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Russell Finn’s Blog Posts

Exclusive: New Tiger window style deciphered

Published April 15, 2005

Paul Thurrott accidentally wrote a pretty favorable review of Mac OS X 10.4 (“Tiger”). Towards the end, he apparently realized he was losing all his street cred in the Windows world, so he threw in some gratuitously negative comments — “Tiger is in fact a minor upgrade with few major new features, more akin to what we’d call a service pack in the Windows world” — which, apart from being patently ridiculous, supports the not-very-original premise that Apple fans are “suckers” who will immediately cough up the cash for mere glitz.

  • Pretty tough stance for a self-described “Mac fan [his] entire life”; so much so, we learn, that in 1987 he replaced his Commodore 64 with … an Apple IIgs. This was followed by an Amiga; then, when Commodore went belly up, a PC running OS/2 — this is one industry analyst who really knows how to pick winners — and finally, in 2001, an iBook. Pity the poor “Mac fan”, pressing his nose against the glass for fourteen years.

I mention all this as an excuse to use another of Thurrott’s comments as a jumping-off point for an observation I have not seen elsewhere as yet. (Not that anyone’s going to see it here, but at least I’ll be on the record.) By now many people have commented on the new window style seen in Mail, where the title bar and toolbar blend together in a single gradient. Thurrott remarks upon “yet another user interface style”, which he calls “plastic”; others have called this change “arbitrary” or “gratuitous” or “confusing”.

Well, I think I’ve figured out the logic. Here are some applications using the new window style: Mail, Help Viewer, System Preferences, Xcode 2, and the Spotlight window itself. What do these all have in common? The Spotlight search field. The new window style, to me, is a visual cue that the application supports Spotlight as a primary navigation mechanism.

Unfortunately this analysis fails in two important respects:

  1. I haven’t found anything in the Apple documentation that suggests this usage is intentional. (Of course, the Tiger developer documentation hasn’t been publicly released yet.)

  2. A huge exception to the rule is the Finder, whose windows still (inexplicably) use the “brushed metal” style. You’d expect that if a Spotlight cue were present anywhere, it’d be in the new Finder.

Still, this is the best theory I know to explain the new style, and I haven’t seen anyone else mention it, so I hereby take credit for it.

  • On the other hand, Mail’s toolbar icons… I understand why they’re in “capsules” (to allow for toolbar button “groups” — though it makes the non-grouped icons needlessly cramped), and I even know why they’re “centered” (they’re not; they’re left-justified over the message list, skipping over the mailbox source list — a bit of a hack, but having Delete and Junk over the source list is potentially confusing). But I won’t make apologies for them, either.

[2005-04-16: Added Help Viewer to the sample applications.]

[2005-04-22: Well, I could be wrong… see first comment.]

[2005-05-05: Yes, I’m wrong… see second comment.]

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That's better…

Published March 9, 2005

Following up to my last post: Today Dantz released a new Retrospect Driver Update that supports the DVR-109. I hooked everything back up and fired up Retrospect; it recognized the drive immediately and proceeded to happily write to my 16x media. (At around 360 MB/min, too; not bad, although perhaps not the boost I was looking for.)

Now the only problem is the fan in the Bytecc case, which is fairly loud; I may have to move the 109 into my G4 tower if I’m going to be using it as the primary drive from here on out. Still, I’m happy to (eventually) get things working the way they’re supposed to.

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How not to backup to DVD+R faster

Published March 2, 2005

My backup strategy for the three household Macs involves periodic archiving of about 60 GB data from an external hard drive (to which the “daily” backups are made) to DVD+R discs. Now that there are 16x DVD burners on the market for under $100, I figured it was time to upgrade in order to speed up the process. I wanted to go from a DVR-106 to a DVR-108, which is supported by my backup program (Retrospect); but by the time I was ready to pull the trigger it had been replaced by the DVR-109. Well, OK, I figured; it’s probably enough like the 108 that I can get Retrospect configured to use it.

