What's it all about, Alfie?

With this plugin, you can now view PDF files in a Firefox 3.0 browser window. While I'm not a huge fan of PDFs, they are a popular way of getting out a stylized page, and reading them in Acrobat, or a stand-alone Preview window isn't as nice an experience as seeinf them in-line in the browser. So when I saw this plugin I got it right away.

No time like the present to get things off to a smoother start. With Safari in Mac OS X 10.5, I've really liked the way Preview shows PDFs in the browser window. Very fast, very clean, and less of a horrible kludge that is Acrobat in Safari. I wonder why Adobe doesn't work harder at making the experience with their tools better? Odd. Anyway, I've liked the Safari/Preview combo, and now I'll have a similar set up with Firefox. Excellent.

I caught this story this morning about the problem with a Javascript bug in iWeb and how Firefox 3.0 fixed it and broke the usage in iWeb. It's not a blame game but if you want to get the Photo Galleries in iWeb fixed, you're going to need to get a new Javascript patch from the site and install it on your iWeb site and then the Photo Gallery and Blog postings will work.

I'll have to remember that for the Kids' iWeb pages. I can't imagine that it's going to be that hard to update, so I'll try to get it done this evening - or at latest, this weekend and let them re-publish to the web. Glad that someone is following these issues. I'm sure there will be an iWeb update soon to fix this.

This morning's WWDC Keynote by Steve was nice, but everything there was leaked with such high reliability that there was nothing - literally nothing that wasn't on the rumor site's round-up of rumors for the keynote. Steve even passed on saying anything about Snow Leopard in the keynote, referring to another speaker after the lunch break. Not too surprising, because it's not going to have wild new features, but still... unusual for Steve to have nothing up his sleeve.

iPhone 3G was expected... Mobile Me was expected... iPhone 2.0 apps was expected... that's about all he talked about. I was a little disappointed that they spent a good 45 mins talking and demoing apps for the iPhone. Leave that for the show floor, guys. Spend 10 mins on that and then the other 35 on Snow Leopard, or something else. I understand why - he wants to generate a lot of buzz and therefore a lot of sales, and this is a good way to do it.

So it was something I glad I kept an eye on, but nothing I saw or heard is making my buy anything in the near future.

Today the rumor mills were abuzz with the rumor that Mac OS X 10.6 would be unveiled at WWDC next week. The rumor has it that it's named Snow Leopard which is a slick name, if it's true, and they also say that it's an infrastructural release - no new features visible to the user other than the removal of PowerPC support and therefore better optimization of the Intel-only release.

While I suppose it's possible that Steve will talk about OS X, I have to wonder where these guys get all this stuff. If you look at what Steve is supposed to talk about at the keynote it's pretty significant:

• iPhone 3G
• New .Mac
• Updates to MacBook Pro
• Mac OS X 10.6

I mean it's possible, but that's a pretty full plate given that some of these things have taken the majority of a keynote all on their own. Sure, a lot of them can be brushed over a bit, but to have all this in one talk seems like a bit of a stretch. I'll certainly be listening, however.

Just now I realized that I hadn't plugged in my external FireWire drive, which is my TimeMachine drive, to my laptop yet this morning, so I plugged it in and in a few seconds it started cranking on the backup and everything was happy. And this lead me to realize that the upgrade for 10.5 was really quite marvelous. I have used TimeMachine probably less than a dozen times, but each time it's saved my bacon in a way that I didn't used to have. I've been able to create new machines from old dead ones... I've gotten back single files, and I've reached a level of relaxation with regards to the data on my laptop that I simply never used to have.

I've tried several programs, and ended up rolling my own eventually, but I didn't really keep up with it properly, and so I always had some exposure to loss. Now - it's only an hour. That's pretty impressive. It's really taken my data security to a new level. Thanks, Apple. Well done.

