Month: April 2006

Do you still support 800×600?

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Apple site not compatible with 800x600

For a while now, there has been a debate raging between web developers on whether or not to still support the 800×600 monitor resolution. As of today, my site still supports 800×600, evan though only about 10% of my visitors have their monitors set to that resolution. Globally, I’ve heard that 800×600 is still used by about 25% of internet users.

I was browsing the Apple site today, and realized they took the plunge at some point. At one time all of the Apple site was compliant with an 800 pixel wide monitor. Some portions of the site still are, but most of the pages now require at least 1024×768 (the most common resolution).

Repair Permissions Dialog is blank ?

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Repair Permissions

Apple released the 10.4.6 update today. As with all major updates, I always use Apple’s Disk Utility to Repair Permissions before, and after I run the update.

Under 10.4.5 (and earlier), I always had a long list of repairs in the permissions dialog, when it was finished. It didn’t matter how many times I would repeat the process, the list was always the same.

Strangely, after the 10.4.6 update… the list of repairs is blank. Either the utility is just not listing the specific repairs anymore, or the repairs actually worked, and there was nothing to fix. If the latter is true, then this is a good update.

Phasers and door controls

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Buck Rogers Disco Chicks

I have kind of a light schedule today, so I have the TV on in the background. Buck Rogers is playing on the Sci-Fi channel, and I’ve made kind of a silly observation.

If you use your phaser to blast the electronic door controls, the result varies depending on what you are trying to do.

Let’s say, you’re trying to escape from 3 evil disco space-babes who are chasing you. You can run into a room and blast the door controls behind you. The result will be the door gets locked.

Now, lets say you are trapped in a different room with 3 evil disco space-babes. If you blast the door controls in this room, the door will open.

I think you’ll find that this holds true for all science fiction movies and TV shows.

This concludes todays silly observation.

Download movies… but not through iTunes

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logos

Engadget is reporting that seven major studios have announced they will make new, big-name movies available for purchase via online downloads, through MovieLink and CinemaNow.

You won’t be able to burn them to DVD, and unfortunately, these services don’t offer any Mac support (damn them!). But, at up to $30 a movie, I wouldn’t buy these anyway. I think that’s a bit of a rip-off considering the price of an average DVD.

My only real question is… Apple, how could you let someone else get to this first?

No new Apple announcements… yet

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Raise you hand if you thought Apple would be making some new product announcements yesterday, for the 30th anniversary. The rumors have been running wild since Steve Jobs announced they would be doing something special for the Anniversary, during the 2006 Macworld keynote in January. A lot of the rumors were far to grandiose to be realistic, but there were a few that had a chance of coming true.

The Cult of Mac thinks it was one big April’s Fool’s joke that Steve has played on us, and there never were going to be any new announcements. Personally, I don’t believe that. I think they will do something for the anniversary, we just haven’t seen it yet.

I’m only mildly surprised that we didn’t see any new products yesterday. I’m more surprised that we didn’t see any mention at all of the anniversary. I had actually expected to see the same image I used for my Birthday message to Apple, because I pulled that from the keynote address where Steve mentioned the anniversary.

This may sound strange, but I actually think that the lack of any mention at all of the anniversary yesterday on the Apple site, almost guarantees something is coming. Think about it… no company would let their 30 year anniversary come and go without using it for promotional purposes. The biggest reason I can think of not to call any attention to it yesterday, is because they want to do that at the time they make some other announcements. It will be Apple’s anniversary for an entire year. They really don’t have to announce new stuff on the exact day… in fact, given the day (April Fool’s), it may be better for them not to announce stuff on that day.

Spelling Bee is G-R-E-A-T

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Spelling Bee

5 Stars

Last night we went and saw Spelling Bee at the Post Street Theatre here in San Francisco. A friend gave us tickets for Anne Marie’s birthday. It was awesome!

I knew nothing about it going in, in fact, I didn’t even know it was a musical. But, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I laughed out loud. The writing, acting, comedy, and songs were all excellent.

Spelling Bee is currently playing in three cities around the country, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York. I highly recommend checking it out if you live in one of these areas.

Thanks Dave!

Commodore Vic-20: The Friendly Computer

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Commodore Vic-20

In my last post I mentioned the first Mac I ever owned was a lime green iMac. That post sent me wandering down memory lane a bit.

The first computer I actually owned was a Commodore Vic-20. It was released in January of 1981. It had a supercharged 1 MHz processor, and a whopping 3.5K of RAM. Of course it was expandable to 64K of RAM through the use of a brick-sized cartridge that plugged into the back. You stored all your data on cassette tapes.

The Vic-20 was replaced in 1982 by the Commodore 64. It had 64K of built-in RAM, and in addition to the cassette drive, could store data on an optional 5.25″, 170K floppy drive. The tagline on the box was The Personal Computer with Professional Power… which just makes me laugh now.

One thing that younger computer users may not realize about these old machines, is they had no hard drives. If you turned them off without first saving your work to either cassette of floppy, it was gone.

Oh, and here’s an interesting quote from Tom R. Halfhill, Byte Magazine, August 1984:

“Next came the Commodore 64 (1982), almost certainly the best-selling computer model of all time. Ex-Commodorian Andy Finkel estimates that sales totaled between 17 and 22 million units. That’s more than all the Macs put together, and it dwarfs IBM’s top-selling systems, the PC and the AT.”

What was your first Mac?

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lime iMac

With all the nostalgia flying around today for Apple’s birthday, I thought I would ask… What was your first Mac (or Apple)?

I’ve worked on many, many Macs over the years… starting with the IIci. But the first Mac I actually owned was a lime green iMac. I don’t still have it today, but at the time, I loved that little machine.

What was your first?

Oh, on a quick side-note… if you think Macs are expensive today… The IIci I started on, had a 25MHz processor, 1MB of RAM (yes, 1) and cost $8,800 in 1989. Of course, mine had been upgraded to a whopping 16MB of RAM.

The original Apple Logo

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original Apple logo

Do you think you know what the original Apple logo looked like? If you said it was the rainbow colored apple with a bite taken out, you’d be wrong. The original logo was Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. It was replaced by the rainbow apple in 1976. Apple used the rainbow logo from late 1976 to early 1998, when they replaced it with a simple grey version of the apple.

Check out these images of the original Apple-1 Operations Manual, and advertisements.

Logo images found via Laughing Squid

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Humble Beginnings
Dodgy Apple Apparel
Evolution Apple