Apple a Day: Prediction: Snow Leopard release date is June 8

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/business/appleaday/blog/2009/03/prediction_snow_leopard_releas.html

Prediction: Snow Leopard release date is June 8

The prediction is based on his research about when WWDC might be.  Maybe, but WWDC could be a setting for a beta rather than a final release.  I suspect that the ship date will depend more on Mac sales than anything else.  If Mac sales are down, they'll figure that everyone is waiting for Snow Leopard so they'll have to ship something.  If sales are OK, they'll hold off on shipping the OS until they need a revenue bump.

Personally, I want to buy a new iMac, but my practical wife is making me wait until Snow Leopard ships.  She simply doesn't understand the coolness of buying a new Mac on the day it's announced.  She also won't let me have an iPhone just because we can't get AT&T service where our new house will be.

Microsoft boss Bill Gates bans his children from using Apple products... but his wife admits she'd like an iPhone | Mail Online

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1158905/Microsoft-boss-Bill-Gates-bans-children-using-Apple-products--wife-admits-shed-like-iPhone.html

She told Vogue magazine that the couple's three children Jennifer, 13, Rory, 10 and Phoebe, seven, are not allowed Apple products.

'There are very few things that are on the banned list in our household,' she said.

'But iPods and iPhones are two things we don't get for our kids.'

Like any forbidden fruit, however, Mrs Gates, 44, admitted that some Apple products do have the power to tempt her.

'Every now and then I look at my friends and say 'Ooh, I wouldn't mind having that iPhone,' she admitted.

If Guy Kawasaki still worked at Apple, he'd be dropping off a free iPhone for Mrs. Gates this morning, and free iPods for all the kids.

App Management in iTunes ~ concept

Great idea for how iTunes could let you organize the apps on your iPhone or iPod Touch...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wfv0OJ1oMQ

Fotonauts beta

I'm trying out Fotonauts. Here's a widget that displays an album from Fotonauts...

Wanted: Layout System

http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2009/02/17/wanted-layout-system/

All this is why the old "only use tables for layout" argument keeps coming up over and over: strip away the overheated rhetoric and obvious link-baiting, and you find the core of a real need. Because as powerful as CSS can be, table cells do certain things very easily that CSS makes very, very hard. Cells stretch vertically, keeping equal heights as a matter of their intrinsic nature. They stay out of each others' way, while still being allowed to sit next to each other and use any sizing dimensions. They tie their layout to their parent elements, and vice versa.

There are no equivalents in CSS. There have been various very clever attempts to replicate bits and pieces of those capabilities using CSS. What CSS does, it does very well: if you don't need equal-height layout blocks, then no problem. If you do, it's a massive pain. Clever techniques provide substitutes, but can't replace what tables already do.

P. G. Wodehouse's short story: Ordeal By Golf

http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1471/

How few men, says the Oldest Member, possess the proper golfing temperament! How few indeed, judging by the sights I see here on Saturday afternoons, possess any qualification at all for golf except a pair of baggy knickerbockers and enough money to enable them to pay for the drinks at the end of the round. The ideal golfer never loses his temper. When I played, I never lost my temper. Sometimes, it is true, I may, after missing a shot, have broken my club across my knees; but I did it in a calm and judicial spirit, because the club was obviously no good and I was going to get another one anyway. To lose one's temper at golf is foolish. It gets you nothing, not even relief. Imitate the spirit of Marcus Aurelius. "Whatever may befall thee," says that great man in his "Meditations", "it was preordained for thee from everlasting. Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear." I like to think that this noble thought came to him after he had sliced a couple of new balls into the woods, and that he jotted it down on the back of his score-card. For there can be no doubt that the man was a golfer, and a bad golfer at that. Nobody who had not had a short putt stop on the edge of the hole could possibly have written the words: "That which makes the man no worse than he was makes life no worse. It has no power to harm, without or within." Yes, Marcus Aurelius undoubtedly played golf, and all the evidence seems to indicate that he rarely went round in under a hundred and twenty. The niblick was his club.

rumor: Apple Store coming to Augusta Mall

Consider this a rumor, but they're usually right...

http://www.ifoapplestore.com/stores/chronology.html

Augusta Mall - Augusta (GA) - The General Growth Properties mall has 1.1 million s.f. and 134 shops along I-520 and near I-20. The mall just finished an expansion area, which may be where Apple locates. Job listings appeared Dec. 12, 2008. The store could open by July 2009.

PeachMac opened a shop in Evans last October.  We're becoming a Macintosh hot spot!

Super Bowl review

Great game! I was hoping for the Cardinals to win, but it was a fun
game to watch. Congratulations to the Steelers. That 100-yard
interception return was the longest play in Super Bowl history.

At half-time, Bruce Springsteen sounded like he had just made that 100-
yard run. His voice was gone. He skipped the refrains most of the
time, apparently trying to catch his breath. I think he's getting too
old to be bouncing around the stage. "Glory Days" was a fitting
finish to the show. They've passed him by...

50+ Tips and Resources to Improve Your Site’s Speed and Performance

There are some interesting tidbits in here.  With links to tools...

http://www.webhostingunleashed.com/blog/20090121/50-tips-and-resources-to-improve-your-sites-speed-and-performance/

Macintosh 25th Anniversary Reunion: Where Did Time Go?

Guy Kawasaki writes:

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2009/01/twenty-five-yea.html

On January 24, 1984 Apple introduced Macintosh. Many of us who worked in the Macintosh division are now asking, "Where did the time go?" The Division had a reunion at the home of Alain Rossman (software evangelist) and Joanna Hoffman (the division's conscience and first marketing person) to celebrate this occasion, and these are pictures from the event.

Great pictures at the link.