Earlier today, I wrote several thousand words about New Orleans before I realized I still didn't have the words and was just doing it to try to structure my thoughts. I don't think anyone has the words yet. Such a mess.
However, if you have $5 you can spare on your credit card, the McCormick Tribune Foundation will turn it into $7.50 until they reach a million ($0.50 for every $1), and will cover the administrative costs themselves so the full amount gets where it needs to go.
posted on August 31, 2005 at 11:40 PM
Belay the last post, as within a day, Apple has pulled their test drive promotion. Arstechnica is where I saw it, and will echo their words...
Cameron passed on that Apple is allowing people to take Mac Mini's home for a test drive with a 30 day guarantee...
Had an outage earlier today, which was compounded by the fact that I've been dealing with some stuff and was nowhere near a computer for the majority of it.
Haven't taken the time to really look into what happened, but the ~340 trackback pings and ~140 comment spams sitting in my inbox are a likely early suspect. Anywho, things should be up now, sorry for inconvenience, yadda yadda.
[Update:] Yep, it's the spammers, who just don't get pinging a site with hundreds of comment/tracking spams at once -- with 50 urls in each -- is going to kill things when its already under load. Entirely unamused, but the virus rarely realizes its killing the host and servers don't like a load of 70+.
As you're probably aware, earlier today Apple released Safari Update 2.0.1. A few notes...
Unless you're living under a rock, chances are you've heard that Google announced their Google Talk service recently, which ties into ones Gmail account. Once they acquired a company with an instant messaging solution, speculation was flying about them releasing something, but no one really knew what form it would take.
They've branched out into native Windows software recently, with apps like Google Desktop Search or the Google Toolbar, while at the same time focusing on more services via your browser, like Google Maps. What was announced earlier was a native Windows client that communicates via the Jabber protocol, but we'll only touch upon that in a cursory way.
Rather, we'll be focusing on what wasn't announced, and how Google's competition in the space -- Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo -- will be reacting.
Subject of the email I got 30 minutes ago says it all, and I guess it's not that surprising in the grand scheme of things. So, if you were making plans, you should probably put them on hold. I don't feel like I have the real deal yet on what went down, but know some of you were buying plane and train tickets and such and wanted to let you know first thing. I've had some alternate venues suggested, so who knows.
It's Friday, which means it's report Report-an-Apple-Bug Friday. Dan Wood started this a few weeks ago, and it seems to be catching some traction around the web. This is a very cool idea, and it'll let me throw out something I'll be referring back to over some upcoming posts.
Now, before you click and view the following image, if you happen to be using Apple's Safari or possibly OmniWeb, you may want to commit www.drunkenblog.com to memory, as there's a very high likelihood your browser is about to crash...
A reader of the site named Dirk happens to be employed at a large Apple Reseller in Europe, works lonely hours, and is surrounded by broken iPods. Add in The Cow, and you get...
Sometime between getting my stuff done, a lovely wheat beer and banging out the last post, it got to be 4am while I wasn't paying attention. This means I'm faced with the same choice many have been in whether via geeking or studying: push through till the morning and make it through the next day, or try to get a few hours on the pillow.
If I eschew the pillow, I have at my disposal...
I pulled a Rumpelstiltskin last night, as I was flying way too close to the sun when it came to lack of sleep, and today has been go dog go. PostgreSQL is a fantastic database server until something goes wrong, and then its a complete nightmare, so I'm glad I had a solid 16 hours under my belt.
There was a time I could go four days easy, now I'm rounding the horn into Willy Wonka mode at two. It certainly shows in the last posts, where the filter had some serious gaps in it, and towards the end of the last one you can pretty much watch the situation degrading at 15 minute intervals.
Which means I got some flames.
It'll start at 6pm and could go as late as 9pm, but I should be there a little early to meet and greet some, and down a few shots before the coffee. Now, the idea of all these people driving hours to hear me talk for just a few is a little wiggy, which means the talk itself is going to have to match the absurdity somehow, otherwise it would be a little shameful to have The Cow on the couch projected onto the giant screen.
More details will be forthcoming, as much of it is in flux, but here are some things you may be interested in...
