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New United Parcel Service software aims to cut delivery time and save fuel…

Ultimately, the software could save UPS millions of gallons of gas each year and about $50 million in the United States in fuel costs, Perez said. It's one of many adjustments UPS has made to save time and fuel. Since 2004, the company has discouraged drivers from taking left-turns on their routes, saving millions of gallons of gas. And in the past year, UPS has been implementing keyless trucks, so drivers don't have to waste time searching their pockets for keys.

Is that the stuff that tells the UPS driver that the best time to deliver a package to my house - a package that's been on his truck since 5:45am - is 7:35pm??? 🙂

Twitter is branching out with custom timelines. It'll be interesting to see how this is used and/or how it's abused.

Wow.

Their Reaction
And what did Misha (or staff) from MacUpdate do on the other hand?

1. Removed the "Featured" red highlight for all Koingo applications on MacUpdate.
2. Deleted every 3+ star review on every Koingo app on MacUpdate, but left all the bad ones.
3. Posted "MacUpdate does not recommend software from Koingo Software" tags on all of our product pages on their site
4. Continually sent messages to customers saying we reneged on our end of the deal. Of course, failing to mention there was no formal or official agreement in place. Failing to mention he did not go through any official channels. Failing to mention that he did not strike a deal for version 3. Let alone having any signed agreement with anyone who has signing authority at Koingo.
5. Ignored us when we sent numerous CEASE AND DESIST orders to MacUpdate staff to remove our copyrighted works from MacUpdate.com.
6. Claims we're "re-writing history" because he misunderstood what was being offered and that he should've just used the proper channels. Just because you've misunderstood, sir, doesn't make it right to throw out allegations like that.
7. Continually attempts to append our Wikipedia page with negative propaganda.

I've only ever had one bad interaction with MacUpdate, but it was over a decade ago ((Wow, seriously, it's been that long.)) when they listed closed beta software with a link to download what was clearly not an app for public consumption. The head of MacUpdate at the time was a different person, I believe, but the above - if you read the story I linked to with "Wow" - is quite appalling if even half of it is true.

"We live in a decaying age. Young people no longer respect their parents. They are rude and impatient. They frequently inhabit taverns and have no self control."
- Inscription, 6000 year-old Egyptian tomb

"When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly disrespectful and impatient of restraint."
- Hesiod, 8th century BC

"What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?"
- Plato, 4th Century BC

"The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint… As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress."
- Attributed to Peter the Hermit, AD 1274

I just got an email that Garmin was sending me a 620 watch (I asked for orange and white) to replace my 610. The 610 they sent in exchange for a review that I wrote long ago, but they made no mention of reviewing the 620.

It's no secret that I haven't been running much lately. The counter on the right sidebar hasn't incremented in months, and though I've run a few times without my watch, it's nowhere near a regular event the two or three months. I've had the usual excuses ((Additionally, the last time I went out, I strained my right arch and it's just now feeling better.)) - it's been very rainy, windy, and I'm busy - but there's nothing like a new toy to re-spark the desire and willpower. I always enjoyed importing my runs into rubiTrack and looking at the data, seeing whether I'd improved, and trying to push the run totals. At one point I ran at least a mile a day for 100 days in a row. That's small beans to a lot of people, but it was important to me. I don't feel that I'm really built to be a distance runner.

As usual, DC Rainmaker has a great review of the 620. My 610 was nice, but I like the changes made to the 620, particularly ditching having to run that ANT+ app with the little USB stick.

This issue (large, bitmapped looking paper clip attachment icons) is not fixed in the Mail 1.0 update for Mavericks. 🙁

On the bright side, this is a nice article on the changes in Mavericks Mail.

A friend/co-worker and I will be self publishing a book soon. Good quality, paperback, 200 pages or so.

We've found 48 Hour Books and an order of 1000 with the options we'd like (200 BW pages, 70# white paper, 12pt CIS Silk Cover) comes out to $4,454.50. They're also in Ohio so we could probably pick up the books ourselves to save on shipping costs to us.

Any other options out there? It's just a black-and-white book (text, BW illustrations) with a nice cover. 200 pages or so.

Apple's done something it's almost never done before: quell the rising tide of people unhappy with the latest versions of iWork apps for OS X with this article: About the new iWork for Mac: Features and compatibility.

More of the backstory on the backlash can be found here.

