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Ever since I picked up a MacBook Air I’ve been disappointed in my 17″ MacBook Pro. The Pro has better specs, more memory, more everything. It should be faster than the “underpowered” Air? NO. Maybe it’s the solid state drive or maybe I just ask it to do less, but the Air has consistently been more snappy than the other … until today.

In the latest software update (along with iPhoto and a new iTunes supporting the iPad) Apple pushed out 10.6.3 complete with eighty-something fixes at ~800 MB. Generally when an update comes along, it’s “fine, an update.” It’s just that this one seems to have rejuvenated the poor Pro. Hopefully the feeling lasts … but, just in case, I’m holding off touching the Air for fear it may have improved as well (though I don’t see how it could).

After being excited about Snow Leopard for quite some time now and getting it the day after release. I’m pissed off. It just won’t install. I’ve tried for hours on several computers for days and it just hangs. Now reading, I see that dozens upon dozens are having this problem, and it is indeed as I suspected. Faulty duplication. Upon examination of my disk I see that the culprit is the same as all other reports … Mediagate something or other “Recorded in Singapore!” mine is B09 000124, but I’ve seen reports of 000119. I guess I get to make another trip down to Ginza to see if they’ll deign to replace this thing (though I hear from most all that stocks are sold out and in many instances Apple blamed the user in the earliest cases – though have now backed off of that – and just have been saying to keep checking). After all this, the Air has zero OS because, of course, clean install is the best idea if the install DVD does not fail. This “master” DVD even fails verification in Disk Utility! I never thought to check that. URGH!

Some time ago someone was mentioning the main thing that sucked about the Mac laptop keyboard was the lack of a forward-delete key. I had no answer, until now. “Funtion-Delete” is the “key” … ahem … two keys. That’s ‘fn’ and the usual ‘delete.’

Keep those background windows scrolling, with command key. OS X has the answer, just use that mouse in the background, on another app entirely, and all with the apple command key.

Huzzah, huzzah! NetNewsWire 2 beta just went public. It’s been a long time coming and the NDA for the innumerable development and alpha tests prohibited any mention before (and I mean way innumerable – this is one well tested beta). It’s quite an astounding upgrade and it’s even a free upgrade from version 1. Everything you’ve always wanted is in there such as smart feeds, scriptable feeds, persistence, an embedded tabbed browser and much much more. This release also realizes my life long quest to appear in a Mac app ‘about’ box. And for it to appear in the universally recognized number one program in it’s category! *giddiness ensues* Yup in the credits under “For beta testing, feature requests, bravery, and other help” … scroll … scroll … scroll … scroll … and there it is! That’s what I get for having a name late in the alphabet. There are so many people helping out with this release but it still feels nifty-keen to be there at all. After all, a diamond shines as brightly, even amongst many. By arcane geek allusion it would have to be pointed out that this would only be true if one believed humanity to be akin to a precious jewel … a belief to which I do not subscribe. Ahem. Anyway, the weblog editor I’ve been playing with for a long while, MarsEdit, was also unveiled (it’s free for the taking for v1 owners as well). Check both of them out (be aware they are now public beta though and not gold). Brent and Sheila have more than enough reason to be proud.

inessential.com: Weblog: 2004-09-21