As I get older, I find myself yearning for a simpler, less complicated life. It doesn’t feel like that long ago when I couldn’t quite understand the phrase “they don’t make them like they used to,” but lately, I find myself echoing that sentiment over and over. Several weeks back my wife and I stepped foot inside an antique store and as we walked out (nearly two hours later) we were both surprised at the nostalgia and sadness we felt. So much has been lost for the sake of advancement and technology — and I’m afraid that the price we will ultimately pay will be too high.
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I am absolutely flabbergasted! About two weeks ago I ordered some flowers for my wife on our anniversary. They were slated to arrive on a Friday before we went out of town, but it turns out that even though I got the delivery confirmation email, my wife couldn’t find anything outside our door. I was confused (and frustrated) and decided: oh great! These guys delivered it somewhere else.
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I still shudder when I recall the pain-filled days of OS9 freeware/shareware applications. They were often very good, but they were so few, and ran on a crash-prone operating system. Those were truly dark days.

Things are looking much better these days though. The mac developer community is alive and well, and they keep pumping out fantastic software that makes macs even more pleasurable to work with. There are few tasks out there, in fact, that don’t have at least one or two solid freeware/shareware apps to handle the work. Here is a short list of some of my favorites:
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Now that I’ve had the opportunity to play with Leopard on a daily basis since its release, I have a clear idea of what things I love and what things I loathe about the upgrade. I’m happy to report that for the most part, I still feel like Leopard is a solid and worthwhile update, but there are some annoyances I have yet to get used to.

Downloads Stack (Thumbs up)
This seemed like a nice idea when I first played with it, and it has only gotten better since. I didn’t realize just how much junk i download on a daily basis, and the fact that it sits there quietly waiting for my next move is so…polite. My Desktop doesn’t look like I sneezed files all over it, and I haven’t lost anything yet. The fact that it’s a system-wide feature is an even bigger plus.

Mail (Undecided)
I’m still undecided on the new upgrades to mail. I have yet to use notes (I honestly can’t think of what I’d use them for) and have had limited results with the To-Do items (perhaps because I’m constantly feeling behind on the list anyways). I can’t say that I’ve noticed much difference in Mail - and if anything else, I’m discovering that Mail is quickly becoming my arch-enemy - not because of the program itself, but because I have too many emails, and too many accounts. Ugh.
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As I was casually surfing the web today It occurred to me that I should check out Adobe’s Lightroom application to see what the reviews on speed and reliability look like (more on this later). So as I pointed my intraweb picture-looker machine to Adobe’s site, I was surprised to see that they have finally given their home on the web a much-needed facelift. My frustrations with Adobe’s site are plentiful and extensive, so I hope this new implementation takes care of at least half of them.

I have yet to understand their archaic and overly-complex AdobeID mechanism - as if I don’t have 3000 other “special” ids I have to remember already! Don’t get me wrong, I understand the need for these logins, but there are simpler and friendlier ways of handling those, and I look forward to the day where OpenID rules the intraweb!