I have always wondered: Why on earth does the “Turn AirPort Off” command in Mac OS X’s AirPort menu appear above the “Connect/Disconnect” command? In ORDER to make the menu DROP down, you have to click on the menu heading. This means that your mouse is going to be at the very top of the […]
I am afraid that Raymond Chen’s recent blog entry on Windows’ “Start” menu is typical of the attitude that explains why so many things in Microsoft products are so flawed and user-hostile: But one thing kept getting kicked up by usability tests: People booted up the computer and just sat there, unsure what to do […]
Rob Pegoraro tells it like it is in a Washington Post column about the recent worm/virus attacks targeting Windows computers: The usual theory has been that Windows gets all the attacks because almost everybody uses it. But millions of people do use Mac OS X and Linux, a sufficiently big market for plenty of legitimate […]
I am afraid Arsenal squashed Middlesborough once again on their home turf on Sunday. The game was effectively over after 25 minutes… and, of course, we’ve all seen it before. It’s a bit sad that Middlesborough are so utterly unable to offer any kind of challenge. You’d think the teams were from two different leagues… […]
I have finally been able to identify and reliably reproduce a bug that has been… bugging me for a long time. When Spell Catcher X is on (i.e. the Input Menu is on “Spell Catcher”), if you invoke Microsoft Word X’s “Find” dialog and then type a word or string that contains an accented character […]
When you are in Word X, you can use command-dragging to move windows belonging to other applications that are in the background without bringing them to the foreground — presumably because such actions are actually handled by Mac OS X itself. When you are in a particular Word X document window, however, you cannot use […]
I have now added a “printer-friendly version” link in the footer below each Betalogue entry. The link takes you to a page where the corresponding blog entry is formatted using a printer-friendly layout and printer-friendly character and paragraph formatting. The font size specified for these printer-friendly pages is 11 points. Unfortunately, Safari suffers from a […]
This second day of the English Premier League season was entertaining, although not for the expected reasons… Frédéric Kanouté’s goal for Tottenham against Leeds was simply magnificent, and will probably be one of the goals of the season. Strange player he is to look at: tall and lanky, never seems to be actually running. Quite […]
I frequently save articles that I like on the web as PDF files on my hard drive using Mac OS X’s built-in print-to-PDF architecture. This is because I am all too familiar with the tendency of online articles to disappear from the web after a while and become only accessible to those who are willing […]
In an August 19 article for the Denver Post, Ed Quillen argues convincingly that copyright laws are more harmful than no laws at all, and primarily serve the interests of lawyers and major entertainment companies (i.e. their executives and shareholders, mostly). When a law that is supposed to protect creators and creativity actually ends up […]
My latest “Apple Peel” column is up at Applelust.com: “Parliant’s PhoneValet: Put Your Mac at the Service of Your Old Analog Phone Line ” It’s a cross between a column and a review, actually. CHECK it out and let me know what you think!
Sandy McMurray has a good article on computer viruses in the August 20 issue of Canada’s Globe and Mail — and should be lauded for mentioning Macintosh computers. McMurray makes the very valid point that part of the problem is that, for various reasons, people don’t apply the system software updates that their computer recommends […]
Following the observations I recently made about Word X failing to apply macro-operated formatting commands to a discontinuous selection properly, I’ve discovered another, even more obvious problem. As I have already had the opportunity to explain here before, Word’s drag-and-drop capabilities suffer from a very simple and obvious bug which often causes the drag-and-drop operation […]
There are a couple of mysterious behaviors in Mac OS X that I have been unable to pinpoint and EXPLAIN yet, probably due to a lack of time for comprehensive testing procedures. Yet these behaviors keep occurring again and again, and I can’t help but wonder whether they are due to “mistakes” that I make […]
As Mac users, we might be watching the virus/worm situation unfold for Windows users from the sidelines, but that doesn’t mean that we are not affected. I have 18 different email accounts to manage, and for a variety of reasons my email addresses are in many people’s address books / contact lists, including those of […]