Christopher Mackay’s Blog

From the Daring Fireball post on Wired’s story on 37signals:

Long profile by Andrew Park in the March issue. Pretty good overall, but there’s an awful lot of ginned-up conflict. E.g. the last paragraph contains the sentence: ‘Call it arrogance or idealism, but they would rather fail than adapt,’ and suggests they’re somehow losing customers due to their emphasis on simplicity above all else.”

Doesn’t seem so “ginned-up” from here. Count me among the lost customers.

37signals have earned their success. They get an awful lot right in their apps, from lack of data lock-in to an admirable overall level of intuitiveness.

So why have I given up on them after trying to use Basecamp for nearly 3 years?

A big reason would be that “vetoing customer requests” is standard operating procedure at 37signals. Don’t take my word for it: it says so on page 62 of Getting Real:

Don’t worry about tracking and saving each request that comes in. Let your customers be your memory. If it’s really worth remembering, they’ll remind you until you can’t forget.

Or until they go away because they have better things to do.

It’s fine with me that DHH would say “fuck you” to this, but he doesn’t get to do that and have my money.

For people looking for something, um, less simple than Basecamp (on Mac OS X) take a look at OmniPlan, recently upgraded to version 1.5.

RickMercer: Science: 21st century menace: in which Rick Mercer speaks truth…

The Street: “Mac Owners Are Snobs”

So, according to this article,

Mac owners are more likely:

• to be perfectionists
• to use notebooks
• to use teeth whitening products
• to drive station wagons
• to pay for downloaded music
• to go to Starbucks
• care about “green” products and the environment
• to own a hybrid car
• and last but not least … to buy 5 pairs of sneakers in a year

• Perfectionist? Nit-picky, maybe, but I’ve never really mastered it, so, no.
• I do use notebooks (paper ones and laptop computers; not sure which they mean…)
• My teeth don’t need to look like they’re made of plastic, thanks.
• Don’t own a station wagon. Ask me again in two weeks, though…
• I do buy all of my music from iTunes. I’ve become allergic to CDs, and I value my time too much to use P2P networks.
• I don’t recall ever buying a drink in a Starbucks. I might’ve, once: I was with other people, and wouldn’t have gone in on my own… Does that count?
• Caring about the environment makes me a snob? Wow. There’s a baseline in need of adjustment…
• No hybrid car. Doesn’t make sense when most of your driving’s on the highway.
• I don’t think I’ve bought five pairs of sneakers in the last fifteen years. Maybe I should walk more (would that make me an environmental snob, though?)

So there.

(Via TUAW.)

Hand-wringing About American Culture - Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?: —New York Times

…she first got the idea for this book back in 2001, on 9/11.

Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:

‘This is just like Pearl Harbor,’ one of the men said.

The other asked, ‘What is Pearl Harbor?’

‘That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,’ the first man replied.”

That’s chilling.

(Via Digg.)

INDIANA JONES: first teaser trailer released for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; looks pretty sweet…

TidBITS Macs & Mac OS X: Leopard Emerges from Beta as 10.5.2 Ships.

What is it with everyone’s obsession with Leopard’s transparent menubar?

If you’re using a desktop image that’s in any way useful — as in it’s easy to find icons on the desktop, you know, big blue sky, as opposed to some noisy, distracting pattern that camouflages everything you put on it — then it’s not a big deal.

I agree with Matt’s assessment that iCal’s new behaviour of requiring a double-click to show event details is still an annoying step backwards, though.

Doesn’t look a day over 150:

His genius is more relevant today than ever…

Watch this YouTube clip.

It’s the old ladder schtick, but with a tree, and no other people… Quite an accomplishment, actually

(Via reddit, of course…)

In an interview with BBC Radio 4, Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, suggests that more accommodation should be made in the British legal system for peoples’ religious views:

There’s one law for everybody and that’s all there is to be said, and anything else that commands your loyalty or allegiance is completely irrelevant in the processes of the courts — I think that’s a bit of a danger.

He’s proposing nothing less than two classes of citizens; those with basic legal rights and responsibilities, and special people with extra rights and, presumably, fewer responsibilities.

Not wanting to cause undue alarm, he hastened to add that the

principle that there is only one law for everybody is an important pillar of our social identity as a western democracy.

He doesn’t seem to believe it, though:

But I think it is a misunderstanding to suppose that means people don’t have other affiliations, other loyalties which shape and dictate how they behave in society and that the law needs to take some account of that. [emphasis added]

The law should do no such thing.

Especially not based on anything as ill-defined as a belief system. Where would that lead? Exemptions for people who believe in Thor, Zeus or little green men? Special rights for Sagittarians? Why not? Astrology is a belief system.

One set of laws for everyone is the only way to protect everyone’s rights.

He stresses that ‘nobody in their right mind would want to see in this country the kind of inhumanity that’s sometimes been associated with the practice of the law in some Islamic states; the extreme punishments, the attitudes to women as well’.

But this is exactly what his suggestion would lead to. Does he imagine that once that door is opened an inch, that the demands would end there?

Dr Williams is more interested in not offending anyone’s beliefs than in safeguarding democracy. The special accommodation he seeks represents nothing less than the undermining of western civilization.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) (via the Sydney Morning Herald):

However, [Torvalds] went on to say that both companies are using their operating systems to propel more software and hardware sales.”

Simply shocking. I can’t imagine what they’re thinking…