Crazy Apple News Site

Once upon a time there was a beautiful computer company who lived in the magic valley far to the west. And this computer company made graceful, elegant, useful machines that everyone loved.  True, it was hard to develop software for the beautiful computer because the beautiful company only wanted beautiful software. And true, the beautiful computer was a little expensive, but people were happy to buy it because it was so great.

One day an evil software company from far to the north came and tricked the Master of Business and Industry into putting their software on all the computers the Master sold.  The evil company’s software was ugly, hard to use, and downright primitive compared to the beautiful company’s offerings, but people still bought it for two reasons: it was cheap, it was easy for all the little developers to write software for the evil company’s operating system, and you could install it on any hardware you wanted.¹

At first the beautiful company laughed at the evil company’s products, but somehow the evil company took over the world, and all but a faithful handful moved to the Dungeon Of Stupidity. Those few waited for the return of their King, the head of the beautiful company, and a day when they would once again be able to use beautiful computers in the light of day, instead of hiding in MUGs.

At last the King returned and the beautiful company started the long, slow climb back out of obscurity. They made it easier for the little programmers to write software for the beautiful computer by giving them the tools they needed. They brought the price of the beautiful computer down, so that more people could know of its beauty.  And the beautiful computer once again flourished.

And the King thought, and brought forth Music that the people could carry, and all was good. And he thought again, and the beautiful company built computers in the Air, and all was good.  And at last he thought his greatest thought, and brought forth a new device, one that combined the Music, and the Air, and let people talk to other people across great distances.  And the people rejoiced, for the new device was amazing and powerful.  At length the beautiful company let others create programs to run on the device, and the rejoicing increased.  True, it was hard to develop software for the beautiful device because the beautiful company only wanted beautiful software.  And true, the beautiful device was a little expensive, but people were happy to buy it because it was so great.

And now a company that claims not to be evil has brought forth software that seeks to replace the beautiful device.  The software isn’t ugly, but it isn’t as beautiful as the software that runs the beautiful device.  It isn’t hard to use, but it’s harder to use than the software for the beautiful device.  It is more primitive than the software for the beautiful device, but there are those in the kingdom who fear that people will use the software of the company that claims not to be evil for two reasons: It’s cheaper than the beautiful device², it’s easy for all the little developers to write software for it³, and you can install it on many different devices.⁴

For now, the beautiful company laughs at the company who claims not to be evil’s device. But the faithful sit and wait, wondering what the King will do to ensure that what happened to the beautiful computer doesn’t happen to the beautiful device.  They hope that the beautiful company will allow the little programmers to write software for the beautiful device in freedom, as they have the beautiful computer.  They hope that the beautiful company will make the beautiful device less expensive, so that more people may know of its beauty. And they hope that the beautiful device will flourish.

1. Three reasons. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition! [↩]
2. 
   The software is free [↩]
3. Because the company that claims not to be evil says that any software will be allowed [↩]
4. This fairy tale still hasn’t learned to count [↩]

Every Friday¹ we publish a list of inFrequently Asked Questions and answers to help you, the Crazy Apple user, get more out of your Crazy Apple products.

This week we’re as excited as you are to know that WebKit is the first browser to pass the Acid3 test. Let’s talk about that, shall we?

Q: What is Acid3?

A: It’s a comprehensive test of a browser’s ability to render (X)HTML² , CSS, and JavaScript according to the official standards set out by the W3C.

Q: That’s a lot of letters that don’t mean anything.

A: The better you do on the Acid3 test, the more Sir Tim Berners-Lee likes your browser.

Q: So what does this mean for the Mac?

A: Nothing.

Q: The PC?

A: Nothing.

Q: The iPhone? The G1?

A: Nothing and really nothing, respectively. Look, all that happened is that the latest experimental version of Safari’s rendering engine has done better than anyone else so far at meeting standards compliance. This version of WebKit isn’t shipping with any current browser, and probably won’t for at least 6 months.  But the big problem is getting sites to be standards compliant.

Q: Why is that?

A: Because web designers write code that works on Internet Explorer, which has an Acid3 score of 21 out of 100.

Q: So what can I, a concerned Netizen, do to combat this menace?

A: 1.) never, in print or in person, say “Netizen” again. 2.) Run up to your congressman, representitive, tribal leader, king, president, or suprieme overlord and say, “I FAVOR OPEN WEB STANDARDS” at the top of your lungs, then see how far away you can get before their bodyguards take you down.

Q: And that will help, will it?

A: No, but it’d be funny.

Q: I’m an American living in the Netherlands; how do I say that it Dutch?

A: Ik keur heb gebonden niet de norm van World Wide Web goed

Q:”I like not has bound the stand of World Wide Web good?”

A: It’s not a perfect translation.

Q: One of us hasn’t been getting enough sleep lately.

