posts

Raymond Chen, writing at The Old New Thing at Microsoft:

A colleague of mine shared a story from Windows XP product support. A major computer manufacturer discovered that playing the music video for Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” would crash certain models of laptops. I would not have wanted to be in the laboratory that they must have set up to investigate this problem. Not an artistic judgement.

One discovery during the investigation is that playing the music video also crashed some of their competitors’ laptops.

Continue reading ⇢

Apple Support, in a pretty terse document:

The eligibility period for the MacBook Air (Original, Late 2008, and Mid 2009) Hinge Quality Program has ended.

The eligibility period covering this issue has ended.

I had forgotten about this situation, but I linked to a support article about it back in 2009.

The URL I linked to back then now redirects to the short announcement quoted above, but here is what it said:

Learn what you can do if you experience one or more of these issues with the hinges on your MacBook Air.

Continue reading ⇢

I’m a big fan of Death Cab for Cutie. Like most music that has stuck with me, I first came across the band’s work in high school. My buddy Levi drove a first-generation Miata, and one night as we drove around the suburb outside of Memphis that we called home, he popped in a burned CD labeled “DCFC.”

“I think you’re going to like these guys,” he said, turning up the volume. As a somewhat-emo 17 year old, I was hooked.

Continue reading ⇢

This is a lot of fun:

Continue reading ⇢

MarsEdit 4 is a native Mac interface to WordPress and other blogging systems that focuses on one thing: blogging! As WordPress gets increasingly complicated with an emphasis on BLOCKS and whole-site design, MarsEdit sticks to the classic idea that:

1. There would be an editor.
2. You could write in it.
3. You could publish it to your blog.

I mean just look at how clean it is:

If you’re annoyed by the increasing complexity of WordPress’s browser-based editor, download MarsEdit and give it a try. It’s the Cadillac of classic editors. You’ll see why many of the best bloggers in the Apple ecosystem rely on MarsEdit’s native, reliable, intuitive Mac interface.

Continue reading ⇢

This week on Mac Power Users, David and I are joined by Chris Christensen. He is a web developer, writer and traveler with roots in 90s Apple. We discuss his work, navigating the world and a lot more.

On More Power Users — the longer and ad-free version of the show — we talk about Chris’ time working on the Newton and eWorld. I loved it.

Continue reading ⇢

My thanks to TextExpander for sponsoring 512 Pixels again this week.

The way we work is changing rapidly. Make work happen wherever you are by saying more in less time and with less effort using TextExpander. TextExpander is available on Mac, Windows, Chrome, iPhone, iPad. Learn more and get 20% off by visiting this page.

Continue reading ⇢

Jason Snell:

Network Locations is a feature of macOS that, ever since version 10.0, has allowed users to switch between different sets of network configuration preferences in different environments and situations. It’s not visible in the redesigned System Preferences app of macOS Ventura — and Tyler Loch discovered that the disappearance is not an accident. Loch’s Feedback submission to Apple has been marked as “works as currently designed.”

Length of service in macOS is not reason enough to keep any feature around, but I’ve heard from several people who say they still use this feature and are upset that it’s seemingly been terminated. It’s useful in business situations where different networks have different properties. One colleague of mine says he uses the feature to debug network problems without messing up existing settings and to connect to specific devices when visiting a relative’s house.

Continue reading ⇢

A nameless Dropbox employee:

A public beta for full support of macOS will be available in early Q4. For now, you can still double-click to open files in Finder. Everything else is working as usual.

The “full support” language is in regard to a change Apple made in macOS 12.3 that deprecated the type of kernel extensions used by both Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive and others. This extension allowed Mac applications to open online-only files from Dropbox as if they were stored locally. For users running macOS 12.3 or later, a workaround is available, but the experience is less than ideal.

Continue reading ⇢

This week on Connected, Myke and I revisit sleep tracking and discuss the original iPad Keyboard Dock. We also cover changes in iOS 16 Beta 5, the Opal C1 webcam and Amazon’s purchase of iRobot.

Continue reading ⇢

Spotify:

This week, we are launching a new Home experience that includes feeds for both Music and Podcasts & Shows. The feature is currently rolling out to Android users and will soon be available on iOS. By creating these feeds, Spotify will help listeners to easily scroll through the type of content they’re looking for at that moment. The updated interface will make the experience more personalized while allowing users to dig even deeper into their recommendations.

Continue reading ⇢

Apple Support:

Learn about the power consumption and thermal output (BTU) of iMac computers.

Sadly the list only goes back to 2009, even on the Wayback Machine. I really wanted to see how the G5 faired.

Continue reading ⇢