While I probably won’t get an iPhone for a long time, I have toyed with the idea of getting an iPod Touch, just to get some of the functionality. Well, the iTunes Remote may be the application that pushes me over the edge. Remote control of your iTunes Library from your iPhone or iPod Touch? Sold! Oh, and the new iTunes 8.1 allows friends to request songs on iTunes DJ. Come on, how cool is that?
For you Mac users out there, I am pleased to announce that my favorite browser OmniWeb is now available for free! It has a ton of cool features that I can’t live without. One of them is Workspaces, which are saved collections of open web pages that you can easily switch between. These workspaces can be automatically saved while browsing, so if you need to quit the application (for example, if you need to restart), all of your open web pages will be restored the next time you launch. For someone like me who has multiple pages open at a time, this is a huge time-saver!
OmniWeb also has lots of preferences for ad blocking, and all preferences can be set on a per-site basis. So I can adjust the ad blocking for a particular site, or I can do tricky things like telling my banking site that I am using Safari so it doesn’t give me the “Your browser is incompatible” warning every time I log in. Set it and forget it.
My favorite OmniWeb feature is website shortcuts. For any site I visit frequently, I have set up a two-letter shortcut, so whenever I want to go to Penny Arcade, I just type “pa” in the address bar, and I go right there! You can also set up search shortcuts, so if I want to find a book on Amazon, I just type “am thomas sowell” and the search results show up. A Google search is “g”, Wikipedia is “wi”…you get the idea. You would not believe how much time it saves! And all of these are compatible with Quicksilver, so I can jump to Facebook from any application by typing “command-space, fb, enter”. It is really convenient.
There are a bunch of other little interface niceties that I probably just take for granted by now, like tabs with little thumbnail previews. But in any case, you can’t go wrong with OmniWeb 5.9. And it’s free. Go try it out.
I was considering liveblogging during the Macworld 2008 keynote, but then I decided it would be easier to direct you to one of the other blogs already doing it. So if you’re interested, point your browser at Engadget for their usually excellent keynote coverage.
Finally! After what seems like years of iPod ad campaigns, Apple is finally starting to advertise the Mac again with their Get a Mac ad campaign. It looks like theyre finally trying to summarize the Macs advantages over the PC in short, 30-second sound bites. If you havent already seen the ads on TV, you can check them out here.
As always, the analysis at Daring Fireball is inspired and insightful. For more about Boot Camp and what it means for the future of Apple, start with Windows: The New Classic, then continue on to Several Asinine and/or Risky Ideas Regarding Apples Strategy That Boot Camp Does Not Portend. Good reading and thoughtful analysis.
Ask, and it shall be given unto you! No sooner did we start a discussion on price comparisons between Macs and equivalent PCs, then someone comes along with an article stating that the equivalent Dell laptop is $1000 cheaper than the MacBook Pro. Of course, someone on the Mac side did a more detailed comparison, and found that the MacBook Pro is actually very price-competitive. Then the next day, when Apple announces that they will be shipping machines with better performance than previously expected, he updated the comparison. All are interesting reads.
Edit: The first Macworld article also has links to three previous articles comparing the Mac Mini with a comparably-equipped Dell. Those are also worth reading, as they cover other issues such as configuring hardware, specifications, and the value of certain “intangibles,” such as bundled software.
And for those of you who like to read obsessively-detailed review, here is Ars Technicas look at the new Apple mouse.
First Apple decides to switch to using Intel processors, and now a multi-button mouse. Has Hell ever frozen over twice in such rapid succession?
Ive mentioned Delicious Library before, created by Wil Shipley. Now that Mike is leaving the company to go work for Apple, that leaves Wil as the last remaining founder. You can read a fantastic interview with Wil Shipley on DrunkenBlog. Very interesting stuff.
As always, there is a good article about the Apple-Intel deal at ArsTechnica.
For the Apple faithful (or anyone who is interested in a next-generation operating system), Mac OS X Tiger is available today. Apple Stores will have an event from 6 pm to midnight, so you may want to get in line now! While you’re waiting, you can discover the operating system’s new features, read Ars Technica’s always excellent in-depth review, find out about the lawsuit over the Tiger name, or look at the various downloads that already take advantage of the new OS functionality (including a Dashboard widget for searching your Delicious Library media). You might also want to read Slashdot, which provided links to many of these articles, and also offers reader commentary on each.
So the other night, I’m sitting at home, reading a few web pages, and just generally minding my own business. Suddenly, I get an invitiation to an audio iChat. (For you PC users, iChat is the Apple version of instant messenger, and it supports video and audio chats.) Since I didn’t know the person requesting the chat (their name was a mishmash of letters and numbers), I refused, but out of curiosity, I sent a text chat back to the person, just to find out who they were and why they were trying to contact me. Actually, what I said was, “Yes?”
