Bandwagon launches tomorrow; it purports to back up your entire iTunes library over the Internet to their servers (or alternatively to your Amazon S3 box) for a flat rate. Updates occur automatically in the background. Sounds like a good idea, if they can pull it off. (Mac only at the moment, apparently.)
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Item on The Unofficial Apple Weblog: Apple Genius says: Moo’ing normal.
Same item as quoted on Powerpage: Apple: It’s Normal for MacBooks to Moo.
Now I’m not a professional journalist, but even I can tell the difference between one offhand comment by one employee at one Apple store, and an official position by Apple the corporation.
Also omitted from the quote on Powerpage: the part where the TUAW writer then called AppleCare and is having his MacBook repaired under warranty. (Of course, the Apple Genius should have handled this…)
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to take Jason O’Grady seriously. How he ends up writing for ZDNet is beyond me.
(By the way, my new black MacBook does not moo.)
In response to a challenge in the Mac forum at Ars Technica, I’ve banged out a quick service that adds “Search With Wikipedia” to your Services menu (right below “Search With Google”). It’s called PyWikit because (a) somebody suggested “Wikit” for the name and (b) I wrote it in Python, using PyObjC.
To use it, download it and move it to your ~/Library/Services folder. At the moment you will probably have to log out and log in again to update your Services menu. If I get motivated I’ll build an installer, someday. (Unlikely since I’ve only spent about an hour on this, most of which was taken up building a universal binary for PyObjC. While it is true that PyObjC rocks, its universalness is still a little, uh, rocky.)
Random thoughts on Apple’s new “Get a Mac” campaign:
On the whole, it’s good to see Apple making some noise. Now if they can just get the new Intel-based iBook replacements out (before the education buying season)…
SubEthaEdit from CodingMonkeys is an excellent collaborative editor that I’ve used to help create session notes at past PyCons. Many people also use it as a programming editor, although to date I’m still in the BBEdit camp.
Now, as part of BLOGZOT 2.0 on MacZOT.com, MacZOT and TheCodingMonkeys will award $105,000 in Mac software — specifically, free SubEthaEdit licenses (if enough bloggers link back to the web site to reduce the license price to $0).
Obviously, the intention is to drive a lot of visits to the MacZOT site, but SubEthaEdit for $0 is a great deal no matter how you slice it. (And MacZOT is an interesting idea itself; I’ve used it once or twice to spring for software I might not have otherwise bought, when the discount pushed the price down to impulse buying levels.)
(Thanks to Matt Deatherage for the heads-up.)
Update: Yes, enough bloggers fell for the offer to drive the cost down to $0, and I got my free license code over the weekend — thanks, MacZOT and Coding Monkeys!
Amidst all the hoopla over the new Intel-based Macs, I’ve seen little coverage of this item: Developers who spent $999 to “rent” a Developer Transition Kit (a G5 case with a Pentium 4 inside) will have the opportunity to exchange it for a 17-inch iMac with the Intel Core Duo inside. For free. And yes, they get to keep the iMac.
I had privately conjectured that Apple might encourage developers to return their DTKs on time by offering a small incentive (like a $500 credit towards a new Intel Mac), but this is even better.
Looks like Apple has updated their Switch campaign. Now that’s more like it. I’ve been “advising” the neighbor on what computer to buy their son who’s heading off for college — his first volley was “Look, here’s a Dell for only $299!” — and this is the sort of information I’d like to have handy.
In fact, if Apple’s serious about restarting the campaign, they ought to be printing this up as a brochure to distribute at Best Buy (next to the Mac minis), CompUSA, etc. They should also have a version ready to go as a multi-page ad insert for glossy magazine and Sunday supplements.
And most importantly, they should have one of those MTV-style TV ads that shows beautiful happy people plugging their iPods and their digital cameras and their camcorders into Macs — each bringing up the appropriate application — and ending with the Apple logo and the URL www.apple.com/switch. Put it in heavy rotation starting this fall; get people fired up for it by Christmas.
