Rohdesign Weblog: Macintosh

Here you'll find all posts file under the Macintosh category.

September 6, 2007

Ecto 3 Icon Design

In the flurry of activity here, I've not had a chance to mention the release of the new ecto 3 application icon I've designed for Adriaan at Infinite Sushi:

Working on this one was quite fun, going through the sketch process, until we came to this solution of a box with items you might use for blogging inside. It was a different approach for a blogging app icon, but that's just what Adriaan liked best.

Fireworks & Upscaling
I designed the original icon as a standard 128x128px icon, then later in the process, Adriaan needed a 256x256px version for other uses. I took the opportunity to refine the details, like adding actual lines of text to the documents.

Because I used Fireworks' vector tools to build this icon, it was relatively easy to upscale the 256px icon from the original 128px icon. The initial up-scaled icon wasn't perfect, but good enough to save a god chunk time rebuilding the icon from scratch if it were a 128px bitmap icon.

Thanks Adriaan for working with me on this fun project! :-)

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July 23, 2007

SOLD: LaCie 250 GB External Hard Drive $100

This week I've secured 2 gently used LaCie d2 250GB hard drives, with Firewire 400, Firewire 800 and USB interfaces. I plan to keep one of them, and am offering the other up for sale here to Rohdesign readers.

A quick check on the web showed prices for new 250GB drives between $125 and $150. since this is a gently used drive, I'm asking $100 plus shipping for the drive.

All firewire and USB cables, power brick and software CD are included.

Specs:

• LaCie d2 250GB External Hard Drive (300790U)
• FireWire 800
• FireWire 400
• Hi-Speed USB 2.0
• Ultra-quiet, heat dissipating design
• Stack, rack-mount or stand upright
• 7200 rpm
• 8 MB Buffer

"Combining all of the leading interfaces into one drive, the LaCie d2 Hard Drive Extreme with Triple Interface now also comes in higher capacities to handle your most demanding projects and storage needs. It can be easily shared among multiple users and environments and is conveniently plug & play.

With up to 800Mbits/s per bus and up to 64MB/s per drive burst, it's ideal for a variety of professional applications, including digital audio/video, graphic design and system backups. It can be conveniently stacked, stood upright or rack-mounted, and it's specially designed to be ultra-quiet and dissipate heat."

Udpate July 24th, 2007
I've now sold the LaCie hard drive. Thanks to everyone who sent in requests!

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June 15, 2007

Friday Tidbits: Pudding, Journler & Northern Room

Here are a few Friday tidbits to share:

Ataraxis Pudding Launches
Pudding, a tool crearted by Michael Sica, launched last Friday. It's a web-based tool for sharing creative work with others. Pudding allows you to post images of your work in a private account, for clients and colleagues, to view and comment on. It comes in many flavors depending on your needs, free 30 day trial and a tour to see what Pudding can do.

Journler Gets 4.5 Mice from Macworld!
My friend Phil Dow's wornderful mac application Journler just received 4.5 mice from Macworld, in an August 2007 review. I've talked about the icon I designed and how I love the application — so it's very nice to see a great guy like Phil, seeing success and critical acclaim for the hard work he's invested in Journler.

Good Tunes: Northern Room
A few weeks ago I came across the local Milwaukee band Northern Room, via my good friend Joe Phillips. They have a great sound, which I quite like. I'd categorize their sound as similar to Snow Patrol, U2, Coldplay, and O.K. Go. Check out Northern Room on iTunes, Purevolume and SonicBids.

That's all — have a great weekend everyone!

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March 23, 2007

Journler Mini Review & Icon Design

I've been using Journler a great Mac OS X journaling, tidbit-capturing, swiss army knife application for the past several months, and it's high time I share it here on the weblog.

On Thursday, Journler 2.5 was released, a major milestone for the app, including many new features, a new look and feel and an icon I designed with the developer, Phil Dow.

I love this multi-purpose capture tool, as I can store all sorts of useful information in one place. I can keep track of logo projects here, standard templates for emails, references to recipes and even links to external files.

I feel like I'm barely scratching the surface of Journler's capabilities. It integrates to iLife, I can capture images, video and audio, it uses of the 'Services" menu to capture information from other applications, and has a 'Journler Drop Box' folder for an easy way of importing or linking files to Journler.

Like NetNewsWire (another favorite app), Journler features a built-in webkit-based web browser, so I don't need to leave Journler to check out a weblink.

Here's a screenshot of how I have Journler setup:

Phil has a nice approach to purchasing Journler, with a donation option for personal use, and a $24.95 if you use Journler for business purposes. Not bad.

If you're a Mac OS X user, interested in finding a tool to capture the snippets of your life, a place to write journal entries, and more, check out Journler.

It's highly recommend, even if I'm a little biased about the icon design. :-)

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March 14, 2007

HoudahGeo Icon Design

Just this week I've completed the application icon for one of my MakaluMedia clients, Pierre Bernard of Houdah Software, on his latest beta application HoudahGeo. In June 2006, I designed the icon for Pierre's first OS X application, HoudahSpot.

HoudahGeo allows you to geocode photos with latitude, longitude and altitude information. Take your photos, "pin" their locations on the earth, then export information to EXIF tags or Google Earth KML files, letting you can see the images in Google Earth.

Sketches
Pierre and I started working with pencil sketches, using a globe with photos stuck to the surface, and a satellite in orbit around it, as you can see below:

1. In my first sketches, I focused on a single satellite, beaming information to/from photos on the surface of the globe. At this stage I hadn't worked out continents or exact placement of the photos, but knew I liked this general idea.

2. Here I played around with the idea of both a satellite and a camera orbiting the earth, and had by this round, started exploring continents and image locations a bit more. In the end, we discussed the camera+satellite option and felt the camera was redundant and not necessary to get the message across.

Production Icons
Next I went to production, using Fireworks to create the vector-based artwork. After a rough first draft, Pierre had an idea to try a pushpin in place of a satellite, though in the end, we felt the satellite just worked better.

With each successive revision, the earth was refined, satellite tweaked, highlights, glows and adjustments made. Here I've placed the first 4 revisions together to give you an idea how the process generally works:

The final adjustments and tweaks happened on icon v5, including a size up of the earth about 5-6%, lightening of the satellite's pulse glow and a few adjustments to photo locations on the earth itself.

Fireworks as Tool of Choice
The construction if icons using vectors in Fireworks, greatly assists in these kind of subtle tweaks. Because all of the elements are created as vector items, they can be easily sized up and down with no degradation of image quality, or moved around without worrying about re-applying masks or filters.

For comparison purposes, here is the final, winning HoudahGeo icon v5:

Thanks Pierre for choosing to work with me and MakaluMedia on your latest Mac application! I had a great time working with you on another fun icon project. :-)

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January 9, 2007

iPhone Rockin' the World

I'm right now spending my lunch break watching the live Macworld Keynote blogging at Engadget, chatting with my good pal Michael Ashby about the iPhone. We are both in shock (in a good way).

The iPhone is a smartphone running some version of Mac OS X, complete with a full web browser (Safari) what look like Widgets, and apps on the device far beyond any mobile phone apps out there.

Watching the Steve Jobs keynote unfold, we both agree that this announcement of the iPhone is big — really big. So big that it could impact nearly every aspect the tech world — mobile phones, smartphones, phone service carriers, PDAs, MP3 players, computers, Mac software developers, and web-based software developers... and probably others I haven't thought of.

From the Engadget live blog:

We've been pushing the state of the art in every facet of this design. We've got the multi-touch screen, miniaturization, OS X in a mobile device, precision enclosures, three advanced sensors, desktop class applications, and the widescreen video iPod. We filed for over 200 patents for all the inventions in iPhone and we intend to protect them."

This is the kind of device I would be compelled to carry, and I've more or less stepped off the PDA bandwagon last year. It's looking that cool and useful.

This is going to be very, very big.

Amazing! Conan O'Brien gives us a sneak peek of everything the iPhone can do! :-)

Related Links:
The Ultimate iPhone FAQ (David Pogue, NYT)
Cingular's iPhone Signup Page
Apple Unveils iPhone (Macworld)
iPhone a 'wake-up call' for the industry (Macworld)
Does the iPhone hit the spot? (CNET)
Investors dump RIM as Apple launches iPhone (Washington Post)
First iPhone Pics (engadget)
Raw commentary on the iPhone announcement (Michael Mace)
Apple's iPhone: That isn't a phone, it's a PDA done right (Michael Mace)
Impact of the Apple iPhone (Michael Mace)
Apple aims to shake up cell phone industry (San Jose Mercury News)
Top 5 Worst Things About The iPhone (Wired Gadget Lab)
iPhone: The Newton's Revenge (Wired Cult of Mac)
The Apple iPhone (Kottke.org)
Apple's New Calling: The iPhone (Time)
iPhone: The Most Revolutionary Device Since 1984 (JeffCroft.com)
iPhone Not Touchy Feely (37signals)
iPhone and the End of PC Era (Om Malik)
The iWipe
You could call iPhone perfect (Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun-Times)

Image via Apple.