Trying to save a few bucks, I purchased a bare drive and an external FireWire enclosure from an online media vendor (SuperMediaStore.com) that had a good price. I did this on a Tuesday and requested two-day shipping, so I’d have it in time for the weekend. Long story short: the enclosure turned out not to be in stock; I tried to get the vendor to send the drive out early; they ended up shipping the entire order a week later. So much for two-day shipping. [I emailed them that I was annoyed my entire order had been delayed for an item the web site had said was in stock; and would some portion of my wasted two-day shipping charges be refunded? I’m still waiting for an answer on that one…]

When the package arrived, I found the bare drive wrapped in bubble wrap and thrown into the box along with the enclosure and a bunch of foam peanuts. I know I didn’t order a retail pack, but I expected the drive to at least be in a box. Still, everything appeared to be in order and undamaged.

Turns out the Bytecc enclosure is so cheaply made that the plastic strips that are supposed to cover the gap between the top and bottom lids don’t fit properly. Well, never mind; at this point I really just want to get the drive to work. System Profiler recognized it; Retrospect didn’t, but I expected that. Started up the configuration process; Retrospect asked for a disc of the type to be used for the backup, so I gave it a blank 16x DVD+R disc. Then it asked for another one. Then it gave up with an uninformative error message (after burning just enough data to each disc to make it unusable). In a momentary lapse of reason, I tried again with the same result.

Hey, didn’t I hear there was a firmware update for the 109 to support additional high-speed media? Oh, wait, the Mac flasher doesn’t support the 109. Great. Hey, somebody at xlr8yourmac.com says you can use Virtual PC and a USB connection. Let’s see, my PowerBook has a USB 2.0 connection, and I’ve got this spare hard disk enclosure that happens to have USB 2.0. By perching the 109 on the 3.5″ case I was able to hook it up to the USB connector and thence to the PowerBook. The Pioneer flasher worked perfectly under Virtual PC — the first thing that had gone completely right.

It turned out to be the only thing. System Profiler reported the updated firmware, but once again Retrospect failed to configure the drive, Now I’ve wasted six blank discs and about two hours of time.

At this point I did what I should have done in the first place: I called Other World Computing, which is one of the two vendors Dantz includes on their compatibility list with FireWire DVR-108 drives. They now show their burner with the 109 (like everywhere else, the 108 seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth). They also explicitly list Retrospect compatibility, but I thought I’d better make sure. The person I spoke to initially claimed it was supported as a “generic” device, but after checking with someone said they’d just sent a sample to Dantz and in about six weeks they’d have built-in support. (He implied my problem configuring the 109 was the case I was using, but of course he’d say that.)

End result: As a result of not wanting to wait a few weeks and trying to save a few bucks, I have a DVR-109 drive in a cheesy FireWire case that (thanks to PatchBurn 3) will apparently work with everything except Retrospect — the one thing I wanted to use it for.

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Hey, where've you been?

Published February 17, 2005

Well, I’ve been really busy, is all. How do you people find time to post every day? I’ve got a wife and a kid (make that *two* kids now, which is obviously a large part of the issue), a job, a commute… I barely have time to listen to the *radio* anymore. (And I lost my iPod somewhere…)

So since virtually all of the activity over the last six weeks has been from comment spammers, and since WordPress 1.5 has just hit the streets, I’m taking the opportunity to switch over. You like it? It’s so *purty*, too…

Switching was pretty easy, too, especially since I’d been playing around with WP last December and kept a parallel copy of all my posts; so it was really just a matter of following the 1.5 upgrade instructions. A few little graphical glitches here and there, but I’ll probably be hacking the CSS anyway soon.

I should probably think of a more clever name for the weblog, too. Hmm…

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Fair is fair…

Published January 3, 2005

[Previously](http://www.sprucehill.com/rsf/wp/2004/11/18/) I commented upon the so-called “DeLay Rule” that would allow Tom DeLay to keep his leadership position even if indicted.

Lo and behold, the Republicans in the House have just [reversed this rule](http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20050104/ap_on_go_co/house_ethics), apparently at the request of leadership — that is, Tom DeLay and Speaker Dennis Hastert. (Tip of the hat to [Josh Marshall](http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_01_02.php#004333).)

Let’s give credit where credit is due. I sincerely hope this is not an isolated incident, but a trend towards true leadership (on both sides of the aisle — the Democrats also strengthened their own ethics rules).

