John Gruber writing on Apple’s choice of AAC as the DRM-free format sold on iTunes, makes this interesting comparison: Apple’s use of AAC in lieu of MP3 is analogous to the Mac’s switch to USB in 1998. USB was an industry standard that wasn’t taking off because PCs didn’t ship with built-in USB ports, which […]
The Future Parc at the Cebit trade fair in Hanover, Germany is a place to showcase future technologies. I didn’t go, but two of the products I read about caught my imagination and got me thinking. Here they are: Tobii Technology’s eye tracking system It’s one thing to use multi-touch to move things about on […]
Over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog, Scott McNulty has a review of Google Desktop for the Mac version 1.0. If QuickSilver were not enough, may this provide Apple the substantive reason to improve the speed and responsiveness of Spotlight. Please.
When Apple announced the iPhone, I signed up for “more information” and gave them my email address. Today they sent me this: On so many levels this is classic Apple. Update 1: The graphic I uploaded from the email I got from Apple has misteriously disappeard. I’m guessing it’s some copyright issue, but I recieved […]
Today Apple announced that all songs from EMI will be available free of DRM (digital rights management) limitations. In the past it was like this for EMI music on iTunes: $0.99/song $10.00/album AAC at 128 kbps All music with DRM (only playable on 5 computers, can’t burn in same playlist over 7 times, only playable […]
One of my favorite bloggers, Scott Stevenson, recently wrote about a subject near and dear to my heart, namely, some Simple Truths About Cross-Platform Apps. Scott makes some great points: Mac users bought the computer they did because they found the experience more appealing. Bringing an application across from Windows with minor tweaks simply won’t […]
This is part 1 in my “Blogs I Read” series. I hope you find it useful. Infinite Loop – Ars Technica Staff – Feed I found Ars Technica before it had an RSS feed and it quickly earned a place on my bookmark bar. Infinite Loop is the Apple subsection or “journal” of their main […]
I just got this email from Apple: What can I say? Apple, you just made my day. (And pushed me that much closer to a Video iPod…) It looks like there’s more content on the way. Did I mention since I attended the conference, all of this is “free”? It will be interesting to see […]
A few months ago we got a bunch of Intel Mac minis (Intel Core Solo). We got 64 for automation and a some others for testers to use. When I saw the pile of boxes sitting in the hall to be recycled, I knew I had to save them. We piled them into my office […]
Jonathan Rentzsch is putting on a small developer conference called C4. For various reasons I’m not able to go, but oh how I want to. I’m SO glad it’s going to be re-broadcast like Evening at Adler was. Any how, I just found out that one of our Office developers, namely Olof Hellman, is making […]
David Weiss 