“sorry - just at the mac store trying to test this…”
The Mac store? Interesting! Still curious as to how they got my name, I asked them which Mac store they were in.
“ginza”
…
…uh, Ginza? As in, Ginza? Why would someone from an Apple Store in Japan be sending me an iChat?? He said he just clicked on a name, and was hoping it would give him a tutorial or something, then he apologized for bothering me. I was understandably curious as to how someone halfway around the world ended up sending me an anonymous audio iChat…but before I started inquiring about how he got my name, I decided to attend to higher priorities first. Specifically, the guy was at an Apple Store, trying to get a Macintosh demo. Hey, I may be curious, or puzzled, or amazed by the prospect of an random international connection, but above all else, I am an Apple evangelist, and if he wanted to get a Mac demo, then come hell or high water, I was going to give him one!
To make a long story short, there was some problem with the iSight on his end, so we could only connect with an audio chat, not a video chat. Over the course of our text and audio discussion, I found out that he used to live on both L.A. and Santa Barbara, and went to UCSB from 1993–1998. (I myself attended from 1992–1994.) From there, he got some voiceover work in L.A., then eventually moved to New York, and from there, to Japan. I thought it was an odd coincidence that we had both lived in Santa Barbara, and he said, “I think that Santa Barbara is one of those beautiful places in the world, and once people have lived there for a while, they always remember it and want to go back.” I thought it was a nice sentiment, and very true, at least in my case.
So anyway, we said our goodbyes, they thanked me for the demo, and that was about it. Oh, and how did they get my name in the first place? I took a guess, and it turns out I was right: My good friend Bobby, who is now living in Japan, happened to visit that very same Apple Store, where he entered in my information, hoping to get a video chat with me. And once he was finished with his test, he was either unable or unwilling to delete the information. So there it remains, in the Apple Store in Japan, just waiting for someone to click on it and start an iChat with me. I’m hoping that next time it will be a video chat. I think that would be pretty cool.
“Quarterly Revenue & Net Income Highest in Apple’s History.” Apple sold over 1 million Macintoshes during the quarter, and over 4.5 million iPods, which represents a 26% and a 525% increase in sales, respectively, over the year-ago quarter. To put it in real terms, net profit was $0.70 per diluted share, versus $0.17 for the same quarter in the previous year.
In other words: whoo-hoo!
Here is a quick rundown of the new announcements from Mac mini: At 6.5 inches wide and 2 inches tall, it’s the cheapest Mac ever. It comes without a monitor, keyboard, or mouse, so you can either plug it into your existing Mac hardware, or your PC gear. There are two configurations: A 1.25-GHz G4 with 512MB and a 40GB hard drive for $499, or a 1.42-GHz G4 with 512MB and an 80GB hard drive for $599.
iPod shuffle: This is a flash-based iPod that is designed to compete in the low-end MP3 market. To accomodate the smaller size, the device does not have a display, so you either have to listen to your playlist in order, or in shuffle play. Smaller than a pack of gum and lighter than four quarters, you can get a 512MB model that holds 120 songs for $99, or a 1GB model that holds 240 songs for $149. I predict that this one will sell like…well, like iPods.
iLife ’05: The new iLife suite comes with a new version of iPhoto that provides more functionality for editing your photos, new slideshows, and new photo books, including three new softcover versions; iMovie HD that lets you do HD editing within iMovie, and adds many new features; iDVD 5 with, again, many new features; GarageBand 2, which provides real-time music notation, vocal effects, and the ability to change keys on recorded tracks just as you would with loops; and the latest version of iTunes. iLife is $79, and will be available on Friday, January 20.
iWork: iWork is a productivity suite that contains two applications: Pages, an application that lets you compose professional-looking word-processing documents easily, including the ability to have themed documents; and the new version of Keynote, which adds new transitions, new themes, and other new features. iWork will sell for $99, and will ship on Saturday, January 21.
Final Cut Express HD: The new version of Final Cut Express provides HD editing, and includes the new version of the LiveType titling application.
Mac OS X Tiger: Many new features of Tiger were featured, including fast Spotlight searching across the entire computer; the ability to play slideshows of pictures from within Mail; smart folders in the Finder and Mail that automatically update to include new content; and Dashboard, which provides cool widgets to access information on the fly. Tiger will be available on the first half of 2005.
Through a convoluted connection, I discovered Longhand, a calculator application for Mac OS X. And by “calculator,” I mean “an application that calculates things,” not “an application that works like a real calculator.” It really is a cool idea: Instead of typing numbers and operations in sequence to get an answer, you type an equation as you would in a word processor, and the result is calculated in real time. Want to change the first operator from a plus to a minus? Just edit it; the result is automatically recalculated. It also supports variables, in case you really want to get complex. I’m going to try it and see how well it works, but so far, it looks pretty powerful.