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Dear Paul Thurrott…

Published December 8, 2004

Could you explain just what you mean in your article [Apple Macintosh Installed Base Set To Grow Again](http://www.internet-nexus.com/2004_12_05_archive.htm#110251423620527604)?

1) You show Forbes quoting Goldman Sachs as saying in 2005 Apple will see “unit growth of 10% compared to our industry growth estimate of 9%”. Doesn’t that mean, at least, that *Goldman* thinks Apple’s installed base will grow relative to the rest of the industry? Why should we use Goldman’s numbers for Apple, but Gartner or Merrill Lynch’s numbers for the industry? Isn’t that comparing apples to — no, I promised not to use that phrase again…

2) You say “if just one ex-PC user switches to the Mac this year, than the Mac’s ‘installed base’ increases, rendering this headline moot.” Doesn’t this argument *support* the headline, instead of making it moot (which I looked up to make sure I understood: “1. Subject to debate; arguable / 2. b. Of no practical importance; irrelevant”)?

3) “I’ll mention once again just for kicks that I’d love to see Apple really grow its Mac market, though no one seems to believe it.” I’d *like* to believe it, but as you seem to keep going out of your way to find the worst in every Apple item, it’s hard. Perhaps twenty years’ of Macintosh use has enfeebled my mind.

Thanks for your consideration.

[Since I can hardly pretend Paul Thurrott reads my weblog, I actually sent this by email as well. Let’s see if I get an answer.]

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The Tres Amigos of Iraq

Published December 3, 2004

Al Kamen in the Washington Post (scroll down):

> President Bush announced yesterday he’ll be awarding the presidential Medal of Freedom to the Tres Amigos of Iraq: former CIA chief George J. “Slam Dunk” Tenet, who gave him bad information; retired Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, who didn’t have enough troops for the postwar occupation; and former Iraq viceroy L. Paul Bremer, who complained about the troop levels too late.

The Medal of Freedom? Are you kidding?

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Prehistoric links fixed

Published December 2, 2004

To the fraction of a person who cares: the one [page][] on the Internet that links to my pre-MT blog is now correctly redirected to the equivalent items in the MT blog. (Originally, I used a [Redirect][] directive instead of a [Rewrite][]. After I reinstalled MT and switched to a MySQL database because the Berkeley DB was corrupted, I just put the archives at a compatible URL.)

Oh, and Google finally indexed my website again, so searching for the title of the weblog now yields the weblog as the second result (the first result is still [Blogshares][], for some reason — I don’t play, but I claimed my blog anyway).

That is all. Please resume your regular indifference.

[page]: http://www.nickbastin.com/archives/000146.php
[Redirect]: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_alias.html
[Rewrite]: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_rewrite.html
[Blogshares]: http://blogshares.com

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Ketchup: the "Esperanto of cuisine"

Published December 1, 2004

I’m not sure exactly where I came across the reference to this article about [ketchup][] — apparently it hit the blogosphere a while back — but like many others I found it quite fascinating.

[ketchup]: http://gladwell.com/2004/2004_09_06_a_ketchup.html

The author, Malcolm Gladwell, writes periodically in [The New Yorker][] on a variety of topics and apparently makes them all equally fascinating. His articles are archived [here](http://gladwell.com/archive.html). (Bonus pick: [How caffeine created the modern world][].)

[The New Yorker]: http://www.newyorker.com/
[How caffeine created the modern world]: http://gladwell.com/2001/2001_07_30_a_java.htm

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Incredible

Published November 28, 2004

I finally got to see _The Incredibles_ — I took my wife for her birthday. (We had decided based on the reviews that it was probably too intense for my five-year-old daughter; as it turned out we were completely justified. Maybe when she’s eight.)

Summary: Fantastic. I can’t imagine any way it could have possibly been made any better. It’s difficult to imagine another studio who could have even made this movie. The set design alone is worthy of an Academy Award nomination — there’s a scene in which the walls of a room are decorated in minute detail, even though the room is not directly lit and the walls are barely visible. But as usual with Pixar, it’s the story that propels the picture; the technology is there to support the story and not to be the main focus.

Every Pixar film has met or surpassed the previous release, and _The Incredibles_ is no exception. It’s difficult to imagine how _Cars_ (scheduled for November 2005) will continue the streak; the early teaser is amusing but not particularly captivating.

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