One of the things I've been asked in a roundabout way this week is "Why, in the name of all that's holy" would I spend so much time writing up a little shareware game instead of using the time for something 'bigger' and giving it a plug as a footnote. There are a few reasons:
- If you go back through the archives, you'll see I often try to single out some little guy that's toiling in the corner doing cool things, especially when they're going so over the top. Hopefully it made the authors day, and is an encouragement to keep plugging.
- Others might see it and be encouraged to keep plugging, or to plug things that need plugging. While that writeup was about Lux, there was a lot of other stuff mixed into it also. You might pick up that while I'm talking about Lux in general, it was also a convenient means to an end. There are other people out there toiling to make good games for the Mac, and hopefully they're encouraged to see so much time spent on a little guy.
When you're a small developer trying to give it a go, often times the hardest thing to deal with -- paycheck issues aside -- is the idea that no one is paying attention and the momentum to get them to pay attention can seem insurmountable. Basically, startups and small bands have everything in common but the pussy, everything else can be mapped to a commonality.
And it's not like games on the Mac are doing that well in general, with Aspyr all but confirming their cash flow issues earlier today. Anywho, at the end of the day, I go over the top like that because I've seen how completely awry a little software project can go, which is why we're going to be talking about Tiger's Eye Pub today.
It is quite possibly the worst game every created for the Mac, perhaps one of the worst apps in general, but it's hands-down the worst casino game I've ever seen.
I don't normally post rumors and tips, but lately they're starting to freak me out a little. A little while earlier, someone who will remain nameless passed on:
- The Apple wired mouse & keyboard combo was being EOL'd, to be replaced by a Mighty Mouse and keyboard combo.
- The build to order options of the Mac Mini were changing, no more wired mouse and keyboard, just the Mighty Mouse & keyboard and the Wireless Keyboard & Mouse combo.
I gave him my usual spiel, where I said I'd try to look into it but if I couldn't get any similar rumblings probably wouldn't run with it. I get all sorts of tips and rumbles, and lot of times they:
- Are accurate, but things change between what the person heard and what actually gets decided.
- Are conjecture based on something loosely heard somewhere else and the person wants it to be true.
- Are someone repeating someone else who wanted to be seen as In the Know™.
- Are wildly inaccurate, and is just Sircasua trying to mess with me.
Rarely are they really accurate if I haven't confirmed rumblings, but in this case a few minutes later while poking around in the Apple Store, the store changed. Looks real enough to me, and while you can't yet BTO the Mighty Mouse keyboard combo with any of their other Macs in the store, it would appear we're one step closer to Apple shipping a multi-button mouse by default.
You can glean some info from the above screenshot, but once you're done there are a few other things which, if kept in mind, will make both our lives easier...
From time to time I've been asked why it's been awhile since I've had an alcohol-related post on the site, and you'll be pleased to know my non-site related goal for the weekend is to duplicate the above drink at home.
It's sort of a white russian with a hint of mint, but it is going to require me to make my own coffee liquor. Considering my domestic skills are still just one level above baking frozen fish sticks, I'm trying to keep my expectations in check but have high hopes.
There are a few more odds and ends about Tiger and the Mini Mouse and such I don't feel like making entire posts about to take care of...
Yesterday, I found out that someone I knew in a familial way back in Canada passed away, by their own hand, the evening before.
A reader named Dan pointed me towards an app called URLwell, which well, acts as a well in your menu bars for URLs.
Using it couldn't be simpler: Launch the app (or add it to your login items), and you get a little icon in the menu bar. Drag a URL from the address bar in your browser of choice to it, and it adds them to a list. Once they're added, you can click on the URLwell icon and see them, and selecting one loads it in your default browser.
Now, Dan left a link to this in the comments for a reason...
Apple posted Security Update 2005-007 v1.1 early this morning...
Security Update 2005-007 v1.1 replaces Security Update 2005-007 v1.0 for Tiger systems Mac OS X v10.4.2. Users who have already installed v1.0 on Tiger systems should install v1.1.Security Update 2005-007 v1.1 provides a combined 32- and 64-bit version of LibSystem to replace the 32-bit version that was delivered in v1.0. No other changes have been made in version 1.1.
Well, that explains it. They just forgot the 64-bit version in the last one... Yeah, I'm sticking to everything I said yesterday, and then some.
