The Daring Fireball Linked List

Friday, 9 May 2008

Covering Bond ★: Coming soon from Penguin: Exquisite new editions of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Perfect.

Thursday, 8 May 2008

Nice feature update to Rainer Brockerhoff’s €7 pop-up menu utility for the Leopard Dock.

Extraview Interview With Adam Lisagor ★

Adam Lisagor, on how You Look Nice Today got started:

The three of us had talked very briefly and noncommittally about doing some sort of project together. A couple months later, by chance, Bobby Andersen, kid-genius of Pixel Implosion suggested on his Twitter that the three of us do a podcast. In this town, when Bobby says do a podcast, you do a fucking podcast.

BlackBerry 9000 Video Tour ★

Doubt anyone at Apple is losing sleep over this. I especially love the way you’ve got to rub your thumb like a crazed junkie to move the mouse pointer half an inch in the web browser.

Unicomp Customizer Keyboard ★

Jake Seliger on the Unicomp Customizer keyboard, a modern version of the “buckling spring” keyboards IBM used to make:

Today, buckling spring keyboards are never or almost never shipped with computers. Fortunately, Unicomp has accomplished what Matias couldn’t and produced an excellent modern version in the Customizer. Keystrokes are crisp and precise. The “shadow key” problem that bedeviled the Tactile Pro is absent, and the Customizer itself is solid, recalling a slab of stone, unlike the fragile, mushy keyboards most PCs ship with.

The only downside is that the meta keys are for Windows, not Mac. You can remap them using the Keyboard & Mouse panel in System Prefs, but you’re stuck with that ugly Windows key. Unicomp might do well to sell a Mac-specific version, or to at least offer Mac-specific keycaps you could pop on yourself.

When Is the Next Release Planned? ★

Panic’s Cabel Sasser, responding to a Coda user who’s worried that it’s been five whole months since the last update:

A company like Adobe, which has hundreds of engineers working on Photoshop, releases ONE version every two or three years, and maybe a single bug fix release in the interim. For the most part, we’re all cool with that, myself included! :)

But a shareware company that has, say, one or two people working on a product, is somehow expected to do releases every few months — even free major ones — or people start getting itchy.

NBC Offers Free Episodes of The Office and 30 Rock to iPhone and iPod Touch Users ★

Commercial-free, but crummy quality. (Via MacDailyNews.)

Wednesday, 7 May 2008

Why Apple Is More Expensive Than Amazon ★

Reg Braithwaite on why the music industry has a problem with the iTunes Store’s dominant position:

They want consumers using devices in proprietary silos like old-fashioned cell phones, where you pay for the track, you pay for the bits transferred over the air, and then you pay all over again when you want to use a few seconds of the track as a ring tone.

As soon as they can break this pesky iPod-iTMS-iPhone nonsense, the labels want to get back to dictating what you pay and how often you pay. The labels want to do business with people like Microsoft. Microsoft gets it: all the people who bought music using MSN music? They can buy it all over again at the Zune store.

Microsoft Promised NBC a ‘Copyright Cop’ to Block Non-DRM Video Files ★

So why are NBC TV shows now available for the Zune but not for iTunes? Saul Hansell reports:

First, Apple insists that all TV shows have an identical wholesale price so that it can sell all of them at $1.99. NBC wants to sell its programs for whatever price it chooses.

Second, Apple refused to cooperate with NBC on building filters into its iPod player to remove pirated movies and videos.

Microsoft, by contrast, will accept NBC’s pricing scheme and will work with it to try to develop a copyright “cop” to be installed on its devices.

That sounds like a surefire winner to help the Zune catch up to the iPhone. I can see this both ways, though — perhaps Microsoft has no intention of actually doing this, and they simply conned NBC into an agreement with a fingers-crossed promise to “get right on it”.

Sprint Spending $100 Million to Advertise iPhone Knock-Off ★

Mark Wilson reports at Gizmodo:

Starting May 9th, Sprint will begin a massive, $100 million marketing campaign aimed straight at the iPhone’s nether regions. Stacking its [Samsung] Instinct against the iPhone, Sprint hopes to show that EVDO and GPS make their product way better than anything coming out of Cupertino.

They’ve got video of the first two spots. Watch them.

As Wilson writes, it boggles the mind that Sprint is hanging a $100 million dollar advertising campaign on two features — GPS and EVDO networking — that the iPhone is widely-rumored to be picking up in its next-generation hardware. Worse, side-by-side, even in commercials commissioned by Sprint, the Instinct looks like crap next to an iPhone — the screen is way smaller and way less bright.

