Thoughtful, detailed coverage of the Mac, iPhone, and iPad, plus the best-selling Take Control ebooks.

 

 

Pick an apple! 
 
Is it a Unicode Font?

To determine if your font is Unicode-compliant, with all its characters coded and mapped correctly, choose the Font in any program (or in Font Book, set the preview area to Custom (Preview > Custom), and type Option-Shift-2.

If you get a euro character (a sort of uppercase C with two horizontal lines through its midsection), it's 99.9 percent certain the font is Unicode-compliant. If you get a graphic character that's gray rounded-rectangle frame with a euro character inside it, the font is definitely not Unicode-compliant. (The fact that the image has a euro sign in it is only coincidental: it's the image used for any missing currency sign.)

This assumes that you're using U.S. input keyboard, which is a little ironic when the euro symbol is the test. With the British keyboard, for instance, Option-2 produces the euro symbol if it's part of the font.

Visit Take Control of Fonts in Leopard

Submitted by
Sharon Zardetto

 
 

An iPhone in a Blender?

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This is just painful to watch. There's a company called Blendtec that makes a high-powered blender. To showcase its capabilities, they've done a number of hilarious "Will It Blend?" videos that feature a wide variety of objects being subjected to blending. They've destroyed a can of fake cheese, old toilet components, and even a garden hose. But for their latest spin de force, Blendtec put an iPhone into their demon blender, and... well, you'll just have to see what happens for yourself. Don't try this at home, not that any sane person would.

 

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