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Thursday, May 16, 2002 |
Key Xing v2.1.1
Key Xing is a keyboard launch utility that can launch any type of file, program, or folder, execute system actions such as "Sleep" or "Hide Others" and execute compiled AppleScripts. This release includes several enhancements pertaining to AppleScript. [AppleScript Info]
8:03:51 PM 
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The comments that just won't die
I am seeing more flow to Mac Net Journal today thanks to MacCentral posting a story called Apple accused of Microsoft-like tactics. The story points to Farhad Manjoo's Wired News piece Apple "bundle" create a rumble, which was spurred by my comments about Apple bundling iChat and other applications with OS X. Why bring this up again today? Because it illustrates the flow of a story from one point to another and the amount of time it can take for things to hit various Web sites. I wrote my initial comments on May 6, the day that Apple announced the upcoming Jaguar update to OS X at the World Wide Developer Conference in California. I wasn't at the conference, but I had an opinion about Apple including more and more free applications with OS X that have an advantage over small developers' products in the same product categories. I compared this practice of bundling applications with the standard operating system to Microsoft bundling applications with Windows, and I knew that in general the rest of the Mac community would throw up its arms at any mention of Apple and Microsoft doing anything similar to each other. A link to my initial comments of Apple "pulling a Microsoft" appeared on the Macsurfer site an hour or so later and I started getting feedback on the piece - most of it the same kind of thing that I expected (there is no comparison between what Apple and Microsoft are doing...how dare you...you are going to hurt Apple...). I had a short dialogue with readers of this site through the Comments feature that can be used with Radio-based Web sites, and by last weekend it looked like the story was dead and things were moving on, with me posting more about how people can get the most out of Mac OS X. I kept seeing some traffic on the site, for instance after Dave Winer commented on bundling and that it was a fact of life for software developers, but the surge of traffic was gone. The traffic resumed earlier this week when Wired News ran its story, which resulted in more negative comments for my site. Manjoo did a good job on his story, but it struck me how long it took an online publication to follow up on a controversial topic that had appeared a week before the Wired News piece arrived. And now today, there is a whole new round of discussion about my 10-day-old comments thanks to MacCentral trying to fill out a slow Mac news day by pointing at Manjoo's Wired News story. This whole process is interesting. The only real news in the whole situation were my initial comments on May 6 and then Manjoo's follow up article that expanded on my comments and showed just how out of the Mac mainstream that my opinions were a week later. But even more interesting is how long it takes supposedly agile and responsive online publications to bring stories to the reading public. Aren't Internet publications supposed to be able to publish more timely coverage of events and happenings in their target news area? If so, why is it that it takes a week to write about something that was a valid comment and issue on May 6, but that is no longer a valid concern a week or 10 days later? In this case, if you really wanted to get to the heart of the news when it was actually happening, the only way to do that was to follow this Weblog and the comments that its readers submitted that became a real-time dialogue on an interesting issue. Otherwise, you can read the seven-day-old coverage of the issue in Wired News or read the 10-day-old coverage of the coverage of the issue on MacCentral.
5:02:30 PM
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Jaguar on the Loose
Read the online version of the Mac Newsletter from O'Reilly that sums up the last week's worth of information about the upcoming Jaguar release of OS X. One thing that encourages me is the opening note from Derrick Story about how much Jaguar rocks on a 400 Mhz PowerBook G3, which is the same machine I use full time right now...
11:26:43 AM
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Apple suggests Disk Utility over fsck
In a newly-posted Knowledge Base article, Apple offers its definitive advice about the question of whether it is best to reboot and start from an OS X installation CD to use Disk Utility to repair an OS X volume, or whether it is better to reboot into single-user mode and run the Unix utility fsck to check and repair your OS X disk. The conclusion: Use Disk Utility unless you don't have the OS X CD with you.
My take on this: I will still use fsck predominantly, because it is so much more convenient than carrying the OS X install CD with me everywhere...
9:56:32 AM
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OmniWeb updated with 4.1 sneaky peek 81
For the first time in a few days, the Omni Group updated its popular OmniWeb browser to version 4.1 sneaky peek 81. This update is supposed to address layout problems with table-laden Web pages. If you are using the latest version of OmniWeb, you can grab the update by going to the OmniWeb menu and selecting "Check for Updates."
So far in my use, I still see table layout problems with this new version, but as usual...progress is being made...
8:59:42 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Rob McNair-Huff.
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