Archives

The Exploration Is Over

IE for MacThis Friday the Thirteenth turned out to be kind of a bad one for the Macintosh, as today Microsoft confirmed recent rumors that it is discontinuing that platform’s edition of Internet Explorer. This, coupled with the Redmond behemoth’s recent announcements that IE will no longer be a standalone product but will instead be entirely integrated into future versions of the Windows operating system, confirms that the Clinton-era Department of Justice was right to sue for monopoly abuse and that the Bush II-era DOJ was wrong to settle the suit so willingly. This is a decision that surely would never have been made in 1999. (Thanks Ralph Nader!)

With its 95 percent share of the internet browser market, Microsoft’s cancellation of IE amounts to a kind of condemnation of the Mac platform. It remains to be seen whether the strategy that Steve Jobs has pursued with Apple over the past few years — shooting for consumer dollars while half-ignoring the common wisdom that the Mac and Windows machines should be as interoperable as possible — will bear fruit through this unfortunate turn of events. Things don’t look so great, though I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Safari will continue to keep up with the ever-changing demands of the Web browser market.

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The Design of Everyday Mix CDs

Squat CDMy contribution to the CD mix club of which I am a member is tardy yet again. I had burned thirty copies of my mix and handed out a small number to some friends, and one of them pointed out to me that the tracks on the disc don’t match the tracks listed on the sleeve. Somehow the master CD I burned was missing a track. Since my packaging this time is somewhat complex and pricey, it was easier and cheaper for me to throw away thirty CDs and burn thirty new ones. Ouch. Anyway, the whole act of got me thinking about what I actually enjoy about being a member of a CD swap club.

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Big Plans

As part of an exercise in strategic planning at Behavior, I had to write down my thoughts on where I think the company will be in the future. This kind of thinking is tough, but it’s a useful way to try and reconcile vague aspirations with reality. I had to project out five years, and I set a goal for roughly twelve times the revenue we made in 2002, six times the staff, a broader client base and the luxurious market context of a second Internet boom. I think optimism is important.

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Ill Suited

Men’s SuitsSometimes I write about politics or design or technology, but today I am going to write about clothes. I like suits. I like the way they serve as a kind of social uniform and armor, and the way they allude to a world “at a sort of moral attention for ever,” to borrow a phrase from one of my favorite writers. And yet, I have never owned a suit that I can say I’ve been one hundred percent happy with, and it’s that frustration that I’m afraid will be with me forever.

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The Morning Commute

Radiohead “Hail to the Thief”Two anecdotes from my daily walk to the office: First, it was a beautiful morning to release a new Radiohead album; the skies were a calming, solid blue and the sun is finally, after weeks of miserable precipitation, pouring down clean, bright light again. There’s a Virgin Megastore at Union Square and as I walked past it I saw one satisfied consumer after another exiting its doors with a copy of “Hail to the Thief,” happily heading off into the springtime. I walked a little further into the park and I saw a young woman sitting on a bench beneath an old, old tree, already listening to the CD on her Discman and reading along with the lyrics intently.

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Unfit for Print

These days I’m getting my fill of the world of print design. We’re getting ready to send out a new marketing brochure at Behavior and I’m lending a hand to get the production files out to the printer. A lot of Web designers would like this change of pace, would like the opportunity to work on something tangible and based in atoms rather than dealing with the world of the Web, but not me.

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Looking for WMD in All the Wrong Places

Bush & PowellKnowing that I am a bit quick to cry foul over anything the Bush administration does, I have tried to reserve judgment on the current, somewhat desperate, so far unsuccessful search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that the run-up to the recent war there was predicated on half-truths, falsehoods and specious intelligence; a decent overview of the situation as it stands this week is available at The Economist. Clearly, any WMD program that Saddam Hussein may have had in place does not live up to the tremendous advance billing given to it by the Bush administration. If weapons of mass destruction are indeed found in Iraq, I’m convinced it will be a discovery guided by serendipity rather than intelligence.

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The ‘i’ Is for Indie

It’s a relief to me that earlier this week Apple finally gave a presentation to independent music labels on the subject of getting their music into the iTunes Music Store. As these first-person notes on the meeting suggest, the company is serious about diversifying the content for sale via their breakthrough foray into music retailing. That’s great news, because as I mentioned when the store debuted, its offering of actually interesting music leaves much to be desired. If enough indie labels come aboard — and all signs indicate that they’re champing at the bit to do so — it will exponentially improve the value of the iMS, at least to my mind.

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’N’ Sync ’n’ Sync ’n’ Sync

iSyncThe latest version of Apple’s iSync will synchronize bookmarks across multiple installations of Safari. So if you have a Macintosh at work and a Macintosh at home and you pay US$100 for Apple’s .Mac service, you can always have your bookmarks handy without even having to think about it. This new iSync feature is an attempt at solving a crucial problem with which I’ve been living for five years, but unfortunately it seems like a case of ‘close but no cigar.’

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