Following yesterday’s item on the subject, and after reading some of the literature provided by Bare Bones, I’ve decided to try and put Mailsmith to the test again. I’m still in the process of setting things up, but I’d like to report on a few things, some good, some less good. First, I am quite […]
This is a problem that I have been experiencing for several years now and have yet to be able to understand or solve. Quite frequently, in certain applications, when the document I am viewing is in full-page view mode (meaning that I can see the whole page all the way to its edges, including the […]
John Gruber’s latest rant on Apple’s own Mail application and its users (including yours truly) is uncomfortably biased (by John HAVING worked for Bare Bones Software for a while, presumably). I tried Mailsmith. My database of tens of thousands of emails in Eudora immediately ballooned from 50 MB to something like 250 MB. I realize […]
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As a follow-up to my recent column on the intrusiveness of background processes in Mac OS X, I have to add another outrageous example, which was brought back to my attention by a couple of readers. The culprit is StuffIt Expander. If your web browser or FTP client is set to post-process downloads automatically , […]
Amazingly enough, today I experienced my first-ever kernel panic since I started using Mac OS X 10.2 (can’t remember how many months ago). It was obviously caused by a FireWire-related problem. The panic happened a few seconds after I had plugged my external FireWire CD-RW burner and an external FireWire hard drive back in. (I […]
My latest column is up at Applelust.com: “The Problem with Anticipatory Software Design” Fundamentally, anticipatory software design is the tendency to design software for which the optimal running environment is a computer that does not exist yet. Is Apple guilty of excessive indulgence?
I keep reading more and more scary stories about the impact of spam on legitimate (and essential) email communication. Here’s the latest: “When spam filters go bad” by Laura Miller, Salon.com To me, the scariest part of her column is this: One rep did slip me a special customer service address where I sent a […]
I have had the opportunity to discuss this bug before. Today, I was working on my next “Apple Peel” column, typing it in Word X using a template that I have defined for such purposes. I created a blank document based on the template a couple of days ago and jotted down a few notes. […]
There is something mind-boggling in the way that a Republican senator such as John McCain continues to try and justify — by stating that we are “past the point of justifying”, no less — the actions of the current US administration. What is mind-boggling is that he is continuing to use the “weapons of mass […]
Read what web design guru Jeffrey Zeldman has to say about the death of Internet Explorer as a stand-alone product, both for Windows and for the Mac: “R.I.P.” From here, as it has for several weeks now, it looks like a period of technological stasis and dormancy yawns ahead. Undoubtedly the less popular browsers will […]
Wow. I had no idea all French raw-milk cheese was banned in the US: “Hey, Wanna Score Some Cheese?” by Katy McLaughlin, The Wall Street Journal (Raw-milk cheese from other countries is banned if it’s aged for less than 60 days, which eliminates most raw-milk soft cheese.) Such cheese was stamped with a big red […]
The previously mentioned article on “Font Fatigue” has led me to explore the creativepro.com web site further, and here’s another article that I find highly interesting: “dot-font: Avant Garde, Then and Now” by John D. Berry, creativepro.com I remember when Multiple Master fonts were first introduced, and it does sound like they never went anywhere, […]
A good article on the current situation with fonts under Mac OS X: “Font Fatigue: How Fonts Really Work in Mac OS X” by Chuck Weger, creativepro.com It’s actually the first part in a series, but it’s already quite informative, especially for people who might be confused about the whole font issue.
Try the following little experiment. Open a new document in Word, and type at one fell swoop the following: Ever noticed that, when typing text then press cmd-Z once. The “Undo Typing” command triggered by cmd-Z removes all the text you’ve typed, taking you back to a blank document. This means that, in Word’s interpretation […]