Inspirational Technology

Apple Tablet Rumblings (again)...

MacRumors is reviving the rumors of an Apple tablet. I'm of course am absolutely dying to buy something like that. However given what I've said about Tablet PCs I also have to feel the same way about Apple's prospects for launching a device into the category. It's just doesn't appear to be a winning market.

It seems what uptake of Tablets exists is occurring mostly in the corporate arena, not exactly Apples strong area. I think this is primarily based on price, as in reality I see the Tablet being something that should have strong appeal to the home user. At least it probably would if it was even slightly marketed toward that arena.

For me the appeal of the Tablet is for media (i.e. digital music, movies), web browsing in a relaxed manner, holding a digital library and note taking. Of these only note taking is probably outside the realm of what most people would do with their home computer and that's not entirely outside it either. The tablet form factor should also be very good for digital photography and video editing. Neither of those generally require significant amounts of text editing (at least they don't with decent software). Combine it with wireless printing and the ability to hook up to a TV and it should be a pretty compelling solution within the home.

Hmm, now that I really think about it, maybe Apple should make a tablet and aim it at this market. Of course if PC makers can't get the price down, it's not too likely Apple will either and tablet prices are still way too high. Ugh, all I know is I want a tablet. I'd much, much rather have one from Apple, but I fear I'll have to settle for a Tablet PC.

Russell Beatie is making money for his...

Russell Beatie is making money for his weblog by using Google.

I started doing this too, though nobody ever clicks on any of mine. ;-( Oh well, I'm just using it as an incentive to write more.

SS_PrefsController

More from the Irate Scotsman, SS_PrefsController allows you to easily create an iTunes style preferences pane. Looks pretty slick.

Panther UI Criticism

Irate Scotsman Matt Gemmell offers a criticism of the UI changes in Panther. I'm waiting to see the final thing before passing final judgement, but I agree there's some questionable things Apple is doing in the UI department. Using more and more metal being one of the biggest. Oh well, we'll see how it goes with the final result.

I'm of course still jazzed about Expose'. Also I don't necessarily see anything wrong with the new Tab controls, it's consistent with the way Apple seems to intend tabs to be used. Maybe this is setting the stage for the introduction of Safari style tabs. That would be cool as the current NSTabView is not much good for using tabs to display documents since it doesn't adequately handle overflow.

Spookiest Song Ever

`97 Bonnie and Clyde from Tori Amos' album Strange Little Girls. This is an incredibly haunting version of Eminem's song off The Slim Shady LP. Stripped of the typical Eminem aggression it's stunning how effectively scary that song can be. Tori Amos set it in a very slow, basically spoken word style over a haunting string arrangement. It's very cool.

iTableView

While working through the new mountain of Mac developer blogs I just added to NetNewsWire I came across iTableView. It's a NSTableView subclass that adds coloring similar to that used in the iApps. Very cool, I implemented a simple version of this, but this looks much more comprehensive and respects the system setting for highlight colors. It also looks like Panther is going to bring this as a default control.

Mac Developer Blogs List

Yes there is a list of Mac developer blogs. I actually saw this a while back, but forgot about it.

Mac Developer Blogs

I'm wondering if there is a list of Mac OS X software developer blogs? I just discovered Sci-fi Hi-fi from a comment left in the 100th Window review. It's a blog by Buzz Anderson, the author of PodWorks. Lots of interesting pictures and comments from last weeks WWDC, makes me even more sorry I missed it.

Review: Massive Attack 100th Window

Alright I'm in a review writing mood so I'll add a review for the album of the number 2 song on my top 25. Let's see what can we say about Massive Attack 100th Window? Well it's enjoyable, I've listened to it quite a few times, however it also doesn't stand out. In fact as I write this I can't mentally bring any tune from the album into my mind. The way I've been listening to the album is as something that is enjoyable without being too offensive and without dropping all the way to being just background music.

I guess this isn't a very ringing endorsement for the album but it isn't a horrible thing either. Even if the music doesn't stick, the album it self has made it into my rotation and is listened to quite a bit which means it is good.

