Category Archives: Apple

Not Just Pixels Anymore

Aqua IconsThe days when the design of software icons revolved around whatever aesthetics that designers could squeeze out of a single pixel are rapidly receding. The icons to be found in Mac OS X, and to a lesser extent in Windows XP, are like little digital paintings, and it takes a different kind of savvy to design them. Pixeljerk is a great practitioner of this new craft, and he had a terrific tutorial up there but it’s now gone. There’s also some decent help at Robouk Designs.

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Enduring Cuteness

iMacLast week I helped some friends out by resurrecting their original Bondi-blue iMac, which was dogged by corrupted system files and extensions conflicts. All it took was reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling the system software — I updated it to Mac OS 9.1. It struck me how incredibly easy it is to perform maintenance on the ‘Classic’ flavor of the Mac OS, and how, in spite of its kludgey late history, it remains in essence an incredibly elegant system. I’m still looking forward to moving over to Mac OS X, but I’ll miss the structural transparency of its predecessor.

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Crossing over to X

AppleleMore Mac stuff. Over the holidays I took a day out to reformat and partition my PowerBook G4 and installed Mac OS X 10.1. I had a good time playing around with the Aqua interface, and steeping myself in the Mac OS X user community’s hubs and blogs, but that’s about as far as it’s come. 10.1 may be an improvement over 10.0, but it’s still not quite ready for prime time. There are too many missing applications, utilities and feature gaps. When I tried to play a DVD on my television via an S-video cable, for example, Mac OS X refused.Right now what it has to offer just isn’t compelling enough for me to boot it up very often, though I’m trying to remain optimistic about it. The foundation is quite impressive, and with some polishing it could be a first rate OS experience. But what’s most disappointing is that after all this time, Mac fans still have to wait even longer for a servicable, fully functional, modern operating system.

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Mac-like

AppleleA little late, but I’m really impressed by the new iMac, which is such a refreshing design that it’s easily my favorite piece of Mac hardware in recent memory. The swivel arm is a deceptively simple breakthrough — its quiet shattering of the most basic of computing ergonomics will have far-reaching influence, I predict.In some ways, the new iMac trumps even the legions of hypothetical Mac designs posted by fans at sites likeThe Apple Collection and the Japanese Applele.

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Titanium

Titanium PowerBook G4So I had a little bit of a distraction from the news and the aftermath of the World Trade Center disaster when my PowerBook arrived. I’d been without a Mac since I lost my job a few weeks ago, living solely on my Sony PCG-SR7K VAIO laptop. Thanks to my sister, I lucked across a great deal on a Titanium PowerBook G4. Granted, I’d disparaged this laptop when it first debuted, but with just four models of Macs to choose from, Apple doesn’t leave its devoted many choices. This was the one that suited my needs most, and now that I’ve got it here in my hands, I don’t seem to have quite so many complaints as I did before.

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