A few hours ago, AppleInsider posted that Apple's newly released Security Update 2005-007 had major problems when it came to 64-bit apps, namely that it completely broke them:
Wolfram Research, makers of the popular Mathematica software, began informing its customers of the issue in an email on Tuesday. The company said the security update disables its flagship Mathematica software: "Due to an error on the part of Apple, this update prevents any 64-bit-native application from running. In particular, this means that Mathematica 5.2 will not run on any G5 system if it has installed this Security Update
MacInTouch apparently contacted Apple and confirmed the issue. The same email AppleInsider was working from ended up on the Mac Enterprise list in its entirety yesterday evening...
Oof, I kinda feel sorry for the Unofficial Apple Weblog once they recover, as you just know they're going to get mail about it. I'm actually giving them points, as you don't run an exposed Windows server by choice unless your Kung Fu is strong or your pair drags when you walk, and The Cow is constantly going on about his approval for both. Go easy.
Earlier today wootest turned me onto an image editing app for Mac OS X I'd never seen before: Seashore.
The idea seems to be to wrap the open source GIMP image editor within a Cocoa front end, and I have to say it's pretty damn cool. I love the GIMP, but there's no denying it has some issues when it comes to user interface in general, and that using it on the Mac is a rougher experience than on other platforms.I use it all the time on Linux and tolerate it on Windows, but rarely launch it on the Mac, even the version where the guy moved a bunch of menus around to make it more like Photoshop.
Still, the tech is all there, and it's very good tech, so the idea of wrapping it up in a Cocoa interface is fantastic. It's been talked about since the beginning of Mac OS X, but I didn't think anyone would take it on in my lifetime because of how large the project would be. Mark Pazolli apparently decided to take it on, and hence we have Seashore...
Ah, the first home movie posted on DrunkenBlog. Don't get used to it, I'm just a little burned out on my other options for the evening.
Trying to map out Apple's QA processes from the outside without giving them an easy way to sue me, or trying to figure out how to ask chat questions about genetic algorithms without turning people into human <blink> tags can be fun but can also grind one into a nub this late. So enjoy, but Quicktime 7 is required...
This go around it's Digital Rights Management (DRM), whether or not Apple and Intel are cooking up a revolution, and a small redux on the PowerPC versus Intel brought about by a reader trying to juxtapose what they were being told yesterday versus what they're being told today.
We're still chewing through these, although the order is a little out of whack because I messed up how I was sorting them by their first-come-first-serve basis and the text file never seems to shrink.
Still, if you sent one we'll get to it eventually...
Another Apple Store has been tagged...
I couldn't make it to the Shibuya store when it opened on the 6th (I was in Hiroshima for the peace ceremony), but you get the Shinsaibashi store instead. At least it has the same spiral staircase.In the second picture, you can see the desktop was still unchanged when I left the store after browsing for a while. When I went back later in the day to catch the concerts, it was already replaced. Oh well.
Hao Ye
I'm so down with the Shibuya store...
Aha, if you look close, there it is at the first computer. This one really made me smile, because:
- Hao is one of my few readers from Japan that I'm aware of, and that's just cool. [Hao has informed me he's Chinese by birth and living in Japan]
- The desktop he chose to use is one from the covercasts, but not the public one. It's the one I just gave out to those who helped, so he had to have trucked that out with him en leu of one of the standards. You can find Hao on disc one.
I have to say, it's a little strange to be throwing up a post that includes "Hiroshima", "peace ceremony" and "The Cow", but not in a bad way.
Thanks, Hao.
A few days ago, the above dropped into my inbox from a certain Mr. Wil Shipley which had me roundly amused yet confused, and I had to backtrack to an older conversation where he mentioned he knew a girl who made plushy things out of socks and such. And now, a few hours ago, this dropped into my Inbox labeled "Version 2"...
My precious. Version 3 may well have to be setup for a production run.
Ars and others have been running a sort of TiVo deathwatch I've been trying to keep tabs on, and the latest installment involving DirectTV phasing out their service doesn't make the situation look any rosier:
The Wall Street Journal today reported that TiVo fell 7.5 percent in early trading today, as DirecTV's plans to abandon TiVo reverberate through the market. The relationship has been publicly souring for over a year, especially after DirecTV Vice Chairman Eddy Hartenstein resigned from TiVo's board of directors over a year ago. Oh, and did I mention that a week later, DirecTV sold 3.4 million shares of TiVo? Indeed, the writing has been on the wall for a while now, and some analysts saw this train wreck coming the minute News Corp got their fingers on DirecTV in 2003.
