Tag: Apple - Page 16 - UNDERDOG of PERFECTION

No, iPhone, my house is not located in the middle of the Arctic Ocean

It goes without saying that I love my iPhone. I can geek out on just about any Apple device but the iPhone trumps them all. Yes, when I first heard the rumors circulating early last year that an Apple cell phone was in the works, I dismissed and denied them. “Impossible. That sounds totally stupid and Apple would never do something that totally stupid.” Of course, not only was I staggeringly wrong in my assumptions about the device, but by the end of the keynote I was already coveting one.

Fast forward to March of this year. Although no official word had yet come out that a 3G iPhone was on the way, it was fairly obvious. Nonetheless, the time was right, and I had to move on it, so I bought an iPhone while my window of opportunity was open. I certainly haven’t regretted it, and I admit I’m pleased that the 3G isn’t a revolutionary leap forward. That its most interesting feature — the new software — is fully compatible with the old iPhone means that not only did I not regret not getting a new iPhone this past weekend, it meant that in some sense I did get a new iPhone this past weekend. And it’s what I was waiting for since March.

But, sadly, the most peculiar flaw in the iPhone’s software, for me anyway, endures.

The Google Maps app has a cool little button that, when tapped, triangulates your current location from cell tower and public Wi-Fi hot spot data. Awesome. And it almost always works. But the one place I’ve discovered so far that it absolutely does not work is in my own house! For some reason, whenever I’m at home and I tap that button, I am dropped deep in the frigid depths of the Arctic Ocean beyond the northern coast of Alaska.

Now, given the fact that the map uses (*gack!*) Mercator projection, it’s darn near impossible to tell where exactly that’s supposed to be when you get that far up there. My guess is it’s simply dropping me into the default location it returns when both latitude and longitude come up null… probably 90 degrees north 180 degrees east (i.e. the “upper left” corner of the map, at least in terms of the coordinates they actually plot).

I am decidedly unhappy about this, far beyond any rational justification. That’s because it taps into my absurd and long-standing fear of blank spots on maps.

I think Psystar is mocking itself now…

I hadn’t been keeping up with the saga of Psystar this week, so I assumed they’d crawled back under their rock. No, apparently they’re still promoting this asinine open Mac concept of theirs.

This photo of their headquarters says it all. Yes: their “Open Computing Headquarters” is “Not Open to the Public.”

Brilliant. But that barely scratches the surface of this twisted story.

I have to admit, after the last I’d read about them, I’m incredibly surprised to see that they exist in a physical location at all. I get the distinct feeling that their presence is more temporary than those fireworks stands that pop up along the roadside in rural Wisconsin in mid-June.

Removing the Leopard Dock’s “shininess”

I know there were already dozens of blog entries the day after Leopard “dropped” with instructions on how to remove the shiny Dock, but I’ve actually been living with it peacefully and almost liking it.

But now at my new job, I’m not sure if it’s the saturated color on my iMac display, the particular desktop image I’m using, or some strange combination of those and other factors, but the Dock’s reflection was painfully (yes, painfully) shiny and distracting, so I just had to look up how to get rid of it.

Apparently there’s a whole cottage industry now around customizing the Leopard Dock’s appearance, but all I really wanted was the simple look you get when you have the Dock on the left or right side, but when the Dock is resting nicely on the bottom where it belongs. It was surprisingly difficult (in that I had to do three whole searches and then hunt through a few links on the first page of results of each) before I found (again) the simple command line instructions to accomplish this task. And in the interest of saving myself the trouble next time (if there is a next time), I’m posting them here:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES
killall Dock

Room 34 on iPhone

I finally got myself an iPhone on Thursday. In fact tomorrow I will have two, which is one more than I need (and is also a story for another post), but the point right now is that I finally have an iPhone.

Naturally one of the first things I did with the iPhone was take a look at how room34.com looks on the iPhone. And since the iPhone’s Safari browser works pretty well, it looked fine. But since it’s optimized for a 1024×768 display, it also was a tad small.

By now I am all set to create an iPhone-friendly version of the site, but since it’s built on WordPress, I was pretty sure someone would already have created an iPhone-friendly theme, and sure enough, someone did. But they actually went one step further and built it as a plug-in, so you can keep your regular theme for computer-based visitors and mobile users will automatically see the mobile version. Nice!

It’s a bit plain for my tastes, and it doesn’t account for the fact that I’ve built my own navigation bar and menu system for browsing the non-blog pages of my site, but it’s a start. I plan to customize it over the next week or so to look more Room 34-ish, and to include all of the necessary navigation.

What Web 2.0 really needs is a global “turn off comments” switch

I love a lot of things about “Web 2.0.” Websites just look better, for one thing, and I firmly believe that “form” is a key part of “function.” The increased interactivity both between user and site and between user and other users has made the whole thing a lot more engaging.

But some people seriously need to shut the hell up.

I love the fact that many sites allow readers to comment on their articles. And I often wish more people would post comments on my own site. (I have to assume/hope more people are reading it than just those who very… very… rarely post comments.) But sometimes, especially when the topic inspires a passionate response (often involving Apple, love ’em or hate ’em), the worst thing I can possibly do is allow myself to get sucked down into the vortex of asshat ramblings in the comments section. And I have a perfect case in point here today from Technology Review.

I happen to be an Apple fanatic, I can admit that. But even if I didn’t love Apple, the iPhone would have won me over. In fact, going into the Macworld Expo keynote where Jobs first announced the iPhone, I met the rumors of an Apple phone with cringes and revulsion. Why would Apple make a phone? I wondered. What a stupid idea, I was convinced. But by the end of the keynote, I wanted one.

I still don’t have one, although I am presently contemplating it. Once I had actually used one, I was even more convinced that it was the greatest invention of the computer age. Opening it up to business apps and third-party developers is going to release the deluge. So I found the TR article interesting, but I seriously wanted to crush my skull in a vise after reading the first comment. And it just got worse from there, even with the commenters I agreed with. And yet, like with Katherine Kersten, I just can’t… stop… reading… them! HHFFRRRGGH!!! (Suddenly, I think I understand what that means.)