Like previous Massive Attack efforts 100th Window is a downtempo album with electronic beats, mellow lyrics and a rich melodic backdrop of electronics and samples. It's music meant to be listened to when you're in a mellow mood. I suppose with the beats it's probably danceable in a slow vibe kind of way, but that's not really my thing. The songs are kind of orchestral in nature due to the samples used. This definitely isn't music that is meant to be played on the radio. I guess you could even describe it as being kind of new ageish, but with far more artistic merit. Hmm, that's a key word there, artistic. Yep, this album is artistic and that's why I enjoy it. What the music lacks in memorable riffs or lyrics it more then makes up for in depth. This makes it worth devoting time to explore, enjoy and just to vibe.

Previous efforts like Mezzazine and Blue Lines have had songs that were a little more memorable and have been high on my list of album picks for quite some time. I think 100th Window will make that list as well. Even if no single song stands out, the album as a whole is very enjoyable. It can take some time to appreciate it, but it's time that's worth it for any fan of downtempo electronic music.

Review: Metallica St. Anger

Well since the song Frantic from Metallica's new album made the No. 1 spot in my top 25 for the week I figured I should write something about the album as a whole. If nothing else
St. Anger is a controversial album. A lot of people really seem to hate this album and at first I couldn't say I cared much for it either. However after a few listens it started to grow on me and now I do like it for the most part.

The biggest thing that changed my mind is that the album has energy. Listening to it gets you pumped up. This is what metal should do and in that St. Anger succeeds where Load and Reload failed. The album is nice and crunchy with a very heavy sound and Lars absolutely wails on his drum kit. What's strange though is the sound of the drums, Lars is using a new snare that has a very metallic sound to it. I can see how this would be easy to dislike, it is quite different, but for me I like the change.

Unfortunately the album isn't without problems. The production quality isn't all that great and some of the vocals are pretty weak. The lyrics are often angry and uninspired. However, despite this I still enjoy the album and that anger provides some real drive, even when delivering lines that are otherwise pretty weak. One song in particular where this is evident is My World. This song is really weak in the first half, but the second half kicks pretty well with the delivery of the line "not only do I not know the answer, I don't even know what the question is".

This album is being billed as Metallica trying to get back to their roots and in some ways I guess it is. Is it on the same plane as the first four albums? Not even close, the songs simply are not composed as well as the earlier work. In reality this album is probably closer to Garage Days then it is to Master of Puppets or Justice For All. And like Garage Days that means St. Anger is an enjoyable album, but is not likely to have lasting appeal.

iTunes Playlist to Blog

While messing around today I wrote a little Python script to post an iTunes playlist to a Metaweblog API enabled blog (like MovableType). I'm toying with the idea of using it to auto-post a top 25 list of songs once per week or something. The script is available here.

Here's what the top 25 looks like for this week. This is from an iTunes smart playlist that shows the top 25 most played songs that have been added to my library in the last month. iTunes smart playlists are an absolutely great feature that I hope shows up in other places in Mac OS X, like oh maybe in the Finder as a smart list of files.

What's funny is that I have a tremendous breadth of musical interest, but you sure wouldn't know it from this list. I bought a number of more popular albums a couple weeks ago which skews the results away from the more eclectic mix I usually get from eMusic.

Currently Playing "Marquis Cha-Cha" by "The Fall" from the album "Palace Of Swords Reversed", a little more eclectic bit from eMusic.

Drawing User Interfaces

Robert Scoble is using an app that allows you to create user interfaces with a Tablet PC as an example of what's good about the tablet.

My first thought about this is that it's a useless idea because there's no precision in hand drawing an interface. You'll basically end up with an interface that doesn't line up right and forces you to use an interface builder anyway to put things in the proper place. You also still need to use the standard tools to set other attributes about the interface. However, thinking about this more I suppose it could be useful if you can define enough gestures to control alignments and spacing and such. Maybe using different colors to indicate different elements of the design (no idea if that's technically possible). For instance sketching the interface in black, then in blue drawing alignment lines then in red drawing pixel offsets between controls, yellow for relative control placement control. Your sketch would be kind of messy, but could be kind of cool for creating the first pass at an interface or for an interface for an app you don't really care about. I doubt it will make a good product, but it certainly would be an interesting research effort.

I've never looked at the Tablet PC APIs so I wonder if you can use colors in ink to control things like this.