What’s clear is that Sprint is run by MBA-trained executives who see everything as a general “business” problem. In their minds, the same things apply to selling phones as toothpaste. How about this idea: Take $100 million and use it to design a better phone?

When the Fall Is All That’s Left ★

Mark Pilgrim on Mozilla’s “we’ll just stay on the sidelines” attitude toward the Acid 3 test.

Hillary and Bill: The Movie ★

You’re aware that Roger Ebert is now writing a weblog for the Sun-Times, that it’s about whatever is on his mind, and that it’s excellent, right?

A Short Review of Times for Mac ★

Ian Beck reviews the new mimic-the-look-of-a-newspaper RSS reader Times:

All of my feeds fit neatly into one of two categories: feeds whose headlines I skim, and feeds where I read every headline and often read every article. NetNewsWire is great for the former category; Times is perfect for the latter (minor bugs notwithstanding).

Tuesday, 6 May 2008

‘Wrong, Wrong, and Wrong’ ★

John C. Welch on Matt Freestone’s claim that Leopard doesn’t run well on three-year-old Macs:

Matt is so far out in left field here, he’s in right field. While Apple does regularly cut off older hardware from the latest OS releases, that is still not, nor never has been the same as “You have to buy new hardware to get new OS versions”, nor is it even close. In fact, prior to Mac OS X, Apple would constantly provide for truly ancient hardware in their OS releases. Mac OS X 10.5 still supports a machine with at least an 867MHz G4, 512MB of RAM, and a DVD drive. You have to go back into 2002 to start hitting sub-867 MHz G4s.

AT&T Purportedly Nixes Retail Employee Vacations Between June 15 and July 12 ★

Leaked memo states they wish to ensure sufficient staffing for “an exciting Summer Promotional Launch.” They did the same thing last year for the original iPhone debut.

So, question: Will there be tens of thousands of people across the country lined up all day waiting to buy the new iPhones, just like last year? I say yes.

iMovie ’08: Don’t Use Periods in Project Name ★

Sad that in 2008, Apple is still producing OS X software with DOS-style file name limitations.

‘Citation Needed’ ★

Funny t-shirt.

iPhones in Italy ★

Another short press release. In fact, the URL is longer than the PR itself.

Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination ★

I took the boy to see this exhibit of props and costumes from the Star Wars films at the Franklin Institute here in Philly over the weekend. Some favorites here, here, here. and of course here.

Vodafone to Offer Apple’s iPhone in Ten Markets ★

On the newswire today:

Vodafone today announced it has signed an agreement with Apple to sell the iPhone in ten of its markets around the globe. Later this year, Vodafone customers in Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey will be able to purchase the iPhone for use on the Vodafone network.

Best press release I’ve seen in years. 56 words, short and to the point. No mention of exclusivity, so there’s speculation that other carriers will have the iPhone in these markets, too.

VMware Fusion 2.0 Public Beta ★

Free upgrade for current VMware Fusion owners. New features include multiple monitor support, 3D acceleration, and conversion of Parallels virtual machines.

Monday, 5 May 2008

Apple Denies Rumors of Selling Off Pro Apps ★

Richard Townhill, Apple’s director of marketing for professional video applications: “I can categorically state, on the record, that is not the case.”

Unicode Wins ★

Good news from Google regarding text encodings on the web:

Just last December there was an interesting milestone on the web. For the first time, we found that Unicode was the most frequent encoding found on web pages, overtaking both ASCII and Western European encodings—and by coincidence, within 10 days of one another.

(Via Andy Baio.)

AP Mobile News Network ★

Very nice MobileSafari-optimized news site from the Associated Press. Be sure to check out the Settings page, which lets you configure the stories that appear on the home page. (Thanks to Steve Curtis.)

I Box in Yellow Gox Box Socks ★

I think Scott Stevenson is making this more complicated than it is. Borders around text on a web page can look good (and Theocacao is a fine example), but they’re never necessary, and when done ham-fistedly, create a Russian doll effect — a box within a box within a box. In print, you’ve got two boxes at a minimum: the page, and the text itself; on the web, you’ve got the browser window and the text. That’s enough boxiness for anyone. The key is to remember that a column of text, by itself, forms its own box. See Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style if you need further convincing.

