Linked List: March 2, 2006

Thursday, 2 March 2006

Brent Simmons: Where We Are With NetNewsWire 2.1 ★

Brent Simmons:

Another new thing: we’ve worked hard on performance. The goal is to make it seem like PowerPC users now have an Intel Mac, and Intel Mac users have, well, something even faster.

Macworld: Opening Up the Intel Mac Mini ★

Jason Snell:

Our first Intel-based Mac Minis have arrived, straight from the Apple Store, and what was the first thing the cold, cruel alien intellects at Macworld did with one of these innocents? That’s right. We got out our putty knife, popped it open, and spilled its guts out faster than you could say “CSI!”

Jackass of the Day: Andre Da Costa ★

Andre Da Costa, on the Sidebar feature in the latest Windows Vista beta release:

I personally believe a lot in the technology culture has influenced the development of the Sidebar over the years. You could probably describe it as a tiny bit of Yahoo’s Konfabulator, mixed in with the Sidebar Teams innovation. I can’t say I see any influence from Apple here since they basically sent spy’s [sic] to PDC 2003 and ripped it off into Dashboard in OS 10.4 Tiger.

Yes, that’s right. Dashboard is a rip-off of Windows Vista’s Sidebar. Those damn Apple spies.

(Via Tomi Siikaluoma via email.)

MacBook Pro Keyboard Backlighting Is Not Ludicrously Bright ★

Daniel Jalkut, proud owner of a MacBook Pro, on the brightness of the keyboard backlighting:

Obviously, my photos might be deceptive, too. But all I can say is that dim version looks “pretty much” the same as it looks in my office. Maybe O’Grady got a defective keyboard? I would like to see a picture of this retina-burning “lowest setting.” If the dim version shown above is brighter than the maximum brightness of the G4 keyboard, I’d say it’s the G4 that was defective!

Also, reader Adam Polgar emailed to say that the new brighter keyboard backlighting was introduced with the higher-resolution PowerBooks last fall — meaning the backlighting on the MacBook Pros is probably the same as on my PowerBook (which I think is pretty darn good).

Penn and Teller’s Smoke and Mirrors ★

Andy Baio on Penn and Teller’s unreleased “Smoke and Mirrors” video game from a decade ago:

The most infamous part was “Desert Bus,” a “VeriSimulator” in which you drive a bus across the straight Nevada desert for eight hours in real-time. Then you drive it home. Also, I’d read the bus veers to the right, so you can’t just leave the joypad propped up. The rumor was that if you won the game, you got one point.

David Pogue Reviews the MacBook Pro ★

David Pogue:

You can see why Apple might be fond of its latest machine. The one-inch-thick MacBook is only 0.1 inch thinner than the PowerBook, but somehow feels worlds sleeker and more futuristic. Fit, finish and quality are spectacular.

The wireless antenna has been moved, so Wi-Fi reception is much improved. The guts, from the bus (circuitry) to the graphics card, have been substantially accelerated. Battery life is pretty much the same as on the PowerBooks: 3 to 3.5 hours.

The MacBook trumps its predecessor in five substantial areas. First, the gorgeous, 1,440-by-900-pixel screen is much whiter and brighter. It’s very, very bright. At half brightness, it matches the brightest setting of other laptops; at full brightness, it could illuminate a runway. It’s really bright.

Getting Real: The Book ★

New self-published 171-page PDF book from the team at 37signals. Self-publishing is the future of long-form technical and design writing — this way the authors get to make some actual money instead of the publishers. (Most authors get about $2-3 in royalties from a $39 tech book published through a traditional publisher.)