New Xindice 1.1 Build Available

I've been virtually silent about Xindice lately, but Kevin Ross has stepped up as a new leader within the project and has just announced the release of a new Xindice build. This is a 1.1 build and Kevin seems intent on getting a 1.1 release out, something I'm very happy to hear. My original plans called for Xindice 1.1 to be released almost 1.5 years ago. The project has struggled a lot since then and my dropping in and out of it hasn't helped much. I did manage to get a 1.1 beta build out a couple months ago, but again had to drop out of the project before making any more progress.

Xindice definitely needs some new blood among its developers. Kevin has stepped up as a new leader, but he needs a lot more help.

Xcode Screenshots

FunMac has posted some screenshots of XCode. The changes in Interface Builder are interesting, the biggest and most exciting is that there's now a palette to add a Safari/WebKit control to your application. Apple has also changed the look of the NSTabView and NSBox. The new look for NSBox is definitely better, NSTabView I'm not sure about yet.

Another significant addition is that they've added a rounded text field with the little search selector drop down like the google box in Safari. That should be quite useful.

Panther and BeFS

Now this could be the biggest productivity boost of all. I would absolutely love to see a more BeFS like file system in Mac OS X. There is so much power that can be brought out when the file system is more database like. It enables all kinds of applications that require tons of extra software currently. For instance much of the functionality of iTunes could be built directly on top of the file system rather then using a separate database. This doesn't mean that iTunes would be replaced by the Finder, it just means the implementation of these meta-data heavy applications would be considerably simplified.

The problem of course is portability of the meta-data. It would bring back the whole resource fork problem where you have to specially handle files that move across platforms. That is definitely not a good thing. Because of this what I'd also like to see is an open XML based format for the transfer of files along with their meta-data. It still means special handling, but at least it would be in a format that would actually be useful someplace other then on a Mac. Maybe a bundle format (i.e. a directory) with the file in its usual form and the metadata in a separate file. For transfer simply zipping it up would work and then PC users could just unzip it and access the file inside or use the meta-data for what ever.

Power Mac G5 Performance

Welp, arguments about Spec scores aside, me thinks there's some very serious power lurking under the hood of the new G5s.

Echo Project

Anyone who's interested in blogging tools may want to pay attention to the Echo project. From the site "The EchoProject is an initative to develop a common syntax for syndication, archiving and an editing API". It's an effort to consolidate all the RSS, Blogger API, MetaWebLog API, whatever mess into something more manageable.

Tim Bray is wondering if it's going to go off the rails. In my original comment on this, I expressed the same concern. It's the second system syndrome, developers just can't resist it.

If nothing else Echo is an interesting experiment in community oriented specification.

Found the post about Tablet PCs being boring

It was from Tabula PC. The one thing I can agree with, Tablet PCs probably are going to be big in Asia. In the US though? I'm not so sure. The Tablet PC is too young and immature to be greeted as something that can be considered boring. It's not a sign that they've become ordinary, it's a sign that the market's simply lost interest.

One more Tablet PC Thought

One other thing to mention about the tablet PC is that when they were first announced I predicted that they would be a huge failure. Now that they're out, well quite honestly I still think they're going to fail. Even if I buy one and end up loving it, I'll still think they're going to fail. Why? There's no buzz.

I've spent a lot of time researching these things on the web and going around to various stores in town to try to get my hands on different models. So far the only Tablet PC I've actually seen is the Toshiba. Comp USA didn't even have the things on display and actually couldn't find their demo model of the Viewsonic to show it to me. From what I've seen there is basically zero interest in these things outside of a very small, hardcore geek community and the usual vertical applications. No one in the various stores I've been to knew anything about them. No special displays, no marketing materials, nothing. Even the incredibly stupid portable display things are getting more shelf space then the Tablet PCs are. Both Comp USA and Frys had large end of isle displays for those stupid things, but nothing at all for the tablets.

I saw something on another blog, unfortunately I forget where, that said something like Tablet PCs have gotten boring because they've become mainstream and they're not bleeding edge anymore. Sorry, I call BS. I think Tablet PCs are boring now because quite simply nobody cares about them. An eight month old product that is truly exciting with the expectations associated with Tablet PC should have much more buzz associated with it. I'm sorry to say it, but the experience I've had from shopping for this thing is the experience of shopping for a product that nobody is buying.

