I get a cool email from Speck about a 50% off sale. I love the clear clase for my MBP. adds a little bulk but takes a beating and kinda looks cool!

So I follow the link which redirects to....

I mean come on. Firefox 3 was in beta for like 1,000 years and has been in the wild since the 18th, I think it is.  What the hell is on the site that is so browser specific you'd rather turn away business?

That's just plain not a good idea. I'm glad the coupon is good for 5 days, hopefully they get their act together in that time.

<update> I completely missed the tiny orange font "Continue anyway" link. Missed it when I screen grabbed, missed it while I wrote this. Almost missed it as I went to close the tab. </update>

I watched the WWDC keynote with only mild interest. 3G iPhone, done, we all knew it. To not announce it would be suicide.

What I wasn't prepared for, was yet another raping of iPod touch owners by Apple. I paid what? 400 bucks I think for my 16gb iNewton. Then I paid, what? 15 bones for the 1.1.4 firmware update. Now I'll have to pay another 9.99 for firmware 2.0?

Why? If I remember right, the excuse was something lame like like SOX accounting or some bullshit. SOX is a whack excuse, and a whacker still law. All it's accomplish is making "SOX compliance consultants" and Lawyers rich. Great job government.

I'm seriously weighing whether or not the 2.0 iPhone will be a crackberry replacement for me, and a large part of that is I'm tired of apple screwing me on firmware updates. I didn't need a phone, but the iNewton functionality is great. Apparently it's also taxable, since Apple has twice now levied a tax against me for owning an iNewton.

Denver has limited ATT 3G coverage so I'm not 100% sold. When it comes out, i'll go look, but the Crackberry is such a great device. I've no complaints other than build quality about it. The iPhone has a lot to measure up against, but we'll see. I'll need to practice more on my iNewton, for the keyboard.

Apple sure is clever. I feel completely taken as an iNewton owner. Add to that, no new enhancements to the device itself, Shoot, hook it up with GPS! Give it some location awareness, at least!!

This coming Thursday Nicole and I will be boarding a plane for Italy. My conference is next week in Milan, so we'll be doing that first, getting it all set up over the weekend, then doin' our thang Mon-Wed.

After we wrap up the conference, Nicole and I will be doing a little self guided (for the most part) tour of Italy, from Milan to Rome, where we leave the end of the following week.

I'm both excited and nervous. Traveling a foreign country is always a bit daunting, neither of us speaks Italian, and Spanish is sorta similar, but not so similar we could use it. Thankfully it seemed like most folks could at least interact in english, when I was there a month ago. Except the rude gal at the airport snack shop, her english sucked, and her attitude was atrocious.

It's made finding a project a little tough, since being gone for two weeks is a bit of a barrier, so I'll be glad to be home and nave no further travel (aside of Japan, but that's only three days) to worry about.

I'll try to blog as much as I can as we travel. I'll have the MacBook AIR with me. The MacBook Pro is staying home. It'll be interesting to not have my "Main Machine" with me, the AIR is great, but it won't have a ton of things I'm used to having with me. Oh well, it's technically a vacation so I shouldn't need any code or anything.... we'll see. The nice thing about the AIR is that I won't be worried about my code (my life's work) or even my writing (it'll be backed up to .MAC each time I find Wireless internet), and I can just toss it in my bag and go. Many have said it but the construction is quite remarkable, so tossing it in a bag and going, won't bother me much.

Here's to a fun trip!

"Wal-Mart's digital media chief departs for Apple"

I don't know if it was his brain child or not, but he was in charge, so whether it was his idea or not, he helmed the ship as it crashed in a ball of fire to the ground... I've talked about Wal-Mart's retarded attempts at getting into digtal media, and how those attempts, almost exactly when i said they would, folded.

Of all the things, Apple does that make me shake my head and wonder if Steve isn't getting a little to full of himself, this move makes me shake my head in a different way. Granted he'll be over the international market, so the chances of him doing any real damage are slim, but still, why would Apple bring in someone from Wal-Mart? I'm sure he was one of the more visionary execs in AR, but really? A kid off the street, with an iPod and a computer, would IMO be a better choice than any one from Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart is hardly the breeding ground for executive decision making I'd want in a high tech company. Well any company for that matter, but Apple, no less?

Hopefully not a sign of things to come, I'd really hate to have to switch back to Dell or something, what's next, "we're moving to all plastic laptops, they're lighter. Lighter is better!"

So I've gone around and around with different folks on this MacBook Air thing, Apple Insider has an article reporting that "those in in the know" say it takes only three minutes to replace the battery in the MBA.... well, three minutes and $129.00!!

"The mail-in repair process normally takes 5 business days, the company says."

5 days? granted, this won't be anyone's primary machine! but how that makes sense to anyone, I simply can't see how this makes sense to anyone.

5 days without an iPod, ok, no biggy.

5 days without an iPhone, no thanks, but I don't own one, for that among many other reasons.

