Tag: Mac

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Touch Arcade:

We’re happy to report that iOS gamers will soon have the chance to experience the magical little game that is Glider in Calhoun’s upcoming App Store release of Glider Classic. I recently had a conversation with Calhoun, who left Apple after 16 years this past summer in order to bring Glider to iOS, to find out more about his coming release.

I spent a lot of time playing Glider on my LCII back in the day and I’m thrilled to hear that it’s coming back. It’s an inventive game design and idea and should still be fun to play.

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I’ve been using Thunderbird for a very long time. I love it. It’s one of my best friends, and it helps me get things done.

However, it doesn’t support some of the flashier stuff in OS X Lion and I would like to try and find an email client that’s more likely to. So I need your help in selecting a replacement. To aid you in giving me advice, here’s how I work with email and what features I certainly need in a new app:

  • It must support bottom-posting by default. By this, I mean when I hit “Reply,” my cursor is placed, ready for bottom posting. (This is what has ruled out Mail.app in the past for me.)
  • It must be able to send plain text emails without me having to fuss with anything. I want to be able to set one option and then not have to change anything ever again.
  • It needs good search.
  • It needs to be able to show me emails in a conversation view. Threaded would be awesome.
  • It needs to be able to search within Thunderbird-created archive folders (or at least make it easy for me to understand how it archives).
  • It needs to either already support or be likely to support Lion stuff in the future, such as full-screen use.

So here’s how I work with email: I run through my messages with a preview pane open, with one finger on the “delete” key and one finger on the “archive” key. If it’s an email I need to reference later, I archive it. (I don’t use folders. Everything goes into one archive and then I use search to find it if I need it later.)

If I’m not likely to need the information again, or if I can get the information from other sources, I will simply delete the email.

If an email needs a response, I reply to it right away using key shortcuts, then I archive it immediately. Once I’ve relayed the required information, it’s out of my inbox and out of my mind.

So that’s how I use email—any suggestions for a new client? I’m interested to hear what you have to say in the comments.

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If you use a Mac, there is a high likelihood that you have, at least once when switching applications using ⌘-Tab, accidentally hit ⌘-Esc instead. This causes your computer to pause for a bit, interrupt what you’re doing, and enter Front Row.

I have never used nor do I really care about Front Row. I’ve even managed to kernel panic my laptop once by invoking it and then trying to get out of it too quickly.

After a conversation with Andrew at work mutually expressing our hatred for that little “feature,” I was bothered enough to try and find a way to stop it from happening. It turns out that it’s a pretty easy thing to do, really.

Fire up System Preferences. You can find it in the Apple menu, in your Dock in a default setup, or in the Applications folder.

Click on the Keyboard preferences panel. Click the tab marked Keyboard Shortcuts.

In the list of applications to the left, select Front Row. You’ll see a list of—or really, the only—keyboard shortcut in use by Front Row, and that’s the one that brings it up when you don’t want it. Untick the box for “Hide and show Front Row” and then close your way out of System Preferences.

Now, hammer that key combination a few times to prove to yourself that the demons have been exorcised. It’s OK, because nothing will happen.

Mildly annoying problem, super-simple fix.

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I love the unintentional humor of this dialog. Can you spot what’s wrong here?

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The full version of RDC has been out for something like four or six months. I refuse to upgrade to it simply so I can see this dialog every few days and get a laugh out of it.

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The Macalope says it’s go time with Microsoft:

[…] This is not about price. This is about making “safe” choices. For years enterprises have chosen—and let themselves get locked into—Windows because, yes, no one got fired for buying Microsoft.

But these companies also bought Microsoft because, like AIG, Microsoft simply seemed “too big to fail” and Apple did not. Well, that’s as may be, but there’s “fail as a company” and then there’s “fail to deliver”—and Microsoft has certainly failed to deliver.

So, congratulations, enterprises! You’re left holding the bag for an outdated desktop operating system bundled with a costly and uncertain path forward!

Seriously, if it were solely about price and choice, every company in the world would be running Linux.