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Back before I was blogging for TUAW, I was a contributor to Hadley Stern’s iPod & iTunes Hacks. After working on that book with Hadley, he was kind enough to let me write articles for Apple Matters for a little bit of cash. Jason, Judith, and Barb spotted some of my writing over at Apple Matters, and that put me on the Weblogs, Inc. radar. Fast forward several years later, and I find myself the Editorial Director of Mahalo.

Hadley has been a great link in the chain of great people who have helped me get where I am today, and I’m happy that our paths are crossing again for a side project that I think will be fun.

This iPhone Matters gig is a calmer pace. About 5 posts a week, focused on one little gadget that I’ll have in my hand. It’s a win win. Now I just have to wait for the thing to be delivered.

UPDATE: Nevermind. I think last night when I was chatting with Hadley about this, I was fooling myself about how busy I actually am. Don’t want to short change him, so I wont be doing this after all.

Also, here’s my pal Randall talking about the iPhone on MSNBC:

w00t! Go, Randall!

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Apple Matters | Safari For Windows.

Hadley’s psychic, yo!

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My friend Hadley Stern, proprietor of Apple Matters (for which I used to write a weekly article), has just launched a new website: iPhone Matters. Very cool. Check it out.

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Hadley just pinged me, pointing this story out. Check out the “helpful instructions” link.

Thanks, Hadley!

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Jason waxes poetic in a recent entry about what the blog-life is like: Walden 3 (or “Utopia as business model”). This is definitely the ideal that we’re all shooting for and would like to see happen, but it’s not the reality yet. There is a buzz in the Weblogs, Inc. camp, however, and we’re all very excited to see things actually heading strongly in this direction.

My lifelong dream has been to work as a writer full-time, working out of my home at my own schedule, and perhaps teach a class here and there along the way. If Weblogs, Inc. keeps growing exponentially, I could see this dream becoming a reality sooner than later.

However, the reality of the situation is that it’s not there yet. Last Spring, I was effectively working 5 jobs: my full-time job, my new blog job at TUAW, my article writing for Apple Matters, the class I was teaching at Iona, and attempting to keep my dissertation afloat. Only one of these jobs was a full-time thing, but they all cumulatively amount to a lot of work and stress.

Now, things have shifted, but I’d say I’m even busier. I’m going through a major transition at my day job, which unfortunately means that I am having to give up teaching the class at Iona. I’ve flourished at TUAW and started writing for other in-network blogs, but alongside that an entirely new writing project that I’ve been working on for a while has come up, and I’ve had to put my work over at Apple Matters on hold. I’ve also had to put my dissertation on hold for the summer for this project. Lots of work and stress, even now.

I’m excited about Weblogs, Inc., and what’s going on in that space, but until it reaches a level of profitability beyond where it is now, it’s not the mainstay. It’s a nice extra paycheck to help ease everything, but it’s not the mainstay. Blogging is the labor of love that I’m doing in hopes that it may someday evolve into the mainstay.

I can see the Utopia, I think we will get there, but right now, I’m still working hard in other areas so that I can stay afloat while waiting for that Utopia to arrive.

I’m tugging on the rope with all my team mates, so hopefully we’ll be able to dock on that island soon.

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Make sure you read this post and all the comments for the history behind it, but Gene Steinberg replied today to a post I made over a month ago about how he was clearly not reading my original Apple Matters article by claiming that I clearly wasn’t reading his article. What was really funny is that he takes issue that I hid my rebuttal on my “personal blog.” Here’s part of my reply:

Man, you really can’t read yourself well then can you? Your critique is filled with points that talk about me rather than the issues I raised in my original article. Actually, you call every point that I make in the Apple Matters piece into question by saying things like “I don’t know if Sample, who considers himself a Mac guru, did that, since it’s not mentioned in the article.” Now, considering that I am a Mac guru, wouldn’t you assume that I did? I mean, that’s not arguing my article, that’s making assumptions about me that imply that I am misrepresenting myself.

Oh, and Gene, if you ever get around to finding this reply, I’d like you to explain the difference between my well-trafficked personal blog and your website where you concealed your original critique of my Apple Matters piece without a heads-up (and just in case you’re not following, that’s what you accuse me of doing in your comment, even though it doesn’t make any sense).

