My 5th generation iPod (30 GB) has given up the ghost. Sad iPod icon and everything. ‘Josiah’ at Apple tech support says it’s probably the hard drive, and that it’s not likely worth fixing; since it’s out of warranty, the repair cost is nearly as much as the replacement cost. Ah, disposable technology… Is there any other kind? 
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.
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…
Twittering From My Newton on Flickr - Photo Sharing!: Grant Hutchinson out-geeks us all…
I really should fire up the old eMate again…
(Via John Moltz.)
Apple’s calendar software, iCal, has taken unfortunate steps backwards in Leopar, Mac OS X 10.5, which were not remedied by the 10.5.1 update.
When users of iCal under Mac OS X 10.4.x invite users of 10.5.x to an event, the behaviour is quite different than it used to be. Regardless of the calendar the sender had assigned an event to (e.g. Home, Work, etc.), when inviting a Leopard iCal user, the event arrives as part of the Home calendar.
Worse, it’s impossible to edit the event or its notification/reminder. You can’t change the Calendar to which it belongs, it will have a 15 minute alert — even when the sender chose an hour — and there’s no way to confirm or decline the invite.
Here’s hoping 10.5.2 addresses some of these issues.
Time to rename Dell ‘Beleaguered Dell’. This should be familiar to anyone who remembers 1997.
Obligatory links:
It seems that the fix Sony posted to remedy their root-kit leaves the user’s (Windows) machine wide open. Open house. Run what you like. Wired News has the story on this and on the pervasiveness of the original root-kit, which has spread to over half a million networks, including military networks.
Not only has SonyBMG president Thomas Hesse arrogantly asked “Most people don’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?” (on NPR, cf cbc.ca), Sony.com’s search returns no useful results on the term “root kit” (unless “Charlie Daniels Band The Roots Remain” counts). There is a note on the bottom of the screen at SonyBMG.com, but that’s just pathetic. Sony — the mothership of the Sony empire — is the one taking it on the chin for this malevolent misstep, so Sony.com should prominently step up and help fix it.
I think it’s quite unexpected for a relatively trusted and well-liked company like Sony to screw up this badly, but I know for certain they’ll never screw up like this again because they’ll never regain the level of trust they once enjoyed.
Nov. 16 Update: Sony posts feeble apology, which contains the following statement:
Going forward, we will continue to identify new ways to meet demands for flexibility in how you and other consumers listen to music.
Inane linguistic redundancy aside (”Going forward”), I wonder how long it will take them to ‘identify’ standard Red Book audio CDs — you know, the ones everyone’s been calling ‘music CDs’ since the mid 1980s — as the ‘flexible’ format we’d like to get when we think we’re buying a music CD. When we’re not buying from the iTunes Music Store, that is.
Sony has justifiably been taking a lot of flack over the root-kit issue.
If you haven’t heard about this issue, then you probably get all of your news from the mainstream media. Take a minute and read the cnet story; I’ll wait.
If Apple can be said to have done DRM properly with iTunes’ FairPlay, and I think they can, then Sony has just spectacularly demonstrated how not to do it.
Sony is backpeddaling on this, to some small extent, but I bet no one at Sony gets fired over it.
Before watching Tactiva’s QuickTime TactaPad demontration videos, it had never really occurred to me just how linear and sequential most GUI-based interactions with computers are.
TactaPad’s new paradigm blows that wide open and allows a much more natural process — one that could make the computer more transparent to the user. At first glance, it looks child-like in its simplicity, but it soon becomes apparent that there’s a lot of subtlety at work. This would make it easily and quickly acceptable to a broad range of users.
Their FAQ states that they’re not currently for sale as they’re looking for a manufacturing partner. Let’s hope they find one; I’d buy one immediately. If Wacom has any sense, they’ll snap this up immediately. And let’s hope Apple, Microsoft, Adobe/Macromedia and other developers add support for this device into their software.
This looks like a real winner. The potential gains in apps like Final Cut, Illustrator, Flash, PowerPoint, Keynote, Finder, etc., are mind-boggling. The future development of these apps could go off in exciting new directions once freed from sequential, linear thinking. I’d love to see what they could do in apps that aren’t oriented around object-manipulation, things like Word or Photoshop.
With third-party templates overlaid on the board, it could even act as a keyboard replacement, or have trackpad-like navigation areas reserved. The possibilities are endless.
This device could also be a great help for those with accessibility issues. From a motor-control perspective, an input device that acts as an alternative to mice, pens, and keyboards, and doesn’t require grasping could be tremendously beneficial.
I can’t wait to get my hands on one.
I took notice when Microsoft chose Apple’s traditional processor — the G5 — for their new Xbox2.
My jaw dropped when Steve Jobs announced that Apple would be switching to Microsoft’s traditional processor — the Intel Pentium line — in favour of the G5.
But with the recent announcement that Roger Waters will be joining Dave Gilmour, Nick Mason and Rick Wright on-stage at Live8, I damn near fell off my chair.
Black is white. Day is night. If this continues, maybe Roger will even release a new album… Nah.
