Off in the sidebar for a long time have been links to some of my articles on AppleXnet. I used to write pretty regularly for the site, but once I got into grad school I didn't really have the time to do that. (Plus, I spend a lot of time writing on my own weblogs anyway, so it's not like I even have material to write about.) But since the recent switch of AppleXnet over to another team, it seems that the migration of older AppleXnet articles to the new site is very low on the priority list.

So, I've decided to post my old articles here. All the content on the old AppleXnet was licensed under the Creative Commons License anyway, so I am free to do whatever I want with it, even though it was originally published on AppleXnet. Sadly, the new site overseers have discontinued the usage of that license.

To look at my old articles, simply browse all the articles in the new "Publications" category. The post date for these articles is pretty close to the actual publication dates on AppleXnet -- they simply are the creation dates of the articles on my hard drive. (The modification date is inaccurate sometimes because I changed the files after they were published to correct a few mistakes.) I've added my earliest 10 articles from AppleXnet so far, with the rest to come whenever I get the chance.

I published my first AppleXnet article in November 2003, with my latest article being in March of this year. (I still hope to publish one or two last reviews on AppleXnet, given that I have prior relationships with companies for whom I promised reviews on the site. Dunno if I can swing the dual-posting here as well, though, for those articles.) In the beginning, I did mostly opinion articles, but then I switched over to mostly tutorial articles and reviews.

I've also put up two tutorial articles on AppleScript Studio that I wrote for OS X Factor, thinking that I would continue on to do a series. Somehow I invariably find myself creating help documentation or tutorials or giving help in forums, and I actually kind of hate doing that kind of stuff. I enjoy spewing vitriolic rants about Microsoft much more. :P

Reading back through these articles, it's interesting to see some of the arguments I made. I make no apologies for some of the ridiculous inaccuracies I've made over the years, as well, including "Why Apple Still Needs Motorola", "Second Coming of the Cube? Don't Hold Your Breath", and "iPod mini needs Mini Price". (I've also written some painful things in the past on my own weblogs, chief among them the one in which I somehow deluded myself into thinking that people would actually pay me via PayPal to run for governor in California's recall election. The idea lasted barely three days. Ahh, idealism. Sometimes I feel like I should delete those entries so there's no evidence of that ridiculous experiment, but I try hard not to deny ridiculous things I've said. This often comes back to bite me 'cause I'm often such a stubborn ass that I don't see the logic in someone else's argument. :P)

One article in particular that you should check out is the one entitled "Rediscovering Mac Gaming". I'm still really proud of that one -- it goes through many of the old games that I used to play a lot on the Mac.

Here are some other choice (and perhaps amusing) quotes:

But one thing's for sure: if Apple wants to continue to be the king of the hill in music services and portable music players, it needs to release a Windows version of the iTMS soon. VERY soon. Not only do Apple's profits hang in the balance, but a fundamental battle is being waged against proprietary formats: AAC vs. WMA. Let's hope Apple doesn't get relegated to the 5% market share it currently has in computers. Apple has a chance to completely shape an entirely new market, and hopefully they're not just sitting around. (source)

Who would've thought that it would be WMA to be relegated to the ~5% market share?

More importantly, however, is in the future. IBM and Apple seem to be tightly knit right now, but that could change in the future. If IBM's sales of its blade servers start dropping off, Apple will be the sole customer of IBM's PowerPC 970 chips. That would mean that the return on IBM's investment in the creation of that processor may be negligible, and IBM could be in the same position as Motorola is in now: focusing its chipmaking business on markets other than personal computers. And if that happens, where does that leave Apple? (source)

Err... IBM? Focusing on other markets? Impossible! The only out that Apple would have is to switch to Intel processors, and that would be horrible!:

At that point, if it ever comes, Apple would be in a really tight spot, and the migration to Intel or AMD processors would be rockier than the transition to Mac OS X. It's doubtful as to whether Apple would even be able to survive such a transition, mainly because all existing Mac software would become unusable. Motorola could turn out to be Apple's saving grace in a situation like that, as horrific as that sounds right now. (source)

Make no mistake: the PPC-to-Intel transition will be a rocky one. Apple might not even survive! *gasp*

On the other hand, developers do have the right to complain when Apple rips off a product and integrates it into the operating system. But not in the case of Watson and LiteSwitch X. If Apple ripped off iBlog and included that in the operating system, Lifli Software would have the right to be pissed. This would be because 1) it would be a new iApp, coming out after iBlog was released, 2) it would not be a natural evolution of any of Apple's existing products, and 3) it is not an essential operating system feature. Could it be that this is why Apple is providing iBlog free for .Mac users, and didn't develop iBlog by itself after iBlog was released? (source)

Yeah, Apple would never make its own website creation application and include it on all new Macs. Never, I say! (Even if they did, Apple certainly wouldn't release their own commenting system! :P )

The first recommendation for a cube reintroduction is as a cheap, headless Mac that is powerful enough to do normal day-to-day tasks, but is cheap enough to compete with the PCs out there priced around $500. But I have to ask the question: does anyone really believe that Apple would introduce such a product? Has there EVER been a period in Apple's entire lifetime that it has mass-produced a cheap Mac? No! Apple has always been a company that produces innovative products but at a premium up-front price. Their profit margins on almost all of their products (including the iPod) have been around 25%. So there's no logic in thinking that Apple will just buck this trend out of the blue by introducing a product that has razor-thin profit margins. That's not Apple's style. (source)

Heh heh heh. I say "G4 cube", you say "Mac mini", let's call the whole thing off.