The September issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure.
Wes examines the kerfluffle du jour in the Mac blogosphere, that of the supposed Airport wi-fi hack which, as more and more evidence is examined, appears to be a complete fake. It’s a shame that this falsehood had to be propagated at the same time Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference was going on.
In the offering is another double dose from Mark, who looks at the power of the press when it comes to a conflict resolution, and the trickle-down effect of broadband access in the United Kingdom. Ted discusses new business models, as they pertain to the outlining community, holding up Hog Bay’s Mori as an example, in this month’s ATPO.
Chuck takes a break from showing you how to get more out of FileMaker, and instead offers a roundup of what’s new in the newly-released FileMaker Pro 8.5. Miraz Jordan continues her look at development tools that can make pages which meet basic standards for Web accessibility, this time giving RapidWeaver the what-for. If you’re interested in running Classic Mac software on your Intel Mac, Chuck shows you how in this month’s How To section.
This month’s desktop pictures are again brought to us courtesy of Robert Reis. These photos of the rolling German countryside were taken during Robert’s recent trip to Deutschland for the World Cup.
Matthew takes the PowerPC-only Guest PC for a spin, while Ellyn decided to talk to her computer this month. She was reviewing iListen after all. Lee examines the TVMax and TVMicro from Miglia, and Wes looks at the very interesting WriteRoom, which will be getting its own workout on phischbowl computing systems.
As usual, you can read the latest issue of ATPM online, or in one of three other formats. We aim to please.
Tag: Mac
- The U.S. Army now has podcasts.
- Picture Framer is one of myriad non-productive widgets, but it’s probably the first one of that category that I like.
- There are new Get a Mac ads, and in “Trust Mac”, I swear Justin Long is about to truly crack up every time he has to look at John Hodgman wearing the glasses and fake mustache.
[Via Paul.]
Michael has announced that C-Command now has forums for all of its products.
I helped him do some testing with the forum boards–which means we spent about ten minutes on it–and if you’re a SpamSieve or DropDMG user, I hope to see you around the virtual water cooler.
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Messy networks.
Dear God in Heaven.
[Via Firewheel Design.]
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Just when I thought there was never going to be anything interesting on Yahoo’s corporate blog, they have races with toy babies triggered by the licking of lollipops.
The August issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available.
Wes kicks things off by noting in this month’s Bloggable that we still really don’t have much to discuss in the Mac blogosphere but the departure of Pilgrim and Doctorow from the Mac-using citizenry. My hunch is that Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference is going to change that very shortly.
The plenteous Mark Tennent is tired of all the beeping in the world, and wishes Apple would turn its interface design skills loose on washers, dryers, and car radios. He’d also like to see a new sort of computer expo, where systems could be tested, real world-style, much like the test drive of an automobile before purchase.
Publisher, editor-in-chief, developer, hiker, and all-around nice guy Michael Tsai returns to the pages of ATPM with a look at Mac OS X’s increasing stability. Miraz Jordan continues her series on web accessiblity, this time putting Sandvox under the microscope. Sylvester is making good use of the summertime, cannonballing in to the world of Automator.
Angus Wong ponders the new Zune music player from Microsoft, and the notion of corporate character. Sylvester uses all of that Automator learning to send automated birthday greetings. ATPM reader Robert Reis traveled to Germany to cheer on Trinidad & Tobago in the FIFA World Cup, and was kind enough to share some of his shots with us for this month’s desktop pictures selection.
Lee spends a good deal of time in InDesign, so he was a shoo-in for the review of O’Reilly’s Adobe InDesign CS2 One On One. Paul upgrades his home entertainment center with the addition of Elgato’s EyeTV 250, and, fittingly enough, the Sylvester Roque edition of ATPM closes with his review of the how-to book, Keep It Simple With GarageBand.
We have several open positions on the ATPM staff, and we’re looking to add regular reviewers to our stable of writers. If you’re interested, please [drop us a line](mailto:editor@atpm.com?subject=Reviews Writer).
