TidBITS#791/08-Aug-05
=====================
Just when you thought it would never happen, Apple quietly breaks
with tradition and ships... the multi-button Mighty Mouse. Also in
this issue, Adam shares his experience navigating Boston's streets
with the Magellan RoadMate 700, a GPS device that got him there
and back again with a few surprises. Jeff Carlson finds a great
deal on a 20-inch LCD monitor not made by Apple, and finally hops
on the multiple-monitor bandwagon. And the Japanese iTunes Music
Store opens to a rush of business and expanded offerings.
Topics:
MailBITS/08-Aug-05
Apple Ships a Multi-Button Mouse
Expanding the View with a Dell LCD Display
On the Road with the Magellan RoadMate 700
Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/08-Aug-05
<http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-791.html>
<ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/issues/2005/TidBITS#791_08-Aug-05.etx>
Copyright 2005 TidBITS: Reuse governed by Creative Commons license
<http://www.tidbits.com/terms/> Contact: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
---------------------------------------------------------------
This issue of TidBITS sponsored in part by:
* READERS LIKE YOU! Support TidBITS with a contribution today! <----- NEW!
<http://www.tidbits.com/about/support/contributors.html>
Special thanks this week to Seth Anderson, Damian Halloran,
Jeff Kwapil, and Tom Wilcoxen for their generous support!
* SMALL DOG ELECTRONICS: Free shipping!! <--------------------------- NEW!
Free shipping on Small Dog Electronics Flash Drives
256 MB - $35.95; 512 MB - $55; 1 GB - $89
Visit: <http://www.smalldog.com/tb/> 800-511-MACS
* FETCH SOFTWORKS: Fetch 5 makes FTP and SFTP easy! <---------------- NEW!
Upload, download, mirror, and manage your Web site. Dozens of
new features to make file transfers easier and more reliable.
Get your free trial version at <http://fetchsoftworks.com/>!
* Dr. Bott, LLC: Bulletproof your PowerBook. It's the briefcase <--- NEW!
of choice for the chrome-plated professional with a plane to
catch and documents to carry. Laptop Armor in chrome, black,
or white for 12-17" laptops. <http://www.drbott.com/>
* Web Crossing, Inc: Site Crossing brings Web Crossing power to
your small biz, family or club. Build a core site or bolt onto
a current one for discussions, blogs, chat, polls, calendars,
podcasts, and more. <http://www.sitecrossing.com/tb-305>
* Circus Ponies NoteBook: Never lose anything again. NoteBook <------ NEW!
lets you take notes, clip content, and share information. Find
anything instantly with automatic index pages. One-step Web
publishing. Free 30-day demo! <http://www.circusponies.com/>
* AUDIO HIJACK PRO: Gain total audio control to record <------------- NEW!
and enhance any audio. Save internet streams, import
vinyl & much more. MacUser's Utility of the Year!
Download it now: <http://www.rogueamoeba.com/tb/>
* Bare Bones Software's BBEdit 8.2 -- More than 100 new features <--- NEW!
& improvements including Subversion support, Text Factories,
Codeless Language Modules, Documents Drawer, and much more!
Demo or buy it today, visit <http://www.barebones.com/>.
* [Math+Magic] - The ultimate Equation Editor on the planet!
Write beautiful math equations & symbols easily in MathMagic,
use them widely in your word processors, Keynote, DTP software.
Fully working trials at <http://www.mathmagic.com/download/>
---------------------------------------------------------------
MailBITS/08-Aug-05
------------------
**iTMS Opens in Japan, Rolls Some Stones** -- Apple Computer got
some satisfaction for its iTunes Music Store, announcing not only
the debut of the Japanese version of iTMS but also the worldwide
availability of early Abkco catalog recordings, which includes
early rock 'n roll classics from The Animals, Sam Cooke, Herman's
Hermits, Marianne Faithful, and the Rolling Stones. The iTunes
Music Store is now the only online music service with the complete
catalog of the Rolling Stones.
<http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/aug/04itms.html>
<http://www.abkco.com/>
The Japanese version of the iTunes Music Store reportedly features
more than 1 million tracks, including songs from popular Japanese
acts such as Little Creatures, Chara, and Crazy Ken Band,
alongside Japanese radio shows and podcasts. Over a dozen Japanese
companies are providing music for the Japanese version of iTMS,
along with international distributors, and Apple plans to offer
more Japanese content in the months ahead. Songs on the Japanese
version of iTMS sell for 150 or 200 yen (roughly US$1.35 / $1.80).