Let's Talk Tablet PC

OK, I admit it, I want a Tablet PC. In fact if it wasn't for a little miscommunication between my credit card company and I, I would have already ordered one (I thought my card number had been snatched so I canceled, turns out it was just my domain registrar automatically re-registering all my domains). I've decided to buy an older model Acer from Costco. The older Acer wouldn't be my first choice (256MB max RAM mainly), the newer Acer would (Centrino + 2 GB max RAM, much better), but I want to get it from a place that has a very solid return policy and Costco fits that bill better then anyone else.

Obviously since I'm so concerned about the return policy, it's clear I'm skeptical about whether I'll ultimately like the Tablet PC. There's good justification for this too, I've bought way, way too many pen based devices that have just ended up in the drawer. It's been a quest for me to find a digital companion that I'm truly comfortable with. I've tried numerous PDAs (Windows CE, Pocket PC, Psion, Palm, Zaurus) and so far the best thing I've ever found is my trusty Apple Powerbook. The failing of all these devices has always been usability. They just aren't comfortable enough to work with all the time. The Palm sized devices are too small and the clam shell devices too cumbersome to use standing up. And herein is where we reach the problem with Tablet PC, it's a Microsoft product and Microsoft's concept of usability basically sucks. They're way too focused on features for features sake and not enough on building a coherent experience. The Tablet PC is something that I've always felt needed a coherent experience in the form of a custom designed OS like a modern PenPoint.

Unfortunately the market as it is hasn't really left any room for someone to be able to step up and create an entirely new platform. So I'm stuck with looking at the current possibilities. I'm desperately hoping that Apple will make a Tablet device, but I don't have my hopes set too high on that, so it pretty much leaves Tablet PC as the winner. Simply because there's no one else in the game.

I'm worried about how well the Tablet will work for me. Primarily because I don't use Office and absolutely detest proprietary file formats. Microsoft is pushing ink as a new data format, but as far as I can tell there's nothing being done about making it a data format that exists anywhere other then Windows. That's not encouraging.

So anyway, my anti-Microsoft leaning aside there are some things that appeal heavily to me about the Tablet PC. The funny thing about a lot of these is that they wouldn't exist if the Tablet PC was not based on Windows XP. So I guess to start I have to admit my feeling about the OS needing to be a custom tablet specific thing is probably wrong. Progress I guess.

Here's what I'm looking to get out of the Tablet.

- First I'm approaching it as if it was an entirely new device focused on some particular tasks. I'm not looking for a general purpose computer so to speak. That's what my Macs are for and they're not going away.

- A big thing I want is an information repository. Notes, manuals, design documents, magazines whatever. I want it in a small package that can be used in a non-computer centric way. i.e. why the tablet form factor is appealing. This is also why I can't stand proprietary formats and my biggest concern overall. I don't like having all my information tied up in something that I can't easily repurpose without Microsoft providing the tools to do so. More then anything else this factor alone could be a killer.

- I don't care about handwriting recognition very much, I'm interested in ink. On the general concept level this is something that I think Microsoft got right, we'll see how I feel about the real implementation later. I'm looking for an enhanced notepad experience. I'm constantly in conflict between using paper and the computer, I'm hoping the tablet can finally put an end to that question. Again uncomfortable about the closed file format.

- Sketching. I want to be able to make digital sketches for UI designs and such. From my playing with the Tablet PC in the store, this is something that I think might work pretty well. It's really annoying on paper to sketch multiple different versions of a very similar interface. On the tablet you can sketch the basic interface once and then copy and modify to create the other interface states. Very appealing.

- Reading. I'm definitely looking at the Tablet PC as a real enabler for digital books and magazines. As I've written about a couple times recently, this is an area I've been exploring a lot lately and it's something that absolutely calls out for the tablet form factor. Reading on the Pocket PC is nice, but the screen is just too small for things like the Zinio magazine reader. Here yet again, closed formats and also DRM is unappealing.

