Buzz Andersen has written an emotional and truthful announcement of his departure from Apple. Congratulations, Buzz! Best of luck to you. You’re going to do great things.

I got to know Buzz online, through his blog and through occasional chat sessions on IRC. As it happens, I moved away from San Francisco just before I got to know a number of people online who I wanted to meet there. But since I visit often, it came as no surprise that I ran into Buzz one day at a cafe in San Francisco’s Mission District. I was sitting with my coffee when Buzz sat down a few chairs away. I recognized his resemblance to an online photo and introduced myself. He snapped this photo of me. Afterwards, we walked down to Mission Street, caught a large street protest, and then I took him to my favorite thrift store.

I was relieved that Buzz didn’t hold any personal grudges against me. After my public critique of his decision to bow out of an interview with Cocoa Radio, he would have been entitled to. He was feeling the pressure of forces inside Apple. I was feeling feisty, probably partly because I had felt similar pressures as he was then responding to. My provocative post was sassy enough to warrant a vendetta, but Buzz showed no signs of holding one. I was grateful for that.

A lot of the themes in Buzz’s blog entry hold true for me as well. The desire to work for such a great company contrast with the lure of indie-freedom. Most people think I’m being dramatic when I say that I have regular dreams about my time at Apple, but it’s true. I have at least one dream per month. Surreal dreams about fantastic Apple office buildings, where my old co-workers behave somewhat more like characters from Twin Peaks. I’m always pleased in my dreams to be back in the comfort of my Apple life. These have become a regular staple in my subconscious life. A replacement for the “showing up to school naked” dreams of earlier years. That company put a spell on me, and it’s not likely to wear off any time soon.

I’m sure it’s true for Buzz as well. As he pulls away from the safety and comfort of that great Cupertino establishment, he isn’t leaving Apple behind. He’s taking a little piece of it with him, to share with the rest of the world. Good news for the world.

Jon Trainer and I were invited to take part in a special CocoaCast episode, where we discussed the delay of Leopard, open source organization, and advice for a community-developed application by CocoaCast’s listeners. We had a great time chatting with Russell. Check it out!

By the way, I mentioned Skim in the podcast, but couldn’t remember its name. I only remembered I had read about it on Michael McCracken’s blog.

No, not a clearance sale, I’m talking about MarsEdit’s support for Markdown, the easy-to-read text formatting language invented by John Gruber. Using Markdown, you can format your text using old-fashioned ASCII symbols like you might have done on bulletin boards or USENET. Once Markdown gets a crack at your asterisks, hyphens, and hash-marks, it translates them into sparkling HTML that will fit right in alongside the rest of your web content.

MarsEdit is an application for editing web content, the vast majority of which is HTML. So naturally it supports editing and previewing HTML text right in the application. But something not everybody knows is that MarsEdit also supports editing and previewing Markdown text right in the application:

(Click for full-size image)

I see Markdown as a response to a major problem with WYSIWYG HTML editors: they overpromise and under-deliver, almost guaranteeing disappointment. If you can get your content to look the way you want it to, you’ll probably be horrified to see the HTML code that has been computer-generated to make it happen. Markdown strikes a nice compromise by providing a predictable set of rules so that you know exactly what you’re going to get.

Most Markdown users configure their blogs to do the Markdown “rendering” as needed for web presentation, but keep the text of the post in Markdown format for easy re-editing. This is where MarsEdit’s “pure text” editing becomes a great asset. What you see is what you send. This makes it great for editing the content of whatever system you’re using. If you’ve got a custom formatting script of your own, just install a copy into MarsEdit’s text filters folder, and you’ll have built-in previewing for your format, too!

While most publishing systems don’t support Markdown “out of the box”, the tide may be turning. As Daring Fireball noted today, TypePad not only supports the technology, but has added a thorough article explaining how to use it. I’m hoping to see increasing support in other systems over the coming months. If your system doesn’t support it by default, do a quick search for “markdown plugin” and I’m betting you’ll find somebody has a solution waiting for you to install.

I love my Apple iPod Nano. This is a product that, even more than my first iPod, has changed my life. The combination of size, style, and ease of use make it so appealing that I’ve allowed it to become a major part of my daily routine. I rarely do a household chore without it, and I always take it with me when walking long distances or working out at the gym.

The product is so good, and I depend on it so much, that when my Nano recently went on the fritz, I wasted no time obtaining a replacement. The “lock” switch had stopped working, and being a geek I thought I might be able to crack it open and convince it to start working again. Pretty soon the whole thing was apart and I had irreparably broken it. OK, I’ll take most of the blame for that. The switch dying was annoying, but I haven’t exactly babied this thing over the past couple years.

I walked 30 minutes (painful, without the iPod!) to my local Apple store, avoided the bad genius, and plunked down muchos dólares for a replacement unit. Since the “black tax” didn’t exist when I bought my first Nano, I had to pay substantially more than before to match appearances, but I did so without hesitation. I learned at the register that I could have saved 10% by “recycling” my old iPod, but at this point the thought of another hour of walking was too much to bear. I’ll save the broken one for a future discount.

See what happened here? I bought a product, loved it, it broke, and then I bought another one. That’s good for Apple. My resilience with this product is high.

