Category Archives: Apple

The Safari Ecosystem

Safari & OmniWeb 5Today was a good day to be a user of Apple’s much praised Safari. First, Apple released a new update to it, pushing the version number to 1.2 and, most significantly, adding full keyboard navigation, thereby allowing users to fully interact with Web pages without mousing (if they so desire). This is the latest in the very slow conversion of Apple’s philosophy on keyboard versus mouse access to user interfaces; the company is incrementally acquiescing to the generally accepted principle that, more often than not, using a keyboard is much faster, at least for advanced users.

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The Bitter Suite

Adobe Creative SuiteWe’ve had a copy of the Adobe Creative Suite in the office for a few weeks, but it was only today that I got around to installing it on my PowerMac G4. I spent the afternoon trying to knock out some comps for a project using Illustrator CS and Photoshop CS, using essentially the same techniques and methods that I would normally use with their predecessors. In fact, there is nothing dramatically different about these revisions, which is a kind of disappointment to me given the rather pronounced rebranding effort invested into this software suite by Adobe.

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Data in Denial

Sync Entourage-Address BookOne of the disappointing things I noticed during last week’s Macworld Expo announcements was Microsoft’s sketchy details about their impending Microsoft Office 2004 for Macintosh release. Specifically, there was nothing said about integration of the contact management component of Entrourage with Apple’s built-in Mac OS X Address Book.

This core application is the closest thing to a system-wide contact manager you’ll find in a consumer operating system, and I’ve been patiently waiting for such a thing for years. Being a dedicated Entourage user, I’ve felt frustrated that this very robust Microsoft product can’t take advantage of the Address Book. I have no desire to manually maintain two separate contact databases — something I’ve tried to do in the past and found to require too much effort — so I’m desperate to find a way to link them.

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All Play and No Work

Apple iLifeHere are my quick thoughts on some of Apple’s announcements from yesterday’s Macworld Expo. Nearly everyone with whom I’ve discussed the new, slick and inevitable iPod mini feels that it’s over-priced at US$249, and I agree. I think the consensus was hoping for something in the US$150 range, but heck, they could have priced it at US$200 and everyone would’ve been happy. There’s something psychologically forbidding about that extra fifty dollars, but it’s just like Apple to hit a home run like this and twist its own ankle while rounding the bases.

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Burn Baby Burn

DVD BurningThe so-called “SuperDrive” in my new 12″ PowerBook G4, while not the first DVD-RW I’ve ever had access to, is the first one I’ve personally owned. So, with a little bit of free time this past weekend, I decided to sit down and see if it was possible to burn myself a copy of one of the movies that I own in DVD format — for fair use, back-up purposes only, of course.

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Twelve Inches of Fun

We are under a blizzard of snow here in New York City. It’s not exactly twelve inches, but it’s a more significant amount of snowfall than the mid-Atlantic has become accustomed to getting this early in the season. I, for one, am not particularly excited by the sudden transition to sub-freezing temperatures, slush-filled sidewalks and skin-chapping, chilling winds, but I admit it was a lot of fun watching the dog frolic in the snowdrifts this morning — and yet another reminder of his recent anniversary in our household.

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The Road Runner Ahead

Road RunnerWhen the first previews of Mac OS X’s “Aqua” interface made their way around the Web, I remember a designer friend of mine pronounced them to be “ass.” This was in the midst of a rage for a pixel-based aesthetic that fetishized jaggy fonts and graphics tied intimately to the display limitations of computer monitors.

Many designers then looked down upon any design element that was anti-aliased, shaded or that cast a shadow of any sort, and yet it’s since become apparent that this is the future of interface design. Soon afterwards, Windows XP copied much of the same aesthetic, and Windows applications like the recent version of AOL and new programs like Picasa have whole-heartedly embraced this direction.

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Retouching iPhoto

PicasaWithout apology, I admit a prejudice against any Windows-based software that blatantly mimics innovations that originated on the Mac OS; a prime example is Candy Labs’ App Rocket, a startlingly faithful and shameless reproduction of Objective Development’s superb LaunchBar that was developed for — you might even say “ported to” — Windows XP recently.

Unfairly or not, I regard those indiscretions with scorn, and not a little indignation, which was my attitude when stumbling across Picasa, a program that bears a remarkable similarity to Apple’s iPhoto software for management of digital photos. I might have dismissed it altogether, but the attractive design of their Web site hinted at some level of cleverness at work, and so I decided to download and install the software on my Windows box for a trial run.

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Housebreaking Tips for a Panther

Mac OS X PantherWith my girlfriend away all weekend in San Francisco, I figured that if I was going to make the somewhat reckless and potentially time-consuming decision to install Mac OS X Panther that I may as well do it while I had two good, solid days to myself. On Friday night I settled down after dinner and and set about preparing my system for the upgrade. First I did some research around the Web for tips on how best to avert any potential problems, which led me to pay for and download “Take Control of Upgrading to Panther” — a PDF-based ebook from TidBITS publishing that is an invaluable primer sold at the bargain price of US$5.

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Crouching Panther, Hidden Crashes

PantherAll 23 gigabytes of my PowerBook’s hard drive have been backed up to my G4 tower, so I am, in some sense, ready to install Panther, the newest version of Apple’s Mac OS X software, as soon as it goes on sale tonight. In about an hour and a half, on my way home, I’ll probably swing by the venerable Tekserve and pick up my own copy… but I cant’t decide whether to actually go through with it and really install this major upgrade to the operating system on the very first weekend of its public release. Typically, I would wait a little while to see what kinds of problems other, more adventurous Macintosh fans might encounter. But there’s something about Panther that has me very anxious, and I’m just itching to get it running on my Mac. In all likelihood, I will install it on an external FireWire drive, but somehow I know I won’t be satisfied until I’ve thrown caution completely to the wind.

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