Recently in Mac Category

Just got a new QWERTY Apple alumin(i)um keyboard. A bit of low end retail therapy. Totally sucks. I have a glass top desk. The keyboard has a shiny plastic underside. So, as soon as you start to type, it just skids over the table. Totally useless and very frustrating. Pretty though.

Back to the standard white keyboard I guess.

So Apple has finally entered the social space with my iTunes. Fairly limited, and focused pretty much on Apple's needs (shifting units) rather than the user's, but whatever, it's better than a kick in the teeth with a sharp trowel. It would also be nice if the instructions did not switch to the default language of the local iTunes Music Store (German in this case, since Apple appears to think all of Switzerland is German speaking - which is a bit like saying "everybody uses Windows")

I'd prefer to be able to show you what I've been listening to, but for what it's worth, I can destroy any semblance of credibility by showing you what I've been buying:

Pretty eclectic, non ?

For the last year I have been a subscriber to John Gruber's blog, Daring Fireball - basically an Apple fanzine. I've decided not to renew. Gruber is a good writer, but his tone is really getting irritating. Describing everybody who takes a different view to his as a "jackass" is just childish. And although he does display a higher level of intelligence than most, he is display more and more signs of Cult Of Mac zealotry and fanaticism.

Daring Fireball is an interesting example of blog as income model, but however good the writing, Gruber's world view is too narrow and too predictable to be worth reading very often, let alone paying for.

Back when I were a lad, Macs - and Apple stuff in general - were very much a niche thing. Used mainly in design, pre-press and academic circles, they were nevertheless respected, although correctly seen as vastly overpriced (unless you had an educational discount).

They were attractive because they were extremely well designed, and had a number of killer features, such as WYSIWYG text and graphic editing. They also featured zen-like design hardware and software, which basically got out of your way and let you concentrate on your tasks.

Around the mid 90s, things started to go a little wrong, but even so, the basic philosophy (which owed far more to Jef Raskin than Steve Jobs) held good.

So what went wrong ? An 2007 iMac compared to a 1987 MacPlus is a bit like Paris Hilton compared to Ingrid Bergmann. The 2007 model screams "look at me!! I'm dazzling! aren't I coooool ??? look at all the cool people who hang out with me!!". The 1987 model was subtle, refined, and discrete. The Mac has become a fashion statement, a way to look wickedly on edge, to show how different you are. The fact that form has totally taken over from function seems to have totally bypassed the current generation of designers and mavens, who see no flaws, and tolerate no criticism. Of any Apple product.

Yesterday I was in a room with a small group of talented people. All of us demonstrated our slavish devotion to fashion with our $100 cool-tax black MacBooks. At some point, there was a suggestion that we should copy the latest Apple fad, the utterly pointless cover flow. I decided to keep quiet about that one, but later there was some comment about how the iPod is the epitome of UI design. I dared to voice my end-user opinion (which apparently I'm not entitled to have) that the scrolling lists, which may have been fine for the 5Gb model, are perhaps a little stretched on the 60Gb model. I got torn to shreds for daring to doubt the word of the Prophet, er, sorry, I mean the genius of Apple. I doubt that the same comment about a Creative MP3 GUI would have even registered anything other than a complicit smirk. This stuff worries me, seriously. Good design these days seems to equal "copy Apple", full stop, and good design at Apple is becoming increasingly rare (striking design is not necessarily good design).

This isn't particularly about my meeting yesterday, and is not specifically a criticism of the people involved, who are doing great work. But I'm beginning to see the day when I'm going to ask "do you use Macs?", and if the answer is "yes", slamming the phone down. In the design world, "Mac user" is converging with "slavish imitator".

Mac OS X is a pretty wonderful creation, compared with the competition. Most of it really does "just work". Things like, say, plugging in a USB stick require one step: plug it in - whilst the immediate competition insists on telling you all about the new hardware it has found, then telling you you're not allowed to add hardware, actually, and then mounting it anyway... and then insists on you telling it exactly want you want to do with it. You get the picture.
However,there are exceptions. Some things don't "just work" in OS X, and using a bluetooth phone as a modem is one of them. To do this, first you need to pair the phone with the Mac. This part is painless. But then, you need to use a complex combination of the Network preferences and Internet Connect to try to set up a modem connection. Along the way, you need to identify your phone from a list which doesn't appear to have been updated since OS X10.1, so you need to be aware that, for example, there is a chance that the settings for an Ericsson T39 (2002 vintage) will work with a 2006 v600i. You then need to set up ISP settings, and finally somehow work out how to get it all working. Good luck.
Well, there is a better way, and it is called Launch2Net, from Germany's Novamedia. Let's get one thing clear first: priced at 99 Euros, Launch2Net is bloody expensive. At that price, it needs to be absolutely flawless. Well, it is. Beyond bluetooth pairing, Launch2Net takes care of everything, and in an elegant way. A one time setup process sorts out the background details, and then it is simply a matter of launching the application.
On launch, you need to wait a few seconds whilst it activates the bluetooth connection, and then checks the available network connection type (e.g. GPRS, UMTS) and reports on the signal strength and available uplink and downlink bandwidth - something that Internet Connect does not do. You then simply click on "connect", enjoy the snazzy way the window flips to show connect mode, and hey presto, off you roll down the information super-highway (or crawl, depending on your mobile connection).

Launch2Net keeps you informed of exactly how many bits you are sending and receiving, and of your connection time, inobtrusively but clearly. When you've had enough, simply click on "disconnect". Roaming is handled seamlessly, which avoids hours of trying to set up connections when travelling. Launch2net supports just about every phone on the market, over 100 devices, and over 300 connections.
Since launching is manual, you don't run into the potential situation of the OS doing one of gazillion background tasks it appears to need network access for, and running up mobile session fees without you noticing.
Being a German company, Novamedia understands mobile networks in a way that most US companies, including Apple, just don't get. I used to use Novamedia's similar product for PalmOS, but Palm, being a little more switched than Apple in this regard, made it redundant, for me at least.

There is no getting around the fact that Launch2Net is extremely expensive, but this is the only qualification I would make to a high recommendation. If you regularly need to connect your Mac laptop over mobile, and you think that 99 Euros is a good tradeoff for saving you a lot of time and stress, then buy it.
You can make your own mind up by trying out the connection-limited but otherwise fully functional demo.