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.

Apple - iWork - Numbers

ImageWell is a small, but powerful, image editing application that lets you quickly resize, crop, watermark, edit your images and then upload them to the web, save to your computer or email them to a friend. ImageWell also lets you annotate your images with text, shapes, arrows and lines, quickly and easily. And it doesn't stop there - add a drop shadow, a shaped border, flip or rotate your image, take screen grabs, plus so much more.

ImageWell is a great utility for facilitating easy picture posting to MemeStreams.

ImageWell, the Free and Lean Image Editor

Apple Computer this month is expected to update its retail copies of Mac OS X 10.4 to include the first two maintenance releases to the Tiger operating system, ensuring that all new customers obtain the most stable and reliable version of Mac OS X directly out of the box.

The company's online store in Canada is already listing for sale the current version of Mac OS X as "OS X V10.4.2 'Tiger' Retail," although the latest official release remains at 10.4.1. Developers contacted by AppleInsider also said they are expecting to receive Mac OS X 10.4.2 on optical media -- something Apple did not offer with the release of Mac OS X 10.4.1 last month.

Mac OS X 10.4.2, which is due for release from the company this week, will reportedly deliver over 80 fixes and enhancements to Tiger, in addition to those included with Mac OS X 10.4.1.

Among the many fixes expected in the release are Finder updates to finding by kind and using Slideshow, updated ATI and NVIDIA graphics drivers, and improved autologin for managed user accounts.

Other areas of change will reportedly improve user experiences with AirPort and wireless access, iDisk synching, installation reliability, and file sharing using AFP and SMB/CIFS network file services.

The release is also rumored to deliver enhancements to Address Book, Automator, Core Graphics, Core Audio, Core Image, iCal, iChat, Mail, Safari, and Stickies.

Sources tell AppleInsider that Mac OS X 10.4.2 will likely arrive in two versions: a 42MB Delta release containing only the changes made since Mac OS X 10.4.1, and a 55MB Combo update that will pack all the enhancements made to Tiger since its inaugural release on April 29th.

According to reports already present on several Internet sites, Apple over the weekend provided its developers with Mac OS X 10.4.2 build 8C29, which at the time contained no known bugs.

Still, it's rumored that Apple continues to work on Mac OS X 10.4.2 this week and is considering builds from the 8C3x milestone as final candidates.

Hopefully this fixes some of the problems I've been having.

AppleInsider | Apple to refresh retail copies of Tiger with 10.4.2

My 1Ghz G4 Powerbook's performance has really taken a dive since installing Tiger. I'm wondering if anyone else is having similar problems... Should I assume for one reason or another my machine has developed cruft and I should do a fresh reinstall? I was hoping cruft was a "windows thing".

I have one gig of ram, yet regularly my system is having to pull applications out of swap in situations where I'm not pushing it hard and never had a problem in the past.

Dashboard flat out sucks. If I have not used it recently, it takes forever to come up and refresh apps. Currently I'm only using it with four widgets due to both memory and CPU reasons. I found it highly dismaying that even the translator app took a whopping 39M of ram to sit there infrequently used. The clock eats roughly 9% of my CPU. THE CLOCK!

Ok, I like Spotlight... But I suspect its at the heart of my performance issues. Quicksilver is way less mature in numerous ways, but its faster and it never caused my system to be leveled.

Safari seems to eat more ram with every update. I'm used to unloading it and re-loading it every so often to alleviate its fat, but that has not been necessary recently because it seems to be crashing more.

Mail has been crashing regularly as well.

Expose does not seem to be as fluid as it was previously. Also, sometimes it takes a very long time to activate and it never used to in the past.

The list goes on...

] You know who you are. You've got thousands of song
] titles in your iTunes music library that you are
] constantly adding to and you've got a playlist for
] every occasion. You listen to your music at work and
] while you're playing. So when you want to change a song
] or browse all of the albums by your favorite artist or
] just pause the currently playing song, why should you
] have to stop what you're doing and go to iTunes? You
] shouldn't have to, and now you don't.

This is the best iTunes controller I've come across. At the current time, they appear to be giving away free registration keys for it.

This application does global hotkeys, but its not exactly intuitive about how you set them. Hold your mouse over the command in the context menu you want to set the hotkey for, then hit the hotkey. Some hotkeys simply don't work, so if you have having trouble setting one, try another.

You Control: Tunes

This morning my beloved 17-in Powerbook decided to die. I was browsing through some RSS feeds when all of a sudden it crashed to a grey screen. Whenever I turn it on, it just beeps three times in a tone that sounds similar to the phone company saying "no". Apple had me reseat the RAM and test the SIMMs individualy before declaring my logic board dead.

Long live my PowerBook, my PowerBook is dead.

[weep]

My posting frequency is about to plumet even further.

Apple says they should be able to turn it around in a week.. I hope they are correct. This is going to be a massive inconvience.

] 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

mamamusings: serious os x 10.3 security problem

] Quicksilver is an evolving framework for accessing and
] manipulating many forms of personal data.
] Existing modules include a launcher, a clipboard
] recorder, and a shelf.

This is a truly awesome launcher app for OSX. Using keywords you type in, it launches a dynamic menu for picking to launch apps, open documents, visit bookmarks, etc. Its that much less you have to take your hands off the keyboard.

This may be the latest must have app for OSX. I continue to be very pleased with the overall evolution of OSX as a workstation platform.

Blacktree - Quicksilver - Mac OXS launcher

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.

NetNewsWire, the RSS reader standard on OSX has finally got some worthy competition.

This app has a great interface. It does not impact my machine's performance nearly as much as NNW. You can page around very fast in this app. It has "Smart Channel" capabilities that allow you to group entries and channels based on keywords and other factors. It supports HTTPS and logins, so its possible to support custom feeds like the Reputation Agent here at MemeStreams. It has that whole iApp thing going on, brushed metal and all. Its nice. If you use OSX, you should check it out.

Its also not without problems. It seems to be making Safari crash occasionally. There is no option to open pages in the background, as opposed to bringing the browser to the forefront. When you close the window, and later click on its dock icon, it does not bring back up the main window, only focuses the application. (Many apps do that) All my initial complaints are little things I can see getting worked out in a version or so. The key navigation seems to be missing ways to page-up/down an entry or visit a post without using the mouse.

All things considered, my first few hours with this application have been enjoyable. Aside from a post or two, including this one (twice), going into the bit bucket when Safari crashed. I'm forgiving to new apps. At $19, its also cheaper then NNW.

Update: Getting less forgiving by the minute. Might have to wait for the next version. Safari is either crashing or the viewer pane isn't working at any given time.

Shrook 2 - RSS and Atom Newsreader for Mac OS X

] He changed the computer industry. Now he's after the
] music business

Good interview.

Steve Jobs: The Rolling Stone Interview