Macintosh

FedEx Ground finally delivered my Mighty Mouse at about 8:15PM. It’s the most beautiful mouse I’ve ever seen, but I can’t say it’s the most comfortable. I’m used to a bigger mouse, but after a few minutes I didn’t find it uncomfortable. I didn’t install the software yet, but I found that USB OverDrive recognizes it and supports all the features including left & right scrolling. The scroll ball is extremely sensitive & quiet. I didn’t have any trouble right clicking, since I already tend to lift my finger off the left button when I right click. Middle Clicking is also pretty easy. I do have a bit of trouble with the side buttons, though. Squeezing feels a bit unnatural, but I can just ignore the right side button and click the left one with my thumb, like I click the left button on other mice. I’ll write a full review after I use it for a while and install the included software.

I just noticed a weird new icon in my menu bar when I mounted my camera’s flash card. It gave the card’s manufacturer (Hitachi) and an item to power it down. When I ejected the card it disappeared. I’m using a SanDisk CF card adapter in my PowerBook’s PC card slot and I know I didn’t install any extensions for it.

There must be quite a blizzard in hell right now. First Apple switched to Intel chips, now they released their first ever multi button mouse! I ordered one as soon as I saw the announcement, although a Bluetooth model would be even cooler.

I’m now sitting in Detroit airport (which doesn’t have free wireless) with a few hours before my flight.

The end of MacHack marks the end of an era. It was a major social networking event as well as a place to learn and share neat tricks. For Mac geeks it’s the years biggest social event, more so than WWDC or MacWorld. MacHack had it’s own unique culture and tradition that will never be duplicated. It provided an opportunity for Mac gods & smart kids (‘Yoots’) to work side by side and learn from each other.

MacHack was inexpensive enough for most people to pay for themselves, rather than having their company pay for it as with WWDC. Instead of WWDC’s serious business-like atmosphere, MacHack was all about fun. The keynote starts at Midnight on wednesday. The rest of the conference is spent working on hacks to show at the Hack Contest (now known as the Showcase), which takes place Midnight Friday/Saturday morning. Finally we go to a bad movie Saturday night, which we heckle and scare away any normal people in the theater. After the movie we return for the Ice Cream Social and “Keith Explains”, in which we tear apart the movie we just saw.

I’m going to miss MacHack, even though this was only my 5th. The last night was very emotional, with lots of hugs & some crying.

At the end of tonight’s banquet on the last day of ADHOC/MacHack it was announced that there won’t be any more. Attendance was dropping each year and we had fewer sponsors this year, so at this rate we could no longer sustain it.

This is the end of an era. MacHack is unique – no other conference has the same atmosphere. It’s a mix of fun & learning.

I leave tomorrow morning for ADHOC Conference, so I probably won’t be posting much for the next few days.

I found that the iSync 2.1 update made me unable to sync my Motorola V551 via Bluetooth, however I was able to regain the ability to sync by completely removing the device both in iSync & Bluetooth setup and re-adding it in both places.

MacWorld Boston is going on this week and nobody seems to care. This is about the least excitement I’ve seen for a Mac show.

I just got my new iPod, the 60G color model. I bought it from PowerMax trading in my old 40G 3rd generation iPod. I’ve bought every Mac I currently own from PowerMax (except for the old B&W G3) since they accept trade-ins and give a decent price.