UNDERDOG of PERFECTION

Further knocking Apple down from its pedestal (not that I’m not still a rabid fanboy as mentioned in the previous post), we have this further proof of my theory that although Steve Jobs usually has impeccable instincts, once he gets something stuck in his craw, no matter how outlandish it is, Apple simply must go through with it.

I’ve been thinking this a lot in regards to the grand trilogy of Leopard GUI design decisions that have been widely criticized by the world of Mac users (including myself): the translucent menu bar, the 3-D Dock, and the Stacks icons. But now here’s some proof that this really does go on (if you accept it as proof, which I do in this case), from the hardware side. The left side, to be specific, of the current MacBook line. I happen to be sitting in front of one right now, and I can vouch for this. The left side is “squishy,” right where those two screws are. They’re clearly not attached to anything! Therefore, they must be purely cosmetic.

Which is pretty ridiculous, when you think about it.

Wow. I mean, wow. This guy freakin’ loves Apple. He must have a giant poster of Steve Jobs in his bedroom. Either that or he owns a mountain of Apple stock.

Whatever the case, Tom Yager finds Mac OS X Leopard to be without flaw. Not only a “10” but a “Perfect 10.” There’s no way that even I can say that.

Granted, my gripes with it are petty and purely visual: the translucent menu bar; the glossy, glassy Dock; the stupid Stacks icons. I love its functionality and performance, and haven’t run into any actual problems using it (other than the fact that iPhoto is flaking out on me, but I’m running an old version and I have over 7000 photos in my library, neither of which is Leopard’s fault; and I had to upgrade Photoshop for compatibility, but with CS3 I’m glad I did that anyway).

But still… perfect? Come on. And it gets even more nauseating as the article goes on.

So yes, if you have a Mac, by all means buy Leopard; it’s $129 far better spent than on Vista. (Not that you can get a usable version of Vista for that price… but if you could, you could run it on your Mac too.) If you don’t have a Mac, now’s a great time to give one serious consideration. But if you’re still on the fence, don’t read this article first; with friends like Tom Yager (and of course the ever-insufferable Guy Kawasaki), Apple needs no enemies: this kind of sycophantic Apple-can-do-no-wrong drivel only proves the point for people who think Apple products are just for the fanboys.

For an antidote to this sickening lovefest, check out this anti-Leopard rant a former coworker just emailed to me.

In honor of the pending release of the first of four new feature-length Futurama DVDs, Wired magazine has an extensive feature about the past and, erm, future of the show. But it also has a feature on the original “Futurama” of the 1939 World’s Fair.

I’ve read a bit about the 1939 World’s Fair, about the eager anticipation of emerging from the Great Depression into a brighter and better “World of Tomorrow” (circa 1960), laughably naive from today’s perspective. But until now I’d never actually seen the film of the Futurama exhibit, with its swelling, dramatic score and overwrought narration. In some ways it felt like I was back in high school, watching the long-outdated science films our district had elected not to replace, devoting the precious funds instead (and to little avail) to our perpetually mediocre sports teams. But my response was deeper, and more disturbed.

It’s true that in many ways they got things right, though it may have been a self-fulfilling prophecy: the “world of tomorrow” is dominated by controlled-access superhighways teeming with (free-flowing) traffic. It’s easy now to forget that back then, freeways didn’t exist. The idea that they would relieve congestion is laughable (or lamentable) however, especially considering that they also envisioned a megalopolis where residential, commercial, and industrial districts (I feel like I’m playing SimCity) are separated, for “greater efficiency and convenience.” (Ha! Good one, GM!) The current trend of revitalization (and gentrification) of depressed and/or abandoned inner-city industrial areas as mixed-use residential/commercial developments (such as the “North Loop” neighborhood of lofts and coffee houses comprised of converted warehouses and new-construction-designed-to-look-like-old-converted-warehouses here in Minneapolis) would suggest we’ve learned the error of that particular vision. And yet, the ominous portent of elimination of “undesirable slum areas” in the relentless march forward remains. (Just ask the former residents of Chicago’s Cabrini-Green projects… wherever they’ve been dispersed to today. It’s not that slums — and the side effects of concentrated marginalization of the economic and/or ethnic “Other” — are a good thing, it’s just that you can’t simply displace all of those people and expect their problems to magically vanish.)

On a lighter note, the enthusiastic prediction of a floating dirigible hangar in the city’s river brings some comic relief to an otherwise suffocating, earnest yet ultimately soulless and hollow, view of a future of “penetrating new horizons in the spirit of individual enterprise in the great American way.” For some, anyway. Women and slum dwellers need not apply. Freudians welcome.

As intriguingly unnerving as the title of Ars Technica’s article, “Human observation of dark energy may shorten the life span of the universe” is, I read the entire article waiting for the counterargument that appeared at the end of the penultimate paragraph:

For an opposing viewpoint, the New Scientist writer contacted Prof. Max Tegmark of MIT who states that the quantum Zeno effects is not predicated on humans doing the observations of dark energy or light. “Galaxies have ‘observed’ the dark energy long before we evolved. When we humans in turn observe the light from these galaxies, it changes nothing except our own knowledge,” says Tegmark.

Thank you, Dr. Tegmark. Perhaps I am the one who’s just not “getting it” when it comes to quantum uncertainty (indeed, I never studied any of the hard sciences beyond high school, although I’ve read a fair number of non-technical books on physics and cosmology in my adult years). But I find it incomprehensible that serious scientists would actually consider that human observations of dark energy would have a significant impact like this. As Dr. Tegmark suggests, it’s not that our observations don’t affect quantum systems, but interactions with anything count as “observation,” and surely dark energy was interacting with something else (anything… take your pick) before our humble little species on our insignificant little planet became clever enough to detect it.

If this doesn’t get Steve Ballmer worked up into a frothing rage, I don’t know what will.

A coworker tipped me off to this A-to-Z list of downloads on Microsoft’s website. The only problem is, since the overwhelming majority of their product names begin with “Microsoft,” about 90% of the links on the page are in the M section. Brilliant!