- Media. I'm looking at it to open a door for more digital media exploration. This is something that comes from the Tablet PC being a Windows XP system. In particular I'm interested in having something to access Windows only media solutions like listen.com and Movielink. I just discovered Movielink yesterday and it definitely looks interesting. No Mac version of course. I also could use my existing PC laptop for that, but I can't stand the thing and there's no room for its bulk on my desk. The tablet is appealing because of the small size and its orientation for getting away from the desk. And say it with me now, again closed formats and DRM make me nervous, although both of these seem to be services that provide a value where DRM isn't such a hinderance(i.e. it's not something that you're going to keep for a long time). Movielink in particular is the first use of DRM that I actually understand and am OK with.

- Integration with the Mac through Remote Desktop connection. This is how I make use of my current Windows laptop and it works fairly well for basic usage. You can even send the sound from the Windows laptop so that it plays through the Macs speakers. The quality isn't great, but it's better then crawling around on the floor to swap cables. I like this better then running Virtual PC too.

Hmm, there's probably some other things too, but that's a decent list. I think I can justify the purchase, but I have a lot of reservations. We'll see how it goes.

Apple's Spell Checker and Product Names

While writing the previous post I noticed that Apple's built in spell checker knows about iTunes, iPhoto, iChat, iMovie and iPod. Not surprising really, but kind of interesting none the less. It of course doesn't know about iSight. It will be interesting to see if OS X 10.2.7 does.

MyiSight.com Opens Its Doors

Yep, not surprised to see this pop up. So far I don't have any plans to join the fray of people using IChat AV, mainly since I don't even use iChat no-AV. However, it's looking like Apple may have once again taken a common concept and through engineering excellence brought out something that is much more then just the average. The iPod was the same kind of thing. At first it was thought it's just a MP3 player, now it was a truly inspiring device that no one else has ever been able to catch up with. It will be interesting to see if the iSight and iChat AV has the same effect.

There's also an interesting article in the New York Times comparing iChat AV to the latest MSN Messenger. It's the typical Microsoft vs. Apple kind of thing. Microsoft has boatloads of features while Apple has refined simplicity and greater usability. Someday Microsoft will finally figure out power is not about how many features you can pile into your product, it's about how many of the features that are there people can actually use. This is where products like iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto and now iChat AV show their strength. They may not have as many features, but the user can get more done simply because the features that are there are more accessible and just work. I'll take power through simplicity just about every time and this is why I'm now an Apple user.

Artima Buzz Site

Yet another interesting use of RSS for building new applications. The Artima buzz site allows you to register your RSS feed for a particular category if it's something you post about often. I registered for the Mac OS X buzz since it seems that's what I mostly post about now.

Bluetooth Keyboard/Mouse Support in Panther?

Bluetooth is finally turning out to be useful, well at least on the Mac it is. Haven't heard too many good stories about it on Windows. In particular the Microsoft Bluetooth keyboard and Mouse appear to be extremely problematic. Anyway, I'm definitely looking forward to the removal of as many wires as possible. Hopefully Apple can actually make Bluetooth fully reliable.

More Power Mac G5 photos published

You'd think G5 photos would be boring by now, but these are non-marketing photos which shows some interesting things about the machine. In particular how much bigger it is then the G4 and how the Airport and Bluetooth antennas stick out the back. Other then the obvious comparison to a cheese grater or electric razor I love the look of these boxes. They're completely form following function with a minimalistic look that reminds me of really nice, high end audio gear. It's the kind of quality engineering that so many people just can't appreciate. They want all these blinken lights and crap, or god-awful case designs like this. I think the G5 is going to be a true classic of computer design like the Cube. Let's just hope it doesn't suffer the Cube's fate in the market.

Early Look at Panther

MacNightOwl has posted a look at Panther. Nothing really new compared to what I've seen over the last few days but it does hint that there's a slight possibility of upgrade pricing.

Expose' is the one killer feature that I want out of this thing. I hate window clutter and this looks like a very good tool to help with that.

Now what I really want though is to be able to resize any window via zooming and then to continue working with it in its zoomed state. You can do this already by zooming in on the screen to make it bigger, I use this all the time to view images and such that are too small, but I want to also be able to zoom out and make things smaller. This should work on a per window basis so that you can size the windows to better fit on the screen. This seems completely possible. In my experiments I've been able to almost get it to work. Unfortunately any NSButton that has an image on it doesn't scale properly so the interface gets all screwed up. Some things like NSTextView scale perfectly, but some forms of NSButton just don't work right for some reason. I know there's a way to do this, the dock minimization effect is one example that shows it can work but so far I haven't been able to quite figure out the right APIs to call.

