Coursey

Al, the "fonts problem" that Coursey referred to isn't really related to fonts, per se. It's that in the initial release of Office v. X, MS didn't support Quartz text smoothing. That came in the SR-1 updater in June. So mark this one off your list, too.

Quicken 2003 VQS is out!

Some hypester I am; I completely forgot to mention that my latest book, Quicken 2003 for Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide, has been published and is now available from Amazon and at fine book retailers near you. If your local fine store doesn't have the book, it's prima facie evidence that the store could be even more fine. Anyway, I'm pretty happy with the book; I added about 60 pages to the last edition, and beefed it up in two areas that I think needed it, to wit, online banking and handling your investments. If you're in the market for a Quicken book, please check it out.

We're famous

We've both been a bit under the weather, but I see that we were both mentioned on Wednesday at the always funny Crazy Apple Rumors Site. My appearance at Your Mac Life, which was refernced in the CARS post, went well, I thought; it's archived here (streaming archive that requires QuickTime; if you want an downloadable or MP3 archive, check out this page and look for the 10/2/02 show.

Credibility Counts

There's some interesting things here from Stanford University's The Web Credibility Project. The intersection between Web credibility, as they define it, and Web usability is fodder for thought.

Tom on the Radio

Shameless Plug Alert: I'll be appearing tomorrow evening, around 6:45 PM Pacific Time, on the Net radio show Your Mac Life. I'll be gamely plugging my book, Microsoft Office v. X Inside Out. To listen in, go to the Your Mac Life Web site and click on the big microphone.

Two cents on two apps

A tale of two vendors

Vendor one: Tom and I went to NCMUG's Computer Expo a couple of weeks ago, and I got a chance to talk with Michael from Matterform Media, makers of SpamFire. I think that SpamFire is a way cool app, but it still has a number of bugs, so I gently brought up that there were some changes I'd like to see in a future version. Michael demanded (nicely) that I sit down, and he wanted to know everything that I'd like to see changed. He took lots of notes, and looked genuinely interested. While I love SpamFire now, based on his attitude, I suspect that I'll like future versions even more.

Vendor two: these were folks whose product we used for over 2 years. I reported bugs, and every time I did, I said that I could tell them just where in the code the problems were, and that I'd be happy to visit their offices personally and fix them myself. Given that we were early adopters and responsible for a number of other people using their software, I hoped that my contributions would be accepted and used to make a better product for everyone. No dice, so after a lengthy period of time where it became obvious that the company was happy to take our money and ignore our bug reports, we went elsewhere.

Why did this come to mind? I ran into a representative of the latter company here at the OS X Conference, and I mentioned to him that I moved off his app because of the number of bugs and the lack of customer support. His response (and I quote): "Why are you being so rude to me?"

Good companies want to know about bugs and feature requests so that they can produce a better app in the future. Companies that want unhappy customers to go away and take their bugs with them are doomed.

(Okay, I may have been a little intense to him, but what I said was nowhere near as in your face as stuff I see daily about that app.)

Can't get enough?

Interested in hearing more about the OS X Conference? Check out the Mac OS X Conference TrackBack page. All hail Ben and Mena!

Damn them! Damn them all to hell!

Damn Sonnet! I finally finish my session on Building a Cheap, Ugly Mac and those folks release a bunch of new hardware. I have four hours or so till my speech; time to do some fast updating.

New and improved

One of the things I've learned over the years is how to listen to my body and its limitations. Given that I'm supposed to be doing 3 sessions in 26 hours, I've turned the middle session Introducing the Mac User Community to UNIX Developers into a panel. I'm now the moderator, and joining me will be Adam C. Engst of TidBITS, Lorene Romero from the Apple User Group Advisory Board, and Rich Siegel from Bare Bones Software. This is definitely making lemons out of lemonadelemonade from lemons—I think that it will be even better than if I'd just done it myself. See you there!

A code in my node

If you're here at the OS X Conference and you come up to say hi, please don't feel offended if I don't shake your hand or give you a hug. I have a nasty cold which I'm trying to shake, and I'm trying hard not to spread it around. But please do come say hi—just don't stand too close.

Big Geek Award

Sean's taking French 1 this year, and as part of his homework, he has to write single page reports on 4 famous French people.

"I'm going to write one on Napoleon Bonaparte," said Sean, "but who else should I pick?"

"Auguste Rodin" said Tom.

"Jean-Louis Gassee" said Dori.

Tom and Sean agree that Dori wins today's "Big Geek" Award.