By John Gruber
Mux — Video for developers
Linked List: October 15, 2008
Wednesday, 15 October 2008
- 2.5 GHz MacBook Pros at Amazon for $1644 ★
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Amazon has the old MacBook Pros on sale at a steep discount — $1794 with a $150 rebate. This machine sold for $2499 at the Apple Store two days ago. (Buy through this link and I’ll get a kick-back from Amazon.)
- Michael Tsai on the New MacBooks ★
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Good list of pros and cons. The lack of FireWire on the regular MacBook is the worst con, from my perspective.
- The Macalope Asks: ‘Is This a Joke?’ ★
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Adam DuVander apparently thinks the difference between a BMW and a Chevy is that BMW “charges more”.
- ‘In No Other Country Is My Story Even Possible’ ★
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Poster design by Jonathan Hoefler.
- Bento 2.0 ★
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Looks like a solid update to FileMaker’s consumer-oriented personal database.
New features include “more spreadsheet-like behavior”, which I think is good, but which conflates Bento even more with Numbers. Numbers is a database-y spreadsheet, and Bento is a spreadsheet-y database. I think there are many use cases where it’s hard to tell which to choose.
- The Problem Isn’t With Predictions ★
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Peter Kafka:
We thought that at this point, everyone understands: The blogosphere isn’t 100% reliable, especially when it comes to Apple-related news. Some combination of intense fanboy and investor interest, mixed with Apple’s secrecy fetish means that the Web is riddled with eroneous [sic, I swear] predictions about Steve Jobs’ next move.
The problem is not with predictions. Predictions are fun. My predictions about Apple have been wrong far more often than they’ve been right. The problem is with false reports. None of the reports I called out yesterday were “predictions”, they were false reports. “Here’s what I think Apple will do” is very different from “Here’s what a trusted source tells me Apple is going to announce”.
I find that it is easy to be right with what I report, because I only report what I know to be true. This is not some sort of high standard. It is basic journalism.
- Gizmodo: Steve Jobs Preparing His Farewell? ★
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At Gizmodo, Jesus Diaz posits that Jobs is preparing to leave the company, “probably very soon”.
I’d say no. Having Tim Cook and Jony Ive on stage with him was certainly different, and it may well be part of grooming both of them to take bigger public roles. It was also a good way to inspire investor confidence. But it’s hardly unprecedented for Jobs to act more as MC than showman during an event. He played an even smaller role in the keynote at WWDC 2006 when Leopard was introduced; most of the demos were presented by Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall. Diaz writes:
[Jobs] was saying: “Hey, look, Apple is more than Steve. These are The Guys, the Goodfellas, the A-Team. They share the same vision I have. And they are going to push the company forward when I change my office chair for a hammock and caipirinhas on my private beach in Hawaii”.
I think he’s right that Jobs is proud of, and has tremendous faith in, Cook and Ive. If Jobs dies or gets really sick, Apple’s obviously going to have to replace him. But so long as he’s healthy, working at Apple is exactly the thing Jobs wants to do. He’s consumed by his work, and I think it’s only in the last two or three years that Apple has gotten to the point where Jobs feels he has a decent set of crayons at his disposal. In Jobs’s mind, the iPhone is only the beginning of what a truly flourishing Apple can produce. Why would he leave now? “A hammock and caipirinhas on a private beach” would be living hell for Steve Jobs.
- PCalc Updates for iPhone and Mac ★
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And developer James Thomson has launched a new weblog, “Three Letter Acronym”. Check out the screenshots of the new color themes for the iPhone version of PCalc.
- Old Apple Cinema Displays Still Available ★
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Apple is still selling the full lineup of old Cinema Displays, including the 23-inch model that one would think was replaced by today’s new 24-inch LED Cinema Display. I’m not sure what the story is here, but my best guess is that it’s about the new DisplayPort connectors. The new MacBooks all have them and so does the new 24-inch LED display. But no other Macs have these ports, and Apple doesn’t (yet?) have a DVI-to-DisplayPort adapter, so Apple needs to keep the old displays around for the time being.
Update: To clarify, Apple is selling adapters that allow MacBooks with mini DisplayPort ports to connect to DVI displays. What they don’t sell is an adapter that would allow a Mac with a DVI port to connect to the new 24-inch LED Cinema Display.
- Announcing the New York Times Campaign Finance API ★
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The confluence of programming and journalism continues.