Another Look at eBooks

I just finished reading my first complete eBook. It was a free book I downloaded from the Baen Free Library. I downloaded the book in Microsoft Reader format. Overall it was a good experience. I read the book partly on my Pocket PC and partly on my Mac via a Microsoft Remote Desktop connection to a Windows XP laptop. Unfortunately. a Mac version of Microsoft Reader doesn't exist.

The book I read was Wizard's Bane. The book itself was enjoyable. It won't be a classic of the fantasy genre, but it was good enough that I would read other books in the series. What's more important though, Baen is a very forward looking publisher and has chosen to release a number of their books for free in DRM free formats. They also sell books that I believe are also DRM free. According to this article on Planet eBook this has been a very successful strategy for not only increasing sales of paper books, but also providing one of the few eBook sales channels that actually makes money. I know I certainly will be more likely to buy books from this company and being able to sample their authors is a very good thing.

Unfortunately the rest of the eBook picture may not be so rosy. In particular it appears to me that the DRM situation is pretty grim. There are three major eBook formats: Microsoft Reader, Adobe Reader and Palm Reader and a number of other less common formats. For sales of books all support some form of DRM and the DRM in the Microsoft and Adobe formats seems to be horrible for usability. For instance as I was reading my book I read it on two completely different devices and it isn't at all clear to me whether the DRM encumbered formats would have even allowed me to do that. From what I can tell they try to lock the book to a particular device, which if that's actually the case is totally unacceptable from my perspective. From what I can tell Palm offers the best compromise, but I need to look deeper to be sure. I've become very interested in the eBook idea so I'm going to experiment a little more and buy a couple books in different formats to get a better idea of what the process is like.

Currently I'm reading The Hacker Crackdown, another free eBook that I downloaded in Palm Reader format from Palm Digital Media. Again this file has no DRM associated with it so the experience has been pleasurable. i've been reading it mostly on my Pocket PC and some with the native Mac OS X Palm Reader client.

Really, simply the fact that I have to so thoroughly consider the impact of the various DRM technologies presents a barrier. Maybe this is the cost of being a technologist and caring too much about how things work, but the experience of purchased eBooks right now just leaves an unpleasant taste in my mouth. I'll write more once I have more first hand experience.

NetNewsWire 1.0.3

Finally got around to installing NetNewsWire 1.0.3 tonight. It's a very nice improvement over previous versions. The new combined view is extremely nice and it finally fixes the weblog editor problems with keychain. The "More Options..." button to control advanced features of MovableType is also a nice addition, particularly for the ability to specify Trackback pings. If you haven't upgraded yet it's well worth it.

Apple rolls out dual 64-bit G5.

EE Times: Apple rolls out dual 64-bit G5."Each G5 dissipates 97 watts..." [Hack the Planet]

These machines are sweet, but 97 watts means it's going to be tough to put a G5 in a laptop. Looking at the internals of the new machines it's clear that cooling these chips takes some effort. I'd love to see a new Powerbook with these chips, but I'll definitely be buying a dual processor system when they start shipping.

Krzysztof Kowalczyk: " My future will so...

Krzysztof Kowalczyk: "My future will so bright that I'll need sunglasses. ... Now, excuse me, I have some software to write..."

Another interesting read in response to the Eric Kidd post on software future.

Time for Forward Motion

As previously noted, weblog protocols are stuck in a rut. We want to work together and solve the problems, but political battles keep getting in the way. It’s time to put our differences aside and solve the problem.

I support the weblog format roadmap. Let’s start fresh, work together, and get the job done.

I hope you’ll join me and announce your support for the roadmap from your weblog. If we get enough people behind this, maybe we can see some forward motion in RSS again.

This is something I tend to agree with. The current set of tools has gotten too fragmented and difficult to work with. If a new effort can actually keep things simple and not fall into the second system syndrome it could be a good thing over the long run.

Eric Kidd, a 27-year-old programmer, writes about...

Eric Kidd, a 27-year-old programmer, writes about The Missing Future in software. "What if I have a great idea, and I want to change the world?" he asks. [Scripting News]

A very interesting read and a question I wonder about everyday.

