SafeSheep

So, leopard went into SafeSleep mode for the first time today, and I have to say, it has improved since tiger. Instead of a black screen, there was a black and white blurred image of my desktop with a progress bar superimposed on it. Cool.

Apple down ten. Why?

Apple fell ten points Friday, and I just realized why.

When it came to me, it felt so obvious. Apple is down ten points because investors saw Google fall. They thought that Apple would fall further and saw an easy way to flip some Apple stock around the iPhone Europe launch. Or they thought that it would be safer to pull out their money. Then, I looked at this chart:



I looked at that chart and the Google Finance chart and saw that Yahoo used a semi-logarithm scale. If I extrapolate a line from the log scale I get this:



There always seem to be a small dips before the holiday selling seasons. I think that this may just be normal behavior for a stock as volatile as Apple's. What the log chart does not show, and what Google's does, is that Apple has gotten more and more volatile. More people investing means more that can change.

If I extend the extrapolation line, Apple stock would hit $200 per share by their second quarter in their fiscal year.

I realize that ten points is nothing to overanalyze. I am just trying to justify the dip as normal for the time of year.

I've been thinking...

I've been thinking... why doesn't Apple name their final builds of Mac OS X "Golden Delicious," not "Golden Master?"

Leopard and HUD panels

With Leopard's release, apple decided to integrate those black transparent panels as a feature within Interface Builder. This means that it will be much easier to do "cool looking" black panels without the work involved before: a custom subclass of NSPanel, rewriting the background view, making the title bar work again, etc.. However, one thing that I fear is that too many people will use them and we will get a Vista-like windowing problem of not being able to tell what window is on top. I think that the main thing UI designers should recognize is that Apple uses these panels sparingly. By just thinking about where I saw them I can think of two places: the quick look panel and the image adjuster panel. Nowhere else. Without the proper restraint we will have applications use them when not aesthetically wise, such as with a normal inspector-like panel. These kinds of panels are good for when you want something to stand out and you do not have very many controls on it. Like most things, when used sparingly and tastefully it works well, when overused it utterly fails.