Update: I closed comments on this, because I can, and I’m sick of hearing it.

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Wow. There’s no permalink (update: found a weekly archive permalink), but check out this June 2nd attack on my article:

The case in point is an article from C.K. Sample III, of AppleMatters, where he says he’s really frustrated over some problems he’s encountered with Tiger. In reading his demands that Apple must fix the things “that are somewhat askew,” I find it raises questions that may be better solved by some careful troubleshooting, rather than playing the blame game. Now I’m not even going to suggest for a moment that Tiger is free of maladies of one sort or another, but when you complain about something in an article intended for public distribution, it helps to check your facts first.

I’ve had a lot of negative response from a few (two or three) TUAW readers as well. However, I have to say that they’re all missing the point. Troubleshooting doesn’t seem to work with Tiger right now. Careful troubleshooting doesn’t work because these problems are inconsistently emerging across a series of installs. The only real solution would seem to be a full erase and install of Tiger. That’s a problem.

And one more thing, (I’d write a more thorough rebuttal on AppleMatters, but I honestly don’t have the time), the article isn’t idle speculation made from a little nook and cranny as this ad hominem article implies; it is based on my experience with a number of users’ machines, with my own machine, with many of my friends’ machines, and on a slew of buggy behavior complaints that I’ve read littered across the web. By the same token, I know a large number of people who aren’t experiencing any of these problems.

What I am sick of is people who don’t have a problem (good for you), but who doggedly insist that that means that there is no problem based on their little microcosm of experience. So completely close-minded that it baffles me!

Update: Oh yeah, and by the way: “no version of iPhoto has never crashed for me, ever…” Double-negative. Learn to write. :-b

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I wasn’t happy with my last piece for AppleMatters, so I talked to Hadley today and I am taking a sabbatical from the site. I may do a few guest spots on a podcast or two if the opportunity arises, but I’m taking a break from the writing.

I’m writing like a madman everywhere else and starting to feel the stress of it all. I just need to buckle down and work through this month and then in the beginning of July I get a nice Club Med vacation.

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My Apple Matters rantarticle, Apple Fix Tiger: Waiting for 10.4.2, is up and ready for reading:

Apple seems to be “pulling a Windows.” Rather than addressing the problems in Tiger, they are ignoring them publicly and talking about all the new features to distract us from the truth. They recently announced a new version of iTunes with support for podcasts. That’s great, but where is it and in the meantime why can I no longer transfer pictures and files via iChat since I upgraded to Tiger? Why does Spotlight decide to bring the Finder to a screeching halt every once-in-a-while? Why does iPhoto crash every third time I launch it?

Check it out.

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My new Apple Matters article, Looking Forward to 10.4.1, is up and ready for reading. I wrote it last night, and when I went to post it, the internet ate the post. So, I tried to rewrite it from memory this morning. The current article is a mere shadow of what was first written.

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My biweekly Apple Matters article, Pretty Pleased with Panther, is up and ready for reading. Here’s an excerpt:

With Tiger right around the corner, I thought it would be a good idea to take a look back at the year (and a few months) of Panther. Overall, I’d have to say that I have been very pleased with Panther, and, perhaps as a result, I’m not feeling overly jazzed about Tiger. Don’t get me wrong. I’m interested to see many of the Tiger improvements; however, a good handful of these improvements are already possible in Panther with the help of a few 3rd party gems. And the few things that I despise about the Mac OS X interface don’t show much sign of changing when Tiger comes out.

Check it out.

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Check out the press release: Apple Matters Unveils New Design and Inks Deal with BackBeat Media. I’m all over the place today. Crazy.

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Congratulations to Hadley Stern and the entire AppleMatters crew for the launch of the new site design. Looking snazzy!

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My newest AppleMatters article, The Next Great Apple Peripheral: The PSP, is up and ready for reading. Here’s a teaser:

Okay. So the Playstation Portable isn’t made by Apple. Technically it is made by a PC manufacturer (although from what I’ve heard about Sony, all the separate departments are separate to the point of close to all-out-war on one another). However, I think the PSP is quickly becoming my favorite Mac peripheral. Here’s why:

Check it out. Also, speaking of PSPs, this is cool.

