but here is the crucial point, as long as they aren’t DRMed.
So now we get right to the core of it. The only thing that is actually making life difficult for these stores, is the major record labels obsession with copyright protection schemes. DRM is not about protecting rights, it’s simply about limiting what music fans can do with purchased music. It’s also a perfect vehicle for creating a lock-in, which is what Apple has done — some people guess it’s so they can sell more iPods.
So, it’s the labels fault. Not Apple. They wanted the DRM schemes, they got ‘em. Now if it starts fucking things up, the labels are the ones we should be looking at.
Stupid greedy bastards don’t know it, but they’re making trouble for themselves.