Quarter Life Crisis

Mac OS X.6 Snow Leopard available now!
[Buy at amazon .com, .uk, .de]

Reads¶

486 words

Quite a few interesting and in part lenghty things to read these days:

• John Siracusa reviews MacOS X.3 – and he does so in depth, reaching mostly the same conclusions as I did. The article offers a few more technical details and screen shots plus plenty of links. I particularly agree with the observation of the Finder's poor performance, the bad networking experience and bad scrollbar behaviour. The review seems to lack any mention of the greatly improved Preview application.
• Matthew Thomas resurfaces with a text on secure web sites and the certificates therein. While he takes this topic from a completely different angle, it seems to revolve about the same problems and annoyances that I recently dealt with when trying to do crypto related stuff with Mail. Matthew's text ends with

  So that’s why I have such a poor opinion of security certificates: they’re a demonstrably unusable solution tothe wrong problem. Now, someone please tell me why I’m wrong.

  If whoever answers that question will also suggest a better solution, I shall be thankful. Whoever solves Matthew's problem will probably also solve mine and vice versa.
• John Gruber about text rendering in X.3 – complete with screenshots illustrating the point and proving the suspicion that things have changed. John badmouthes the resolution of 300dpi laser printers. I think that is a little harsh. While not as good as current printers, even at 300 dpi the results were quite good – almost matching the 360dpi of a Nec P6... Probably a good 300dpi laser will still beat a cheap inkjet printer with gazillions of dpi on ordinary paper. But the point about resolution is correct of course. Just take a look at the displays in railway stations or on buses. They'll invariably be more legible if they're old non-pixel driven displays. – And let me join into the ode to Chicago.
• If only a fraction of the claims in this Guardian commentary are correct, Messieurs Blair and Bush deserve a swift kick in the balls by every one of their subjects citizens who feel they've been lied to.
• Stereo Total at the iTunes Music Tubes of Love.
• In Die Zeit:
  • A study mapping the tastes of beers.
  • The largest brewery company in the world is South African.
  • Fun getting Windows users' money by installing 'dialler' programs is quite popular – they cut your internet connection and dial in on an expensive number in the promise of porn or something. Frankly, that just reeks like scam and it is. Sadly the screenshot they present along with it is from a Mac.
  • Unsurprisingly, neutral finance optimisers aren't neutral but mainly work for their own benefit rather than yours.
  • Michael Moore makes clear that not all Americans are crazy warmongering rich brats, offering a few explanations along the way. In my opinion he sucks up a bit too much to the 'good European' stereotype, though.

November 11, 2003, 22:43