Looking back,This is an update to the article I wrote last summer, when Safari 3.0 was first released. In the 9 months since then, a lot has happened, and I wanted to try to keep this info up to date. Opera, iCab, Konqueror, and Firefox have all made progress in adopting CSS 3.0 specifications, the next generation of the W3C's Cascading Style Sheets standard.

However, the WebKit team continues to lead the pack, as they have since I first contemplated this article over a year ago. In the last 6 months, that team has not only adopted more of the CSS 3.0 specs ahead of the others, but they have proposed several exciting new specs of their own, which the W3C is taking up as draft recommendations.

In addition to updating the state of CSS 3.0 in WebKit/Safari, I've also added some new demos for the Backgrounds section.

Here are the CSS 3.0 features I wrote about in July 2007:

1. Box-shadow: Yes! Add drop shadows through CSS!
2. Multi-column layout: Can we really do this now? With HTML?
3. Resize: Give JavaScript hacks a rest and let users relax when typing input on web pages.
4. Rounded corners: Any
   can be made round.
5. Colors with transparency: There goes another ugly hack from way back!
6. Background image controls: Remember how great it was when you could add images as well as colors to an element's background CSS style? Well, it's about to get a whole lot better!

And since then, WebKit and Safari 3.1 have adopted the following new ones:

1. Adopted last October, WebKit introduced its first take at CSS Transforms, which it has submitted to the W3C for consideration. With CSS Transforms, <DIV>s can be scaled, rotated, skewed and translated... all without using JavaScript!
2. Announced at the same time is the equally exciting implementation of CSS Animations. At the moment, the only type of animation that's documented and demonstrated on the WebKit blog is based on CSS Transitions, which let you define how an object or attribute changes over time from one state to another.
3. Also in October, WebKit added the CSS Web Fonts feature, which lets designers beam fonts to users through CSS and HTML, approximating the capabilities of PDF in a much lighter-weight form.
4. Then, after a lull, things started to heat up again last month, when Apple released Safari 3.1. Safari 3.1 incorporated all of the CSS 3.0 features WebKit had pioneered earlier, plus it added a bunch of things the WebKit team hadn't blogged about. Chief among these was support for CSS Attribute Selectors. This is something of a holy grail to advanced web developers, since it opens up a whole world of possibilities for using the Document Object Model (DOM) to build better web interfaces. When released, WebKit was the first and only browser to support this geeky, but highly practical feature.
5. And then, just today, WebKit added support for CSS Gradients to its portfolio. Gradients are not yet a CSS 3.0 specification, but they are part of the HTML 5.0 spec. No doubt Apple's implementation will be referred to the W3C for consideration.

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With Leopard's forthcoming "Quick Look" feature in the Finder, Apple is leaping ahead of the file-previewing game by providing a separate, translucent preview window of amazing flexibility and beauty. Quick Look can preview movies at full size or even full screen. It can preview text, HTML, and PDF documents and even let you navigate them. If you select multiple files, Leopard provides an "expose"-like view that lets you navigate among them. Or, if the files are images, you can quickly go into slideshow mode. There's much more... but ain't that enough for now?

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A lively discussion and exchange of information occurred recently on Hawk Wings, the blog site mostly devoted to news and resources for users of Apple’s terrific Mail program. A colleague at work sent me a message on Tuesday, excited when word on Hawk Wings started circulating about a “vacuum” process available for SQLite databases that appeared to dramatically speed up Apple Mail. He had tried the recommended vacuuming and definitely noticed peppier Mail performance. One thing led to another, and before I knew it, I’d become engrossed in developing and polishing up an AppleScript utility to automate a periodic vacuuming of my Mail, which I’m of course dubbing VacuumMail.

As the Hawk Wings discussion unfolded, we learned that Mail maintains an SQLite database called “Envelope Index” in your ~/Library/Mail folder, which gradually grows as the number of emails in your mailbox does. Natively, Mail performs no optimizations on this critical database, which contains pointers to all of your mail that become fragmented and somewhat disorganized over time. At the office, my Envelope Index file was over 100mb, and at home it’s about 30mb. SQLite offers a “vacuum” command that rewrites the Envelope Index, optimizing and reorganizing it for faster access. It sounds a bit like what happens when Mac OS X defragments your hard drive periodically.

