Day: 4 May 2011

What’s the Point of Popular? ⇥

Popular is almost never a measure of impact, or genius, or art. Popular rarely correlates with guts, hard work or a willingness to lead (and be willing to be wrong along the way).

Good points. However, it’s worth noting that the converse is also not true. Something which is artistic, smart and revolutionary does not have to be unpopular for it to work. In fact, something which makes an impact almost has to be popular.

Things that are popular are not necessarily bad, or wrong, or unworthy of attention. Many people seem to make an attempt to differentiate themselves by deliberately listening to obscure music, creating blatantly offensive art and penning “difficult” poetry (or whatever). Strange is the new cool (but black is, and always will be, the new black).

The New iMacs’ Hybrid Drive Chipset ⇥

I think I called this at some point. According to Apple’s online store:

If you configure your iMac with both the solid-state drive and a Serial ATA hard drive, it will come preformatted with Mac OS X and all your applications on the solid-state drive. Then you can use the hard drive for videos, photos, and other files.

If Twitter’s search worked better, I’d be able to find that tweet from when the 2010 MacBook Air launched, and people were predicting how the SSD technology would find its way into other Macs. At some point, I suggested that the SSD would be used primarily for system stuff, and storage would be on a traditional hard drive until flash memory prices dropped significantly. This is what Apple is doing, with a chipset from Intel that allows for a “hybrid” hard drive setup, split between two physical drives. Very clever.

Also, do yourself a favour and check out the new iMac website, which features some awesome parallax animation in the slideshow.

Business Class for Online News ⇥

As I have posted/whined many times about the NY Times paywall, I figured I should repost this fantastic article, via Daring Fireball.

People pay for Business Class because they don’t want to be tortured in Economy. They get faster lanes at the terror check. They get an extra glass of champagne. The stewards are more attentive. They get off the plane more quickly. They get the feeling of a higher social status. […] What would a Business Class news site look like?