Sachin Agarwal: October 2003

This guy took a pictures of a bunch of G5s being delivered to Microsoft and he posted it on his blog. He was then fired for a security breach. That's rediculous. I don't see any sensitive information in his post.

http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2003/10/even_microsoft_.html

I was going to post a few pictures of my office, but now I think that might not be a great idea. You'll have to come have lunch with me to see it.

I went to Matt DiMaggio's house warming party on Friday. He lives in Noe Valley in the city. The view from his house was spectacular! And his house overall was one of the nicest I've seen in SF. I want to move to the city so bad. My lease is up in May.

We also went to another party in the Marina. I was randomly invited to some party a couple of my friends were going to. Then it turned out Chris, Javier, etc were also going to a party in the Marina. Then we found out the two parties were down the hall from each other and they merged into one super-party! Too cool.

Cool picture Gary took in New York. This is a real ad:



Eric just sent me this old picture of him at Apple. He looks like he's 10 years old!



This past weekend this Phi Psi national guy was in town visiting and he saw my iTunes poster on the wall. He said "I have always been a PC guy, but I've been using Macs at these schools I go to. You know, they are better."

Sam's dad emailed me a few days ago because he just got a new Powerbook G4. I helped him out earlier when he bought a dual 1.4 G4. He said "I am glad I switched to Macs."

It's been hard getting people to switch, but I think people who do are very, very happy.

Expose is one of the coolest things Appe has done with Mac OS X. Basically you can hit a trigger (mouse in corner of screen, mouse click, keyboard stroke) to invoke Expose. There are 3 modes:
1. All the windows slide off screen and you can see your desktop.
2. You see all the windows of the current application, tiled nicely around the screen.
3. You see all the windows of all open applications tiled around the screen.

So first of all, Expose works best with a 3+ button mouse. You should assign a mouse button to activate it. That way you can use it without taking your hand off the keyboard.

Obviously you can use expose to click to activate, find the window you want, then click on it to bring it to the front.

Other cool things:
1. Once Expose is active, if you hit tab it will cycle through the open applications. Each time you hit it the effects are awesome. The old windows slide off screen and the new windows either slide in from the side, or kinda zoom in a little.

2. When in Expose, you can use the arrow keys to move through the windows on screen.

3. So let's say you want to attach a file to a mail message. Activate Expose Desktop only, click and drag the item to attach. Then while you're holding that item, invoke expose again. All windows are visible. Find the mail message and either just hover over it for a few seconds, or click again to bring it to the front. Then drop the item in the message. Very very cool.

I was randomly searching the web today and found some articles about the Palo Alto store grand opening. Some of these I had never seen before!

Jobs opens Apple Store in Palo Alto

Same article but in e-week

Macintouch reader report. Scroll down a little

Apple Store chronology

My own pictures from the event

Is Apple finally going to get the respect it deserves and are people going to start switching?

Yesterday I was walking around the Phi Psi house and I lots and lots of Macs. I also saw two different people walk in listening to iPods. Cool!

Last week iTunes was released on Windows. Andrew already bought a song. Dan said his residents are loving it. And Gary said, "I finally got iTunes working. I'm a believer now. Will spread the gospel soon on my blog." People are going to use iTunes and the iPod and realize how amazing Apple products are. Hopefully that will get them to switch.

Tomorrow Panther will be released to the public and it's already getting great reviews. Exposé alone is worth upgrading to Panther for.

I like this:

"Finally, surely there's value in using an operating system that, well, isn't Windows. Mac OS X isn't just free of viruses; it's also free from copy protection, "activation" (a Windows XP feature that transmits information about your PC back to Microsoft), and pop-up messages that nag you to sign up for some Microsoft database or clean up your icons. When you use Mac OS X, you feel like it's yours; when you use Windows, you feel as though you're using someone else's toys, and Mrs. Microsoft keeps peeking in on you."

Finally, Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street writes why you should switch to a Mac to avoid viruses, spam, and pop up ads.

This morning Apple announced all new products in their Music line. Late yesterday Apple invited all of the Applications group to go to the event and check it out live. It was incredible!

The event was at 10am in Moscone West, in San Francisco. Everyone expected iTunes for Windows (and Music Store for Windows) but other announcements were a surprise.

When the presentation started, the lights went down and they played a song by Johnny Cash in its entirety. It was interesting to see a giant room full of Apple employees and the press just sitting there listening to a song.

Steve came on stage and quickly ran through some announcements: iPod sold 350,000 last quarter, 1.4 million total, number 1 mp3 player out there (even though it's the most expensive). He then quickly announced 2 new peripherals:

Microphone. Lets you record voice memos and sync with your computer. I have one of these and was beta testing for a while

Memory card reader: You're on vacation with a digital camera that only holds some number of pictures. So you just put the memory card into this device and it copies the pictures to your iPod! That basically means you have infinite storage for long trips! I need to buy this before going to India. It will cost less than buying just one additional memory card.