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My article, DVD Jon Versus The Tyranny of the iTunes Music Store, is up and ready for reading over at AppleMatters:

Okay, before you all start attacking me for hating on Apple in this article and / or for not simply banning use of the iTMS outright, let’s get some things straight. I consider the iTunes Music Store, or something very close to it, to be the future of music sales. Also, I haven’t seen a legal alternative to the iTMS that comes close to carrying all the musicians whose music I want to buy and that sells me the actual songs without any sort of rent-for-life…

Check it out.

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MacFixIt mentions the article I posted at AppleMatters a while back:

A Look Inside the iPod Shuffle—C.K. Sample has posted a look inside the iPod Shuffle’s file structure.

Pretty cool.

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My newest AppleMatters article, How to Make a Cardboard Case for your iPod Shuffle, is up and ready for your reading:

Why cardboard? Cardboard is cheap, strong, impact resistant, easily replaceable, bendable, and although it can be rigid, it still has some give. Perhaps most importantly, you can probably find a very suitable piece of cardboard for this project lying around your house or place of work. If you screw up, it won’t cost anything to start over. After you’ve gone through these instructions with cardboard, you can try designing your own case out of other materials.

I botched the measurements a bit, but made a nice recovery with some rubber bands. Check it out.

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My latest AppleMatters article, The Beauty of Free, is up and ready for reading:

I love free stuff. I don’t mean free as in all the PC software available for free that slows down WinXP machines with tons and tons of SpyWare, but free in the sense of nice free productivity-increasing products available for OS X. And, now that Apple will soon have iLife, iWork, and Tiger out on the shelves of the local Apple Store taunting me during each day that passes in which I do not purchase them, I need to start saving up. There’s a tipping point coming where it will be a better move to buy a Mac mini with iLife ‘05 and Tiger included, but we’re not quite there yet, so I need to focus on what I love most and can afford: the freeware available for OS X.

Check it out.

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My article, How to Autofill your iPod Shuffle from your iPod Or iPod Mini, is up and ready for reading over at AppleMatters. An excerpt:

In last week’s article, I took a look inside the invisible folder on the iPod Shuffle and talked about methods for moving your music off of your iPod / iPod mini / iPod Shuffle and back to your Mac. This week, I’m going to walk you through how to set up iTunes so that you can choose to Autofill your iPod Shuffle directly from your iPod, without having to copy all those files back to your hard drive. This is very useful for someone like myself, who works off of a 12-inch Powerbook with only 2GBs of music on my internal 60GB hard drive, but with nearly 32GB of music on my 4G 40GB iPod. These directions will center on the Mac side of things, but everything I’m doing here should be doable on a Windows XP box, so everyone, please, read along.

For those of you without iPod Shuffles, thinking to yourselves, “Who cares?,” think again:

Now—organized nicely in the playlist you created in step 3 and scattered all over your Library—you have aliases (Windoze users know them as shortcuts) to all of the music files on your iPod. Any time your iPod is connected to your computer, they act like any other file in your Music Library: you can play these songs, organize them into playlists, burn them to CD, or right click on a song and choose “Show song file” to open up the window that contains it again for easy drag and drop to another location.

Free your tunes!

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This week’s AppleMatters article, A Look Inside the iPod Shuffle, is up and ready for reading over at AppleMatters:

I realize that we’ve already shown a dissection of the iPod Shuffle here at AppleMatters, but what I haven’t seen is a look inside the iPod Shuffle’s file structure. Let’s do it.

At the end of the article, I note:

This is also the same type of procedure you would use for fishing songs off of your regular iPod / iPod mini. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to figure out how to write a script that will use these commands to auto-fill my iPod Shuffle from my regular iPod…

I’m serious about this. My scripting skills are at the level where I know how to run basic copy commands to automate the transfer of songs from my iPod to my iPod Shuffle. What I don’t know how to do is to run a random search that also determines how many songs can be taken from point a and shoved into point b. If anybody has any ideas, please let me know. Also, if you are a most industrious coder than me, please feel free to take this idea and make it yourself. Just send me a copy when it is done. Thanks!

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