iTunes 10 Replacement Icon by Chris Carlozzi (via jxnblk)
Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times YES. Download it immediately (includes alternate version without tail if you’d like).
Maniacal Rage
Here are my most recent posts:
Ugmonk 2nd Anniversary Shirt (View bigger at Flickr)
I’m a huge fan of Jeff Sheldon’s shirts. I own pretty much every print and I wear one nearly every day. Get your own at Ugmonk.com.
Visual Differences Between iTunes 9 and 10
A year ago, I compared the then-brand-new iTunes 9 against its predecessor. New year, new version of iTunes, so here’s an updated comparison. It’s amazing to see just how much visual tweaking Apple does with each new major version of the application.
I’ve also slightly redesigned the whole thing this year so that you can easily view last year’s comparison, and a fun 8 versus 10 version as well.
Update: Added support for iOS devices—on your iPad or iPhone you can now touch the images to toggle back and forth.
Selected Notes From Watching Today’s Apple Keynote Live Stream
[Steve Jobs mentions the iPad will support the new HDR photos feature]
- Me: Why did he just say HDR photos on iPad?
- Me: There is no camera.
- Shawn Morrison: Unless they’re bumping the iPad today too. Obviously the next iPad will have a camera.
- Me: At least a front-facing one for Face Time. I would buy a new one for that.
- Shawn Morrison: I’ve been using my iPad a lot more lately. Sort of re-fell in love with it.
- Shawn Morrison: Did you watch that original iMac unveiling video that went around again recently?
- Shawn Morrison: Seeing Jobs refer to a 233 MHz machine as “crazy fast.” Then remembering that back then, that WAS crazy fast.
- Me: Yeah, it was awesome. He has the guy walk around the thing with a camera and it’s all lit up through the case. My favorite was the hockey puck mouse, which he says is the best mouse ever. And it’s clear, just from looking at it, that it’s terrible.
- Shawn Morrison: At the time it was nice *looking*. And was actually fairly comfortable to hold… it just always turned in your hand, which made it useless.
[New Shuffle is announced]
- Me: Oh good, the new Shuffle is cheaper. I can replace my sweat-ruined current iPod Shuffle.
- Shawn Morrison: You still use a Shuffle?
- Me: Yeah, for running.
[New Nano is announced]
- Me: Jesus, the Nano now definitely fits its name.
- Shawn Morrison: What asshole would buy a Shuffle!
[Steve Jobs is demoing new Nano]
- Me: That fucking thing is tiny!
- Me: Star Trek shit.
- Me: Seriously, I want to make it into a watch.
- Shawn Morrison: Someone will make a watch band case for it.
- Me: I might just buy it to have it. It’s so crazy.
- Shawn Morrison: I know. I immediately want one. They really push the envelope on these iPod updates.
- Me: Seriously. How much smaller could the Nano get?
- Me: Eventually they’ll just say, “Eat this pill. Music forever in your body!”
- Shawn Morrison: And the Touch will eventually be made out of a sheet of tissue paper.
- Me: The Shuffle literally cannot get smaller without it just being inside the Apple earbuds.
[iTunes’ new Ping social music network is revealed]
- Me: They should have done this 4 years ago. Now it feels like… well, I already use all these other services.
- Shawn Morrison: Though they may be able to gain traction just by placing it in iTunes.
- Me: True. Immediate adoption.
- Shawn Morrison: What’s odd is that ping is definitely music centric but it’s almost like a full-on Facebook thing.
- Me: What if when they showed Steve Jobs’ profile, in the “Music I Like” section is was just straight-up racist music from the 40s.
- Shawn Morrison: Huh, I would be surprised if it wasn’t.
- Me: UPGRADE RIGHT NOW I NEED TO USE PING WITH YOU WE NEED TO PING!!!!
[Live stream starts flickering]
- Me: Is your stream flickering?
- Shawn Morrison: Yep.
- Me: I love the idea that now that I have this stream, ANY SINGLE ISSUE WITH IT IS RAGE-INDUCING.
[New iTunes 10 icon shown]
- Me: I wish they hand’t made the icon blue. TOO MUCH BLUE IN MY DOCK.
- Shawn Morrison: Yeah but then you realize that it doesn’t matter at all in the world, you sip some booze and drown away all the real problems.
- Me: *cries so fucking hard*
[One More Thing, which Jobs then calls One More “Hobby”]
- Shawn Morrison: What if Jobs’ new hobby was fly fishing? And the entire rest of the keynote was a new fishing pole.
- Me: Just one that he bought, too. Not one that Apple makes or is selling.
- Shawn Morrison: He just says, “Listen, I’m Steve Jobs and at this point I can do whatever I want.”