5 days without a laptop, even if it's not my main one... oh hell no!

"Given the simplicity of the upgrade, however, it's possible that Apple will in time offer the service on-demand at its retail stores."

Ya think? How was that not something they already had in place? I'd be more inclined to buy one if I could go in and get a new battery lickity split! But 'maybe' we'll offer in store service? WEAK

I'm sure there third party market will pick the slack, sounds like there's not much to taking the machine apart, but still, i just don't get it.

The reality distortion field is one thing, it's well documented and always presumed to eminate out, from Steve to us. I think there's another field acting on him. The NYT got some time with his ego-ness and more or less everything he had to say was such a load of horse crap, it almost made me want to go buy a Dell.

It's bad enough iPods have to be so tiny they don't hold a music library, but get to be called "the thinnest blah ever" a Title he seems to want for all his gear. And Now the MacBook Air, a very expensive "device" that looks like a laptop.

"Still, the machine is a reversal of field for Mr. Jobs, who in the past has insisted that less-than-full-featured laptops are undesirable."

Uh, that's still the case... Sure it'll sell, it's an iProduct, but people want useful AND sexy. Sexy alone is just lame and over priced, look at Bang & Olufson. I'd deck my whole house out in their stuff... but it's 8x the price and not more useful.

"Some of the competitors’ machines are so flimsy, he said, they require a fifth or even sixth pad to keep from sagging."

Well, that's good, I'm glad the MBA only needs four pads, I've been thinking, "There's just too much pad being used by these flimsy WinTel machines."

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

Ok Sure. A lot of folks don't read. A few never read, a few even don't know how. 40%? I think that's an exageration. I find it funny, that since no one reads, Apple isn't interested in eBooks, however "no one" was buying music in the numbers they are now, prior to the iPod, and "no one" wanted a phone with out a tactile keyboard prior to the iPhone, so I'm sure that when Steve decides the world is ready to read again, Apple will be all over eBooks, until he's decided that though, it's a terrible idea, doomed to fail. Sheesh

"Having created a phone its a lot harder than it looks,” he said. “We’ll see how good their software is and we’ll see how consumers like it and how quickly it is adopted.”

LOL, "having created a phone..." Yeah Steve, Apple is an old hand at handset manufacturing now. And uh, in case no one told you, the iPhone is probably more unlocked and Jailbroken, than it is not. I recall a load like "People don't want third party apps, They want a stable OS" speaking of phones, turns out, yeah most want third party apps, especially if you're not gonna provide any yourself. Also turns out, a "stable OS" is harder to accomplish too, since the iPhone isn't V1 any more..

It sucks, I'm really started to get tired of Apple and Steve's ego in product creation. I'm sure when Steve reached Shambala and lists his accomplishments and being the creator of the thinnest (every piece of tech ever) will be impressive, but consumers, in general, I don't think car... Shit look how many SUVs are on the market still...

Saw this on lifehacker, kinda cool, some of the features aren't even remotely interesting to me, but one or two were cool enough. Since the app is free, only one or two cool tweaks ain't so bad :)

It's on macupdate, so take it for a spin. the one I like the most ironically is the one I always activated in Windoze. "full path in window name"

I just like knowing where I am.

Oh yeah, ready for MacWorld?

CNET has an interesting article entitled, Is Apple becoming Microsoft?

Well duh, i wasn't aware that was up for debate. It's been happenning for a few years now. Unfortunately for Apple, M$ is successful inspite of itself, VISTA can blow chunks, no one likes it. Enterprises are STILL standardizing on it. M$ can stumble, fuck up, fall down, rip us off, etc, and the enterprises will still be running Exchange.

Apple doesn't have that leisure. Apple is largely supported by Fanboys. I know it. I am one. I extol the virtues of OS X to anyone who makes eye contact (I don't but I know DB thinks I do, LOL)

The writer of the article, wraps it up by saying he doesn't think Apple or M$ are evil empires, blah blah. I disagree.

I don't think they're evil, I think they're smug. Which is often worse.

M$ releases piss poor software, not ready for prime time, we allow them to. I'll give them that being the 5,000,000 lb gorilla in OS/Software makes them largely a target for attack by virii and script kiddies, but really. Both have been around so long, maybe M$ should work on hardenning the system rather than making it look like OS X. One battle I think they can win, the other, never.

Apple, bends us over, and uses a wiffle ball bat on us, and we let them. a 16GB mp3 player for $400? a phone that doesn't even do what most other phones do, $600 with contract?

Laptops, that cost a good deal more than any other...? let's not start the comparison fight, i agree that you can get darn close now, but that hasn't always been the case.

Does iPod technology still cost what it did 6 years ago? I can't see how, no other tech costs what it cost that long ago, yet iPod prices aren't coming down.

