Macs

marketing: OpenOffice.org 3.0 Beta Features:

“With Version 3.0, OpenOffice.org is now able to run on Mac OS X without the need for X11. Thus, OpenOffice.org behaves like any other Aqua application. The cool thing is, while the market leading office suite vendor dropped VBA support and the Solver feature, OpenOffice.org recently introduced limited VBA support and includes a powerful Solver component. In addition, OpenOffice.org integrates well with the Mac OS X accessibility APIs, and thus offers better accessibility support than many other Mac OS X applications. Finally, people like OpenOffice.org 3.0 for Mac OS X because of its very good stability and performance. Reportedly, some Mac users have switched to OpenOffice.org just because of its extremely good stability.”

There’s quite a few more goodies, but for Mac users this is the big one. Download from here.

Now this might just tempt me back to NetNewsWire again:

“NetNewsWire 4.0 will bring new features and changes to fall in line with NewsGator’s aspirations for taming information. At the top of the new features list will be integration with AideRSS and the company’s PostRank technology for automatically filtering newsfeeds for hot topics and headlines. NewsGator is already using this technology in its web-based client for its top 1,000 feeds, but NetNewsWire 4.0 will bring AideRSS and PostRank to Mac OS X Leopard. If you’re drowning in feeds and headlines that you constantly shrug off with the ‘mark all as read’ command, this new PostRank technology should help you to at least catch the stuff that really matters.”

Plus, there’s this wonderful news about the iPhone:

“As far as a release date for NetNewsWire 4.0, Brent has a more general Fall-ish time in mind. On top of 3.2 and 4.0 development, he’s also working on a native NetNewsWire app for the iPhone, but I can’t share many of those details just yet.”

I veer between using Google Reader and using NetNewsWire on an almost-weekly basis. I love using NetNewsWire as a client, but - despite the massive improvements that the company has made - prefer Google Reader to Newsgator on the Web.

I’m a Mac users. I tend to recommend Macs to people I know, once I’ve talk to them about what they want to do. But it’s the high of dumbassery for someone who know nothing about what someone needs a computer for to just blindly go “buy a Mac” as if it will fix someone’s computer problem.

And it’s particular idiocy when the problem is that the keyboard on someone’s new PC has a particularly stupid design flaw, as happened to this guy.

John Gruber linked to his story, and predictably he got a lot of people telling him to get a Mac, as if Apple was the only company in the world capable of making a keyboard right. They know nothing about this guy, what he needs from a computer, or what he wants to do with it. They know nothing about his preferences, his budget, the features he needs, or anything like that. Yes, they could have worked some of it out from looking at the model of Dell he bought - but I’m willing to bet that none of them even went that far before typing their silly “get a Mac” comments.

I think I’m going to ask John to write some magic Javascript code which will send the vast majority of his readers (reasonable, smart people) to the right link while the other 0.00001% (the MacMacs) get redirected to the collected speeches of Chairman Steve. A Mac is suitable for a lot more people than is represented by its market share, but it’s not right for everyone, and blindly giving advice to “get a Mac” to people you know nothing about is dumb.

Unless you’re Steve Jobs, of course.

The iPod firm makes computers, too? That’s amazing | Technology | The Observer:

“Apple is always going to be a minority player, but 6 per cent of a colossal market makes for a very nice niche. The best way of looking at it is to say that Apple is the BMW of the computer industry: minuscule in comparison with Toyota, GM and Ford, but a driving force nevertheless because of design, functionality and fanatical customer loyalty. It sets the standards that the others eventually have to reach.”

jkOnTheRun: Nova iSync plugin supports 158 phones for Mac synching:

“With the newest iteration, version 6, it supports over 155 cell-phones that don’t play nicely with iSync on their own. Once installed, you can synchronize Contacts and Calendar events to and from your BenQ, Siemens, Motorola, Nokia, Samsong and Sony Ericsson device. “

If you’re using an unsupported phone, this looks like a very interesting option. If only it would work with the LG Viewty…

…more of which soon. I’ve had a Viewty for a while, and been using it side-by-side with my iPhone. The quick conclusion: if you’re looking for a nice looking phone with a really good camera and smart video, this could be for you. If you’re looking for an internet phone… not so good.

Now this is worth looking forward to:

“As mentioned toward the tail end of this morning’s liveblog chat with Rogue Amoeba’s development team, there is a version of RadioShift in the works for the iPhone and iPod touch; the proof is in the (video) pudding. You can see the full-res QuickTime here.”

Apple releases an update to Safari, and according to the listed system requirements it shouldn’t run on the MacBook Air, as they list a FireWire port as needed - something the Air doesn’t have:

“Safari 3.1 for Mac OS X requires Mac OS X Leopard® or Mac OS X Tiger® version 10.4.11, a minimum of 256MB of memory and is designed to run on any Intel-based Mac or a Mac with a PowerPC G5, G4 or G3 processor and built-in FireWire.”

Of course, it actually will run on the Air - someone at Apple has done a bad cut and paste job on the specs.

UPDATE: As others have pointed out in the comments, I’m parsing this slightly differently to its intention… in other words, badly

Is there an easy way to trim video in iTunes? I record stuff using Elgato’s EyeTV - but I want to use the feature which lets you automatically convert everything to H.264 and send it to iTunes. However, this means I end up with a couple of minutes of stuff before the programme starts.

So is there an easy way to trim this off either within iTunes or QuickTime Pro? When I trim with QuickTime Pro, it makes me save as a different file - which seems silly. Anyone know an easy way to do this?

Rogue developers

If false, bad Jon! If true, bad Rogue Amoeba!

UPDATE: Rogue Amoeba has admitted the error:

“Simply put, we screwed up. A 16-line wrapper written by Jon Lech Johanson to access a system API on Windows was being used in Airfoil Speakers, in violation of the GPL. David, the programmer behind Airfoil for Windows, had used the code while making an internal prototype. When he built the official Airfoil Speakers for Windows, he mistakingly reused this code.

We immediately worked to correct this issue. While this was a minor oversight that involved only a few lines of code that were removed right away, violating the GPL is a crummy thing to do in general. These violations happen frequently and sometimes maliciously. We’ve no desire to be lumped in with anyone intentionally stealing code. So, the downloads for Airfoil Speakers for Linux and Airfoil Speakers for Windows were both updated earlier today, just as soon as the offending code was removed. You can grab the latest versions from those links.”

They deserve some kudos for holding their hands up and fixing things quickly.

Levy: Gone, Without A Trace | Newsweek Voices - Steven Levy | Newsweek.com:

“As humiliating as it sounds, let me repeat: the MacBook Air is so thin that it got tossed out with the newspapers.”