Macintosh

Apple has a page showing car manufacturers with iPod integration. I notice that Toyota is very conspicuously absent. If they don’t have iPod integration by the time I’m ready to get a new one in a few years, I most likely won’t get another Toyota.

I think iTunes 5.0 is UGLY, especially the new glossy playback status bar & the volume slider.

Remember the Kutztown 13? It seems their case has been resolved. n meetings with students over the last several days, the Berks County juvenile probation office has quietly offered the students a deal in which all charges would be dropped in exchange for 15 hours of community service, a letter of apology, a class on personal responsibility and a few months of probation.

“The probation department realizes this is small potatoes,” said William Bispels, an attorney representing nearly half the accused students.

The 13 were initially charged with computer trespass and computer theft, both felonies, and could have faced a wide range of sanctions, including juvenile detention. Read more here.

My little trial of Opera is over. I got fed up with its quirkiness & went back to Camino (at least until it starts crashing or slows down).

I switch browsers frequently because I get annoyed with the one I’m using. I try to keep my bookmarks pretty much in sync between browsers using URL Manager Pro, and I usually add new bookmarks to del.icio.us rather than my browser’s bookmarks.

Right now I’m trying Opera as my default browser, thanks to the free registration. I’ve used it before unregistered & the ads really weren’t too intrusive. Opera is very fast, but has too many quirks I find annoying & features don’t work as expected. I’d like it if it acted more like other browsers. I do love the speed & stability, however.

I usually go back to Safari, but end up getting annoyed when it freezes up & slows down my entire system. Safari is by far the nicest & when it works, I like it’s OS integration & support.

When I get annoyed with Safari’s slowdowns, I usually switch to Camino but soon get annoyed with its extremely slow typing in text fields & rendering problems in certain pages or it will start crashing on me.

I often end up using FireFox because I love its speed & I find it more stable than Camino, but I dislike its poor OS integration and lack of support for services or the middle mouse button.

My ideal browser would have FireFox’s speed, Opera’s stability, and Safari’s OS integration.

I finally upgraded my Mac Mini to Tiger. I’m using it as a media center rather than a desktop system. Everything works perfectly, including TV output, EyeTV, and ATI Remote Wonder.

iPod sightings are still pretty rare here, but I saw two this week. A few days ago I saw someone jogging with an iPod Shuffle, the first time I’ve seen anyone else with one in my condo. I’m always the only one with an iPod in the gym – everyone else uses radios or CD players. Today I saw a kid with a clickwheel iPod in Publix.

I’m sure everyone is familiar with the story of the Kutztown 13, a group of Pennsylvania teenagers charged with felonies for using their school-issued Apple iBooks to circumvent security measures and access forbidden programs (iChat), music, and Web sites. I was reminded of them once again after reading this article in MacWorld. Here’s my belated 2¢ on the issue.

• What the kids did was wrong. HOWEVER…
• Using an obvious password (the school’s address) and printing it on the back of the computers was monumentally stupid.
• Charging them with a felony is excessive. What they did was wrong but most likely not illegal. This should have been handled strictly as a school matter.

After installing Apple’s Mighty Mouse software, I find that I prefer USB Overdrive. Apple’s software is a lot less flexible and it prevents USB Overdrive from managing the mouse. I ended up disabling Apple’s software by removing AppleHIDMouse.kext from the extensions folder and USB Overdrive is once again working with it.