Karl-Peter Gottschalk: Software

Chimera Must Get Better.

Tue, 29 Oct 2002 01:42:20 GMT

I really like many aspects of Chimera, the Mozilla organization’s web browser for Mac OS X, built in Cocoa. But the current version, 0.5, is so unstable. It crashed 6 times this morning already. Bad news indeed.
There is an AppleScript application named ChimeraKnight at VersionTracker that assists you to download nightly builds of Chimera. I am going to grab it right now, in the hopes that there are nightly improvements made to issues like stability.
Otherwise I will try out Netscape or Mozilla again, and hope that the problems I was having with them will not get in the way too much. Their Mac OS X versions are at least much better than their Mac OS 9 versions.

Is There a Macromedia Experience?

Tue, 29 Oct 2002 01:27:57 GMT

Macromedia Chief Creative Officer Michael Gough ponders: “We have been spending a lot of time lately puzzling over a very simple question: Is there a ‘Macromedia experience’?”

Mac OS 9 versus X.

Mon, 28 Oct 2002 01:37:14 GMT

I have to use Mac OS 9 on an old clone at home weekends and nights, and a 17-inch iMac running Jaguar at work. Using X is fun, and efficient, and fast. Using 9 is awful by comparison.
It has been so easy to get used to doing lots of things at the same time, on Jaguar, and when you try to the same on 9 you strike real trouble, and the machine goes down far more often than it used to, with these new habits I have developed at work.

Apple Australia To Enter Retail.

Tue, 22 Oct 2002 02:31:40 GMT

Looks like Apple Australia is finally to follow the lead of Apple US and Apple in one or two other countries, and is about to set-up a retail presence, according to The Australian newspaper IT section.
The Australian AppleCentres are not owned or operated by Apple. They are independent retailers.

Radio 8 In Mac OS X Jaguar Is Great.

Tue, 01 Oct 2002 09:44:02 GMT

So far Radio 8, the software package for building this weblog, is working far better in Mac OS X than it did in Mac OS 9.
Of course, I was using 9 on the the elderly Mac clone and not this wonderful new iMac. But I suspect that Radio works fine on it because Radio is essentially a client-and-server application and X is perfect for that kind of thing, being a flavour of Unix, the ultimate server operating system.

Jaguar Seminar Over-Attended.

Mon, 09 Sep 2002 05:41:31 GMT

I went to the presentation on Mac OS X 10.2—Jaguar—held by Apple Australia at Burswood on Thursday, and I was amazed at how many people were there. Perth has the smallest percentage of Apple computer users anywhere (so it feels like), but you would not know that by the numbers there that day.
Then when the keynote was over I left the hall, and could barely move in the exhibition space in the foyer, for all the extra people who had arrived in the meantime.

How A Gymnastics Coach Uses Macs And QuickTime...

Sat, 31 Aug 2002 14:18:04 GMT

as well as other software from Apple.

Album Cover Artist Roger Dean On Macintoshes.

Sat, 31 Aug 2002 13:43:47 GMT

Here is an article about English artist Roger Dean, who designed the album covers for 1970s hippie band Yes. The article rather cutely is laid out using Mac OS X windows and a Photoshop 7 toolbar.

Photographer Uses iDVD and iPhoto Professionally.

Sat, 31 Aug 2002 13:31:47 GMT

This article is a good reminder that even though the free applications that come with Mac OS X—iPhoto and iDVD—are targeted at the non-professional market, they are perfectly useful to professionals as well.

Film Editor Sharon Rutter On Final Cut Pro.

Sat, 31 Aug 2002 13:24:36 GMT

I have been reading up on Final Cut Pro and Apple’s other moviemaking software tools, in anticipation of being able to make movies with a 17-inch iMac when it finally arrives.
Professional movie editors like Sharon Rutter use high-end PowerMacs, needless to say, but you can still do a helluva lot even with a humble iMac. especially if it has a decent monitor and a SuperDrive like the top-end iMac.

While We Are Awaiting The Font Reserve Updater For Jaguar...

Sat, 31 Aug 2002 13:04:16 GMT

… here is an article at the Apple website about the Chief Graphic Designer for the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, and how he uses Font Reserve in his daily work.

Gary Krakow of MSNBC Also Evaluates Jaguar.

Thu, 29 Aug 2002 00:58:24 GMT

“I really like Apple’s OS X. I think Apple has done a wonderful job of combining the best of their user-friendly operating system with powerful Unix-based underpinnings. But previous versions of OS X haven’t been very helpful in allowing me to do work on the Microsoft network at my office. Apple says OS X Jaguar will change all that. I wanted to see if that was true.”

Charles Haddad on Jaguar.

Thu, 29 Aug 2002 00:50:22 GMT

“The good old days are here again: The new version of OS X once more gives Macs clear superiority in operating systems,” says Charless Haddad of BusinessWeek online.

Ken Bereskin of Apple has a Weblog.

Wed, 28 Aug 2002 02:49:10 GMT

“If you’ve been wondering, I’ve got the database with the 150+ features of Jaguar and will start posting a couple of them every day,” he writes.

New AOL Web Browser Based On Mozilla's Gecko.

Wed, 28 Aug 2002 02:04:15 GMT

For the web designers and developers who read this weblog, don’t forget that the new version of AOL’s web browser is built using Gecko, the page rendering engine made by the open source developers at Mozilla.org.
If you use Mozilla as your main web browser when building web sites, then you willl have a pretty good idea how your pages will work for AOL’s millions of users all around the world.