Apple announced this week that the new store sold more than 1
million songs in its first four days of operation. Apple hopes
the introduction of the Japanese version of iTMS will spur sales
of iPod music players, particularly the iPod shuffle. Unlike
the rest of the world - where the iPod is the utterly dominant
portable music player - it merely leads the pack in Japan,
accounting for about 36 percent of the market while rival
Sony has managed to secure about 27 percent of the market
for flash-based music players. [GD]
<http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/aug/08itms.html>
Apple Ships a Multi-Button Mouse
--------------------------------
by Mark H. Anbinder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The conventional wisdom has been that Apple founder and CEO Steve
Jobs would never allow the company to ship a multi-button mouse;
such an animal would compromise the legendary simplicity and ease
of use that were Apple's hallmarks. Power users griped and, tired
of Control-clicking instead of right-clicking to bring up
contextual menus, or, desperate for a scroll wheel, looked
for third-party pointing devices.
No more: last week Apple announced the immediate availability of
the $50 Mighty Mouse, a programmable multi-function, multi-button
mouse for Mac OS X, Windows 2000, or Windows XP. Mighty Mouse
(yes, Apple was careful to license the name of the cartoon hero)
is visually simple, a white corded mouse that looks just like the
Apple Pro Mouse except for a tiny, spherical, scroll ball where
the average mouse's scroll wheel might be.
<http://www.apple.com/mightymouse/>
The scroll ball rotates in any direction, rather than just up and
down, enabling free-form scrolling that Apple says better suits
"applications from viewing Web pages and photographs, to video
editing and music creation." This any-direction scrolling is
similar to that capability of the new scrolling trackpads featured
in recent PowerBook and iBook models. The scroll ball is also
clickable, as are most scroll wheels.
What keeps the Mighty Mouse's design pure and simple is the new
touch-sensitive upper shell. Rather than separate hard-wired left
and right buttons, the Mighty Mouse features a programmable touch
area that can be one or two buttons - just one for purists who
never need to right-click (and single-button mode is the default),
or two for right-clickers or those who would like a right-click
to perform some other action.
Side buttons, positioned where users of the Apple Pro Mouse have
gotten used to gripping in order to lift and reposition their
mouse, can be programmed together or separately, either for clicks
or, for example, to activate Expose or Dashboard.
While Mighty Mouse is compatible with any version of Mac OS X,
the company says Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is required to customize the
buttons for one-click access to Dashboard, Expose, and Spotlight,
or to launch applications. The new mouse is available immediately
at the online Apple Store as well as at Apple's retail stores and
resellers.
Expanding the View with a Dell LCD Display
------------------------------------------
by Jeff Carlson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Back when I took a more partisan approach to operating systems,
I considered Dell the latest in the line of sworn enemies of
Apple. Sure, Microsoft makes the dominant operating system,
but vast numbers of Windows installations end up on Dell PCs.
It didn't help that company founder Michael Dell and Steve Jobs
have traded PR barbs for years, with Jobs likening Dell laptops
to bland Ford Taurus automobiles and Dell commenting that his
favorite Jobs creation was the movie Toy Story 2. (Interestingly,
Michael Dell also commented recently that he's open to the idea
of selling upcoming Intel-based PCs running Mac OS X.)
<http://www.dell.com/>
<http://www.fortune.com/fortune/fastforward/0,15704,1072719,00.html>
Since I don't run a PC on a regular basis, I didn't expect that
I'd be looking at the Dell logo on my desktop. But that's exactly
what's happened - not a PC (though I did buy a refurbished laptop
a couple of years ago for testing), but instead a beautiful 20-
inch flat-panel widescreen display, the Dell UltraSharp 2005FPW.
<http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?
c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&sku=320-4111&category_id=4009>
**Multiple Monitors, At Last** -- Adam has been a proponent
of using multiple monitors for longer than I've known him
(see "Double the Fun with Multiple Monitors" in TidBITS-421_).
And although he and others have made a good case for more screen
resolution over the years, I could never quite justify the cost.
Plus, I've used PowerBooks as my main Mac for years; the previous
desktop Mac I owned was a Power Macintosh 7500. For a short
period I hooked my PowerBook 5300 up to a 17-inch CRT, but only
to use the monitor as the main display, with the PowerBook's lid
closed. When PowerBook displays started increasing in size, and
the 17-inch CRT gave out, I saved my pennies and stuck with the
laptop's LCD.
