notes.husk.org. scribblings by Paul Mison.

Apple Settings Pro Tips

If you’ve ever been annoyed at the large gaps between volume settings on a Mac, help is at hand:

If your keyboard has volume keys, [to] change your volume by smaller increments, hold down the Shift and Option keys as you press [them].

This trick also works for brightness. Meanwhile, shift alone also does something: you can temporarily toggle the “Play feedback when volume is changed” setting.

One thing I haven’t found documentation for (although I’ve not looked particularly hard for it) is that holding option with a function key brings up its preference pane. For example, option + brightness opens Keyboard, while option + volume opens Sound and option + Exposé opens, well, Exposé.

[Edit] I’m told this works on 10.5 as well, while option + key works back to 10.3.

Some Thoughts On Cr-48

Yesterday Google previewed its “pilot program” test notebook, the Cr-48.

Some quick thoughts, mainly on seeing the pictures.

• Crumbs, doesn’t it look like a black 13” MacBook circa 2008?
• A VGA port? Upside: compatibility, no dongles. Downside: huge, analogue
• The mousepad appears to be buttonless, like newish MacBooks
• No function keys
• No caps lock (replaced, naturally, with a Search key)
• Only two meta keys (Ctrl and Alt). No Windows key, but no replacement either
• The cursor keys fill the space, so left/right are bigger than up/down

I’m not sure if I’d use one, but I’m sure people in the office have put their names down for the lottery and if there’s one place in the world where I can pretty much seeing one in the next few months, it’s here. It’ll be interesting to watch.

Kindles and bookshelves

This should probably form part of a Five Things post, but Marco’s just written about how cheap the Kindle is:

Amazon is selling a lot of these. And at that price, it’s no wonder: $140 is barely more than many iPad cases.

(It’s £110 in the UK.) Seeing that, I thought it was worth relaying this thought (I think) Chris Heathcote mentioned in passing last week:

A Kindle is cheaper than a bookshelf.

Admittedly, that’s not true if your bookshelves are the Ikea Billy (as low as £29!), but if you’re comparing it with something from, say, John Lewis? It’s about right. And forget those fancy designer shelves. That’s nearly into iPad territory.

OpenOffice.org Mouse seems real

Yesterday saw the announcement of, and incredulous reaction to, the OpenOffice.org mouse, specifically designed for users of that app.

Many people doubt it’s real, especially as the images of it are renderings, but along with the protestations on the blog, there is other circumstantial proof that, even if it doesn’t end up as a shipping product, there seems to be an actual prototype.

The press release talks about a launch at the OpenOffice conference. There was indeed a session about the mouse, and if you suspect that even the conference was faked, there are (a very few) pictures. Then there’s the discussion of the mouse on the OpenOffice.org mailing lists. Perhaps this is enough to convince the true sceptic, but for me, it’s enough: someone really wants to ship this.

The product itself leaves me with something of a sense of awe, even if most of that is at how misguided the project feels. This is a mouse so complex you can export the configuration as a PDF, that allows you to trigger 70-odd actions at once, and which allows you to set the DPI sampling level. Really, it’s so much the opposite of the Mac mouse philosophy¹ that it’s difficult to truly wrap my head around it. I can see why other people can’t believe it either.

¹ Full disclosure: my favourite mouse ever was the classic ADB Mouse II, the single-button teardrop design that shipped as standard with Macs throughout most of the 1990s.