Leopard is old hat. It's been out for a few months now. I'm bored with it. We need to move on.
First, please take part in my poll. What do we think the next version of OS X will be called?
Secondly, does anyone have any ideas (as wacky as you like) as to what the next big features in OS X will be? We've had Fast User Switching, Exposé, Spotlight and Time Machine. What's next? What would you like to see?
Wednesday 23 January 2008
Monday 21 January 2008
Freedom of speech
So who should be able to comment on my posts? How much protection should I put around comments?
From what I can see, I can limit who can post (anonymous, google account holders, blog members only), I can moderate comments, and I can add word verification to prevent autonomous comments.
Now, at the moment, my readership is not *that* big.
I am going to open my arms and allow anonymous posts and turn word verification off. I want as big a readership as possible. If it starts to go sour and I get comments by bots or other unsuitable comments, then I will start to restrict things.
Let's see how it goes...
From what I can see, I can limit who can post (anonymous, google account holders, blog members only), I can moderate comments, and I can add word verification to prevent autonomous comments.
Now, at the moment, my readership is not *that* big.
I am going to open my arms and allow anonymous posts and turn word verification off. I want as big a readership as possible. If it starts to go sour and I get comments by bots or other unsuitable comments, then I will start to restrict things.
Let's see how it goes...
Rich text, poor text
I feel I have reached an important milestone in my emails: No longer will I make a conscious effort to send plain text emails. It's rich text (well, HTML to be picky) for me from now on.
I use Mac OS X, so I'm not too concerned about reading emails with potentially dangerous virus and trojan-laden payloads. (My spam traps are about 95% effective anyway.) Most of the mailing lists I subscribe to use HTML, and they're always much nicer to read in HTML than plain text
If Apple Mail had an option to always compose new emails in plain text (hint - it doesn't if you 'Mail Link to This Page' from Safari), and an option to prefer viewing plain text content I might have persevered a while longer.
Can anyone convince me as to why I should stick with plain text?
I use Mac OS X, so I'm not too concerned about reading emails with potentially dangerous virus and trojan-laden payloads. (My spam traps are about 95% effective anyway.) Most of the mailing lists I subscribe to use HTML, and they're always much nicer to read in HTML than plain text
If Apple Mail had an option to always compose new emails in plain text (hint - it doesn't if you 'Mail Link to This Page' from Safari), and an option to prefer viewing plain text content I might have persevered a while longer.
Can anyone convince me as to why I should stick with plain text?
Sunday 20 January 2008
OS X Packages and Version Control
Chris's blog about ClearType fonts in OS X got me thinking about other issues with Microsoft Office and iWork.
One 'good' thing about Office is that the documents it creates are truly single files, as opposed to iWork where it's documents are OS X packages, or bundles, in particular document bundles.
A bundle is simply a folder with sub-folders and files. OS X and the application that created it knows it's to be treated as a single entity.
This is important when considering a version control tool for OS X. Most (if not all?) version control tools work at the file level, they don't know how about bundles. I would love to use iWork for our documentation, but see here how it can go wrong (some comments offer solutions).
It seems to be an issue with version control tools that want to litter your working copy with a hidden file or directory per directory (CVS, Subverison). On the other hand, more modern version control tools like git or Mercurial don't seem to suffer from the same issues and CVS and Subversion.
We deliver documents to our clients as PDF, so it shouldn't matter what tool we use to generate them. On the other hand, clients may well be Microsoft-bound, and may still send us Word documents.
But how do you send a cross-platform spreadsheet, or PowerPoint presentation?
I suspect we may be stuck with Office for a while yet...
One 'good' thing about Office is that the documents it creates are truly single files, as opposed to iWork where it's documents are OS X packages, or bundles, in particular document bundles.
A bundle is simply a folder with sub-folders and files. OS X and the application that created it knows it's to be treated as a single entity.
This is important when considering a version control tool for OS X. Most (if not all?) version control tools work at the file level, they don't know how about bundles. I would love to use iWork for our documentation, but see here how it can go wrong (some comments offer solutions).
It seems to be an issue with version control tools that want to litter your working copy with a hidden file or directory per directory (CVS, Subverison). On the other hand, more modern version control tools like git or Mercurial don't seem to suffer from the same issues and CVS and Subversion.
We deliver documents to our clients as PDF, so it shouldn't matter what tool we use to generate them. On the other hand, clients may well be Microsoft-bound, and may still send us Word documents.
But how do you send a cross-platform spreadsheet, or PowerPoint presentation?
I suspect we may be stuck with Office for a while yet...
Saturday 19 January 2008
Chewbacca at home
You may have seen these before, but they make me laugh.
Is Chewbacca trapped in my nightstand?
My Hoover Sounds Like Chewbacca From Star Wars
Is Chewbacca trapped in my nightstand?
My Hoover Sounds Like Chewbacca From Star Wars
Wednesday 16 January 2008
Macworld 2008
Here's a few of my thoughts about the recent announcements at the Stevenote:
Time Capsule. Great idea, but I might want to put in my own bigger disk later, especially for my ever expanding collection of exotic photos and videos ;-). I wonder how suitable it would be in an office environment?
MacBook Air. Cool! But, no firewire? Only one USB? I don't think it's intended to be your main machine (no optical drive). SSD is welcome, even though a tad expensive - £639 for 64GB! I'm sure prices will fall eventually, but at £2000 it's not for me.
Movie Rentals. This definitely got my attention. With the new Apple TV box and a nice new LCD HD TV, the idea of renting movies over the internet is now looking quite plausible.
iPod touch apps. Already bought. Now we have Mail and Notes, the move towards it becoming a PDA is much more likely. The Maps app Locate function was quite scary - is this Big Brother in disguise! The wiggling home screen icons is just so twee!
Time Capsule. Great idea, but I might want to put in my own bigger disk later, especially for my ever expanding collection of exotic photos and videos ;-). I wonder how suitable it would be in an office environment?
MacBook Air. Cool! But, no firewire? Only one USB? I don't think it's intended to be your main machine (no optical drive). SSD is welcome, even though a tad expensive - £639 for 64GB! I'm sure prices will fall eventually, but at £2000 it's not for me.
Movie Rentals. This definitely got my attention. With the new Apple TV box and a nice new LCD HD TV, the idea of renting movies over the internet is now looking quite plausible.
iPod touch apps. Already bought. Now we have Mail and Notes, the move towards it becoming a PDA is much more likely. The Maps app Locate function was quite scary - is this Big Brother in disguise! The wiggling home screen icons is just so twee!
Sunday 13 January 2008
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year!
I'm back - grudgingly - from 2 fabulous weeks in South Africa.
Every time I go everyone says - you must come out to live here. To be honest, part of me says yes, and part of me says no. (The bigger part says yes.) Of course, there are many reasons I'd love to stay out there longer. Seeing friends and family more often than 2 weeks out of every 52, Gilroy's, and being able to go for a quick swim on the 1st January, at 12.01am (that's one way to sober up!) are just a few that spring to mind.
I'm back - grudgingly - from 2 fabulous weeks in South Africa.
Every time I go everyone says - you must come out to live here. To be honest, part of me says yes, and part of me says no. (The bigger part says yes.) Of course, there are many reasons I'd love to stay out there longer. Seeing friends and family more often than 2 weeks out of every 52, Gilroy's, and being able to go for a quick swim on the 1st January, at 12.01am (that's one way to sober up!) are just a few that spring to mind.
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