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Linked List: November 13, 2008

Thursday, 13 November 2008

Safari 3.2 

Bug-fix and security update for Mac OS X and Windows.

Apple Publications Style Guide 2008 (PDF) 

Apple’s in-house style and usage guide, first update since January 2006. Excellent resource for technical writers of any sort, filled with useful nuggets like this. (Via today’s issue of MDJ.)

Updated 5 April 2010: Changed the link to point to the 2009 edition. The 2008 URL went 404.

AppleInsider Obtains Legal Documents From Apple/IBM Papermaster Case 

Including a complete copy of Mark Papermaster’s declaration (PDF).

Update: Seems weird that they watermarked “APPLEINSIDER” repeatedly over every page in the PDFs; they’re readily available on the web. Go to justia.com, search for “Papermaster”, and there you go.

Pierre Igot on the Adobe CS4 Installation Experience 

Is there a worse installation experience for any mainstream Mac software?

iPhone Backup Slurper 

I neglected to link to this a few weeks ago when he released it, but Jason Harris has written an open source app that, much like this week’s aforelinked iPhone Backup Extractor, reads the data from the backups iTunes stores when you sync your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Among other benefits, iPhone Backup Slurper automatically dumps the contents of SQLite database files in the backup data.

Ed Boyd, Dell’s New Industrial Design Director 

Reena Jana, writing for BusinessWeek:

The man behind this effort is Ed Boyd, one of Dell’s most unusual hires in recent years. Boyd is an industrial designer who used to dream up new sunglasses and shoes for Nike. Now the 43-year-old is trying to make design an integral part of Dell, the personal computer maker long known for cranking out boring gray boxes. “I was skeptical it could be cool,” says Boyd, who joined the company last year. “I took the job when I heard the design lab would function like a startup for consumer [products].” […]

Next year, Dell will let buyers customize laptops in a dizzying number of ways, mixing scores of colors, patterns, and textures. The options will go far beyond the handful of choices available from most of its rivals. In essence, Boyd is taking the Nike approach of letting people design their own sneakers, and trying to apply it to the world of computers.

I think this is a very smart move for Dell. A very different philosophy than Apple’s, for sure, but that’s a good thing — Apple’s philosophy would never work for Dell.

Duncan Davidson’s Nikon D700 Field Report 

Long-time Canon user Duncan Davidson on using his new Nikon D700 kit to shoot the Web 2.0 Summit.

Flat-Screen Makers Plead Guilty to Price-Fixing 

U.S. Justice Department gets guilty pleas on price-fixing charges from LG, Sharp, and Chunghwa Picture Tubes.

The ‘Which OS?’ Question 

I’ve updated the first footnote in yesterday’s piece regarding Tony Fadell and his role, or lack thereof, in the development of the iPhone, with a one-word answer to the question as to which OS Fadell pushed for Apple to base the phone on rather than OS X.