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September 21, 2006

Mac OS X Horizontal Scroll Trick

Just stumbled across a cool little Mac OS X trick today:

1. Open an application where you must scroll horizontally to see information — like an image file in Fireworks, Photoshop or Illustrator that's been zoomed large.

2. Hold the shift key and use your mouse scroll wheel — the screen will now scroll horizontally!

This appears to be an OS X system level feature, so it should work in any app where you can scroll horizontally, though I have not tested it deeply just yet.

I don't know how well known this trick is among Mac users (it was certainly a surprise to me), but I'm already finding it indispensable in detailed graphics work.

Enjoy! :-)

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August 7, 2006

I Love Witnessing the Joy of New Mac Users

In 2006, I've had the privileged of seeing 4 good friends move from a Windows PC to a Macintosh, and what strikes me the most is their excitement over the little things, like installing applications or putting a MacBook to sleep by simply closing the lid.

I should start out by mentioning that the most recent switcher is my blogpal and good friend Michael Ashby, who just this weekend bought a MacBook and began his migration to a Mac, from a Windows PC. I think Mike has spent at least 15 years as a hardcore Windows guy, not only managing his life on one, but supporting many clients with their PC systems. So, when I learned Mike was buying a MacBook as a primary machine, I was surprised... pleasantly so!

I've been intrigued as I've followed Michael's progression from Windows to the Mac, since I know he has such a deep history with Windows. I've shared his excitement of the purchase, of learning how fun the Mac is to setup and work with, and have shared advice on applications and a few tricks I've learned.

Michael has been posting like a wild man since Friday, with new posts each day. You can check out his many postings below:

Making The Leap
Meh…
First Impressions
Taking Her Out On the Town
One Of The Gang
OK, So Nothing is Perfect
Choosing Apps: E-mail
Choosing Apps: Web Browser
Choosing Apps: Office Suite
Surprise! I’m A Keyboard Guy. Who Knew?
Having A Hard Head Can Sometimes Pay Off (GarageBand & Axiom 25)
Flickr Photoset: Making The Switch

The funniest experience has been Michael's unbridled excitement over putting the MacBook to sleep by simply closing the lid.

Having been a Powerbook user for many years, I couldn't understand his thrill in this — isn't that how laptops are supposed to work?

Well, according to Michael, it ain't so:

One of the features I have been most eager to try is almost not even a feature to most Mac users. It’s the fact that you can simply shut the lid and put the laptop to sleep. If you’re a Mac user, this may seem old hat, but for Windows users, this is a very big deal.

Why? Because in the Windows world, if you don’t shut down the computer, you’re just opening yourself up to a world of hurt. Although the “feature” is present on all Windows laptops, it simply doesn’t work worth a damn. I’ve been using laptops for the past 11 years, many of which with the laptop being my primary machine, and the sleep has never worked properly.

On a Mac, when you close the lid, the computer quietly goes to “sleep”. When you open the lid, the computer comes back to life exactly where you were. I’ve been completely green with envy as I watched friends and colleagues at conferences just close their laptops and go. They then have to wait as I shut down my laptop. Why didn’t I just close the lid like they do? Because the results were so unpredictable. Some times it would come back, but more often than not the computer would lock up, or simply crash. It’s just safer to shut down.

When I mentioned how much I was looking forward to using the sleep feature on the MacBook to Mike Rohde, he asked me what I was talking about. When I explained how it worked in the Windows world, he said “Is that why my Dad freaks out when I just shut the lid to his laptop?” I let out a huge belly laugh and told him “Yeah. That’s why.”

Another common "wow" moment is when Windows users install new applications. Most Mac apps are simple to install: double-click a disk image file (.dmg) which creates a virtual hard drive on your desktop, then drag the application on the virtual drive to your Applications folder (or anywhere else on the drive). That's it. No registry hacking, wizards or other gyrations to go through.

Tonight it was great fun. Michael and I watched the WWDC Steve Jobs keynote video together — it was fun to see Michael get so excited about the new hardware and software Apple released. It was very enjoyable seeing Michael, this hard-core Windows and Palm veteran, so pumped up about his new Machine and platform, seeing features he could only dream of on his Windows machines. It was like seeing a kid in a candy store.

I'm going to enjoy observing Michael settle into his new MacBook. I think this is the most excitement I've seen from him on a gadget since getting his Tapwave Zodiac. I'm sure there will be frustrations here and there (it's a computer after all) but in general, Michael will love his new MacBook, and become one hardcore Mac fan.

Welcome to the Cult of Mac Michael! :-)

Related Links:
The truth about switching - what it's really like switching to a Mac by Bill Westerman

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June 22, 2006

Designing the HoudahSpot Icon

Back in February, I came in contact with Pierre Bernard, a Mac OS X developer in need of an icon design for his search tool, HoudahSpot. Pierre's search tool is really an alternate front-end to the Spotlight engine, offering features such as live queries, manipulations of files within search results and an easy to use interface for searching with complex criteria.

Concepting
Pierre had ideas in mind for the his icon — his signature elephant, a set of binoculars, and sheets of paper. I was selected to offer alternate ideas, refinements and provide design guidance in bringing this icon to life. After some initial questioning about the application and Pierre's idea, I began as I always do, with pencil sketches in my Miquelrius notebook.

Sketches, Round 1
I felt there needed to be something tying the loose papers, binoculars and the elephant icon together, when I realized that if you were on safari, you would carry papers in a binder.

So, with this idea in mind, I sketched out a a heavy duty leather binder with the Houdah elephant icon embossed on the cover, and binoculars laying on top of the binder. Pages would be coming out at odd angles to suggest chaos often present on a user's machine. I also included a small compass to complete the image.

Sketches, Round 2
Pierre and I both quite liked the binder concept from the first round, and wanted to refine the idea a little bit more. I sketched out a second round of pencils, exploring variations on sketch 5 and a runner up, to make sure we were going along the right track.

On this set, I moved the binoculars down and right on the binder cover to reveal more of the Houdah elephant character, removed the compass, which felt unnecessary. I then rounded the leather binder's corners and refined the paper positioning to be a little less chaotic. This second round sketch looked quite nice, with pretty good balance and proportions.

Sketches, Round 3
Pierre had one more experiment to try before settling on the concept — sliding the binoculars off of the right edge of the leather binder, to reveal the entire Houdah elephant character. I created an abbreviated 3rd sketch exploring this idea, though immediately Pierre and I felt it threw the balance of the icon off. The binoculars on an angle, laying on top of the binder were better.

Color Comps v1-3
Next up, , move ahead to the Mac, and start building the icon in Fireworks. First, I began in icon 1 with the binder, as I felt this element would hold the icon together. Using a photograph of leather, I modified it in Photoshop and Fireworks as the base texture, adding shade, reflections and seams. You can see I also began exploring documents inside of the binder. In icon 2, the binoculars were built using reference from Leica binoculars. In icon 3, I move to defining the documents in the binder in more detail, widened the binder and corrected the angle and skew of the binoculars.

Final Icons
Next, I brought the final icons from Fireworks into Photoshop, for final tweaks and export to .icns files which Pierre could bundle into HoudahSpot. Pierre wanted to remove the highlight on the left edge of the binder, and other small tweaks I found were made to the icon before final export.

I used the binoculars art from the master application icon file to create a complimentary document icon, using the leather binder texture on the top edge of the document to carry over the look and feel of the main icon to the document icon.

Conclusion
Pierre and I are both very pleased with the final application and document icons. They're warm and inviting, capturing the idea of HoudahSpot well. Yoram Blumberg, a German designer liked the icon quite a bit:

When I stumbled upon HoudahSpot at MacZOT.com my first thought was: «I really love that catchy icon, I don’t care what the app is for — I wanna add that icon to my dock!»

Thanks Yoram! :-)

Special thanks go to Pierre Bernard for choosing to work with me and MakaluMedia on this icon. His help and collaboration through the entire project made the HoudahSpot icon a pleasure to create.

I hope my description of my icon design process is interesting and helpful, especially for developers who are curious what goes into the development of an application and document icon. If you need an icon designed, drop me a line.

