:: Friday, January 31, 2003 ::

Living the iLife

Check your Software Update preference pane! :: Yup, Apple's finally released its updates to iPhoto and iMovie, bringing them to versions 2 and 3 respectively. This was announced at the Macworld Expo in San Fran earlier this month, but we've had to wait until now to get our hands on these two updates. You can get the software free, but the whole package, including iDVD is now being bundled together as an integrated package called iLife for $49.

If you look past the obvious marketing hype of a name like "iLife," the new suite and its integration (you can access your iTunes music and playlists from the other three applications, for example, to use as soundtracks for your movies, slideshows and DVD menus) gives Apple an ever bigger advantage over other platforms for the ease of use and usefulness of its digital hub software. Microsoft still doesn't get it, and wants to turn your computer into a TV. If I'm sitting by myself while working on something or chatting with someone, I may want to watch a DVD or a movie or my EyeTV, but when it comes to the family getting together to watch a movie, they are not going to gather around the PC. They're going to sit on the couch and turn on the tube. Yes, with Windows XP Media Center, you can cue up DVDs and stuff from your digital library on your TV, but it misses two facts: 1) Most of the media/movies you may have on your hard drive probably won't look good full screen on your TV and 2) Can't you just pop the DVD in the DVD player under your TV?

I haven't had a chance to play with any of the iLife applications yet, iPhoto 2 is downloading as I write this (I haven't gotten into iMovie too much yet, I may try it later). I'll report more on it next week.

Just be happy we don't have to worry about this ... :: File this under "Things that make me happy I'm a Mac user." There's a new Internet Explorer toolbar going around that tries to take over your PC. According to BBC News, "The toolbar takes advantage of low security settings to automatically install itself and many people do not know they have downloaded it until it is too late. The program can be difficult to remove because it does such a good job of concealing itself." Yikes. Take a second to kiss your Mac!
:: Steve 1:25 PM [+] ::
Living the iLife

Shiny and grey, released yesterday

Apple releases speed bump to Power Macs, finally leaves OS 9 out :: One of the top questions Mac users have been asking each other since yesterday's release of the new Power Macs, which now have speeds of up to 1.42 Gigahertz, is: Can they boot into OS 9? Well, the answer is on the Apple Store page where you can buy the new speedy monsters. Up in the right-hand corner, you'll see a little graphic that says "Mac OS 9 systems." If you click there, you'll get to buy one of the stick-in-the-mud older Power Macs, which don't feature the new built-in support for Bluetooth or Firewire 800 that the new PMs do.

Yes, some will be disappointed, but this move makes sense for Apple. In a sense, it doesn't have to write OS 9 drivers for these technologies, and will now be able to devote more energy toward Mac OS X features and bug fixes. Mac OS 9 users will still have to keep using the older hardware. This has always been the way of the computer industry. How long has it been since Apple stopped supporting OS 6 or 7 on any new Macs? Besides, no Macs were supposed to boot in OS 9 this year, anyway. The dying OS only got a second chance because Quark keeps dragging its heels.

Odds and ends :: Have $8,600 to spare? Then head over to eBay and get your copy of the original Macworld Magazine, signed by both Steve Jobs and the Woz, Steve Wozniak. ... Wired News also is reporting that the animosity between Windows and Mac users is all but over. ... How long does Bob Levitus, also popularly known as Dr. Mac, need for vacation, anwyay? His e-mail list of Mac OS X tips from OSXfaq.com has been sending out re-runs for what feels like a month or two. Publish some new stuff, or I'll drop the list! ... And finally, for those needing a little pick-me-up today, click here.
:: Steve 8:19 AM [+] ::
Shiny and grey, released yesterday

The Quark Question

"Fred's a punk, plain and simple" ... :: And here I am, once again, for the umpteenth time in what feels like 20 years, discussing the Quark question. We're now on 10.2.3 of OS X, and Quark still is the only major Mac application that still isn't native. "We're working on it!" they say. Well screw them, John Manzione of MacNet 2.0 says, in his article, "Seeing the light about InDesign, a very real story."

