iTunes was released on January 9, 2001, at Macworld San Francisco. It was a huge deal at the time. Like, really huge. The big deal Mac MP3 players at the time, well, sucked as music jukeboxes. They were just that - MP3 players. that left the organization up to the end user. So when iTunes came out and replaced SoundJam MP, it was not only revolutionary, but extremely welcome to those of us with large music collections.

However, iTunes 1.0 was more than just a rebranded SoundJam. It had a completely reworked UI. Gone were the completely horrific looking skins that accompanied it. It was a music jukebox, just like it had been advertised. And Apple made it dead easy to rip, mix, and burn. Suffice it to say, iTunes 1.0 was a pretty amazing app. But Apple didn’t stop there.

Continue reading ‘What happened to iTunes?’

Microsoft’s Zune. I swore to give the Zune an honest look when it actually began materializing on the Internet. I wouldn’t be a Mac zealot for the sake of being a Mac zealot - I’d actually give it a fair and honest run through. Well, as it came out a couple days ago, a couple of my friends decided to each get a Zune at launch. Naturally, I got my grubby hands on it, and gave it a ten minute run-through.

I’m not impressed, but I am a bit worried. More after the jump.

Continue reading ‘Zune vs. iPod - Hands-On’

Introducing Tubular, the brand new YouTube client for OS X. Why would you want a YouTube client? Simple.

• It’s pretty. Tubular was designed to have a simple, elegant, and out-of-the-way user interface that still manages to look gorgeous. With icons designed by Cyril Seillet and Tom Stoelwinder, and a user interface designed with the collective wisdom of dozens of people, Tubular is simply beautiful.
• It’s familiar. Anyone who has used iTunes will feel right at home with Tubular’s look and feel. We’ve taken the UI ideas given to us by iTunes and ran with them, producing a user interface that is intuitive and usable.
• It’s useful. Features like one-click iPod conversion and drag-and-drop playback really give Tubular incredible utility to anyone who uses it.

We’ll be unveiling more about Tubular in the next couple weeks. You can go check out the blog at TubularApp.com, where I’ll be posting updates periodically.

I was looking for something that would display the currently playing iTunes song on my desktop. Nothing, however, seemed to really fit. No solution really looked like it belonged on a Mac’s desktop. So, I wrote one. And here it is.

Introducing DeskTunes.

DeskTunes is a very simple, very elegant way to see what’s playing in iTunes right now. It stays stuck to the bottom left corner of the Desktop, no matter what you do. It even stays put if you try and hide all of your windows with Exposé. You can also rate the currently playing song by clicking the star bar.

Simple. Elegant. Tiny. Out of the way. Beautiful.

The best part? It’s totally, completely, eternally free. Click here to download it.

Update (4/18/2008): DeskTunes keeps getting talked about all over the place, and now on TUAW and Lifehacker. I’m planning on releasing DeskTunes as open-source soon. It’ll be available on Google Code as soon as I get around to cleaning up the source code and making sure it works on Leopard. Thanks for checking it out!

Before last week, I’d never been to a Worldwide Developer’s Conference. Hell, I’d never even been to San Francisco. So, in June, when Apple sent me the email saying that I was getting a free ticket through the door, I was very excited. Two months later, on Saturday, August 5th, and I’m on a plane headed to San Francisco.

Continue reading ‘WWDC 2006 Experiences’

I write this hot on the heels of a post I made a few weeks ago, citing my insignificant attempt at turning the world away from the Dark Side of IE. Since that started, the use of MSIE by my readers has gone down to 26%. Certainly better than 33%, but not groundbreaking by any means.

I’ve been giving the topic a lot of thought lately, because I’ve often wondered why people don’t use a browser that is clearly superior to IE (hell, I’ll push Opera on people if it means getting them off IE). I think I’ve got a real reason why people aren’t flocking to the Fox in hordes. And it’s pretty chilling.

People don’t switch from Internet Explorer because it is familiar and it is already there.

Continue reading ‘Internet Explorer Isn’t Gonna Die Soon, Guys’

Check out the About Me page. I actually got around to writing it. And I made it a little different by using a special stylesheet.

Anyone vaguely familiar with RIT can most likely attest to one thing: the ratio of males to females is very skewed. The official ratio for the 2003-2004 academic year is 2:1, male to female. While that’s the official head count, looking around the campus, you get the impression that the actual ratio is much higher - it really feels like 3:1 or 4:1.

Everyone on campus is very, very familiar with the ratio. As a male, I can attest firsthand on how much it sucks if you hate being single as much as I do. Your standards become significantly lower and almost anything that is single becomes a prospective. And I’m not trying to be chauvinistic or arrogant by stating this; it’s simply a fact, and one that gets joked about. I’ve seen friends get turned into clingy, sycophantic, desperate attempts at being a boyfriend, simply because there is no alternative.

However, possibly even more than the males, the females at this school are very, very aware of the ratio at this school. This has a very adverse effect on the girlfriend economy, which does nothing but turn normal girls into spiteful, pompous, and deceitful women; the notion being that if Guy A puts so much as one toe over the line, the girl can go to guys B, C, D, E, and F, who will bend over backwards to fulfill the whim of this girl, simply because they have no choice.

Continue reading ‘On RIT Girls and the Economy of Dating’

Here’s the thing. I <3 productivity. So, as I’ve yelled about Java’s exceptions before and how time consuming they are to write, I decided to do something about it.

And so, I present to you, the Exception class generator. It’s command-line, because I roll like that. It’s very easy to use, and it’s RIT coding standards compliant. Here’s how it works:

java ExceptionCreator name author [description]

Let’s look at that. Say I wanted to create an exception called HeadUnlikeAHoleException (Nine Inch Nails reference!). I would be the author, and for a description, I’d want something like “This exception gets thrown whenever the head is unlike a hole.” Here’s how my command would look:

syco: ~syco$ java ExceptionCreator HeadUnlikeAHoleException “Steve Streza’” “This exception gets thrown whenever the head is unlike a hole.”

Here’s the output.

Again, this class is 100% RIT coding standards compliant. I’m sure they might yell about the fact that you’re generating code, but its an exception. You’re practically copy-pasting every time anyway.

Think it’s too good to be true? Check it out yourself! (You’ll note that that class is very much not RIT coding standards compliant by any means. Think of it as my little attempt at fighting the man. And by the man I mean the Nazi coding commenting standards of the RIT CS department. ^_^)

TIME has an interview with Samuel L. Jackson about how fans on the Internet saved Snakes on a Plane.

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