Linked List: November 5, 2007

Monday, 5 November 2007

From the DF Archive: Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Details ★

Sure would be cool if I did something like this for Leopard.

Blacktree: Wildcard 0.9.2, and Open Source Quicksilver ★

Blacktree.com is back after a recent outage, so anyone looking to re-download Quicksilver can get it once again. There’s also something new: Wildcard, a “virtual space” for card and board games. Wildcard is Leopard-only (and Intel-only, at least for now). Also new: the source code for Quicksilver (and Wildcard) is now open.

Another Folder Icon Trick for the Leopard Dock ★

Peter N Lewis’s aforelinked naming trick works for folders in your Dock sorted by name; Matthew Yohe has a good trick for getting the same effect for folders sorted by date (like Downloads): set the modified date on the sub-folder to something far in the future.

Data Loss Bug in Leopard When Moving Files Between Volumes ★

Tom Karpik:

Leopard’s Finder has a glaring bug in its directory-moving code, leading to horrendous data loss if a destination volume disappears while a move operation is in action.

Safe workaround: When you wish to move a folder between volumes, do a copy in the Finder (by dragging with no modifier keys held down) and then delete the original on the old volume manually.

What Does Google’s Open Handset Alliance Announcement Tell Us About iPhone Third-Party Apps? ★

Marc Hedlund:

Did Apple announce iPhone third-party apps as an aside in their “Hot News” column (instead of on Steve Jobs’s home court, a conference keynote) in order to get the news out fast — before Google?

Folder Icon Trick for Leopard Dock ★

Peter N Lewis:

The Leopard Dock shows folders as a layer of icons, which is crazy for folders as you cannot easily recognize a folder based on its contents. Especially crazy when the folders have recognizable icons already!

Of course, here at Stairways we prefer to find solutions to problems rather than just grumble, so here is a trivial solution. Simply create an alias to the folder, name it to sort as the first icon, and put it in the folder.

Ironcoder 7: Bigger, Better, and Uncut ★

The seventh edition of the Mac programming contest now has a longer schedule and an excellent prize: an 8 GB iPod Touch.

Daring Fireball RSS Feed Sponsorship ★

Only three unsold weeks left for 2007.

Derek Powazek: ‘Google Now in Vaporware Business?’ ★

Derek Powazek:

Is it just me, or has Google forgotten what making software means? Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for big companies taking on big problems, but maybe they should balance all these utopian announcements with some actual, you know, product releases.

O2 Scraps Web Limit on iPhone ★

Good news for iPhone users in the U.K.: “unlimited” now means unlimited.

Om Malik on Google’s Mobile Phone Platform Announcement ★

Sounds like total vaporware to me — just an announcement and a list of partners, with phones based on this new platform not available until late 2008. Given that Google is only engineering the software, not hardware, it’s more of a rival to Symbian and Windows Mobile.

But jiminy, watch this “INtroducing Android” video from Google on YouTube — could it be any more vague? So far this seems like the most Microsoftian thing Google has ever announced.

Google Data APIs Client Libraries ★

Google-supplied developer libraries for their new “GData” APIs. Languages: Java, .NET, PHP, Python, JavaScript, and Objective-C. No C, no C++ — the only C family language is Objective-C. Interesting. (Thanks to Joe Bolte.)

Ze Frank: Strike Day ★

Here’s to hoping this is regular, and not just a one-off.

Dodgers Introduce Torre as Manager ★

Man, that photo just feels wrong.

Regarding iPhone Pricing ★

Jesper, in the midst of arguing that Apple would be better off selling unlocked iPhones:

It’s not even economically debatable if Apple could sell the same iPhone for under $500. Of course they could, with margins too.

I think this is debatable. Isn’t it possible that the iPhone is, in fact, a subsidized device? What if it costs close to or more than $399 to produce, and it’s in the monthly revenue sharing from the carriers that Apple makes its profit? For one thing, it would explain why Apple seems so determined to foil unlockers, including their decision to no longer accept cash and limit you to two iPhones per purchase.

Update: A little birdie tells me that prior to the credit-only, two-per-person limit, it was not uncommon for would-be resellers to walk into the Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York with $50,000 in cash and walk out with 100 iPhones. Apple is turning these people away for a reason.

Update 2: The best evidence to the contrary — that iPhones might be profitable at $399 — is the $299 iPod Touch. I.e., if the iPod Touch is profitable at $299, then $100 extra for phone gadgetry sounds reasonable. I really don’t know what the answer is, I’m just saying it’s not clear either way.

Security Researcher Gadi Evron Jizzes His Pants Over Mac Trojan ★

From a craptacular Wired News story on the Mac porno codec Trojan:

“Apple’s day has finally come, and Apple users are going to get hit hard,” security researcher Gadi Evron said. “OS X is the new Windows 98.”

It’s unfortunate, because this Trojan is an actual attempt by Ukrainian criminals to hijack Macs, but it’s not exploiting any sort of security hole in any version of Mac OS X. To get hit by it, you must (a) be the sort of moron who downloads “video codecs” from porno sites; (b) mount the disk image and launch the installer; and (c) grant the installer administrator privileges to install whatever it wants, wherever it wants on your system. No system can prevent that.

If anything, the fact that you have to manually install the software and supply your administrator password is a sign that Mac OS X security works.

An Interview With Daniel Jalkut ★

Nice interview by Austin Heller.

TaskPaper BBEdit ★

Very nice BBEdit codeless language module for TaskPaper’s plaintext to-do format. Freeware from Matthias Steffens.

The 15 Dumbest Apple Predictions of All Time ★

Includes some real classics, like Hiawatha Bray declaring the original 1998 iMac “doomed” because it lacked a floppy disk drive, and of course Rob Enderle makes the list twice. But my favorite is then-Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold’s statement regarding Steve Jobs’s return to the company: “Apple is already dead.” (Myhrvold eventually left Microsoft and has since become a patent troll.)