My love for the iPod is only possible because I’ve convinced myself to hold Apple mostly faultless for the fact that its standard headphones are utterly useless to me. I buy iPods without anger because I consider the little white plastic-coated electronics that come with the units to be disposable freebies, much like the poor excuse for a mouse that comes with today’s Macs. Little bits of disposable plastic are commonly bundled with products, but at least the little dolphin-threatening 6-pack loops do something useful before I discard them.

My perfect iPod experience is completed by perfect 3rd-party headphones. For the past two years, those headphones were the Sony MDR-A35G “Sport” headphones. See, I don’t like earbuds, because they inevitably fall out. I don’t like little hooks around my ear, because they are uncomfortable and look dumb. I don’t like big foam pads because they’re uncomfortable when running. I like the Sony MDR-A35G because they are light, water-resistant, block outside noise, can be folded up and stuffed in my pocket, and only cost $20.

(In a brilliant move, Sony puts a product code, “MDR-A35” on the product itself which, when searched for at Sony.com, yields no result. Only by looking on the package did I determine it’s actually the MDR-A35G.)

A couple weeks ago my beloved headphones followed the iPod into the great electronics graveyard. After two years of being battered, folded, stretched, worn through rain and snow, and keeping me entertained through countless miles of running, the sound in the right ear went dead. No big deal – I got my money’s worth! I walked out of my way to the local Radio Shack, which is the nearest place I know that carries them. I grabbed a pair from the rack and marched up to plunk down my $20. On the way out of the store I threw my faulty headphones in the trash on Massachusetts Avenue. I was back in business.

The next day, as I widened the headphones’ reach to place them on my head, the plastic on one side snapped, rendering the product useless. (My head’s not that big).

Just bad luck, I was sure. Though I felt a twinge of wonder: was the product being made more cheaply, now? All the same, because I’m a loyal, happy customer, I walked straight back to Radio Shack and paid another $20 for another pair. At this price, it’s not worth quibbling over warranties. In fact I often wonder what the point is of a warranty on a $20 product. When my $2500 MacBook Pro acted up, you’re damn right I’ll wait on hold and ship the product back for repairs. When my $20 headphones disappoint, there’s no chance I’m going to bother. (Which makes it even dumber that Sony requires the odd customer who does apply the warranty pay shipping if they want a replacement).

This time, I was determined to be gentle with the headphones. Perhaps they didn’t “make ’em like they used to,” but I still loved the product. It completes my iPod, after all. I wanted to be a happy customer again, even if it meant coddling the brittle plastic a bit. This was something I was willing to do.

Today, about a week into coddling them, I caught the wire on a doorknob as I was leaving the apartment. Snap! Another pair bites the dust. After two years of happily using a product, I go through two replacement units in little more than a week.

And just like the “snap!” of cheap plastic, so went my customer loyalty. A product that served an integral role in my daily lifestyle, as far as I’m concerned, is now no longer on the market. $20 is affordable, but not if I’m paying weekly! I’m convinced that the Sony MDR-A35G is now a cheap product. It’s possible that I just got lucky with my first pair. Perhaps the cheap breakable version is the standard, and mine just happened to be durable? Or maybe it’s just a huge crap shoot. Maybe some pairs are still durable today, and you need to get lucky.

In any case, I bought a $7 pair of stupid foam-covered headphones from Walgreens. They’re uncomfortable, they don’t block sound, and they look ridiculous. I find listening to my iPod to be joyless, now. Meanwhile, the Radio Shack is a 20 minute walk, and I could have my old lifestyle back for only $20. But I can’t afford to put my faith in a product gone bad.

Earlier today I whined about this on Twitter, and learned that at least two others, EcoChick and Dan Moren, have had similar disappointment with Sony’s headphones. Surely there must be a company that can make decent, comfortable, stylish headphones that don’t break within the first week of use. Any suggestions? I’m a headhones free-agent, now. (And desperately need my old lifestyle back).

Update 5/2/2007: I searched and searched for a “better choice,” but to my great disappointment I found nothing as suitable as the original Sony design. I decided I would try them once more, but take the advice from the comments and at least pick some up from a different shop. Maybe the ones at Radio Shack were part of a bad batch. I ended up buying a similar but slightly different pair from Newbury Comics in Boston. This pair is the Sony MDR-A34, and is in almost every way the same as my beloved A35, except $7 cheaper and in a stylish flat black. Best of all? The band is noticeably more flexible (this might equate with “cheaper,” but it’s working for me). I noticed immediately that they could be comfortably stretched over my head without the slightest fear of breaking. The “Sport” version I had been using before is supposedly good at deflecting liquid away from the earphones, but to me they look identical to these. I think this could be an instance of identical parts being used to build a cheaper and more expensive product.

The real test? I just pulled a majorly clumsy move with my headphones attached. I was kneeling down and stood up quickly, snagging the cord underneath my knee. I gasped as one side of the headphones snapped off. I was sure they had broken, like others before them. But to my great relief and surprise, the portion of the headphones had simply detached from the rest. I snapped it right back on and voila, good as new.

The Sony MDR-A34 are easily my new favorites. So Sony kept me as a happy customer after all, even if I had to waste $60 or so getting here.