A: Zzzzzzzzz…

1. more or less. Around Friday [↩]
2. the X is given “Separate but equal” housing [↩]

• 11:15pm, Day one – My Hotel Room: Finish talking with wife on iChat.  Set alarm on cell phone to wake me up at 6:00AM.
• 3:25 am, Day two – My Hotel Room: Dream that cats have taken over planet.  All requests for food are must be phrased in the form of “I can has soup?” (really)¹
• 6:30 am -same place: wake up and notice that alarm has failed me again.
• 6:35 am - stumble into shower. Because bathroom has one light in middle of room and remarkably loud fan, blearily believe that I am being abducted  by aliens so that I can be inducted into Earthling Hall of Fame.  My acceptance speech is hailed as “heart touching…moving” by Alien Abductors Weekly.
• 6:50 am - decide to stop writing post and go get some breakfast.
• 7:40 am – CSU: Resume top-secret meetings with CSU programmers.  They reveal a truth so secret, so, dark, so deep, that Sarah Palin would have me killed if I revealed it here. So I’ll reveal it in the footnotes.²
• 11:30 am – CSU: top-secret meetings concluded, we set off, spirits high and MacBook battery low, back to the Denver Airport.
• 12:30 – lunch: Nothing even remotely Apple related happens, except that every other person in the restaurant has an iPhone.
• 3:30 – Denver Airport: Flight departs.  Airline stewardess completes safety demonstration, adds under her breath, “hopefully this one makes it over the mountains”³
• 3:31 – Denver Airport: I commence worrying.
• 4:40 – Salt Lake International Airport: plane lands.  I have blinked twice, after holding the plane in the air the entire time with nothing but my mind.
• 5:30 – Salt Lake International Airport: I finally get my baggage back from the airport trolls. Homeward bound!

And so ends the saga of the Crazy Apple News Fort Collins Trip (CAN… I’m not gonna finish that one.)  I hope you were entertained and enlightened, as I was. True, we never solved the mystery of why CSU doesn’t like Macs, but I did get a number of good meals on somewhat else’s dime.  Thank you.

1. I never sleep soundly in hotels [↩]
2. Alaskan moose (meese? Mooses?) never wear pants! [↩]
3. Not really. She’d probably get fired for saying that. If anyone gets fired and subsequently rich and famous for my little blog, I want it to be me. [↩]

Since I didn’t have free access on campus, I wrote my notes for the day on paper, and I’m putting them here now.

• 8:15 – Salt Lake City: Waiting for my plane to board. A man across the isle of seats from me is reading about the launch of the new G1 Phone. I can tell he’s about ready to rush out and get one by the way he yawns and closes the paper, then turns to the sports section.
• 9:40 – 35,000 feet above sea level: I learn that airline restrooms are not designed for men who are over six feet tall.
• 10:53 – Denver International Airport: Lady at the car rental place asks if I would like to rent a GPS unit.  I confidently tell her that the iPhone has built-in GPS.  She reminds me that I have a busted Motorola PEBL, not an iPhone.  Incensed, I refuse the GPS anyway.
• Noon – Somewhere near Fort Collins: We can’t find the hotel.  Wishing I had an iPhone.
• 12:15 – Fort Collins: Stop and ask for directions. Lady at gas station exclaims, “You’re on the wrong side of town! You need to drive all the way across town, turn on Harmony, and you’ll find your hotel.” We set out across town.
• 12:20 – Fort Collins: turns out Fort Collins isn’t all that large of a town. We check into our hotel and go get lunch.
• 2:00 – Colorado State University: We meet with people about highly classified business. Programmer at CSU informs me that the CSU campus doesn’t like Macs, but he’s a secret Mac fan that is trying to fight the power.  I urge him to keep the faith alive.
• 5:30 – CSU: Meetings over.  We head to dinner.  My secret, furtive glances around the campus reveal that 1.) it is indeed a PC campus, and 2.) there are at least three men with full beards, suspenders, and large black skirts on the CSU campus.  Unable to determine relationship between these two facts. The day’s reconnaissance finished, we set out to find dinner.
• 7:00 – Our Secret Hotel Headquarters: There is a hot tub and swimming pool. Both are empty. This is because the hot tub is heated to fourteen million degrees.  After twenty minutes, it’s too hot even for me, so I get out and return to my room
• 7:25 – My Room: I unpack my MacBook and connect to the free high speed internet.  There are no instructions for how to connect a Mac to their network.
• 7:26 – The Internet: I am now connected. I check my email and begin writing this post.

So there you have it folks! Day One of the Fort Collins experience.  Although I was unable to comply with Ace’s suggestion, I did drink a large amount of root beer, which is exactly the same the world over.

What will tomorrow hold? Will we discover the answer to the great question, “Why doesn’t CSU like Macs?”¹ Will I get an iPhone?² Will we see more bearded men in large black skirts?³  Will we successfully find our way back to the airport without an iPhone? ⁴  Find out in the next installment of Fort Collins Journal!

