Apple
Apple to the rescue?
I’m have been lamenting (here and here) the lack of a good solution for an MP3s on my home stereo. I want an MP3 player in a stereo component with a giant hard drive, outputs to a TV for the interface, and uses a hand-held remote for navigating large MP3 collections. It needs an optical drive for ripping CDs and WiFi for streaming from other computers on the network.
I have considered cobbling a solution together using an old g3 laptop, a 250gb external drive, video out to my TV, and stereo out to my stereo, with maybe a cordless mouse to navigate iTunes. But at the cost of $800, it seems like too much to pay for a hack, even if it would allow me to put ~500 CDs into deep storage.
It is only a matter of time before a good solution become available. Windows Media-Edition isn’t the answer, nor are the countless solutions for streaming from a desktop computer to the stereo because I have a laptop that isn’t always at home.
Enter the iBox.
The latest rumor is that Apple is going to produce a device to connect to home theaters, it includes a SuperDrive, a 160gb hard drive, video/audio out, a (physical) remote control, and more. It sounds like the perfect device for me which likely means that there is very little chance of it coming to pass.
Alas, MacRumors isn’t impressed with the likelihood of this rumor.
Raising the bar
Apple continues to amaze. Check out their latest iPod commerical. Totally different from their previous documentary style commercials of people on a white background. That style was instantly ripped off by another music service which we won’t name.
This commercial is the exact opposite. Apple did the same thing when the colorful iMacs starting to get copied, they switched their product line to white and silver. No one can touch their design style.
Incidentally, the song is “Hey Mama” by Black Eyed Peas. You can grab it from the iTunes Music Store here.
Safari annoyance
Safari is a fantastic browser, while it still has some rendering problems, it is fast, has a good interface, and has very good support for Web standards.
But the interface isn’t perfect.
My two biggest annoyances are 1) no support for Undo in text fields, and 2) how Safari handles links from applications when you have tabs enabled.
The first is self-explanatory, the second needs a little explanation.
Apple rightly disabled Tabs by default. It is an expert behavior, but one that is easily enabled. But once you start using tabs in your browser, you can’t go back. Apple just needs to get it right.
I am at the point where I can’t stand too many browser windows open. It is all tabs, all the time. I only open a new window if I’m doing a few tasks, where each one requires a bunch of pages open. For example, if I’m doing web development, I might have six tabs open in one window with various CSS resources. My other browser window might have news, Amazon, IMDb, ESPN, or whatever.
My complaint is what happens when you click a link in Mail. What should it do? While Safari has a preference whether clicking links in other applications open a new window or stay in the current window, it doesn’t have the right preference: “Open in a new tab”, which should open in a new tab in the front-most window.
Without that, you’re left with opening new windows all the time. This doesn’t appeal to my meticulous nature. Replacing the current page is not acceptable. There is almost a work around—if you have an altogether empty tab, the link will go there. But that isn’t really a solution—too many steps: you need to switch to Safari, create a tab, then go back to Mail, and click the link. You might as well cut and paste the URL in the first place.
Another Safari tab annoyance—incomplete AppleScript support.
Now entering the ring…
X vs. XP compares the usability between the two big operating systems and it is relatively even handed about it, even including a page about bias.
What I like about the site is that it goes feature by feature, from high level to the nitty-gritty. For example, pages about login, web serving, screen capture, dialogs, drag and drop, etc.
The methodology for determining an overall winner is highly questionable, but what are you going to do? It still comes up with the right answer.
Apple store goes indy
Here’s an account on how independent music will be added the iTunes music store.
I love the fact that Apple does not accept any money for placement, nor will they. All labels have the same deal, and none get special treatment. It sounds like Apple is on the right track—who ever figures out digital music distribution that is artist-friendly will make a killing.
[Update] Apple forced CDBaby! to remove the account but that’s like putting Pandora back into her box. Here is a repost.
Napster who?
I downloaded my first album today from the iTunes Music Store, and all I can say is “fantastic”. They did an excellent job on the application itself. My favorite aspect is the “browse” interface—just like the standard iTunes browse.
