I have never wanted an iPod before! But now there's a reason

Awesome!!!

I recommend everyone who has seen even one of those Get A Mac commercials by Apple to have a look at the ones by TrueNuff. They are darn funny, if you're a Mac lover and are aware of my blind love for Windows - let me recommend a more neutral video just to prove that these videos are not funny just because they are poking jokes at Mac. My personal favorite will have to be this video on gaming.

Credit to Mike Stanclift's blog on Neowin.net for sharing this great comic series.

My newfound "hobby " in WPF/E effortlessly landed me to Charles Petzold's website. Notice the hobby is in italics so don't expect me to know a great deal about it, the highlight on hobby is to reflect that it would see me months before I am any good at it. I got really excited to learn about Charles Petzold's Applications = Code + Markup. Although it says Pro Developers in the title, it's definitely in my must read books list (which is very very short ).

While I was lurking at Charles' website, I encountered "It Just Works" in his blog. This has to be the funniest thing he has posted in his blog.

Here are the funny bits -

Perhaps if my mother used lots of various Mac applications and stuck in lots of external devices, the machine would "just work" quite well. But she basically only uses email, so perhaps that's the problem.

On Apple's home page, the most important information they deemed necessary to convey to me was that I needed QuickTime 7 to view even more of those insufferable TV ads where that smug goateed glazy-eyed dork tries to make closed architecture and a complete disregard for backward compatibility seem cool.

To a longtime Windows user, an upgrade from OS X 10.2 to OS X 10.4 seems the equivalent of a free downloadable Service Pack. In the Apple world, however, upgrading from 10.2 to 10.4 costs $129, which is actually more money than we spent for the printer we were trying to install, and would involve a DVD sent through the mails.

I then went to the HP site to see if they had any helpful information — I think I wanted something that said "Don't mind our obsessive-compulsive listing of various OS X versions. Of course, OS X 10.2 will 'just work' just fine" — but once again I discovered a site that shouts a big "Screw You, You Pathetic Loser" to anybody who accesses it with a dial-up.

The HP site actually crashed the iMac. The pointed-finger cursor remained pointed no matter what I pointed it at, nothing on the keyboard worked, the on-off switch didn't work, and we had to resort to turning it off by the power strip.

This sucks, I've been extremely busy these past 2 days that I haven't even had the chance to visit Neowin.net, my primary source for industry news. This was mostly attributed to screw ups by one of my subordinates who made some major mistakes in his code which I had to edit as I was auditing it. Then it was an all day cycle of appraisals that I had to perform. I missed out on the news about the free giveaway offer of the DivX create suite. Not that I had an imminent need for a DivX encoder.

A few minutes ago I read about the continuation of the story on faulty iPOD Nanos with screen problems, where it was reported that the screens would get scratches very easily thereby making them hard to read in a very short span of time. People have also reported cracks appearing on the screens. Apple finally admitted that there may have been a problem a batch of nanos. But at the same time denying any problem relating to the iPOD nano being easily scratched. Deleting posts on the Apple forums, or locking existing posts, Apple has taken a new stance to silence any customer who has a complaint with the design/built of their newest iPOD & the media coverage of the emerging issue.

I've always considered a Mac to be a $2000 OS that comes with a free PC. This nifty yet awefully true statement is not my creation rather I read it somewhere on Neowin.net , my favorite online community site. Until a couple of years ago I used to think that a Mac could pose a significant threat to Windows dominance if Apple decides to shift their platform to Intel based CPUs. This feeling spurred once again recently when Apple decided to actually go ahead with shifting on the Intel platform.

But the one crucial thing that every OS now comes with; (yes I'm talking about a web browser which regardless of the OS you're using comes bundled with) it's a whole different story in Apple land. Safari makes a mockery of the CSS we build (most visible in case of CSS buttons). And Internet Explorer... well we all know there's no love lost between page designers & IE.

I've been developing the Seminars resource website of World Press Photo. Sorry its not a public site, but to understand my point you only need the login interface page and obviously access to a Mac (not an old one, one with at least OS X). When you're visiting this page on a Mac regardless of the browser you're using, you'll notice the Welcome "Tab" appears disconnected from the rest of the page underneath it. I've tested this with Safari, IE 5.2 & Firefox 1.0.4. If you were browsing the same page on a Windows or a Linux machine on  whatever browser you choose it is connected and you get the "Tab View" feeling! I recommend using  Firefox so you know this is a Mac problem not the CSS or rendering code I made. So far I've been unable to understand the cause behind it. Apparently on the Mac the background image of the div containing the tabs is just not showing up which isn't the case on other OS's.

UPDATE: Since the site has been updated, the example is no longer relevant.