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Linked List: April 26, 2006

Wednesday, 26 April 2006

Apple released Pages 2.0.1 and Keynote 3.0.1; looks like both are mainly related to chart-rendering fixes.

I got hooked on LaunchBar 3, but switched to its arch-rival Quicksilver over a year ago. A couple of the new features in LaunchBar 4.1 have me intrigued, however, including the significant performance improvements (LaunchBar 4.0 felt slower than Quicksilver to me) and the new built-in calculator feature. (Via Michael Tsai.)

WouldjaDraw 1.0 ★

New $30 simple, lightweight vector-based drawing app. If you’ve been looking around for a modern app along the lines of MacDraw, this might be it.

How Apple Found 50 Acres in Cupertino and Why They Paid for It ★

Michele Chandler reporting for the San Jose Mercury News:

Jobs was most likely speaking plainly when he told the Cupertino City Council that Apple ended up spending more than it would have liked to acquire the land. The assessed value of the 50 acres Apple is buying tops $160 million, according to property records. Apple would not comment on the purchase process.

But the purchase price is just the beginning. By the time Apple flattens the site’s old-style structures and builds new offices for as many as 3,500 employees — a process the company expects to take about four years — Apple could easily have spent $500 million, two real estate experts predict. That would make the company’s second campus one of the costliest Silicon Valley commercial ventures in recent memory.

(Via Infinite Loop.)

Slashdot CSS Redesign Contest ★

But contestants are supposed to use the existing article icons, which are just horrible, and Slashdot grand pooh-bah Rob Malda strongly suggests the color and logotype remain the same as well.

Adobe Offers Migration Help to FreeHand Users ★

George Penston asks if the writing is on the wall:

Adobe has just posted a rather comprehensive FreeHand to Illustrator Migration Guide (11MB PDF) as well as a brief technical resource paper (392KB PDF) to their Design Center. Although it’s thoughtful of Adobe to put together such helpful guides for longtime FreeHand users, one can’t help but think the writing is on the wall for FreeHand and its users.

I think the writing has been on the wall all along; Macromedia disbanded the FreeHand development team long before the Adobe deal even took place. I’m pretty sure there’s never going to be another major release of FreeHand.