Tag: Mac

The August issue of About This Particular Macintosh is out. Ellyn reminds us to take some time out, while Ted dives in to mindmappers in his latest outlining column. Wes has the complete coverage of the Dashboard vs Konfabulator from the Mac blog world. Sylvester walks readers through making a silent movie, which, alas, was the last great task of his beloved FrankenMac before it gave up the ghost.
This month’s desktop pictures section is a bazaar of reader-submitted photos from around the world. Greg looks at Excel Hacks, and Kirk reviews the Rolls-Royce of mini-speakers, while Ellyn offers her thoughts on Wil Wheaton’s Just a Geek. Finally, fellow Dallas metroplex resident Adam Zaner reviews the Belkin Media Reader, an iPod accessory I have long had my eye on.
As always, the issue is available in regular, premium, and super.

As a 12-inch PowerBook owner, the blurb on MacMinute about QuickerTek’s new Whip Antenna for the smallest PowerBook piqued my interest. However, after looking over the product page, I’m left wondering if this wouldn’t just be something that would easily break off. It appears to be a permanent or semi-permanent installation; how does that affect my three-year AppleCare warranty? The kicker: 90 bucks. Sheesh. Fifty I could understand, but it seems a little overpriced as is.

Wittiness like this is one reason why I decided to support our Mr. Gruber. (The latter of which won me an iLife ’04 book + DVD from Jim Heid! Thanks, John!)

So it seems that just about everyone has weighed in on the Dashboard vs Konfabulator issue. I happen to firmly echo the sentiments of John Gruber, and, like Michael, feel the bigger picture is getting lost in the melee.
I have tried Konfabulator and its many widgets. I was initially impressed, but in the end, I feel the widgets are nothing more than extra eye candy that, as Gruber points out, takes up even more memory from my system. I fooled around with Panic’s Stattoo, which seeks to provide the same sort of feedback that most of the widgets available for Konfabulator do. Stattoo, however, is an application running different “capsules” within its environment, whereas each Konfabulator widget is running as a separate app, each loading the Konfabulator runtime engine. If I were going to use one over the other, I would go with Panic’s offering, based on the types of capsules vs widgets involved.
In the end, the point is moot, as neither will find a permanent home on my systems. I just don’t see the point. I can tell the time and date because it’s already up in the menu bar. I can tell how much battery charge is left on my PowerBook because it’s already up in the menu bar. I can tell my iChat status because it’s already up in the menu bar. I can tell what the weather is, and what it’s going to be, because I already have WeatherPop Advance running–you guessed it–in the menu bar. I keep iTunes minimized, and position the window where I can always tell what song is playing, so I have no need for that particular widget, either. For that matter, I use Synergy as my alternative iTunes controller, because the buttons reside–drumroll, please–in the menu bar. If I have new mail, the bouncing Mailsmith icon in the Dock is sufficient to warn me.
I realize there are many other widgets out there for Konfabulator that do other things, but after looking through the gallery, there are some that are cool, but none that I cannot live without. I would rather have my system resources back.
Which brings us back to Dashboard, and how it differs from Konfabulator in that regard. Gruber has an excellent summary of this, and I see that the impact on system resources will be less when using Dashboard gadgets than Konfabulator widgets.
Like Michael, I personally am more inclined to fool around with building my own Dashboard gadget, because I already know some HTML and CSS, and can build on that knowledge. There is a greater reach toward the hobbyist market with Dashboard, versus Konfabulator. It will be fun to play around in.
Of course, the Dashboard gadgets are going to have to evolve beyond the typical widgets and capsules I have already mentioned. I’m not about to go with eye candy that replicates what the system, or another app, is already telling me in another format.

The July issue of About This Particular Macintosh is out. Ted’s amazing ATPO series continues with a look at the future of outlining, while Ellyn takes a chance with a public appearance, and how the digital lifestyle has made it easy to share such a moment.
Yours truly shares some more desktop pictures from Kilauea Volcano National Park, and posts a review of the BOOQ BP3 System. Lee reviews the iTalk, next on my own iPod accessory list, and Eric looks at a shell script book that actually discusses Mac OS X. Other reviews and articles abound. As always, available in three different flavors for your reading pleasure.

Apple publicly acknowledges what Mac users have known all along.

GigaDesigns announced today a 1.5 GHz G4 upgrade for the Power Mac Cube. However, at six hundred smackers, I believe I’d rather put that toward a new G5.

From my days of working on 15-inch LCDs, I have long hidden Mac OS X’s Dock. After all, I wanted to maximize my screen real estate. I still do this on my 12-inch PowerBook, for the same reason. On my Cube, however, I have a 19-inch Princeton LCD and my Apple 15-inch Studio Display. Plenty visual expanse, right? Yet old habits die hard, and I have found that I do not miss the Dock at all.
I am not one of the many whom have not cared for the Dock since OS X first rolled out. On the contrary, I rather enjoyed having it. But the addition to the operating system of cool switching via Command-Tab, and my usage of–nay, addiction to–LaunchBar, has rendered for me the Dock irrelevant. If the current beta of LaunchBar 4 is any indication, the final release of this new revision is going to ensure my hands stay on the keyboard even more.
Finder usage will not be going away any time soon. I still need that for moving files about via drag-and-drop, and I have customized my Finder toolbar with various apps for such drag-and-drop operations. One example would be opening archive files of various denominations by dropping them on Stuffit Expander. I know the command-line junkies will tell me that I can do all of that from the Terminal, thus ensuring my hands stay on the keyboard even more. However, for some operations, such as the example above, I believe I am faster with the mouse than typing in pathnames to drill down to the file I want.