1. No. [↩]
2. No. [↩]
3. Altogether too likely. [↩]
4. So long as I’m not driving [↩]

So, The Crazy Apple News Crew (CANC?) leaves early tomorrow morning to go to Colorado for a day.  We’re going by plane (but by biplane. This is the 21st century, not the 19th.), so the title doesn’t really make any sense at all. But my question to you all is: What does one do when one is in Fort Collins?  We will immediately post any and all Crazy Apple News Items((CANI? Sounds like an Italian dish.)) we come across in our travels.  And by “immedately” I mean, “Whenever we can get a network connection. Some of us don’t have iPhones, ya know.”

So, to sum up: What does one do in Fort Collins and expect some microblogging from the road. Hopefully.

Okay, over and out.

Every Friday we publish a list of inFrequently Asked Questions and answers to help you, the Crazy Apple user, get more out of your Crazy Apple products.

This week: Terminal

Q: D00d, ru a 1337 HAXX0R?

A: No, I speak English. Not idiot.

Q:Whatev, man. I’m a total hacker.  I could hack your Mac right now, and you wouldn’t even know it.

A: Uh-huh. Did you have a question of some sort?

Q: Why do you use that Mac, man? My box is a dual-booted Windows XP and Ubuntu system, and in Ubuntu I can rule the world from the command line.

A: Nnnnnno, you can’t.  I use the Mac because it’s simple, clean, stable, and friendly to developers and bloggers alike.  Did you have any other questions?

Q: You don’t even have a command line, dude. You’re all “I gotta click on a picture or it’s not a real program.” I could P0wn you so hard. Just tell me your IP address and your Mac is my slave.

A: Not a question. But actually, there is a command line interface for OSX. It’s called Terminal.  It lets me do all the Unixy things that the Mac is so good at, just like your little Ubuntu box.  And my IP address is 127.0.0.1. Hack away!

Q: Yeah right. I’m not a total newb.  I know that one.

A: You’ve done it before, haven’t you?

Q: Shut up!

A: You totally did, didn’t you?  You were all, “I’m gonna hack this dude’s system, look, I totally have root access #rm -rf / oh noes, where are all my files?”

Q: I did not! I just… I just wanted to try a new distro. At three in the morning!

A: Yep. Look, you already have a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Why not get yourself a little something?  I think we’ll all be happier.

Q: I can’t, my allowance is cut off ever since my mom saw what I was doing on her computer…

A: Let her know that the Mac has real parental controls, she’ll get you one.  Bye bye, script kiddie!

Note: The editor–who works as an IT person for a living and is tired of script kiddies attacking the systems for which he is responsible–needed to blow off some steam.  I promise more insightful, less vitriolic posts next week.  Maybe even tomorrow; maybe even with footnotes, we’ll see. And remember: Friends don’t let friends speak Leet.

Despite non-true rumors that the 1st-Gen iPod Classics would be getting the Genius feature, there’s a group of iPod owners out there that just ain’t happy.

“We Shuffle owners feel left out,” said S. Huffle, owner of every iPod Shuffle since the one that looked like gum.  “We always get the short end of the stick. I mean, look at what the Shuffle can’t do: It can’t watch movies. It can’t play podcasts. On-the-go playlists? Shuffle need not apply.  And now we don’t get a genius on our Shuffle to help us discover our music in a whole new way.  Frankly, we’re tired of feeling like second-class citizens.”

Apple Exec Tony Fadell was perplexed by the request. “I mean, wanting the Genius feature on the Classic is one thing. That makes sense; you paid a buttload of money for a hard drive with a screen, so I can see wanting your little toy upgraded.  But the Shuffle? Do we even still make those? We do? Why?”

But Huffle and others were not appeased by Tony’s generous comments.  Fortunately, Fadell and the Apple board listened to their complaints, and responded.

“We’re glad to roll out the Shuffle Upgrade Program,” said Steve Jobs in an email to registered Shuffle owners.  “Through the SUP Shuffle owners can get all the features found in high-end iPods, as well as a memory upgrade to 8GB for only $149.  Shuffle owners who are dissatisfied with the level of performance on their current iPods should say this secret phrase to any Apple Store employee: ‘I would like to buy an iPod Nano’.  They will know what to do.”

Apple could not be reached for comment, but that was mostly because they’re tired of us whining that we can’t have the genius feature on our 1st-Gen Classic.

You may have noticed a brief outage earlier today. Hopefully, looking at the site now, you’ll see why that happened.  This should be the last theme change for a while.  Until they come out with a Snow Leopard theme, anyway.

