Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Running and Spunning
- The more I use Tiger, the more I love it. My latest newly discoverd gem: Mail only makes a "new mail" notification sound if one or more of the new messages is not spam. Beautiful. Come to think of it, maybe this was there before Tiger and I didn't notice it; I get so frustrated at the increasing number of websites whose ads include audio that I go long stretches these days with my computer on mute. Next feature I want to see: a variant of pop-up blocker that automatically silences ads. Or maybe a Federal law against such ads. Or perhaps a heavy object dropped on the head of the idiot who thought up the idea.
- I'm not interested in any third-party solutions that might be out there that might already do this, so please don't write in with any.
- Come to think of it, please don't write in trying to convince me to use one of them, either.
- When Detroit won game one of the current best-of-seven series with Miami, every sports analyst on the planet proclaimed that Miami had no chance to win the series because Detroit was too good. Miami then promptly won the next two games, and every one of those same sports analysts reversed their position entirely and claimed that Detroit had no chance of winning the series because Miami was too good. Naturally, in the game taking place tonight, Detroit is killing Miami. What kills me is that every one of those analysts has known the whole time that this is a series between two really good teams that's destined to go down to the wire, with results impossible to predict...but every one of them knows that they'd be crucified for saying so. Recently we've somehow become a society in which you have to take a side, you have to be right or wrong, and while switching viewpoints is okay, you can only get away with it if you do so completely. Perspective, the notion that there might be more than one possible thing happening, none of that seems to be allowed. And so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that (with a few notable exceptions) most of the folks who responded to my most recent article on the Mac mini refused to even consider the possibility that the mini might be doing something other than selling billions of units per second. These are undoubtedly the same folks who, if the product were cancelled tomorrow, would immediately jump sides and claim they knew the mini was the next Cube after all.
- I guess I also shouldn't be surprised that folks still want to try and frame the thing in terms of whether I was right or wrong about it. I've said all along, despite the deaf ears refusing to hear it, that I hoped I would end up being wrong about it. As evidence continues to mount that I was right all along, believe me, I'm not celebrating. My reason for writing about it this past weekend, then? The hope that, no matter how Quixotic it might sound, I just might manage to convince Apple to swallow its pride and get the darn thing off the market before any more damage is done.
- Come to think of it, one of the most annoying things of all about the Mac mini is that even though it has little to no relevance to the Macintosh in the real world, the Mac Web continues to waste more and more words pretending as if the Mac mini were the only Macintosh model on the market, thus becoming ever more of a vast wasteland. Six months ago, there was still some good content. These days it's just a bunch of geeks wanking about the Mac mini from a thousand different geek angles. Almost none of it is worth reading these days, and that's just sad. The Mac platform is reaching perhaps its finest hour, just as the Mac Web is reaching perhaps its lowest point ever. I swear to God, there have to be some talented Mac users out there who want to write about relevant aspects of the platform and would flourish given the chance. Maybe I need to put out a casting call to identify them, and give them that chance. Lord knows it would be nice to have some stuff worth reading again.
- I'm fully aware that "spunning" is not a word. Please don't write in.
- The more I use Tiger, the more I love it. My latest newly discoverd gem: Mail only makes a "new mail" notification sound if one or more of the new messages is not spam. Beautiful. Come to think of it, maybe this was there before Tiger and I didn't notice it; I get so frustrated at the increasing number of websites whose ads include audio that I go long stretches these days with my computer on mute. Next feature I want to see: a variant of pop-up blocker that automatically silences ads. Or maybe a Federal law against such ads. Or perhaps a heavy object dropped on the head of the idiot who thought up the idea.
- I'm not interested in any third-party solutions that might be out there that might already do this, so please don't write in with any.
- Come to think of it, please don't write in trying to convince me to use one of them, either.
- When Detroit won game one of the current best-of-seven series with Miami, every sports analyst on the planet proclaimed that Miami had no chance to win the series because Detroit was too good. Miami then promptly won the next two games, and every one of those same sports analysts reversed their position entirely and claimed that Detroit had no chance of winning the series because Miami was too good. Naturally, in the game taking place tonight, Detroit is killing Miami. What kills me is that every one of those analysts has known the whole time that this is a series between two really good teams that's destined to go down to the wire, with results impossible to predict...but every one of them knows that they'd be crucified for saying so. Recently we've somehow become a society in which you have to take a side, you have to be right or wrong, and while switching viewpoints is okay, you can only get away with it if you do so completely. Perspective, the notion that there might be more than one possible thing happening, none of that seems to be allowed. And so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that (with a few notable exceptions) most of the folks who responded to my most recent article on the Mac mini refused to even consider the possibility that the mini might be doing something other than selling billions of units per second. These are undoubtedly the same folks who, if the product were cancelled tomorrow, would immediately jump sides and claim they knew the mini was the next Cube after all.
- I guess I also shouldn't be surprised that folks still want to try and frame the thing in terms of whether I was right or wrong about it. I've said all along, despite the deaf ears refusing to hear it, that I hoped I would end up being wrong about it. As evidence continues to mount that I was right all along, believe me, I'm not celebrating. My reason for writing about it this past weekend, then? The hope that, no matter how Quixotic it might sound, I just might manage to convince Apple to swallow its pride and get the darn thing off the market before any more damage is done.
- Come to think of it, one of the most annoying things of all about the Mac mini is that even though it has little to no relevance to the Macintosh in the real world, the Mac Web continues to waste more and more words pretending as if the Mac mini were the only Macintosh model on the market, thus becoming ever more of a vast wasteland. Six months ago, there was still some good content. These days it's just a bunch of geeks wanking about the Mac mini from a thousand different geek angles. Almost none of it is worth reading these days, and that's just sad. The Mac platform is reaching perhaps its finest hour, just as the Mac Web is reaching perhaps its lowest point ever. I swear to God, there have to be some talented Mac users out there who want to write about relevant aspects of the platform and would flourish given the chance. Maybe I need to put out a casting call to identify them, and give them that chance. Lord knows it would be nice to have some stuff worth reading again.
- I'm fully aware that "spunning" is not a word. Please don't write in.
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