Ars Technica has a wonderful review of Delicious Library, the wonderful Mac OS X program for cataloging DVDs, CDs, video games, and books. Along with a thorough review of the application, its target market (read: collectors) and its potential, there is some discussion about the Macintosh experience of installing and using new software.
If you dont have a Mac and dont want to wade through the multi-page review, just jump directly to page 4 and look at the screenshots, particularly the close-ups at the bottom of the page. The attention to detail is amazing. This is an application that caters to the person who wants to organize and display his collection, and you can tell that the developers worked to make something that is both easy to use and looks nice.
Delicious Monster has posted a sneak peek at their new Mac OS X program, Delicious Library. Delicious Library is a cataloguing program that lets you track and organize your library of books, CDs, DVDs, and video games. Among the cool features: a visual bookshelf that lets you see the covers of your collection as they would appear on a real bookshelf; a system that uses iCal and Mail to let you check out an item, then notify the borrower when it is overdue; and the coolest feature, using the iSight video camera as a barcode scanner, where all pertinent details and cover art are downloaded from the internet. The developers claim that using this scanner, you can enter 750 new items an hour! Anyway, it looks really slick. Expect a full review when its finally available.
Macworld has a great interview with Greg Joswiak, Apples V.P. of Hardware Product Marketing, talking about the various design elements in the new iMac G5. Definitely worth reading if you care about elegance in design.
After a long delay and lots of rumors, the new G5 iMac is finally available! The previous desk-lamp form factor has been replaced with a new design reminiscent of the Cinema Displays. Apple is also playing off of the iPod in terms of style and design, which is a nice touch. So now, all the consumer-level machines have a polished white finish, and all the professional-level machines are brushed aluminum. Apple does know how to design nice machines.
The new iMac comes in a 17- or 20-inch widescreen display, with either a 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz processor. Prices start at $1299 for the 17-inch 1.6GHz model, all the way up to $1899 for a 20-inch 1.8GHz model. The system itself is only two inches thin, and can even be wall-mounted. Toss in a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, maybe some Airport Extreme wireless networking, and you have an elegant system that you can put just about anywhere.
In the tradition of sudden and unexpected announcements (at least, unexpected to some of you), Apple today announced the latest iPod. This one is notable for several things: First of all, it features the elegant Click Wheel, first seen in the iPod Mini. If you havent seen one, the Click Wheel (patent pending) is a touch-sensitive scroll wheel that can also be clicked to go to the menu, go forward or backward one track, or play and pause. It is much better than the previous iPod, which used touch-sensitive buttons. While they looked nice, they were a little too sensitive and lacked any tactile feedback, so users would often themselves accidentally skipping tracks when they picked up the iPod or brushed it accidentally. The new Click Wheel should take care of that problem through Apples traditional elegance in design.
Other features include a new Shuffle Songs top-level menu item, 12 hours of battery life, a slightly thinner body than the previous generation (the new one is 0.69 inches), and a new $399 price point, which is $100 cheaper than the previous 40GB model. That new price point is a little misleading, however, since the new 40GB model no longer includes a dock or the remote and headphones, each of which runs another $39. I commend unbundling those items from the new iPod though, just because many people might have a dock from a previous iPod, or a set of perfectly good headphones, and they shouldnt have to pay more for something they wont use.
Another day, another round of great new Apple products. It seems like every one is more momentous than the last. This latest keynote was for Apple’s 2004 WorldWide Developer’s Conference, so it naturally focused primarily on Tiger, the new version of Mac OS X which is due out next year. (They had some posters up advertising Tiger with phrases like, “Redmond, we have a problem,” and, “Introducing Longhorn.” I thought it was quite clever.) But before the new software announcements, there was one significant hardware announcement…
Yes, the rumored 30" Apple Cinema Display HD was finally announced. It offers a mind-bending 2560x1600 resolution, although at a seemingly unattainable $3299 price tag. Still, for those who can afford it, it seems like the perfect tool for the video editor or Mac enthusiast. It still might be a little out of my price range for the time being, so I’ll probably have to settle for the redesigned 23" display. Oh, and the new smaller enclosure is the perfect complement to the G5 case design.
