Jesus, I bet you Windows people are about ready
to fucking kill me by now, aren't you? Oh, but I just can't help it; ever since last week, when I first set up Poppy (the name I've given my new Mac G4, which was a present from one of my readers), I've been finding it nearly impossible to divert my attention away from Poppy, and from learning OSX for the first time and importing all my old files and starting to teach myself the two-dozen new pieces of high-end creative software I now own as well. And each day that I'm on Poppy I seemingly end up learning like half a dozen new things, and some of them are just so cool and so different from Apple's last operating system (OS9, that is) that I just can't help but to share them. So yes, I missed two days' worth of journaling last week because of playing around with Poppy, and I've now got something like 50 new emails to get back to as well, and I will be getting back to all those emails hopefully this week, as the shock of owning this new computer starts wearing off and I can finally start getting back to my normal routine. (Oh, and I appreciate all the readers who have sent in recommendations of OSX software they think I'd like; but keep in mind that I still don't have online access at home, so applications that somehow access the internet are pretty much worthless to me. That said, I'm always on the lookout for cool standalone programs, so feel free to keep sending in those recommendations.)

Oh, but wait, the story gets even more pathetic; the other day I was going through the big pile of installation disks that TGS ("The Good Samaritan") gave me when he gave me the computer, just seeing if there was anything on them he hadn't already installed on Poppy, when I discovered this shocking fact - that on top of everything else, TGS also gave me copies of over 20,000 typefaces, most of them Postscript or OpenType in nature and immediately ready to be used in OSX. OH. MY. LORD! Regular readers will of course know what an obsessive amateur typography nut I am; shit, I even taught myself Fontographer a number of years ago, just for the hell of it, and even released all the typefaces I created for free download, simply as a way to karmically pay society back for all the free typefaces I myself have downloaded over the years. (Yes, by the way, this fall I'll be adding those typefaces to the MovableType build that is now running my site, so that they'll be searchable and categorizable and all the rest. And yes, I've been thinking for some time now about creating a couple of new handwritten fonts, an easier proposition now that I'm turning my old Mac into a dedicated scanning station. I don't suppose anyone has a copy of Fontographer for OSX they'd like to slip me? It's no big deal if you don't - I still have Fontographer for OS9, of course, and it still works just fine.)

So yeah, if I haven't already stretched the "alcoholic in a liquor store" metaphor here to its breaking point in the last week, this newest development surely puts it over the top. And so for about 60 hours there last week, everything else in my life came to a complete and abrupt halt, because of me of course having to go in and check out all 20,000 typefaces TGS gave me, each and every one of them, and determine which of them I wanted to keep and install on Poppy. And boy, wouldn't you know it - on top of everything else, the kids at Apple have even radically redesigned the way font management works in OSX, to something that just blows the old operating system completely out of the water.

I'm surprised that this hasn't gotten more press among Appleheads, to tell you the truth, because fellow Mac veterans will of course intimately remember exactly what a pain in the ass this used to be under Systems 1 through 9. And that's always been the ultimate irony of Macs, of course - that the technology itself (including the invention of Postscript and laserprinters) is what ushered in the age of desktop publishing in the first place, but the software controlling this technology has always sucked out loud. In fact, for decades there was really only one good way to manage your fonts and typefaces on a Mac, which was to get a third-party application called Suitcase that automated a lot of the process for you.

Well, so now Apple has its own font-management application called Font Book, and in some respects it's basically lifted some of the best things about that original Suitcase program; you can now keep your fonts wherever you want, for example, instead of in a central "Fonts" folder in your System files, and turning certain fonts on and off is now as easy as simply clicking on them with your mouse. But the thing that's really blown me away about Font Book is its user interface (or UI); namely, it has the same UI as all the other in-house "iLife" software Apple has developed for OSX, like iTunes and iPhoto and iMovie and all the rest, meaning that I was already a power user of Font Book not even ten minutes after turning the program on for the first time in my life.

This really more than anything else is what's been making my brain do backflips this last week, as I get more and more into the guts of Poppy and learn more and more about how OSX works; namely, the way the OSX team has programmed all these iLife apps so that they have the same UI, no matter what program it is or what type of files it was designed to manage. I mean, you would think at first that this would be impossible to do - to create one common UI for such diverse programs as a movie player, photo viewer, music player, font manager, events calendar, address book and more - but those smarties in Cupertino have done it. Just look at iTunes, for example, the one piece of iLife software that most people are probably the most familiar with; how you have a central "library" of all your MP3 files, with a chance to then add "albums" consisting only of certain songs, with a small window on the left side of your screen for accessing these albums, and a big window on the right side for working with the files actually found in that album. And this is exactly how Font Book works as well; you have a central library with all your typefaces, the chance to create albums of specific typefaces, and a two-window UI for working with all these albums and files. And of course in OSX these apps all have visual interfaces as well; instead of adding a new font by choosing a command from a pulldown menu, for example, you can simply grab the font with your mouse and drop it in Font Book's window, and have the rest of the process automated for you. (And even better, double-clicking on an uninstalled font in OSX will now bring up an onscreen preview of what the font looks like, with a simple button in the corner for installing that font if you desire. And man, ask me HOW MANY FUCKING YEARS I've been waiting to have that ability.)