If you're interested in exploring an alternative approach to search on your Mac with the power of Spotlight under the hood, give HoudaSpot a try.

Related Links
Designing the endo icon
Kula 1001 Icon
MailDrop 2.0 Icon Story

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May 2, 2006

Funny New Apple Ads

Last night my wife and I were watching a little TV and saw Apple's latest TV ads with two characters: one kind of nerdy, middle aged guy playing the role of a PC, and a hip cool young guy playing a Mac. I liked the humor, which is of course at the expense of the PC.

Here's one of my favorites of the ad series, called Viruses:

Check out all 6 new ads on the Apple site or several now on YouTube. I suspect all of the ads will be there shortly. Enjoy!

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March 11, 2006

Designing the endo icon

I'm very excited reveal my latest new icon design for endo, a syndicated feed reader developed by Adriaan Tijsseling. This new app approaches syndicated feeds as "streams" rather than the common "email app" approach most aggregators use.

The icon was developed in collaboration with Adriaan, the developer of blogging tool ecto and Flickr stream manager 1001, which I'd designed the icon for last year. While we worked out the new icon, I'd been under an NDA with Adriaan (as design director at MakaluMedia) but since endo has been released, I'm free to share. :-)

(Click on graphics below to see full sketches)

Initial Concepts v1
I began the project by writing out thoughts and sketching some initial ideas, and having designed the 1001 icon, felt that the icons might benefit from having a "family" feeling between them. So, when you look at the initial v1 sketches I did, you can see this quite clearly.

While the final icon veered quite a bit from the initial sketches, I like to point out that very often a designer must work through what is in their heads in order to progress to the next step — a bit like flushing out the immediate ideas to get at the deeper ideas.

Sketches v2
In the second round of sketches, I began exploring the idea of different shapes, shapes breaking planes and swirls of data surrounding shapes. As endo was to be different than other aggregator/readers because it treats feeds as "streams" I wanted to convey the idea of a stream of data — as chaotic swirl or plane.

While breaking a plane was an interesting concept, the more chaotic swirl appealed to both Adriaan and me, because it felt much more like the real net, with wild streams of feeds spinning out of control. Endo was to be the calm in the midst of this storm of data; helping its users wade through this swirling cloud.

Sketches v3
In my 3rd revision of sketches, I focused entirely on the idea of a swirling cloud of data, surrounding various shapes. You can see in the larger sketch that circular swirl with a central "hub" containing a magnifying glass at the center of the swirl. This represented the application at the center, filtering good signal from the noise. These concepts were attractive to both Adriaan and I, though we both wanted to see one more round to finalize the concept before I went to Fireworks and Photoshop on the Mac.

Sketches v4
In this round, Adriaan had the idea to include the newly standardized Feed Icon, which is already used in Firefox (and will also be used in IE7), so I tried several icons with the Feed icon integrated. I tried a variety of angles, until in sketch E you can see the idea of having the feed icon appear in the central hub and also appear in the shadow below, since the central hub would be transparent (like a marble).

Once Adriaan and I saw sketch E, we were both in love. Adriaan gave the Ok to move to the Mac, and there, the new endo icon was born, using Fireworks to build the icon (with vectors and layers) and then exported in Photoshop, using the excellent IconBuilder 8 from IconFactory.

Only minor tweaks were needed to finalize the icon on the Mac and deliver the needed icon, and source files Adriaan needed to spruce up his endo application and the new Kula website.

Conclusion
I'm very pleased with the new endo icon; it's simple, different and I think conveys the concept of a feed aggregator sifting signal out of the syndication noise — just the idea Adriaan was trying to convey with his very different application. One commenter on the BWANA Weblog suggested the endo icon "has the best application icon since Shiira." which was flattering indeed. :-)

Thanks Adriaan for trusting in me to help on this project and all of his excellent collaboration. Working on this project was truly a pleasure!

If you're on Mac OS X and want a alternate way of deal with feeds, try out endo. It offers a very different approach, which may just suit your needs.

Technorati Tags:
mikerohde, rohdesign, sketches, visual+thinking, design, makalumedia, drawings, icon

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March 10, 2005

SyncBuddy 2.0 for Mac OS X

Received some great news over lunch today, which I wanted to share — Florent Pillet's SyncBuddy has been updated to 2.0 for Mac OS X!

I used to absolutely love Sync Buddy when I was an OS 9 user. I could plug my Palm handheld into my Mac and mount its internal RAM or removable card (back then, a Springboard module), just like a hard drive, with files and folders. It was excellent for quick backups, installation of new apps or copying single files to or from the Mac.

Not only was it quicker than HotSync for many activities, Florent had converters built into the tool, enabling on-the-fly conversion of text to Palm Doc format, simply by dragging a text file into Sync Buddy.

For its time this app was cutting edge on the Mac or PC, but eventually it fell out of my regular usage patterns once I migrated to Mac OS X. Now, with version 2.0 released, I can have my Sync Buddy back again!

Even better, the new version supports export of pictures from a Treo or Zire, and features transport over USB, WiFi or Bluetooth. As I'm soon to be the proud owner of a silver Zire 72, I'm becoming more interested in Bluetooth and WiFi support.

Sync Buddy is $25, though Florent is offering special pricing options for past owners of Sync Buddy and iTreo. If you are the owner of either application, look in your email for details, or contact Florent at his website.

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January 24, 2005

Kula 1001 Icon

Received good news on Sunday night! Adriaan Tijsseling, the author of blogging tool ecto, dropped a line to tell me my new icon for 1001 (a Flickr photo stream management tool) was used on his latest beta. Alright!

I've been a user and fan of ecto since June, so when I learned via Michael Ashby that Adriaan was looking for some icon and design help with ecto, I dropped him a line. As it turns out, Adriaan found help with the ecto project with designer Neil Dixon. However, he was also in need of a new icon for his 1001 app, a tool for viewing and managing your own and others' Flickr streams. I felt honored to be offered the opportunity, so I immediately agreed to take on the project through the company I work for, MakaluMedia.

So, I began as I usually do, with sketches in my Miquelrius sketchbook. The concepts were scanned and emailed to Adriaan for review. The process went quickly, as one of the concepts in my sketches — an earth with photo streams wrapped round, being viewed by a loupe — resonated with both of us.

From there, I began the icon construction process. At first I tried to sketch the sphere with streams wrapping around it, but soon realized it would be difficult to get right without good reference. The next day I had an idea in the shower — why not wrap strips of paper with black photo blocks printed on them around one of Nathan's kickballs?

So that's exactly what I did — and it worked perfectly! The strips provided a perfect template for re-drawing in Adobe Illustrator. I then copied the vector art from Illustrator into Fireworks, to add color and paste photos into the stream blocks on the globe.

In fact, if you look very closely at the pics on the streams of the final icon, you can make out shots of Adriaan, his friends and several of my own family. It's always fun to see the icon, because even though the little pixelized photos are obscured, I can still remember the moment when each family photo was taken.

I had a blast working on this icon. It always feels great to see a project like this come together, especially when the process leading up to the final art was so much fun! :-)

Thanks Adriaan!

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January 12, 2005

The Mac mini and Moleskines

Got up early this morning, scanned a few RSS feeds to start the day. I've been keeping an eye on Apple's new Mac mini, iPod Shuffle, iLife and iWork software suites, because I have a feeling all four of these will be big hits.

Janet Tokerud had a new post, Mac mini and iPod shuffle Don't Disappoint, so I stopped by to see her take on these two items. I wasn't surprised by her thoughts (they virtually mirror my own) I was caught immediately by the shot she includes of her pocket Moleskine on top of the Mac mini (see my cropped out version above). Wow! Immediate perspective!

That's my trusty pocket Moleskine there to give you some perspective. It is a full-fledged OS X computer that's tiny, weighs less than 3 pounds and is cheap. I am loving the prospect of watching this play out.

Its so funny — I had a look at the Mac mini's specs last night, including Apple's imagery and comparison to a standard PC tower. I thought "Hey, that's pretty small." But when I saw Janet's Moleskine on top of a Mini this morning, I really grasped its tiny footprint. Moleskines save the day again! :-)

To put the Mac mini into other journal related terms, it's even a little smaller than the footprint as my A5 sized Miquelrius sketchbook laid horizontally.

Amazing.

