Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
I’ve been a Mac user since 1991, so it’s inevitable that I’d have this as a category.
For some reason, Apple doesn’t include a preference to default to plain text in Mail, the bundled e-mail application. The preference is there, though, just not in the interface.
Quit Mail, then type this into the command line:
defaults write com.apple.mail PreferPlainText -bool TRUE
(via MacOSXHints)
Hey, Tim —
Could you do me a favor and point Rick to this webpage?
You might want to give him a drool cup first, though. ;)
(via Phil)
Looks like Apple’s iTunes Music Store is catching on (or, at the very least, getting enough interest to warrant an interesting experiment): in the US market, the soundtrack for the movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen will only be available through the iTMS — no CD’s will be pressed.
I’ve got mixed feelings on this, personally. One of the things that has kept me from jumping full-bore into the iTMS for my music is the paucity of full ID3 tags in the purchased files. As I’ve been importing my CD collection, I’ve been working on being very thorough with the metadata included with each song: Artist, Title, Album, Year of release, and Composer are all information that I want available in my collection. Unfortunately, with the tracks I’ve purchased from the iTMS so far, Artist, Title, and Album seem to be all you get.
With a soundtrack release that (at least in the US market) has no physical media, how easy is it going to be for me to track down the rest of the metadata that I want included for search and organizational purposes? Not very, would be my guess, which concerns me. I like the idea, concept, and execution of the iTMS a lot, and I do support this experiment — just gimme my metadata!
(via MacRumors)
There’s been a fair amount of brouhaha recently in the Mac/PC circles over the benchmarks for Apple’s new G5 Power Mac — Apple’s benchmarks show the G5 trouncing equivalent PC chips, and the results have been called into question. Apple just got a nice vote of support, though, as NASA has released independent benchmarks that seem to support Apple’s claims.
Seeing as how I honestly can’t remember the last time I had to run a Classic (pre-OS X) application on my box, the Declaration of Indepence from OS 9 is right up my alley.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that Classic and OSX are not created equal, that they are drastically different in so many ways, that among these are file sharing, system crashes, software compatibility, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, we should banish Classic from our computers.
(via Brent Simmons)
Regardless of how Apple corporate wants to portray its products, the Mac isn’t a machine for the masses any more than red wine is the preferred beverage at baseball games. To be honest, the masses don’t have the capability to appreciate the elegance and depth of this platform.
(via The Book of FSCK)
I finally got a new digital camera last week…. It’s pretty nice. I wish I could download pictures to my PC. Thankfully, I have a Mac now. (I hated when annoying people said things like that before I had a Mac. ;)
— Evan Williams, Back Behind the Lens
Everyone else on the ‘net has reported this already, but hey, I’ve got visitors — I’m allowed to be a bit slow.
Steve Jobs announced the usual slew of goodies during his WWDC keynote speech. To sum up:
After the iTunes Music Store opened, there were two recurring comments from much of the Mac world: why was it US only, and what about independent labels? It’s commonly accepted that the intricacies of international copyright law are most likely what’s restricting the iTMS to the US for now, but aside from a few rumors, the question of whether the store would open up to more than just the major labels was still unanswered.
Yesterday, however, Apple hosted a special invitation only event for independent and smaller music labels, giving them information on how they could join with the iTMS. A representative from CDBaby was at the event, and has posted an extremely interesting rundown of Apple’s offer to indy labels, mixed in with a lot of information about the iTMS system.
Interesting reading, even just for the peeks into how Apple is handling all the behind-the-scenes details of the iTMS. From what I can see, I think this is just going to keep getting better and better.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball says many of the same things I did, only far more professionally.