When people talk about software quality control and the horrible amount of bugs and flaws inflicted upon hapless software users world-wide by careless software companies such as Microsoft, one of the key points is that these companies can get away with selling such buggy software because, unlike driving a car, for example, using computer software […]
There are still a number of small details in Mac OS X that simply aren’t right. My latest example is the “Login Items” preference pane in System Preferences. Why is the list limited to showing only 8 items at a time? I have over 20 items in there. I constantly have to scroll up or […]
Eeek. I thought that, with the advent of Jaguar (Mac OS X 10.2), the ugly, “Unix text spilling” kernel panics of the early days of Mac OS X were supposed to have been replaced with the slightly more palatable multilingual “Please restart your computer now” messages in an anti-aliased font over a grey background. Apparently […]
Every computer design involves hard choices. Obviously when Apple designed the original PowerBook G4 (the so-called Titanium PowerBook), they chose to sacrifice the computer’s AirPort range. AirPort range problems have plagued every generation of the TiBook, and that’s a clear indication that the problems with the first generation were not an accident. The TiBook was […]
Much has been said and written on last week-end’s incidents at Old Trafford, but Paul Wilson’s latest column in The Observer bring a welcome amount of balance to the coverage of the issue. Somebody has to look at the big picture, and realize that referees and their rules are too easily fooled by mind games […]
Chelsea fail to convince against Aston Villa and are rather fortunate to bag all three points. Manchester United play against a non-existent defense at Leicester and Ruud van Nilsterooy predictably gets a hat trick. More interestingly, Charlton manage to come back from 0-1 against Liverpool, to lead 2-1, only to have a Liverpool penalty scored […]
Entertaining stuff at Highbury on Friday night with a 3-2 victory over Newcastle United. Arsenal responded in the best possible fashion to the criticism heaped on them during the past week, by playing fluid football and being always dangerous. While the first goal resulted from a miskick by Newcastle defender Titus Bramble, it was a […]
Can you really blame Arsenal’s manager Arsène Wenger for complaining that the media and the Football Association have “over-reacted” following the incidents at Old Trafford last Sunday? After all, no fewer than six first-team players have been charged for “violent conduct” or “improper conduct”. Yet what actually happened on the pitch? Tempers flared up and […]
My review of DataViz’s MacLinkPlus Deluxe 14 is up at Applelust.com. Feel free to comment on it below.
An interesting article in the The New York Times about the striking similarities between the current “battle” against peer-to-peer file sharing waged by the RIAA and the battle waged by the US administration in the early 1990s against strong encryption in business and consumer tools. Those seeking to restrict the new technology are using “legal […]
The many problems caused by Apple’s latest “minor” system UPDATE Mac OS X 10.2.8 indicate that the usual advice bear repeating: Don’t rush to install updates on the very day that they are released. There are enough volunteer beta testers out there that will do it, experience the pain caused by the bugs introduced by […]
I guess that with any new version of a software product, you have to expect bugs — even bugs that might take a while to get fixed. But what I find particularly grating about iTunes bugs is that they are primarily due to the imperfect implementation of the “digital rights management” procedures in the software. […]
This “Live Online” transcript on the Washington Post web site in which Associated Editor Robert Kaiser answers questions from readers is an interesting read. It shows that at least some Americans have a fairly open-minded and balanced view of the whole US/Iraq/UN situation. The question it doesn’t address, of course, is how representative this is […]
Pete Gill at Football365.com adds to the debate following the incidents at Old Trafford on Sunday. In particular, he echoes the comments in the Times on Monday about van Nistelrooy’s “unpleasant, dark side to his game”: From the sight of him punching Freddie Ljungberg in May 2002, to his use of the arm in the […]
Apple appears to have pulled the recently released Mac OS X 10.2.8 UPDATE from its servers. It no longer appears in Software Update, and the web page for both the regular and the combo updaters states that the UPDATE is “temporarily unavailable“. You’d think that, in this day and age, Apple would be more forthcoming […]