My favorite n3rdling has a great primer on MacMerc about getting the most out of OS X’s Services menu. I’ve recently begun relying on the Services menu more myself, and Jon’s article showed me a couple of items I hadn’t thought about using yet. Check it out.
Tag: Mac
One of the cool things about being an independent Macintosh software developer is that you can have more open and direct communication with your customers. Ranchero’s Brent Simmons is a great believer in this concept, and he has posted a list of possible future features for Ranchero’s flagship application, NetNewsWire.
I’m not one to spread Mac rumors; heck, I wrote an entire column about the dangers of rumor-mongering and how it affects Apple’s bottom line.
I’ll make an exception in this case, however, because should this rumor prove to be true, it will not affect the majority of the Mac population, and thus, will not greatly affect Apple’s bottom line in the here and now.
MacWhispers is reporting the possibility of a revised Mac Cube as the system that commemorates the 20th anniversary of the Macintosh at the end of this year, beginning of 2004. (Not to be confused with the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh released during the tenure of Gil Amelio, which celebrated Apple’s 20th anniversary.) I’m sure that like the original TAM, this will be a premium product out of the range of a majority of Mac users, yours truly included.
I adore my G4 Cube, and I’m slowly extending its life a bit at a time. It is maxed out with 1.5 GB of RAM; it enjoys a 100 GB hard drive and a GeForce3 MX vid card. The next upgrade will likely be a new processor card, bumping it to 1 GHz or higher. A SuperDrive is currently available from MCE, but I consider it to be at too high a price point right now, especially when I have access to SuperDrive-equipped Macs at work. I know someone out there may rightly point out how in the long term, I may spend as much on upgrading my Cube as I would on a new Mac, but I don’t believe that to be the case. (Unless I ran out right now and bought the PowerLogix dual-1.2 GHz proc upgrade and aforementioned MCE SuperDrive; but I’m on a budget.)
RAM continues to be relatively cheap, as it was when I maxed out the Cube. The hard drive was purchased on sale, and with a mail-in rebate. The video card was the most expensive upgrade of the three, and it was picked up on sale as well. All told, I would hazard a guess that I’ve spent around $400 on upgrading a system I got a great deal on when Circuit City was blowing out Cube floor models.
It takes up very little space, makes very little noise, and if you weren’t paying attention, you might miss it on my desk, sandwiched between my 15″ Apple LCD and the shelf stereo’s right speaker (stereo and left speaker sit to the left of the display).
Though it suffered from a bit of an identity crisis and pricing issues early on, the Cube is one of my favorite all-time Macs, and I’d love to see Apple make an updated version, even as a limited-run, 20th-anniversary special edition. I just hope I can afford one.
Brent links to a novel proof-of-concept usage of his flagship application, showing how versatile NetNewsWire can be.
Some times, the solution is so simple, we overlook it. Brent Simmons has a quick and dirty tutorial on how to get Safari to open an external links (like from your mail client or NetNewsWire) in a new tab, rather than a new window.
It appears that Jeff has the only Gigabit Cube in the world. Now if we could just get someone to make the rest of us an upgrade. Too bad Apple won’t sell the leftover Gigabit Ethernet parts from before they EOL’ed the Cube; Gigabit Ethernet was going to be a build-to-order option.
What a killer little server this box would be, especially after you popped in a processor upgrade.
So I wanted to borrow my buddy Jim’s CD of Seussical the Musical, in light that it’s coming to town this month, and my wife and I want to take in one of the shows.
Jim says it’s loaded in iTunes, just connect to his shared music. Once we figured out that iTunes wants our IP addresses (different subnets here at work), I’m listening to John Williams – Greatest Hits 1969 – 1999 (greatest composer of the latter 20th century?), and Jim’s reconnecting with his teenage years by jamming to Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet on my TiBook.
It’s wicked fast, with no lag. This despite the heavy traffic on our corporate network and the fact that our Macs are both streaming and receiving at the same time. Apple rocks.
Yeah, I know everyone has read how the Apple Music Store has sold more than a million songs in its first week.
But Lee has broken down what that means, and the results are impressive. Better than one-and-a-half songs sold per second. I can’t wait to see Apple’s financials on this as the year progresses. My stock has already gone up about three bucks a share in the past week.
Crikey! I completely forgot to mention that the May issue of About This Particular Macintosh has been published. Doh!
I talked Lee in to interviewing our mutual acquaintance, Jon Gales, a total Mac-head who has an awesome mobile phone site, MobileTracker.net. I’ve been relying heavily on information Jon posts for our upcoming mobile plan/handy switch when our current contract is up at the end of June.
Matthew Coates has a great article on Acrobat, PDFs, and OS X. Lee went to the National Association of Broadcasters conference in Vegas, and offers a Mac-centric perspective. Ellyn offers a fantastic column on the virtues of the Golden Rule and our online lives. The usual assortment of reviews abound.
So Lee asked what made Synergy worth $5 when PTHiTunesNotifier was free and did essentially the same thing. So I decided to run down a quick comparison of the two.
- PTHiTunesNotifier offers more button choices for the button controls in the menu bar (though I prefer Synergy’s choices over PTHiTunesNotifier’s)
- PTHiTunesNotifier offers more control over the layout of the track display window
- Synergy has a few more hot key options for controlling iTunes
- Synergy offers greater control over the menu bar buttons
- Synergy includes recently played tracks in its drop-down menu; it is able to remember up to the last 50 songs played (set in the number in the prefs)
- Synergy includes the Playlist and iTunes submenus (if you don’t want to use hot keys to control iTunes)
- Synergy offers button spacing control (this can be important when you have tons of stuff in your menu bar, like I tend to)
So there you have it. If you’re already using PTHiTunesNotifier and you’re happy with it, or you’re just a cheapskate, then you’re not missing much with Synergy. To me, Synergy simply feels like the more well-polished app. I like its button choices and options better, and I consider it $5 well spent.