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=04768>
Then, a couple of months ago, I had an opportunity to
experience multiple monitor nirvana: as part of a software
review for Macworld, Apple went crazy and set me up with the
best hardware it could offer to test with: a dual 2.7 GHz Power
Mac G5 running _two_ 30-inch Apple Cinema Display monitors
(that's more than 8 million pixels; you can see two photos
at the URLs below). The hardware had to go back to Apple
within a couple of weeks, but it finally convinced me to
consider buying a secondary display.
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffcarlson/15194718/>
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffcarlson/13050332/>
Unfortunately, I'm not keen on spending the $3,000 required for
a 30-inch Cinema Display. LCD prices have been falling pretty
steadily, though, so I checked Dealmac to see what special offers
were available.
<http://www.dealmac.com/>
Dell, being the giant of the industry, is able to command great
prices on the parts it buys, which is one reason the company can
offer complete computer systems for relatively little cost.
Consequently, Dell frequently puts together deals to move its
inventory. In this case, I found the 20.1-inch 2005FPW LCD for
around $550. Considering that Apple's original 22-inch Cinema
Display cost $4,000, and its current 20-inch model costs $800,
the Dell display was a great deal.
**More than a Monitor** -- The 2005FPW has a 20.1-inch viewable
screen size, supporting a maximum resolution of 1680 by
1050 pixels (1,764,000 pixels). According to the technical
specifications, it sports a contrast ratio of 600:1, an image
brightness of 300 cd/m2 (candela per square meter, a measure
of luminosity), and a viewing angle of approximately 88 degrees
vertically and horizontally. In real-world terms, that means
the screen is bright, beautiful, and sharp.
That's not all, though. The 2005FPW includes four input types:
VGA, DVI-D, S-video, and composite. At first I thought that was
marketing jargon that indicated you could simply attach just about
any device with included adapters, but no, the monitor includes
four separate ports. That enables you to connect four devices and
switch between them. My PowerBook G4 connects via the DVI-D port,
and for fun I hooked up my old Dell laptop via VGA. A button on
the front of the monitor's frame switches among the different
inputs.
What's more, you can also view two of the inputs in a picture-in-
picture configuration or side by side, though this seems to apply
only to VGA or DVI and one of the other inputs. I wasn't able to
view both my Mac desktop and the Windows screen at once. I suppose
I could hook up a DVD player to the S-video or composite ports and
watch a movie in the corner of my screen, but I never tried it
(I deal with enough distractions; a movie would completely wreck
my productivity). Due to these input options, my TidBITS colleague
Glenn Fleishman bought a 2005FPW to replace his aging television
and turned it into a home entertainment system by hooking it up
to his TiVo via S-video and to a Mac mini via DVI.
The 2005FPW also includes four USB ports, so you can use it as a
USB hub; an included cable connects to your Mac using a separate
USB input, giving you the four open USB ports. Two are easily
accessible on the right side of the frame, and the other two
are tucked under the bottom with the other inputs, and are
harder to reach.
The height is adjustable from 15.3 inches (38.9 cm) to 22.4 inches
(56.9 cm), and you can swivel the screen side to side and top
to bottom in a fairly limited, but functional, range of motion.
More impressive, however, is its capability to rotate: yep, just
like the Radius screens of old, you can rotate the entire screen
90 degrees for a portrait view instead of a landscape view.
Since all of Dell's technical specifications are geared toward
Windows PCs, it's unclear what video hardware is required to
support the rotated display. On my PowerBook G4 running the
latest version of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, a Rotate pop-up menu
enables me to set the screen at a 90, 180, or 270 degree rotation.
**Never Going Back** -- I use the 2005FPW as my main monitor,
with my PowerBook set up at the right side to extend my desktop.
Even with the PowerBook's 15-inch widescreen display, my workspace
felt cramped on its own. With the new setup, I keep my most-used
programs on the larger Dell screen, such as email and Word, and
reserve the PowerBook's screen for iChat, extra Web pages I
reference, and miscellaneous things like Activity Viewer and
Terminal.
One downside is that the PowerBook's screen is dim in comparison
to the Dell; it would be nice if they both shared the same
brightness, but the PowerBook, while brighter than previous
models I've owned, is still a display designed to be portable,
and therefore not equipped with the same type of lamps found
in the desktop LCDs.
If you're looking for a good deal, the 2005FPW is a great choice.