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December 3, 2004

MailDrop 2.0 Icon Story

Okay everyone, time for a little horn-tooting PR for a “design the icon” contest I won on November 18th. I think the busyness of the season and Thanksgiving holiday threw me off, because I'd intended to mention this sooner. :-)

Anyway, Matt Henderson, the owner of MakaluMedia (the company I'm design director for), alerted me of an icon contest being offered at Erik Barzeski's NSLog weblog. Erik runs Freshly Squeezed Software, makers of various Mac OS X applications, including a Mail Merge app called MailDrop. It turns out that MailDrop is being updated to 2.0 and was in need of a new icon.

Well, I figured what the heck. While I have 15-some years of graphic design experience, I've never done a Mac OS X icon before. I thought this project could be fun, challenging and educational. Better yet, the icon concept they were looking for was somewhat cartoony, and hey, I love cartooning. So I took on the project.

Erik liked the direction in my sketches and rough icon ideas, so I proceeded with the icon project and ended up winning the contest. The final set of application icons are posted with this article. We're still in the process of finalizing the app's document icon.

My icon building process took a little time to sort out at first. I ended up working in Macromedia Fireworks, because I could use vector art, yet see immediately how my changes would appear in pixels. I also experimented with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, but because of my daily use of Fireworks and its vector/pixel feature, it just suited me best.

Once I had a final icon, I exported a master PNG file with transparency. Then I opened the file with Photoshop 7 for conversion into icons using a handy Photoshop plugin from IconFactory, called IconBuilder. At $69 It's not cheap, however, for the time it saves doing icons, I can see its value. I love that IconBuilder has no use restrictions (other than a nag screen which appears after multiple uses), because this allowed me to fully test it out before we decide to purchase it.

If IconBuilder is a little too high for your budget, there are other free and shareware tools out there, like Icon Composer (included with the Xcode Tools on the OS X developer CD) or the $15 shareware tool, Iconographer.

Should an icon for OS X be in your future, check out these helpful Apple documents: Icon Genres and Families, Suggested Process for Creating Aqua Icons, and Tips for Designing Aqua Icons. Here's another useful reference: OS X Icon Tutorial from O'Reilly's MacDevCenter.

Overall, it was a great challenge, and indeed, very educational. In fact, it felt very good to dive into something I'd never done before!

Ok, here's my final PR spiel for this Friday: If you happen to need a little icon work or any other type of design work (web or print), please feel free to drop me a line. :-)

Have a great weekend!

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September 1, 2004

The iPotty

Fresh on the heels of the newly announced iMac G5, my MakaluMedia colleague, and good friend Matt Henderson, has posted what he sees as the Next Big Thing© from Apple. Just imagine — a computer oasis, available from the comfort of your own toilet seat! ;-)

Matt asked me to illustrate his idea as a cartoon, which I did (and enjoyed greatly). You can see the image on my weblog, but be sure read Matt's detailed description on his own weblog and leave your comments and suggestions there.

BTW, if you need any cartooning done, I'd love to offer you my services. I've had many years of experience with cartooning (here are some samples). So, feel free to drop me a line.

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August 27, 2004

Business Diary Concept

Today I've made a decision to keep a business diary. My Wednesday post on paper vs. electronic planners and all of the wonderful responses received, has me inspired to finally get serious about keeping one.

I had the seed planted by Rick, whom I shared a story about in Paper Planner Longings. I still recall the description of his daily business diary, used to track his work notes, and how attractive this idea seemed then and now. Matt Henderson also had a post about keeping his daily business diary that made quite a bit of sense to me too. I think today, the convergence of these inspirations and my thoughts following Wedensday's post, led me to commit to a business diary of my own.

So, for the fun of it, I kept a business diary in my sketchbook today. I wanted to see how it felt to try and capture ideas related to projects I've been working on as they occurred to me. I found that ideas often float round my head but are never noted anywhere. I was pleasantly surprised at how good it felt to do this, and wondered why I hadn't been keeping notes before.

Well, I actually have taken a few stabs at a daily business log in the past few years. Once I tried using the Palm Memo, and another time, using an RTF file that synced to Wordsmith. However, I never truly committed myself to it, and never felt as I have today, keeping manual notes.

The Paper Option
Tonight, I wrote up the pros and cons of paper vs. electronic diary keeping. I really like the experience, quickness and flexibility of analog note taking in a notebook. However, it's not easy to back up a notebook, so if it's ever is lost, I'd be sunk. Further, written notes can't be searched and are difficult to modify without scratch-outs and insertion arrows.

So, while I wished the paper option was my final solution, I realized it can't do all I want in a paper system. However, I do think it should play a part — particularly for sketches. If I can find a way to quickly and easily scan in sketches for storage with plain text or RTF notes, that would be ideal.

The Electronic Option
Electronic text seems to me the best option, as it can be backed up, searched and even synchronized to my Palm for viewing and editing away from the Mac. If I store notes in plain text, then they are accessible anywhere, with no worries about backward compatibility. RTF is not bad either, sas it is plain text, with rich text features added on top. RTF was my final choice, because it offers a decent balance of utility and features.

I like the idea of using simple, rather than complex tools for this process. I'd be happy with a very basic text editor on the Mac and Palm, rather than a full-blown multimedia application. I simply want to capture raw electronic texts, store or sync that text, and save an occasional sketch from my sketchbook.

After a good discussion with my friend Andy on the topic, I spent time tonight exploring Mac and Palm tools. I've settled (mostly) on what I feel could be the ideal system for my note keeping needs, at least for getting started. Here it is:

Paper Input
I should be able to scan my sketchbook pages easily. I don't see myself scanning something every day, but maybe every other day, or a few times per week. This may require a new scanner, as my crusty old one is a a bit of a hassle to use. If scanning isn't effortless, I might be discouraged to scan sketches.

Mac & Palm Tools
I want to use standard tools, or tools I own and use already, on both the Mac and Palm. I like TextEdit, included with every OS X Mac, and Wordsmith on the Palm as it has a conduit for Syncing RTF files. I tried using DataViz WordToGo, but didn't like the editing experience, even though it could deal with txt files and sync them with the SD card quite nicely. Palm's Memo is ok, but a bit too limited.

I considered note taking software with hierarchal folders, categories and the ability to store pictures and such, but for my purposes, this seems like overkill. I just want a place to capture thoughts in text, which I can search and refer to later.

Document Structure
The master document would be a single RTF file (Diary-2004.rtf), created in TextEdit and synced to my Palm via the Wordsmith conduit. I would write in a weblog style, with a date at the top and the latest entries at the very top of the page, in descending order. At the end of each day's notes, I'd enter a character string, like --- to keep them separate from the previous day's entries.

2004-08-27

This is a sample note entry.

This is another sample note entry.

---


I would record notes in the master file for a month, then make a copy, add the month number to the filename (Diary-2004-08.rtf), then clear the text inside the original master RTF file for the following month. This should help the master file from getting too large for the Palm and break up the files by month for easier access.

Folder Structure
I've created a new folder on the Mac (MM-Diary), and have stored my master RTF diary file inside of it. This folder is where scanned sketches would reside, stored in sub-folders dated by month (2004-08). The archived monthly RTF files would then be stored in these monthly sub-folders.

MM-Diary/
 2004-08/
  Diary-2004-08.rtf

Open Issues
There are a few things I need to work out yet, such as a tool on the Mac that would quickly paste that day's date at the entry point in my document. TypeIt4Me might do, or possibly another utility. I may also need to configure some text tags like [ACTION] or [Client - Project] so searches can be a bit more relevant.

Of course I'll need to use the system for a while and see how it shakes out — I suspect it will need tweaking as I see problems or issues in the system. But this is normal, and to be expected.

Feedback
I would love to hear feedback from readers on how they manage their own diary systems, along with suggestions for other software tools or processes I might want to consider. So, feel free to suggest away.

I'll set a reminder in my Palm to report on my status in a month and share how my system is working, and how it may have changed. Hopefully this documentation of the process will help someone else faced with the same issues and ideas.

Have a great weekend everyone! :-)

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August 26, 2004

Excellent Myssing Sync 4.0 Review

If you're a Mac user who's considering Missing Sync, Jeff Carlson has an excellent write up on The Missing Sync 4.0 in the latest issue of TidBITS. While I kind of knew it had some nice features, I was surprised to see how well integrated The Missing Sync is, with such features as SD card mounting, internet connection sharing, iTunes and iPhoto integration.

Of course, The Missing Sync ain't cheap at $40, but at least it offers some compelling features to justify the price. Right now, the HotSync software bundled with Palm Desktop 4.2.1 works reliably enough. However, if there's an OS 6 device in my future, that will likely change.

