Webdesigner Depot has a great look at the past 25 years of Apple design. The visual list of famous Apple products, both good and bad, can take old-timers back with fond memories, and provide a bit of a history lesson to Mac users who’ve just recently jumped on board. The article is loaded with large images (some used above) from Wikipedia, and covers All-In-Ones, laptops, desktops, monitors, keyboards, mice, and of course, the iPod.
Tagged: Apple
Accepting an invitation on a specific Apple iCal calendar
If you have multiple calendars set up in Apple’s iCal application and you receive an invite from a friend, family member or client, you can easily decide which calendar you want the invite to be placed in. Simply hold down the Accept button, rather than just clicking on it, to get a pop-up menu which allows you to choose which iCal calendar it should be placed in.
Friday link blitz
Photo by amrufm @ Flickr
Apple Store Arrowhead Mall opens to large crowd and cranky security
The latest Apple Store in Arizona opened this weekend to large crowds, and cranky, party-pooper mall security. When I arrived a half hour or so before the Apple Store was set to open, there was already a line stretching halfway through the mall. Most patient customers were waiting with coffee in one hand, iPod/iPhone in the other. 
The first thing I noticed was the age group of the Mac-oholics waiting in line. It wasn’t the typical 20-something geek crowd I generally see at Apple Stores. Instead, a host of 40-somethings, and a very large handful of 50+ retirees just wanting to see what the fuss was all about. I spent a few minutes explaining that the long lines was indeed typical for all Apple Stores, and that while many probably were interested in seeing all the goodies in the store, some were simply in line for the free t-shirt. 
This wasn’t my first Apple Store opening, but it was certainly the most crowded – and I’m not referring to customers. The Arrowhead Mall is located near Arrowhead Ranch in Glendale, Arizona – a big money part of town where the “if you have to ask how much, you can’t afford it” crowd calls home. There were (I’m guessing here) around 40-50 Apple Store employees in bright orange and cyan colored shirts buzzing around the store front, with several of them walking up and down the mall checking the length of the line, which 15-minutes after my arrival had doubled. Perhaps whomever was in charge thought they were going to busy selling iPhones. I still think it was the free T-shirts. Just before the store opened, all the store employees filed-in for a last-minute pep-talk. Lots of clapping and yelling could be heard through the glass store-front. 
It was at this point where the party took a moderate down-turn. The mall security (politely) asked me to stop taking photos because it wasn’t permitted inside the mall. Not wanting to cause a big scene, I decided to stop – because they’re well within their rights to ask me to leave. It was then that I noticed another security officer starting acting like a traffic Cop, rather rudely directing the flow of people when the store opened, as though people were too stupid to know that moving forward was the thing to do. At one point it appeared that he was ready to use whatever means necessary to stop a woman and her kid from cutting in line… the problem was, they were trying to get into another store that the flow of traffic from the line was temporarily blocking. Sheesh. Arrowhead Mall security needs to lighten-up! Despite these minor mall mishaps, the Apple Store Arrowhead appears to be off-and-running at full-speed. I took a quick peek in the store and got the heck out (I don’t like being in the middle of large groups of people). The store itself looked about the same as the Biltmore Apple Store, just a bit smaller – so there was really nothing new to see.
Rant: The iPhone – Just shut up already!
A while back, I ranted about developers, PC writers, bloggers, Microsoft and Mac users in general. Today, I want to chit-chat about the iPhone. The iPhone, it’s the 2nd-coming of Christ. It’ll make your stupid kids smarter, your fat-ass smaller, your husband’s beer-belly smaller, and your ugly wife hotter! The iPhone makes your e-penis huge like no amount of Viagra can. It’ll deposit $100,000 into your bank account today, and it’ll eradicate every douchebag in Washington D.C. and replace them with hard-working, honest Americans with the touch of a button. With all that up-side, it’s no wonder that every Web site I visit, I get a heaping helping of iPhone B.S. shoved down my grocery pipe.