"I'm going public about this because I am sick and tired or Fred Ebrahimi, CEO of Quark. His attitude about the Mac and the Mac publishing community, in a word, sucks. And as far as I'm concerned this is one company whose demise I would celebrate. Fred's a punk, plain and simple."

Rumor has it that Quark has shipped an Alpha of its OS X-native version, but I haven't seen anyone holding their breath, so to speak. Most of Manzione's column is about how he brings in a DTP guy who worked in an agency full of "QuarkXpress Snobs" who sees the light when Manzione shows him how slick Adobe's InDesign works and looks on OS X. He eventually goes back to the agency and evangelizes InDesign and they all turn off their Quark snobbery like a light being turned off by a clapper. "Thanks for making my day Pete, and thank your office for letting the truth shine in about InDesign. They ain't seen nothing yet."

Manzione uses the column to make the point that the "Quark question" really isn't that big of a deal. He's right. There is another option out there. If Quark is going to continue to stall while the rest of the Mac world moves on, let's just leave them behind.

My, things have changed a bit in here, haven't they, Kevin? :: Notorious hacker Kevin Mitnick has finally been released from his prohibition against Web surfing. Welcome back, Kevin. You've got a lot of catching up to do! According to the CNET story just linked, Mitnick is reportedly itching to get his hands on one of the new 17-inch Powerbooks. Who could blame him? As someone on one of the e-mail lists I belong to said: "He might make an interesting candidate for a Switcher ad." Indeed.

He just looks really young, he's actually 33 :: While surfing yesterday, I came across one Blake Ross, an 8-year-old blogger. God bless him. Do read this link. Yes, he is using words like "pretentiously" and "graciously." As a sidenote, yes, he is a switcher like Mitnick, too. "Becoming a Mac user has really affected my outlook on life; I never realized how important an operating system is to one's worldview. I felt compelled to paint my iHouse a shiny, translucent blue, which made me realize just how ugly my friends' iHouses were. I've since adopted a policy of never stepping into any person's iHouse unless it matches the consistent beauty of my own." This has got to be a joke? Is this kid for real? I like him, nonetheless. More: "Naturally, however, there are some flaws [Ed: in Safari]. (UPDATE 1/21/03: Steve Jobs has asked that I rephrase the previous line if I ever want to work in the computer industry again)."

NetNewsWire rocks! :: Safari developer Dave Hyatt has extolled the virtues of recently discovering NetNewsWire in his blog. "I have spent today playing with a piece of software called NetNewsWire. It's simply wonderful." I couldn't agree more. He also comments on some of Blake Ross' comments in his blog on splash screens for Mozilla. He jokes about creating one for Safari, which starts up so fast that a splash screen would just get in the way. "It's clearly time to implement the Startup Delay Manager for Safari. The entire browser can launch with a randomized delay, or maybe it could slide in from the side of the screen, or it could dance its way out of your dock while singing `Getting to Know You.'" We're all twisted and connected in this backwoods Mac blogging world. Maybe if I'm lucky, Dave will write a response to my blog talking about his blog talking about Blake's blog. And since I have them all loaded in NetNewsWire, I can read them all at once.

Yikes.

May the Safari be with you :: One last note: You may notice the little Safari graphic up at the top right of the page, which responds by javascript to whether you're using Safari or another browser. Apple has done a similar thing on its front page this week. Just for disclosure, Apple's javascript code is quite similar to mine, but I did some research on the Internet before I implemented it, and Apple has pretty much posted the code on the Net for free use. I didn't want anyone to think I was stealing someting! ... Also, I just bought an iBot firewire Webcam, and I may experiment with letting you see me sit here and read all of this Mac stuff every day. Not that you would really want to see that ...
:: Steve 10:24 PM [+] ::
The Quark Question