So, while I was chatting with Steve Jobs on the phone after the “Let’s Rock” event he received a call from John Mayer. I don’t know if he meant to put it on three-way calling, or if he just meant to put me on hold, but this is a transcript of the call:

Phone rings

Jobs: Oh crap.  I gotta take this, Moltz. Hold on.

Dickson: Er, Dickson, actually. But Moltz is fine.

Mayer: Hey Steve.

J: Hi John.

M: I saw the keynote today.

J: Good, good.

M: You played “Gravity” as a “Genius” example. That was pretty cool.

J: Glad you liked that.

M: And some of my other songs came up as well.

J: Yep.

M: But I was surprised, there at the end, when that Hawaiian guy got up on stage.

J: Jack Johnson is a very talented artist, and…

M: I had my guitar there with me, Steve.  I was already to go.  What happened?

J: Look, John, I know this might be hard for you, but we’ve moved on.

M: Moved on? You can’t leave me, Steve! You need me! Apple needs me!

J: John, don’t make this harder than it already is. Bono didn’t get all whiny like this when we stopped making the U2 special edition iPod.

M: What about that one keynote? And that other keynote? I rocked the house!

J: You performed adequately, yes, but…

M: I mean, I can understand bringing in Randy Newman from time to time. You basically own his soul, right?

J: Well, Pixar did, which means Disney does, so basically yes, but…

M: So he’s okay; he’s fine. But Jack Johnson? Some wimpy hyper-mellow…

D: Maybe I should just go…

J: Quiet, Moltz.

D: Dickson. But Moltz is fine!

J: Whatever. Listen, John, your time has passed. You’ll still show up in cover flows or as a “favorite song” in a playlist here or there but your star has set.

M: What’s that Johnson got that I don’t got?

J: Grammar, for one.  Also, he’s personable, John. He tells jokes. He connects with the audience.

M: I can tell jokes! I can connect!

J: You look like a stuffed iguana trying to sing, John. Let’s face it. You were hot for a while because of that real world song, and that wonderland song, but…(tinny snippet of “Upside Down” starts playing) Look, John, it’s over. Goodbye. And Moltz, I told you stop calling me. (click)

D: Dickson… Oh who cares. (to self) I could never be as good as John Moltz…

M: (to self) I could never be as good as Jack Johnson…

Every Friday we publish a list of inFrequently Asked Questions and answers to help you, the Crazy Apple user, get more out of your Crazy Apple products.

This week we return to an old favorite who just got a new look. That’s right, HyperCard!  Er, no, I mean, iTunes 8.

Q; Is iTunes 8 really all that different?

A: Hoo yeah!

Q:…

A:…

Q: Care to elaborate?

A: Sure!  I mean, the genius mode alone is more awesome than a bag of tap dancing penguins.  And then there’s the new grid view for all media types. That’s just awesome. I mean, seriously, what could be more awesome than having ten icons that all say “Dance” on them?

Q: Why would you have ten “dance” genres?

A: Who doesn’t? Techno, DJ, Hip-hop, they’re all “Dance” to iTunes.

Q: O-Okay, whatever. I gotta tell ya, though, I’m just a little worried about the “genius” thing.  Does it really need to send the entire contents of my library to some creepy server in Cupertino?

A: There aren’t any creepy servers in Cupertino!  And anyway, it’s completely anonymous. Just because the server knows that someone has the complete works of Yanni in full, uncompressed 256kbps glory doesn’t mean that it knows who that loser is.

Q:  Heh heh, yeah, what… what kind of loser would have a complete Yanni collection?

A: But what they would know is that a person who listens to the works of Yanni also likes John Tesh, and they can help people build Yanni/Tesh playlists, with some Neil Diamond thrown in to “spice things up”.

Q: Ewww, I don’t like Neil Diamond… I mean, um, yeah, that works.

A: It also helps avoid the embarrassment of Party Shuffle pulling up your previously-mentioned Vanilla Ice collection when you’re trying to listen to Beck-like music.

Q: That wasn’t me, that was a different FAQ question-asker.

A: There’s more than one of you?

Q: Yes.

A: Strange.

Q: Is it true that the “Genius” will insert any John Mayer you have into any playlist it creates?

A:  It was in beta, but something seems to have come between John Mayer and Apple, and he’s been replaced.  I wonder what could have happened with that relationship¹?

Q: Yes, It’s like there was a painful conversation between them²

A: Well, I guess we’ll never know³.

Q: So now is there some new “most favored artist”?

A: Jack Johnson.

Q: Cool.  So, If I make a genius playlist based on, say, “Penny Lane”, then I’ll get the most Penny-lane-esque Jack Johnson song?

A: Oooh, no can do.  iTunes don’t do no Beatles. But you would be amazed how well Johnson’s Hawaiian groove blends with Coltrane.

Q: Awesome.

1. foreshadowing [↩]
2. heavy foreshadowing [↩]
3. What could they be talking about? [↩]