Tao of Mac

Nov 14th 2005 · 2 min read

Restlessness

Wasn't too bad, for a Monday. At least I got some planning done, and started a minor thermonuclear war where it regards mindsets.

No, I didn't mean handsets, I meant mindsets.

You know, the only kind of fossil that has no physical substance.

Stuff of note:

  • Various noises about 10.4.4 (which is supposed to be the first "lockstep" version to completely sync PowerPC and Intel stuff) as well as Intel s in January are doing the rounds. My take? I'm waiting to see, but if I needed a I'd buy one now, no doubt about it. One of my colleagues actually SMSed me on his way to our corporate HQ in Newbury to let us know he'd taken a little detour through the Regent St. Store, and instead of waiting months upon end to get an updated over here, I might well do the same next time I'm over.
  • Nuno must be having fun. After a recent lunch where he complained about not having a decent stats package, launched Analytics today. I have long skimped on handling my own web stats (I don't for statistics), but having looked through the features the only thing I could wish for (which isn't granted yet but is already in their FAQ) is for it to e-mail its reports. And the most interesting aspect of it all is, of course, that they are essentially opening up their own tools to generate a positive feedback loop - and improve all their other services (AdSense, AdWords, basic search, etc.). Finally, an advertising company with real smarts.
  • SonyEricsson is pulling some smart moves, too, by launching three new low-end handsets. None of them are UMTS ones (not necessarily a smart thing, but understandable given the target market), and all of them offer some form of simplified navigation. Now that I call a smart move indeed - ever had (older) family members ask you to do something on their phone?
  • Apparently  offered to the MIT $100 laptop and was declined. Makes some sense, since the hardware would probably not be able to cope, but it's strange to think that they refused it based on it "not being open source" when Darwin is out there, and Aqua is light-years beyond anything can come up with - Inkwell would be a killer feature for kids, but I guess zealotry and fundamentalism got in the way, and they'll just have to use a crummy cut-down Gnome.
  • Via Carlos Santos, Linksys One. Yes, folks, Linksys is going to leverage their hardware and become a VoIP enabler/intermediary. Ironic to see that they're delivering the low-end solutions that Cisco never really wanted to supply...

In the meantime, I'm starting to love , which I rediscovered yesterday after an early version that didn't work tool well.

What it does is pretty simple: It hides applications after a specified period of inactivity (you can set exceptions), which makes for a very clean desktop (although it can be unsettling to have vanish the first few times - I always think "Oh no, it's crashed again...").

Would probably be nicer if it faded them quickly after a bit (instead of the panicky "not there" moment), but that's probably much harder to code.