Ask and you shall receive, Andy Ihnatko

So you said you couldn't take a screen capture in OS X's DVD player? :: This is one of my favorite parts of being involved in such a small, tight-knit community of tech outcasts and rebels. Macworld columnist Andy Ihnatko, in the February 2003 issue, complains about how he could not take a frame capture from a DVD movie. I can't seem to find the link on Macworld's site, but it's the back page (144) of the February issue, so those who have their own copy can follow along at home. Maybe I can't find the link because of Ihnatko's imminent replacement as Macworld's backpage columnist. But here's a quote:

"The other day, the name of my pain was Apple's DVD Player program. I needed to take some frame grabs from the movie Fargo to send to an artist friend of mine, and while I knew that previous versions of DVD Player couldn't do this, I was hoping that the problem had been fixed in the most recent version. Then I was thinking that I could find a way to bamboozle the OS into doing it. Finally, I got myself another soda, cracked my knuckles, and started messing around with the command line. The next day, I threw in the towel: I hooked up a PC and had my frame grab in seconds."

Well, no one in the world of Mac enthusiasts wants Andy to be using a PC and all, so Digitally Obsessed wrote a program called DVD Capture, which is available on Version Tracker. Actually, I'm fairly certain Digitally Obsessed didn't write the program for Andy, as it's at version 2.0, which would be much too high a version number for brand-new software written in response to a column in this month's Macworld, but it just goes to show you how just about everything you might think you're missing on your Mac exists, somewhere.

From the WTF? archives :: This one is very disturbing, if it's true. According to the blog BoingBoing, a company called SBC is trying to get money from a Web site for using a tabbed navigation system at the top of its page. It claims to have a patent on said system. As blogger Corey Doctorow points out, "Near as I can tell, they think their patent applies to virtually every website extant." He also has a link to the letter. I don't know where this came from, but it smells like a hoax. Maybe I'll send my own letter to someone that says: "Hey, I have a patent on the word `the,' stop using it or I'll have to charge you a royalty of 5 cents per use." I think 5 cents is fair, don't you?
:: Steve 6:52 AM [+] ::
Ask and you shall receive, Andy Ihnatko

I like Safari a lot, but say it isn't so, Mike!

This is what I get for reading others' Blogs :: I didn't want to read this! Not after just 10 minutes ago praising Safari and extolling its virtues from the top of my lungs! If you didn't click the link, its the Blog of Chimera developer Mike Pinkerton, who says he is considering throwing in the towel. That would be a shame. One of the reasons I was so happy to see Safari was because it added yet another alternative to Netscape or Internet Explorer, the 800,000,000-pound gorillas of the Macintosh browser experience. Chimera's really the best of the bunch outside of Safari, and what I turn to most often for really important things: Like working with my bank account. But Safari will be pretty good with its final release, I'm sure, and many of us will probably switch for good, so maybe he's got a point.

From his blog: "It's obvious it will only ever be a marginal product on a even more marginal platform. AOL and Netscape have no interest in supporting it. Who aspires to be number two in an already over-commoditized space? Working my ass off for 3% just isn't any fun any more. Safari has already won, the rest is just to see by how much. `On a long enough timeline, the survival rate drops to zero.'"

Yeah, but isn't Apple working its ass off for 3 percent of the market? This is a toughy, folks. What do you think? Leave feedback!
:: Steve 4:04 PM [+] ::
I like Safari a lot, but say it isn't so, Mike!

Apple says Safari is a home run

I'm inclined to say it's a triple :: Apple has posted a news release on its Web site calling its beta Web browser, Safari, a "home run." From the big guy himself, Stevie J. (or at least one of his highly-paid public relations professionals): "Safari is a home run, with over a million downloads in less than two weeks. Mac users have discovered that Safari beta release is already the fastest browser on the Mac and possibly the best browser in the world."

Well, it's definitely fast, at least for me. And I'm running it on one of the first iMacs, so if it's fast for me, it must be fast! It's also elegant, IMHO. I can't wait to see what's in store for us when it finally hits a full version number. In the meantime, download the beta and go to Apple's home page, you'll see a little welcome there in the top left corner, just for you. A badge that says "Welcome Safari user."