Mozilla 1.1 Web Browser Out: Reviews Mixed.

Wed, 28 Aug 2002 01:46:34 GMT

According to News.com developers’ responses have been mixed, but hell, I am going to download and use the latest version of the open source Mozilla web browser anyway. It can’t be any worse than Internet Exploder.

Jaguar Sells 100,000 Copies So Far.

Wed, 28 Aug 2002 01:38:05 GMT

News.com reports on the release of Jaguar in the United States, and quotes an Adelaide computer consultant.

“For me, 10.2 is like coming home to some features I really missed from OS 9,” said James Rolevink, an Adelaide, South Australia, Apple dealer. “I feel as though I have just bought a truckload of what would otherwise be really useful third party add-ons, but they are all an integral part of the OS.”
Rolevink, who also is a computer sciences student, couldn’t praise Mac OS X enough. “I can say that you would be mad not to upgrade,” he said. “This is Unix at its absolute slickest, so why would you want to miss out?”

According To Its Creator, Lotus Notes Is Dead.

Wed, 28 Aug 2002 01:20:02 GMT

InforWorld’s Steve Gillmor has a semi-humourous story about Lotus Notes being pronounced dead by its creator Ray Ozzie now that we have entered the era of IM and weblogs.

Nice Weblog On Info Architecture and More.

Tue, 27 Aug 2002 02:23:05 GMT

I came across this weblog—xBlog: The visual thinking weblog—courtesy of Zeldman. Well worth regular reading.

Microsoft Security Problems: So What Else Is New?

Sat, 24 Aug 2002 15:59:16 GMT

Yawn, yet another major security hole the size of Manhattan in various Microsoft products.
“The Office-related programs vulnerable to attacks include Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, Money 2002, Money 2003, Project 2002, as well as server software related to such client software,” Microsoft said.

Font Reserve 3.1: Exactly What I Wanted To Hear.

Sat, 24 Aug 2002 15:46:43 GMT

The Diamondsoft website states that “Font Reserve 3.1 adds auto-activation for Adobe InDesign 2.0, Illustrator 10, Quark XPress 5, as well as support for OpenType, Windows TrueType, double-byte, and dFont fonts.
In addition, the System Font Handler now provides a completely automated method for removing non-essential fonts from the many Mac OS X Font Folders.”
Yes, yes, yes! OpenType support! Just what I wanted to hear! Ah luurrvvve OpenType. Especially in conjunction with InDesign 2.0. The best font manager just got better.

Jaguar Events In The States.

Sat, 24 Aug 2002 14:13:34 GMT

I dropped in to the Joondalup AppleCentre, to clap my eyes on a 17-inch SuperDrive iMac and Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar), and to see what is said to be the biggest AppleCentre in Perth. The guy there told me he had already sold all his copies of Jaguar. It was pretty quiet though.
Here is a report from MacCentral on some of the Jaguar launch events in the United States.

Tim O'Reilly on Unix To Mac Switchers.

Fri, 23 Aug 2002 02:41:17 GMT

Tim O’Reilly has some things to say about Switchers, this time from Linux and other Unixen to Mac OS X. When Mac OS X was on the horizon, the people who were most excited about it, and understood what the real implications were, were the kinds of geeks who read SlashDot.
The non-geeks, let’s call them freaks as they are the ones on the artier end of the equation, either failed to understand what X was at all, or could not see what all the fuss was about, and still have not made the switch from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X.
This article also has a number of stories from people who have switched to the Mac from Windows and various Unixen. Here are quotes from two of them.

“I quit having fun with computers. Windows 2000? No fun. Windows ME? No fun. Windows 98, Windows XP? No fun. Then I got a new job, where I had to support Macs. So I got a used PowerBook G3. OS 9 was OK. But OS X? Shiiineeeeey. And fun! Computing was fun! A computer, was fun. Laughing at the viruses that tried to infect my computer, was satisfying… and fun!”
“Like a lot of my pals (and tons of other folks as well), I switched from fighting linux on the desktop to OSX and I never want to go back (I never ever want to touch another windows box, as well). linux is a great server platform, no question, but I look back at the last couple of years of literally fighting with the linux desktop as a waste of my time.”

The common thread to these readers’ responses is that OS X just works compared to Linux. O’Reilly’s conclusion: “Apple may be wise to target Unix/Linux rather than Windows in their switch campaign.”

Talking About Opera.

Fri, 23 Aug 2002 02:27:44 GMT

Jeffery Zeldman has some thoughts about the Opera web browser and its coming support for the W3C DOM.
Opera is a pretty good web browser, in either its free version wiuth banner ads or the paid one where the banner ads are no longer there in the interface. But its lack of support for the DOM has been a real deal breaker, and has meant it has been of little value for most users. I use Internet Exploder for testing my web page designs, not Opera, because of this nonexistent DOM support.
Incidentally, now that I am using CSS more now than ever before, the failings of DreamWeaver MX’s design view are very apparent. It cannot display most CSS. You have to view the page in your web browser to see what is going on.
There was a report a while back that Macromedia had made a deal of some kind with the Opera people to incorporate their browser into future versions of Macromedia products. DreamWeaver MX would really benefit from that.

Opera: The Fat Lady Just Screamed.

Fri, 23 Aug 2002 02:09:21 GMT

Goddamn! The Opera web browser that I use in writing this weblog just quit. Opera is developing the same bad habits that Internet Exploder exhibits all the time.