The long and short is that TiVo just hasn't been doing very well financially, but the big problem it faces is one that's similar to what Apple and the other music services are facing: There's a fundamental understanding that this is the real deal -- that time shifting is a real feature people want that won't go away -- but now that TiVo has created the market, and demand, there are few reasons for the cable and satellite TV companies not to cut them out of the chain...
Today we're going to be going through a strategy game for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux called Lux, for a few reasons:
- I like games, and Lux has an interesting history and I had some chats with the author that others might find interesting.
- There's a certain shiny absurdity to Lux in general that has thoroughly charmed me. The fact that someone went out and recreated the old board game RISK for Mac OS X, and then ported to it to Windows, would be amusing by itself, but the author went way beyond that.
- It's on my system, yet it's not really installed -- only its preferences are. I keep it within its archive, because its too dangerous to have hanging about in the 'Recent Applications' part of the Apple Menu where it could be easily launched while I'm supposed to be doing other things.
This isn't a real software 'review', more just jotting down my thoughts on it, as otherwise I'd have to go breaking it out "5 out of 5 white russians" or "4 out of 5 cows" or something, and then I'd have to make up a pretty badge in different sizes... Still, you should be able to grok the soul of Lux via this, and why The Cow and myself dig it muchly, later caveats notwithstanding.
At the tail end of last night, I saw that Peter Jennings had passed away, and it made me sad. Back in Mornings with Dan Rather I mentioned I was always a Peter Jennings guy, but I've always been fascinated as to why, and all day the back of my mind has been gnawing on that question because that's what my mind does, and I've always been fascinated by the idea of 'comfortable strangers'.
A comfortable stranger is someone that's a familiar part of our landscape, yet we don't actually know. It may be someone you see every other day at the bus stop or subway or intersection, because your schedules match, or just someone you see working at a store you visit often. You don't know them, and have probably never said a word to them, but over time your brain develops its own familiarity. You notice the comfortable stranger by their absence one day, and wonder if they're just sick or ever coming back.
Whenever something was going on, after I turned on the TV, something about Jennings, over time, caused me to switch to ABC to hear it from him. If there were pictures going on, I might watch a bit, but the minute the commentary overlays started, I was switching to ABC. Whatever that something was, those close to him should be proud of it.
I mentioned my PowerBook drive died, but I didn't mention a reader, who wishes to remain semi-anonymous (Thanks, Alex), sent me a new one. This is actually the second time a reader has kept my Macs up and running by sending hardware love, and its always appreciated.
After spending some quality time with Apple's swell instructions and my handy Torx-8 screwdriver, I used my shiny new drive as an excuse to reinstall OS X from scratch again, and this time start to trick it out. For my first two installs, as I said I wanted to make sure the problems I was having were repeatable on other systems first -- and I just didn't want to introduce the doubt by installing my two beloved haxies or even something as simple as a 3rd party mouse driver.
This hasn't been optimal, because I'm really, really partial to my buttons. I figured I'd start out slow with a driver that could handle my buttons, and then work my way back up to fink so I could polish off some things on my plate, but I haven't been able to get past the drivers...
When unable to blow out a candle by leaning over the table and blowing, do not pick the candle up and blow directly into it, unless you are willing to spend a minimum of 20 minutes cleaning dried wax from your goatee and glasses. Also, you are really stupid sometimes.
The last time I looked at any language-used stats, English was used on ~68% of all blogs, which I remember because I was freaked out at how much content people from Iceland and Sweden were throwing up.
So the whole American part probably isn't kosher, considering there are other countries that speak English also, but I'm willing to concede the joke on the rest of it, and asumme its their small way of telling people they are listening. [Via Laughing Squid, via Sandy.]