A late night rendezvous with a TiVo :: TiVo, Brother and Aspyr are among the first companies to announce official support for Apple's Rendezvous technology. Our favorite computer company took some knocks in OS X's earlier days for the way it treated the open-source community (if I remember correctly, I think I may have at least landed a slap or two), but it seems to be making good these days. With Safari and now Rendezvous, Apple is sharing the wealth with everyone else. It's making public its changes to the Web browser's rendering engine and sharing the Rendezvous code in an attempt to get it adopted as an industry standard.
:: Steve 3:44 PM [+] ::
Apple says Safari is a home run

Help me! I've got an undefined subroutine!

I've fallen into UNIX hell, and I can't get up :: I'm posting from my newest toy for blogging, NetNewsWire, a wonderful program for Mac OS X that reads news feeds from sites all over the Web (including many Macintosh news sites), gives you a little Notepad window to drop links and notes into, and even provides a Weblog editor that interfaces with Blogger. In other words: I can read Mac news stories, take notes on them, and post to United Mac all from one program with three windows. Nice.

But it got my mind going, as these new and exciting toys often do. All of this newsreader stuff is based on RSS, or Rich Site Summary. RSS is an XML-based Internet technology that uses simple, formatted text files outputted from Web sites to give you a synopsis of top stories so you can click on to sites you might want to visit. I was so excited by this, that I used Blogger to set up my own little RSS feed. It's at http://www.stevesobek.net/weblogs/rss.xml, if anyone's interesting in using it. I'm going to add the link to the United Mac sidebar, also.

You see, this got me going, too. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of these RSS feeds around on the Web, and I know I've seen some sites that actually provide those headlines inline on their Web pages. So, I decided I wanted to do the same thing on United Mac. I've even got grand ideas for what I'd do after I figured it out.

But thus far, I still have not found a suitable - and easy! - way to do this expeditiously. I did find a tutorial on WebReference.com using a simple perl file to do this, but I couldn't get it working totally on my Mac OS X machine. I spent about four hours trying to install the right libraries in the right places, and when I finally did, I get a "Undefined subroutine &main::get called at rss2html.pl line 35." The source code for this simple Perl script is at the link above, if anyone is a Perl maven and thinks they can help me, please don't hesitate to drop me a line.

I'll have to see if I can figure out more about this tomorrow!
:: Steve 11:40 PM [+] ::
Help me! I've got an undefined subroutine!

A less than communal vibe coming from Cupertino and a lack of sharing in the Mac community

iTunes plug-in no longer available for download, which brings me to something else I've been meaning to bring up ... :: From iCommune's description on Verstion Tracker: "iCommune is a plug-in which extends Apple's iTunes software to share music over the network. Your friends' music libraries appear in the iTunes source list. You can browse their collections, and choose to download or stream their music. It also allows you to make your own music library available to others."

It seems that our friends at One Infinite Loop didn't like iCommune too much. If you look at the iCommune Web site, you'll see the program's author has gotten a cease and desist order from Apple and he's had to pull the download of his iTunes file-sharing utility. Well, in the spirit of open development of software, and so you can have the ability to have your friends listen to the same songs you are while you're iChatting, here are some mirrors where you can still get the software: Mirror #1. Mirror #2. Mirror #3.

You might get all uppity on me and think I'm just out to get people to break the law and infringe on artists' copyrights. Naw. It'd be nice to think that's Apple's beef with iCommune, as well. But is it possible that Apple is only squashing iCommune because it's a feature planned for the next release of iTunes? Remember last summer, when Steve Jobs demonstrated at Macworld the dynamic discovery of iTunes music libraries through Rendezvous, Apple's easy-to-use, automatic networking technology? It could be a coincidence. But there are few coincidences in Cupertino. Most things happen for a distinct purpose. It's Stevie J.'s way.

