“Starting with iOS 5, the same 58 font families are now installed on both the iPad and iPhone. Hooray for more Gill Sans on the iPhone. (Fonts installed on Android: 3.)”
Evolution and Intelligent Design (No, Not That Kind …)
“Everybody has a duty to participate in the quest to deeply understand more and to be better. It is our duty. When we are born, we sign a contract with our family, with our tribe, with our environment. We have to honour that contract.
Nobody is obliged to be a genius — Ptolemy, Hawkins, Einstein or even Steve Jobs[2]. But you must do the best you can with your own tools. A plumber who performs his best possible work is part of our grand race to be better.”
Yep. This.
The ethics of work. Not everybody gots to be a rocket scientist nor everyone has the physical body to do heavy physical work and build stuff. We need to play the hand we were dealt. But what we must do and we must try to be is one of the best at our work. No matter what it is. That no one can truthfully claim that we weren’t honest or truthful or one of the best. Now, that’s a goal.
Zero sum game
“The problem isn’t individuals. We do hire some very smart and capable people, who I am sure all want to ‘do the right thing’.
The problem is the emergent behavior of all those individuals rushing around doing what they think they need to to get ahead. Somehow the whole is a lot less than the sum of its parts.”
Mini-Microsoft comments section is basically “Microsoft under a microscope”. There you can witness the rants, complaints and Dilbert similarities of what goes on at Redmond. Sometimes i just take an hour or so and go to read the latest. ((when they don’t jump from less than two hundred to over a thousand like the quoted post…)) Some comments aren’t from ‘Softies at all, but it’s fairly easy to figure out those. Some are just outsiders that would like to get an answer or give input. But you can find there a great picture of the human reality in Microsoft’s HQ.
I won’t say that i understand Microsoft HR evaluation scheme. I don’t. I find the whole thing a jigsaw puzzle of meaningless numbers where, between the time necessary for a new post, someone at the HR department decides to reinvent the wheel and introduces some “improvements”… And then I, the outsider, am lost again. ((And apparently many ‘Softies as well…))
What i do understand is this: When you turn the assessment of individuals on the same team into a zero-sum game, you’ve just activated the self-destruct mode. No one can win in that game.
Microsoft is dying on its inside. It appears there’s only two types of MS employees. The ones utterly disappointed with MSFT current situation and absolutely despairing with the lack of direction from above; and the ones completely blind and with a zest of “we will prevail” zealot-fanatic style where the reality and visible trends are something that we shouldn’t pay attention to. ((The complete lack of understanding and importance of trends reminds me of this guy but without the excessive verbosity…)) There may be a “silent majority” there but, as usual, that majority, the ones who usually do the really good work, will just grow disenchanted with all the dirty politics and treachery going on and decide to depart to greener pastures, to somewhere where they are truly appreciated and they can feel that they do a good work.
Steve Ballmer may one day get fired ((And let’s hope that that happens on the 15th of November, at the Board meeting)) but when that happens what will be left to rebuild MSFT with? One hundred thousand back-stabbing “politicians”? It barely seems a good fit for a technology company that produces the software the equips 90% of the world computers and basically 100% of the enterprise market.
I’m truly curious about the future.
Sustainable Softworks Blog
“The combination of application sandboxing and entitlements could provide a more elegant solution if it is applied carefully. Apple doesn’t need to solve the entire problem all at once, but it does need to recognize there are important applications beyond self contained productivity or entertainment, and begin thinking about how to include some of them in the Mac App Store.
To help get the conversation started, I’d like to suggest a rating system similar to the already familiar film-rating system:
“G” for General use or everyone
“PG” for Parental Guidance suggested (security implications should be noted, such as anything that installs a plugin)
“R” for Restricted (requires more extensive system access such as a backup or disk utility)
The point here is that Apple could offer a better user experience by allowing a broader range of integrated solutions to be offered in the Mac App Store.”*
Yes. The one approach fits all is in itself a security risk as more and more users and apps opt-out of the Mac App Store (MAS) entirely or circumvent its restrictions. Add to this the updated delay for security bugs most apps have – comparing with the non-app versions – this might blow up in Apple’s face. But read the full post at the source to get a better view of what’s being criticized
I usually just try to use the non-MAS versions for these reasons as well. And i find the all “download dmg file -> open it -> drag the app to where you want it” not that cumbersome, but then again, i’m not the usual Mac user so my view is skewed.
But Apple needs to seriously consider the criticism being stated all around the developer’s internet. Switching Preference Panes for a Menu Bar icon is, on the long run, a dumb idea. What happens when people have more than 10 apps that require this “hack”? Stop buying apps at the MAS entirely?