Yahoo Stock Plunges After Microsoft Backs Off ★

At this writing it’s trading at about $24 a share, a 20 percent drop from Friday. But that’s not bad, given that their stock was at $19 prior to the Microsoft takeover bid.

Sunday, 4 May 2008

Hahlo 3 ★: Dean Robinson’s excellent web-based iPhone Twitter client gets even better. Now integrates with Summize for tweet searching, and the interface has been improved across the board, including a new option to include replies and direct messages in your regular timeline. A slew of the issues I mentioned in my iPhone Twitter client comparison have been fixed, but typing in the posting field still feels a bit slow.

Saturday, 3 May 2008

NYT: Microsoft Withdraws Its Bid for Yahoo ★

Microsoft gracefully concedes. Surprising to me, given that reports yesterday claimed the two were close on a price. It’ll be interesting to see what happens to Yahoo’s stock price.

Pixar’s Brad Bird on Fostering Innovation ★

Great interview with Pixar’s Brad Bird:

You don’t play it safe — you do something that scares you, that’s at the edge of your capabilities, where you might fail. That’s what gets you up in the morning.

And, regarding Pixar’s headquarters:

Then there’s our building. Steve Jobs basically designed this building. In the center, he created this big atrium area, which seems initially like a waste of space. The reason he did it was that everybody goes off and works in their individual areas. People who work on software code are here, people who animate are there, and people who do designs are over there. Steve put the mailboxes, the meetings rooms, the cafeteria, and, most insidiously and brilliantly, the bathrooms in the center — which initially drove us crazy — so that you run into everybody during the course of a day. [Jobs] realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen. So he made it impossible for you not to run into the rest of the company.

(Via Kottke.)

Friday, 2 May 2008

Fake Steve on Facebook ★

“Facebook is Webkinz for adults.”

I Think Cringely Is Off His Meds Again ★

Cringely:

So why, then, was Apple quietly shopping around its entire professional application business to prospective buyers at the recently completed National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas? These include Aperture, Final Cut Pro, Logic, and Shake — applications that are hardly also-rans in their segments and none of which are antiquated in the least.

That sounds crazy to me, and it’s the first I’ve heard of this rumor. But his explanation is even nuttier:

It seems obvious to me, however, that there is only one real reason why Apple would sell off its professional applications and that’s to avoid antitrust problems when/if Apple buys Adobe Systems as I predicted at the beginning of the year.

Even if Apple were to buy Adobe (a big if), and if that acquisition raised anti-trust concerns, Apple would sell the competing Adobe apps, not their own current ones. (And Cringely’s suggestion that Sony might buy Apple’s apps is nutty too — none of these apps have Windows versions, so none would run on Vaios.)

Update: So, after fishing around a bit: Selling off the pro apps division? Doubtful, but there are rumors floating around about it. Buying Adobe? Not in the cards. The only reason Apple would sell off the pro apps division would be to keep the company smaller and more focused; buying Adobe would make Apple bigger and less focused.

NYT: Microsoft and Yahoo in Merger Talks ★

Looks like it’s all come down to a dollar or two in share price.

So Much for That Price Drop ★

Cleve Nettles at 9to5 Mac, back on February 10:

We just got a tip that Apple is planning on dropping the prices again on the iPhone and iPod Touch line within the next month or two - perhaps at the late February event, perhaps as late as mid-April. Our tipster says that Apple will drop the prices by $100.

Or maybe by zero.

Blu-ray Player Sales Slowing ★

Sales are slow because most people can’t see the difference between Blu-ray and upconverting DVD players (which cost just $70 or so).

Firefox 3 Background Window Appearance Bug Fixed ★

Fixed in source and the nightly builds, should be in the next public beta.

DoubleTwist ★

My thanks to DoubleTwist for sponsoring this week’s DF RSS feed. They’re a venture-funded startup in San Francisco founded by DVD Jon and Monique Farantzos, is hiring Cocoa developers — one full-time in San Francisco, one contractor.

Want to send a video shot on your cell phone to a Facebook friend or sync your iTunes library to your PSP? doubleTwist takes care of protocols and format conversions so that you can enjoy your media without technical headaches.

Sounds like a great gig for anyone interested in media format transcoding and social networking.

New Digs for The Deck ★

The Deck moves to its own domain and a swell new design by Jim Coudal. Even better, new member sites: Chip Kidd (!), Dean Allen, Ze Frank, and Aviary. I was going to say something flattering about these sites, but Zeldman did it for me, with more flair.