But the whole issue brings me to something else I've been thinking about a lot recently. I just said that I'm not someone who will suggest that you go out and start stealing music and software, and that everyone should never have to pay for anything again. But you know, there are uses for this stuff. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to try some of the Mac file-sharing programs that are available so I could look for a rare song that I could never seem to find.

What did I find out? Unlike in the PC world, where peer-to-peer leeching of music and programs is as easy as making a pot of coffee when you wake up, there really isn't an effective solution for the Mac. We have some straight file-sharing applications, like Direct Connect and iShare, which does regular file-sharing through Rendezvous (why hasn't Apple yelled at these guys?). And then there also are the Gnutella network clients, such as iSwipe and Limewire. The best of them all is a Cocoa application for Gnutella called Acquisition. Acquisition is a joy to use, but it doesn't get over the biggest limitation of all of these P2P apps: None of them seem to work very well. Finding files is hit or miss, sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. And downloading them is another question entirely. After reading some complaints on Acquisition's forum about the difficulty one person had downloading files, another reader responded by saying that downloading using Gnutella is always that way. You may actually find and get onto your hard drive 5 to 10 percent of the files you search for, if you're lucky. With Limewire, that number drops to half and you have to put up with the slow Java interface and the lack of adherance to Apple's Aqua guidelines to boot. And don't even get me started on Carracho, a system of Mac servers similar to Hotline that shares files and hosts chats around the world. Leeching is a way of life in this place, and whie the whole project purports to have started from a Utopian mindset of share- and share-alike, it's populated with servers run by people who require users to upload unreleased software (insome cases not-even-written-yet software!) to get passwords to be able to log on and leech. It's full of hypocrites who have user agreements that say things like: "You must own the software you upload, for backup purposes only, of course. And you may not download anything that you do not own. I am not responsible for your copyright infringement." And then when you enter the server, the admin has a list of programs he doesn't have that you must help him steal in order to be a part of his server.

I know our PC peers have much more luck with file sharing, and I have a feeling it could simply be because of the sheer volume of PC users compared to Mac users. Translation: More computers and more files to share.

Ethics and legal issues aside, the situation could be detrimental to Apple's Switchers campaign, as recent Mac converts coming from the PC world may be more miffed by not being able to download the latest Harry Potter movie than they will be by not having as large of a selection of games to choose from. Acquisition is the best of the bunch, but it's just one guy doing the developing. Maybe it's time for some serious development among Mac programmers. Maybe they can come up with a Mac P2P application that will actually work.

I've recently added a little comment system to the Blog, where you can add your own two cents' worth about anything I write at the end of each entry (Hint: It's a link that says "(X comments)"). Feel free to sound off on how you feel: Peer to peer file sharing, does it have a place in the Mac world?

A quick tip gleaned from one of the Mac e-mail lists I belong to :: Another e-mail list to join! I had no idea this existed! Thanks to Janice for this link to Apple's Daily Knowledge Base mailing list.
:: Steve 9:01 PM [+] ::
A less than communal vibe coming from Cupertino and a lack of sharing in the Mac community

It looks like Stevie J. listened to us after all

That is, if you trust Think Secret :: Think Secret reports that Steve decided at the last minute to make most of the iApps free at Macworld last week after reading all of the negative publicity and e-mails coming from early leaks of Apple's plans. I like getting my way.
:: Steve 5:39 AM [+] ::
It looks like Stevie J. listened to us after all

Safari gear

Things to take with you in the Outback :: Well, Apple's Safari beta has been out a week now, and not only has it become a big download for Apple (everyone needs a browser, duh!), developers already have stepped in to provide enahnced functionality and changes to its appearance. What follows is a short list of what I've seen so far. If there's anything that I've missed, please e-mail me and let me know.

