Category Archives: Apple

Fantastic Voyage (of Sorts)

Here’s a little bit of nerdery: last week at Behavior, we had to quickly generate lots of potential names for a branding project. To get the widest possible array of names, everyone in the office was invited to submit their ideas, and we ended up with over a hundred submissions. The problem was that they were all trapped in many different email messages, and I needed to get them into a nice, clean PowerPoint presentation.

At first I was thinking that I would have to manually retype them all in order to get them into the presentation in alphabetical order. Then I started thinking that if I could get the list of names out of the emails quickly, I’d be able to use a series of applications to create an XML version of the list that would be readable by Apple’s alternative to PowerPoint, the beautifully-designed Keynote.

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One Word to Rule Them All

MellelThere’s no denying that Microsoft Word is the de facto standard for word processing documents, but every once in a while I will entertain a daydream for a more streamlined, less buggy alternative. Had it not been for the terrible name, I might have turned earlier to Mellel, which is a smooth, elegant and powerful multilingual word processing contender from RedleX. It was written for Mac OS X from the ground up, which makes it seem a thousand times more fluid than Word, in spite of its admittedly butt-ugly, brushed metal interface.

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Plugging Holes

I’ve always thought it was an act of hubris for Macintosh fans to brag too loudly about the allegedly more secure construction of Mac OS X, but I secretly enjoyed it, too. Compared to the onslaught of malicious forces consistently threatening the Windows platform, managing a Mac OS X system is like living in a gated community. I rarely have to worry about viruses, worms or exploits, and that has been a huge part in making the user experience so much consistently better than Windows.

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Facts on ’Fiction

PulpFictionWhile everyone was getting all riled up over the pricing terms for Movable Type 3.0 late last week, I was eagerly keeping an eye on Freshly Squeezed Software’s Web site for the release of their entry into the Macintosh news aggregator market, the unfortunately titled PulpFiction.

After a fair amount of hype — or routine buildup, depending on how you look at it — the small software outfit made PulpFiction available for download on Saturday afternoon. I was out most of the day, but as soon as I got home, I dutifully installed a copy on my PowerBook.

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Access All Areas

Keyboard AccessOften, it takes me a while to warm up to software features that more savvy users begin taking advantage of as soon as a publisher unleashes them. Case in point: I’ve been running Mac OS X for over two years and Panther practically since the first weekend it was launched, but it’s only been in the past few weeks that I’ve been using the operating system’s improved Full Keyboard Access feature.

This addition to Mac OS X 10.3.x allows users to control just about anything you can click on with a mouse by using only the keyboard. It’s something that Windows has had for a long, long time, and in spite of my frequent dismissive remarks about that OS, this is one area where Microsoft has a long usability lead; Apple is a latecomer and it shows.

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Now and Then and Now

Now UtilitiesIn the old days of the Macintosh’s System 7, I used to use a suite of products called Now Utilities which added a host of widget-style enhancements to the operating system, most principally for the purpose of helping users get to files faster. The first great benefit the suite offered was being able to add custom menus to various locations which would allow me to get to recently accessed folders, files and favorite applications. Another component of the utility suite greatly enhanced the Open and Save dialog boxes, again allowing me to access recent items.

As the old Macintosh operating system got long in the tooth, Now Software shuttered its operation, but the same products essentially lived on in the form of the Action Utilities suite from Power On Software. Still, neither suite ever truly made it over to the newer operating system, and for a while, I actually resisted upgrading to Mac OS X, holding out hope for some equivalent.

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All the News That’s Fit to Feed

NewsMacThe reigning king of Macintosh XML news readers is NetNewsWire from Ranchero software. It really is a solid piece of software engineering, but I’ve been looking for something that will let me organize all the XML feeds I’ve been collecting in a more orderly fashion. A search on VersionTracker led me to NewsMac, which has lots of great features but has been riddled with a few nagging bugs in its latest incarnation. But the author has been really responsive with fixes and updates, and has even laid out a pretty detailed road map for the application (when’s the last time a shareware developer laid out a road map?). This level of support has, over the past few weeks, gradually won me over, and I’m pretty sure that I’m settling on NewsMac as my reader of choice now.

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In Store Service

Apple Store SoHoWhen it comes to getting a real, living and knowledgeable person to have a look at whatever troubles I might be having with my Macintosh, I feel fortunate that our office is just four blocks away from Tekserve, hands down New York City’s most prominent Apple reseller and authorized repair center. I’ve always preferred it over the sales and support at the Apple Store (if for no other reason than they have a much more sensible and liberal attitude towards letting Mister President in the store), but when I’m at home on the weekends and I need the help of a technician, it’s far easier for me to walk over to SoHo than to Chelsea.

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Sliders and Buttons, Oh My

Nice Little ArrowHerewith, a few of the user interface widgets that I’ve been tinkering with lately for a Behavior project; only sliders/scroll bars and buttons here, but I’ve recently turned out four or five entire interface comps that wouldn’t look particularly conspicuous alongside most any Aqua-friendly Mac OS X application. Well, that’s my humble opinion, anyway, because I’m still getting comfortable with working in this aesthetic.

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