I got another tweet today saying that Acorn 2.6 is out and it's got an impressive list of features. I'm not sure what I'll be using in the new features, but the Quartz Composer filters sounds pretty nice. Plus, there's a lot of nice fixes in the app too. Pretty nice.
Impressive day for the Flying Meat guy.
Today I got a tweet about the release of VoodooPad 4.3.1. The update is pretty surgical with just a few things updated, but the syncing with the VP Reader on the iPhone is nice. Nice to see.
This morning I saw a tweet that Adium 1.4rc1 was out with a nice collection of updates that are going to polish the app and really get it ready for major release. I think I've been on the 1.4 series as long as Snow Leopard has been out, but maybe even longer than that. This is really for the rest of the users, as the vast majority of folks like me are just using the betas, and it's working just fine.
I noticed yesterday afternoon that Transmit 4.1.3 was released but I was too busy at the time to do much about it. This morning, however, I took the time to upgrade as it's simply a fantastic file transfer utility. Far better than Cyberduck (which just had it's own update) and it's all about the polish and the completeness. Transmit is simply the cleanest, nicest, most well-thought app of it's kind. Simply amazing.
First off, I'm very impressed that Apple is continuing with the live broadcasting of it's major keynotes and product releases. I think for a technology company, it's what should be done, as opposed to what can be done. If you invest in massive server farms and huge datacenters, with streaming video, TV, and movies, then if you can't pull off a keynote, you're in big trouble.
That said, I had hoped that there would be something really neat about the things I'd see in the keynote. But there weren't. I can understand that a lot of people like to work their apps full-screen. My wife is one of them. Makes sense for her, as that's how she "sees" the computer - a device that has "multiple personalities". It can do email, it can do web, it can do music, but in her mind, as with many others, it doesn't do these all at once.
And that's where I sit. All kinds of things happening at once. For me, my phone can do one thing at a time, and with the fast app switching, I have to say I'm not upset about the "reconfiguration" time. But for a computer? That would be horrible. So while I can see the keynote going for the more consumer-level audience, it missed me.
Don't get me wrong, I'll upgrade to iLife '11, but not because of the full-screen modes.
But as for Mac OS X 10.7 - Lion, I didn't see anything there that I liked. Not a thing. I'm very comfortable with Spaces and Expose. I don't need them in a different view. I don't dislike the new view, but it's something I'd never have asked them to improve upon in a million years. It's perfect at what it does.
As for the App Store. I'll wait and see. There's a lot to like about it, but I like the way in which my apps now work. They all update, or close enough. They are easy to find with LaunchBar, and I don't have to worry about those ugly screens of apps. That's something for a phone, not a real computer. At least, not for me.
They didn't highlight the little things, and I'm hoping there's more to like about Lion than what I saw. The new iOS-like scroll bars will be nice. I don't want to see them if I'm not needing to see them. Scroll bars on Terminal.app have been something I wish they could remove for ages. Glad to hear that the rumors say they'll be updated in Lion.
I'm sure I'll get Lion for my machines. It's the future. But I hope there's a lot more to like about Lion than what we saw in the keynote. That's awfully thin, in my book.
Finally, the MacBook Air. Nice looking notebook, but too small and too underpowered for me. It'd be nice to see a higher resolution screen on my 17" MacBook Pro... along with faster processors and more memory. I'm already excited about the SSD option, but just need to wait for a nice update to the MacBook Pro line to get a new one.
In all, it's interesting, but not earth-shaking.
Yesterday I had the real pleasure of working with the lead developer of ZeroMQ on a problem I was having with my TickerPlant. Specifically, I was sending one message and seemingly receiving more than 10. Very odd. When I started off with a note to the mailing list, it then transitioned into a nice chat on IRC, and when he needed to see code, I simply posted the programs I had been using on github as gists. It was a completely amazing experience.
I haven't worked remotely for a long time - about a decade, really. But when I did, the experience was a wonderful one. I got a ton of work done, I didn't feel out of the loop, and everyone was happy. This experience was even better, and it's because of the tools that are now available: github, the Mac and iSight cameras, universal development tools on most platforms - it's really made it possible for someone like me to do my job completely physically removed from the traditional workplace.
Once again, I long for the days of working at home. There's just so much to like about it.
This morning I saw a tweet about MarsEdit 3.1.2 being out with several fixes to the Rich Text editor as well as a few things in the Media Viewer. Not bad.
I hadn't had any real problems with MarsEdit, but it's great to see that he's still working on it.
Once again, the Google Chrome guys have pushed out a new release, this one's only "release note" is: Fix minor stability issues. Some day, we'll read that this is really something akin to wiping out your hard drive, and they just wanted to downplay it so as not to harm "the brand". Like so many things in life, perception is far more important than reality.
Still, it's nice to see it getting better. I'd really like to see the OpenGL accelerated rendering and playback in the Mac OS X port, but I can wait.
UPDATE: I'm still disappointed in the default zoom rendering. It has all the graphics in a very 'rough' state until the window stabilizes, and then it redraws it to the right scale. Annoying, and I'd have thought they could put in the default CSS, but that's not working in this version either. Oh well... I wait for fixes.
This morning I noticed that LaunchBar 5.0.3 was out with an impressive list of features. I use it every day, all the time, and can't imagine not having it around. While I understand that Apple tried to do something like it with Spotlight, it's not the same, and for me, it's worth spending the few bucks to get something that's as good as this.
OK, color me impressed with Google Chrome. I've been using it for quite a while (except for those few days when I got really sick of Google's duplicity with Motorola) and have been pretty happy with it, but have always wished there were a CSS file - like there is with Safari, that would allow me to "zoom out" all the pages so that they aren't as big as they might normally be. Unfortunately, while there seems to be hints on the net about that, the ones I tried all didn't work.
I was left wishing that I could do what I wanted, but realizing that until Chrome got more advanced, I was probably just stuck with what I had. There's supposed to be a fix in Chrome that allows a user style sheet, but every time I tried to get it to work I failed - miserably.
Then this morning I read about a site-specific zoom setting - and it's persistent! I just had to try it. Sure enough... once I went to a site - even if I had multiple tabs open for that site, a zoom change in one effected all, and survived restart! That's sweet.
What it means is that until I get the global user stylesheet in a way that I can actually get it to work, I at least have the ability to set up my environment and have it look nice after restarts. That's sweet. Very nice.
But guys... really... would it kill you to have the user stylesheet? It's already in WebKit. All you need to do is really use it.