Safari Enhancer -- Gordon Byrnes almost immediately hooked into some of the secrets of the browser left there for programmers and gave us access to it with this cool application! The program enables a special menu called "Debug" that offers several useful choices, such as adjusting Safari's security level and allowing you to set what browser name you display to servers when you go to a site. For instance, if you're having trouble getting onto a site (such as Blogger Pro, which effectively tries to block Safari, to my chagrin), you can have it identify you as a Windows machine when you ask for files. Then it will hand them over just like you're on a PC! Also, another submenu allows you to quickly jump to another browser with the same page if something isn't working. A must have.

FullScreenSafari.ape -- This program is very simple.I'm not sure of all of its features, but it seems to fix one annoying bug of the beta: getting your new windows to open in the same place, instead of half off the screen. I don't know that I could use Safari as my daily browswer without it!

SafariNoBrush and Safari Aquafier -- Quickly switch the theme of Safari to get rid of the brushed window style like QuickTime's. This has been a huge issue among Mac users over the last week, and I don't think Apple realized how much of a stir they were going to cause when they released Safari this way. Personally, I like the brushed window style, as it is a good contrast to mostly lighter-colored Web pages. But Apple's program design guidelines discourage its use except for programs that interface directly with or mimic digital hub devices, such as cameras (iPhoto) and mp3 players (iTunes). QuickTime, the original brushed-metal app, counts because it is a movie viewer, like a monitor in the hardware world. On one of the e-mail lists I belong to, someone who was at Macworld said he had talked extensively with the Safari development team. They told him they did it simply because it looked better that way. Personally, I think Apple should probably update its guidelines a bit. Another fellow lister said a better way to look at it is applications that edit and work with documents, versus applications that view and organize. The brushed metal look seems to work well for viewing, like with Safari. Web pages aren't documents, in that you can't directly manipulate them like you can word processing documents, unless you first look at and save the code from them. They are almost like movies, like with QuickTime. But programs such as Microsoft Word, that are almost built on complex foundations of toolbars used to manipulate documents, work much better with the white of Aqua. My two cents.

SafariMasks -- This program comes with several themes that color the toolbar icons in Safari, in case you're bored with the grey widgets that came with it. One problem with this one: it's shareware. I don't mind paying for shareware, but it seems a bit premature to start charging people for hacks made to beta software.

Safari CookieCutter -- This program helps you edit the cookies - or digital certificates - you encounter while using Safari.

Other Safari enhancements -- You can also download a utility called Safari Icon Manager, which will enable you to clear Safari's icon cache and localization files for German, French, Hebrew, Italian and Czech.

Safari Task Bar -- Which sets up a list of your open browser windows almost like an application swticher. But again, this is shareware, and its for something that Safari already does in the Window menu. Also: The window itself is large and takes up screen real estate (maybe it should be small, almost like a rectangular floating dock) and uses Aqua instead of brushed metal!

Not bad for an application that's been out just a week!

:: Steve 12:18 PM [+] ::
Safari gear

May the tabs be with you!

Tabs in the Outback? :: And as for that other Safari controversy, its lack of support for tabbed browsing, a recent developer's note for KDE notes that tabs are a planned feature in the next release of Konqueror, the browser that shares at least a portion of its code base with Safari.

Apple has shipped the improvements it has made to KHTML, Konqueror's rendering engine, back to the open-source developers. Maybe, if this spirit of cooperation continues, the tabs will be with us - and Safari - after all.

:: Steve 12:16 PM [+] ::
May the tabs be with you!

And now for something completely different

A little OT, but ... :: Does President Bush remind anyone else of an obstinate, stubborn 9-year-old bully who has gotten himself all worked up? I'm not a wussy peacenik or anything (I supported the first Gulf War - Saddam did invade a country, after all), but it's getting a little strange around here. We continue to send oodles of troops to the Persian Gulf to face the threat that the United Nations weapons inspectors can't seem to find, no matter how hard they look. And meanwhile, North Korea, a country that has been blatant in its defiance of the U.N. - and us! - may get a deal. Would someone explain to me the wisdom in all of this? To go back to my bully analogy, it's almost like Bush got accidentally hit by a stray spitball in lunch by a kid two years younger. Even though the kid says "Hey, I'm sorry, I don't have any more spitballs, see?" Bush is still bumping shoulders with him, going "You got a problem? Come on, you know you do!" He's like that drunk on a Saturday night who won't go home until he finds someone to fight with. Maybe there's a local Fight Club chapter our fearless and extremely intelligent leader can join? Time to call Tyler Durden...

