Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Sirius Black and X-Tunes

I got my new MacBook last weekend. I'd been waiting very patiently for the MacBook Pros to come out in something smaller than 15" and the un-pro-ified MacBooks are still a tad bigger than my old 12" Powerbook, but close enough. I went with the black version rather than the white, though I'm bummed they don't have these in titanium. The white ones look a little too Fisher-Pricey for my taste, but the black is kind of cool. And that means I can name it Sirius Black. (Naming is always a very important part of getting a new computer.) Also, the two partitions on my external hard drive are now called Padfoot and Prongs. (Yeah, I'm a Harry Potter geek. So sue me.)

The overall transition has been pretty easy and painless, and I love having a zippy new machine with fewer problems. The only thing I'm really missing that I can't get to work is X-Tunes. That's a little iTunes controller that lets you just hit a key combination and then use Return and the arrow keys to play, pause, skip and change the volume on iTunes tracks. It's absolutely fantastic, but doesn't appear to work on the new Intel Mac system. Not only that, but the email address on the site bounces, so I can't contact the guy who developed it. Phooey. Anybody else know any cool little iTunes controllers like this? I was just going to use the Dashboard widget, but that doesn't accept keyboard commands, which is really the important part.

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