As of press time, you could get the 2005FPW for around $525
directly from Dell's Web site. (Be sure to check both the Home
and the Small Business sections of the site for prices; the Small
Business price is currently $560, while the Home price is $525
for the exact same model.) I've seen Dealmac coupon codes that
reduce the price further, but Dell's special deals are fleeting
and often limited to a certain number of orders. If another great
combination comes up, I may pick up another display to use with
my PowerBook when I'm at home.
On the Road with the Magellan RoadMate 700
------------------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
When I last wrote about GPS navigation, Tonya and I had just
returned from the mean streets of New York City safely, thanks to
the Garmin StreetPilot c330 GPS's voice-navigation instructions.
But perhaps the Garmin c330 wasn't the ultimate GPS navigation
device. The other big name in GPS is Magellan, so I requested
a review unit of the RoadMate 700, the model most comparable to
the StreetPilot c330, thanks to its pre-loaded map set. The test?
Our trip to Macworld Expo in Boston. Unlike New York City, it's
easy to get to Boston from Ithaca; you just follow interstates
to the Massachusetts Turnpike, which runs smack into the city.
The problem is what happens once you get there, given that Boston
is notorious for having some of the most, er... creative street
layouts and markings. Would the RoadMate 700 take us successfully
to and from our hotel, with some city street navigation through
Cambridge on the way home?
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=08121>
<http://www.magellangps.com/en/products/product.asp?PRODID=955>
**The Hardware** -- The RoadMate 700 is a bit larger and heavier
than the StreetPilot c330 because the RoadMate 700 duplicates
touch screen functions with a keypad, includes a hard drive
for storing all the maps, and has a slightly larger display.
In real-world usage, however, we didn't have trouble with
the size of either device, though the slimmer profile of the
RoadMate 700 (the one dimension where it's smaller than the
StreetPilot c330) made it easier to store in the glove
compartment when not in use.
The screen quality was similar, with the RoadMate 700's screen
being clear and easy to read, except in bright sun. Tonya found
its touch screen a bit less accurate at tracking her finger
presses than the StreetPilot c330's screen. However, the RoadMate
700 provides extra controls in the form of right-mounted buttons.
There are plus and minus buttons for zooming in and out, an
eight-way rocker button for scrolling, and Enter and Cancel
buttons for responding to prompts and navigating menus. Then there
are three buttons labeled Option (for entering the configuration
screens), View (for changing between different views), and Locate
(for showing where you are on the map and giving more information
about your location). Magellan undoubtedly thought that
duplicating most of the touch screen functionality with buttons
would help users, and it may, but we found it somewhat confusing,
since we had to think at each point whether it made more sense
to touch the screen or press a button. And since Tonya found
herself leaning forward to press them, she often wasn't entirely
sure if she'd pressed the button hard enough, leading to more
interface frustration.
The extra weight of the RoadMate 700 probably comes from its
internal hard drive and associated power supply, and although
the weight of the device isn't an issue at all, the hard drive
does make for a slower startup than a RAM-based device. I'd also
be a little concerned about the hard drive if the device was
left on the dashboard on a blisteringly hot day, and I can't
imagine that bitterly cold winter temperatures would be good
for it either.
The review unit came with the suction-cup window mount, which
attached and detached easily from our Honda Civic's windshield.
We did have to position it fairly carefully, though, with the
bottom of the arm firmly touching the dashboard, to prevent the
RoadMate 700 from shaking enough to become hard to read; even
still, it didn't feel as solid as would have been ideal. Magellan
offers other mounting accessories; it's possible that one of them
would work better.
<http://www.magellangps.com/en/store/productListDetail.asp?
segment=Magellan+RoadMate+Accessories>
Most notable in the RoadMate 700's physical design was the lack
of a battery, which meant not only that the RoadMate 700 required
an outlet in the car (which we provided via a lashed-up power
splitter so we could use our iPod as well), but also that it
turned off every time we turned the car off. Although the RoadMate
700 was smart about resuming routing directions after coming back
up, the boot process was by no means instantaneous, making for
some annoying delays after stopping for gas. The lack of a
battery also means you can't use the RoadMate 700 outside of
the car unless you plug it into the wall, making it clumsy to
use indoors and impossible to use on foot or on a bike.
**There and Back Again** -- In real world use, the RoadMate was
a success; it gave us essentially accurate directions that took
us to our hotel in Boston, to Tonya's sister's apartment in
Cambridge, and home again, complete with a number of unplanned
detours forced upon us by creative Boston intersections and
construction blockages. Each time we deviated from its planned
route, it calculated a new route for us quickly, although it
tended to be retentive about the quality of the original route,
usually saying, "When possible, make a legal U-turn." Perhaps
it's just me, but U-turns strike me as dangerous, so I would
have preferred it to say, "When possible, turn around safely"
so I could look for the next reasonable parking lot driveway
to pull into and turn around in.
