Linked List: June 12, 2006

Monday, 12 June 2006

Google SketchUp for Mac OS X 

First Mac release of Google’s free version of SketchUp, the acclaimed easy-to-use 3D drawing and modeling app, featuring integration with Google Earth.

A few notes, assembled with the help of Daniel Bogan:

  • You have to run an installer to install SketchUp, and even though the icon looks like a standard Mac OS X installer package, it’s actually a crummy installer from MindVision. It does not tell you what it’s going to install, or where, or why it requires you to authenticate. Looking at the installer log, it’s pretty innocuous: it puts the app in /Applications/ and a bunch of support files in /Library/Application Support/Google SketchUp/. I moved the app to ~/Applications/ and the support folder to ~/Library/, and the app still seems to work properly.

    Any installer that doesn’t offer you a list of everything it’s going to install sucks. The worst part, though, is that this app shouldn’t need an installer in the first place.

  • Poke around in the support folder and you can see that the plug-ins are all written in Ruby, and they’re doing useful things like dynamically the changing the app’s menu items. It’s a real Mac app, with its UI laid out in nib files, and appears to be written in Cocoa. But it looks like the Ruby plug-in API is cross-platform. Very cool. This is a serious Mac app, not a slapdash QT port like Google Earth.

Google Earth Release 4 Beta 

Now a universal binary for Mac OS X; the UI is better, but still ghetto. Lots of fun to play with, though.

Apple Posts Three New ‘Get a Mac’ Ads 

“Touché” is a big deal — Apple is now advertising the fact that Macs can run Windows. Says the “I’m a Mac” guy: “Now you can run Mac OS X or Windows on Mac, so in a way, I’m kind of like the only computer you’ll ever need.”

Michael Bartosh, Renowned Mac OS X Server Expert, Dead at 28 

Fell to his death from an 11th-floor balcony. John C. Welch has written a nice tribute.

Pairing Wine and Microformats 

Dan Cederholm on the markup behind Cork’d.

Max 0.6.1 

Stephen F. Booth’s open source audio ripping and encoding app for Mac OS X. Supports a lot of different audio formats and a lot of different options. (Via Infinite Loop.)

FuzzMeasure Pro 2 

I have no need for a audio and acoustical measurement app, but if you do, I’ll bet this is the one you want.

LoJAX 

Brothercake:

LoJAX is a re-creation of the window.XMLHttpRequest object, designed for low-specification and legacy browsers.

(Via Mark Pilgrim’s links.)

Hugh Macleod Cartoon on Scoble-Microsoft Breakup 

Funny because it’s true.

Quinn 3.3 

Simon Härtel’s excellent Tetris implementation for Mac OS X keeps getting better. It’s been over three years since I last mentioned Quinn, and in the the meantime, the graphics and animation have improved, the sound effects are better, and, most impressively, there’s now a network mode (with Bonjour support) and the ability to easily find other network players via the Quinn web site. All this and it’s freeware. I hereby declare Quinn the best Mac Tetris game since Wesleyan Tetris.

Scoble Says He Wasn’t Underappreciated by Microsoft 

Refuting the rumors circulating about why he’s leaving for a startup. I was skeptical of those claims that Microsoft was nickle and diming him on his expenses.