Filed under: Software, Tips and tricks
What's up with July 17th?
'Tis the
weekend, oh members of the Mac Elite, and thus any sort of noteworthy news is woefully absent. So, instead, I thought
I'd share with you a quick piece of trivia, compliments of Chris at Macteens, for folks who always Wondered but never
Knew:The iCal dock icon, when the app is not running, always says "July 17." Why? Because July 17th is the date iCal was originally announced at Macworld New York in the summer of '02. Press release here.
There you have it: one less thing to be curious about. Aren't you glad I'm around?
[via Macteens]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Reem said 1:12PM on 3-18-2006
July 17th is my birthday too!!! For a long long time i thought that I was the only one with july 17th on my ical then figured out it was standard feature. Still feels special though!
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Mickey Herman said 3:13PM on 2-04-2006
I love how you relay stuff from mt to here. Good job!
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Porchland said 3:20PM on 2-04-2006
Now that Apple has finally figured out how to make a two-button mouse, the developers can sharpen their focus on an iCal icon that's always right. Oh, and an HD set-top box.
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Jeff Beck said 3:31PM on 2-04-2006
I personally think there should be a plugin that will update that display based on the date without having the app open.
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ArAgost said 3:36PM on 2-04-2006
I think that having a calendar which is displaying the right date only when open and displaying a wrong one 99% of the time is just plain wrong. I just can't explain it, it's TOO obvious.
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manutd58 said 3:36PM on 2-04-2006
woo tht was my post im big(ish) news haha but seriously that did confuse me a lot
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snale said 3:48PM on 2-04-2006
*obligatory geek corrections*
ArAgost:
It's actually not wrong 99% of the time. 364/365 which equals ~99.726027% OR 365/366 in leap years, giving us ~99.726776. . .
. . . Don't give apple more credit than they deserve ;)
Bets on how long someone will take to correct ME?
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Klar said 4:06PM on 2-04-2006
I had often wondered if it was someone's birthday or something. However, I also think that it is rather irritating to have it display the wrong date when the app is closed.
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fra said 4:29PM on 2-04-2006
Snale : mabey ArAgost was rounding his percentage.
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Brian said 4:40PM on 2-04-2006
Along those line, at the Mac Brainiac challenge at Macworld this year. The teams were asked what the significance was of "Lou 555-7361" and surprisingly, neither team got it right. All three of my friends and I immediately recognized it. (Do I get a star for this?)
While you're reading this, I'd like to make my voice for an update to ical to get rid of the drawer. Thank you.
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snale said 4:44PM on 2-04-2006
fra, if he was rounding, then he would have said 100%, not 99% ;)
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Dan Warriner said 5:07PM on 2-04-2006
thanx dan...always wondered
i guess havin it wrong is more incentive to always have it open and ready
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Wheels said 5:19PM on 2-04-2006
Fra, the way I was taught rounding percentages, any decimal placing that's 5 or higher gets rounded up to the next greater decimal placing (.5% would be rounded to 1%, .05% would go to .1%, etc.). If you are using even percentages, therefore, using that rule, iCal is wrong 100% of the time. Of course, this defies logic, since there is one July 17 a year. So the percentage should be rounded off to the nearest tenth of a percent, which would mean that iCal is wrong 99.7% of the time. This makes sense, but it also points out that 99% is, in fact, wrong.
Not that I care or anything ;)
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John Hood said 5:30PM on 2-04-2006
It also happens to be my Dad's birthday! :-)
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fra said 5:32PM on 2-04-2006
snale: rounding to the nearest whole number, 99 is a whole number last time I checked, 99.726776 isn't. He could have been rounding down though to make his post seem more.. not Mathey?
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Brad said 5:44PM on 2-04-2006
I like to think of it as an homage to my dad and (step)mom. It's their anniversary (7/17/2004), and when I showed it to them, they were amused.
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Jacob Elder said 5:49PM on 2-04-2006
That's a shame. They could have done more than what amounts to an ever-visible Easter Egg. Even if iCal isn't running, iCalAlarmScheduler probably is. Why can't that process keep iCal's Dock icon relevant?
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Conor Hastings said 6:22PM on 2-04-2006
It's actually not wrong 99% of the time. 364/365 which equals ~99.726027% OR 365/366 in leap years, giving us ~99.726776. . .
. . . Don't give apple more credit than they deserve ;)
You're not accounting for the amount of time per year that the application is open.
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Stevie said 9:10PM on 2-04-2006
July 17th is my birthday, so i always thought that Apple knew that about me, or that it was steve jobs' birthday or something a little more cool. ironically enough my name is steve too, oh well. this makes sense i guess. haha. hope they introduce something cool on my birthday some year in the future. maybe a computer that has my name on it or something amazing, maybe i can get it free on my birthday = )
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ChillyWilly said 12:54AM on 2-05-2006
Also, which this is now relevent...
July 17th is Disneyland's birthday. They opened their doors on July 17, 1955.
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