At first, news of this function took the form of a shell command you can run in Terminal. It was quite interesting and exciting to see how the Mac users reading of this learned more about it as information was shared, and the command itself became more concise and precise as the day went on. Other users discovered that SQLite offers an “autovacuum” process that can do vacuuming without prompting, and I’m sure that’s a great thing as well. However, we also learned that vacuuming is a more robust and thorough optimizing of the file, since it actually analyzes and rewrites the whole thing, whereas autovacuuming acts only on a certain recent portion of mail pointers. The basic Terminal command turns out to be:

sqlite3 ~/Library/Mail/Envelope\ Index vacuum;

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There are definitely some life decisions that you should think twice before revisiting. I’m talking things like your marriage, your decision to have kids, your choice of college, your upcoming vacation plans… maybe your car and house. But honestly, don’t politicians make too much of clinging to decisions they made that turn out to be wrong? And don’t some of them place way too high a value on consistency over a long period of time in one’s personal values and beliefs? Is that “fortitude” or “stupidity”? Heck, as Joni Mitchell once pointed out, “Life is for learning.” If you acknowledge that learning changes you by adding new ideas and insights, then individuals who never change their mind about things aren’t particularly good role models for an advanced society… are they?  

Astute readers of this page are probably starting to wonder where the hell I’m going with this topic. “Is this an article about PIM software, or not?” Well, it’s actually highly relevant, because one type of decision we make quite often nowadays should be easily reversed. If it isn’t, we’ve made the wrong choice and should change our minds immediately. I’m talking about one’s choice of software applications.

It’s ironic that so many “technology experts” think of Apple as the company that locks users in with proprietary hooks, when Apple has never been the source of such danger at all. Yes, Apple’s hardware is proprietary, but think about it: If you want to extract your data from a computer, what form does the data take? Hardware? Of course not… it’s the software, stupid!

The danger of lock-in isn’t from hardware, it’s from software. Since Mac OS X hit the scene 5 1/2 years ago, Apple has been delivering a platform built on open source, standards-based software. Even when they come up with a proprietary file format, they will shortly reveal easy ways of getting your data into and out of that format. I’m not saying Apple has never been stupid about this, but their stupidity about formats is the exception rather than the rule. As a pure software company, Microsoft’s business model is built on secret, proprietary formats that hook in to secret code in Windows, closing the Windows environment and locking users into an apparently velvet prison.

I didn’t mean to digress onto Microsoft (yet again), but my point is that one of the main reasons I use Mac OS X drives a lot of my software decisions: I don’t want to get stuck. I want to be able to migrate freely to a new software application if the features and benefits are compelling enough, and I don’t want worries about how I’ll migrate my data to be a show-stopper.

With this in mind, I’ve been eyeing the market for personal information management (PIM) software on Mac OS X for a couple of years now. I’ve felt a little like a honey bee, alighting briefly on this software package, then moving on to another, and another, all the while sampling a dozen more. The tool I’m currently using has been my “flower” for the longest period so far: DevonThink Pro.

Though far from perfect, it’s the best tool I’ve yet found, with the most flexibility for getting data into and out of its data store. DevonThink Pro covers the widest range of data types, and encompasses a large universe of possible uses and usage scenarios. However, it took me quite awhile to get comfortable with DevonThink, and even now I continue to discover better ways of working with it. And because of a few glaring limitations, as well as my general Software Addict’s mindset, I continue to sample the competition.

This article is not about DevonThink Pro, although I’ll share a few thoughts along the way. Rather, it’s intended to be an ongoing repository of my observations about software products that overlap with DevonThink as I try them out. Given time constraints, these are not complete reviews of the various products, but rather they simply document my quickly written notes on pros and cons during the course of my evaluations. Because new versions of software often overcome limitations in earlier versions (but, as self-evident as this may be, it’s not always true), it wouldn’t be fair to set these notes in stone forever. For any products that have enough “pros” to make me want to return and sample new releases down the road, I intend to revise the entries as the products evolve.