UPDATE 2004-08-27: There is one significant thing not mentioned in Jeff's article, pointed out today by Matt Henderson. Matt just picked up a copy of Missing Sync 4.0 and found the licensing restrictions are incredibly strict — it apparently uses the Mac's ethernet address and (possibly) other criteria to limit Missing Sync to a single machine.

This is maybe no big deal if you have one machine, but if you have a desktop and a laptop as Matt does, it forces him to buy another full copy for the other machine. I think Mark/Space should consider offering current owners of Missing sync 4.0 the option of buying an additional sub-license for maybe $5 or $10.

Update 2004-08-28: Good news!! Matt has written back, to mention that Missing Sync 4.0's license allows use on up to 2 Macs! Mark/Space support says you can enter the same serial number on both machines when registering the software! Kudos to Mark/Space! :-)

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August 12, 2004

Bad Battery Day

Zoop.

The screen went black on my Titanium Powerbook, which is not unusual, except I'd awakened the Powerbook just 10 minutes before the battery died. Ugh.

No problem! I'll just get the AC adapter from my bag, plug in and I'll be good to go... wha? Where's the adapter? It's at home, on my desk. Double ugh.

Worse yet, I was at a local cafe, coffee in hand, awash in a virtual sea of free WiFi net access. Triple ugh.

My morning episode served as a reminder. As cool as technology might be, battery powered technology will eventually go kaput. And, it will most likely fail you when you least expect it, or can afford it.

Buying a replacement battery is of course an option, though maybe not the most sensible one. I don't take the laptop fully wireless very much (normally the adapter is along for the ride if I go mobile). Besides, 200-some dollars for a replacement battery seems much better saved and spent on a future Powerbook.

Next time I'm going to stuff the AC adapter in my pockets and tie the cord round my arm — at least until the old TiBook is retired in favor of something new. :-)

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February 17, 2004

Great Palm OS Cobalt Mac Support Overview at TidBITs

TidBITS is one of my all-time favorite e-zines, published by Adam and Tonya Engst for many years now. In fact it was the inspiration for the Palm Tipsheet which I founded in 1997 and sold last year.

Anyway, today I received the latest issue of TidBITS (#717) via email and saw that Jeff Carlson has written up an excellent overview of the Mac OS support situation at PalmSource that worth a read for all Mac users.

A great quote:

"Although Palm has occasionally taken interest in the Mac - such as buying Claris Organizer and turning it into Palm Desktop for Macintosh - the company's overall history of Mac support has seemed more like the kid brother your parents insisted you take to the movies with your date; he can get into the show, but has to sit somewhere else and can't have any popcorn."

I'm happy that Jeff has laid out the situation so well for Mac users, because it helps clarify alot of details that might be missed otherwise.

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February 16, 2004

Apple PDA Rumors and The PDA vs. The Laptop

Following a link from my well-connected Mac friend Andy, I read two long, detailed and very intriguing articles (part one, part two) by John Manzione at MacNETv2. The general gist of these posts is that PalmSource announced Mac OS Cobalt "non-support" slightly too soon for Apple, whom John suggests has a "Smart PDA" coming very soon (July '04).

Here's an interesting quote from part one:

"It will use an OS X-like OS, having full integration with iCal, Mail, Address Book, iSync, etc. It will be QuickTime driven, with support for the new codec’s, including Mpeg-4. The display will offer 65k colors and will be as large as the largest Sony Clie (there's that Clie thing again). The screen will be touch-sensitive, using Ink as the input software. Just imagine the latest Clie (!) with an Apple twist, meaning a whole new design concept, a flip screen, and a keyboard, FireWire, USB and Bluetooth. And it will be hard-drive based, using the same hard drive in that the new iPod mini uses, but I'm told the drive will be bigger. I have no idea what the cost will be, nor do I have any information about the processor, RAM, or anything else. However, it won’t matter if you have a Mac or PC, it supposedly works with both platforms through the introduction of iSync with Windows and an arrangement with Microsoft. (you don't think Apple advertised iLife '04 as being "Microsoft Office for the rest of your life" for nothing, did you?)"

and another about the reasons behind the long delay in part two:

"In the end, want Steve Jobs wants is what you get. He wants Wi-fi, Bluetooth, FireWire, Hard Drive, QuickTime, and OS X functionality. And he wants to be able to actually type an email, or an instant message, or input data quickly. You can’t do that today, no matter how nimble you are with a cell phone or PDA keypad (Although Sony’s Clies come pretty close). He wants to sync it easily with his Mac, and Dot Mac. He wants to watch video and listen to music, he wants to surf the web from anywhere, and he wants to get email anywhere. He wants something that will make him more productive and entertain him as well. He wants it all, and wouldn’t build a device until he could make it happen, on his terms."

Rumors like this have been floating around the Mac rumor mills a long time, so in some ways I'll take this with a grain of salt, but it would be great if such a product would appear. My guess is that should this Smart PDA from Apple surface, it's going to be high-end rather than low-end. Think the iPod of PDAs (in other words, not cheap).

The PDA vs. The Laptop
Now, relative to these two interesting articles was a chat I had with my colleague Matt Henderson recently about PDA usage. In a nutshell, Matt argued that there is not much that you can do with a PDA that cannot be done better or more comfortably on a Mac or PC laptop. Only those things which are truly useful for a majority of people when away from said laptop are truly practical to do on a PDA, such as checking your datebook, to-do list or addresses (PIM) and things like e-book reading and other remote-specific tasks (like retrieving data on a film you want to rent, showing photos, shopping lists, etc.).

Matt argued that while you can do many things with the current batch of PDAs out there, it's more or less "doing it with a PDA because you can" rather than "doing it with a PDA because it is better or easier". Web browsing is terrible, email is passable (but still limited and done by mainly über-geeks) and just about anything you can name as being "doable" on a PDA over a laptop is much more "make work" for the PDA than something a PDA can excel at and do better than a small, light, fast-waking, long-lasting wireless laptop (such as a 12" Powerbook, or what have you).

I argued the PDA side of things and yet Matt's responses seemed to undercut my defense. He asked me "how many business people do not travel with a laptop any more?" Not many to none I replied. Matt responded with something like "If so, why wouldn't a business person just check email or surf or whatever on their lightweight laptop rather than a Tungsten C or other PDA? Sure, you could use a Tungsten C, but would it be a better experience? And in reality, how many average business people would really do this? My sense is, only über-geeks would."

Hmmm. I think you've got a point there Matt.

We also talked about the question of true mass-market appeal of smartphones -- would these fall into the same category as PDAs? Will people be quite happy with semi-smart phones that maybe have some nice features (camera, MP3 player, minimal PIM info features)?

Yes, you can check your email on a Treo 600... but is it an imminently better experience than checking your email on the laptop right in front of you (or there in your bag)? How often are we really so far from a desktop computer that a Treo 600 would be that compelling for even checking email?

I'm not sure of my thoughts on Matt's questions, but I think he raises a very valid question in my mind: exactly what am I using my PDA for? Am I simply "making work" for it so that it feels more useful (and justified) or are there actions which are vastly superior when done on a PDA? Hmmm. Have to really ponder that one and not just give a knee-jerk reaction.

I'd love to hear your feedback on either the Apple Smart PDA rumors or this line of logic from Matt about PDAs vs. Laptops, as I'm, quite honestly, still brewing on both of them.

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November 21, 2003

Pantherized

Well, I've taken the plunge. Thursday evening around 9pm I finished final prep work on the Powerbook (backups, disk checkups, verifications) and clicked the install button of Panther (Mac OS X 10.3).

The install went mostly smoothly. The only problem I encountered after booting into Panther for the first time were all of the apps except for the Finder crashing seconds after launch, which freaked me out a bit, I must admit.

With help from the excellent $5 Take Control of Upgrading to Panther e-book by Joe Kissel, I suspected it was a startup item, and used the Shift key after login trick he suggested to shut them down and remove them. Turns out it was a favorite system add-on called Default Folder X, which makes navigation and file naming much nicer. I had the incompatible 1.8 version, so I simply updated to the new 1.9.2 release and all has been well since.

General impressions:

Faster, snappier, zippier. This was what I'd heard alot about, from readings on the net and my good friends Andy and Matt. It's subtle but nice -- things just feel like they're acting a bit more quickly. I can see how those seconds might add up in a day, week or month's time. It's not earth-shattering speed, but it makes my older TiBook more useable.

Exposé is quite nice. This was a feature I began having interest in after a few visits to the Apple Store in the past few weeks. Basically you can set F-Keys, hot spots or even mouse clicks to show windows of all apps, apps of the frontmost app or can hide all windows at the edge of the screen. I can see this being very useful.

