Sven-S. Porst’s Quarter Life Crisis has an excellent article entitled “Mature Burning” on the deceptive “simplicity” of burning CDs (data or audio) with Mac OS X. I especially agree with the comments about audio CD burning with iTunes. Even a (sort of) techno buff such as myself was fooled the first time. That stuff is […]
I like many of the improvements made to the Finder in Panther, which is now a more Mac OS X-like application. (You can now command-click on the toolbar widget in the top-right corner to change the display mode of the toolbar, for example.) But I really don’t like the fact that some issues that affected […]
Since upgrading to Panther, I’m trying to get accustomed to using Preview for viewing PDF documents rather than Adobe Reader. But it boggles the mind to see that Apple is still unable to really provide some essential functionality. For example, I like to see the total number of pages of a PDF document at all […]
I can’t remember where I read this now (I think it was in a reader report on the MacInTouch web site), but I remember quite clearly someone mentioning that the annoying stalls that had been plaguing Microsoft Word ever since the first version of Office v. X came out were finally gone when using Word […]
I’ve already written before about the weird way in which files with the “.webloc” extension are handled in Mac OS X. I am afraid things haven’t changed much in Panther. A “.webloc” file is typically created when you click on the proxy icon next to the URL of a web page in the Address Bar […]
It happens to the best of us… We get used to one way of doing things. Then all of a sudden Apple releases a software update/upgrade that appears to break that functionality. We fume. We scratch our heads. We cannot believe that Apple could have been so stupid. (At the same time, we do believe […]
In Panther, whenever I open a new Finder window (cmd-N), by default the focus is on my home folder in the sidebar. Even though I have set the “New Finder windows open:” setting to “Computer” in the Finder’s Preferences dialog box, new Finder windows still point to my home folder. I suppose it must be […]
In Jaguar, each time I wanted to do a backup of my “Preferences” folder in my home library, I would get an error message saying something to the effect that “one or more files cannot be copied because they are in use” and asking me if I wanted to proceed with the rest of the […]
Safari developer Dave Hyatt writes about the “Reality of Bugs” in his blog, and has a number of valid points, including: This is the reality of the Web. People are constantly shocked and amazed that their pet bug hasn’t been fixed in subsequent releases (e.g., in Mozilla or Safari), but those people simply don’t understand […]
There are two new articles by yours truly at Applelust.com today: Apple Peel – Improvements in Panther’s Mail (Part 1 of 3) Review: Miglia’s AlchemyTV Please feel free to comment on them below.
It’s a small detail, but I find that it’s much more important than it initially seemed to be. I realize that I have quickly become quite dependent on the “wushhh!” noise that Mail makes whenever an email has been successfully sent out. I have always had customized sounds for incoming mail in Mail: a short, […]
I like the fact that Panther’s Finder now includes built-in file archiving, with the “Create Archive of XXX” command (available in the “File” menu or in the Action button in Finder windows). I find that Aladdin’s StuffIt products are a regular source of frustration and I certainly wouldn’t mind getting rid of them altogether. I […]
I like the fact that Mac OS X includes a built-in architecture for contact management — known as the Address Book — and that it keeps improving with each new version of the system. The version in Panther comes with a number of changes, including several new (optional) fields, such as “Prefix”, “Department”, “Birthday”, etc. […]
UK newspaper The Guardian has a candid interview with Dick Pound, chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada). It contains refreshing views on the doping issue in soccer/football (with the current scandal involving Manchester United’s Rio Ferdinand) and what he calls “entertainment sports” in the US: People there don’t seem to care that someone who […]
The other day, I created another user account on my dual G4 (MDD) for testing purposes, but also so that I could see the fancy user switching visual effect in action. After all, my dual 1.25 GHz G4 with its Radeon 9000 (64 MB) should have enough computing muscle to display the rotating cube fairly […]