In rewriting these applications, some features from iWork ’09 were not available for the initial release. We plan to reintroduce some of these features in the next few releases and will continue to add brand new features on an ongoing basis.

Some features in upcoming releases in the next 6 months

Wow. Virtually unprecedented for Apple.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone says they could care less.

Safari 7 on OS X Mavericks (10.9) crashes regularly ((Not quite 100% of the time, but north of 80%.)) when I edit posts (of my own or anyone else's) on sites like http://thesandtrap.com/f/ or other sites that use the Huddler "Rich Text Editor."

An example crash log is here on PasteBin: http://pastebin.com/F6R0JxXp. It is not a hardware issue, as the crash is repeatable on over 20 machines that I've been able to test, including several that haven't been changed from the factory (Apple) configuration.

Additionally, Safari (and my other software) is rock solid otherwise - the vast majority of crashes I see these days are in Safari when doing this type of editing.

Here's a video showing two such crashes:

The only two extensions I regularly have enabled are YouTube5 and 1Password, but turning off extensions still results in this crash: http://pastebin.com/2EAQ8BwR.

If any Apple engineers would like for me to test anything for them, I can screen record and document the process.

Graphing Calculator Story is well worth five minutes of your time if you enjoy reading about the history of Apple before it became, uh, what it is now.

Every time I forget how much I love good photography, or powerful photography, The Big Picture pulls me back in.

That link is "Autumn Around the World 2013" and the first picture may be one of my favorites. It's tough to choose, though, as they're all always good.

Just a few posts on the new iWork suite of apps that came out with Mavericks:

• Pages 5: An unmitigated disaster
• Why does Apple get rid of so many useful features in new Pages (Apple Support Communities)
• Pages 5 features checklist (Apple Support Communities)
• Whither iWork?
• Michael Tsai - Blog - Numbers ’13 Performance
• With iWork, Apple Walks It Back Before Moving Forward
• Exploring the New iWork for Mac File Formats — Pixel Envy

The phrase "the same file format for both Mac and iOS" is used on the pages for all three products. It was highlighted in Apple's keynote. It's important.

Without all versions of iWork using the same data format, true interoperability is impossible. In the previous versions of iWork you would lose some formatting & data when moving from Mac to iOS.

Then…

The fact that iWork on the Mac has lost functionality isn't because Apple is blind to power users. It's because they're willing to make a short-term sacrifice in functionality so that they can create a foundation that is equal across the Mac, iOS, and web versions. It will take time to bring these new versions of iWork up to parity with what the Mac used to have. In the meantime all platforms have to live with the lowest common denominator.

Lots of folks are getting all worked up about iWork being “dumbed down,” but it feels like a reset to me. I can see this playing out pretty much like Apple’s recent Final Cut Pro X re-thinking. That app was introduced in a radically simplified and streamlined form that caused immediate outcry. Over time, Apple has steadily added back features that were missing from the early dramatic redesign of the pro video-editing suite. A handful of mishandled decisions like pulling the old version of FCP too soon caused unnecessary friction there, but recent updates to FCPX have made it a very viable choice for professionals again.

Here's to hoping…

Signing and Mavericks:

Very simply put, you can no longer sign a bundle (like your .app) if any nested bundle in that package is unsigned. These nested bundles are things like helper executables, embedded frameworks, plug-ins and XPC services.

The result is that you'll need to update your Xcode projects as soon as you start building on 10.9. It's taken me several days to understand what these changes are, and with the help of Perry Kiehtreiber on the developer forums, I'd like to share what I've learned.

I'm still working on the problems explained in this post: Safari 7.0 in Mavericks Cannot Load iBooks Store, Twitter.com, PayPal.com.

I created a new admin account called "Test" that works fine. When I say "fine" I mean I can do these things, which I cannot do on my account:

• Load both PayPal.com and Twitter.com in Safari
• Load the iBooks Store
• Click on the magnifying glass to show a Safari download in the Finder

If there was an easy way to move my files to the new user while keeping everything (username, user ID, etc.) as I like it, I'd do so.

Currently, I plan to use the new account as a test. First I'll boot to another drive, rename my ~/Library, and copy the Test user's Library into my account, then boot into it. If that works, I'll slowly pull things across to see when/where the "breakage" occurs.

P.S. Happy Birthday to my wife. She's now in her "late 30s." 😀