I found a screensaver!

Just a quick follow up post to yesterday's gripe about not being able to find any software for OSX Jaguar (10.2) - I found a screensaver!

It simply displays this big retro-style digital clock on the screen.

Yeah, I know, it's not much. But at least it works on Jaguar!

I'll post if I find anything more interesting...

Software for older versions of OSX

I have a couple of Macs in my life these days: A shiny new 24" iMac, and an old G3 iMac like the photo here.

The new one is running OS 10.4 - so no dramas there. But this old one is on 10.2. Not that old - but I can't seem to find any software for it! Everything I find (either free or commercial) wants a newer flavour of OSX.

So with the exception of Firefox (which I'm using at the moment) I'm stuck with whatever came on the OSX Jaguar CDs.

That strikes me as a bit weird. Surely there must be a place to go for older OSX software. Anyone know of such a place?

No right answers for IE8

There has been quite a lot said recently about Microsoft's new Internet Explorer 8 (IE8). Should it default to "standards mode"? Or default to "IE7 mode"?

But Joel on Software has put things into perspective: Neither side is right, and neither side is wrong. Because there is really no right answer here.

It's a long read, but worthwhile if you've been following the debate. It also add some understanding as why Vista is so plagued. (And yes, I'm one of those who has gone back to Windows XP)

Before reading Joel's article I didn't really have an opinion on what IE8 should default to. At least now I can say that maybe having no opinion is the right one!

If things stay as they are, we may all have a lot of work to do - going back and fixing old sites. Grrr.

The saving grace in my case might be the use of very specific stylesheets for Internet Explorer. We have used a conditional comment to call a stylesheet for IE6, another one for IE7, so IE8 shouldn't read either of these - and just worry about the main stylesheet designed for Firefox etc.

I hope. I'll have to check...

Jailbreaking an iPod Touch

I had heard about "Jailbreaking" an iPod Touch but until recently had no particular reason to do it. Until I found MobileScrobbler - and little application that runs on your iPod Touch (or iPhone) and sends info about the songs you listen to to last.fm. (More about that in a different post - but it's the source of the song list to the right of your screen.)

But needless to say, I had a reason.

Sure, Apple have released an SDK which means in June you'll be able to download Apple-sanctioned third party software. But I'm not known for my patience!

So anyway - my first attempt didn't go very well. I got this BSD error message hat just kept appearing on screen.

After doing some digging on how to restore the iPod Touch I found out that the Jailbreak didn't actually work for my 16 GB Touch with 1.1.4 installed.

Until this post (and video) show you how to do it!

So now I have MobileScrobbler updating my last.fm profile via WiFi - regardless of how often I sync the iPod back up.

Yeah, it's geeky, but it's cool.

What's all this about then?

Everything "cool" these days seems to be prefixed with an "i".

So what does someone who's been using Windows since version 3.1 make of all this?

As they saying goes: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!

I purchased my first iPod - a Nano -  back in October 2005, and fell in love. I have since added a Touch and a Shuffle to the lineup. Let me tell you: the Touch has been an experience! More on that later.

As far as the bigger ticket items are concerned, I was fortunate enough to win an iMac at a conference last year (thanks guys!) That was a real bonus - being able to try out a Mac without having for put my hand in my pocket!

It seems that more and more people are switching from PC to Mac - so we all must be having similar issues. Like not being able to maximise a window. And plenty of other stuff. So I thought I'd post some experiences and observations here. Feel free to add yours in the comments too, and maybe together we'll figure out all these "i" things!