Siri easter eggs
Endless more at “Shit Siri Says”
Taking Away The Magic
“And Apple took away that magic, bestowing it solely to iPad 2 owners and leaving my hindbrain and fingers pointlessly swiping every now and then (even as I typed this and tried to switch to Twitter momentarily to gripe about my usual morning headache).
But maybe I’m not getting the full point across here, so I’ll try again: I became so used to switching between apps without using the home button that the iPad is now the most frustrating device I own.”
I guess today is rant at Apple day. Nothing they don’t try real hard to to deserve sometimes.
Steve Jobs on Why He Wore Turtlenecks
“On a trip to Japan in the early 1980s, Jobs asked Sony’s chairman Akio Morita why everyone in the company’s factories wore uniforms. He told Jobs that after the war, no one had any clothes, and companies like Sony had to give their workers something to wear each day. Over the years, the uniforms developed their own signatures styles, especially at companies such as Sony, and it became a way of bonding workers to the company. “I decided that I wanted that type of bonding for Apple,” Jobs recalled.
Sony, with its appreciation for style, had gotten the famous designer Issey Miyake to create its uniform. It was a jacket made of rip-stop nylon with sleeves that could unzip to make it a vest. So Jobs called Issey Miyake and asked him to design a vest for Apple, Jobs recalled, “I came back with some samples and told everyone it would great if we would all wear these vests. Oh man, did I get booed off the stage. Everybody hated the idea.””
Excerpt from Jobs biography on Gawker.com
I would never had guessed this.
iStupidity
So let me get this straight. In order to try iCloud i must have Lion OR, in alternative, Windows Vista or 7?! What about Snow Leopard and Leopard? And i won’t even go to the other previous cats… You know, the other OSes that Apple produces!!
And no, currently i don’t have any iOS device. I wanted to try multiple macs sync. But apparently Apple values your use of Windows more than Mac OS X.
And as a cherry on top, because my Apple ID is a MobileMe address, from when i subscribed to Apple’s overpriced service, and because that account is long expired but Apple still recognizes it as a attached to a MobileMe account, i hit a wall of: “please go MobileMe site to upgrade this account” -> “this account is expired and can’t be renewed”.
At least 18 months of planning and testing and this is what you came up with? Jeez… That’s just dumb and disrespectful.
Printer catalog
Want to see something really cool?
Open Finder, select your Mac hard disk on the left, then select the /Library folder on your disk top level. Now type “icns” on the Search field (upper right corner of finder window) and select “Search: Library” and “File Name”.
You should now be watching a Finder window filled of magnificent icons representing real life printers, plotters, scanners and other assorted hardware.
Zoom in to the maximum. Scroll down. Now say “Ahhhh!”.
The realism and detail level on these things is amazing. You can actually recognize any physical printer that you use, down to the numbers on its keys. And there is an endless supply of them. I thought the nice icons i usually see on the printer preferences pane was only done to for the high price / office grade printers i usually use but it’s for all of them. Brother, Cannon, HP, you name it. On my case i can even see the Texas calculator i use.
Of course, many of these icons are in fact pictures converted in to icons (512×512 pixels max), but there are also drawn icons and pictures converted to drawing. All in all, an amazing attention to detail, even on the simpler icon level.
Quicklook your install packages
One of my biggest complaints and pet-hates are the Install Packages many developers feel they must include. (( I always have the impression they’re just Windows developers that transitioned to the Mac without fully understanding it. ))
The problem is that Install Packages are a security and abuse issue waiting to happen. You are required to go back to the “dark ways” and just mindlessly click “next, next, insert password, next…”
to go through screens of useless information while the installer package can simply be wiping out your home folder and installing a key logger on a system level and you will never even know what it did.
A possible solution to this is a Quicklook plugin called “Suspicious Package“, a very apt name i must add. With it you can simply invoke Quicklook (( through pressing the space bar on finder or right-clicking it and selecting on “Quick Look filename” )) on a Install Package and see what its contents are.
You will now see where the installer will install files, if it haves any install scripts (and you can look through these if you understand them) or if they require an Admin password or a full System Restart to install. All without even executing the file once.
A QuickLook on the MAMP install package.
The installation of the plugin itself is very simple and you just need to drag the plugin to your Quicklook folder on YourUserFolder/Library/Quicklook . If no such folder exists just create it with the exact name of “Quicklook”.
It should be noted that although Mac OS X is a very secure system, it is no more secure than any other when it comes to the user allowing suspicious applications to run with the elevated privileges of a Administrator. If an application has that privilege, because you gave them to it by typing your admin password, then the app can do as it pleases with your system. So, always go for the paranoid side of things, specially the ones that you are not fully sure of its character. Better safe than sorry…