Quentin Stafford-Fraser's blog
One should always have something sensational to read on the net...
Macs and stuff
I wonder how many people have realised that the iPod Photo could be a great way to carry Powerpoint-style presentations around? Or Keynote presentations, I should probably say. The video-out connectors would plug happily into most projectors. It'll be interesting to see what the quality of the TV output is like; it may be rather low resolution for presentations involving much text or many diagrams.
Just watched the Quicktime feed of Steve Jobs doing the iPod Photo launch, with the aid of U2. I have to take my hat off to Apple - I'm biased by my enthusiasm for their technology, but even without that I can think of few companies with their marketing and branding skills.
I've sat through plenty of roadshows and product launches in my life, and, in general, I detest them. So why would I voluntarily give up an hour of my weekend to watch a CEO telling me about his latest product? If you need to ask that, I suggest you watch one. This latest isn't their slickest, and Steve Jobs, though on good form, is perhaps a little below his normal par, which is understandable after his recent major surgery. But there's still no other company that comes close.
Get a good connection, expand your Quicktime window to a good size, sit back and enjoy. And remember that it's Apple technology that you're using to view the stream as well....
This year's must-have Christmas present? I keep a backup of my photos on my iPod, so I guess being able to view them makes sense.
I think John's going to beat me on this one - he can justify it if he keeps posting such nice pictures on Memex.
[Original Link] Here's a hint I found quite useful. On the Powerbook, the function keys, by default, do other things like changing the brightness of the display or turning numlock on and off. To make them operate as function keys, you have to press 'fn' at the same time. If, like me, you use them more as function keys (for exposé etc), you can invert this behaviour in the Keyboard section of System Preferences.
This comes to you via a wi-fi connection in Detroit airport, where I'm sitting in a lounge waiting for a flight to the CES show in Las Vegas. I've just had a long chat with a friend, but it wasn't in person or on the phone. It was using the audio chat facilities in iChat - we were chatting by instant message and I suddenly thought, "This is ridiculous - why am I typing?" I've always been impressed with the sound quality of the built-in microphone on my elderly Powerbook - the only problem is that it's close to one of the speakers so there tends to be an echo on the line back to the other end. But since I never travel without my iPod, I had some headphones with me, which I plugged in and everything was splendid. If anyone else in the lounge thought that the fellow in the armchair was having a strange conversation with his laptop, they didn't show it....
Very nice quote seen on somebody's email signature:
"Never ask a man what computer he uses. If it's a Mac, he'll tell you. If it's not, why embarrass him?" - Tom Clancy
Today Apple released the new version of their operating system, Mac OS X 10.3, more commonly known as Panther.
Actually, they released it yesterday at 8pm, and when I woke up this morning a friend of mine was still online in Seattle (1am their time) after the big gathering of 'hundreds' for the launch at the local Apple store.
Here, in contrast, our local Apple dealer closed at 5.30pm yesterday, so we had to wait until this morning to get a copy. And they only had 25. It would have been much too nerdy to be seen actually waiting at the door when they opened, so I sauntered in at a much more laid-back five minutes past the hour, and one of those 25 copies is now mine.
I also treated my elderly PowerBook to a new hard disk (so I could do drastic things without destroying my chance of returning to safety) and so I have a completely fresh install of Panther. I copied my applications, documents, some preferences etc into it from a backup on an external firewire drive, and so far it's all going very nicely.
Like 10.2, this is not a very major overhaul from the appearances point of view, but there are small improvements to almost everything which make the cost (100 UKP) definitely worthwhile for me. The big changes are well documented elsewhere; the main benefit I've seen so far is the much better integration with a Windows network, and with remote servers. I can browse the 'network neighbourhood', can print to the Deskjet connected to Rose's Windows machine, and can interact much more seamlessly with remote WebDAV and FTP servers.
And the 'Exposé' feature is lovely too.
Just when Apple's PowerBook line was getting nicely settled, they go and confuse things by upgrading the iBook to a G4 processor. This was needed - the G3 was getting a bit long in the tooth, but it used to be the main thing that defined the difference between the iBook and Powerbook ranges.
I don't imagine they'll be upgrading the PowerBooks to a G5 in the very near future, so it's almost a question of how much you want to pay for the nice shiny colour... :-)
Every now and then I come across a bit of Mac OS X software which does just what I want and is reasonably priced. Keyboard Maestro was one I wrote about in September. A plug for some recent finds:
Since upgrading my elderly Powerbook to 'Jaguar', the latest version of Apple's operating system, I'm struck once again by an important contrast with Windows. As far as I can remember, every upgrade of Windows I ever did gave you extra features, sometimes even features you wanted, but at the cost of speed.
Mac OS X, perhaps because of its youth, has the wonderful characteristic that every version has been faster than its predecessor, which is especially good if your hardware isn't the latest. This is particularly wholesome because Apple, unlike Microsoft, does make a lot of its money from hardware and so has a vested interest in encouraging you to upgrade.