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Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets 
  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
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Friday, November 8, 2002
15:59 - Pleasant Little Surprises

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More and more since OS X was first released, and most of all with Jaguar recently, the experience of using the operating system has been one of constantly discovering cool new features. One of the most common sounds in and around my cubicle these days is "Whoah! I didn't know it did that..." upon stumbling across some feature, either a long-standing part of the Mac OS that has been translated seamlessly to X, or a new piece of operational polish that's really bloody cool. I love running across little things like how if you double-click on the column-sizing thumb at the bottom of each set of scrollbars in Column View, it automatically resizes that column to fit the contents-- and if you resize the column so it's too narrow for one of the longer filenames, the text on that file alters its kerning on the fly to scrunch more letters into the visual space. I love playing with the software Apple keeps churning out-- iTunes, iCal, iSync, the .Mac features like the Screen Saver Publisher-- and realizing just how much value they keep packing into these machines for free, just as a perk for those who have already paid the price of admission by getting a Mac. And I love how we're now in an age where if I take my laptop to all kinds of different places, whether connected to Ethernet or not, with the prevalence of AirPort base stations in surrounding buildings, the task is to prevent the machine from setting up a valid network connection, rather than fuming over TCP/IP settings trying to get it to create one in the first place.

Damien Del Russo e-mails me with a cool anecdote along these same lines, regarding potential methods for accessing the Internet wirelessly from an airplane:

Well, I wanted to let you know that there is actually a pretty cool way to
do it! I found out yesterday when I got my D-LINK Bluetooth USB connector
in the mail. I hooked it up (i.e., plugged it in - no installation
required) and linked it to my T68i telephone, because I want to iSync the
phone numbers and calendar from my wife's Palm to my telephone (and on our
Macs and iPod of course LOL). Anyway, much to my surprise I see that the
iBook can use the Bluetooth telephone to dial an ISP and get internet
access! Anywhere I have GSM service, in fact! Now most of America doesn't
have GSM yet, but a network is being rapidly built. And it's the standard
in Asia and Europe.

So, check this out. When I go with my wife to Thailand, we could,
technically, take a photo, plug the camera into the iBook, (auto) load it,
dial into an ISP in the USA using the GSM/Bluetooth phone and D-Link, upload
to my Apple iDisc, publish to a new web page, and email the URL to friends
in, like, a minute. Perhaps PCs can do this is well, but is it likely that
the user would discover this ability *by accident??????*

I daresay that even if they did discover such a thing by accident, they'd be in a much worse mood upon doing so; if my experience is any indication, wrestling with Windows, even if the end result is successful, is just inherently draining.
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© Brian Tiemann