Thought I'd try a new regular feature for Onlineblog, taking a look at some of the emails and comments that have come into us over the past week.
Obviously the constraints of space in our treeware edition mean we can't publish everything that comes our way, but we do try and read everything that comes in to us via our email.
You'll be able to see our weekly letters page tomorrow. But in the meantime, here are some of the past week's talking points.
Time to switch
Top of the agenda, unsurprisingly, was the decision by Apple to switch to Intel chips from IBM-manufactured PowerPC ones. Further to the coverage here on the blog, Jack's piece got a mixed response.
Though Christiaan Briggs said it was "a nice summary of events", some readers pointed out that the Universal Binaries mean programmers won't necessarily have to code an Intel and a PowerPC version of OSX software. Ian Hobson said "this is not dissimilar from what Apple did when porting from [Motorola's] 68xxx to PowerPC in the 90's, whereby so-called Fat Binaries did the same".
Steve Lepper made the same point, claiming there was "only a nodding acquaintance with fact", and pointing out that "Cocoa" applications (like iLife) already run on both systems, and Adobe and Microsoft have committed to producing Universal Binaries.
Finally there was some concern about the idea that the new system will be built to run old Mac applications "fast enough".
"That sounds suspiciously like an interpreter to me, not usually close in speed to compiled code in my experience," said Roger Kidley. "'Fast enough' is a vague enough term. 10 times slower? Two? 100? I think we should be told."
Golden oldies
The ongoing saga of older people and computers continued, too. Originally riffing off a piece by Online's editor, Victor Keegan, the discussion on whether technology patronises older users just won't go away.
"The ageing techies who accuse Vic Keegan of being patronising do not realise that he was not addressing them, but people who come to computers and the internet in their 60s and 70s," said Richard Sarson. "For normal human beings, the whole technology is still as 'user-friendly as a cornered rat', written by teenage techies for teenage techies. "
The irony, of course, is that few of our outraged older readers realised that Vic is probably older than they are. He must be mighty pleased with his byline photograph.
Any other business
There was also an issue with the suggestion by one reader last week who spoke about Lord Byron's role in the history of computing.
An editing error on our part changed a line in the letter so that it stated - incorrectly - that "the first programmable computer was operated by Lord Byron, not too long after the Battle of Trafalgar". The original letter actually stated that Lord Byron's sister was, in fact, the first. But that's still wrong, as Andrew John Poulter was at pains to point out.
"Byron's daughter Ada, Countess of Lovelace, [who worked for Charles Babbage] does have an important place in the story of computing machines," he told us. "However, the first practical, 'programmable', general-purpose, computers were not created until the 1940s."
And last but not least, somebody with a question about Onlineblog.
"Is it me,"asks Greg, "But with the new style template for the blog, it's missing the links to, say, Techdirt and other blogs... or have they gone somewhere else and I just can't find them?"
Well, Greg, it isn't you. We dropped a few aspects of the old blog - including our linklist - when we ported over to this new design. And we're hoping to reintroduce them in the near future, in some form or other. Hope that helps.
Remember: if you've got any questions, queries or points to make about anything you've seen in Online or here on the blog, please email us at online.feedback@theguardian.com, or leave a comment below.