A little bit more on topic ... :: In other news, the fearless AOL Chairman Steve Case is stepping down. Maybe someone with some actual style will step in his place? Could we hope that maybe AOL will stop using proprietary formats for its pictures and get a decent browser? Naw, probably not. But at least they agreed to let .Mac folks use AIM.
:: Steve 2:33 PM [+] ::
And now for something completely different

Jan. 7, 2003: Independence Day

Apple takes us on an Internet trip into the Outback, leaves Microsoft at home. :: Either I have never been happier to be more wrong, or Stevie J. read my blog and listened to me. But none of that matters now because all is forgiven - for Steve and his Minions have gotten it right again.

At Macworld Expo on Tuesday, Apple introduced cool new Powerbooks (a tiny 12-inch model and a huge 17-inch model), announced that it wouldn't be charging an arm and a leg just to download iTunes and introduced some cool new software that brings us further along the road to independence from Microsoft. Think of Monday as George Washington's crossing of the Delaware to take the Hessians surprise at Trenton - we haven't won the war yet, but hey, things are looking up.

So allow me to make a crazy prediction today. Apple's leaders (including Jobs) aren't stupid. They knew that with the Switch campaign, things have become strained with Microsoft. They already were, remember last year when former MacBU leader Kevin Browne complained about Apple's marketing? Forget for a moment that the real problem was how much MS charges for its software.

Some had speculated that they should do it, but who really knew that Apple was working on its own browser to once and for and all remove the Internet Explorer icon from default installs of OS X? Who knew that Cupertino was crafting - for more than a year! - presentation software that kicks the pants off of Microsoft PowerPoint? I'm willing to bet my iMac that Apple engineers are working secretly right now on replacements for Word and Excel that are far beyond what we see in Apple Works. They had been working on Keynote in secret for more than a year, after all.

That's all that's standing in our way, really. If Apple out-innovates MS on its own software platform, then the whole debate of whether Microsoft produces Office or not will be moot. If Apple had word processing and spreadsheet programs that were award winning like the iApps and kicked the pants off anything MS made, I wouldn't even be talking about Microsoft anymore, except in reference to how many people we're trying to win as switchers. We are so close!

Stevie didn't kill the magic after all. In fact, even though the hints were subtle, he's creating magic I didn't dare dream of until Tuesday: The very real hope of true freedom from Redmond.

Surfin' Safari :: Now, on to Safari, the software from Tuesday that could have the most impact on our daily computing.

First impression: Fast and beautiful. Although there has been some discussion on the Mac e-mail lists about whether Apple should have used the brushed metal appearance (it violates their own interface rules, which state that the theme should only be used to mimic hardware devices). But I think it works - it's nice to have a color contrast to Web pages, which are often white or light in color. I never noticed how distracting it was to have a "white" interface in other browsers.

It's still beta software, and Apple will be making fixes. But as Apple has done with a lot of its new applications in recent years, it's nice to have them include us in the testing process. I think we'll get a better product all around because of it.

Some general impressions and feature desires after two days of use:

• Give us tabs as in Chimera Navigator. They work. They make sense. I don't know how long I'll be able to survive anymore without using them. It's one of the recent browser innovations that make the most sense. Having 20 open windows and trying to move between them with keyboard shortcuts does not make sense.


• Implement a better system to import bookmarks from other browsers. As it stands, Safari will only import bookmarks from Internet Explorer, and it does it without asking the first time you launch.


