Christopher Mackay’s Blog

A great site full of useful typographical advice. And not just for lawyers.

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…

A computer shop’s sales pitch: ‘We remove Vista’

From what I hear, Microsoft’s actually done a reasonably good job of improving security in Vista, but people really seem to hate it.

I still haven’t used Vista (XP & XP pro on the non-Macs here), and I’ve only seen it on one person’s laptop in the wild, and that person loved it (but found some of the changes to where things are stored took some getting used to, as compared to XP).

Steve Jobs announced at today’s world-wide developer’s conference that Mac OS X 10.5 (”Leopard”) will replace the Finder (which is?Ǭ

This might not mean as much as one expects at first glance; after all, large government and corporate users tend to be conservative in their adoption of new technologies. I’ve spoken with people who plan to upgrade their users to Vista, but not for a year or so (certainly until after the first Service Pack).

But this quote

In a memo to his staff, the DOT’s CIO Daniel Mintz says he has placed “an indefinite moratorium” on the upgrades as “there appears to be no compelling technical or business case for upgrading to these new Microsoft software products. Furthermore, there appears to be specific reasons not to upgrade.”

is pretty harsh.

From Information Week, via Slashdot.

No, I’ve never been upset by the presence of DRM in iTunes. Apple’s terms are more than acceptable from my point of view. I get most of my music from the iTunes Canada Store these days, as I have since the Canadian store opened on December 2nd, 2004. (What irritates me is having to pay the CRIA royalties on blank media that I purchase to back up my digital photos, movies (shot with my DV camera), and Photoshop design files, but that’s another story.)

Still, I understand why musicians might want to be able to sell their music devoid of DRM software. That’s why I was pleased to learn, via Michael Geist’s blog, that Puretracks had gone DRM-free for some 50,000 titles.

Of course, they’ve made a mess of it.

Previously, Puretracks’ Windows Media-infected music offerings had required the use of Windows Media Player, Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer. Which is fine, unless you prefer your internet experience to be devoid of spyware/malware, and have therefore chosen Firefox/Safari/Opera and/or Mac OS X. Or if you happen to be one of those weirdos who bought an iPod (like most of us).

• See my previous post on Aliant’s branded Puretracks store…

So I looked forward to being able to browse their store for DRM-free, no-longer-needing-Microsoft’s-locks-and-chains service, in search of Canadian independent artists who haven’t yet found their way into the iTunes Canada Store. Only to be greeted by this:

Sigh.

Aliant’s Puretracks store offers a little more detail:

I especially like the last part:

Puretracks is currently working to make our service available to Mac users.

I guess we’re still waiting to see if that statement is true.

Vista has speech recognition hole | BBC.co.uk

From the article:

Tuesday Microsoft has admitted that speech recognition features in Vista could be hijacked so that a PC tells itself to delete files or folders.

Wow.

Since downloading iTunes 7, it’s been crashing regularly — which is something I’m not used to experiencing under Mac OS X.

When the first release of iTunes 7.0 came out, there were a lot of complaints about stability, which apparently affected Windows users the most. It was stable for me, though. The latest version, 7.0.1 (7), has been quite irritating.

This is very good news. Now if only there was a way to run IE6 & IE7 side-by-side on one box…

IEBlog: Details on our CSS changes for IE7

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.