Tag: apple

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Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright

Apple has finally announced a ship date for OS X 10.4 and 10.4 Server; it’ll see its official release on April 29th.

It’s honestly rather strange, now that we’re four years into OS X, how Apple manages to keep cramming in new useful features into each major OS revision. My appreciation for Apple’s engineers grows with each OS revision as they refine and enhance the interfaces I see so much over the course of a day. Just as often, my forehead wrinkles in confusion when menu items move, key commands change, and functionality disappears – but as they always say, “Adopt, Adapt, Improve”.

One of the key reasons I’m both dreading and cheering on Tiger is the b40 release of Quicksilver. The developer [dropped a few notes](http://forums.blacktree.com/viewtopic.php?t=1956) on the forum a short while ago; a synopsis:

– B40 will be released around the same time Tiger is; it will be a Tiger only build.
– B36 will be released at the same time as B40; it will be the last Panther build and have no expiration code (as all the previous betas have).
– Features in Tiger that will probably be leveraged include “*Core data for the catalog storage and used in a few of the plugins (iTunes). Core image for Superflous Visual Effects once i can figure out how. New XML tools for the plugin management. Spotlight for a new catalog sources and some additional functionality. Automator for workflow actions, and (hopefully eventually) individual action*”
– It will have a shiny new icon.

It speaks a lot to the power of Quicksilver that one of the key reason I’m excited for a whole new operating system is not the incredibly useful Dashboard, not the thousand-times-better Mail.app, not the wizzy services I’ll get to use on 10.4 Server, not even Spotlight. No, it’s that Quicksilver will again be moving forward and enhancing my day-to-day work in new and exciting ways.

(The reason I’m dreading it? Because I know I’m going to have to overhaul my tutorials for the fifth time.)

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Do Not Eat iPod Shuffle. It Is Delicious.

I’m not the first to have noticed this, but:

Further down the iPod Shuffle page, footnote 2 is clarified:


Decent keynote, I think. Wish they had announced a Tiger ship date and maybe a new Powerbook, but oh well.

RELATED: Holy Shit, You Mean I Can Randomize The Playback Order Of My Music?

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A Different Take on iTunes 4.0.1

Looking around at the headlines on various blog friends…

“iTunes 4.0.1 Goes Straight To The Top Of My ‘Blow Me” List’ – Corey Tamas

“iTunes 4.0.1 = ass” – Peter Cohen

…you’d think Apple has pulled the biggest boner in history with iTunes 4.0.1.

For you non-Mac users (and it’s required by bloglaw that I describe the situation), iTunes 4.0 had the ability to stream music over the Internet, as a offshoot feature from the Rendezvous sharing. The community bit into this like a rabid dog, and immediate there were twenty ways to steal MP3s via this manner, never mind huge listings of places you can stream off of people. iTunes 4.0.1’s biggest change is that you can only stream off of people on your subnet.

Before I start off on my little anti-anti-Apple rant, let me just say that I agree with Peter that it’s silly to try and use technology to police human nature. And I agree with Corey that Apple trying to push this as some sort of great, positive upgrade is hugely boneheaded.

But honestly, what’s the option for Apple here? Their product is getting exploited for uses that it wasn’t designed for. Are they supposed to ignore that? Are they supposed to just leave the feature in and go, “Hey guys, cut that shit out”?

And needless to say, we are talking about Apple here. The company where every move they make is followed by a flood of criticism, no matter what the decision is. Faster machines? Well, they aren’t cheap enough. New OS X upgrade with tons of new features? Well, shit, we shouldn’t have to pay $130 for it, we should pay $20 instead. Losing support for my machine from 1996? Those bastards, how dare they. Won’t get Quartz Extreme to run on my Rage IIc with 2MB VRAM? I hate Apple, I’m going to go buy a PC.

This isn’t a forced upgrade, although I would imagine things will break as much as Apple can make them break if you’re still using 4.0 – which isn’t very much. You can’t stream on a LAN between 4.0 and 4.0.1. Maybe somehow they can disable the IMS for 4.0 users – but to the people that are really fighting this upgrade (the ones who quite possibly might’ve been abusing the internet streaming), is that really going to matter?

I think that given all the options, Apple made the only decision they really could – and I’m not going to begrudge them of that just because they took away a feature I barely use.