[Update:] Gruber pointed out he mentioned this before, and that I'd seen it before, which means I just shouldn't be let near anything today. FYI, it's straight from the New Oxford Americal Dictionary, which means they have an Easter Egg. *trundles back to his cave*
HelloDrunkenBatmandrunkenbatman, my name is Jordan, I help out on the Adium project and have been reading since your interview with Evan. I was looking around for MacTech for your interview today, but none of the book stores around here have it (ive tried multiple Barnes & Nobles) and all seem to have stopped carrying it. No dice on Borders either. Any idea if there are any other stores who supposedly sell it? Any help would be appreciated.Thanks,
-Jordan
A lot of people are trying to find the issue of MacTech with me in it since I mentioned it, and I know it set off an amusing flurry in the AdiumX group once the word spread they'd see their app mentioned in print where they were all running to different Barnes and Nobles trying to find it, reporting back to each other with no luck, and then repeating the whole thing again with different B&N's. Why none of them just called first is beyond me, but I'm guessing it was part of the fun.
Unfortunately, I can't really help you out here. Someone in the comments mentioned that 'Books 'a Million' may carry it if its around you, but I haven't confirmed that myself since they were nice enough to UPS me a bunch of issues.
You have to remember that while its a printed magazine, its a very targeted one and the content is geared towards Mac gear-heads. I.E., you won't see ways to optimize iPhoto, but rather ways to optimize your Python code or QuickTime movies. Barnes and Nobles are the new Starbucks, but not every store carries everything, and so you're much more likely to find a B&N carrying it in a larger metro area than a suburb in Kansas (in the same way that their website will have a larger selection of autobiographies than their brick and mortar store).
The safest way to get it while my issue is still around would be to subscribe to their magazine via their 'risk-free' offer. Right now it appears their store is down for the day, but I have a feeling if you email the editor [after removing the NOSPAM] saying you'd like to subscribe (and want to be sure to get my issue) he'll take care of you.
Apparently the new vogue is, while browsing through an Apple Store, to use its provided internet access to download one of DrunkenBlog Desktops and set them as the computer's background, then snap a pic. I'm sure it raises some eyebrows, which makes it highly amusing.
This one is from the Tysons Corner Apple Store in Virginia...
This one is from the The Woodlands Apple Store in Texas...
drunkenbatman, I intended to get a shot of The Cow on a 30" monitor. However, given the fact that 1) for some unknown reason, they had their flagship monitor shoved in a corner, and 2) an Apple employee was asking whether I needed assistance every 15 seconds, this seemed the more prudent course. I'll forward more pics of the opening later."
What's sad is that he did send these the day the store opened, and if you have any idea of when the Apple Store opened, you'll have an idea of how behind I am. My inbox taunts me. I'm not being a jerk, just a bit laggy.
My girlfriend and I took The Cow with us on our holiday to Stockholm, I took several digital photos but for some reason some didn't store on the memory card but saying that two of the best shots did work :)
"A wooden horse in Stockholm's city hall. They have them in every tourist shop (albeit much smaller versions of this one). They are hand carved and painted. Apparently if you buy two you get good luck, don't know if thats true or if the shop keeper was trying to get us to buy more!"
"Outside the Swedish parliament and palace. The guard wouldn't hold The Cow up for us :( and we couldn't get any closer than we did."
So very, very cool. I just love these things. As a side note, for liability reasons, I am not encouraging readers to approach and ask people holding automatic weapons to pose with The Cow.
The other day I went a little nuts on Apple's new Mighty Mouse, because I figured one good splooge deserved another (No more emails about splooge -- count yourself lucky this wasn't titled "Oh, how the mighty have.." and be done), which included a lot of stuff, but my questions about the actual mouse itself boiled down to:
- How well the buttons work (Remember -- if these worked well, I was willing to give them major points)
- How well the trackball nub works. More specifically, whether you are constantly flicking your finger up and down or wagging it side to side.
- What the hell the tag to right on Apple's site meant -- My working theory was that the mouse might cost $.99+ per minute to use.
That very strange marketing blurb turned out to just be the normal mechanical click of the mouse
It's still a normal Apple on-button mouse you have to click down on, so there is that standard click, but there's some thingamajig to make small noises when you scroll or squeeze. Still, that leaves the buttons and the trackball...
Rory has some reasoned thoughts on Spotlight's user interface...
