Joe Clark on why those complaining about the closedness of the iPad are complaining about a non-problem. "Open source has nothing to teach literature or indeed any artistic creation, since talent doesn’t scale as you give more and more developers check-in access to the version-control system set up for your novel."

"I had this vision of the future — a ruined empire, run by number crunchers, squalid and stupid and puffed up with phony patriotism, settling for a long slow decline."

How-to.

On crazy geniuses and products with and without imagination. "And the iPod itself is a shiny fruit fallen to earth from an enchanted tree in a mystical fairy land populated entirely by crazy geniuses."

"The recent launch of the MacBook Air has made me think a lot about my perfect computer, which the Air is not." Musings on the perfect machine.

"Steve Jobs gives a legendary keynote at Macworld SF every January, launching products and giving a state of the union view of things at Apple. What if you invested $10,000 the day before the keynote, then sold at the end of the keynote day?"

Pressure from hearing charities and internal company concern has led Apple to patent a technology that would calculate how long a listener had been listening at high volumes and automatically turn the volume down.

"WebKit is an open source web browser engine. WebKit is also the name of the Mac OS X system framework version of the engine that's used by Safari, Dashboard, Mail, and many other OS X applications."

It's all true. All right!

FSJ posts on the photo my friend Dean took of the UMass antipiracy campaign poster.

An interview with Apple's brilliant product designer, who possesses a "fanatical care beyond the obvious stuff."

A fine review of the trend in minimalism on the web and in technology in general since the late 90s.

Photographed by Dean. "In a bold move, the UMass Office of Information Technologies makes a stand against violating intellectual property rights by....violating intellectual property rights?"

"Every time Apple releases something new, I am re-staggered by the internet's ability to be negative. It makes me sad. Every Steve Jobs presentation brings out so much negativity... There's no way to grapple with it, [but] I'm going to try."

Indeed.

Interesting ideas from Apple, patented just in case.

A turning point.

Japanese versions of the Apple ads with Mac and PC.

Understanding H.264 and how to optimize its encoding.

Details all about my computer.

macOS Ventura brings Stage Manager, FaceTime Handoff, and Continuity Camera to Mac along with major updates to Mail, Spotlight, Safari, and Messages.

On the struggle between Apple and the music industry. "Is the government coming to take away your iPod? Of course not. But your iPod is already less functional than it should be."

"According to sources who have so far filed accurate reports on Apple's future hardware plans, the company is feverishly working on a two-button wireless optical mouse that it intends to release."

Isamu Sanada's Apple concept art.