I can't wait to play with Numbers. I've been waiting for Apple to create a spreadsheet program that doesn't suck for a long time. Excel makes me want to do violent things when I use it.

I like Pages and Keynote.

[Agreed, Numbers looks rad. This has finally pushed me into the realm of caring about iWork. -k]

Apple - iWork - Numbers

...locks you in deeper. Want to buy a different portable music player next time you buy one? I hope you don't mind throwing away 5 years of songs you bought on iTunes, because they aren't going to work with anything else.

[ Not precicely. I burn all my iTunes tracks to CD and re-rip them in unprotected format. This is 100% within the terms and gives me a nice backup copy of the album too. You can say, that this is too much of a PITA for you to want to bother with, but it's the surefire legal way to not get locked in. I do worry a bit about the encoding losses, but i figure we're still a fuckton better off than we were with, say, tapes, or records, in terms of maintenance issues, and i gain a little convenience. That being said, i still don't buy much from iTunes. Only things that spark a sudden interest and need to be bought immediately for the most part. Anyway. iTunes isn't the right answer, but it's the right answer for right now, sometimes. -k]

Every Song you buy on iTunes...

] Essentially, Mac browsers (including Safari, Mozilla, and
] Firefox) are all designed to launch the Help Viewer
] program when the help: protocol is invoked in a web link.
] Unfortunately, the Help Viewer program, in turn, is able
] to run scripts. What this means is that a malicious user
] can set up a page with an automatic redirect that runs a
] dangerous script. More details for the tech-minded can be
] found on this MacNN thread. And if you want a terrifying
] (but harmless) example of this, go to
] http://bronosky.com/pub/AppleScript.htm. It will launch
] Terminal and run a harmless du command

[ damn. that sucks. -k]

mamamusings: serious os x 10.3 security problem

Shrook 2 is a next-generation news reader that offers advanced features not available to Mac users anywhere else. Some aren't available on any platform. It supports all versions of RSS, as well as the current draft of Atom. And it's all really easy to use, too. Shrook 2 is a free upgrade for users of Shrook v1.x.

[ I'm sorry to hear that it's a bit unreliable... I've been looking at installing an aggregator on my mac, but didn't want to pay for NNW. This thing appears to have some really nice features, like being able to check your feeds online or from multiple systems, and have all your instances sync up... very cool. Also, the mirroring of feeds to mitigate publisher loads is a good call. I look forward to version 2.1 -k]

Shrook 2 - RSS and Atom Newsreader for Mac OS X