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Wednesday, July 31, 2002 |
$50 Amazon rebate disappears
I first read notice that the $50 rebate offered by Amazon.com on the purchase of OS X 10.2 had disappeared an hour or so ago, and after doing some digging around I can confirm that at this time the rebate appears to be off. Stay tuned to see if this rebate coupon once again supports Jaguar later today, but it looks like Amazon may have made a big mistake and it has taken steps to fix the situation.
There is no word at this time if Amazon will honor rebate coupons for those who bought OS X 10.2 yesterday when it appeared that the $50 rebate would apply. I know I didn't jump on the offer quickly, so one thing is for sure - if the rebate is off, I am out of luck either way.
This could get interesting...
4:32:53 PM 
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Why are Mac users whining so much?
Tom Negrino writes on the Backup Brain site:
"Maybe it's just because I work with Macs for a living, but I just don't understand the complaining and whining that's filling the Mac sites and mailing lists over Apple's pricing for Mac OS X 10.2."
Tom makes some great points here. Over time I have grown more and more accepting of the upgrade price for Jaguar or OS X 10.2. Paying for .Mac may be another story, but there is no doubt in my mind that everyone who has a machine capable of running OS X 10.2 will want to do so as soon after the release of the software as possible. And now that Amazon is offering $50 off the price of Jaguar, I'm sorry but there is really no excuse to complain about paying $79 for Mac OS X 10.2...
3:17:39 PM
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Just how big is Wi-Fi?
Glenn Fleishman of 80211b News points to 802.11 Planet for the numbers:
Numbers, we got numbers: 802.11 Planet summarizes two expensive reports on wireless networking revenue from the manufacture and deployment sides. It's all up, up, up. A cluster of Wi-Fi manufacturers (Linksys, Agere, and SMC) are now tops for shipments, beating out Cisco. [via Sifry Alerts, Werblog] [80211b News]
3:04:51 PM
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Do you visit the Weblogs you read?
The emergence of cool new RSS Weblog news reading applications like Brent Simmons' NetNewsWire Lite has me wondering how many people are switching to reading their favorite Web sites or even the Mac Net Journal site solely through a news aggregator rather than ever visiting the Web site?
Why do I ask? Simple. If you never actually visit MNJ, then I can never hope to either build site traffic or to rely on an advertising model to help support the effort of running Mac Net Journal. It also means I will seldom hear feedback on topics through email or through the Comment link that is at the end of every MNJ post.
Neither of these things is either good or bad, and neither is the fault of those developing stand-alone news reader applications that harvest news from multiple sites for easy reading in one place. But knowing the answers to these questions would do a lot to help those who run Weblog-style sites to decide how to make their publications more interactive and more sustainable as traffic to the site grows...
Don Strickland comments:
"So, if you don't offer an rss feed I rarely visit your site now (MacInTouch are you listening)? If you DO offer an rss feed then give me just enough to get my interest and I'll click to read the rest. Make your feeds as clear and useful as possible."
2:37:51 PM
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HotApp bumped to version 1.4
HotApp v1.4. - HotApp is a utility application that lets users control various elements of Mac OS X (10.1) directly from the keyboard. Changes include: Fixed a bug when installing HotApp for the first time where the various default AppleScripts are not automatically installed. [AppleScript Info]
12:16:48 PM
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PowerMail 4.0 improves email client
PowerMail 4.0 (Updated 7/30/02) - ($49, or $29 for a license upgrade) PowerMail is a great text-only email client with rudimentary HTML rendering capabilities and tie-ins to external spell checkers. It is speedy and stable, which along with the appealing user interface and powerful filtering capabilities make it my email client of choice.This new update, which carries a $29 fee for holders of current PowerMail licenses like me, adds better email address handling as well as improvements that make the program compatible with Mac OS X 10.2 or Jaguar.
11:59:38 AM
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Clearing up the StarOffice question
MacCentral and other sites today are correcting previous news with an announcement that there is No StarOffice planned for Mac OS X. Earlier reports had stated that Sun was working with Apple to bring StarOffice to Mac OS X.
11:30:57 AM
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Portraits & Prints photo app updated
Portraits & Prints v1.2. - Portraits & Prints is a photo layout and printing application for OS X. Version changes include greatly enhanced AppleScript support.
The AppleScript dictionary has been expanded and scripts can now access almost every property associated with an individual photo entry in a catalog. Also, photos may now be exported under script control.
There's also a new "Scripts" menu. Scripts specific to Portraits & Prints can now be installed and will appear automatically under the "Scripts" menu. Choosing a script's name from this menu will execute it. Six "starter" scripts are now included to give you an idea of how to script Portraits & Prints. The Portraits & Prints Scripter's Kit (available late August, 2002) provides detailed information and examples on how to expand Portraits & Prints' capabilities via AppleScript. [AppleScript Info]
6:49:27 AM
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It's a camcorder, but also a 2-megapixel still camera
Digital Photography Review takes a look at the Sony 2 megapixel Network Handycam.
We don't normally cover camcorders here but this one does seem fairly significant for its still image resolution. The new Sony Network Handycam IP220K (DCR-IP220K) is the first camcorder (that we know of) which offers such high resolution still images. [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]
6:46:47 AM
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What an interesting start to the morning
For the first time ever, I stepped outside this morning around 6 a.m. and startled a deer that was in our front yard. No big deal, right? Well, this deer was about four blocks from the nearest woods, right in the middle of an urban area here in the North End of Tacoma, Wash. The deer didn't like seeing a human at all...it bound in that leaping deer sort of way out of the yard, down to the sidewalk and then southbound on the residential street in front of our house. I sure hope it finds some woods...
6:40:58 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Rob McNair-Huff.
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