My RSS reader of choice actually puked on my keyboard this morning, and I’m pretty sure I saw an iPhone Mail icon mixed in the puddle of mush. Sites I used to love reading are gagging like a cat with a furball in its throat with iPhone articles. Enough already! (more…)
Apple Font Book
The following is the second installment of a 3-part series on font management applications. Part one covered FontAgent Pro from Insider Software. Apple graciously provided some form of font management in OSX with Font Book. Alec Fromm offered to post his findings and experience using Font Book in a professional environment.
In what type of environment do you use your Mac?
Until a year and a half ago, I owned and operated a small printing company supplying materials predominantly to one of Canada’s leading real estate companies. These materials included traditional stationery, flyers of all shapes & sizes and corporate promotional & communications items for the Canadian head office. With over 4,500 agents as part of this network, the demand to produce innovative and unique materials in a timely manner was grueling and intense. 
What font management apps have you tried, and which one did you settle on using?
Prior to upgrading my company’s Macs to Apple’s OS X, Extensis Suitcase was the preferred choice for font management. But upon the release of Apple OS X Panther, I decided to give Font Book a serious try. My experiences with Suitcase running under OS X Panther weren’t without numerous issues and updates to the popular font management application were fairly slow to arrive. These issues and their subsequently slow fixes had me searching for something simple and reliable.
Did you switch to Font Book from another font management app, and if so, why?
I spent the better part of a week experimenting and learning some of the “peculiarities” of Font Book and felt I had found an adequate replacement for my long time favourite font management software.
What are the pros of using Font Book for font management?
Although there have been references made to the limit of total fonts Font Book would load and run, my experiences differed. At one time, I had almost 1,000 font faces loaded and running at all times. To ensure decent operation of Font Book, I’ve learned to load fonts a few at a time versus large groups of fonts. I’ve also discovered when a document is open and a font is not loaded, adding the font while the document is open can be painfully slow. Closing the document, adding the font to Font Book’s collection, and re-opening the document is much quicker. While the latest version of Font Book provides automatic enabling and disabling of fonts through the use of Apple’s Automator, I have yet to discover how this “auto-activation” feature can be implemented to work with other applications. Therefore, any and all fonts added are automatically enabled and will activate each time the Mac is started. Font Book’s ability to resolve duplicate fonts through it’s command under the Edit menu seems to do a near perfect job of dealing with duplicate font issues. 
In traditional Apple style, Font Book’s user interface is clean and simple. Fonts are organized in a hierarchy that includes User, Computer and Classic collections as well as font family Collections. The Collections area allows the user to add his/her own sets and enable/disable entire sets according to needs. Font Book provides a “Font Info” preview pane which allows the user to view details of the selected font including the location of the selected font and whether or not duplicates are running. 
What are the cons of using Font Book for font management?
Font Book’s preferences are minimal, to say the least. The only options available include placement of installed fonts and whether or not those fonts are deemed to be usable through the “Validation” option. Font validation (available from the “File” menu) checks for corrupt or damaged fonts and warns the user, at which time an easy option is provided to remove offending fonts. 
What one particular feature about Font Book do you like?
As previously mentioned, handling duplicate fonts in Font Book has proven to be relatively reliable and very simple. From the “Edit” menu, a user can turn off any duplicates of a selected font which is marked by a bullet. Although this function struck me as too simple, it has been effective with no subsequent issues.
Any closing thoughts about Apple’s Font Book?
My overall experiences with Apple’s Font Book have been very good and I continue to run it daily. While my demands are no longer what they were, I still prefer Font Book to my one time favourite, Extensis Suitcase. Because I’m not a fan of using too many different font families at any given time, the fact I am forced to keep all fonts running is of no significance to my expected performance. All my experiences described were on an Apple Powermac MDD DP 867 with 2 GB RAM and hardware RAID 0 boot volume. A special thanks to Alec for taking the time to review Apple’s Font Book. Alec runs an OSX consulting business in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada called Professor A. If you’re ever in need, give him a call! As always, sound-off in the comments if you have something to add to the review regarding font management software.