I just spent the last 20 minutes toying around with Scribbles, a new drawing application for Mac OS X. Let me do away with the formalities and jump right into it:

Scribbles is flat-out cool.

First off, Scribbles doesn’t do a whole lot in comparison to most graphics apps out there.  In fact, it’s probably the simplest graphics app you’ll ever see. And yet, underneath that amazing simplicity, you’ll find some unexpected power.

When you launch Scribble for the first time, you may notice that some things are missing. Like words. All of the controls in the main window have no text labels. That said, the user interface is incredibly intuitive. It took me only a few minutes to get the feel of what everything does. You will also notice that the user interface is absolutely slick. You get the feeling that every tiny little detail was thought out. The window controls are beautifully rendered. And there are a fair share of clever little touches. For example, when you click on the brush control, you get a brush control pane taking up the contents of the window. To get out, click the big “X” close button. The close button is in the exact location of the brush panel button, so if you just want yo peek at something, you don’t have to move the mouse. This works for all the other drawing controls.

My masterpiece. Click for larger.

This is no MS Paint clone, mind you. Despite its exceedingly simple outward…
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There’s a report floating around the interwebs tonight that Apple will be raising the price of a movie on the iTunes Store in order to appease Hollywood studios. Ars Technica reports that, according to a claim by Pali Research(membership required), Apple will raise their wholesale movie price to $15 US a pop. The Ars report does note that it is uncertain exactly how this price increase will affect the actual selling price (aside from the obvious fact that it’s going to go up!).

As of right now, Apple charges $12.99 US for new releases sold on iTunes, and $9.99 US for older titles. What does this get you? A 640 x 480 digital copy of a movie that you can’t legally burn to a DVD and pop into your DVD player.

As of right now, Apple sells movies from Disney and Paramount, and those companies’ subsidiaries. Keep in mind this report is very much unconfirmed.

Deep Thought’s (very annoyed) take: Oh, how I hope this isn’t true. Say it ain’t so, Steve. Say it ain’t so!

More movies. Good. Higher prices not so good. As Ars notes, it doesn’t seem like movies on iTunes have really set the world on fire, so it’s understandable that Apple would go this route (assuming this is true, of course; Apple has not confirmed these reports) and try to increase its selection. But I see this backfiring big. If people aren’t buying now, how are higher prices going to help any? Hoe many people here…
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You don’t have a green thumb. You tried a little gardening and failed miserably. You even killed a Chia Pet or two. Maybe you need to try a virtual Chia Pet before you take on the real thing. Enter Chi Pet. Chi Pet is a Chia Pet-like widget for Dashboard. Unlike the real thing, you don’t need to remember to water it; just remember to click the water droplet from time to time to keep your Chi Pet nice and green.

Come on, you can do it! If you’re successful, who knows? Maybe one day you can grow a Chia Pet for real!

Sure, this little guy looks naked now, but in time it will grow a lovely green
coat of sprouts--provided I don’t kill it first.

via Mac News Online. And no, I am not the same Nick who wrote the Mac News Online article.

Believe it or not, I’ve never used CandyBar ($29, $24 to upgrade) until now. I’ve never really had the need to tinker with the appearance of OS X.

Well, until Leopard, anyway. I switched off the 3D Dock, and have even modified the 2D Dock to something, uh, less white-border-y (I use the so-called Niqu Dock, but with the standard divider and active app indicator). And with the mixed reactions to Leopard’s folder icons and semi-transparent menubar, there’s no better time for developers of Mac UI tweak apps (ShapeShifter aside—Unsanity’s still working on that). So let’s take a quick look at this tasty morsel known as CandyBar.

The delicious chocolate coating

Icon Quick Look in CandyBar 3.

First and foremost, CandyBar is Leopard-only, as it makes use of some Leopard-only technology. At first glance, it certainly looks like a Leopard application: no side window borders, blue sidebar, medium-gray window theme.  Beyond that, CandyBar 3 includes support for Leopard’s monster-sized 512 x 512-pixel icons, Quick Look for icon previews (it also includes a Finder Quick Look plugin for previewing icontainers), and Dock modification support. Sweet!

The soft nougat filling

Modifying the Dock is simple: drag replacement images into their respective image wells, and click the Apply Dock button. No mess, no hacking. Dock modification has a couple other nice touches: you can also modify the divider and indicator lights for the 2D Dock. And if you change your mind, just click the Restore Images button. Nice! But there is one more thing:…
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I already wrote about this whole Malcor Matter (ooo, alliteration!), but that was before MacHeist confirmed that they were behind Malcor all along. Also, since I wrote my initial post, I’ve done some more thinking on the topic. Here goes nothing.

There are two issues at play here: responsibility and credibility. These two go hand-in-hand. Those who run their site in a responsible manner tend to gain credibility. Those who aren’t responsible usually lose credibility. Being a responsible blogger or tech site operator involves a number of things. It involves striving for accuracy in everything you write. It involves admitting mistakes when you are wrong. It involves respecting your readers. Last but not least, it involves honesty. If you can nail each of these, I feel that you’ll be taken seriously as a blogger and/or site operator, thus you will gain credibility.

The problem with the whole Malcor Matter is that it was flat-out irresponsible. Instead of respecting readers, the sites that took part in the Malcor Matter treated their readers as fools by leading them to believe that their sites were indeed hacked. Closely related is the issue of honesty, or lack thereof. By its very nature, the Malcor Matter was based on deception; after all, in order for a prank like this to work, you’re going to have to lie to someone. In this case, the “hacked” sites lied to their readers, and in some cases, staff writers too.

In other words, taking part in the Malcor Matter and…
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