Well look at that: Thomas Brand’s minimal desk layout was featured by Simple Desks.
iMac? Check. Twitter bird? Check. Newton MessagePad? Check.
David and I had a chance to chat with Mr. Brand on The hello Show a few months back, and it was a treat. So is his blog, Egg Freckles.
[Via Morgan Aldridge on Twitter.]
Steve Jobs on the original iPhone:
“We all had that Garry Trudeau cartoon that poked fun at the Newton in the back of our minds,” he said, citing Doonesbury comic strips that mocked an Apple handwriting-recognition system in 1993. “This thing had to work.”
[Via New York Times.]
While I wouldn’t encourage anyone to go as far as Ballmer in this endeavor, it turns out that no one ever got a terminal illness from claim chowder. While it might be frightening to imagine, it’s not so bad in practice. Try it.
Have an opinion. Defend it. It will make you smarter.
I truly hope it makes some opinionated people smarter, because they sure don’t sound smarter.
Godin references John Gruber’s (with some credit going to the guys at Panic) “claim chowder” label – where writers make predictions that turn out to be catastrophically wrong. Godin’s points is that fear of being wrong shouldn’t prevent you from making predictions.
But “having an opinion” isn’t good enough. Everyone can have an opinion, and anyone can throw it up on the web and defend it. But who wants to listen to just anyone with an opinion?
It’s the wisdom to post good opinions that makes the difference.
Wisdom comes from experience and research and paying your dues, along with some keen insight on whatever you’re predicting. Without insight or wisdom, you’re just another loud mouth who’s proved wrong after a few months.
Gruber does this with Apple products because his track record points to his particular wisdom and insight. He also has inside information that lend greater weight to his opinions. Plus Gruber thinks about these things deeper than just about anyone, and that gives him the vision to see baffoons when they appear. Sure, he’s wrong sometimes. But his record speaks for itself.
These yahoos that spout off opinions about products, sight-unseen? Defend those opinions all you want, you still look like a yahoo – unless, of course, being wrong comes as an exception and not a rule.
It’s not enough to have an opinion and defend it. You have to have brains enough to look at the situation and come up with a reasoned, insightful opinion based on experience and knowledge. You have to be right most of the time. Then you’re worth reading.
I’m much more careful at making predictions these days, and I think that’s a good thing. If I don’t have anything but an opinion to offer, I’m not a compelling read. I’m just a blowhard.
“Only 24 hours? If @tumblr had a real outage, it would have lasted longer than a fresh set of batteries in my Newton.”
– Grant Hutchinson, during the Great Tumblr Drought of 2010.
Allen Salkin at the New York Times:
Newest is not always best. For Andre Ribuoli, the director of Pamplemousse Press, a fine-art printing studio in Chelsea, there was never a better inkjet printer than the Iris 3047. Capable of rendering perfect full-color images on sandpaper, fabric or anything else that can bend, the lifeboat-size machine was made in the early 1990s by an Israeli company that is now defunct.
“If I have to be the last man in the world running a 3047,” Mr. Ribuoli said, hands on his hips and gazing lovingly at the beige and black machines one recent afternoon, “I will be the last man running a 3047.”
Isn’t that true with all of us who appreciate the finer, older things in life?
As I add more photos to iPhoto, it seems to get better at recognizing real-life people. It helps that most of the portraits I take are of a small group of friends, or of myself, like above.
Even on photos with multiple people, iPhoto does a decent job. Where it really shines is in pure face recognition – flagging faces of people I don’t even know.
It’s kind of magical, the way iPhoto operates.
But oh man, when it gets faces wrong? Hilarious.
Thanks for the entertainment, iPhoto.
Newton wizard Eckhart Köppen on developing for the Newton OS post-OS X 10.5 Leopard:
I’ve been trying to put together simple compiler based on NEWT/0 and the DCL to allow at least some sort of text based development.
So far my experiments are actually quite successful, and it seems that developing Newton applications with just a text editor is not that impractical. It is in fact easier when it comes down to version control management. Some things are still missing for developing larger apps, like the ability to split the code into multiple source files, and a way to embed resources into the final package, but for simple applications (and even auto parts), we might have a way forward.
He’s wrapping up a compiler project, with scraps up on SourceForge right now. Pretty sweet.
NEWT/0 is an open source NewtonScript compiler for Windows, Linux, or OS X 10.3 and above. So Köppen’s version will be a compiler for newer versions of OS X. Can’t wait to see it.
[Via Newtontalk.]
Dave Caolog on breaking out his 20″ iMac G4 (my dream machine):
As my MacBook Pro slowly dies, I’ve called my old G4 iMac back into service. Years ago, that machine was wiped clean and given an install of Mac OS X 10.5 before being boxed in the basement. On Friday I will wrap up one week of using it as my primary work machine. In that time I’ve found that it’s slow, beautiful and perfect. Here’s why.
Caolog notes that things run a tad slower on the iMac, but “waiting a half of a second isn’t the end of the world.”
Even better? “This is the most beautiful computer Apple has made,” he says.
Not only do I agree, but after using a 15″ iMac (and at a paltry 800 MHz) for an entire year as my main workstation, it more than served its purpose. Caolog kept his needs simple: TextEdit, Preview, and a few other apps. That’s it.
When your needs are simple, a simple (and gorgeous) Mac is all you need.
[Via Shawn Blanc.]
Love the stuff going on over at Simple Desks, especially this drool-worthy chair and iMac combo.
Not so sure about the cat leering over me, though. I’ll take a scenic view any day.
