There was a lot of work this week behind the scenes at TMO. Several of us were working furiously with developer copies of Snow Leopard to prepare our articles for the end of the NDA and Friday release. In addition, as our publisher, Dave Hamilton explained, we made our own transition from iPodObserver.com to iObserver.com. So the debris cloud is small this week. I won't break it down by day this time.
iPhone ad parodies are fun, and this one is funner than most. How to use an iPhone to manage your love life. There's an app for that!
Jason O'Grady did some work with Rosetta in Snow Leopard and found that the penalty for installing it is, well, zero. It's only 2 MB and doesn't load unless needed. So if you do need Rosetta in Snow Leopard, feel free to install it.
Jason's partner at ZDNET is David Morgenstern, and he reports on information from Nisus that Snow Leopard changes the way .rtf file are handled. Basically, instead of tracking the app that created the .rtf file, Snow Leopard insists on opening all .rtf files with TextEdit by default. But there's an easy workaround, so check it out.
Of course, Snow Leopard doesn't fix everything to everyone's satisfaction. For example, I'll continue to use PathFinder in Snow Leopard, one of my favorite apps of all time. Rob Griffiths over at Macworld has listed some of his own annoyances, so if you're wondering if Snow Leopard has fixed your favorite gripe, see "Snow Leopard's old and new annoyances."
But these kinds of things happen whenever a new Mac OS X upgrade comes out. In time, we find apps or strategies to deal with our own peculiarities and peccadillos as Mac users.
At Apple Matters, Meiera Stern wondered a little bit about the origin of the big cat names for Mac OS X. What the author didn't include was the names left for Apple. Here's a funnier take on the whole thing. As far as I know, Apple has trademarks left only for Lynx and Cougar. After that, we get a succession of smaller, less impressive cats, like Serval, Caracal and Margay. I'm sure Apple will think of something. So long as it steers clear of "Mac OS X, version 11.0."
In recognition of the new ways Americans are using mobile services, the FCC is launching what looks to be a serious inquiry into the business practices of the wireless industry. In the long run, this will be good. The government, for a change, is exercising oversight. And Steve Jobs is back at work. What's all this mean?
No more fooling around. Daddy's home.