 

One of these days, I’ll hopefully find the “perfect” product and can close the door on this category of software for awhile. But in the meantime, I’m keeping the door wide open and welcome any newcomers that look interesting and aren’t outrageously expensive.

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It’s a common myth in the Windows world that Mac users have to make do with only one software title for every 10 that run on Windows. The myth arises from the teeny-tiny or nonexistent retail space afforded to Mac software in the computer stores where Windows users shop. However, the reality is far from that perception. Prior to the emergence of Mac OS X, Mac users did commonly face slim pickings in many software categories, but times have changed dramatically, and nowadays many software categories present so many choices for Mac users that the situation is downright uncomfortable. I certainly feel that way at times!

One of these days, I’m going to do a study of the comparative availability of software titles between Mac OS X and Windows, and my going-in assumption will be that users have an equivalent or greater degree of choice on the Mac platform today in categories such as

• personal information management
• personal organizers
• graphic design tools
• 3D design and animation tools
• image management tools
• project management
• word processing tools
• programmers text editors
• Music mixing and editing tools
• News aggregators (RSS/podcast readers), and
• many others.

Notice that not all of the categories I’m listing are in the realm of creative arts.

However, one category that’s still under-served, in my view, is the original killer app, the good-old spreadsheet. I haven’t researched the Windows market for spreadsheet software, so perhaps the same dilemma affects those guys, too. Undoubtedly, the underwhelming selection of spreadsheets for Mac OS X results directly from the influence of Microsoft Office, and what is probably its best component, Microsoft Excel.

In this article, I’ll review all of the applications that provide spreadsheet-type functionality for Mac OS X, and as you’ll see, not many will come through with flying colors.

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You’ve heard about one or two of them, and you may even have seen a YouTube video of Safari 3.0’s tab tricks. But let me tell you, as part of my Building Leopard project, discovering Safari 3.0 has left me with an insatiable desire to work in Leopard full-time. There are three standout features that I really miss when I “degrade gracefully” to other modern web browsers on my Mac—and that includes Firefox 2.0x, Opera 9.x, and Safari 2.x as my regular web companions.

Even though Firefox has enough cool extensions to keep a software addict fed from now until next year, none of them match the upcoming features Apple has cooked up for Safari 3.0 in Mac OS X 10.5 (”Leopard”). Likewise, Opera and its talented development team is going to be left behind the curve for awhile, as are better-than-Safari wannabes like Shiira and OmniWeb on the Mac. (It took Microsoft 5 years to add tabs to its browser, and from the way they’ve implemented them, I still don’t think they quite get it. So, no, I’m not expecting any innovative new ideas in web browsing from Redmond any time soon.)

Ok, with a buildup like that, I can hear you Safari naysayers out there beginning to clear your throats in preparation for throwing out some canned dissults about Safari. Save ‘em.

I’m not sharing these in order to put down anybody else’s browser of choice (well, IE is so far down it’s hard to do anything else!), and I’m not suggesting they are going to revolutionize web browsing, even remotely. The ideas Apple has implemented are not so unique that the company should have taken out patents or anything. Rather, these are incremental innovations of the sort that keep the art of web browsing moving forward. It’s ideas like these that could potentially jog the minds of other creative programmers, who will then go off and imagine some other cool new enhancements for Firefox or Opera or Shiira or OmniWeb.

In the end, it’s all good for web surfers like you and me. (Hey! Are humans and martians who browse the web “web browsers”? If so, when do we get new features?)

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I didn’t intend to write this article today… In fact, I’m right in the middle of three others that I want to finish. However, it just leaped at me from the front page of today’s Washington Post Business page, and I couldn’t resist. In an article called Access Denied, the writer bemoans the many passwords and PINs and such that the modern, web-connected human must juggle in daily life. People today have so many passwords to remember, they simply can’t, and this undermines the very security the passwords are set up to ensure, since companies will typically allow a shortcut to someone who claims to have forgotten a password—for a bank account, for example.

