Hi all,

As those who hang out on the IRC channel are aware, this afternoon I depart in order to undergo brain surgery. During a visit to the dentist in July for what I thought was an infected tooth requiring extraction (turned out to just be a bad sinus infection), a CT scan was done. As an incidental finding to this scan, a colloid cyst was found within my third ventricle. The cyst measures at 1.3cm x .9cm.

Tomorrow, I am scheduled to undergo the removal of this cyst. 99% of the time these are found to be non-cancerous, typically gelatinous in nature. The risk of not removing this cyst is a sudden shift which could lead to rapid-onset hydrocephalus and even sudden death if it blocks the ventricle.

I wanted to post a picture of a mug and letter I received from Jesse on behalf of DonationCoder and express my sincerest thanks for him taking the time to rush this to me prior to my departure for the hospital.

Melissa will be posting updates online and I am sure Stephen will be more than willing to transcribe the here.

Thanks again for the support from the DoCo team and I hope the procedure tomorrow is uneventful (minus the removal of my brain-born hitchhiker).

- Josh sends

Audio quality aside, how many of Apple's primary target demographic actually care that much about studio quality or better audio? How many are downloading FLAC files or FLAC-HD files and hoping for top quality playback while listening to audio on a mobile device? The technophiles of <insert technology here> will always take issue when a major shift takes place in the tech realm. However, unless you are talking about a tech-specific manufacturer (Monster audio, Bose, etc), most consumer-level products will adapt and provide "Good enough" quality.

When you walk around and see people listening to music or sitting somewhere listening to a book/watching a video with headphones on, what do you see? I see one of two things: I either see people with the "Factory standard" Apple earpods or I see some form of "Beats by Dre" design headphone. I rarely see top of the line headphones while people are out and about. Something tells me this is Apple's target market and is who they are really after. As I said above, the technophiles in ANY market will always cry foul when a technology is changed which hinders their investment. It happened with DVD (Yes, I remember a lot of VHS junkies complaining about the cost and transition) and then again with Blu-Ray. Heck, we still have folks who state that a turntable is far superior to any digital format.

As for the NSA and DRM groups, I am all for more control on the consumer end of what we can/can't do with property we purchase. We absolutely need groups looking out for the consumer and we need to maintain our rights. That said, I still don't see this as a major issue. Does digital audio create a chance occurrence of more integration of DRM? Absolutely. But, with the transition, led by Apple, away from DRM-based audio, will this likely occur? Apple pushed many manufacturers to eliminate DRM from audio and provide their audio files DRM-Free. I can still download any file from Amazon, Apple, and various other audio sources and use it anywhere I choose. I can transcode it, back it up, and even alter it in any way I see fit. Unless we get to a point where these DRM-free files are restricted to a certain device (as in you cannot transfer them off), then I fail to see where this will become an issue. I really doubt the NSA cares about controlling what you listen to or monitoring it, for that point. Many fail to understand exactly what the NSA's job is and how they operate. I am not an apologist for the NSA, Apple, or any other organization, but I do try and level the extreme views of any side, or in some cases paranoia, with a well-rounded logical balance.

Disclaimer: I own an iPhone and MBP. I only own the iPhone because the Nexus was sold out for 6 months as I waited to buy it from Google.

Summary of major new features
Full support for high-DPI (e.g. 4K and 5K) monitors.
Redesigned Rename dialog, with new features like:
A unique macro recorder, which lets you perform complex batch renames without regular expressions.
Enhanced scripting capabilities.
Better handling of recursive renames and filename clashing.
An Apply button which lets you perform multiple renames without closing the dialog.
 
Improvements to the Image Viewer including:
Configurable toolbar and hotkeys, including the ability to run arbitrary commands on the current image file.
A new image marking system which makes it much easier to sort through a folder of photos to identify the ones you want to keep, print, share, etc.
A read-ahead cache for faster image loading.
An integrated metadata panel which lets you edit EXIF and other metadata from within the viewer.
 
Enhanced file and folder labels including:
The ability to assign more than one label at once (label attributes are combined).
Label categories (lets you organise your labels into groups).
Adjustable label priority (for when more than one wildcard or filter label applies to a file)
A new status icon system that lets you assign one or more status icons to each files (e.g. to track which files are ‘done’, ‘watched’, ‘urgent’ or ‘to-do’).
 
A manual sorting mode that lets you sort your files and folders exactly how you want.
An integrated dialog editor that lets scripts create their own complex user interfaces.
File display enhancements including:
Vertical folder tabs (displayed down the left or right side of the file display).
You can assign your own tab colors for specific folders.
Optional vertical as well as horizontal gridlines.
Relative size and age graphs displayed as the background of size and date fields (rather than requiring their own column).
A new “show everything” mode to quickly disable all filters.
 
Improvements to Folder Options including:
Configure column widths to expand and fill the usable space in the file display.
A column filter makes it easier to find and add the columns you want.
File and folder name filters can be configured using regular expressions if desired.
 
File copy improvements including a transfer speed graph in the progress dialog.
Toolbar enhancements including scrollbars and distinct labels in drop-down menus.
Lister layouts can now be arranged into folders and sub-folders.
… and as always, much, much more!

-What's New

Directory Opus 12 has been released