Apple on The uber geeks

Chris Fehnel
About, Posts, Website, Photos
Sameer Barkawi
About, Posts, Website

Colin Devroe
About, Posts, Website, Photos

iPhoto ‘08 comes with a learning curve

It has been a long time since I’ve written anything about the iLife suite of applications from Apple, but I think it is time I hop back into the habit of jotting down my thoughts about each application.

Let’s start with iPhoto ‘08 and its usability issues. There are a few things about iPhoto ‘08 that has changed from previous versions, which are not all that apparent and are pretty odd to figure out. Maybe if you are someone that has recently begun using iPhoto, or maybe you’ve never used any of the of its predecessors, and so you’ve not had any of these problems - but I have a feeling that anyone that has upgraded noticed these specific issues.

First thing I noticed is that Quick Look is sort of built-in. Now, by default, when you double-click on a photo, and it blows the photo up to fill the preview area, the only want to “get back” to the list of thumbnails is to click on it again or hit the space bar. Unlike Quick Look behavior in other applications, it does not open a new window. In previous versions of iPhoto there was a “done” button. I must have looked around for a whole 2-minutes before I just clicked on the photo. I am not a fan of this method - but I have gotten used to it.

iPhoto ‘08 - Calendar

The second thing that I noticed was the calendar view is now “hidden” under the search options. I want to state clearly that now that I’ve found the calendar again, thanks to Justin Taylor via Twitter, I really like this implementation much better than the old one. However, finding it was another issue - since I was used to it being in the info pane.

One of iPhoto’s brand new features is Events. Events is really a great way to store photos since iPhoto “smartly” adds photos taken over a specific duration to an event automatically. Lets say you shoot several hundred photos over the course of a few days. One day you go to a concert, the next to a car show, and the final day is your cats in the sun light through the kitchen window - each of them will be stored as an event. From what I’ve seen so far, iPhoto does a fantastic job of grouping photos together.

There is only one problem. I have better than 35,000 photos that were never grouped into Events in iPhoto. So, it has taken me some time but I’m slowly getting my Events view under control as I’ve been able to begin grouping photos together, splitting other sets apart, and creating events. This is something I’ve always done, mind you, but I was using albums to catalog events. I am not sure how long it will take me to get to the point where I can get rid of my albums and strictly use events, but I’m guessing that won’t happen anytime soon.

Importing photos in iPhoto ‘08 is a little slower, it seems, but it is a joy to use. If you have an iPhone, you’ll find that the first time you import into iPhoto it will do a check of your iPhone’s photo database and the photos you’ve already imported into iPhoto. This takes a very long time. Once it is done though, importing photos from your iPhone is really great. Why? Because iPhoto ‘08 shows you the contents of your memory card, iPhone, camera, or whatever you’re importing from and allows you to choose what to import into your iPhoto library. If you’re patient enough, you could use this as your light box to sift through the crappy photos on your memory card, so you don’t even import them onto your computer. Something I wish that I had since I switched to digital just before the turn of the century.

Conclusion

This is by no means a full review, but I did want to point out a few things that may prove a little weird for those of us that have upgraded from previous versions of iPhoto. Overall this update of iPhoto is worth the price tag without a doubt, and I recommend everyone upgrading.

My On-the-Run College Apps

By Sameer Barkawi with 2 reader comments

This is my 6th semester here at Penn State, and my trusty iBook G4 has been with me every step of the way. I can’t say the same for the applications that have inhabited its hard drive, though. I’ve gone through more than my fair share of applications, looking for the ones that worked best for what I wanted. At this point in my career, I can say “I think I’m set.”

I want to preface my selection with this bit of information. I don’t own my own printer. I can’t get myself to invest in something the campus provides for free. So nearly all of my printing is done in the computer labs on campus. This has its benefits as well as its draw backs. Using Mac OS X means I have to either use a Mac, which aren’t always available in the locations I need to be at, or export the file as a more universal type. The majority of my picks are heavily influenced by this.

First and foremost, as a Film/Video major, I need a good script writing application. I’ve messed with everything from the monstrous Final Draft, down to the screenplay template in iWork’s Pages. The program I decided to go with: Celtx. Celtx is an open source application for the budding screenwriter in all of us. It provides me with all the features I can get in the bulkier programs, but without all the glut. It can export scripts as PDF files, which allows me to print from anywhere. The only other program I really considered was Montage. Its only minuses came from an abundance of features I’d never use.

