Mac.LTL

For some reason I find myself constantly taking screenshots and uploading them places. It’s usually stuff I’m developing and looking for feedback on, but whatever. I just received an invite for Skitch, and despite all the trash I’ve talked about it, it’s actually pretty cool.

For example, it took about 5 seconds and 2 clicks to get this shot uploaded and ready for the world! Pretty neat.

And on a side note, all my rage towards WP was caused by the Safari 3 beta. Everything seems to work peachy from Firefox. Silly me.

Unfortunately, nothing happened. The premier community geek site for Mac users has not changed, improved, or done much of anything in years. It is based on an ancient version of slashcode, the software that powers Slashdot. There have been countless advances in Slashcode and the Internet since the last time MacSlash did anything significant to its site other than adding more advertisements. We have had Mac OS X, iPod, Google’s IPO, and MySpace since I joined MacSlash. Slashdot itself has changed a lot and continues to try new things while MacSlash is stuck in some time in the past where internet communities were geeky and experimental. Successful Mac community sites spring up every year, further decreaing MacSlash’s user base. I don’t know what the owners have been thinking over the years. Perhaps they are bored and moved on to better things. Maybe they are too indecisive to continue in some direction. Any direction would be better than not moving at all.

All of this leads to the state of MacSlash today. The website now has pop-up ads and a tiny community of readers who actually comment on posts. Posts come at most every few day, most of which are mundane questions directed at the readership. Slashdot answered the need for a modern version of MacSlash by creating an Apple section. Portions of the MacSlash community shook their fists, but really, Slashdot did everyone a favor and pointed out directly how little Macslash offers while presenting a simple, successful alternative.

Rumors have been rampant of a new Apple keyboard.  I’ve been reading mixed opinions on what people think of how it looks.  I personally care more about how it feels on my fingers.  The rumored keyboard looks similar to the MacBook keyboard, of which I’ve gotten very use to typing.

Working with Apple computers, this is good for me.  Apple’s success ensures more work for me.

Apple now worth double Dell’s market value

Nothing announced or official from Apple.  I think some clever anti-theft protection from Apple is long overdue.

“The patent, titled “Protecting electronic devices from extended unauthorized use,” outlines a technique that would allow a particular device to authenticate itself with certain, user-approved power supplies and devices so that it can only be charged by those devices.”

Full article, Apple anti-theft system would leave thieves powerless—literally, at Ars Technica.

I just checked out the iPhone in a little more detail at the Apple store. I was familiar with most of the issues people have been having with it. The iPhone could definitely benefit from 3rd party apps.

But I wanted to mention an issue I had with YouTube on the iPhone. It seems like something kind of obvious to me and I did a quick search and didn’t find it being mentioned anywhere. You can’t subscribe to channels with iPhone. That seems very important. Probably more important than being able to bookmark videos. So if I regularly watch the PBS Channel, the only way I can view the videos in it is by doing a search.  Viewing a channel should be three clicks away.  YouTube > Channels > PBS.  You should login once at the beginning, your first time launching the YouTube app, and that should be it.

Of course, I have other qualms with the iPhone.  It looks like there is so very much more they can do with it, and I expect them to in future updates.  But I just wanted to quickly mention that one for the two reasons of seeming obvious that it should be done and not seeing anyone having mentioned it.

I just thought I would share this little app I wrote awhile ago with you guys. It lets you set equalizer preferences based on song genres for iTunes.

Download it here: AutoEQ

P.S. I loathe the WordPress post editor. It’s such a piece of garbage.

I was recently introduced to VirtualBox. It’s a virtual machine available for Windows, Linux, and Mac. There’s a limited version that was released under the GPL in January. It’s surprisingly simple and attractive. It doesn’t have some of the bells and whistles like coherence mode. But it’s free, and very simple to setup with very little technical knowhow.

The Mac version is still in beta, but I managed to seamlessly install Windows XP.

It seems my MacBook is suffering from hairline cracks.  I only just noticed them.  I thought they might be small streeks of dirt and never looked too closely.  One got extremely exacerbated and I finally noticed.  I wasn’t aware this was a problem with the MacBooks.  Seems it’s been reported everywhere, including ZDNet and AppleDefects.com.  I have an AppleCare Protection Plan and they set me up with a Mac Genius at the nearby Apple Store.  We’ll see how that goes and see what they can do.  I’ll try to follow up with an update on how well my customer service experience goes.

This is a site about Macintosh computers and all things Apple.  I hope viewers will find helpful information here.  Thank you for reading and enjoy.