When I forget a password, I launch Keychain Access, which is a surprisingly sophisticated application that I use in a very simple way. Namely, I enter a search term in the search field, which invokes a live search on the Keychain database and displays matching results below. Each result shows the username associated with the website or application, so it’s easy to find which Key I’m looking for. Double-clicking on the Key brings up a dialog panel that gives me some management capability on the particular key. I’m sure this is cool and significant, but I go straight for the “Show password” checkbox.

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Thanks to an article on the Rixstep blog (”The Object Oriented Cake“), I took the time to listen to Steve Jobs introducing NeXTSTEP 3.0 back in 1992. As Rixstep points out, in 1992 Microsoft was just introducing Windows 3.1 and was still trying to build Windows NT. The hardware it ran on was unbelievably weak. As an example, consider that it wasn’t until early 1993 that Intel introduced the Pentium, which ran at an astonishing 66mHz!

Meanwhile, in 1992 Apple had just introduced System 7 the year before, which turned out to be the last truly significant upgrade the company was to make until OS X was released in 2001. Even so, among the “innovations” in System 7 was color computing. (Can you say, “take me for granted”?) Apple had also just introduced the first Macs powered by the new RISC-based PowerPC chip based on their collaboration with Motorola and IBM.

In the Unix world, Solaris 2.0 was just a baby that year, FreeBSD was gestating for a 1993 birth, and Linux was still reaching for a 1.0 release.

Ponder these few moments from computing history as you watch a very youthful Steve Jobs dazzle us with the remarkable achievements of his company’s operating system, NeXT, and its new application development tool, NeXTSTEP 3.0. Truth is, NeXT was so far out there in 1992, a lot of the folks in his audience probably couldn’t believe it was real. After all, these marvels were running on hardware that was only somewhat less puny than the day’s most powerful PC’s, and some of the features he demonstrates are ones we’re still waiting for today!

It should really make you wonder what went wrong after 1992. Why don’t we have PC’s, applications, and development platforms today that fully match the power of NeXT and NeXTSTEP? Mac OS X comes close, but it’s still hobbled with remnants of the Classic MacOS. Besides, the Mac hardly represents “mainstream computing” in 2006.

I know I’m gonna get it from the “never say die!” Microsoft fans out there, but it’s clear to me that the major villain in this story is none other than the company formerly led by Bill Gates. If you want an example of why monopolies are bad for the economy and bad for consumers, just watch this 14-year-old demo of an operating system that you can’t buy anymore. When brilliant technology like this can die stillborn–and no one notices–something is definitely wrong with the marketplace for new technology.

For my own convenience, and therefore yours, I’ve split the video (previously disseminated through YouTube and Google Video) into six parts, each corresponding to one of the major themes in Jobs’ talk.

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I finally got around to watching all of the WWDC Keynote presentation from last week and culled a few movies from it that I thought others might enjoy. Like any long meeting—even one with Steve Jobs presiding—there are boring points or just moments of less importance than others. The five clips I’m including here are not necessarily the five most significant features of Tiger, but they’re the five I personally found most interesting.

If you’ve seen the QuickTime movies on Apple’s website, let me tell you… you ain’t seen nothin’ yet! Here’s a bit more up-close and personal look at some of the really cool things coming in Leopard. (Note: These videoclips are cut from Apple’s streaming video. What you see here is streaming directly from the Keynote video posted on apple.com. Another bit of QuickTime magic.)

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I swore recently that I’d adopt a kinder, gentler attitude toward Earth’s computing majority, which knows (and thinks it loves) Microsoft Windows and nothing else. After all, switching operating systems is no easy task, and merely pondering a switch no doubt evokes mostly fear in the gentle Windows folk of this world. Continuing to use Windows, therefore, in the face of overwhelming evidence that it’s bad for your health, isn’t a sign of weakness or weak-mindedness. It’s simply Human nature to loathe and fear change and to cling to the familiar and comfortable. Hence that wise adage, “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence,” and its close relative, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” All I can say is, Thank goodness I’m a Martian!