Panther Screenshots (for real)

First real Panther screenshots [MacRumors]

There's some interesting stuff in these shots. Expose' in particular looks pretty compelling and a more iTunes like Finder looks interesting. The iTunes style interface is something that's going to show up more and more in Mac apps. Speed Download is another example of an app that just switched to that style. Oh yeah, been using it a bit in my own work.

Leaked: PowerMac G5's Info!

Apple leaks their own info [MacRumors]

Wow, if that's real, it's better then everyone expected. Could easily be a hack. Sure hope not.

eBooks and eMagazines

I've pretty much ignored the whole eBook thing. Always considered them kind of annoying, but for some reason tonight I got caught up in looking at the more modern options available. One thing that particularly caught my eye was the Zinio platform for digital magazine delivery. I normally really dislike proprietary platforms (which is why I've pretty much ignored eBooks), but this thing is pretty slick. It creates a complete digital version of a magazine (including the stupid subscription cards) and delivers it directly to your computer every month. On the surface I wouldn't think this is useful with most of the information being available on the web anyway, but there's just something cool about the presentation of the magazine format that is missing from the web sites. I hardly ever read print magazines anymore, they seem like such a waste of money for something that just ends up in the trash. However, I'm tempted to subscribe to Macworld and PC Magazine through the Zinio service. Why? There's still something to the magazine format that's compelling and you can keep an archive on the computer without worrying about a big stack of magazines taking up space. I don't know, it just seems cool plus I actually like the kind of adds you see in magazines.

I also played around with the Palm reader for OS X. I was surprised to find this fairly compelling and I was actually looking at what books are available for purchase. The main reason for this is that I've become very sensitive to having large collections of physical items, in particular books. I've owned literally thousands of technology books and they always become a tremendous burden once they reach their end of life. They're so expensive when they're new that it feels bad to throw them away or recycle them, but they also go out of date so fast that nobody will buy them for a decent price. The last time I sold some tech books I think I got $14 for about 30 books on Java, Oracle and such that were about 5 years old. So that leaves giving them away. which is also a bit of a pain and is annoying. Right now I have at least five boxes of tech books that I really don't need but at the same time can't part with either. If they were in digital form it would be so much easier, a burned CD just doesn't take up enough space to worry about. Anyway, there doesn't seem to be much of a selection in tech eBooks yet, but it's getting better. I'm now a little more optimistic that someday we may get to the point where we have a decent reader platform with a good selection of books. I'm actually getting really tempted to check out the Tablet PC for this and some other things. Oh how I wish Apple would make a tablet Mac.

Politics: Orrin Hatch is part of the...

Politics: Orrin Hatch is part of the problem

So Orrin Hatch (R-Disney) thinks it's worth considering letting copyright owners launch attacks on computers they believe are holding their content. This, folks, is the chair of the Judiciary Committee of the Senate. One would hope that he at one time had a knowledge of due process. Apparently he has been influenced to forget it. He joins the rogue's galley of Fritz Hollings (D-Disney) and Howard Berman (D-Disney) as one who is willing to dispense with our rights of speech, innovation and process in order to protect Big Media's market position. It seems that they are equal opportunity employers, and have now cut the R's in on the action.

It's arguable whether the current system of copyright has reached its expired-by date in terms of economic utility. However, it's now evident that the economic power it has allowed to accumulate has become antagonistic to the remaining integrity of our political system, and our rights and liberties. It's going to be difficult to make this into a partisan issue with portions of both parties already suborned.

Our own reply must be in the marketplace: crash the economics of Big Media, and they will be able to buy less influence to be used against us. I am boycotting the music labels, from CDs all the way to iTunes. Please join me, it's a matter of all our freedom. Yes, I'm aware the problem goes further than that. Perhaps wrecking one segment of the industry will encourage the others to remember that they exist to serve their customers, not to throttle their liberties. [Due Diligence]

AlbumMagicWand 0.6

I've posted a minor update to Album Magic Wand, my little tool to use Spring as a download stash for the eMusic service. This version just fixes the problem that kept URL icons from displaying on songs and fixes a problem where some of the links on eMusic didn't have an http:// prefix.

Apple Woos Indies [Updated]

Will the Indies come to iTMS? [MacRumors]