Finder seems odd to me. Not sure what I think of this change yet, but at least I can revert Finder windows to the old Jaguar way. The new Finder windows all carry a selection of icons on the left edge and have a brushed metal look. Selections seem different as well, as selecting a file selects a bar of color across the entire window. This might take some getting used to, but is pretty minor. I should give the new Finder approach a shot, even though it's a little different than my normal work style.

I also found a little higher resolution for my 21" screen that's slightly nicer. It's an odd pixel count though: 1344 x 1008. That's a bit weird, but those extra pixels compared to 1280 x 960 do help.

System preferences have been rearranged now, and mostly for the better I think. Since I'm a relatively new OS X user, this might be less of a problem for me than a longer-term user. Generally speaking though, I found everything I needed to find with very little searching.

Finally, all of my apps running under Jaguar seem just fine under Panther. I suspect I'll run into a few that will need updating, but so far so good. So, after a few hours of use I'm pleased with the Panther update.

Now, you could argue that $130 for these updates is steep and in some ways I can agree. It would seem some of the things like performance increases ought to have been there before. Still, better response and speed, Exposé, Fast User Switching and the other tweaks seem well done and worth some price. Maybe $49 would have been better. But Apple is a software company, so this is how they pay for the work they do.

I'm pretty happy with Panther so far, and that's a good thing. :-)

Have a great weekend!

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October 29, 2003

Mac OS X Influencing MS Longhorn? Inconceivable! :-)

This morning I came across an interesting story at the Register about Longhorn (set to be released somewhere about 2006), discussing what it might include. But what caught my eye were screenshots that had apparently leaked out early. I thought these shots of Longhorn's Explorer were intriguing because its brushed metal, gradated appearance reminded me so much of Mac OS X!

As you can see by the sample above, I've taken a key part of a Longhorn screenshot and stacked it above an iTunes window. Quite interesting how the round 3D icons look similar to the play button of iTunes, and how closely the highlight on the Longhorn Explorer window's surface perfectly matches the brushed metal look of the iTunes window. Coincidence? Maybe the ol' Microsoft User Interface engineers have installed copies of iTunes for Windows? It sure seems to be influencing their design thinking.

Now, you might argue that Longhorn is still 2 years off, so these screenshots could conceivably change by 2006... probably to mimic whatever user interface Mac OS X happens to have by then I suppose.

So, the next time someone tries to claim Microsoft doesn't copy other people's work... well, I'll just smile and say to myself, "Yeah, right." :-)

Update 03 November 2003

On Saturday, I popped over to Shaun McGill's PDA 24/7 site while I was at the local Apple store and saw that he had posted an email from David, someone who had read this post last week and had some comments. I thought to clarify my post and respond to David's comments, I would post my email to Shaun here, for the record.

First, here is David's comment from PDA 24/7 in its entirety:

Topic: History of the Mac? Date: 1/11/2003 (13:12)

David sent me an interesting email re rohdesign's recent Mac article- "I  dunno -- I left Mike a note about this. I don't know what your platform affiliations might be (other than Palm OS, of course), but I've worked with everything from Apple DOS (beginning in 1981), through PC and MSDOS, GEM (remember that?), Desqview and Windows on the PC platform. I'm a professional photographer and graphic designer (my wife is also a graphic designer) and have worked with Macs since about 1996. In 1993 I started working with Irix (SGI machines) while I was trying to learn 3D animation (never did get very good at it) and in 1994 started with Linux. The current machines run Win2000, MacOS and Linux.
 
Mike's lack of history with anything but MacOS is typical of a lot of Mac users, seemslike. It's as if computers weren't invented until they bought their first G4.  As a result, there's amazement over iCal (which has been in every distribution of Linux since the beginning, I think), which Apple users seem to think was invented by Apple. Same with almost every old Unix tool being slowly added to the OS X platform. Latest include some old XWindows things (updated slightly) in Panther. Jobs, of course, knows better -- he was using a Unix Mach 3 kernel years ago in his NeXt machines, and the Apple GUI was essentially shown to him full-blown by Xerox at the Palo Alto Research Center, running on networked Unix computers nearly a year before the Apple Lisa and "tombstone" Macs hit the streets.
 
The business of the "brushed metal" look as a theme showing up in both Panther and Longhorn screen shots at the same time being touted as "influence" is just silly. Linux (and other versions of *nix) have had multiple window managers available for years, and just one of the fun things about those window managers (in addition to being able to customize the way they work) is the wide number of themes that have been posted for them on the net -- literally thousands, including probably 100 or more that feature "brushed metal" and a couple that featured the "Aqua" Mac OS look before Apple actually made it available.
 
I love that the Mac is an Unix machine now. It's finally come full circle to embrace the core operating system from which it has filched bits and pieces to layer over a hackneyed single-tasking single-threading single-user antique operating system over too long a time. But it would be nice if Mac users, particularly those who maintaining widely read blogs, had some sense of history <G>..."

If you have an opinion on this post it here. When you post please be polite and constructive- I think David has a point but can see others differing a bit:)

Now, here is my email response to David's comments, sent to Shaun:

Shaun,

Well, what an ironic morning! I was at the local mall today, visiting the Apple store and checking out Safari on the new G5 when on PDA 24/7, I see a post from David, giving me a bit of a hard time on my recent weblog post from Oct 29. That was quite a surprise.

I guess I'm a bit befuddled, because I really believe David and I agree on nearly every point he makes -- except that I have no sense of computing history and that I only see Macs as a true platform.

David says:

"Mike's lack of history with anything but MacOS is typical of a lot of Mac users, seems like. It's as if computers weren't invented until they bought their first G4."

Wow, I have a lack of history? I can only see Macs? Nope. I grew up trying to program a ZX81, used a Commodore 64 for years, wrote many term papers on a Leading Edge PC clone running DOS with an amber screen and worked with paint programs on early Windows machines in college.

Actually, I didn't become a full-time Mac user until about 1990, in my design firm days. So, I feel I'm reasonably aware of general computer history. I might I have less deep knowledge about Unix/Linux, but I certainly do not believe computing starts and ends with Mac OS.

I have experiences with other platforms, and while I tend to give Windows stuff a hard time on my weblog, I certainly do believe those machines are useful and do the job. I just prefer a Mac for many reasons, and that's my choice. Because I love my Mac, I try to show its benefits to others, but by no means do I believe those other computing platforms are somehow complete junk. Hey, Windows PCs are 90-something percent of the computing world, so they must be doing something right. And as for Unix and Linux, OS X is a close cousin to those established OSes, so I feel more akin to them as a Mac user than distant from them.

"As a result, there's amazement over iCal (which has been in every distribution of Linux since the beginning, I think), which Apple users seem to think was invented by Apple. Same with almost every old Unix tool being slowly added to the OS X platform."

I'm not amazed by iCal. I tried it and felt it was okay, but way too slow, and decided not to run it. I don't know where David's iCal reference relative to me is from, because I have never mentioned it, let alone being fond of it. Neither have I suggested it was invented by Apple. :-)

As for Unix tools being added to OS X, I think that's great and generally am aware that they are ports or refinements to existing tools from the *nix platform. If I am not aware of where they are from I am always happy to know their histories. I've no fear of that -- I welcome it!

"Jobs, of course, knows better -- he was using a Unix Mach 3 kernel years ago in his NeXt machines, and the Apple GUI was essentially shown to him full-blown by Xerox at the Palo Alto Research Center, running on networked Unix computers nearly a year before the Apple Lisa and "tombstone" Macs hit the streets."

Of course Jobs does know better. But he's trying to sell an OS and hardware and I am not. He might neglect to mention that his new tools are based on old tools, but I'm not him and never have suggested otherwise. ;-)

I know that the new OS X is essentially a refined version NeXT OS, which was based on BSD. I know that Jobs saw the old Xerox idea of windows and all that other stuff, which he copied and turned into Macintosh. I'm a Mac fan and I know the history of the Mac reasonably well... never have argued that he hadn't, and have never claimed otherwise.

Now if the argument was that Apple copied Xerox and other *nix stuff (re my post) I agree! All of the technology we have now has been built on the shoulders of technology before it. Unix came because of experiences with mainframe and other older systems, so even it must claim influence from earlier technology.

I think David's key point is really this one:

"The business of the "brushed metal" look as a theme showing up in both Panther and Longhorn screen shots at the same time being touted as"influence" is just silly. Linux (and other versions of *nix) have hadmultiple window managers available for years, and just one of the fun thingsabout those window managers (in addition to being able to customize the waythey work) is the wide number of themes that have been posted for them onthe net -- literally thousands, including probably 100 or more that feature"brushed metal" and a couple that featured the "Aqua" Mac OS look before Apple actually made it available."