However, I never said I was going to be nice to narrow minded Windows bigots who pose as thought-leaders at the head of major technology news organizations. And so, with relish, let me dig in and deconstruct a writer whose ignorance, fear, and envy of Mac OS X have led him to write one of the most glaringly ridiculous and self-contradictory bits of Apple FUD I’ve read in months. The guy’s name is Peter Coffee, and you can tell by the photo that accompanies his latest opinion piece, Will Leopard Out-Vista Vista? that he’s bracing himself to be pounced on by guys like me on the Mac side of the fence. (By the way, it really is greener here, folks.)

MacDailyNews has already had a heaping helping of Coffee’s hide, but there’s plenty left for me.

Let me start by making quite clear my view of Windows-oriented technology writers like Coffee who presume to write about Mac OS X or to compare a Mac with a Windows PC: They shouldn’t. “And why the heck not?” You ask.

Well, here’s the thing. Guys like me who trash Windows for sport don’t do so out of ignorance of that operating system. After all, you can’t really turn 50 and be a professional techhie in this world without having had intimate knowledge of Windows over the course of its lifetime. Me, I started using Windows with version 2.0, and every employer I’ve worked for since then has made me use a Windows system. The only one I kind of liked was Windows NT 4.0, and that was only because it was so much better than the Windows 3.1 I had been using. So, you aren’t likely to find a technology writer who prefers the Mac who hasn’t also spent a lifetime working in Windows.

By contrast, guys like Coffee have no earthly idea what Mac OS X is all about. He thinks he knows about Macs by playing with the review copy he receives from the company, or from the few hours he spent back in 2001 with the first version of the operating system. Or from what he reads, or hears, from other technology writers like himself who have no idea what they’re talking about.

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Ah, computer security training. Don’t you just love it? Doesn’t it make you feel secure to know that your alert IT department is on patrol against the evil malware that slinks in and takes the network down every now and then, giving you a free afternoon off? Look at all the resources those wise caretakers have activated to keep you safe!

• Virulent antivirus software, which wakes up and takes over your PC several times a day (always, it seems, just at the moment when you actually needed to type something important).
• Very expensive, enterprise-class desktop-management software that happily recommends to management when you need more RAM, when you’ve downloaded peer-to-peer software contrary to company rules, and when you replaced the antivirus software the company provides with a brand that’s a little easier on your CPU.
• Silent, deadly, expensive, and nosy mail server software that reads your mail and removes files with suspicious-looking extensions, or with suspicious-looking subject lines like “I Love You“, while letting creepy-looking email with subject lines like “You didnt answer deniable antecedent” or “in beef gunk” get through.
• Expensive new security personnel, who get to hire even more expensive security contractors, who go on intrusion-detection rampages once or twice a year, spend lots of money, gum up the network, and make recommendations for the company to spend even more money on security the next year.
• Field trips to Redmond, Washington, to hear what Microsoft has to say for itself, returning with expensive new licenses for Groove and SharePoint Portal Server (why both? why either?), and other security-related software.
• New daily meetings that let everyone involved in protecting the network sit and wring their hands while listening to news about the latest computing vulnerabilities that have been discovered.
• And let’s not forget security training! My favorite! By all means, we need to educate the staff on the proper “code of conduct” for handling company information technology gear. Later in the article, I’ll tell you all about the interesting things I learned this year, which earned me an anonymous certificate for passing a new security test. Yay!

In fact, this article started out as a simple expose on the somewhat insulting online training I just took. But one thought led to another, and soon I was ruminating on the Information Technology organization as a whole, and about the effectiveness and rationality of its response to the troublesome invasion of micro-cyberorganisms of the last 6 or 7 years.

