Let’s get this out of the way: I was one of the original, dyed in the wool OS X fanboys. I accidentally wiped out a computer in my haste to get Rhapsody Developers Release 2 installed, and the day the the OSX Public Beta shipped, I left work early to install it on my only desktop machine. I finally had a Unix system, with long file name support, real multi-tasking, real virtual memory, at my disposal. It was amazing. Also, the system didn’t require the sacrifice of live virgins to keep it from crashing every other day. A lot of people moaned and complained on the message boards about how Apple was destroying the childhood and raping their sisters, but I didn’t see it that way. Apple needed a new way forward, or they were going to die. I never looked back.

Last night, I fired up a copy of Mac OS 9.0.4 for the first time in over 10 years, and I couldn’t stop smiling. I spent so many years in that platinum interface that I had to chuckle. Life was simpler then: there were only a few hundred files that made a system fully bootable, and you could really get by with a dozen or so if you really had to just get the system up and copy a few files off of it. I actually still remember what a lot of the icons represent as the Extensions and CDEVs load at boot time, and I remember the relative hell of debugging extension conflicts.

What surprised me was my reaction to Finder windows. As archaic as they are, they are worlds better than the OS X Finder. Worlds. In OS X, the windows don’t stay where you put them after they are closed and reopened. When you open a new folder, it doesn’t open a new window – it simply fills the current one with new content. It sometimes remembers your viewing preferences, it sometimes doesn’t. Column view, honestly, is a hack to make the OS X Finder functional. The OS 9 model is so much more elegant, and makes you feel more… connected to the machine. John Siracusa really had it right. I’d forgotten what it was like to have real interaction with the filesystem in a GUI.

Apple, please… look into this again. For everyone’s sake.

Take a little time and read Chris Clark’s essay, Crotchety Old Power Users, and think about it for a minute. Chris’s argument is that Facebook “solves” email for the current generation of users – it cuts out spam and viruses, and makes electronic communication a “low friction” medium. I can see where he’s coming from, but I must say, I wholeheartedly disagree with his conclusion:

These are the people who complain that an iPad can’t have third party software installed from anywhere but the App Store, ignoring the massive convenience and security gains the policy affords average users. These are the people who are still using slotted screwdrivers and Edison light fixtures and manual transmission cars.

I don’t complain about the application model that iOS presents – I think it’s the next computer for “the re st of us.” However, I still use slotted screwdrivers to do many things like opening paint cans, prying plastic packaging off of children’s toys, and gasp tightening screws. I personally like the quality of the light an incandescent bulb produces, but am not opposed to compact fluorescents – most of the lights in our house are CFLs. And I certainly think a manual transmission car is cheaper to repair, gets better gas milage, and makes a driver know more about how a car operates. Perhaps this is Chris’s point: the average user shouldn’t know how the technology in his or her life works?

My problem with this is my problem with Facebook Messages (and a lot of other vertically integrated social media stacks) is that once you decide to use Facebook Messages for your primary “email-like” tool, you are no longer able to communicate with people who don’t use Facebook. You can’t run your own Facebook server, you can’t give account create ability to the IT staff at your office, and you can’t easily get out of Facebook. Let’s say, 10 years from now, Facebook has fallen on hard times, like Friendster or MySpace did. There is no local archive of the messages – so once the service goes under, all those messages are gone. Forever.

You also hand over even more information to the staff of Facebook, who are masters at mining the “social graph” to know everything there is to know about you. People are already starting to be leery of Google’s nearly omniscient presence – Facebook would be about ten times as scary.

If you want to replace email – fine, replace it. But suggest something that’s better, not something that sucks out loud so badly.

Yes, the bookshelves are finished.

The year is dead! Long live the year!

Yes, the blog has a new theme, quickly hacked together from the available options in the gallery.

Yes, I’ll be spending more time on this site in the next days – I’ve been on break due to the winter holidays, OK?

Yes, I’ll be posting more to flickr. Again, I’ve been on break.

Sheesh. Some people. :)

I hate waiting. Every day, I get a little older, and my new camera isn’t here. Charlotte is selling her D60 – which gets very little use – as she gets my D200 once I get my new camera. So, anyone interested? A Nikon D60, lightly used, for $300.00.

Albeit, a week late, good news! The UK is scrapping it’s national ID card system, in it’s entirety. Thank god(s)

The ability for an advertiser to know everything about you – what you like, where you shop, what you buy, where you are and who your friends are – is reality today. Take a look around you, and you’ll see people with smart phones everywhere, logging into Foursquare or Facebook, telling their friends what’s new and cool. The problem is that none of this data is yours anymore. Well, it’s yours, but none of it is private to you. It’s all being collected, collated, and filed away, to build a more perfect profile of who you are and how to market to that profile. The Wall Street Journal recently published a very accessible investigate reporting story on the issue – it’s worth a read. Now. Drop what you are doing and read it.

In short, advertisers are the new Big Brother. Our personal lives have been losing the “personal” but since we started using email (where our thoughts were stored on other people’s hard drives) – but this is a whole new level. Facebook knows when you’ll break up with someone, Foursquare knows where you like to hang out, and Google knows… well, everything. Especially if you’ve turned on the browsing history.

In most cases, we are at least somewhat aware of the new level of tracking. Orwell however, must be spinning in his grave.