mowabb: mac-related

Get A Life File 1

So Apple is doing its switch campaign, and it has posted a new ad featuring a college or high-school student named Ellen Feiss. I like the ad because I know lots of people to whom it would appeal -- the people Apple is trying to reach, the people who don't want to think for even a second about how their computer works or to deal with it if it doesn't. Ok, so she might look a little stoned, but... These people (check out the comments) have far too much time on their hands.

How Corporate is Apple?

Um, pretty corporate.

Move To Iceland

This flash animation is in a directory called "switchback" and the title of the page is "Fuck your Macintosh Lifestyle," which leads me to believe the creators of the page/animation are not Mac fans. The great thing is: their "parody" only makes the Mac sound better, in my opinion. Who wouldn't want to move to Iceland? I'm serious. At least part of the Mac fanbase (and let's face it, a lot of people who use Macs are more like groupies/fans than simple computer users) revels in the whole idea of wanting to escape the dominant culture -- particularly U.S. corporate culture -- so the idea that Mac fans might care about matching socks, hang out with movie stars, go hang gliding, and move to Iceland -- these are all good things in my book. Speaking of which, did you know there was a Mac Communist? I stumbled on his manifesto many moons ago, but it's nice to see him getting some press. Of course, if you're a serious communist the Mac is still corporate corporate corporate, but I'll still argue that Apple's corporate culture/ethos is still a damn sight closer than Wintel to being compatible with social progress. Don't you think? (Later: The animation's creator explains the thinking behind the animation. No wonder I found the spoof ad so likable. We agree -- Apple's still corporate, it's still not open source, etc., but it's still the lesser of two evils...)

Mac: Plays Nice With Others

Nathan Torkington just got a an iBook to replace his Win2000 box, and guess what, he loves it. No surprise there. He praises the Mac because it works, and because it works with other technologies:

I came to realize something: I'd been with Microsoft for so long, who are complacent and hoard their customers, that I'd forgotten what it's like to use an operating system built by people who want it to cooperate with the rest of the world. It's good.

It's kind of ironic that Apple, the company that "builds the whole widget," might be more interoperable than any other system. I'm sure it's not, and Apple could really do a lot more to make its technologies interact nicely with others, but still, I think Torkington has a good point. I hope Apple continues to work hard to keep its technologies open and make sure they work with others.

Bill/Steve

What a great idea: Bill and Steve are getting it on! Bill who? Steve what? Read the stories and see for yourself. I hadn't thought of this before, but I wonder if there are any slash stories about, oh, I don't know, Shrub and Cheney? No! Shrub and Putin (reportedly Shrub calls the Russian president "Pooty-poot" or something like that). Hmmm...

Jack's Baa-aack...

Everyone's favorite online soap opera is back from it's little hiatus. ("Hiatus" is apparently today's big word. Who knew?)

Morning Links

Good morning. For those of you who might be finding this site via Jenny Levine's The Shifted Librarian (thanks for the link) or from various Weblog Neighborhood lists (thanks to Adam Wendt for the subscription) -- welcome! And speaking of the neighborhood, the most recent harvest for there is no spoon makes me wonder what it all means. I look forward to hearing more about what we might do with these lists. Meanwhile, a few quick links/comments from the aggregator: I haven't had a chance to fully read The Rise of the Creative Class, but it looks like a good way to help decide where you'd like to move in the next few years. Boston beckons. Chris Nelson offers some interesting comments about the inherent bias of weblogs. But doesn't this assume it's possible for some medium to communicate without bias? If such a medium exists, I've never heard of it. As far as I'm concerned, one of the major problems with traditional media is that it pretends to be "objective" and unbiased when it is inherently anything but. In this sense, blogs seem a step in the right direction bececause they don't pretend to be what they're obviously not (at least in this regard). Mac Net Journal thinks this is a good way to make the RIAA mad: Turn Your LPs or Cassettes into CDs. I've been wanting to do this for some time, which is why I bought Toast Titanium. (Now carbonized for OS X.) Toast's CD Spin Doctor is supposed to digitize tapes and LPs, plus Toast comes with the required Y-audio cable to hook your Mac to your analog audio equipment. However, the MacWorld article mentions several other software options that might be worth a look.

Apple and Developers

Charles Haddad rakes Apple over the coals for the way it has treated developers in the past -- especially when it shuts them out of the market by stealing their ideas and rolling them into its standard package. [via Scripting News] However, Haddad also notes that Apple has, at the same time, improved the lives of all its developers by increasing the appeal of its systems -- more people buy Macs because of the quality software they ship with. Haddad also has an excellent suggestion along these lines: Apple would do well to use its Macs as a platform to showcase the best of third-party software. It's already doing so to some extent: The latest Macs are shipping with OmniGroup's excellent shareware outliner and graphing programs. But here again, PCs have done better, typically shipping with far more programs than the Mac. Yeah. Why not ship Radio with every Mac? :-) Also: LaunchBar and Mozilla (dump IE, please) and Fetch and maybe SBook and MacJournal. Shareware could still ship as demo versions that require users to pay -- this way Apple wouldn't have to raise the price of its systems but would probably increase the number of people who use shareware. It would also save us lots of downloading time.

Apple Rising

Could it be that Apple is going mainstream? Doc notes that people* who yesterday swore by Windoze are buying macs today. Even better, developers are making software for macs. Doc says: The energy coming off Apple right now is very stong and positive. People there are having fun. They're competitive, but not combative (a critical advantage over Microsft's only serious [~] but perhaps fatal [~] character flaw) My advice (no, I don't own any): buy Apple stock. There is a sea-change happening, and it's going down fast. I'll say. Today Apple introduced new 700 mhz G3 iBooks with ATI Mobility Radeon graphics cards, which just adds to the compact goodness packed into that icy white package. They're claiming a 35% speed boost, and I don't doubt it. Anything they can do to boost graphics performance on these things is going to improve them dramatically. I wish I was one of those people who could buy a new computer every year or so...

How Computing Should Be

Joe Carson summarizes what some long-time Windoze supporters are saying about OS X -- they like it. [via dive into mark]

I don't do M$: ThinkFree is a new application suite for OS X (and Windows, Linux, and Unix). It's Java, so it runs on all these platforms in similar ways. It's supposed to open and save to M$ file formats for word processing, databases, and presentations. I'm not ready to do the 14.9MB download yet, but maybe soon.