Charles on… anything that comes along

Nice piece by John Gruber over at Daring Fireball: You Can Choose Any Color You Want, as Long as It’s Black on how Microsoft, within a day, changed its advice on how you can get music bought from the MSN Music Store (in the US, bought with Internet Explorer, on a Windows PC) to play on an iPod (bought with iTunes, on a Windows or Mac).

Splendid stuff. Meanwhile I think I’m going to look into this iTunes affiliates stuff. With that and some Google AdSense, who knows, perhaps I’d be able to afford a Starbucks from time to time.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• My latest at the Guardian: why Internet Explorer is like the Tower of Pisa (3 February 2008; score: 26.27%)
• Clay Shirky: scarily clever (15 January 2009; score: 23.17%)
• Leopards and spots (24 July 2004; score: 23.13%)

The fascinatingly-titled Apple Knowledge Base document How to pick up and carry your iMac G5 is another of those random ones which pops up from time to time, evidence that some of the guys in Cupertino have a sense of humour. (Clearly some sort of wry wrinkle in th character of Chris Espinosa, who oversees these things.)

It reads, pretty much in whole: Pick up the iMac G5 by grasping both sides of the computer. Carry it to wherever you wish.

Umm.. fine. But realise that while it may look like a large mostly-empty pizza box, that thing is heavy. It’s 18lb (8.5kg), which comes as a surprise when you’re expecting just an LCD screen.

Interesting design decision not to have the power block (a step-down transformer, and hence generator of much heat, surely) separate. But that’s been Apple’s approach since.. forever. Contrast HP and other companies, where laptops for example have the step-down transformer outside the machine to reduce the amount of heat they have to dissipate.

So anyway, just pick the damn thing up. But remember, straight back, look ahead…

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• Neenaw: "999, which blogger do you require?" (18 June 2006; score: 34.35%)
• The %! curse of overusing percentages (21 August 2006; score: 32.71%)
• A neat problem for Fraser (31 August 2007; score: 30.61%)