Cyberlaw Central

I’ve been a Mac user since college, but I’ve been an Apple user since 4th grade when I got my first Apple, an Apple II+. I now have both a Mac Powerbook and an Intel-based machine running Windows XP. Okay, enough about my credentials to be able to talk about this news.

Today’s news out of Apple that it is switching from IBM’s PowerPC chips to Intel’s Pentium chips is something that could have only been an April Fool’s joke in other years. It’s truth, though - Steve Jobs made the announcement today at the Worldwide Developer Conference in San Diego. He showed off a Pentium 4-based Mac running OS X. Apple will make the move gradually, over the next several years. There are still new Macs in the pipeline that will use IBM’s PowerPC chips. By 2007, Jobs expects all Macs to be using Intel’s chips.

It’s a great step for Apple, hopefully it’s a way for it to survive in the future with a bigger market share. Apple has been great at its software innovations, much better than its fame for hardware-based innovation. It’s true innovation isn’t in the specs, it’s been in the design. Macs have always been different due their focus on the user experience, from the wonderful experience of opening the box to see the care to which the machine is so carefully packaged, to the way the operating system works as an extension of the experienced user’s thoughts. Once you know where the basic menu commands are, you can intuitively know where to find controls even in a program you’ve never used before.

I have noticed the lack of comments, which may have been because for a while the software was set to only allow registered Blogger users to post comments. Well, I’ve fixed that - anybody can now. If that grows to be a problem with comment spam, well, then I’ll rethink that. The only comments I will delete are those which are offensive or spam.

Blogs are designed to be a conversation, so I look forward to having a discussion with you.

Thanks,
Kevin

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Thanks!
Kevin

I learned through Library Stuff (originally courtesy of Dave Winer) that the U.S. Copyright Office has added four RSS feeds to its website.

The feeds are:
* Copyright Office Home Page
* NewsNet
* Federal Register
* Current Legislation

I’ve already added the first two of these to my RSS news reader, it’s a great new way to keep up with news at the Copyright Office. Kudos to the Office for making such a great resource available.

As a lawyer, I rely on my digital devices to aid me in my practice. I enjoy learning, and I try to find ways to incorporate that into my routine. As an example of how this works in my daily life, here is what happened last Friday:

1) Kevin J. Heller posted at his Tech Law Advisor blog, the “Broadcast Flags” case decison came down just that day. (Thanks for the quick post, Kevin!)
2) I followed the link to the decision, and downloaded it in PDF.
3) I synched the PDF to my Palm.
4) I was then able to read the decision on my Palm while commuting (via the train.)

Total elapsed time in having this hot off the press opinion in a readable format was less than five minutes.

The internet is a wonderful tool, and being capable of timeshifting continuing legal education materials is a godsend.