A lot of people are missing the point of the new iMac. It’s not a computer for pros, it’s a computer for regular users. It’s for the receptionists desk, moms, grandparents, elementary school kids, doctors, lawyers, authors. It’s simple, it doesn’t need fiddling with. Open the box, plug it in and turn it on. I bet at least 40% of all iMacs have never been opened up even to add RAM.

This reminds me of mountain bikers bitching that the Segway could only go 12 mph.

I have a theory that there are two kinds of tech people. Those who always have the newest gadget and fastest computer, and those who hotrod whatever they can get their hands on. I fall into the hotrod category. My main machines are all more than three years old now. Sometimes it sucks, but they’re still getting by and I don’t really have time to move everything to a new machine right now. (Which is a good thing since Apple didn’t announce new pro towers yesterday)

I am shocked and amazed at the monumental stupidity and incompetence of TechTV. They are showing the MacWorld keynote, which started live but then they cut away, said over and over that they were recording it so we wouldn’t miss anything, then ran commercials. Bad commercials.

All TechTV needed to do is what they said they would do, “carry the MacWorld keynote live.” A 10 minute delay might as well be 10 days. I’m reading the live updates on MacMinute and since TechTV is really just an unedited recap.

Better MacWorld hype: Parody Apple hompages. These had me laughing, then they got repetitive. Here are my favorites:

3 days…

2 days… (iWalk)

2 days…

2 days…

2 days…

1 day…
5 minutes…

I was hoping to avoid the subject of terrorism for a while, so consider the following links to be stories about normal people who witnessed extraordinary events.

The author of this firsthand account of the attempted shoe-bombing was traveling with his sister and parents. His mother was sitting in the seat directly in front of Richard Reid. On New Years Day the author posted this followup report.

A few days after the flight, The New York Times published this set of photos taken on the plane shortly after the the attempted bomber was restrained.

We heard about the shoe-bomber flight in Utah shortly after we arrived–by plane of course. In September, we flew into Newark the night of the 10th, I was woken the next morning by news of the first World Trade Center attack. I fly a lot.

The increased security at the airports is overwhelmingly pathetic. The people still don’t seem qualified, and searches lasted only until the plane needed to leave the gate for an on-time departure. Any creative third grader could devise a dozen ways around all of it.

Do the soldiers with assault rifles stationed by the metal-detectors make anyone feel more comfortable? How many bodies can a bullet fired from an M-16 go through before it slows down? I have to believe the psychological effect they are trying for would be better effected by qualified, professional people manning the checkpoints.

Three black and white MPEG movies of lightning viewed from space:

• Mediteranean (6.0mb)


• Argentina (364k)


• no location (or moonlight) (651k)

If these had been explosions, would they have been less beautiful?

Found on this NASA page during some random google search.

The G4 Realtime hack for Final Cut Pro, AKA “The Dane Hack” is causing a small ruckus in the FCP community. Discovered over the holiday break, it works by redefining what FCP thinks a processor is capable of. There is no actual speed gain, just more accessible functions that might not work correctly. Personally, I’m surprised Apple left this setting so accessible. I was looking for something like this, but I thought it would be encoded at installation instead of left in a plaintext FXScript. I’m looking forward to experimenting with this once the new filters are released.

I will not work tonight. I will not work tonight. I will not work tonight. I will not work tonight. I will not work tonight.