The federal government is apparently looking at creating a national SMS alert system.
[Via MobileTracker.]
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Congratulations to Kyle MacDonald, who, one year and fourteen trades later, bartered a red paper clip for a house.
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Making sure you tipped the right amount after the fact doesn’t do your server much good, does it?
John points to a 94x magnification of Velcro being pulled apart. Wicked cool.
You can also see Scotch tape being ripped, more Velcro, still more Velcro, and Equisetum strobilus, all worth a look.
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How much do I love Default Folder? Its functionality should be built in to OS X.
(I was just using it quite a bit today, lots of saving in different locales, etc., and I thought a shout-out was in order.)
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After months of waiting, I found it. Part of a pint was consumed this evening. It was yummy. Retrophisch™ Recommended!
I like iCal’s alarm features, but there is one feature request I have: I’d like to have both an e-mail sent and have an alarm message pop up on screen. For now, it’s an either/or proposition, and which one I select depends on the type of event I need the reminder for, and when said event takes place. Having the option of setting both types of alarms covers all of the bases.
Oh, if true, a tabbed Finder would rock.
(Yes, I am aware Path Finder has this functionality already.)
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You may have seen Seurat’s “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of LaGrande Jatte”, not realizing what a masterpiece of impressionist painting it is. My first exposure to it, and I’m betting for lots of children of the ’80s, was thanks to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Now, the famous painting has been recreated by those crazy cheeseheads.
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It kind of sucks that the 1.0b1 version of a piece of software has crashed more on me in two days of use than the alpha verisons have in the past year. Update: I guess I wasn’t clear in my above disappointment. For those keeping score, I’ve “downgraded” to Adium X 0.89.1.
I note with amusement my pal Damien’s post on TUAW regarding the release of the 1.0b1 version of Adium, in which he writes, “Please note that this is still in beta, though I was using it last night without any significant problems presenting themselves.”
I realize TUAW’s audience includes many non-geek types, who are happily using iChat, and haven’t yet discovered Adium, but it still brought a grin to my face to see a somewhat boilerplate beta-warning line for software that, while technically still in development, has been very stable–for me, at least–over the past year I’ve been using it. This is the first version I’ve seen with the 1.0 moniker attached to it in any form.
If you don’t use the voice and video chat features of iChat much, you should check out Adium (new beta). It supports multiple chat protocols (AIM, Yahoo, MSN Messenger, Jabber (Gtalk), ICQ, IRC, and more…), has a logging feature I have found most useful in finding URIs or other bits of info I forgot to note elsewhere, and is open source, so there’s no proprietary lock-in, if that’s something you’re concerned about.
MacJournals recently released the third installment of its 2005-2006 MDJ Power 25. The Power 25 is a ranking of the twenty-five most influential persons with regard to the Macintosh platform. These persons are voted on by a select group of Apple insiders, developers, and media types.
In the “Unheralded” section of the final installment, MDJ had this to say:
Only writers from TidBITS and Macworld made the list again, blanking out the talented staffs at print publications like MacAddict and at online journals such as About This Particular Macintosh (whose editor, Michael Tsai, is also the author of DropDMG and SpamSieve, two best-of-class shareware products).
I have long thought that we have a fantastic staff working on ATPM, one reason why I continue my involvement with the publication.
Unlike the other publications noted in the MDJ quote, our staff is all-volunteer; we all have “real” jobs. (Well, most of us do, any way.) Each month our writers churn out reviews and how-to columns, as well as opinion pieces, you won’t find anywhere else. We don’t regurgitate product specs and marketing materials, throwing in a few hours of the product use. We live with these items, attempting to integrate them in to our daily workflow or play time. Many a reader has told us how much they like our publication because of that depth. We strive, each issue, to be the “e-zine about the personal computing experience”.
I feel as though this publication is, in a way, an extension of my family, and I always like to see my family’s work recognized and appreciated. Thanks, Matt, for the recognition. Kudos, and thanks, to the staffers of About This Particular Macintosh. You guys and gals rock.