Protecting the network

Who makes decisions about computer security for your organization? Chances are, it’s the same guys who set up your network and desktop computer to begin with. When the plague of computer viruses, worms, and other malware began in earnest, the first instinct of these security Tzars was understandable: Protect!
          Protect the investment…
                    Protect the users…
                              Protect the network!

And the plague itself, which still ravages our computer systems… was this an event that our wise IT leaders had foreseen? Had they been warning employees about the danger of email, the sanctity of passwords, and the evil of internet downloads prior to the first big virus that struck? If your company’s IT staff is anything like mine, I seriously doubt it. Like everyone else, the IT folks in charge of our computing systems at the office only started paying attention after a high-profile disaster or two. Prior to that, it was business as usual for the IT operations types: “Ignore it until you can’t do so anymore.” A vulgar translation of this “code of conduct” is often used instead: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Unfortunately, the IT Powers-That-Be never moved beyond their initial defensive response. They never actually tried to investigate and treat the underlying cause of the plague. No, after they had finished setting up a shield around the perimeter, investing in enterprise antivirus and spam software, and other easy measures, it’s doubtful that your IT department ever stepped back to ask one simple question: How much of the plague has to do with our reliance on Microsoft Windows? Would we be better off by switching to another platform?

It’s doubtful that the question ever crossed their minds, but even if someone did raise it, someone else was ready with an easy put-down or three:

1. It’s only because Windows is on 95% of the world’s desktops.
2. It’s only because there are so many more hackers now.
3. And all the hackers attack Windows because it’s the biggest target.

At about this time in the Computer Virus Wars, the rallying cry of the typical IT shop transitioned from “Protect the network… users… etc.” to simply:
            Protect Windows!

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I’ve been hooked on the idea of screencasting ever since Jon Udell started pushing it a couple of years ago.  He pointed out some very effective screencasts that others had made and posted several excellent screencasts himself, interspersed with articles on best practices, tools, and tips.  As Udell pointed out in “Movies of Software,” Apple has done a less-than-stellar job at making screencasting on the Mac as super-simple as other creative and educational tasks are.  He was also dismayed–well, at least, I was dismayed–to report that he was doing his screencasting on a Windows machine mainly because Microsoft had provided superior, free tools for doing so.  *Groan*  Let’s see… that was a year and a half ago!  I thought surely someone from Apple would have read his blog post and rushed an update to QuickTime Pro to make amends.  Not that it’s completely equivalent, because QuickTime Pro isn’t free, but at least Mac OS X users wouldn’t have to go hunting and pecking for a tool to do a basic job like screen-capturing.  The problem is, you see, that the world has moved on from Grab, and when I think “screen-capture” today, I don’t just think still pictures.  Heck, no.  I want to capture motion… I want to capture sound.  I want to capture software.

The sound part is easy, thanks to the truly superior tools Apple provides in iLife… in this case, GarageBand.  But the video… Like I said, *Groan*!  On a Mac, you can capture yourself making funny faces in both stills and videos… You can create little video miracles of your family at play… You can turn yourself into a budding American Idol with GarageBand and iMovie.  But you can’t do a simple thing like capturing the beautiful animations and user-interface delights that Mac users enjoy while working with their software.  In other words, you can’t capture videos of Mac OS X in action.

So, one of the categories of software I’ve been keeping an eye on–and cataloguing possible purchases in–has been video screen capture products.  I don’t think I’d ever have the time–or talent–to prepare true screencasts in the Jon Udell mold, but I have found myself wanting to capture small videos of Mac OS X software in action on many occasions.  In fact, little videos have been creeping into my software reviews and other blog posts for the last 6 months or so.

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Since my original report on the browser and platform compatibility of some 50 Ajax JavaScript libraries in March, the market has continued to produce new toolkits at a rapid pace. I recently finished grading all (but one) of the 8 libraries added since March, and I’ve revisited the scores of another 8. With that, the time seemed right for a report on how Ajax library developers are doing at achieving cross-browser, cross-platform compatibility in the tools they’re giving us–tools which programmers around the world are using to hammer out their unique vision of Web 2.0.

