Tag Archive for 'mac'

Another Thing I Can’t Stand on a Mac: Lag on Dictionary.app Lookup

Published
by
Josh Kim
on May 11, 2008
in Apple
. Comments

Before Leopard, everything was fine. I was able to open up dictionary, look up a word, be happy that I learned a new word, and close the window. Done.

Is it just me, or does the Leopard Dictionary.app SUCK in the lookup time? I’m talking about the time from when you find the word you want and opening up the definition. With respect to Tiger, this is unacceptable. Back in those days, it was actually fun (yes, I’m a nerd, figure it out) searching through the dictionary.

Let me know if this is just me, because I’ve tried this on both my macs, as well as a Tiger machine just to see the search lag difference.

I also should go to the Apple forums to see if this issue has been reported.

EDIT: Looks like 10.5.3 update fixed this. I am delighted.

Quick Twitter Review and Other Ponderings

Published
by
Josh Kim
on February 14, 2008
in Web Applications
. Comments

Twitter Logo

I’m beginning to like Twitter more and more. The only thing that’s stopping me from using it as much as possible is: the lack of pertinent users. I’m not talking about the awesome developers/leaders of their field people that I “follow”, but people that I actually know in, you know, real life. Outside of my nerdier friends, I don’t know of anyone that use Twitter. Yet.

But this situation is making me think about social networks in general: each network seems to create a culture of its own. This is not a new view on social networks, but it’s interesting I’m seeing it now with Twitter.

Facebook with their college crowd, Myspace with their musician/high school crowd, and now Twitter with their tech crowd.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that these social networks won’t grow into other groups of users. It’s just that certain networks tend towards a faster and wider adoption with the general population than others. And Twitter, at face value, just doesn’t seem to be a service that can grow very quickly.

I would never use the texting feature (thanks to the iPhone, I don’t have to), but I feel like this feature will help Twitter gain a wider appeal with the slightly more techie crowd.

I do like the 140 character limit, and not because it has to do with the limitations of the texting protocol, but because it puts some creative limits on what I am able to “tweet”. Also, the inability to edit an existing post makes you double check yourself before tweeting.

You know, I never thought about it, but there’s probably an iTunes to Twitter Applescript. The Twitter API is so freeing. But also… this can lead to information overload.

So much power. So much responsibility.

And that ends my rambling on Twitter.

Bezel HUD: Quicksilver Interface Plugin

Published
by
Josh Kim
on February 11, 2008
in Apple
. Comments

I love Quicksilver. That’s all there is to it.

But if you can get away with some tasteful lickability, I’m all for it (as long as it doesn’t kill my machine while trying to look pretty).

BezelHUD is just that. I’ve used Bezel for quite a long time now, and this only adds another layer of that delicious icing to the cake. I do like how it fits into Leopard.

And wow, Julius Eckert also wrote the Showcase interface, too, a plugin I used just to have something other than Bezel to play around with. This guy is on a roll! I can’t wait for the SilverFlow interface, now…

One Thing I Can’t Stand on a Mac: Lag on Print

Published
by
Josh Kim
on February 2, 2008
in Apple
. Comments

Sometimes I accidentally press cmd + p when I actually wanted to press cmd + [.

The entire computer freezes up, and I swear inside, as I sit in front of my computer for 3 seconds while the beach ball spins and aggravates my innards.

Is it just me? Does anyone else have this problem with the print dialog taking a bit longer than it should be taking?