These are lower threshold links to stuff I've recently enjoyed.

• The Macalope On MacBreak Weekly - "Yes, it’s true. The Macalope will be on next week’s edition of MacBreak Weekly." The MBW crew seems to remain convinced that I am the Macalope. Tune in this week, and we shall see...
• Daring Fireball: iPhone SDK, iPhone SDK! Wherefore Art Thou iPhone SDK? - Gruber's analysis seems spot-on to me: with a product this big, it pays to manage expectations and hold out the possibility of an unpromised lagniappe or two.
• How to talk to the press | fortuitous - Mathowie talkes to the press a good bit more than I do, so I learned a lot from this. Love the tip about listening for frenetic typing.
• Jonathan Coulton » Blog Archive » How I Did It - JoCo tells the story of how he got where he is with his music and the internet. Essential reading for those who want to go indie on the web today. Would love to see more of these from other folks as well.
• Rosetta Stone for Unix - (PDF) - Ginormous table that lets you compare commands between different flavors of Unix. (via: adurity's bookmarks on del.icio.us)
• MailTags 2.0 leaves beta, goes official - The sine qua non Mail.app plugin goes 2.0. Can't imagine using Mail without this guy plus Mail Act-On.
• Twitter Blog: Are You Twittering @ Me? - "In other words, if somebody Twitters "@biz liking the new Replies tab!" it will get saved at Twitter.com/replies." I love this feature. I can't keep up with the (gulp) 2,300 folks who've been kind enough to "friend" me, but at least now I can see when they're saying something in my direction. Very cool.
• Facebook | Merlin Mann - In related news. I succumbed. Largely because of this awesomeness. (links require Facebook membership)

Submit your ideas for links to del.icio.us, and be sure to include the tag "for:43folders."

Here are the final 5 episodes of MacBreak I reported from the Macworld Expo floor this week:

• MacBreak 59 Macworld 2007: Show Floor Tour de Force - (MOV) - 11:38 - "Alex and Merlin round out our coverage from the Macworld 2007 expo."
• MacBreak 57 Macworld 2007: MemoryMiner - (MOV) - 08:01 - "Merlin interviews the creators of MemoryMiner."
• MacBreak 56 Macworld 2007: Macworld with Merlin, cont'd. - (MOV) - 11:02 - "Merlin continues his tour of the show floor, speaking with Dan Moren from MacUser, Brian Johnson from Microsoft and indulging in his most relaxing interview."
• MacBreak 54 Macworld 2007: Bare Bones Software - (MOV) - 09:23 - "Merlin chats with the folks at Bare Bones Software, makers of BBEdit and Yojimbo."
• MacBreak 53 Macworld 2007: Cocoalicious - (MOV) - 05:11 - "Merlin speaks to the developer of cocoalicious about his del.icio.us client and the software possibilities of the new iPhone."

Here are the previous 4 segments and here's a pointer to all of MacBreak's Macworld coverage.

Thanks to everybody at Pixel Corps who put this together, and most special thanks to everyone who talked with us, came to the meetups, or just said hi on the show floor. It was a really fun week for me.

You can ensure you never miss an episode of MacBreak by subscribing for free.

Two recent articles in the New York Times would seem to put to rest -- at least for the foreseeable future -- any hopes or speculation that the new iPhone will be allowed (nb: I did not say able) to run third-party OS X applications (previously: 43F Podcast: Snell & Gruber on iPhone applications and Let OS X developers at the iPhone. Please.)

Regrettably, the word on this one comes directly from the Steve's mouth (2007-01-12):

“We define everything that is on the phone,” he said. “You don’t want your phone to be like a PC. The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn’t work anymore. These are more like iPods than they are like computers.”

The iPhone model, he insisted, would not look like the rest of the wireless industry.

“These are devices that need to work, and you can’t do that if you load any software on them,” he said. “That doesn’t mean there’s not going to be software to buy that you can load on them coming from us. It doesn’t mean we have to write it all, but it means it has to be more of a controlled environment.”

David Pogue's seemingly exhaustive iPhone FAQ also underscores what we'd been hearing via these drams of dolor (2007-01-11):

Can it run Mac OS X programs? –No.

Can I add new programs to it? –No. Apple wants to control the look and feel and behavior of every aspect of the phone.

Well, there you go. Apple appears to be on the path to providing its iPhone customers with a pantry full of excruciatingly beautiful crockery and flatware that may never be set down for chow. (But you can bet we'll always know it's there -- even while we're eating takeout with our assigned spoons).

Spectators at the iPhone Display
Originally uploaded by x180.

Wonderful photo by Duncan.

Sixfoot6 Archives: 30 Things the iPhone Could Do That You Haven't Thought of Yet

Ryan's list contains a lot of the tear-inducingly sexy fantasies that were going through my own mind on Tuesday morning when we all heard that the iPhone was going to run OS X.

Like a lot of my friends, I (probably naively) took the announcement to mean that, as on my own Mac, I'd be able to install Cocoa applications built to take advantage of announced features like WebKit, Core Animation, and so on. Sure, given the foreseeable hardware limitations, these wouldn't be the exact applications that we're each running on our MacBooks today, but, hell, I'd take "OmniOutliner Mobile" or "iTerm Lite" or "Textmate for iPhone" in a heartbeat. No question.

Yesterday morning, though, I started to hear rumbles about the "inability for users to install additional applications of their choosing." And then later, after Brian from Gizmodo got a hands-on demo along with a sit-down with official Apple honchos, he noted...

It isn't OS X proper, as you'd expect. And like an iPod, it won't be an open system that people can develop for. Remember, this is both an iPod and a Phone.

...and I died a little inside.

Jason Snell and John Gruber on iPhone applications

Merlin talks with MacWorld Magazine’s Jason Snell and DaringFireball.net’s John Gruber about the likely future of applications for the recently announced iPhone. Who will be allowed to play? How does it affect the ostensible competition? Will this end up feeling more like a phone with an iPod, a Mac with a phone, or something altogether different? (5:48)

Grab the MP3, learn more at Odeo.com, or just listen from here:

iPhone size comparison
Originally uploaded by freshyill.

Slenderlicious.

Apple - QuickTime - Macworld 2007 Keynote

Apple - iPhone

Wow. Everyone here in the MacBreak war room is still perspiring as we let it all sink in. OS X. On your phone. Damn.

So what do you guys think about Steve's announcements? What surprised you? What else do you wish you'd heard? What do you think it will mean to have running OS X on your mobile phone?

MacBreak Weekly 11: iPhone Home

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Amber MacArthur, Scott Bourne, and Merlin Mann

The iPhone starts to look like the real thing, and Scott Rejoices. iPod celebrated five years... with a Windows Virus. And dating tips from Steve Jobs.

Running time: 1:22:45