For basic essays and assignments, I stick to trusty iWork Pages. It has the features of Microsoft Word, in the sleek presentation of normal Apple applications. It does what I need it to and exports to *.doc files when I need to print in a lab.

I also do a bit of creative writing. I’m not a notebook kind of guy. I like to put my thoughts down on a screen. Something about it helps the information flow from my head and into words much easier. So I needed an application that would give me the ability to store notes, move them around, and have them all in one place while writing a much larger work. Scrivener gets this done beautifully. It helps me keep track of hundreds of little ideas and notes that a normal word processor can’t handle.
*On a side note, I have actually started using the screenplay template in Scrivener for larger scriptwriting projects.

Another program I’ve come to love is Genius. It is basically a flash card application. I don’t particularly enjoy memorizing facts and numbers. Genius helps me do just that, with minimal effort. Simply plug the question and answers in, and have it deliver a slide show for you. Not only do you memorize via the flash card method, but having to fill in the actual questions and answers is an additional method of studying.

Podcasts. Use them. Nearly every language you can take will have some kind of pubic podcast out there. Nothing helps learn a language then hearing it spoken by native speakers. Search them out and listen to them on the way to class. Not only does it reinforce what you’ve already learned, but helps with pronunciation.

Those are the programs I used to stay productive in my writing and studying. I keep track of school life and work with a couple other programs. I keep up with assignments via iProcrastinate. What I love about this is that it takes advantage of iCal and puts the assignments in as To Do’s. With Leopard’s streamlining of iCal and Mail, I can always see when something is due.

Although I’ve found what works for me, if there are better applications out there, I’d love to hear about them! What do you use to write?

iPhone 16Gb and iPod touch 32Gb now available!

By Colin Devroe with 9 reader comments

Apple has just refreshed their line up of the iPhone and iPod touch, increasing their capacity to store data by double the amount available yesterday.

iPod touch 32Gb

The iPhone has been available since late-June 2007 and debuted in both 4Gb and 8Gb models. The 4Gb was quickly shelved for the larger 8Gb capacity, presumably because sales of the 4Gb were so poor, and now about 8 months later the 8Gb is being replaced by the 16Gb model.

The iPod touch’s story is a bit different. It debuted only 5 months ago and rang in at 8Gb and 16Gb models. Today, the lineup added, not replaced, a new size of 32Gb. My thinking is that Apple still has a fairly large stock of 8 and 16 gigabyte hard drives - and so they’ll work through those until the 8 gigabyte is gone.

Presumably both the iPhone and the iPod touch use the same 16Gb hard drives, so my guess it that we can expect to see the iPod touch available in 16Gb for as long as they offer the iPhone at that capacity.

A note about Apple’s Gigs

Something I’ve found different about the capacities of the iPhone and iPod touch when compared to the original iPod is how Apple is scaling them. The path that the iPhone and iPod touch is taking is slightly different than the original iPod - and I’m wondering if this trend will continue.

If you remember the original iPod was debuted at 5 and 10 gigabytes. The iPhone debuted at 4 and 8 gigabytes. The iPod was then bumped in factors of 10: 10, 20, 30, 40, 60, 80, and finally 160 gigabytes. The iPhone just received a bump to 16Gb while the iPod touch is now available as a 32Gb model.

If I may take a moment to look through the looking glass and see the future; should I predict 32Gb, 64Gb, and 128Gb models of the iPhone and iPod touch? I think a 32Gb iPhone is “a given”, being that the iPod touch is already available in this size and I see no reason (other than price) not to have an iPhone be made available at the same size. However, I do not see this trend continuing beyond the 64Gb models. Call me crazy, but there is nothing sexy about a 128Gb or 256Gb (a capacity not even available for the iPod yet) models of the iPhone or iPod touch. I think once Apple releases a 64Gb iPod touch, they will make the iPhone available as 32GB and they may stop there as far as size is concerned. I do not think that the iPhone, or the iPod touch, will ever have the same storage capacities as the “classic” iPods will.

Looking even farther into the future, when the iPhone is as slim as a credit card and as sturdy as titanium - we may have storage capacities in the 250 or 500 gigabyte range (especially now with the iTunes Music Store allowing rentals that take up a fair amount of disk space). In other words, after 64Gb - we’ll start to see the storage capacities be rounded to at least the nearest multiples of 20 or 50.

So, who is upgrading?

An overview of Delicious Library 2

By Colin Devroe with no reader comments

Our friends over at TUAW.com have scored yet another great video out of the goings on at Macworld. This time they’ve gotten one of the Delicious Monster team, Mike Lee, to sit down and give a pretty broad overview of what is coming up in Delicious Library 2.

