Marc Palmer

Hooray. Hooray. I still can’t believe it. I’m not a Labour voter but kudos to them for first banning hunting and then a total ban on smoking in public places with no exceptions.

I was particularly pleased to see that Blair (and Brown, future PM) and many of the cabinet – not people for whom I usually have much respect – actually voted for a total ban even though the government’s official line was to include exemptions for private clubs.

You can’t help but think that with this level of feeling in the cabinet (boo hiss to John Reid) that perhaps this was the plan all along – appear to smoking voters to be throwing them a bone in the form of ban exceptions, but then cunningly use a free vote knowing the level of support for a full ban amongst MPs. The result is a total ban and it doesn’t look like it was official Labour policy to do it, it was the concensus of Parliament. A majority of 200 votes too – you cannot argue with that. Long live democracy in the UK, death to smoking!

My mother has advanced stage lung cancer, having been a life long smoker – who, incredibly, started to smoke again after having radical treatment despite not significant remission. There’s no telling some people, but at least I know the chances of my daughters suffering a similar fate are significantly cut now, as one would hope that in 10+ years’ time smoking really will be a fringe activity in the UK. Perhaps cigarettes won’t even be on sale by then.

I have only just realised that when I go to gigs to see bands play that no longer will I stink of smoke or have such trouble breathing after leaping around for an hour plus! I still can’t believe it… I can’t wait.

Wow – this really impressed me. A first I thought "oh it’s just another music recommendation system based on your existing tastes and those of previous users". Then I waited for the flash to download… then it started streaming me full songs of music I really like based on some initial info I gave it. It just got better and better. Oh and it steals a bunch of OS X UI ideas so it looks pretty good.

Where to they get the audio streams from?!

Try it out for your self – www.pandora.com

I’ve been very busy the last month or so. I’m buying more software than every before, finding really valuable tools that are boosting my productivity and the quality of my work. As a software consultant, designer and developer, I have needs for tools that don’t necessarily apply to everyone. However, there are some true gems out there in Apple land.

• OmniGraffle – a truly excellent, powerful and yet simple diagramming application. You’re still using Visio?!
• iLife ‘06 – Some improvements are incremental but it’s worth it for the new iPhoto tweaks alone.
• iWork ‘06 – I’m new to Keynote and Pages but Pages ‘06 has been excellent for me, I’m sold on it for invoicing and customer-facing documentation and literature!
• Transmit – a truly excellent FTP client with some really nifty features

I’m also warming to OmniOutliner, for general hierarchical documents – rough quotes, todo list planning, and maybe even some recipe generation before processing the XML to produce HTML output…

What is really surprising is the usefulness of Mac OS X 10.4’s built in iCal and Address Book applications. The problem is that most of the great features are not documented well (no Tips at startup) so as an ex-Windows user you have to explore quite a bit and do some "unnatural" feeling things to discover the joys of them, like dragging things around between applications.

For example, you can just an address book entry into a Pages document that uses "mail merge" fields and have it update with the person’s data. You can create an alias to the Bluetooth File Sender application on your desktop, and then just drop any files from any application onto it to send them to a phone.

You can pair Address Book with your mobile phone’s bluetooth interface and make calls, send SMS and send contact details to your phone – no need for any special software and drivers, and the real joy is that there’s just one button to press on the toolbar to do this.

I’m so sold on the Apple thing that I bought a 12" iBook on New Year’s Eve and I’ve been glued to it ever since, and my wife loves it too – this is her first experience of Apple and she is really impressed. You might say the iBook is underpowered but for emails, instant messaging, diagramming and documentation it is absolutely fine and it is very cheap for such good quality Apple product.

Apple – marketing genius. I buy more software now (because it is really worth it), I buy music from iTunes (because it is so easy and prices are good), I want to buy more accessories and I want my own applications that I develop to work better, feel better, and look better. It raises the bar, and I think it must be stimulating the software and hardware market significantly.

My Windows XP PC? It hasn’t been connected to a screen for 6 weeks, and I only use a Remote Desktop connection to it from the Macs to access my bank’s online banking (which is so lame it only supports MS IE and only on PC – come on Co-operative Bank sort it out!). Nothing has been wanting on my Macs and I’m producing beautiful PDFs of my documents and diagrams, finding crucial emails much quicker, and I am far more organised thanks to iCal and my 10+ calendars, todo lists and my truly useful Address Book!