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MacJunkies Episode 2 recap
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Our brief podcast this week covered the iPhone NDA change, rumors about the MacBook and MacBook Pro prototypes, the stock market and Apple sales and stock, and user questions about running Windows on a Mac and more. You can listen to the full 15 minute episode below, follow it on TalkShoe or subscribe to it on iTunes.
Latest iPhone Software supports full-screen Web apps
One unpublicized feature introduced by Apple's latest iPhone software updates is the ability to save Web apps to the home screen and have them launch in full-screen mode without the Safari wrapper, essentially mimicking the experience of a native app.Opinion: Forget the Dock, Master The Menu Bar
I’ve never got on very well with the Dock, the app launcher Apple puts at the bottom of the screen. It does very little that I find useful, and many things that simply bug me. Thank goodness for the Command+Option+D shortcut that hides it out of the way. That’s where my Dock spends most of [...]
I’ve never got on very well with the Dock, the app launcher Apple puts at the bottom of the screen. It does very little that I find useful, and many things that simply bug me. Thank goodness for the Command+Option+D shortcut that hides it out of the way. That’s where my Dock spends most of its life — out of my sight.
That said, there are still some aspects of daily computing life that need to be kept close to hand. Things that I want access to, at a moment’s notice, no matter what app I’m using. And things I want to use, briefly, without leaving that app.
And that’s why I spend a lot of time investigating and trying out various Menu Bar widgets and applications. The Menu Bar is the mini dock at the top right of the screen where the system clock lives, plus other customizable widgets called Menu Bar apps.
My goal has always been to get the greatest utility from the smallest number of Menu Bar apps - because of course, Menu Bar space is limited.
Consequently I’m very, very fussy about what apps get to stay there.
The current line-up looks like this, from left to right:
XMenu, ByteController, I Love Stars, Anxiety, Jumpcut, Time Machine, iChat, MenuMeters, Airport, Volume, Battery, Bluetooth, clock, Fast User Switching, and Spotlight.
Read on for a guided tour of some of the third party extras in that list.
XMenu is the most recent addition and one that I wish I’d had sitting up there ages ago. It’s a very simple utility that brings back some of the functionality of the Apple Menu of old. You simply populate a Finder folder with aliases of your choice, and XMenu gives you direct access to them. It’s simple, it’s useful, and it works.
ByteController is one of many Menu Bar controllers for iTunes. I’ve tried most of them and found it the least intrusive. You can set a bunch of keyboard shortcuts with it, to make iTunes even easier to reach, but I tend to use it without them. The only thing it won’t let you do is manage song ratings, which explains the next widget: I Love Stars.
This lovely little app displays each song’s rating as it appears, and lets you set the rating with a click. I find it incredibly useful when I set iTunes on to all songs shuffle. Every unrated song gets rated that way, because I can see at a glance what the current rating is. I don’t need to jump to a different app, or a different Space, or bring up the Dashboard — it’s just there, in front of my eyes, right where I need it.
Anxiety is also a fairly recent addition to the Bar, mainly because my todo list has only recently shifted from a plain text file to iCal. Not that I’d dream of opening iCal to add a new item - Anxiety is a much better way of adding, viewing and removing todos. If only I could see them on my iPhone, too. There’s a thought, eh Apple?
Last but not least: Jumpcut, a longstanding resident in the Menu Bar and probably the most essential utility of the lot. Yes, there are other clipboard snippet managers. Yes, some of them might have many more features. But (as I believe I’ve said before elsewhere), I prefer this one because I think it lives in the right place, and operates exactly the way a clipboard snippet manager should.
I make use of the Menu Bar so often, for so many reasons, that I have come to treasure it. I even like the fact that it eschews the eye-candy displayed by the Dock: I like things kept simple. (You can imagine how I felt when I saw those first views of the new Leopard desktop, with Steve Jobs showing off the new transparent Menu Bar and smiling about it. I was horrified.)
It’s like tending a garden. I choose the apps that live in my Menu Bar with a great deal of care, and weed out anything that doesn’t deserve some of those hard-to-come-by pixels.
And, just as in the old days I used to wonder what other people kept on their Docks, these days I’m much more interested to see what’s lurking at the top of their screens.
Let us know in the comments.
Steve Jobs: Thanks, I’ll Park It Myself
Image by lodev via Flickr Maybe it’s a perk of being consistently named among the most influential people of one’s era. Perhaps it’s bravado borne of having put a ding in the universe. Whatever it is, Steve Jobs seems to think nothing of driving a car without license plates and parking in handicapped parking spaces, as [...]
Image by lodev via FlickrMaybe it’s a perk of being consistently named among the most influential people of one’s era.
Perhaps it’s bravado borne of having put a ding in the universe.
Whatever it is, Steve Jobs seems to think nothing of driving a car without license plates and parking in handicapped parking spaces, as the picture above, captured on September 30th by Flickr user lodev shows.
The pic is but the latest in an ongoing parade of evidence Jobs is prone to park wherever he pleases.
It almost begs us to start a Spot-Jobs-in-the Blue-Zone contest, doesn’t it?
CNN’s iReport leads to Apple stock drop on citizen journalist talk of Jobs health
Citizen journalism gone awry or short selling scam, you can’t deny that the drop in Apple stock that cost stock holders so much money was directly correlated to the CNN iReport story that falsely reported Steve Jobs as having had a heart attack. This is bad news for both CNN and Apple, and rankles with aspiring citizen journalists everywhere.In case you haven’t heard the term, citizen journalism refers to citizens blogging about news stories, often breaking the story before a major media outlet. Many old media outlets [...]
MacJunkies Episode 2 reminder and Q&A request
This week Jonathan has a previous commitment, so I am seeking a stand in to cover the hardware side of things. Meanwhile, I am also soliciting your questions! What do you want to know about Macs? I’ll be taking questions before the podcast to get you comprehensive answers, and quick questions during the podcast as well in chat.
You can follow the podcast on Talkshoe to get a reminder before it starts tomorrow, as well.
Mac presence on web up nearly 5 percent in September
More and more consumers are choosing Apple computers to access their favorite online content, with the presence of Macs on the Web growing more than 4.7 percent last month, according to the latest market share figures from Net Applications.Apple’s US retail notebook share up to 20 percent?
One in five notebooks purchased at US retail outlets during the recent back-to-school buying season were Macs, according to a new report.Apple drops iPhone NDA for released software
Responding to widespread criticism, Apple said Wednesday that it has decided to do away with its non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for released iPhone software while it drafts a new agreement covering just non-released software.Hosted, Fully Managed Dedicated Kerio MailServer - Hosted Kerio Mailboxes - Continuous Data Protection for Kerio MailServers
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