Add to that, the fact that Apple likes to leave it's early adopters out in the cold, and even some of it's late adopters. I have an iPod Photo (that's the one with a color screen, the first one, even) it hasn't seen a firmware update since.....  I dunno. ages long past. At least M$ gave Zunies with the 1.0 a bump to the 2.0 firmware. Apple just expects us to upgrade, and we do.

I'm not immune, I'm 100% throwing stones, inside my own glass house.

That might be coming to an end. My laptop has at least another year before I start to think of replacing it, so no new money from me yet in that market. since Apple thinks MP3 players should do everything but play music, I doubt I'll own another iPod. I've got my 40gb that will be in use until the battery gives up the ghost. I bought a touch, for watching some video on, and using as a PDA, so no new iPod money from me Apple.

To sum up, Apple isn't evil, they're smug. The last time they were smug, was right before Apple stock was worth $8.  If Apple continues to abuse it's partners and customers, I can see them getting another consumer smack down. You can't rest on the "underdog" vibe forever Apple.

So the legal battle between Think Secret, and Apple has been settled. Think Secret dies, but didn't have to name it's sources... A win for journalism for sure, but still Apple, i call foul on you.

I know Apple likes it's secrets, who doesn't, especially when you keep things secret up until launch, in case you can't announce. Managing expectations is a great thing to do. But I think Apple going after sucha popular fan site, is like the RIAA suing it's customers. I have zero doubt in my mind, that Apple's successes are 70% fanboy driven. Fanboy's act like evangelists at their schools, workplaces, and homes. Fanboys wait in line for the latest products, selling them out in a matter of days. Fanboys buy products that they don't need, don't like the feature set of, or that just plain suck, because they have an Apple logo.

That's all great, but going after the fanboy's rumor sites, because they scoop some intel.... Weak sauce.

I'm sure this action won't slow the fanboy role, but it's just one more thing to be remembered down the road.

Fanboys, whiners, complainers in general, quit yer god-dammned bitchin'!

Do Apple users really have nothing better to do post Leopard than dry themselves to sleep at night about Leopards Menubar? Some tard put up a flickr photo which got a butt load of comments from other whiner dumb asses. Some other guy whipped up an app that "fixes" the problem. Though based on the pics from Peter's blog making the menu bar glow like it came from Chernobyl is a whack solution.

"I can't see! I've been blinded by my menubar's pasty whiteness. I feel like I'm in London on a sunny day! The agony!"

That pic above is from my MBP. I'm thinking if the whiners used a different background than classic "mac blue swirly thing" they might be happier. It's a computer, you freak, pick a different background that doesn't offend your menubar sensibilities and move on with life.

I know it's early but maybe it's time you started focusing your lunacy on Ocelot, or Lion, or bobcat or whatever the next OS X will be called. It'll give you something to do.

Well, I'm just about back up and running with Leopard on my MacBook Pro.

I've got Spaces set up, I'm digging it. It's a bit less refined than some of the third party offerings, as far as transitions, and customizations, but in general terms it's very good. Very smooth, incredibly intuitive to use.

There's always something I forget, when doing a clean install. Some little piece of data or something that I forget to back up.... Without fail that happenned this time, luckilly I was saved in all counts. Mainly because I did a full disk image of my old Tiger install, down to the system settings.

1. Address Book. I forgot to do an export... Shame on me, yes. Luckilly if you replace the entire address book directory in application support, the next time you load Address Book, your're good to go.
2. iCal. Not as easy to recover. Data exists in Application Support, however I found that the best source of recovery data in this case was my iNewton.
3. mySQL. This was lame on my part. Navicat supports back ups, and while i did make back ups of two DBs, the rest I had not. Nothing mission critical, mainly PITA stuff that now I gotta figure out how to get from MS SQL into mySQL. great fun.

All in all three minor inconveniences, not so bad. I'm going to have to wait to play with Time Machine :( since I don't have a drive of sufficient size. It's kinda lame, that I can't make use of NAS drives, since I've got half a terabyte in the basement. Thankfully drive space is so cheap I picked up a 250GB WD external for under $100, so when it arrives Time Machine can do it's thing.

I can't wait for my other mac friends to get Leopard installed, so I can try out the latest iChat. Looks very promising.

Tom and I might get a lot more work done if we can see what each other is talking about. Of course that would mean he'd have to carry his Mac... I can dream

So far I've only had one app not work, and I knew going in that it didn't support Leopard yet. CandyBar promises a Leopard version soon, can't wait.

Hopefully MySQL will address a few minor issues with Leopard as well, so that I can start/stop it like I used to via the preference pane, vs leave it running 24/7 like I will be doing.

The "stacks" thing is ok. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. I used to have 4 "Dock Folders" that I used to house common apps that didn't need their own exclusive dock space, now those folders are stacks. kinda weird, might take some getting used to.

All in all, minor problems aside, Leopard is quite nice. Some one said, and I agree It's Evolutionary, not Revolutionary. Very fitting.