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What me worry?

I forgot to point this out earlier in the week but there was an excellent article this past weekend on Al Jaffee who has been doing the Mad magazine fold-in's since 1964. This little fact is just crazy:

Mr. Jaffee does have a computer, but its main benefit, he said, has been to make the typographic tricks in the fold-in easier to create. He doesn’t draw with it, which leads to another surprise: the master of the fold-in never actually folds. “I’m working on a hard, flat board,” he said. “I cannot fold it. That’s why my planning has to be so correct.”

Fascinating article but more impressive in my opinion was the outstanding interactive feature that the website did showing off the fold-ins. Just outstanding.

Photoshop and 64-bit

There is a bit of confusion and controversy around Adobe's announcement that the next version of Photoshop (CS4) will be 64-bit for Windows and remain 32-bit for Mac until CS5. Excellent commentary as usual from John Gruber on the subject and MacWorld summarizes the Adobe announcement.

Happy Birthday Apple

From Ars Technica comes 32 years, 32 memorable Apple products.

Example # 46,728

Of people with too much time on their hands and who are obsessed with Apple. This would be referring to the person who made a collage of Steve Jobs out of Apple product pictures.

Are You Color Blind?

A simple ColorVision test to tell. More in-depth information at the Color Vision Testing website.

Apple Logo Subliminally Induces Creativity

A Duke University study claims that exposure to brand logos cause you to mirror the traits of the brand. In particular, they found that people exposed to the Apple logo were more creative or had a goal to be more creative.

A bit of a wacky study involving a brick:

People who were exposed to the Apple logo generated significantly more unusual uses for the brick compared with those who were primed with the IBM logo

There is also a 4 minute video with the researchers. Tip of the hat to Don for pointing this out.

Time Machine

Everything you ever wanted to know, or perhaps more than you wanted, about Time Machine. Super in-depth review and technical behind the scenes report of how Time Machine does what it does. 9347 words by Sven-S. Porst. If you find the tech stuff a little much you should skip down to the "Restoring Files' section and read to the end. Lots of criticism, some deserved, but the bottom line?

Time Machine is worth having because it does make an additional copy of your data and is unlikely to accidentally destroy that additional copy.

Leopard Survival Guide

MacWorld has been running a series of tips for specific Leopard related items. Odds and Ends is the latest but they also have short articles on System Preferences, Spaces, Expose, and Dashboard as well as one on the Dock and Stacks. I'm sure there are a few tidbits for everyone in one of the articles.

Apple's Design Process

Short article from BusinessWeek on a SXSW presentation by Michael Loop on Apple's design process. Michael also has a great book, Managing Humans, and an excellent website.

Not A Real Laptop

Steve Jobs Made Me Miss My Flight

The new arrival looks at the printouts from x-ray, looks at my laptop sitting small and alone. He tells the others that it is a real laptop, not a "device". That it has a solid-state drive instead of a hard disc. They don't know what he means.

Touchpad Pro

This is pretty cool:

Touchpad Pro lets you control your PC or Mac through your iPhone or iPod Touch. It's got multi-touch capabilities just like the new MacBooks, though without the cost :) It's got all the features you asked for, including landscape mode, multi-touch zoom, scroll, right-click, and much more.

Although I will of course wait for a "real" version based on the iPhone SDK.

When Microsoft Upgrades to Vista

Great story this weekend in The Times about upgrading to Vista. Turns out even their own employees complained about the issues and confusion that has led to people sticking with XP.

Road to Leopard

AppleInsider has been running a 'Road to Mac OS X Leopard' series that highlights not only the a feature in 10.5 but also goes into the history of the feature. It's interesting to see the historical aspect of a feature, how it came to be, and the changes it has been through from OS 9, Next, and OS X.

Read them while you can though, Apple is forcing them to be removed.

Road to Mac OS X Leopard: Preview 4.0 [redacted]

Road to Mac OS X Leopard: Dictionary 2.0 [redacted]

Road to Mac OS X Leopard: Dock 1.6

Road to Mac OS X Leopard: Finder 10.5

Road to Mac OS X Leopard: Spaces

Road to Mac OS X Leopard: Time Machine

Google Earth’s Hidden Surprise

It was reveled this weekend that there is a hidden flight simulator if you download the latest Google Earth 4.2 Beta (thanks for the heads-up Don!).

Documentation is sparse within Google Earth but here is a page that lists all the keyboard commands.

Also in version 4.2 is a new Night Sky feature. Productivity has just dropped dramatically...

