From a former Apple genius 

Of all the comments on the hard drive, and there have been hundreds, this one explains it best.

I'm sorry to hear about your experience at the Apple Store. I was a "genius" for a year and can assure you that the policy regarding HDs was frustrating to us as well. In warranty it wasn't so hard to justify, but out of warranty customers often had a problem with it. My recommendation to them (and to you) is the same. AASPs often do not have the same contractual obligations with HD manufacturers that Apple does, so they may very well let you keep it. If you still wanted to have it done through an Apple store, take a magnet to it before you hand it over. The techs have better things to do than trawl through your personal data (there are exceptions, of course), but if it sets your mind at ease- go for it. Honestly, I would do this in your position because I have read of people getting reman drives with other people's data still on them. But that would have nothing to do with Apple and everything to do with the companies contracted to remanufacture the HDs.

Twitter's business model 

When I was in college, professors used to ask questions that are much harder than the question Allen Stern asks in this piece.

The NY Times crossword puzzle is harder.

Geez, installing a new hard disk in a MacBook is harder, and as I've found out that's pretty easy.

Okay what is Twitter's business model?

They give away access to the API only to find that add-on devs have a business model selling Twitter clients while Twitter itself is left sucking air.

And this is some kind of problem?

We should all be so lucky.

Here's what you do if you're Twitter.

Distribution.

How much you want to bet that Twitteriffic reaches a very small number of Twitter users.

Twitter, of course, reaches every Twitter user.

So what could be easier than to offer to sell everyone a client that makes Twitter work a lot better?

And of course Twitter would be entitled to some of that money.

Now, imagine that Twitter was really ambitious and they wanted to design a cell phone around Twitter. One that could make phone calls and play MP3s and do SMS but also had Twitter baked in.

Okay, so you can't imagine Twitter getting into the hardware business or being a cell phone service provider. But what if one of those did a deal with Twitter, or even bought Twitter? Then you'd be paying a monthly service fee to use Twitter, and might have chosen TMobile or Sprint over Verizon or AT&T because they have Twitter and the other guys have Microsoft's ripoff of Twitter. Or Google's. I think there's a premium for being the original guy, if you play it right (I never do, but Evan Williams does this pretty well.)

Anyway, there are lots of ways for Twitter to make money once there are enough users. And right now their business is to grow and their first priority is to stabilize their service. This isn't based on inside knowledge, but comes from reading the tea leaves and applying common sense.

I never learn 

Okay I wanted something for Christmas and I didn't get it, so I decided on 12/31 to buy it for myself. I opted for one-day shipping which meant it would arrive on 1/2, which is today.

So I was following it on the Amazon site, as it made its way from Louisville to Oakland to San Pablo, to oooops.

I don't know, is it just me, or are we getting too deep into this computer thing.

New FlickrFan feature 

Change #21: Subscribe to a Flickr tag.

Makes it easy to subscribe to new Flickr pictures that are tagged with snowstorm, for example.

FlickrFan and the Mac desktop 

Here's an interesting Howto on connecting FlickrFan to the Mac desktop. I love this stuff.

Here's a movie that demonstrates this coolest of hacks.

Update on the missing disk 

Looks like I'll get the drive back soon.

Update: I got the disk.

First I got a call from the Emeryville store, then I got a call from a person in Apple Executive offices (she gave me her name and number, but I'm not going to publish it here).

I'll report back when I have more info.

PS: The number of idiotic comments has gone way up.

Mike Arrington told me... 

Mike told me it would be okay to use Firefox 3 beta on the Mac.

So I am. So far so good.

Firefox 2 was starting to hang every five minutes.

But one of my critical plugins doesn't work in Firefox 3.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh.

Software sucks.™

I just realized something 

There are no more big holidays looming over the horizon.

Whew...

Glad that's over!!

PS: If I could be Emperor of the Universe for five minutes I'd outlaw all holidays in November, December and January and would declare that everybody should be nice to everyone all the time, no matter what season it is!