WriteLarge.com

My employer bought me a MacBook, and I really like it. At first I felt weird using a work laptop as my primary machine. I'm over that now. Now I'm just annoyed that it doesn't make financial sense to invest in it. And that I can't in good conscious put one of them sweet, sweet Web 414 stickers on it.
But, I have to say, not that any of you care, but I have to say, I'm most happy with the MacBook. It's a fine, fine little laptop. I'm not sure why you'd buy anything else. Here's a Heathercoresque list of things I think about it.
1. I Love the chicklet keys. They feel good to type on.
2. I miss the reverse delete key. [Function] + [Delete] is just not the same.
3. I know the MagSafe adapter takes it's share of flack, but with a 2-year-old running around the tables, the magnetic adapter has paid off several times.
4. Get more memory. I did, but I didn't get enough. I should have got more.
5. 10.5 is better than 10.4. By 0.1, and a little bit more.
6. The way 10.5 handles WIFI is both satisfying and disturbing. I like it when I get access to a wifi that has the same password as one I already know. I don't like that my computer hands out passwords it knows to any ol' wifi thinger it comes across. Anybody know more about this?
7. I _hate_ the blue screen PC icon. I'm OSbidexterous.
8. I forgot what eight was for.
9. OSX should just come with Quicksilver. Quicksilver is necessary for OSX to actually work. If you disagree, you haven't tried it. If you still disagree, you haven't tried it -right-.
10. The multi-touch trackpad is more useful than you know. Two-finger tap as right click is addictive as hell, but Two-finger scroll beats the hell out of any other mouse gesture. However, the pinch-zoom is lame.

Microsoft is the Ziggy of the software industry. Think about it. Everybody knows who Ziggy is and most people hate him. And then some people take great pleasure drawing a nipple on his voluptuous nose.

Case in point: Today's ZDnet.com's article breathlessly entitled "XP SP3 performance gains - Nothing to write home about."

The article does little more than draw a giant nipple on Microsoft's voluptuous nose, running a series of benchmark tests on various computers to prove that what was essentially a hot-fix roll-up service pack doesn't magically accomplish something beyond the scope of it's intended design.

May I suggest the following story for next week's headlines at ZDnet: "XP Service Pack 3 does nothing to protect users from tiger attacks." Then we can all point and laugh at Microsoft for being so large and stupid that it can't see the implicit danger of tiger attacks and don't they have any engineers in Redmond they can throw at the tiger attack problem?

This kind of reporting is easy kicking at the cat. It's lazy journalism at best and irresponsible at worse.

I installed SP3 on an old laptop last night. The experience was less than flawless and less than easy, but you know what? I only had to reboot twice. That's roughly six times less than I would have had to reboot in a pre-SP3 world. And that, in my opinion, is a service pack done right.

You guys know I'm something of an operating system slut. I like to get in and root around on an OS. See what I can see. Break what I can break. Try on the culture and the paradigm and see how it fits.
One thing that happens on OSX that doesn't seem to happen as much in the Windows and Linux worlds is "Shareware."Now, before you start harping on just how wrong I am in this regard, let me ask you this: Most of my favorite aps on Windows are free. Most of my favorite aps on Linux are free. Most of my favorite Aps in OSX are about $25.
So far, I've not found a single one that I would pay for. Fetch is close, but frankly,I can put up with the non-OSX-y kluge of Filezilla for my limited SFTP needs. A lot of the other "Shareware" aps that I've used on OSX would be better served behaving as "donor wear" rather than "trial" software. I'll never, ever, ever, buy WriteRoom, as much as I like it. Never. Sorry Writeroom guys. I just don't need a distraction free text editor more than I need a nice lunch once in a while.
Of course, if the Writeroom guys let me use Writeroom for free, forever, one day I might just happen upon a benevolent, giving mood and end up sending them five bucks. By locking me out at the end of a 30-day trial, that's never going to happen.
Another example: Blogging client Ecto. If Ecto was free, I'd sing it's praises, but as it is today, it's not the app I'm willing to throw $25 toward. (Apologies to Mike. I'll happily state here, for the record, that Ecto's problems are _not_ its icon.)
I suggest that the pervasive nickel-and-diming of the OSX user base is just part of why OSX users have the stigma they have. The thought seems to be: if you can afford to pay extra for "The Apple User Experience" it seems reasonable that you'll pay for "The Writeroom" user experience. You OSXers gots to be more spendthrifty. It'll make everything better for all of us.

Sometimes it amazes me that spam works, but I covered a local police beat long enough to know that it works pretty well. People almost seem energetic to fritter away their money and personal data on some kind of too-good-to-be true email promising easy riches with minimal investment.

Case in point:

If you think that the IRS is sending you this email, you've not really dealt with the IRS, have you? But let's dissect some of the telltale signs that this might not be a legitimate

1. The IRS does not ask for personal identifying or financial information via unsolicited e-mail.

2. The IRS probably doesn't need a special URL like "Scooby.co.uk" to improve its viability in search engine results. I think "IRS.GOV" probably serves its needs just fine. Dot-GOV sites tend to have mad Google juice.

3. Think about it. Dot-Co.UK is a UNITED KINGDOM address. I mean, I know the Airforce does most of it's business in Euros now, but I think the IRS probably keeps most of it's data farms on US soil, and in the hands of a US domain.