Though the RoadMate 700 was a success, and we would have had
far more trouble navigating in Boston without it, it wasn't an
unqualified success. Twice in Harvard Square in Cambridge, the
RoadMate 700 tried to send us down one-way streets the wrong way.
And yes, I know the Boston joke about how "it's only one block"
down the one-way street; maybe the RoadMate 700's designers spent
their college years at Harvard or MIT and know which one-way signs
can be ignored. Once, when we tried to exclude a road from the
directions in an attempt to get the RoadMate 700 to give us a new
route, it seemed to get stuck, and we had to cancel the routing
and try again entirely. Its timing for warning us of approaching
turns seemed to be a little less accurate, or perhaps a little
less what we expected, than the StreetPilot c330's directions.
Particularly in situations where there were a number of streets
very close together, it was hard to follow its instructions
properly while driving safely; I took a wrong turn in Harvard
Square because there were several "right" turns at a confusing
intersection and I had to make a decision before I'd heard the
tone that indicated "turn now."
Those tones, by the way, were helpful and accurate; the tone
played just as you should be turning. In a clever touch, turning
left, turning right, and staying straight generated different
tones, though my ears aren't sufficiently trained to say exactly
how they were different. As with the StreetPilot c330, I found
myself wishing that instead of the tones, the RoadMate 700 would
just speak the name of the next street, since it's hard to glance
down at the display to read it when performing complex maneuvers.
We also preferred the 3-D map display of the StreetPilot c330 over
the overhead map view of the RoadMate 700. Although the RoadMate
700 also featured a "TrueView" 3-D view, it appeared only for
turns, either taking over the entire screen or splitting the
screen in half. A maneuver list view showed just the directions,
which was handy for sanity checking the route in advance. The
maneuver list also appeared automatically when the RoadMate 700
lost the GPS signal for a certain amount of time, which is smart,
though it didn't save us from making the wrong turn as we came
out from a tunnel in Boston because we couldn't find any street
signs that matched the next turn. Luckily, the RoadMate 700 was
able to guide us back on track once it picked up the satellite
signal again.
Speaking of the satellites, reception was another disappointment
with the RoadMate 700. Once it locked on, it was fine, but
sometimes it took quite a while to find the satellites in
situations that should not have been problematic (clear skies,
no trees or tall buildings, or other obvious obstacles). We drove
more than 2 miles through Boston on Massachusetts Avenue toward
Cambridge, including crossing the Charles River on a wide-open
bridge, before the RoadMate 700 picked up the satellite signal.
That was a little hair-raising, since although we had a maneuver
list, we knew making our way through Cambridge was going to be
tricky. The RoadMate 700 has a little flip-up antenna built in,
and if that's insufficient, Magellan sells an external antenna.
On the plus side, we had several opportunities to use the point-
of-interest database, which we hadn't tried with the StreetPilot
c330. It was brilliant, since we could ask it to find us a
restaurant nearby, scroll through the list to eliminate the fast
food joints at which we won't stop on principle, and then get
directions to a local cafe or diner just a bit further off the
freeway than we would previously have ventured, all without
worrying about how we'd get back on the freeway, since we knew
the RoadMate would take us back as well. Plus, as we were leaving
Massachusetts on the way home, I made the mistake of not filling
up with gas at the last service stop in Massachusetts and thus
ending up in the barren zone before getting to Albany. The tank
was getting worryingly low, so I asked the RoadMate 700 to find
a gas station nearby. It did, taking us up I-90, which had the
interesting result of changing the rest of the directions home
to go a route we'd never considered before, but which turned
out to be equally fast.
Entering an address into the RoadMate 700 is easy, thanks to
its QuickSpell technology for limiting the amount of data input
necessary. Although I couldn't test this, it's reportedly possible
to beam an address to the RoadMate 700 from a Palm or PocketPC
device. One advantage over the StreetPilot c330 was that whenever
we programmed a route into the RoadMate 700, we could choose from
shortest time, shortest distance, least use of freeways, and most
use of freeways. Although the choice seemed like a good thing,
we couldn't see any particular difference between the different
options most of the time, and there wasn't an easy way to compare
what they would do. We had the RoadMate 700 only for a few weeks
of review, though, so it's possible that these options would be
significantly more obvious and helpful if you were to use it on
a regular basis in a congested metropolitan area.