I’m very pleased to report that the trend is moving strongly toward full compatibility. Of the eight new libraries, a full five of them achieve top grades of “A”. That’s a much higher percentage of the total than in March, and of the three non-A libraries, only one was a D (D+ actually). One was graded C+ and the other B. Of the revisited libraries, I was able to raise grades for three–Backbase, ICEfaces, and MochiKit. Only one library had a lower grade (Rico, down from A- to B), and the rest were unchanged.

Only two of the 8 new libraries have commercial licenses you’d have to pay for, and in one case you are really only paying for the IDE. Three of the new libraries require a java server architecture in order to be happy, one would prefer Cold Fusion, and the others are pure client libraries that are agnostic with respect to the application server. One library was added just a couple of days ago (Jitsu), and I haven’t had time to review it yet–but you’ll find it summarized here with the rest. Only one of these 16 libraries is DHTML with no Ajax controls–Uize. Even without Ajax, however, I think you’ll find Uize to be one of the most interesting here–especially in terms of visual richness.

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With growing interest and amazement, I read the back-and-forth argument between two long-time, highly respected Mac nerds yesterday on the subject of Mark Pilgrim’s decision to abandon Mac OS X for Ubuntu Linux. John Gruber is simply one of the best Mac writers there is, and regardless of what he has to say on a particular subject, you have to admire the elegance, precision, and logic of his writing. So when Gruber raised questions about the wisdom of Pilgrim’s move in a recent blog post, his large readership weighed in, and Pilgrim responded, you can be sure that a great many Mac users like me paid attention.

As usual, I agreed with nearly everything Gruber had to say, and the couple of niggles I have are not worth mentioning here since they would distract from the purpose of this article. And what is that purpose, you are wondering? Before I get to that, let me briefly summarize (if I dare) the exchange so far between Gruber and Pilgrim.

1. Pilgrim has become fed up with Apple’s “closed”-edness. After 22 years as a sophisticated, high-end user, he’s decided Apple’s “closed” ecosystem of software and hardware is too closed for him. His primary concern is that the integrity of the data he stores in that ecosystem is at risk, because Apple doesn’t always document its data formats and doesn’t respect for long the proprietary formats it develops for storage. Pilgrim feels jerked around from one closed format to another and is tired of the data conversions and consequent data loss they inevitably entail.
2. Gruber is surprised and a bit incredulous that Pilgrim would have suddenly been bitten by this bug. He agrees that closed formats aren’t good for long-term archival purposes, but questions whether losing his iTunes metadata and other format problems is worth chucking his expertise with the Mac operating system for something completely different. He points out that a good backup strategy is part of the solution to preserving precious content. He also devotes a large part of his response to criticizing the Mac blog writers who had knee-jerk reactions against Pilgrim’s decision, and who cited old “Mac is better than Windows because…” arguments without realizing the advances Windows has made since Windows XP (or 95, or whatever). Gruber argues against black-and-white thinking in general and for the very reasonable position of respecting other people’s choices even if you don’t agree with them.
3. Pilgrim replies that Gruber missed his point and reemphasizes that his feeling “closed in” by proprietary formats has been coming on for a long time. Apple’s decision to abandon the widely used and understood mbox format for Mail was just the last straw. He feels betrayed that Apple switched formats in Tiger without informing its users, without providing them a way to back out, and without documenting the new format.

So why do I want to wander into this disagreement between two Macintosh heavyweights I don’t know, but greatly admire and respect? As I read their separate articles, I saw something with my Martian eyes that may not be clear to them. What I saw wasn’t an OS switch story, but rather a love story.

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3. Use Real Productivity Applications To Get Work Done Faster, Easier

As inventors of new tools have done throughout human history, the visionaries who designed and built the first personal computers saw them as tools that would provide an immense boost to human productivity. And they weren’t just thinking about business productivity, folks. They were also thinking of personal productivity: Getting more things done faster so we’d have more leisure time.

