Elegant Chaos

Because I have to suffer the ignominy of using Windows every day at work, I'm starting to develop a wish list Mac features that are missing from Windows that would really, really make my life easier.

With the combination of my normal desktop pattern, Yahoo widgets (formerly Konfabulator), and Object Dock Plus to replace the task bar, I've now got something that looks and feels quite familiar.

But there are two things in particular that I really miss.

- built in spell checking in all text fields
- some sort of "default folder" style file history in "open" and "save" dialog boxes.

UK Judge: Who needs software patents?

EU Software Patent Argument to Reopen?

Recently, my iPod has started flaking out on me. I can no longer connect to it via Firewire (although weirdly, it does charge when connected), and it is also losing charge rapidly.

Strangely, the USB connection does work - suggesting that there's something more subtle going on that a broken connector port (although of course it might just be partially broken).

Anyway, these things happen, and I've had it for 2 years so I wasn't overly distraught. It's out of warranty, but Apple have a servicing service, so I thought I'd give that a go.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that they were proposing to charge me nearly £170 to service a two year old 2nd generation iPod. I can get a new one for that!