**The Big Picture** -- Although the RoadMate 700 worked well at
its basic task most of the time, it didn't evoke in us the same
level of appreciation as the StreetPilot c330 did. It had more
options, including male and female voices and the choice of touch
screen or physical controls, but those options didn't seem to
add much other than some complexity. One option that could have
been useful to other people was support for three users, each
with their own recently entered addresses and preferences.
If you were planning on sharing a GPS with others (perhaps to
justify the cost of an expensive gadget), this capability could
be quite handy.
As with the StreetPilot series, infrequent map upgrades for the
RoadMate 700 aren't free, so you have to factor in paying even
more money on top of the $750 to $1,000 price you'll find at
various retailers. All together, that's a bit much for my tastes,
particularly with my worry about the hard drive in extreme
environmental conditions, so I'll be continuing my search for
the ultimate GPS navigation device.
It's possible that device will in fact be coming from Magellan:
as I was finishing this review, I learned that the company had
released the RoadMate 760, which is essentially the same hardware
as the 700, but with some tremendously attractive new features.
Most notable is its "SayWhere" text-to-speech technology that
speaks the name of the next turn - at last! It also features
multi-destination routing, which I've not needed, but which would
be key for a consultant or anyone running multiple errands in
an unfamiliar area. Then there's automatic brightness and volume
control that adjusts screen brightness and speaker volume with
time of day and speed; with the 700 we found ourselves adjusting
volume levels at various times to deal with changing amounts
of road noise. "Smart Detour" to route around traffic jams,
construction, and other unpredictable obstacles automatically
when traffic stops for more than a few minutes. And lastly, its
point-of-interest database increases from nearly 2 million entries
for the 700 to nearly 7 million.
<http://www.magellangps.com/en/products/product.asp?PRODID=1091>
Of course, Garmin hasn't been sitting still, with the StreetPilot
c340 and StreetPilot 2720 both adding text-to-speech and optional
notification and routing around congestion in certain metropolitan
areas, so even the RoadMate 760 will have plenty of competition.
Watch this space!
<http://www.garmin.com/products/sp340/>
<http://www.garmin.com/products/sp2720/>
Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/08-Aug-05
------------------------------------
by TidBITS Staff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The second URL below each thread description points to the
discussion on our Web Crossing server, which will be faster.
**Flickering PowerBook screen** -- A reader reports flaky
flickering on his laptop screen, but is it worth the cost
to repair the problem, or better to buy a Mac mini and an
inexpensive LCD display? (2 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2662>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/514/>
**Tiger Mail vs Spotlight** -- The new version of Mail under Mac
OS X 10.4 Tiger stores each message as a separate file to enable
Spotlight searching, instead of as a large database. Readers
discuss the pros and cons of this approach. (19 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2663>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/515/>
**Segway sightings** -- Where are people spotting the two-wheeled
"personal transporter" devices in the wild? Although Segways
haven't achieved broad acceptance, more people appear to be
using them. (6 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2664>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/516/>
**Hell Freezes Over: News at 11** -- News of Apple's multi-button
Mighty Mouse draws the inevitable comparisons between the Red
Sox winning the World Series and Apple using Intel processors.
(23 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2665>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/517/>
**Files vs. databases** -- A look at flat-file versus relational
database schemes, and how each is used in Mac OS X for specific
uses such as Mail and iCal. (4 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2666>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/518/>
**Mighty Mouse** -- Apple's new mouse gets readers wondering
about future Bluetooth models, as well as pondering the critter's
internal workings thanks to detailed dissection photos on the Web.
(13 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2667>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/519/>
**WebObjects as CMS?** A reader is looking for examples of Apple's
WebObjects technology being used for content management systems.
(4 messages)
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=2669>
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/521/>
$$
Non-profit, non-commercial publications may reprint articles if
full credit is given. Others please contact us. We don't guarantee
accuracy of articles. Caveat lector. Publication, product, and
company names may be registered trademarks of their companies.
For information: how to subscribe, where to find back issues,
and more, see <http://www.tidbits.com/>. TidBITS ISSN 1090-7017.
Send comments and editorial submissions to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Back issues available at: <http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/>
And: <ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/issues/>
Full text searching available at: <http://www.tidbits.com/search/>
-------------------------------------------------------------------
--
If you want to unsubscribe or change your address, use this link
http://emperor.tidbits.com/webx?unsub@@.3c557dc4!u=sfjksldsdfjksdlfsfdfd