He seems bugged that I've not mentioned these brushed metal and Aqua-like skins have been available for *nix a long time, and therefore Apple or Microsoft have both been influenced. Got me there. My apologies for the lack of the mention.

However... right now (and for a few years now) those specific UI elements have been a standard and are specifically well-known as parts of OS X. Metal and Aqua may have been available as add-ons 'skins' for *nix boxes -- but as far as I know, they haven't been a default theme in any standard *nix distributions. Please correct me if I am wrong.

This is the key point of what I was getting at: OS X is well known for Aqua and brushed metal as the default theme, not as an add-on skin. Of course, the Longhorn UI guys may have been influenced by old *nix skins directly at some point... We'll never know. However, the close overall similarity between Longhorn's default UI and OS X's default UI seemed almost too coincidental to me, so I commented on it. I still think it was a fair observation to make.

"But it would be nice if Mac users, particularly those who maintaining widely read blogs, had some sense of history <G>..."

Wow, widely-read... Is he really talking about me here? :-)

I feel I have a reasonable sense of computing history, but not exhaustive, and I have never claimed it was. Who really does? I simply commented on what I saw as a close similarity between Longhorn and OS X, and feel it was a fair opinion to voice, and I stand by it.

I'm still not sure where David and I really differ much, other than his suggestion that I have no sense of computing history, I see only Macs and nothing else. I think I've defended myself pretty well there.

In the end, I'm glad for David's comments, because it gives me an opportunity to explain myself in this area. It also makes for interesting discussion. Hopefully David feels the same way. :-)

I just wanted to set the record straight on my thoughts about this post -- hopefully this update will help do that for the curious out there.

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October 24, 2003

Panther Has Landed

Hey, the day has come -- Apple's Mac OS X Panther (a.k.a. 10.3) has arrived! I think tonight I'll stop by our local Apple Store at Mayfair Mall and check out the Night of Panther event happening there. I'd particularly like to see the environments feature (Fast User Switching) and what Mail might have to offer, as these two applications may suit my needs once I update. The email I received yesterday mentioned free stuff (maybe t-shirts) and a chance at winning a Mac, so Nathan and I will be sure to have a look around.

However, as excited as I am about Panther, I probably won't upgrade for at least a week or two (or more), so I can let others find out which apps are still in need of upgrades to run on 10.3. Let others ride on the bleeding edge. I should also plan the upgrade correctly and include a backup of my data, should glitches occur.

I've mentioned 10.3 before, describing the Fast User Switching feature as one I'm most excited about. In fact, a reader named David sent along a very nice, detailed note about the "environments" feature in Linux, pointing out that this has been around a really long time in the Unix world. While I may one day try out Linux, right now I'm quite happy with Mac OS X and have the patience to wait and see what Fast User Switching in 10.3 is like.

I'm also happy to hear that older Macs, like the Titanium Powerbook G4 I happen to use, should see some significant speed boosts with 10.3. I'll withhold my judgment on just how "significant" the boost is, still, it's good to hear that my Mac could become a bit quicker with a software update.

I've come across a few reviews of Panther out there, notably Walt Mossberg's article which suggests spam-weary PC users might want to check out OS X. Slashdot mentions a David Pogue New York Times review of Panther and has tons of user comments. OS News has a nice article that previews Panther and lets users know what to expect in the new OS. Macworld has a nice article that gives a clear overview of Panther's new features. I imagine there are others, I've just not gone looking for them.

Anyway, this weekend will involve a Panther peek, raking of leaves, caulking of house siding and a bunch of other necessary house tasks. Winter is coming, so I've got to get the house ready while it's still reasonably nice outside. :-)

Update: Just got back a while ago, from Mayfair and the Night of Panther event at the Apple Store. There was quite a turnout; the line for entry snaked across the main hallway and down a back hallway. I think my son Nathan and I waited in line about 30 minutes before getting into the store.

The crowd were definitely the Mac faithful. I saw some people in line with their iBooks and Powerbooks and many Apple-related t-shirts. Probably 90% were really hardcore fans (some of them looked like it was their first escape from indoors since the Apple Store opened nearly a year ago). We received 2 drawing cards, one for Nathan and one for me, and entered for our chance at a free Mac.

Had a chance to chat with a few fans around me about Panther, one of which had already installed the last beta and was psyched up to buy Panther. There was also a family there who oddly enough were still on Mac OS 9. Their daughter was having fun playing with Nathan.

Soon we were ushered into the store by Apple employees in black OS X t-shirts. I found an open iMac and got a close look at Fast User Switching. Wow, what a cool feature! It was indeed fast, and included a slick 3D effect, which made the screen look like one side of a cube that swung away as the new user's profile spun into place.

Expose is also very slick; basically, every window running on your Mac is shrunken to fit onto a single screen with a screen hotspot or F-key. Once the windows shrink down, you can roll over them until you select the window you'd like to work with, using the mouse. That new window comes to the front and all other windows are hidden away.

The new Finder also looked pretty good, with some new features similar to Default Folder X, one of the 3rd party utilities I run now. It offers a list of hard drives, your 'home' folder and favorites in a column on the left side of the main window. Dialog boxes for opening and saving also carry this new layout.

The user interface is much nicer, with OS X's signature pinstripes getting toned down and the top bar of windows getting a gray gradation rather than pinstripes. The iTunes-like brushed aluminum is also more prominent. Overall, the interface feels more refined and professional that Jaguar (10.2). This is good.

I can't speak to Panther's speed, since every machine at the Apple Store was at least twice as fast as my current Powerbook. I'll just have to wait and see how that fares once Panther is installed. I've also learned about incompatibility between Palm Desktop 4.1 and Panther, so this might be another reason to hold off on an upgrade for the time being. I'm sure PalmSource will resolve the issues, but I don't need to be fighting with HotSync issues right out of the box.

UPDATE 2005-11-23: Eric K. wrote about info on the permissions issues with OS X and sent along a link to a resolution from Palm's own website, in case you need this.

So, based on our field trip, I think Panther is a great upgrade. $129 is a bit steep if you're just reading specs, but when you actually see what you're getting in person for that price, it's a really decent deal.

So, Nathan and I left the Apple Store around 9pm. On the way out, we were given two sets of black Panther dog tags. One has the Panther X logo on it with the words "Mac OS X Panther v10.3, Worldwide Release" under it, while the other tag has simply the Panther X logo and no type below it. Each tag has a black Apple logo on the back. I opened mine and kept Nathan's in the plastic bag -- for when he becomes a Mac user in the future. ;-)

Oh, before I sign off for the weekend, if you're considering an upgrade from Jaguar to Panther, check out two great $5 Take Control e-books Take Control of Upgrading to Panther and Take Control of Customizing Panther (to be released soon). These are written by leading Mac authors, with editing by the folks at TidBITS. These look like excellent resource documents for Jaguar to Panther upgraders..

Hey, have a great weekend!

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October 20, 2003

iTunes for Windows is Hot

Just read today on MacNN that Apple's release of iTunes for Windows has been nabbed a million times since its launch last Thursday. Here's the Apple PR release. Hey, this is great news!

Apple Music Store downloads were also up, with sales of over 1 million songs during the same period of time.

I know a few friends who have downloaded the app; Andy (a Mac user) says he was really amazed that the Windows port of iTunes is virtually identical to the OS X version, which makes sense if Apple wants to remind PC users of what OS X users get every day, system-wide. Julie at the Gadgeteer likes the new app and the iTunes Store as well:

It's almost 11:30pm, and I really should be in bed, but I just had to install the new iTunes for Windows. I've been waiting for this for a long while, and now that it's here, I think I'm in love! I only had a Powerbook for a few months, but in that time I really grew to love the iTunes app. Now I have it on my PC! I love the interface, and then there's the built-in store... My first purchase was Jonny Lang's newest album: Long Time Coming. At $9.99, I think it's a great deal. Right now, It's updating my iPod with all 3400 songs in my library (including the 15 new ones). Whee!!! New music to listen to tomorrow.

Meanwhile, another friend Michael Ashby, also grabbed a copy of iTunes for Windows, which he is planning to install, but has heard mixed reviews (I wasn't able to get specific negative reviews of the Windows app though). Slashdot also has a positive review of iTunes for Windows.

