A whole load of menubar icons disappeared after installing 10.6.2. Seems it’s a problem related to me doing a small hack in the past to disable Spotlight. Steven Seeger’s fix restored the menubar to it’s full glory.
Read Moresudo mv /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.{bundle,bak}
killall SystemUIServer
Microsoft recently started their new ad campaign where seemingly normal people try to buy a new computer. They’re given a budget and if they find one that fills their requirements, they can keep it.
The first advert follows Lauren with a budget of $1000. She wants a laptop that’s fast, has a comfortable keyboard and a 17” screen. On her quest for a laptop she visits the Apple store and comes out saying they are over her budget and that she’s just not cool enough to be a Mac person. She has no trouble finding a suitable laptop in regular electronics store and ends up purchasing a HP Pavilion. The second advert follows Giampaolo with a slightly bigger budget of $1500. He wants a laptop that’s portable, has good battery life and power. Once again there is a poke at Apple. This time they are more about aesthetics rather then power and that he doesn’t want to be paying for a brand. And once again he ends up with a HP Pavilion (Oh, HP, that’ll be the brand you just paid for then).
My problem with the adverts isn’t the poke at Apple, but rather they are promoting a non-message. If I’m going out to buy a new computer and I don’t want a Mac or want a Mac but don’t want to save for it, I have no choice but to buy a PC. I can’t see them swaying the people who have made the choice to switch and have the money ready to buy a Mac. So who are these adverts aimed at? There’s no competition in the sub $1500-$2000 range, so is it even worth doing at all. Honda make ads to stand out amongst Toyota, Ford etc. They don’t make adverts in the hope that they’ll stop people that are thinking of splashing out on an expensive sports car, and sway them to settle for a Civic instead. This and the previous ”I’m a PC” series of adverts just end up legitimising Apple’s presence. Apple is a tiny dog biting at the heels of a giant, yet Microsoft feel like they need to gear their entire consumer TV advertising campaign to take them on. The campaign may well be just insurance for Microsoft. How many heads would roll if they decided to ignore Apple completely, or not even bother advertising to consumers, and then their market share tanked. Perhaps it’s better to appear to do something, then to not do anything at all. On the other hand though, could all that money be better spent doing something else.
All of which leads me onto what I would do if I was Microsoft. Simply, I would advertise Windows 7 and IE8. I’d give people hope once again in Microsoft products (Hopefully the products would match the hype). But I’d ram it down people’s throats day and night. “Forget what you thought about Vista, Windows 7 is coming”. “Experience the web like you’ve never done before. IE8 has arrived”. That sort of stuff.
Perhaps that’s what I find so alluring about the “Apple way”. When you see them in use, you feel like you’re being taken to a time and place beyond the normal preconceptions of how technology works. Microsoft used to have that. Microsoft used to ask “Where do you want to go today?”, with the promise of taking you there, no matter how far fetched your dreams were. Now they just state “Your potential. Our passion.”, which leaves you with the sinking feeling that really over the years a massive void has grown between us and them.
Read More
After reading the Jeff Atwood’s arrogant post on IMVU’s brilliant technical success’s, reading this was the final straw in clicking the remove button on his Twitter feed. What does arrogance have to do with making a business decision not to do a netbook? Sometimes things just don’t make business sense. When you brand yourself in a certain way, why would you want to potentially harm that perception with a bad product. It only takes one bad decision to unravel years of good ideas and brilliant execution.
They’ve learnt well from their own past and other people’s mistakes of trying to do everything and be everything to everyone. They’re not a “me-too” company, and becoming one would probably be the end for them. They don’t need to do X and they don’t need to do Y just to satisfy investors or the public at large. They owe no-one a netbook.
Read More
It’s been a day with Safari 4 and I’ve yet to find a reason to switch back to Firefox. With it’s new developer tools, my discovery of FoxMarks for Safari and the Delicious Library bookmarklet I’m pretty much where I was with Firefox. The only thing I am currently missing is adblocking. I’m not sure if PitHelmet currently supports Safari 4, but Glimmer Blocker looks really good. It’s interesting that it works on the network level rather then as a browser plugin.
Read More
The new mac has arrived! I haven’t had a chance to really use it (that’ll all change next week) but wow is it a nice machine. I don’t need to gush over it as everyone knows how amazing these machines are. All I’ll say is my favourite feature so far is how cool all the available multi finger gestures are, not so cool is how obvious oil from your fingers appears on the black keyboard.
Read More
Normally when I come across something “beautiful” on the interwebs, I’d bookmark it in Delicious. The only problem is doing so isn’t entirely practical when looking for ideas or inspiration. Opening each site in a new tab and then browsing through them. No thanks. An alternative is to take screenshots of everything, but it’s just hassle keeping them organised and available somewhere. Problems be gone! LittleSnapper handles all your snapshots and makes it extremely easy to browse through past snapshots. It even knows what site each snapshot is from, so you can choose to visit if you wish to explore some more. It makes all your snapshots uniform and allows you to snap a whole page (even when it scrolls off the bottom), just a portion of a page and also the regular full screen and window variants. This is just another one example of an application that I wish existed on Windows.
Read More
New Macbooks and Macbook Pros are extremely nice. Sadly no sign of the new monitors in the Regent Street Apple store.
Read MoreI’m very sensitive to exactly what mouse I have on my laptop. Can you find a range of choices? [for the Mac] Of course you can’t find a range of choices. You know, anyway — can you find the applications you want on the Mac? Well, you don’t really get full Microsoft Office.
- Steve Ballmer
Seriously, come on. Next he’ll be telling us how you can’t even right click on a Mac. It’s tiring enough to hear this sort of BS from everyday Windows users, but from the CEO of MS? *yawn*
Read More
If, like me, Spore freezes on the splash screen when you start it up, with one running process and one non-responding one, then all you have to do is*:
I found this piece of information through MacRumors.