This new concentration on common UIs is ultimately a triumph for end-users like you and me, because it streamlines the entire process; instead of us having to learn the details of how a dozen different programs work, we now simply learn one and immediately know how to use all the rest. Now, combine that with the interconnectivity that comes with the whole system; how each of these programs now store their files in one common location, which means that all the other programs know where this location is as well, and can tertially reference those other files to make your job as the end-user easier. (This, for example, is why you can view video files in iTunes, why you can automatically access your iTunes library in iMovie, why you can marry a specific event in your calendar with a specific person from your address book, etc.) And now combine all this with the fact that these iLife programs were designed specifically to be as small and fast as possible, so that they'd open in just a few seconds and without that annoying goddamn splash page that so many third-party programs have when they're starting up. Are you starting to understand why OSX has been completely blowing my mind these days?

And sure, an argument could be made that this is simply the natural result of the situation itself - that when a company like Apple sits down one day and says, "Our operating system is crap and we're going to start all over again from scratch," you can't help but to get this common UI and interconnectivity you now see in OSX. But hey, all you have to do is look at a company like Palm to see the folly of that argument; this is a company, after all, who faced the same challenge as the OSX team (that is, to build an entire operating system from scratch, along with a bunch of administrative applications for it), and not only did they build six different UIs for six different programs, but even years after its original invention I still can't get certain data from some of these programs to cross over into other programs.

It's never an accident when a computer program works well; it's always the deliberate result of a team of smart, dedicated programmers, ones who almost maniacally have the end-user in mind throughout the entire process. And given the times we live in, there's a good chance that these programmers had to fight for us end-users as well, to bicker with their idiot middle-management bosses on why this is so important and why the company should spend the extra time and money to get things right. So, you know, from me to you, OSX team, thanks for sticking in there and fighting that battle for us. I am simply flabbergasted on a regular basis these days over just how flawlessly the new OS works, how easy it is to share information, how easy it is to import and manage this information in the first place. Far from being the immaculate conception most people think software creation is, I know that this was the direct result of hundreds of nerdy little humans spending thousands of hours working on such a system, and believing in an almost religious way why such an interface is so important. So, you know, thanks.

Now, all that said, OSX certainly works differently than all of Apple's previous operating systems, which comes with certain headaches of its own. I was talking about one of these at the journal last week - how I'm having to reteach my brain these days to think in terms of tagging and searching instead of files and folders, which is difficult for me because I've spent the last 21 years of my life thinking of computers in terms of files and folders. And here's another one that I was just thinking about this weekend - OSX's habit of opening most creative files in its in-house "Preview" application when you double-click on them, instead of the application used to originally create them (like Photoshop for images, Acrobat for PDF files, etc).

I'm not used to this, and it frustrated me at first; I was used to the OS9 way of doing things, where double-clicking on a file will bring up the application needed to actually edit that file. But much like the whole tagging/searching issue, my brain's been coming around in the last few days to a new mindset about it all; namely, that it actually makes a lot more sense to have a program like Preview as your double-click default, when all you want to do is simply take a look at that file. And this gets into what I was saying earlier, how these iLife programs were designed to be as fast and simple as possible - so that with Preview you're actually looking at a photo two seconds after you originally double-clicked it, versus opening Photoshop and then sitting around for 30 seconds or more, as it loads its fonts and loads its colors and loads its filters and loads its plug-ins and blah blah fuckity blah, all so that you could simply peek at what that file is. With this in mind, having Preview as your double-click default suddenly makes a lot more sense.

The problem is that I keep forgetting about this new visual interface in OSX, and keep thinking about how all these new features conflict with the old way I know of doing things. For example, if Preview had existed in OS9, then every time I had wanted to edit a photo I would've had to manually open Photoshop myself, then choose "File / Open..." from the pulldown menu; with OSX, however, I can simply grab the photo with my mouse and drop it on my Photoshop icon in my Dock, and Poppy automates the rest for me. And that's a great way to manually override a default setting, very fast and intuitive and something I now wish I had had years ago, which I would've never appreciated if I hadn't left my mind open to such an attitude change. And I'm determined to keep my mind open when it comes to this stuff, no matter how old I get, to be willing to explore new ways of doing things instead of being one of those crabby old men in the corner who keeps whining, "I want my files and folders! I want my files and folders!"

Okay, still lots to talk about but I'm almost out of space, so I guess it'll have to wait until tomorrow. Before I go, though, I did want to mention that the verification process for my dad's Paypal account is finally complete (and all you Paypal members know what a pain in the ass that is), so I am finally ready to start accepting online donations again, and prepayments for my 2006 travel book concerning South Africa. (In fact, I just learned today that there's been about $50 in online donations in just the last few weeks - so thanks to Caro, Tim, Beth and PJ, and I'll be getting emails to you guys very soon, I swear to fucking God.) Right now my Paypal link is not that obvious - the only place you can find it, in fact, is on the prepayment page for my South Africa tour. A bunch of you think I should run a link as well on the front page of my site, where this journal is located; but eh, I just don't know about that. I generally dislike it when I come across a prominent Paypal button on the front page of a blog; it just immediately makes me feel like that author is expecting something from me, just for the mere act of randomly visiting their site one day. And I don't want you to feel like that here; I just want you to enjoy what it is that I have to say, without feeling this subconscious guilt that a Paypal button always produces (or at least always produces in me). Running a link on the front page would certainly result in more money, but I'm not sure if that's worth it for me, in exchange for having that glaring reminder every day that just screams, "SEND ME MONEY, ASSHOLE! SEND ME MONEY, ASSHOLE! SEND ME MONEY, ASSHOLE!" Anyway, that's why I doubt you'll be seeing a Paypal link here at my front page anytime soon.