The Original Macintosh User Manual

Nice pics and comments from Peter Merholz on the original Macintosh User Manual he picked up on eBay.

“The Finder is like a central hallway in the Macintosh house.”

Custom Keyboard Skins

We were just having a conversation the other day with some folks in the video dept. about how nice it would be to have a custom keyboard skin for Final Cut Pro functions on their MacBook Pro laptops.

Well, here it is. Also available for Photoshop, After Effects, and Pro Tools.

Sweet!

Official iPhone Tool

From the "crazy but true" desk comes the official iPhone tool.

Office 2008 Delayed

One of the last hold-outs in the move to Intel native applications has been Microsoft Office. Originally scheduled to be released this fall they announced today that it will be released in January 2008.

Just another 5 months... Ultimately I just hope it doesn't suck.

iPhone 1.0.1 Update

Apple released the first of hopefully many updates to the iPhone. This one is minor, mostly patching vulnerabilities in Safari. It turns out thought that there are other undocumented changes that smooth out the initial experience.

Good? Yes, but I'm still waiting for the 1.1 release to bring on more features.

iPhone Keyboard

While moving things around in my basement (thanks to flooding...) I came across my old Newton keyboard. Seems like the perfect size keyboard for the iPhone today. Bluetooth of course instead of the serial cable you see in the picture. It will interesting to see if Apple extends the accessories in this direction.

Also, on last count I know 12 people who have bought an iPhone. I'm sure if I asked around I would find some more.

You can check out the photo on Flickr.

10,116 Point Fraktur

No that's not a typo, it's the size of the font on the front of our new building.

But what looks like a simple sign—if a 110-foot-long logo set as a 10,116-point version of the newspaper’s iconic Fraktur font can be called simple—is actually an intricate assemblage of nearly a thousand separate custom-designed pieces, each a painted extruded aluminum sleeve a little more than three inches in diameter.

Pentagram, who designed the sign, has the full details.

Even More iPhone!

Pogue, in his regular Thursday column, has an excellent FAQ.

Apple has a link to a suspected RSS reader at reader.mac.com

Valleywag has an iPhone Scorecard based on the first reviews.

Finally, Steve Jobs held an internal Town Hall meeting where he told employess they all will be getting iPhone by the end of July. Ars technica has the details.

I think my head is going to explode...

More iPhone...

Yes, more. Had enough yet? I didn't think so...

Apple has posted new videos about Activation & Syncing and the iPhone Keyboard. In addition, there is now detailed Tech Specs and a Questions & Answers page.

The Reviews Are Out

Well the iPhone embargo is over and the reviews are out:

Pogue

Mossberg

Levy

As expected I think; positive reviews for the software and form factor and bad reviews about AT&T's slow network.

One fun side note, if you watch David Pogue's video podcast you can see me, my son Matt, Don and Christian running down the hallway in the crowd.

iPhone Fever

It has started, iPhone fever has kicked in and Apple is doing nothing to stop it.

One week before the launch Apple has announced that the iPhone has now has an eight hour battery life and durable glass surface. In addition, it will also support YouTube videos at launch.

Also, if you going to stand in line for one Apple put together a 'Get ready for iPhone' site to get you ready for the first sync.

Now today Apple has posted a 25 minute guided tour. AppleInsider posts some of the highlights.

Google Cheat Sheet

Ever wonder how to make Google search even better than it already does? Well Google has an excellent Cheat Sheet that operators you can add to a search.

100 Million

You might have heard the news that Apple has sold 100 Million iPods. Christopher Breen over at Playlist outlines his share of that 100 Million, 23 to be exact.

Makes me feel better about the six i own.

Free $15 iTunes Gift Card

Best Buy is offering a free $15 iTunes Gift Card when you buy three. In other words, spend $45 and get $60. Happy Monday!

No Joke

It was hard not to think when the news broke about an Apple/EMI press conference yesterday that it was not an April Fools joke. But it's not.

Apple and EMI announced that DRM-Free music (at a higher quality!) will be hitting the iTunes store starting in May. Cnet has a good overview of the announcement and AppleInsider has a transcript of the Q&A from the press conference.

Still no Beatles though...

NYC Subway Advisor Widget

NYC Subway Advisor is a nice little Dashboard Widget that links to the NYC MTA site to show subway delays. No more being late for that meeting!

Update: Steve Wolgast points out in the comments that the Widget only shows scheduled service changes. You can go to MTA Service Alerts for unscheduled changes. Thanks Steve!