4. See the little copyright statement at the bottom? Not only is it totally unnecessary, (you don't need to state a copyright to have one), but the U.S. government doesn't _have_ a copyright.

5. The authors are missing a Comma between "activity" and "we" in the second line. That's just being picky, sure, but we've seen a good number of IRS forms. Most of them are grammatically accurate.

Bottom line is this, friends. Don't read your spam. Just throw it out. Don't read it, don't click it, and don't respond to it. Nothing good has ever just wandered into your inbox. Think of your email address as a coiled snake, ready to bite you at any second.

There has been some consideration lately on my part as to what exactly my problem is with Adobe. Particularly with Air. Let's talk.

See! See! Air asked me to do an update and added a stinkin' desktop shortcut. Very annoying. Especially, considering that in Vista, I have to enter a a password to delete the shortcut.

This is an example of Adobe's general hostility towards its users. Adobe wraps its products in disruptive and hostile copy protection, creates services and updaters that erode system resource pools, and generally treat the users playgrounds as they're own little stomping grounds.

I believe adobe is manhandling of my personal computer space, and that the shortcut appears without my permission or warning is a symbol of a larger problem of end-user hostility that permeates many of Adobe's products.

I posed this sentiment to some folks at Adobe who have not yet responded. I'll keep you updated if I hear back or I change my mind.

Did you guys notice the new UI that came with the recent update of Firefox 3?

Backward!


Forward!

At first, I hated this.
But, getting over the initial shock, now I like it.
I think, though, UI design peaked in 2007 with the advent of the Ribbon. I wish there was a full-on ribbon version of IE available. I might even use IE then.
I've been using Firefox3 at work for quite a while now. It seems more stable-- but that's probably becuase I don't have any extensions enabled on it.

Wishywashy loser, am I.

The Wauwatosa Public Library has a great and growing Graphic Novel collection. It's given me access to a lot more Graphic Novels than I'll typically get a chance to read. So, here are  reviews two of my latest grabs from the Library, presented in photographic and minimalist terms.

Good Comic.

Bad Comic.

I've been playing with the New York Times reader for Windows  The Times Reader is a standalone application that streams and presents the New York Times onto your PC. It's better than reading the times on the web because it synchs and because it's got a more "Newspapery" interactivity.

It flows the text smartly and plugs in photos and plug ads as you flip through the pages and has the requisite search and annotative features you'd expect from an electronic document reader. Frankly, If I had a Tablet PC, it'd probably be the killer ap. It's got a clean look and feel and the pages move and zoom smoothly.

The app is Windows XP/Vista only, although an outdated FAQ suggests that a Macintosh version is forthcoming. I wouldn't hold my breath. And Linux? Maybe Wine? It requires .net 3. Does that run in Ubuntu yet? Probably not.

Anyway, at $15 a month, it's a reasonable way to enjoy the Times, which, last I checked was over $40 for the print edition. (If you subscribe to the print edition, by the way, you can use reader for free.) Up to five computers are allowed to run the reader per account.

If the Journal Sentinel had a similar product I would subscribe in a heartbeat.

Microsoft OS users can sample the Koolaid for thirty days for free.

Adobe Evangelist Dan D. says he's not sure what I don't like about Adobe Air.
What don't I like about Adobe Air? Seems like such an easy question.
1. The Sins of the Acrobat.
Adobe will forever leave a bad taste in my mouth because of the sins of the Acrobat. Acrobat reader is an invasive, openly hostile application toward users. Look no further than the advertising space it puts on the User Interface. If that's not enough, look at the way Acrobat shovels third-party applications at you (Yahoo toolbar). Then, for the hat-trick, look at the bizarre services, updaters and installers that come along with a _simple_ document reader.
2. Closed sourced wrapped around Open Source.
There's nothing so magical about whatever Air's secret sauce is that couldn't be improved upon by giving the raw source code to the public, especially considering it uses WebKit. I feel this way about _all_ software. Given the hostility of the Acrobat reader, why shouldn't we assume that behind the scenes air is spying, tracking, recording, and storing data?
3. Draining the Developer Pool.
Wouldn't it have been incredible if Snitter was _actually_ an OSX program instead of a blurb of adobe code floating within the host Operating system? Instead of developing a native ap, however, the fine people behind Snitter are developing an air ap. Good for adobe. Not so good for the host OS. And, probably not so good for the developers as well when the Air platform is changed to suit Adobe's whim.
4. All-new security holes.
Any hole in Air/Adobe's Runtime will quickly become a cross platform vulnerability. Imagine the phishing implications alone. (A letter claiming to eBay tells you to install the new EBay Air application) Sweet!
So is this ill-informed ravings of a tin-foil hat wearing looney. Kind of. Here's a great list of ten reasons to love and ten reason to hate air.

We've been over this once already, but enough is enough Flickr. Uploader V. 3 is _still_ broken. I was annoyed with the mysterious and intermittent upload button, but this mysterious bombing out makes no sense to me.

And, although I lack the technical expertise to prove it to complete satisfaction, I get the feeling that, in spite of your cheeky little error message, it's not me that needs to "twiddle" with my cables.

When everything is working, that kind of informality is fun and charming, but when it's broke, it makes you look like an asshole. Seriously, Flickr, Couples break up over shit like this. TApps said it best. Stop Sucking.