I'm happy to see it's released and hope Windows users enjoy it... maybe it'll even get some thinking about checking out Mac OS X in a local Apple Store... :-)

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September 5, 2003

Happy Mac OS X User

You know, there are days when I come down to my Macintosh and I'm incredibly pleased to be a Mac user. I have very reliable a system -- Mac OS X -- that almost never crashes, and never really needs to be rebooted. I think the last time it crashed was... lets see... June I think. As for needing to reboot, I think that was... hmmm... early August.

Sure, apps in OS X crash now and then, but they generally don't take the entire system down with them the way Mac OS 7, 8 and 9 did. I think an app crash has taken the whole system down for me twice since January. So, I can just keep running the Powerbook G4 constantly, only sleeping on occasion if I want to work upstairs or at the cafe for a while.

I'm now growing fond of the OS X way of working, with the pop-up Dock at the base of my screen. All of my daily-use apps have been ported to OS X, like Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and Macromedia Fireworks. Further, I'm seeing a daily parade of new applications being developed, like NetNewsWire, an excellent RSS reader and weblog management tool. I've gotta say, it's a great time to be a Mac user running OS X.

Well, some days I'm even more appreciative of my Mac user status. Take for instance yesterday, when I read the New York Times story, The secret life of an infected PC in the International Herald Tribune.

I about spit coffee onto my screen, reading how Windows PC users have found all sorts of weird viri and unsolicited or unwanted software packages installed on their home machines! This quote was especially troubling:

Richard Smith, a computer security expert in Brookline, Massachusetts, estimated that one of every two computers using versions of Microsoft's Windows operating system has unsolicited software lurking within. "I'm the official computer maintainer in my extended family, and I have seven computers to keep up and running," Smith said. "With the exception of my computer, they've all been whacked." His machine was spared, he said, only because of his extreme vigilance.

Just imagine that: 1 in 2 Windows PCs are harboring unsolicited software within their hard drives. The realization that every other reader of this weblog post who's running a Windows PC is likely to have a nasty bit of software running without their knowledge. Yow. Don't know about you, but that just gives me the willies!

The article goes on to talk about sypware and the ad-app Gator and a security tool app called Ad-Aware that can remove unwanted software from a Windows PC. Good to hear someone is out there offering at least 3rd party protection, even if Microsoft seems a tad unconcerned about security.

After mentioning this story to Craig at GearBits, he added a helpful post about one Steve Gibson and Gibson Research Corporation. GRC produces tools and patches (many of the freeware) to help protect Windows users from all of the holes Microsoft has intentionally or inadvertently left open (sometimes by default) on their OSes. Thank goodness for GRC!

As for me, I'll just say "No thanks Microsoft." I'll stick with my OS X box that just keeps rolling day after day and week after week. In fact, see no real need to change, as I have access to MS Office for OS X (or OpenOSX Office if I so chose) along with many other important tools to stay compatible with my Windows-using pals. If I really need a Windows app, I can run MS Virtual PC or alternately, OpenOSX WinTel.

Sure, Macs have a miniscule part of the market share (about 5%) which makes them less interesting to viri writers, but OS X also has BSD (a form of Unix) underlying the pretty windows, which also contributes to it's high level of security. That, combined with a great looking and well-designed user interface, makes me a pretty happy OS X guy.

If you're unhappy with your Windows PC experience, maybe you should check out a Macintosh and consider Mac OS X? :-)

Have a great weekend!

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June 26, 2003

Jonathan Ive's PowerMac G5 Design

If you've followed this weeks announcement of the new Apple PowerMac G5, you're probably aware of its strange new minimalist Aluminum design, a signiicant shift away from Apple's recent plastic cases.

I really like the new PowerMac G5 design, including some of its controversial details, like its front and rear grilles being equated to cheese graters. The funny thing is, while everyone else in the PC world are trying to outdo each other with freakier or uglier looking plastic cases, Ive and his Apple design team just push the envelope and progress their designs to the next level. Just look at the simplicity and subtlety of the new G5: folded aluminum, and see-through grilles.

In my opinion, Jonathan Ive and his Apple design team are the design trendsetters of the computer industry. They set the trends everyone else tries to mimic and copy. Take for example the original iMac. Shortly after its release, other PC and peripheral makers were furiously copying Ive's design style. Funny thing is, by the time the competition was into copying the iMac look, Ive had long since moved to the next design.

Another good example was the PowerBook Titanium's design which was knocked off years later by Gateway... but by then Apple's PowerBook line had already shifted to a completely new design using an aluminum case.

And finally, I should mention the iPod. Many have tried to copy its style and simplicity but just can't seem to get it down. And again, by the time competitors have made their best effort at a bad copy that's been watered down by committee, Apple and their lead designer, Jonathan Ive have already moved on to the next thing. Buh and bye!

Wired posted a very interesting article this week, called Design According to Ive, in which the writer asks Ive about his design philosophy and the new G5 design. I especially love this quote:

"We wanted to get rid of anything other than what was absolutely essential, but you don't see that effort," he said. "We kept going back to the beginning again and again. Do we need that part? Can we get it to perform the function of the other four parts? It became an exercise to reduce and reduce, but it makes it easier to build and easier for people to work with."

Wow. Reducing and simplifying? This is something really unusual. Often there is this tendency by companies, particularly in the computing world, to keep adding and adding features rather than trimming and reducing things to reach a good design. The idea of reducing to achieve a great design is Design School 101, but I don't often see designers using this approach in the real world. It's very refreshing to see this principle adopted by Ive and Apple.

UPDATE: Andy, my Mac-using Austrian house-guest has supplied me with a nice link to 30-some shots of the new PowerMac G5 surrounded by a throng of German Mac fanboys from the Apple Germany press event in Köln. Check out image 400 -- is that Heidi there in the background? :-)

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June 18, 2003

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Bytes

My Linux-using friend and colleague, Niall, sent along an image via email today that had me literally laughing out loud. I think it's the funniest image I've seen for a while now, since it so perfectly illustrates (and kinda exaggerates) the difference between Mac OS X (based on BSD Unix) and GNU/Linux.

Notice how simple the OS X box is; on or off... well maybe that's a bit of an overstatement. However, on the other hand, notice how you're not really sure which button or knob on the Linux box even turns the thing on or off. In fact, the button you're so sure powers down the box, might just reformat the hard drive! :-)

FYI, the original, larger image can be found at http://gniarf.net1.nerim.net/mindless2.jpg

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May 28, 2003

Mac OS X vs. Linux Hotrodder Analogy

This weekend an analogy came to me related to Mac OS X users and Linux users [1] that I wanted to mention here to see if I'm on the mark or way out there. Here is is:

I think Mac OS X and Linux users are kinda like two first cousins who happen to both love hot rod cars, but love them in slightly different ways.

A Mac OS X user is the cousin who loves to drive really cool cars; loves cruising and being seen in a really slick ride. This cousin may even enjoy tweaking the appearance of the car by adding a custom paint job, spoilers, ground effects, or other easy to moderately difficult mechanical additions. The Mac OS X user also uses the car in practical ways -- to pick up groceries, drive to work, take road trips and the like. Driving the car is the most important thing to the Mac OS X user.

A Linux user is the cousin who loves to tear apart and rebuld cars. Dropping in a new engines, grinding valves, adding high performance engine and transmission parts, tweaking the engine until it runs perfectly. Wanting to know every part intimately. This cousin is less concerned for the car's appearance -- primer, missing body parts, mismatched wheels or missing lights are not as important as having a perfectly running car. This cousin might also cruise the strip or run errands, but would much rather spend time working in the garage. Working on the car is the most important thing to the Linux user.

Now of course there are variations on this theme and some crossover. I'm sure that some OS X users lean more toward under-the-hood stuff and some Linux users are more interested in getting stuff done than making system modifications. I suppose there are even users from either side whom look down on the other. However, for the most part I think each side views the other in a positive light, since both share the a Unix kernel, which I think is kinda cool.

Any thoughts or comments?

UPDATE: After some refelction on the comments and my initial analogy, I've changed the word 'tinker' to 'tear apart and rebuld' and 'system modifications' to get across my real intent -- that Linux users want to know every part of their OS, inside and out. I felt 'tinker' may have been too casual of a term, when I really intended it to mean something more serious.

[1] Apple's latest operating system, Mac OS X, has Berkeley Systems Distribution (BSD) Unix, running underneath that 'lickable' Aqua Graphical User Interface. Linux is another Unix-like operating system created by Linus Torvalds and modified and tweaked by software engineers worldwide for years, following the open source development model.

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April 17, 2003

Microsoft Smart Display = Apple iScreen?

I've just learned today (thanks to Craig!) that Microsoft has already created a spec for with a Wi-Fi wireless Smart Display very much like