- Me: I’m very much looking forward to when he loses his mind. It’s gonna be tons of fun.
[New Apple TV is announced and it’s very small]
- Shawn Morrison: Jobs: “It’s smaller and blacker, just like my women.”
- Me: “It doesn’t even do anything! We can make these things tiny!!”
- Shawn Morrison: If it’s free I’ll buy one.
[Jobs shows parts of Iron Man 2, which I haven’t seen yet]
- Me: SPOILERS COME ON!!
[Jobs shows parts of Glee’s season finale, which I haven’t seen yet]
- Me: SPOILERS COME ON!!!
- Shawn Morrison: Just not your day.
- Shawn Morrison: At the end of Pretty Woman, Julia Roberts dies of AIDS.
- Me: FUCK!!!!!
[Jobs is playing a slideshow of photos on the Apple TV]
- Me: I really wish Apple was legally obligated to admit they kill all their photo models after the shoots.
adenosinemonophosphate asks: "So that picture you posted of the phone being gutted came up on my dash and at first glance I read your url as 'media carnage.'"
Well, “media carnage” is better than some of the other pronunciations I’ve heard in the past 10 years. Because my primary email address is my name @ this domain, I often have to give out said address in stores or over the phone. I always preface the info by saying, “This is a long one, but here goes,” and then I rattle off letter after letter. Most of the time, when I’m done, the sales rep or whoever tries to pronounce it. The most common mispronunciation is “mania calrage”. What the hell is “calrage”? Also common: “manny-ackarage”. Again, those aren’t even words.
The funny thing about all these issues is that I chose the name Maniacal Rage in 1999 after seeing a guest appearance by Joe Pesci on Saturday Night Live in which he completely mispronounces the word “maniacal” when telling Jim Brewer (who is playing a poor version of Joe Pesci) that he’s actually a calm person who doesn’t “burst into lunatic, maniacal rage”. Except he says “may-knee-ackal” instead of “man-eye-icle”. (Watch the sketch—Pesci’s appearance starts around 6:40.) I thought it sounded funny, bought the domains, and here we are more than 10 years later.
Of course, at the time, I never considered that I’d be in my thirties spelling out maniacal rage to a mortgage broker.
Wedding Colors
- Me: So it's a brown suit with light-brown tie?
- Shawn Morrison: Yes.
- Me: I'll just tell Stacey to dress like the leaves of a tree. And I'm the trunk.
- Shawn Morrison: Aside from her wearing brown herself I doubt she could go wrong with just about any color.
- Me: I've got some ideas that go against that theory:
- Me: Yellow: We're #1 and #2!
- Me: Red: Hey, I ate glass and now I'm shitting!!
- Me: Orange: IT'S HALLOWEEN TODAY!!!
- Shawn Morrison: I suppose if you consult a 10 year old then yes, there are potential problems.
- Me: Actually, I ran those by a 10 year-old just now and he didn't laugh much. Kind of disappointing. It's like I kidnapped him for nothing now.
- Shawn Morrison: Who are you supposed to torture in a basement, some adult that can escape???
- Me: It's a valid point, although I'm REALLY getting tired of scrubbing blood off the basement floor. It's killing my back. No pun intended.
- Shawn Morrison: I've had good luck with vinegar for that. Also pro tip: Have the kid dig his own grave and do all the killing there. Super creepy PLUS easy-breezy cleanup. But, yeah, vinegar otherwise.
- Me: Delicate question: What do you do when your yard is full of graves? I mean jammed full. Like seriously JAMMED.
- Shawn Morrison: Ah well then you need some plastic barrels and hydrochloric acid to dissolve the children. Thankfully, with their small sizes and flexible bones you can get them into just about any size container.
- Me: Again I have to disagree with you. Just tried to get one into this milk carton and it was a complete failure. Now I've ruined my carpet AND the milk.
Art Meets Technology by Mads Peitersen (via waxy)
On the Subject of Dynomighty Design Mighty Wallets
- Matt Urban: Also cool: The wallet that looks like it's made out of a piece of college-ruled paper.
- Matt Urban: Although easily mistakable for actual trash.
- Me: God, what if people just kept throwing your wallet away. How awful.
- Matt Urban: Yeah, Mike suggested I put a mailing address and stamp on my wallet [that that looks like an airmail envelope] so that if I did lose it, it would get mailed back to me.
- Me: Even better, they can see what kinds of credit cards and cash you have and then decide to use your address to come rob you.
- Me: THE PERFECT WALLET™
- Matt Urban: Yeah, I've been using it to remember all my pins, SSN, etc, too.
- Matt Urban: Now if I could only find a wallet that would actually punch me in the face.