Then Steve showed off iTunes for Windows. "Hell froze over." It looks PERFECT. Exactly the same on Windows as on the Mac, including the player, playlists, iPod support, the Music Store, and everything else. This is "the best application ever written for Windows"

There were other cool things like Audio books in the music store, celebrity playlists so you can see (and buy) what artists listen to, exclusive songs and more. He announced they doubled the music collection to 400,000 songs, all good quality tracks, not random tracks from random artists just to boost their song count.

They now sell gift certificates, and you can setup allowances so kids can purchase a certain amount of music per month. They set a goal to sell 100 million songs by April. I think they will do 500 million.

Apple announced a partnership with AOL so AOL's music page directs you to iTunes where you can buy music.

They announced a partnership with Pepsi. In February and March 2004 starting at the Super Bowl, Pepsi will produce 300 million bottles with iTunes advertising and special caps. 1 in 3 caps will win a free song! 100 million free songs. The Mac was first announced at the super bowl in 1984 (the famous 1984 commercial) so i think there will be huge things going on that day (20 year anniversary).

Then Steve did some video conferences with various artists who praised the Apple Music Store and were really funny. First he talked to Bono (U2) in Dublin, then Dr Dre in LA, then Mick Jaggar in London.

Finally he had a huge surprised and called out SARAH MCLACHLAN who performed a few songs LIVE! Wow!

In the end Steve thanked the Apple employees for working hard and thanked the press. He gave everyone in the room a free poster of the iTunes Music Store, and a $20 gift certificate! I didn't think the Apple employees would get it but we did too!

Amazing, amazing event. So fucking cool. Apple is leading the way in legal digital music.

If Apple and German cars didn't exist, I'd have like no reason to live. This shit is like the only cool stuff going on out there. Everyone else follows.

I got a new 17" PowerBook yesterday! This is the mother of all laptop computers. It has a gigantic 17" screen but still is 1.0 inches thick and weighs 6.9 pounds! It's one of the most amazing products Apple has ever made. Since this is my one and only computer and I will be using it for development work, I figured the big laptop was worth it.

Features:
* 17" screen! The screen is almost the same size as the monitor I had with my Cube!
* 512MB RAM, 80GB HD
* Slot loading DVD Burner!
* 802.11g airport
* built in bluetooth (for my cell phone)
* Firewire 400 and 800
* Backlit keyboard that comes on when the lights go down! (THIS IS HOT)

The construction and finish on this computer are perfect. Other cool stuff:

* It's very strong and rigid. I can hold it from a corner and there's no flex. My old 15" couldn't handle that
* You can push up on the screen to open it more and the base of the computer stays put!
* Ports on the side of the computer make a lot more sense than the back
* QUIET! This is quieter than my 15". The fan and HD are silent
* The keyboard is the nicest keyboard I have ever typed on
* The base of the computer under the keyboard is long enough that it acts as a wrist area. Ergonomic!
* The trackpad is HUGE so i can devote a large portion to be a scroller
* The aluminum finish looks great

Also I randomly noticed today that iTunes accepts clicks to the play button etc even when it's not the active app, and it stays in the back!

Went to the city yesterday. First I went to Aki's place to work on Wimpus. His place is very nice! It's on Market near Castro. While walking around there I bumped into one of my co-workers. For me it was a big deal to randomly see someone I know. But it wasn't a big deal for him. I guess living in SF you actually meet people and see people walking around. It's not like Los Altos Hills where you isolated and no one leaves their house.

Later at night we met up with my friend Joe and we went to dinner. Walking around we randomly decided to go to Biscuits and Blues. The food there is awesome. Later we went out drinking at a bunch of other places.

Through the day I was parked outside Aki's place. The meter only ran until 6pm so I could park there all day for $4 (I got there at 2). Of course we kept forgetting to feed the meter every hour but luckily I didn't get a ticket. THen later at around 3am we remembered that you can't park on Market from 2am-6am because of street sweeping! We jumped in a taxi and went to my car. On the way we passed the street sweeper! Luckily my car hadn't been towed, but I did get a $35 parking ticket. Oh well, it could have been much worse.

On NBC Thursday there were iPods all over the place. On Scrubs, J.D. is listening to an iPod at the beginning of the show. Then on ER, Dr. Carter is carrying his iPod around the Congo. It is shown many times, and then he even says "It's an iPod"

Around San Francisco there are tons of iPod billboards and signs all over the place.

Yesterday I walked past the site of the Apple Store in SF. Right now there is nothing there (no building at all!) but they were hard at work at 9pm.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=77&e=1&u=/mc/20031002/tc_mc/nbcsscrubsadoptsanallapplesolution

Steve emailed the whole company this morning and gave everyone Thanksgiving WEEK off, paid holiday! Wow. I'm going to try to change my India flights and stay longer. I think I'll be in India for over 6 weeks!

http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/