Archive for September, 2006

That sounds about right

Sunday, September 17th, 2006

A study says that most iPod users “don’t buy from the iTunes store”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5350258.stm. Surprise surprise.
In the 1.5 years of owning an iPod, I’ve bought maybe 20 tracks. Anything I really care about, I buy the CD and rip it. This gives me higher quality rips, and the freedom from DRM, while only paying slightly more […]

iTunes History

Thursday, September 14th, 2006

An interesting “history of the iTunes client”:http://www.tuaw.com/2006/09/14/itunes-from-0-0-to-7-0/. What amazes me is how little it’s changed.

Browser proxy app

Thursday, September 14th, 2006

Ok, this new “Projects” section is for me to document ideas for little random apps that I want to write some day.
This is the first one.
Here’s the problem: I use vpn and then a MS terminal services client to work from home. The problem is that, running a browser through RDP is pretty painful. So […]

Zune Zune Zune

Thursday, September 14th, 2006

Lot’s of news about it today. I’ll let you google for it yourself.
I tried to a little bit, but I still came away with questions.
They seem to make a big point about how PlaysForSure isn’t dead. But what’s the relation then exactly? Does it use something like PFS? Can the device play tracks you get […]

New Microsoft Keyboard

Wednesday, September 13th, 2006

The “Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop”:http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/productdetails.aspx?pid=080. Here’s “CNet”:http://news.com.com/Microsoft+unveils+Vista-friendly+peripherals/2100-1042_3-6115484.html. Looks like a comfort curve + scissor switch design, with a fancy mouse/keyboard recharger. Interesting that they’ve done away with the number pad. Hopefully they’ll have this thing out at frys or something so I can go feel it.
Also with a proximity censor and ambient light sensor […]

Apple Announcements

Tuesday, September 12th, 2006

As anyone who cares about Apple stuff probably already knows, Apple “announced some new stuff”:http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/09/12/showtime/index.php today. Lots of “meh” items, but a few noteworthy ones.
* iTunes videos are now 640×480. That’s pretty good, almost DVD. Makes the value proposition much better, and the quality will be very comparable with torrent-able HDTV recordings. Where is the […]

IronChefPython

Saturday, September 9th, 2006

This is some “cool stuff”:http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/screenroom/ironpython_flv.html.
It’s amazing how much sense the Common Language Runtime makes. It’s really cool how you can just re-implement any Python method in C# and realize a huge performance improvement with very little glue code.

Myths

Friday, September 8th, 2006

Sometimes people make really annoying posts “like this”:http://www.tuaw.com/2006/09/08/the-little-things-anti-aliased-fonts-help-mac-os-x-shine/.
As the author was clearly corrected, XP does support anti-aliased fonts. And even his screenshot is a poor example, because the title bar of the shown window has anti-aliased text.
Without ClearType turned on, XP doesn’t anti-alias your font until it hits a certain size. If he’d done a […]

Mid-range desktops from Apple

Wednesday, September 6th, 2006

I’ll just say that I think the new “24 inch iMac”:http://www.apple.com/imac/ only strengthens my theory about Apple not working on a low-end Mac Pro.

Aperture and Lightroom

Tuesday, September 5th, 2006

Here’s a “Aperture v.s. Lightroom Comparison”:http://blog.duncandavidson.com/2006/09/aperture_vs_lig.html.
One thing he didn’t mention is what kind of hardware he runs these programs on. Aperture on a Powerbook G4 is pretty painful. But then again, most apps are. From the sound of it, he must be using at least some kind of G5.
Also, it’s interesting that he doesn’t find […]