512 Pixels

Apple:

Today, changes in technology, changes in the way we perform work, and where and how we work are occurring at a rapid pace. Nowhere is the change more evident than in the use of computers.

This new technology has brought on new demands for information as well as new and more sophisticated computing systems. Today, almost every one of us interacts with computers on a daily basis to create new things and ideas, to produce documents, to correspond with friends and associates, and to retrieve information. Along with the expanding use of this technology have come reports about adverse health changes for computer users.

Here we will examine the factors that may impact your health and performance while using a computer.

The pages look like they’ve been there for years without an update, so it makes it even more fun to read over them. The illustrations really make it for me.

It’s a fascinating read:

Jobs says, simply, “I convinced them [Adobe] to drop plans to be a hardware company and be a software company instead.”

Reuters’ Mark Sullivan:

Senator John McCain (R-AZ) is the top recipient of campaign contributions from large Internet service providers like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast over the past two years, according to a new report from the Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Responsive Politics. McCain has taken in a total of $894,379 (much of that money going to support his failed 2008 bid for the presidency), more than twice the amount taken by the next-largest beneficiary, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. ($341,089).

Meanwhile, McCain has emerged as the ISPs’ biggest champion against new “network neutrality” rules from the Federal Communications Commission, which voted Thursday to move forward in the process to adopt such rules. Shortly after the FCC vote, McCain introduced a bill (the “Internet Freedom Act”) that would block regulation of the nation’s largest broadband networks.

Disgusting.

Boy Genius Report:

The Motorola CLIQ was a pretty big disappointment for me personally, but oh man does the Droid make up for it. Sure, there’s a little hype sprinkled in because this is the first Android 2.0 device I’ve had the pleasure of using, but once you move past the initial “wow” factor, the Droid really delivers. Whether it’s Verizon’s ad campaign or Motorola’s that pits the Droid against the iPhone it doesn’t matter. The Droid isn’t an iPhone competitor because nothing at this point in time is an iPhone competitor besides the new iPhone. And things don’t have to be right now. Everyone can eat. So will the Motorola Droid be successful? Absolutely, we think. It will eat in to BlackBerry sales, Windows Mobile sales, and positively murder any lingering Palm Pre sales. It’s that good.

Nothing is going to top the iPhone — what these guys should aim for is to be number 2.

Apple PR, back in 2001:

Apple has applied its legendary expertise in human interface engineering to make iPod the easiest to use digital device ever. Simply rotate iPod’s unique scroll-wheel with your thumb or finger to quickly access your entire music collection by playlists, artists or songs. The scroll-wheel makes it possible to hold and operate iPod with just one hand and features automatic acceleration when scrolling through long lists so you can find your music in seconds. iPod also features customizable settings such as shuffle, repeat, startup volume, sleep timer and menus in multiple languages including English, French, German and Japanese. iPod can display song data in any of these languages, enabling users to mix and match songs from all over the world.

The whole thing was genius. Still is, really.

Scott McNulty:

The first iPod had 10 hours of battery life, a FireWire port (which I still miss), and 5GB of storage for $399. Oh, and it was Mac-compatible only. When I first heard about it I thought, “Who the heck even has one gig of music? Dumb move, Apple.” Good thing Apple doesn’t call me up for business pointers because I couldn’t have been more wrong about the iPod if I had tried.

Ars Technica:

If digging through build trees for a Mac build of Chromium (the open source project behind Chrome) was more trouble than you wanted to go through, here’s some good news for you: Google today announced availability of an official Google Chrome for Mac developer preview at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

The developer preview is based on the upcoming version 4 of Google’s upstart browser, and it’s important to note that although it’s publicly accessible, it’s still not quite a beta. Several versions have already been released for Windows, but none have been released for Linux or Mac OS X. This is the first time an official release—build 4.0.223.8—has been available for Mac OS X outside of nightly development builds.

It’s really, really fast.

PC World:

McCain’s bill, the Internet Freedom Act, seeks to do the opposite of what its name implies by ensuring that broadband and wireless providers can discriminate and throttle certain traffic while giving preferential treatment to other traffic. Basically, those in power or those who pay more will have better access. Apparently we have different definitions of ‘freedom'.

According to the text of the McCain bill, the FCC “shall not propose, promulgate, or issue any regulations regarding the Internet or IP-enabled services.” Isn’t that what the FCC does? Isn’t that sort of like introducing a bill to prohibit the Treasury from printing money, or a bill to prohibit the IRS from collecting taxes?

Oddly, the bill also contains text stating that any regulations in effect on the day before the Internet Freedom Act is officially enacted are grandfathered in and exempt from the provisions of the Internet Freedom Act. The implication seems to be that if the FCC can formalize net neutrality rules before McCain can get the Internet Freedom Act signed into law, the net neutrality rules would still apply.

Scary stuff.

Apple:

The ZFS project has been discontinued. The mailing list and repository will also be removed shortly.

Mac Rumors:

ZFS is an advanced file system developed by Sun that had been ported to Mac OS X and released as an open source project on Apple’s Mac OS Forge collaboration site in 2007. ZFS had been rumored to become the default file system for Mac OS X Leopard, but ultimately appeared with only limited read-only capabilities.

Apple’s continued interest in ZFS was indicated by inclusion of the technology in its early product description pages for Snow Leopard Server, although the information was subsequently removed from Apple’s site and support for ZFS was not included in either Snow Leopard or Snow Leopard Server upon release.

Several sources later indicated that the lack of ZFS support in Snow Leopard was due to licensing issues with Sun, leaving the future of ZFS uncertain, although Sun’s pending acquisition by Oracle left open the possibility that the issue could be revisited in the future.

The apparent cessation of Apple’s support for the ZFS open source project, however, suggests that the company may have given up hope of achieving satisfactory licensing terms for the technology and redirected its resources elsewhere.

Gizmodo:

Happy 8th Birthday, iPod-you don’t look a day over… Aww, who am I kidding? You look old.

[…]

Because the problems weren’t fixed by the release of the perfect iPod, but a whole new species: the iPhone and its non-phone-y sidekick, the misnamed iPod Touch. (There’s a good reason why many people prefer to call it an iTouch.) Apple themselves expects the iPod’s trajectory to chill out as iPhone sales eat into the big picture. And it’s not because of these small fixes as much as the fact that while the iPhone and iPod Touch apps collections get bigger and more useful, there’s been a quick shift from the regular iPod as a consolation prize in a time where if you don’t have a network connected pocket computer, you’ve got a toy. A toy that is an island. Or something.

Indeed, the iPod Classic feels older and older each year.

Nilay Patel:

The MacBook is an extremely competent, utterly boring laptop that doesn’t have enough ports.

At only $200 more, I don’t understand why anyone — other than maybe schools — wouldn’t upgrade to the 13-inch MacBook Pro.

The Mac Observer posted a story this morning titled “iPhone 3GS, 3G iPod touch Could Make Apple a Major Mobile Gaming Player.”

I’d replace “could make” with “have made.”