That said, I do think the price should come down a tad. $10 per album is certainly better than Amazon or Virgin, but considering that even with the generous licensing restrictions people still have to back up their music. Especially since there is no way to retrieve the music if your hard drive crashes—in that case you’d have to buy it again.
So if you backup your music: now you have a CD in a case, just like buying in a “real store”. The difference is that you have to buy a blank disc (ok, very cheap), no cover art (the JPEG that give you isn’t good enough for print), and you have to manually create the CD. All to save $5? I’m not sure this is more convenient.
If their going to back it up anyway to CD-R, then you might as well buy a CD from Amazon in the first place. It is easier to rip a CD than somehow recreate a good looking package for your newly downloaded music. But if it fell to $5…
About the Finder…
A very good, and very long, article on how to improve the Finder is OS X, by John Siracusa. I need more time to properly digest it, but there’s some good stuff here.
The primary recommendation is the return of the “Spatial Finder”, meaning each object in the Finder appears in exactly one place—the same place that you last left it. His real-world example is a good one, the way that people can automatically find the light switch in the dark—muscle memory. The same can hold true in a computer interface. Witness OS 1-9.
Update: John Gruber of Daring Fireball offers his take on the above article. He’s had a few great articles on what is wrong with the Finder in OS X. Take a look.
New version of Safari is out
Get it. A bunch of bug fixes, says Dave Hewitt. So far I’ve noticed that Zeldman’s style switcher works now, and the ever-crappy CitySearch doesn’t crash Safari.
“One more thing…”
Apple came out with a slew of new announcements today. New PowerBooks, though I think the small one is too small for me and the large one is too large.
The new browser, Safari, is pretty cool. I am using it now and I have to say, at the very least, it is fast. I am curious how it fares on standards compliance, but for now the two annoying things are, one, no tabbed browsing, and two, you can’t turn off link underlining.
In the last few days, the rumor sites picked up speed and started to hint at the MP3 device that I’ve wanted, but no such luck.
Oh, and Keynote, the competitor to PowerPoint, looks promising.
S p e e d
Part of my slowdown in OS X has been explained—I didn?t have enough free space on my hard drive. A little bit of cleanup has resulted in a lot less ?crunching?. Now with 1GB of RAM, 4GB of free space, OS X 10.2.2, I have a much snappier OS.
Incidentally, this thread has some good tips on optimizing OS X .
OS X is hungry
It is official, Mac OS X is a hog. I upgraded my RAM to 1GB from 512MB and now OS X 10.2 runs pretty well. Much snappier. It is pretty crazy that so much is needed, but what are you going to do?
The problem is that I’ve maxed out my RAM, so when then next version of all my applications come out, my computer will once again be S L O W.
Welcome to NYC
I tried to go to the Apple Store in SoHo today, but it was closed because someone broke in last night and presumably robbed the place. Apple, meet NYC. NYC meet Apple.
The store definitely looked nice though. The store fit right into SoHo, with its minimalist interior. My theory about retail is that you can tell a high-end store from a low-end one simply by how much empty space the store leaves. By this metric, Apple is definitely high-end. Just as Apple use whitespace in their ads, they use clearspace in retail. Very on-brand.
Mac OS X is S L O W
I hadn’t realized just how much of a resource hog Quartz/Aqua was.
First, get an app called Let1kWindowsBloom. This will time how long it takes to open and close 1000 windows. Do a few manipulations, like use different color depths and hiding/showing the dock.
For instance, in millions of colors, with the doc shown, and a bunch of apps running, it took 103 seconds. In thousands of colors, the dock hidden, no applications running, I was able to get that down to 58 seconds. I then tried a few extra things like using Shadow Killer that removes the all of the drop shadows and using the SilverFox theme available here which removes transparency from menus. This brought it down to 49 seconds with no applications running.
The two biggest variables seem to be whether you have any applications running and your display color depth. The effect of having applications running belies the notion that it doesn’t matter have many applications you have running in OS X.
I have a PowerBook G4/550 with 512mb of RAM. This is too fast of a machine to have these sorts of problems. For perspective, this test only took 9 seconds in OS 9.2. Crazy. OS X 10.2 had better fix this.