Today, in our Microsoft-Windows dominated world, we use the term “productivity application” to refer to Microsoft Office, and we think of the personal computer as a business tool. (Quick: Do a Google search for that term–”productivity application”–and see what you get.) But has Microsoft Office provided us with more leisure time? Of course not. Microsoft Office is a business tool that replaced prior, non-electronic tools like the typewriter and pencil. If it has enhanced productivity at all (and that is arguable), the productivity gain has come in the form of more output per worker… not more leisure time for the individual. In any case, whatever productivity impact Microsoft Office and its ilk had on the business world was completed many years ago. Yet even for businesses, productivity didn’t stop with improving our ability to prepare reports and memos, or compile numbers in spreadsheets, or do overlays for a presentation in PowerPoint.

Productivity goes up whenever you can suddenly do a task in less time than before, either at home or at work. Since its beginnings with the original Apple computer, Apple has appeared to be pursuing a vision that steadily expands the personal computer’s potential to save you time… to do complicated things simpler. Apple’s operating system recognizes that this kind of productivity gain begins with the simplest interface to the computer: Finding things, opening applications, printing, opening documents, organizing information, and the like. As a result of this vision, Mac OS X has two built-in features that are simply lacking in Windows, and they enable “productivity” applications that are truly the envy of the Windows world:

Applescript and Application Services.

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While reading MacDailyNews this evening, I happened on a remarkable story entitled, “Another iPod+iTunes FUD article keeps the disinformation flowing.” With a sigh, I took a look to see what idiot could possibly not understand the iPod and/or iTunes after so many years and so many articles.

As it turned out, the depth of this writer’s ignorance is absolutely shocking. There’s no way he could honestly think this stuff is true. If he does, he has no business covering complicated technology topics like the iPod and iTunes, because clearly the product’s available options are far too difficult for him to grasp. Concluding instead that he’s probably a bright guy, I’m tempted to conclude, as MacDailyNews did, that his piece in Reuters is a deliberate attempt to mislead consumers and smear Apple’s innovative and highly successful music service. The article appears as part of Yahoo’s Finance site with the innocuous-sounding title “Do you own songs bought online? Well, sort of“.

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PC Mag’s Michael Miller has written what I’m sure he believes is a reasonable comparison of the state of things with Mac OS X versus Windows. What he doesn’t realize is that he’s full of B***hit, ensnared in a system he thinks he understands but is really merely apologizing for. In doing so, he adheres to old Mac myths that he’ll probably believe till he steps over that final cliff.

Miller tries once again to make the case that Macs are more expensive than PC’s and that they don’t have enough software. If I weren’t so irritated by this, I’d simply yawn. In one case, he writes of visiting the Dell store and buying an E1505 notebook for only about $1,300, while the entry-level MacBook Pro with roughly the same specs is $1,999.

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Good grief. Who the heck is in charge of strategic thinking at those movie studios? Movielink, a consortium of 5 Hollywood studios, launched a new movie-…

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Rob Gonda: “Web 2.0 on the desktop! A new feature!” Um, no, Rob, Sorry…
It’s hard to imagine that this is actually a new thing in Windows…

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This can’t really be called “news”, since I clipped this PC Magazine review in late December, 2005. But a Martian never forgets! Besides, PC Magazine still brazenly displays this information on its website as if it were fact, not fiction. After reading through the info I’ve gathered in the last half hour, you be the judge of the facts in this case.

The serious error here is that PC Magazine lists the Apple Power Mac G5 Quad as costing… guess! You’ll never guess how much they say it costs. Honestly.

OK, I gotta spill the beans at some point. PC Magazine says a Quad costs $7,023 to $9,522!

That struck me as very odd, since I had just bought a new Quad for myself in December, and I didn’t pay anywhere near $7,000-$9,500 for it. The unit I bought was hardly the base model, either: I had upgraded to the $350 Nvidia GeForce 7800 graphics card when it became available and also added Bluetooth and Airport wireless cards for $99. And I got all this for only $3,448! How is this possible, you ask? Read on.

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