When I joined The Deck just a bit over two years ago, DF was the fourth site in the network. Now, there are 29. But the basic idea remains the same:

Each one of these principles is contrary to the conventional wisdom in web advertising — most sites that draw revenue from advertising attempt to cram as many ads as possible on each page, in as big and garish a format as possible. Yet I feel strongly that our policies make for a superior experience both for you, the reader, who is neither distracted by animation nor insulted by “punch the monkey” nonsense, and for the sponsors, who do not have to compete for attention from other advertisers on the same page.

Syncman ★

New €10 utility syncs contact data between Address Book and Gmail. (Via Macintouch.)

Times ★

Attractive, inventive new $30 news reader for the Mac. I don’t think it’s for me, but it’s interesting.

Dell’s New U.K. Keyboard Layout ★

New Dell Vostro laptops in the U.K. have a new keyboard layout where the entire bottom row of letters has been shifted one key to the right — rendering them completely unusable for anyone with even rudimentary touch-typing skills. This is so stupid it’s hard to believe it’s not a prank. (Via Kieran Healy.)

Addictomatic ★

Spiffy new web site from Dave Pell (with development by Alex King and design by my pal Bryan Bell). Pell describes it thusly:

Addictomatic searches the best live sites on the web for the latest news, blog posts, videos and images. It’s the perfect tool to keep up with the hottest topics, perform ego searches and feed your addiction for what’s up and what’s now.

I’d say it’s sort of like a cross between a news search engine and an RSS aggregator.

Keyboard Nerdery: The Apple Extended Keyboard II and IBM 101 ★

Derek K. Miller gets it:

I spent many a year pounding my fingers on an Extended II, in university and as a freelance technical writer. The IBM 101 is a very different beast, also built like a tank but with a more metallic, punchy feel, and an audible note to its astoundingly loud typing sound.

He’s got photos of his collection over at Flickr.

For what it’s worth, I’ve gotten a slew of recommendations this week from IBM keyboard aficionados, recommending keyboards from Unicomp, a company that still makes IBM-style keyboards with buckling spring key switches.

BusinessWeek Cover Story on Rising Mac Share in Businesses ★

There’s also this preamble on their Byte of the Apple weblog, where Arik Hesseldahl writes:

A Yankee Group survey that is soon to be published, found that of some 250 companies surveyed, 87% of them have some Macs in their organizations, whereas this number was only 48% two years ago.

For a market that remained relatively stagnant for about 20 years, that’s a remarkable change for just two years.

Thursday, 1 May 2008

ATPM Review: Apple Keyboard ★

Serendipity — Christopher Turner reviews the new aluminum super-thin Apple Keyboard in the new issue of ATPM:

Moving from a keyboard like the SmartBoard, which uses mechanical key switches — think of the loud clackety-clack of keyboards of yore; those used mechanical key switches — to one using the now more-common rubber membranes to control key function can take some getting used to, and it was an odd couple of days at first. Now, I can’t imagine going back. You don’t have to press very hard on these keys, meaning less finger travel, which saves wear and strain on your digits’ muscles.

Prune Your Time Machine Backups Selectively ★

Interesting Time Machine tip from Matt Neuburg.

New Movies Now Available for Purchase on iTunes Same Day as DVD Release ★

Apple:

Apple today announced that new movie releases from major film studios and premier independent studios are available for purchase on the iTunes Store on the same day as their DVD release. New releases and catalog titles will be available from 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Lionsgate, Image Entertainment and First Look Studios.

Next step: work on moving the rental availability up.

Update: Ends up they’ve also enabled purchasing movies directly from Apple TV — prior to today, all you could do from Apple TV was rent.

CSS Homer Simpson ★

Wow.

Do Web Sites Need to Look Exactly the Same in Every Browser? ★

Agreed.

Architecture Astronauts Take Over ★

Joel Spolsky on Microsoft Live Mesh:

It’s Groove, rewritten from scratch, one more time. Ray Ozzie just can’t stop rewriting this damn app, again and again and again, and taking 5-7 years each time.

Wednesday, 30 Apr 2008

Engadget Tests Psystar Open Computer ★

Nilay Patel, on using a Psystar Open Computer running a hacked version of Leopard:

It’s LOUD. Crazy loud. OS X doesn’t seem to interface with the fan controller, so it runs at full tilt all the time. It doesn’t really come across on the video, but it’s loud enough so that it’s hard to talk on the phone when the machine is running. There’s no way we could deal with this thing on a daily basis.

I’m tempted to order one for Hockenberry.