It's been over a year since the last one, so ... Browser wars #10 is now online. Take a second to vote for your web browser of choice. And yes, I know many of us use more than one. But you get only one selection, so vote for your favorite.
The last time I asked about this, Safari got 55% of the votes, Firefox 31%, Camino 6%, and everyone else shared the remaining 8%. It will be interesting to see how things change this time around. Comments are disabled here; please add them to the poll instead.
On the evening of April 23rd, some nefarious types accessed the admin side of Geeklog, the engine that drives this site (the latest version of Geeklog isn't susceptible to this attack). The attackers then posted a few spammy stories (which I've now deleted), deleted some hints, and (much worse) used a Geeklog function to email all registered users. My apologies for this; we're working on the problem now, and will update this story with additional information as we progress.
Update: The hints and comments from April 22nd have been restored.
Update #2: The hints and comments from April 23rd have now been restored. We may have lost a few comments, but I think I got 99% of them, thanks to the comments RSS feed. Obviously, the time/date stamps are all wrong, as I simply posted them as I recreated them. If you see something noticeably out of place (threading-wise), just let me know and I can move it around.
Update #3: Portions of the user settings system (i.e. passwords, viewing prefs, etc.) will be offline while we update the system during the day today.
Note that I'm only offering two choices for the tab bar in this poll -- up top as in Safari 4, or back where it was in Safari 3. While it might be interesting to find out how many people prefer a vertical on-the-side tab bar (as in OmniWeb), I'm mostly curious about this change in Safari 4 vs. Safari 3, and how we all feel about having the tab bar as the window's title bar.
So how about it? Where should the tab bar reside in Safari? Cast your vote, and discuss the topic in the comments to the poll, please. What's my vote? Let's just say I was a very early adopter of this hint, and I hope it survives the transition to the final version.
Mac OS X Hints will be closed for the new year's holiday tomorrow and Friday, returning Monday with the usual hints -- I'll be at Macworld Expo next week, checking out the latest in tech toys along with the rest of the mob. If you're going to be at the show, feel free to stop by and introduce yourself, as I love meeting readers and contributors. I've posted my currently-known schedule in the 'read more' part of this message.
For entertainment during our down time, please contribute to our latest poll about how much (or little) you use the Places section of the Finder's sidebar. Thanks to Perceval for the poll suggestion.
No new hints today or tomorrow as I'll be spending the holiday with family and friends. Hope you and yours have a wonderful holiday season, and we'll be back as usual on Monday morning.
We're now less than a month from the 2009 Macworld Expo keynote address, so I thought it'd be interesting to gauge what everyone's expecting in the way of hardware surprises from the keynote. Hence this new poll asking how certain (or not certain) you are about any new hardware announcements coming from Mr. Jobs during the keynote.
Just so everyone's clear, a 32gb iPhone or a 16-core Mac Pro wouldn't count as a new hardware announcement. A netbook, a video game console, a large-screen television...those would all count as new hardware.
So how about it, do you think we'll be seeing any "one more thing" announcments in January?
Macosxhints will be closed today and tomorrow for the Thanksgiving holiday (and Black Friday shopping extravaganza). For those in the US, I hope you have a safe and enjoyable holiday. The hints will return as usual on Monday
In the interim, I invite you to ponder OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard's actual "for sale" date. Apple stated last June that it was going to ship within "about a year," but exactly when will that be? Take your best guess in our latest poll. Personally, I voted for March, due mainly to it being the release month for the original OS X 10.0, but I've heard rumors of everything from January to July. What do you think? Will it Snow early next year, or will it be a summer Snow?
I was very saddened today to read of the passing of Michael Crichton. What, you may ask, does this have to do with macosxhints.com? More than you might think -- Michael was a big-time Mac user and early OS X adopter (rare for someone who relied on their machine to make a living!).
Back in 2001, when this site was just a time-intensive hobby, I didn't have any ads, and relied on donations to cover my hosting costs. Michael Crichton was one of the early donors, and in addition to his check, he sent me a very nice card and autographed book.
His passing today hit me pretty hard, and the best way I could think to handle it was to write about what he meant to me, both personally and relative to this site's history. So rest in peace, Michael -- you entertained millions, and you will be missed.
Today not only marks Election Day in the United States (vote early, vote often!), but also the eighth anniversary of the launch of macosxhints.com. Obviously, a lot has changed in eight years, and the pace of hints here lately has slowed -- but that's not surprising, given the continuing maturation of OS X itself. But with roughly 12,000 hints in the database, we've covered a lot of OS X-related ground during those eight years.
One thing that hasn't changed is the mission of the site: to share OS X tips and tricks with anyone interested in reading them. After all, it's the community that really makes the site work -- only about 1,400 of those 12,000 hints have my name on them. That's why every hint ever published is still available to anyone who wants to read them; what the community helps to build should always be freely accessible to that community.
Thanks to all of you for making this site an invaluable resource for OS X users around the world. It's been an amazing eight years, and I'm looking forward to the what the future brings. While the volume of hints may vary over time, as long as there are hints to be shared, I hope we'll be around to share them.
