When you plug in your iPhone and click 'backup' in iTunes, here's what happens.

Apple has made some nice updates to the Camera app in iPhone OS 3.0. Specifically, they've fixed two things that I really wanted them to fix.

Just a few notes about taking apart an Intel Mac mini.

• Basic info is at ttp://www.tuaw.com/2009/05/10/installing-windows-7-rc1-on-your-mac-for-free/
• You can use a Mac to download, but you must use Firefox (not Safari) to get it. It will use Firefox as a download manager.
• It downloads pretty quickly. I got it in less than an hour. Depends on your Internet conection, of course, but at least MS has this hosted on a good server.
• Along the way, you'll be given a key (serial number.) Print/save this number right away--the next time you click 'submit' or 'continue' or whatever it will take you to another page.
• Get the 32-bit version
• Good news--it's Windows 7 Ultimate!
• It's a "Release Candidate Customer Preview" so it should be pretty close to what gets released in terms of performance, stability, and features.
• Space needed: it's a 2.36 GB download, 4.96 GB installed into a VirtualBox disk image.
• Very first thing: install the guest additions.
• One down side: it may take some time to start up. On my 2.33 GHz MacBook Pro (which, to be fair, has been on for 44 days and has many apps and a ton of Safari windows open) it can easily take over 5 minutes. Once it's up and running, it's fine, but evidently it takes some time to read and boot from a 5 GB compressed disk image. :-)

Random thoughts...

(Mostly negative, good things are in bold.)

Number one: tabs across the top? Don't like'em. The rationale you hear is "but that makes the URL box part of the page, which makes sense." But then it also makes the bookmarks bar a part of the page, which it isn't... so it's B.S. Why don't I like it? 1) I have no problem with the concept of the URL box. I've been on the WWW since 1995. I don't need any hints about what this box does. And for me, it makes perfect sense to see the tab directly connected to the page's content. 2) It looks cluttered. And when I want to grab the title bar to move a window, I now have to be careful where I grab it lest something undesirable happen. [Later] The more I use it, the more I dislike it. With a few cascaded windows open, and multiple tabs in each, it really looks messy.

Over the years I've amassed a collection of old software and machines. This is just my list of what runs well where and why, and occasional other notes about apps.

WOW it's been a long time since I've updated this. :-) And, sad to say, 10.5's Dock still sucks out loud. I found a new annoyance: the "Open in Finder" option shows up at the BOTTOM of a menu, so if you just want to open a folder that's in your Dock but you've got a lot of things in it, you have to click, scroll to the bottom of the list, THEN you can finally see the magic "View in Finder" option. But that's not what I'm here to talk about today.

I've seen a lot of articles about launching apps on a Mac and a lot of people, when hearing about QuickSilver, say "Well I just use Spotlight. Why use QuickSilver?" Here is my response.

The Dock in 10.5 still sucks, even after the 10.5.2 update that brought back hierarchical folder menus.
Let us recap:

10.0-10.4: you drag a folder into the Dock.

1. Its icon appears.
2. If you click on it, it will open its Finder window.
3. If you right-click on it, you will see its contents in a menu. This menu is left-justified, like all other easily-readable text in the known universe, next to a nice, straight, vertical column of small icons. Holding the mouse over any folder shows that folder's contents, and if there is a subfolder you can mouse over that to see its contents, etc. You can activate any item—program, document, or folder—by clicking on it.

1. The icon is from one of the things in the folder.
2. If you click on it, you see a fan or stack, depending on how many things it has.
3. If you right-click on it, you get a little menu with options.

I prefer StuffIt over BOMArchiveHelper.app because StuffIt shows a status bar. Who cares if it's a little slower (which StuffIt seems to be), I prefer to know how long it's going to take. What's better: knowing it'll be a minute, or sitting there with NO clue for 50 seconds?