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Linked List: October 26, 2006

Thursday, 26 October 2006

New .Mac Webmail Ships 

I think it’s weird that it looks so much like Apple Mail, because it doesn’t act very much like Apple Mail at all. For example, yes, you can drag-and-drop messages in the new .Mac Webmail, but you have to click on them to select them first; you can’t use Shift with arrow keys to select multiple messages, etc. These are hard things to implement in a webmail client — but if it looks this much like the regular desktop Mail, it ought to act more like it, too.

Then again, if you really do just care about cosmetics, this kicks the shit out of Gmail.

Daring Fireball Free Feeds: Extended Play 

It doesn’t feel right to pull the plug on this mid-week; let’s keep them up until tomorrow night.

Battery Recall Wipes Out Sony’s Profits for Latest Quarter 

Just in case you were wondering who was on the hook for most of the costs associated with Apple and Dell’s recalls of Sony-manufactured batteries, it was Sony:

The company reported today that it earned a net profit of 1.7 billion yen ($14.4 million) in the three months ended Sept. 30, the second quarter of its fiscal year. That was a 94 percent decline from the comparable period a year earlier, despite sales that were 8.3 percent higher at 1.9 trillion yen ($16 billion).

The company took a charge of 51 billion yen ($430 million) for the quarter, mostly related to the battery problem — an amount far higher than analysts initially expected.

MacBook Firmware Update Seems to Be Working 

Scott Lewis has a MacBook that was suffering from the random shutdown problem — he could trigger it on demand by running a Terminal process to consume CPU cycles. After installing today’s firmware update, the problem has gone away.

Soundbooth Nomenclature 

Earlier today, I cracked wise about Adobe’s new sound editor, Soundbooth:

No word yet on which future beta will be renamed “Adobe Photoshop Soundbooth”.

Reader Dan Martinez, via email, suggests “Adobe Phonoshop”.

MacBook SMC Firmware Update 1.1 

Apple:

The SMC Update improves the MacBook’s internal monitoring system and addresses issues with unexpected shutdowns. This update is recommended for all MacBook systems, including those that received warranty repair.

Which Vista Is the Right Vista? 

Ever since Microsoft announced the various versions of Windows Vista, people, including me, have been mocking them for it. But read this. I don’t see any way to look at the Vista product matrix and not come to the conclusion that Microsoft holds its customers in contempt.

For example, the low-end option, Vista Starter. It won’t address more than 256 MB of RAM and won’t allow you to run more than three apps at a time. And, like a few of the other low-end versions of Vista, it doesn’t include the new Aero UI chrome. Why does this product even exist?

Why have they made it so hard to figure out which version of Vista you might want?

First ‘Serious, Deep-Pocketed Competitor’? 

I saw this article about Apple and iPod sales by Jefferson Graham in USAToday last week while waiting to get on a plane for C4, but couldn’t find a link to it on USAToday’s web site. This is a reprint in The Fort Collins Coloradan. This line caught my eye:

The company has a 70 percent market share of digital music devices. Next month, it gets its first serious, deep-pocketed competitor when rival Microsoft launches its music player, the Zune.

So, Sony: Not deep-pocketed? Not serious about portable music players? Dell? Philips?

The sad part is that if, say, the Zune winds up being a complete dud, a year from now these same jackasses will be calling something else the “first serious competitor” to the iPod. The truth is that Apple has already successfully beaten several “serious, deep-pocketed” rivals. This sort of thing is just another variation on the “just wait and see, the ‘real’ companies will teach Apple a lesson just like they did with the Macintosh” theme.

Evan Williams: The Birth of Obvious Corp. 

Great name for a company.

‘Become an Xcoder’ 

Free PDF book for beginners who want to get started with Cocoa and Xcode, available as a PDF and on the web. (Via Cocoa Radio.)

How to Steal an Election by Hacking the Vote 

Jon “Hannibal” Stokes with a detailed report explaining why electronic (paper-trail-less) voting machines are a disaster waiting to happen. They more or less work on the honor policy, under the assumption that all people with access to the machines are honest.

New MacBook Pros Significantly Cheaper Than Comparable Dells 

Apple’s 17-inch model is $1,300 cheaper — or, just under $1,000 cheaper if you include three years of AppleCare.

The Story of Tetris 

Kottke links to an hour-long 2004 BBC documentary about Tetris and Alexey Pazhitnov, the Russian programmer who created it in 1985.

Now seems like an appropriate time to mention that Quinn, Simon Härtel’s excellent freeware Mac implementation, is up to version 3.4.2.

Adobe Soundbooth Beta 1 

New sound editing app from Adobe, which, like Lightroom, is free while in public beta. Available for both Mac and Windows, and the Mac version is Intel-only. This is the first Intel-only Mac app I’ve encountered (Parallels aside, for obvious reasons). I wonder if they’re using some sort of x86-only sound library? I can’t understand why they wouldn’t compile a version for PowerPC.

This button arrangement in the Preferences window doesn’t speak well for its Mac-like-ness:

OK/Cancel button arrangement in Soundbooth's preferences.

No word yet on which future beta will be renamed “Adobe Photoshop Soundbooth”.

(Via Erik Barzeski via AIM.)

Video Footage of Rush Limbaugh Mocking Michael J. Fox 

It’s hard for me to watch this and remain composed. Watch though, and observe Michael J. Fox’s astoundingly graceful response to Limbaugh.

So, This Guy at the Apple Store San Francisco Is a Jerk 

David Young (not that one, the other one) gets the hard sell on AppleCare from an Apple Store sales guy:

Guy: Are you going to get AppleCare with that?
Me: No.
Guy: Because I get AppleCare on all of my Macs. I’m not on commision, this isn’t a hard sell.
Me: I think we’ll skip it.
Guy: You really shouldn’t skip it. It’s $249 if you buy it now, but if something goes wrong, Apple will fix it for free.
Me: No, I think we’ll skip it.
Guy: These are first generation machines, there might be some problems down the road. You should really get AppleCare.
Me: No!

I once told a sales guy at Best Buy that extended warranties were against my religion, on the grounds that they’re like placing a wager that whatever it is you’re buying is going to break, and that my religion forbids gambling. That shut him up.

Ten Loaded Questions: David Young 

Dean Allen interviews Joyent honcho David Young. Hilarious.