(Almost) disconnected usability upgrades

The title isn’t as strange as it sounds – it’s actually three topics:

(Almost) disconnected

I’m now back at my computer after a weeks holiday. A nice break which was intended to be fully disconnected, but a deadline moved forward so I had to borrow my brother-in-law’s iBook to quickly re-work a website.

Usability

I have lusted after Apple computers since the original iMac came out. The release of OS X, and subsequent hardware and software releases have simply increased this desire.

So, I want a Mac. I need a Mac. But I’ve never used a Mac!

Yes, I’ve played with them in PC World, but I’ve never really used one. Last week was the first time I’ve used both a Apple iBook and OS X (10.3) in anger, and to a certain extent I found it lacking.

Everyone raves about the usability of Macs, but for a long-term Microsoft Windows and Linux user they really are quite strange. I got over most of the strangeness (right-clicking, the menus etc.) in fairly short order, but once I was back home and using my Fedora Core 2 machine again I was truly happy. OS X has lots of nice touches – like Expose – and I could see myself getting used to using it, but..

The question is: Do I still want a Mac?

…

Of course I do!

Upgrades

Both Matthew Revell and Sparkes of LugRadio have updated and upgraded their blogs recently. Both have gone with ‘off the shelf’ blog software (Blogger & WordPress respectively), both are using XHTML (only Sparkes’ validates though) and both are using CSS layouts. Good work all round!

Spakes’ moving from a custom blog to WordPress raised a question with me. I have absolutely no evidence to back this up, but it seems that more technical people are moving away from custom CMS/Blogs to ‘off the shelf’ ones. I’ve no idea what reasons they are using, but mine was simply because I had better things to do than tweak site engines all day.

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