A hilarious interview on The Daily Show with Neil DeGrasse Tyson who wrote a book called The Pluto Files:
Category: General Tech
Photos of New Porsche Museum Makes Users Lick Their Screens
Dear CNET, you are why my iMac is now all slimy:
The museum building, designed by Roman Delugan from Delugan Meissl Associated Architects in Vienna, Austria, touches the ground at only three points and so appears to be floating.
Possible Future Uses of the ‘App Store’
With the advent of iPhone 2.0, Apple’s App Store has made it easy for users to find, purchase, and install software on their iPhone anywhere - adding programs is no longer dependent on a “host computer.” Macworld’s Ryan Faas ponders what could be next for the App Store:
Since netbooks essentially fit in between a smart phone and a full-featured computer, they’re a logical step for App Store-style software distribution. In fact, many of the constraints on netbooks and smart phones are the same: small screen size, limited memory and processing capabilities, and restricted storage for the applications themselves. Since many netbooks are designed to be easy to use and carry and often serve as a second computer, making app installation simple is an excellent idea.
Fighting the iPhone with the Cloud
I’ve always been a heavy-duty user of both iCal and Address Book. If something doesn’t get entered, it doesn’t happen. I put my wedding in iCal, for crying out loud - complete with an Event Reminder that morning (in case the hangover I would earn at my bachelor party was enough to erase my mind).
In college, I was a Newton user. It synced with iCal and Address Book very well, most of the time. I also used .Mac (sounds retro now) for email and backing up my contacts and calendars to my iDisk. After the Newton, I used a Treo in the 8 months leading up the iPhone launch. The Treo ran the now-defunct Palm OS on a Palm Treo 680. It synced with my Mac using mark/space’s Missing Sync software - again with .Mac in use for email and backups.
The Simple Things
A friend of mine reminded me of the Lynx text web browser tonight. Here’s a blurb from the download page:
Lynx has become quite popular as a “Universal Access” web browser for the Visually handicapped. Though Lynx is limited as it does not support JavaScript. Lynx was originally developed at the University of Kansas. In 1995 Lynx 2.4.2 was released under the GNU Public License by UKansas, since then it has been maintained and extended by a group of volunteers. This is the latest version, and has been compiled into an OS X package.
The Macintosh Family Tree
Mercury News has a nice graphic of some notable Apple computers over the last two and a half decades.
A Look Back
The Guardian has a great interview with Steve Wozniak and Andy Hertzfeld, two of the men who helped birth Apple and later the Macintosh:
“The Mac was kind of a funny hybrid between the two, and no one thought much of it,” he says. “Even after Steve Jobs took it over, a lot of people thought it was the Steve Jobs back-to-the-garage fantasy, that he was trying to pull Apple back to its roots with a small team who were very excited about what they were doing.”
More on Taskbar vs. Dock
Ultimately, the new Taskbar is not Mac-like in any important way, and only the most facile of analyses would claim that it is. Concerns that Microsoft is making Windows too much like Mac OS X are not founded on any real evidence; the similarity is at most skin-deep.
That said, it’s not impossible to see a future where Windows also uses the same concept of the document being the window, ending the peculiar document-less windows we see today in Word and other software. It could do this by using the same approach as Messenger already uses in Windows 7; retain the Taskbar icon even when the last window is closed. In conjunction with a few extra window management operations (the ability to bring all windows of a particular application to the front, for example), Windows could offer the best of both worlds: the document-centric UI of Mac OS X, with its neatly orthogonal application and document switching, and document windows free from the constraints of their application, combined with the rapid window switching and management of the Taskbar.
A Look at Windows 7’s New Taskbar
The biggest UI change in the upcoming, still-in-beta Windows 7 is the system’s new taskbar.
Up until Windows 7 showed up, the taskbar was not much more than a way to manage open windows and applications. But with the new OS, the taskbar is now an application launcher. True, the old Windows taskbar could hold shortcuts to apps, but it was nothing like the Dock - the whole “mini-launcher” section was kinda janky. The Mac’s Dock was a far better application launcher - allowing users to place their favorite apps at the bottom or side of their display for quick access.
25 Years of Mac Ads
Computerworld has posted collection of Apple ads over the last 25 years. Highlights include Get a Macintosh, Lifesavers, and Super Computer.
Failures include Lemmings, and John Sculley’s open letter . Lemmings makes me want to curl up in a ball and cry under the bed.
Ellen Feiss still remains outside all categories - the whole thing is just plain weird.
I had not seen several of these, and had never seen the phrase “ The power to be your best.” Some classics though - like the Intel Bunny and the Intel Snail are missing from the list - as are the first iPod ad and the HAL commercial.
The Introduction of the "Desktop"
Macworld, looking back at their very first issue 25 years ago:
A lot of the ideas introduced in that first issue seem remarkably normal today. The very first feature article, “A Tour of the Mac Desktop” by longtime Macworld contributor Lon Poole, includes an illustration of features I can see on my Mac screen today: a menu bar with an Apple logo in the left corner, a window full of files and folders represented by icons and names, and a desktop area.
The Macintosh SE/30 Named "Best Ever"
As part of their “ The Macintosh at 25” series, Macworld asked several pundits which Mac was the best ever . The answer? The Macintosh SE/30:
There was a time when every new Macintosh equaled or bettered all aspects of every previous model. The Macintosh SE/30 came along very close to the end of that era, representing the apex of the original Macintosh form factor. Sporting every bit as much horsepower as the phenomenally expensive Macintosh IIx, the SE/30 was like a V12 engine shoehorned into a Honda Civic. Though future models with the original upright shape were released, they were all tagged with the derisive moniker Classic. The SE/30 bore no such shame. It was and is the undisputed king of the original, iconic Macs and, therefore, of all Macs for all time.—JOHN SIRACUSA