So, a video iPod, it finally happened! I’m not sure about the idea myself, but I shall have to watch Steve Jobs do his thing and, positively glowing from RDF exposure, shall want one badly. It still looks good, regardless.

And saying that, I want an iPod nano badly too, just because, and if it had more capacity probably would get one. My poor old chunky v1 iPod (an iPod before most people knew what an iPod was!) is still going strong but is more than a bit cramped, so a nano isn’t going to solve anything. Perhaps I should just buy both for a laugh. 😀

Something interesting is that iPods can now record in stereo, which will be good news for podcasters out there tired of pressing the wrong buttons on their iRivers, which would be all of them.

And iTunes 6 already?! iTunes 5 must have been the shortest-lived version of software in the history of Appledom. Makes you wonder why they bothered.

NewsGator has acquired NetNewsWire along with Ranchero’s other assets, such as MarsEdit and Brent Simmons himself. I can see how this is a good thing, reading all those things they want to do with NNW but can’t because they are just two people and there are only so many hours in the day. Also, reading drunkenbatman explain a few things about the situation, I can well understand how support for such successful products could be overwhelming – particularly for MarsEdit.

On the support, it went without saying as far as I was concerned. My own fun, fun, fun with FTP / iTunes support issues has taught me that, even on a small scale, you can have a product that works exactly as it should, but once it starts integrating with something else, particularly server software, you enter a whole new world of pain: different configurations and versions along with user understanding issues that can devour whole days in the blink of an eye.

Anyway, well done to Brent and Sheila! Here’s hoping this makes their lives that much easier and both their lives and products that much better.

Like many people, I was a little aghast to see yet another interface style appear with iTunes 5, particularly one that isn’t available to everyone else and that has a few little quirks, such as the non-standard radius on the window corners and the way that the gradient starts at the top, ends at the source list then starts again below the lists. On the equaliser window, the same gradient goes from top to bottom – fair enough, but this indicates that the theme is more that just a background and (I suspect) unlikely to become available for everyone exactly as seen in iTunes should the new theme replace brushed metal.

But let’s hope it does, because many people will want to emulate the look and even the best implementations of BM appear a little scratchy next to iTunes now. Besides, the last thing we need is another interface theme in the long run. While I see the need for a device-like theme to limit the evolution of endlessly inconsistent skins, I’m no fan of brushed metal. I think it’s too heavy, too clunky, surprisingly dated and requires an incredible number of changes to standard controls to make them look good. Perhaps the best BM implementation is Safari, but even that has straight corners at the bottom of the window, which isn’t standard for BM windows where all four corners are usually rounded.

Overall, I think the new iTunes theme is a huge improvement, but that isn’t to say I’m totally enamoured with it. I spent most of yesterday being reminded of the Mac version of Windows Media Player, although looking at Windows Media Player again, it’s nothing like it (thankfully!). I also feel better about the iTunes look today, so perhaps it’s a grower. It helped after I updated Feeder’s iTunes preview (for release with 1.2.2 in a week or so) to see that looking much smarter. I wouldn’t expect BM to get replaced before Leopard, however, because of the problems that might cause with existing applications. We’ll see.

Hearing Adam Curry raving about OmniOutliner Pro lately reminds me that my business is almost entirely run using that app. Every feature of each release of my applications, past, present and future can be found in an outline, along with time estimates, notes, link to specifications, etc.

OmniOutliner is perfect for this, not only because you can check each feature off once it’s done and drag them around as necessary, but also because it can show calculated summaries of project-plan style durations (such as 1d, 2h) without having to fiddle with dependancies, dates, etc.

I’ve also used the dynamic HTML export feature to put Feeder’s release notes online when there are so many changes that a collapsable outline makes sense. I also use it to hammer out testing errors, make lists of things that need doing, and sometimes just to organize the scattered thoughts in my brain. I don’t tend to use the new fancy features all that much but it’s good to know they’re there.

The only things I don’t like about OmniOutliner 3 are the application and document icons, but those are easily fixed. I’ve yet to decide whether I like, or can even understand, the latest version of another one of my favourite applications, OmniGraffle, not that I use it much these days.

#4243867 – Safari’s RSS viewer uses GUID as Read More link when isPermaLink is false.

I’ve joined in the fun with Report-an-Apple-Bug Friday, the gist of mine being that Safari’s RSS viewer will use the value of an item’s GUID when its isPermaLink attribute is “false”. Only when isPermaLink is true or the isPermaLink attribute is omitted should the value of the guid tag be considered a URL according to the RSS spec.

I had a couple of reports from Feeder users that this was happening to their feeds in Safari. By default, Feeder generates GUIDs to help newsreaders uniquely identify items in a feed. This can be disabled (in the Feed Settings drawer) but won’t solve the problem for existing items; a better workaround is to give each item in a feed an Article Link, even if it’s just to your home page.

You can see other reported bugs on the applebugfriday tag on del.icio.us.