In today's post I'm going to show you some UI from Tiger and I'm going to point out all the obvious flaws in its design. These are flaws that if I can spot, any one with some serious training in HCI should be able to see in the first few seconds of looking at it, and one does hope that Apple still employs such people (and that someone actually listens to them!).
It's not an exhaustive list, and I agree with all of them. Like most bad UI, it all seems immediately obvious once it's been pointed out to you. Rory is one of those Mac devs I'm trying to keep an eye on, because his approach to software reminds me so much of the others I like. I.E., quality is the cake, features are the icing, not the other way around. It doesn't hurt that he sent me a movie not long ago showing his efforts to shave pixels off his app, and the website looks pretty sweet in it... (QT 7 required)
In a previous post, I mentioned I had to finish the last chat on another platform, because of a bunch of wonky bugs I was having to deal with in Mac OS 10.4, many of them involving text. Some of you screamed for details, so we'll go through the evening which led me to sit down and write A Community of Quality.
At this point, it's not just that interview, or the ones I'm working on right now. If I didn't have access to a Linux or Windows machine right now, it would be difficult for me to do much for the site, let alone my other stuff.Today we'll follow the downward spiral that made me give up and finish it on another computer -- the whole deal -- warts and caveats and all. Now, I'm well aware my experience isn't everyone's experience, but I'm also well aware that what led to my issue is real, as the movies and such will show.
Buzz @ Sci-Fi hi-Fi has a neat little entry with some tips for creating a metal app that isn't ugly. If you are thinking of creating a metal app, or have created a metal app, or just want to know what to tell a developer of a metal app, do check it out.
I'll admit I wish he had added "Don't." to the list, but I'm jaded. Drew from Delicious Monster has a good tip in the comments regarding text which is worth a look, too. I think a few of them can easily apply to many aqua apps also, or at least can. I was struck by how much of it seemed to be to hide as much of the metal as you possibly can.
For the record, I resolutely refuse to believe it's been two years since he packed up the truck and moved to Cupertino, as it would confirm time has lost all meaning.
I don't really advertise my IM names around anymore, but people have picked them up in various places anyways... and it isn't as though they're hard to guess. My impression is a lot of people will add me, and then lurk and watch my weird status messages (They're usually song lyrics, but I'm sure everyone thinks I'm close to reaching for a revolver).
All these people suddenly come out of the woodwork when Apple announces something, and I get to wake up and get a laugh because AdiumX has a gazillion tabs waiting for me that are all basically a "Did you see this?", followed by a link...
So yep, I saw it, but it was a busy day and I wanted to have a few drinks in me before I tackled it. I think Apple's Mighty Mouse is pretty cool, although I probably would have skipped dinner if I had known I was going to swallowing this much marketing splooge...
Someone sent me a link to a site called Inside Apple earlier today, which has an article up which is, I think, almost a parody of the last post:
It seems that in the past couple of months, I’ve read about and have personally seen more than a comfortable level of iMac G5’s hitting the dust a little sooner than originally expected. Surprisingly, even numerous second-generation iMac G5's have broken down short of their advertised life expectancy.
And on and on making points about the heat problems (And others, which yes, are very real) and then:
I may sound like I would never recommend the iMac G5 to friends or family. Not true. I find the iMac G5 to be a remarkable computer with its elegant design, along with the power of a PPC970 processor packed in behind its beautiful flat 17- or 20-inch liquid crystal display. Though I've seen many first-generation iMac G5's break down on numerous fronts, I haven't witnessed nearly as many second-generation iMac G5's break down on the same scale - and I'm confident - without any real facts to back it up - that of all the negativity I may witness in the iMac line of Apple products...
The guy wrote this a day or two before mine, but I hadn't seen it as The Drunken Eye of Sauron™ has been focused on other things and I'm not familiar with the site, but if I had I would have linked to it as an example because, um, what the hell.
Hey Drunken Bat Dude,Is something going on with you? I was reading through your last post, and I recognize some of the behaviors you pointed out in myself, but the drunk I know would not have made me feel stupid while making his point. Just my opinion, take it for what it's worth.
Mark F.