Some of the main things that stand out to me during this video are:

Public collections: I think it will be pretty neat to allow people to browse through your collection online. Not only will it be fun, but I can see some useful applications coming out of this feature.
AppleScripts within the menu structure: As Mike Lee says in the video, I’m pretty sure that everyone else will begin to do this very same thing in their applications too. Not only is this good for Delicious Library, but the more applications that do this, the more I think we’ll start to see AppleScripts for your favorite applications popping up.
CoreData: A lot of times the best updates to an application are the ones you can’t really see. I think the best update to Delicious Library is that it now takes advantage of CoreData.

What are your favorite features of Delicious Library 2? Sound off in the comments.

Also see: You can find more information by looking at our coverage of Delicious Library from the past, as well as TUAW’s coverage, and I even featured it on Viddler today.

Enhance Safari’s search with Inquisitor

By Colin Devroe with 2 reader comments

Recently Dave Watanabe released a version of Inquisitor, a Safari plugin that turns Safari’s default Google search box into an asynchronous (or, search-as-you-type) search, that sported some affiliate ads within the results.

Some people didn’t like that.

He then released an updated version that “now explicitly tags product/affiliate links in search results and, furthermore, now includes an user preference to disable these links all together” [source].

I had tried an early version of Inquisitor, and it didn’t really stick. Trying to think back I’m not really sure what it was lacking, but it may have been that at the time I was using a much older system and so perhaps Inquisitor wasn’t as responsive on an older machine. I can’t be sure.

While this whole ‘affiliate link debacle’ was going on, it reminded me that I wanted to give Inquisitor another try and I must say - it is extremely useful and I highly recommend giving it a try.

Key features

Search as you type: Since Inquisitor searches as you type, it is able to give you the “top” few search results and also a few other possible search terms as you type. After using it only a few days, I can honestly say this has saved me a lot of time.
Records number of visits: I have yet to figure out exactly how this works, and if it keeps a record forever, but - Inquisitor will show you the number of times you’ve clicked on a search result.*
Preferences: There are several preferences that you can modify to customize your experience with Inquisitor. As promised, the latest version allows the removal of affiliate links.**

Inquisitor really is a quality product and it saves oodles of time. Dave Watanabe has a few other applications like Xtorrent and NewsFire. Give the most recent version of Inquisitor a spin and come back and let TUG.n know what you think.

– Footnotes below –

* I think the # of visits could be more accurately described as the number of times you’ve clicked on that search result. For other searches I’ve done, which return results to sites that I’ve visited, it doesn’t show this running count. So Inquisitor does not search your history and provide you with the correct number of times you’ve been to a site.

** I leave the affiliate links on. The developer was kind enough to provide this tool free of charge, and so if that is how he’d like to make money on it, I’m ok with that.

The iPhone web apps on my home screen

By Colin Devroe with no reader comments

There are a number of iPhone web apps (most also work fine on the iPod touch) and there are more popping up everyday. Around the Christmas holiday season, there have been reports that Google’s mobile traffic had a huge spike due to new iPhone and iPod touches being given as gifts, and - this traffic surpassed all other mobile devices.

Now with the iPhone’s latest software update, 1.1.3 which enables iPhone owners to customize their own home screens by sprinkling their favorite applications and web applications on them, I think we’re going to see a dramatic increate in mobile web traffic. Side note: To see the latest features available in this software update, you can watch Apple’s guided tour.

So now that I’ve updated my iPhone, what web apps have made the cut? Which ones are on my home screen? Here’s the list so far, and I’m hoping it will grow.

M.gnolia.com is a mobile version of Ma.gnolia. This application isn’t built only for the iPhone, but I think it works the best on one. I use Ma.gnolia on a daily basis, so I love finally being able to use it on-the-go. More on the Ma.gnolia blog.
Hahlo is my mobile-Twitter client of choice. I use Twitter a lot (probably too much) and this is the best web app I’ve found so far.
Google has recently release a new revamped mobile site for iPhone and so I use this for searching, and Google Reader.
Flickr mobile isn’t really built for the iPhone, but their main site is far too heavy to load on AT&T’s EDGE service. So a compromise must be met. I suspect at some point Flickr will release an iPhone version of their mobile site (or maybe they are waiting for someone else to build it for them).

Even though there are a lot of really great web applications available for the iPhone, these are the ones that I’ve found to be the most useful so far. The latest update to the iPhone is truly great and I’m looking forward to what February brings with real applications from third-party developers.