Linked List: November 21, 2007

Wednesday, 21 November 2007

No Sub-Pixel Anti-Aliasing in Leopard Menu Bar ★

Sven-S. Porst:

As the variable background of the X.5 menu bar means that characters have to be drawn on a transparent background and then put on the modified desktop menu bar picture, this also means that no sub-pixel anti-aliasing is used. As a consequence you may find that certain glyphs look irregularly rendered or poorly spaced in the menu bar.

Early OmniFocus Sales Figures ★

There’s a growing trend of indie developers publishing sales numbers for their apps. Ken Case on the just-released-as-public-beta OmniFocus:

I just wanted to write a quick note to thank you all for your support! In less than five days, we’ve already received over $100,000 in preorders for OmniFocus, making this one of our strongest product launches of all time.

At $40, that’s over 2500 licenses. Compare and contrast with Hog Bay Software’s TaskPaper, which Jesse Grosjean reported sold 170 licenses in its first four days.

Wide vs. Deep ★

Can’t stop linking to Greg Knauss.

Shortened URLs With Quicksilver ★

Short Quicksilver script for taking the URL from the frontmost Safari window, passing it to the Metamark URL shortening service, and putting the result on the clipboard.

T-Mobile Forced to Sell Unlocked iPhones in Germany ★

Jacqui Cheng:

T-Mobile Germany announced this morning that it would begin selling iPhones without a contract or a SIM lock that would restrict the device to its network. Those SIM-unlocked iPhones will be available starting today, in fact, but they won’t run cheap. T-Mobile is selling them for €999 (just under US$1,500).

In an iPhone-Enlightened World, Kindle Has an Obvious Flaw ★

Astute criticism on the Kindle form factor from Craig Hunter:

Everybody is talking about how Kindle is the ‘iPod of Books’ or something like that, but the iPod is so yesterday (even Apple knows it). If Amazon really wanted a breakthrough, they should have aimed for the ‘iPhone of Books’.

E-Book the Letter ★

Steven Poole on the Kindle’s shortcomings compared to paper books. Half in jest, obviously, but perhaps my main problem with Kindle is just that: I love paper books.

And, putting his own words on the line, Poole has released a free PDF version of his own book, Trigger Happy,