I actually got two emails like this, and after a little sleep and some coffee, and now looking over that last post, there is probably some truth to them and I should take my lumps. I was certainly a little more acerbic in what I'm banging out than I often am. I meant everything I said, but given a second shot I'd probably word some of it quite differently, as if I'm making people feel stupid I'm letting people down, including myself. In deference, I proffer these excuses:
- I'm stretched more than a little thin lately.
- A few of the things I'm working on have me frustrated to a level I rarely reach, yet I have to sit on quite a bit of it, and it wouldn't surprise me if stuff eeks out around the edges.
Let's just say I've become somewhat obsessed with the current quality of Mac OS X, and Apple hardware in general, but for right now am keeping it to the quality of what is going out on discs. I've been devoting a lot of resources into digging into what's going on, enough that I'm already backed up on the chats again. Not full-on Deconstructing Maui X-Stream obsessed, but it's getting close.
I think most real users know, in our heart of hearts, that Mac OS X has been misfiring quite a bit lately, and that 10.4 was almost a total misfire in terms of actually using it. It doesn't mean we're going to switch, it doesn't mean we've given up, it just means we know something is wrong.
You can like the idea of XHTML/JavaScript/CSS apps and still know Dashboard was a complete misfire, even if your only clue is that they're bolting on major functionality in a .2 release. You can like the idea of building webkit into your apps while knowing the quality of what you are building your app around isn't at the level it should be.
Severe, extreme wonkiness like this doesn't happen by accident, whether it is going on at Apple or Microsoft or anywhere between.
I was browsing the Ars Apple Blog this morning, which linked to a story saying this would be the last ADHOC (formerly MacHack) conference, which just finished up the other day:
At the end of this year's ADHOC Conference, Expotech announced that this was the last conference. Due to dropping attendance, higher expenses, and fewer sponsors, the show could no longer be sustained.The decline began in 2003 when Apple moved WWDC to the week following MacHack, which resulted in some last minute cancellations. In 2004 the name was changed to ADHOC in an attempt to attract a wider audience and the date was also changed to occur following WWDC. MacHack had its own culture and traditions, and was as much a social & networking event as an opportunity to learn & show off neat tricks.
I'm still sort of hoping this isn't really true, and still sort of hoping my feelers won't get back to me. Expotech, the company that's behind them, barely has a site to speak of, and there isn't anything on the PR page of Adhoc just yet.
Unfortunately, it has some of the ring of truth to it. Awhile ago all of the expos and exhibitions came under a grind, and when Apple started changing shows around it messed the Mac-specific ones up bad and they've never really recovered (Some would say there was more they could have done perhaps, but it's hard to put show like this together under ideal conditions).
Probably one of the better descriptions of ADHOC I've heard (or at least the most recent) was from Jonathan Rentzsch back in the Red Shed interview, where he said:
Adhoc is about one thing: coolness. It has four facets:
- Cool people
- Talking about cool stuff (papers/sessions)
- Showing off cool ideas (hacks)
- Coming up with your own cool ideas and trying to get them working (your hack(s))
That's it. It's very informal, most of it made up on the fly, by really smart people whom you can communicate with at very high bandwidth. Unlike WWDC, which is Apple's firehose, Adhoc is a distributed firehose about what your peers think is cool, not just what Apple thinks is cool.
Rentz also has a nice little introduction at his site that gives some more feel at the site (I'm kicking myself for forgetting to post it), and there are some other MacHack memories within that interview. If it's true, it's a really sad thing all around, as ADHOC was really a one-of-a-kind institution for Mac coders and the technically minded, and so many cool hacks and relationships would come out of that show every year.
There are hacker-conventions and such that take place elsewhere, but they don't really capture the charm and spirit that MacHack seemed to pull together every year. I tip my coffee to them, and if it turns out to be true, will be tipping a glass of something else to them tonight.
I'm still catching up from this weekend, but like most people with a site, every few days I browse through the referrer logs to have an idea of who is linking and what they're saying.
I so love them, as it doesn't really require any real thought, and I often back-track and leave little notes at the sites, like thank-you's or the like. Really just depends on the amount of time I have, or what I'm avoiding doing, but I figure whoever runs the site gets a warm fuzzy.
It's pushing it if I have to register for something, like a forum, but sometimes I get carried away... There's a guy out there who still doesn't know how I got into his wiki, but he seemed nice about it and I didn't hurt anything...