This morning I was able to use Software Update to get Mac OS X 10.5.3 which look pretty tame - about the only thing I really look forward to is the fixes to Spaces where it doesn't re-order the windows when hopping from one to another. I'm sure there are other things I'll like that I don't see right away, but it's not like getting 10.5 in the first place.

Still... it's nice to see that Apple is fixing security issues in iCal and the like. Not bad for a few minutes of my time.

I read this article this morning and from the sounds of it, Intel is getting closer to getting it's quad-core into an operating mode where it'll be able to be dropped-into the MacBook Pro frame and just run. While the report estimates that the shipping date would be sometime during the summer, it's unlikely we'll see anything from Apple until the fall, even if the chip ships from Intel on time. Apple has it's hands full with the iPhone and iPhone Store on iTunes.

However, it's very exciting to see that they will be producing something this year that should make it to the MacBook Pros by early next year at the latest. That will be an exciting thing to see.

Everyone is talking about the update to the iPhone to optionally use 3G networks and all the spiffy new things they want with that - apps, access to this and that. If I had one wish for the iPhone it would be to be able to use it as a bridge to the internet via something like Ethernet over Bluetooh. It's already in the network preferences - all that would need to happen is to make it possible from the iPhone. Then, with a fast 3G network, I'd be able to use my MacBook Pro from the train. That would be most excellent.

I don't expect them to deliver this as it would really crush the network, and that's not the point of the iPhone - at least not Apple's point. They are looking at it not as a gateway, but as a stand-alone device in it's own right. I can see this, too. But I wouldn't spend $500 for that - I just don't need it. But I might spend $500 for a gateway to the internet. I would use it that much.

We'll have to wait and see. It certainly would be cool.

I'd heard about this on the rumor sites for the last few days but Apple updated the iMac line with faster processors and such. Nothing major, but it's nice to see that the iMac can now contain a 3.06GHz processor - which is a powerful little beast for a 'non-professional' machine. That's pretty impressive.

I'm not in the market for a new desktop - since the death of my iMac G5 and it's replacement by an Intel iMac, but it's nice to see things moving on the hardware-front. I'm still waiting for the quad-core, 8GB RAM, 500GB HDD MacBook Pro... that'd be something to have.

Yesterday Apple updated Safari to 3.1.1 fixing two bugs but not putting in the new WebKit that's passing the Acid3 test 100/100. Too bad. I was looking forward to that, but they may have a lot more work to do on that guy before it's ready for release. Still, it's nice that they keep on top of the problems folks have found and release updates as often as they do. Sometimes it's still amazing how big a memory footprint Safari can get to be on my laptop - easily passing the 200MB size with only two tabs open. The cache and 'history' of the working browser has got to be enormous. Anyway, it's great to have that updated.

The next update I got this morning was Transmit 3.6.5, and while I really like the work the Panic guys do, I'm still a little surprised that they don't have a more 'minimal' interface to Transmit. What they have is fine, if you're using an FTP client like a file browser, but most of the time for me it's more like a small extension to the system. Make it as seamless as possible - no need for big borders - more like Cyberduck. That's a minimalistic interface that I like for file transfer. Nothing that gets in the way or takes up pixels that it doesn't need. I like all the features, and I appreciate what they are doing, but I think it'd just be nice to be able to have an alternate GUI that was less into borders fluff, and more into "just the goods".

The last update this morning was Camino 1.6. While I'm not a big user of Camino, I can appreciate what they are doing, and at times it's nice to be able to fire up another browser and see if the web site I'm having problems with works any better with Camino than Safari. It's fast, clean, and a nice Mac app, so you gotta keep up to date and make sure they didn't throw in something really cool that could make it the best browser on the platform. This release is supposed to have a few nice GUI improvements and I'm sure they're nice. I just haven't had a lot of time to play with it. Maybe this weekend.

Like any self-respecting computer goober, I love getting the updates and seeing what others have done with their code. In each of these cases, it's more than just an app - these are things that the developers are seriously proud of, and they should be. This is some of the best software out there, written by passionate, dedicated folks. And it shows. Gotta love that.