Google Earth 4.1

Upgraded from 3.1. Google Earth 4.1 has some new features (what are they?) and has a new navigation control panel:

The old one looked like this:

So far, perhaps until I get used to it, the old version seems to operate much more smoothly.

Complaints!

1) My keyboard often produces double strikes like thiis. In System Preferences, setting Delay Until Repeat to Long doesn’t solve the problem!

2) Apple Mail: Point, press, drag and release the mouse cursor over the messages. This action will sometimes move one message, and at other times simply select a batch of messages. It seems there is NO consistency, but eventually, with patience, persistence, and experimentation, I figured out what is going on. So, my complaint now is that this message-selection-move process isn’t covered in the Help menu.

3) Spotlight: Yeah, cool, shows everything and then some, more than needed. It’s infinitely configurable, of course, but I just want to simply find the file I happen to know the name of. How do I make it work like the straight-forward Find utility of yore? And why should I even have to ask that question? Shouldn’t a simple file-name find be the default configuration until I actually need all those bells and whistles?

4) As long as I’m on this tirade, remember in those days of yore when inserting a diskette of an unrecognized format provoked a dialog box asking if you wanted to REFORMAT! Who’s the blankety-blank who came up with that stupid idea? I know it’s ruined some lives!

Apple (AAPL) Common Stock!

Is this all due to the upcoming iPhone?

Mac OS X passwords

The three to concern yourself about:

Admin

The primary user’s password. Gives access to the entire system, except the private areas of any secondary users.

Master

Makes it possible for hapless secondary users to reset their own passwords. Note: Don’t forget this one because it can’t be re-created!

User

Secondary users need their own password to log on, giving them restricted access to their part of the system.