• Apple has implemented a contextual menu command to download an image from a Web site to disk. But for now, it sends the image to your default downloads directory without asking you where to put it. It needs to do this. Also, and this has been a recurring beef of mine with Chimera, it should automatically generate a thumbnail preview of the image for the Finder as IE does.


• This is just a personal opinion, but I would like to have the links in the shortcut bar show a site's mini icon (the one most browsers show you in the address field). Chimera recently implemented this, and although some find it too busy, I like having the quick visual reference of a site I'm going for. Maybe there could possibly be an option to turn it off in Safari's preferences.


• Improved keychain support. As far as I can tell, so far Safari can only save passwords when you need to enter a server directly and a dialogue box pops up asking you for your password. It cannot save the passwords you enter into form fields in a page, as IE and Chimera do.


• It has a pop-up blocker like Chimera! Nice touch. This has been one of the worst problems with IE, which even with shareware applications, still does not have adequate protection from these sometimes dangerous annoyances (ever accidentally clicked on a link from a spam mail or some other site and ended up at a site that endlessly spawns new windows? You have no choice but to force quit your browser!).


• HALLELUJAH on the Google search bar. I'm smitten by this.

Overall, it is good for Apple to break new ground and make a small, low-footprint browser. It doesn't hur that it may anger Microsoft at the same time.
:: Steve 6:24 AM [+] ::

Don't kill the magic, Steve!

Leave the decorations up just a bit longer, there's one more holiday left: Macworld 2003 :: Here we are, once again, on the eve of Macworld. This time of year is always fraught with rumors among the Mac faithful about what new hardware or software we can expect to hear about during Stevie J.'s big speech. But one of the most persistent rumors this year is a bit troubling and a little too reminiscent of MacWorld New York last summer, when Mr. Jobs made the announcement that everyone would have to pony up $99 if they wanted to keep their "@mac.com" e-mail addresses. Sure, there were new features and free virus software, but it really angered a lot of folks.

The Mac faithful were right to be angry -- at least at how they found out about it. The Macworld keynote speech by Jobs is many things -- at times magical (when the new iMac was introduced last year), sometimes boring (yet another discussion of the digital hub), often surprising and always full of the CEO's famous "reality distortion field." What it should not be is a time for bad news.

That doesn't mean that Apple can't give us bad news, but maybe the Macworld keynote speech isn't necessarily the right time for this. And some of the rumors floating around point to this happening once again, with Apple possibly charging for some of its iApps.

Which begs the question, where did Apple get their public relations folks, or is this all Stevie's fault? It's no secret that he calls almost all of the shots. So here's a person appeal: Leave the negative "We're going to gouge you for every dollar you have" stuff for any other time than Macworld, unless of course you want to kill all of the magic.

This is not the time to kill the magic. Apple stands at a watershed as this year starts. It has weathered the economic downturn, and with the continuing maturity of OS X and the development of the digital hub, Apple is in a wonderful position to gain more switchers. Will alienating the existing faithful help Apple turn the corner? Nope.

You don't have to kill the magic. Give us the good stuff, save the bad stuff for later.

New iCal and iSync :: One piece of good news Stevie will most certainly go over are the new iterations of iCal and iSync, pieces of Apple's growing suite of productivity apps. I had been loathe to use iCal day-to-day heretofore, as iCal was slower than I was on New Year's Day after drinking all night, even on the G4 I use at work. But the new iteration, which has even climbed a fraction of a point over the last week with the release of 1.0.2 on Sunday, is much, much faster. Finally it seems useable. And syncing has been much better, too. Although I've faced two different issues: I still can't get my Palm Vx to sync using iSync, and I can't get iSync to work with .Mac behind the corporate firewall at work. I have no idea why the Palm is not working, but my system administrator is looking into how I can get around the firewall. If I fix these two issues, I could be more organized than I've ever been before. But unfortunately, half of this proposition is not just the software, it's remembering to use it. I'll have to work on that one without any help from Apple.
:: Steve 2:39 PM [+] ::