I honestly didn’t expect to see this one. So, how could Apple top their already revolutionary iChat AV? Why, with the new Tiger version of iChat AV, which has several significant improvements: First, it uses the new H.264 Advanced Video Codec, which provides a much higher video quality than the current version, over the same bandwidth; secondly, the new iChat allows up to ten people to chat over audio simultaneously; and finally (and most significantly), it also allows you to video chat with up to three other people at the same time! And not content with that new feature, Apple implemented their traditional UI flourish to multiple video chats, where each person’s picture is placed in a pseudo–3-D environment, complete with a black floor that reflects the video chat! (Check out the screenshot to get an idea of what I’m talking about.) When Steve demoed it, I literally said, “You have got to be kidding me!” It’s that cool.
Spotlight is another cool feature that looks to revolutionize the way people use comptuers. The simplest explanation would be that Spotlight is a systemwide search function that returns results immediately. To go into a little more detail, Spotlight searches for text strings in the filename, subject line, sender field, copyright information, or even the contents of files themselves. In the demo, the search string was “Pixar,” and it pulled up all files with Pixar in the copyright information. Or when searching for “Half Dome,” it found a PDF file about Yosemite, where “Half Dome” was listed in a tiny font in one part of the file. You can search for text, or contacts, or all files that have been modified in the past week that contain “blog,” or any of a number of other combinations. And when you’re done with your search, you can save it as a Smart Folder, which will always contain all files that match that search criteria. Extend that to Mail, and you have folders that contain, say, all flagged email messages that you received at your work address in the past week. I’m going to find this technology very handy.
The new Dashboard is basically the Mac OS X version of Konfabulator, which is a cool application in its own right, but has a few UI deficiencies that Dashboard improves upon. Remember the old desk accessories from the first Mac OS? Dashboard is basically a collection of those, but all stored on a layer that can be accessed at any time, on top of what you are doing, and then dismissed just as easily. So you can pop up a calculator, check your stock prices, check the weather in Glendale, then dismiss the widgets and get back to your work. And it looks like these widgets will be easy to create and customize, since they are based on JavaScript and HTML.
Another cool technology that looks like it has a lot of potential is Automator. Automator is basically a visual interface for putting together complex scripts, called Workflows. You select from a number of different Actions, string the results together, and you have a sequence of repetitive tasks that is performed for you automatically. The example that was used in the keynote was finding all thumbnail images on a certain web page, pulling up the original images, saving those to a folder, importing them into a new album in iPhoto, applying filters to each picture, putting them into a new slideshow with a Cube transition, then sending that slideshow to iDVD to be burned to a DVD. The entire workflow took about two minutes to set up, almost completely with drag and drop, and the resulting workflow can be used to pull images off of any web page for archiving to DVD. And if you still don’t get my explanation, check out the web page for more information.
Finally, the new version of Safari has support for RSS feeds. In case you’re not familiar with it, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and an RSS feed contains the content of a given web page, without all of the extraneous formatting and layout. For example, the RSS feed for this site (currently available on the “Syndicate this site” link on the right-hand sidebar) contains the text of this article, along with category and author information, but none of the other text styles or sidebar entries that you see on the main page. So a program that can access these RSS feeds is able to organize content from a variety of different sources, and present it in a simplified layout that lets the user find the data he wants more quickly, without having to wade through various web pages. If you haven’t used it, it’s the future of web surfing, and I’ll try to talk more about it at a later date.
I go away for a few days, and suddenly Apple has a bunch of new announcements! There are the new speed-bumped G5s (the top-of-the-line machine is now a dual 2.5GHz for only $2999!), but that’s not the big news. The big news is something that is so simple, yet so groundbreaking, that it’s amazing that no one has thought of it before.
I’m talking of course about the new Airport Express, which is simply a cheap Airport Extreme (802.11g, for you PC users) wireless base station that plugs directly into the wall. Instead of buying a $250 base station, you can buy this $129 device that does most of what the base station does. It can be used to extend the range of your current wireless network, or you can pack it along and have wireless access in a hotel room or at a friend’s house. And it also has a USB port, so you could wirelessly share a printer between multiple computers.
Not revolutionary enough? Well here’s the best part: It has an audio jack. So you plug it into the wall behind your stereo system, run the audio jack to the stereo, and you have an instant wireless network for streaming music from your computer to your stereo. Or plug one in to a socket in the kitchen, add a pair of powered speakers, and you have you entire music collection in the kitchen. It’s such a simple idea, but at the same time so revolutionary. Take your entire music collection, and just play it wherever you want, anywhere in the house, simply and easily. It’s brilliant, which is the kind of thing that Apple does best.
So as you may know, I just got back from working at NAB, the National Association of Broadcasters convention. I was there for two days, and worked two morning shifts in the Apple booth. The rest of the day I had free time to wander around the show floor, but I actually spent most of my time back in the Apple booth, watching the demo presentations and trying out the new apps. Here’s a quick summary of what caught my eye:
Both of my shifts were spent demonstrating Final Cut Pro HD. I had to fake my way through a few things, because I work primarily on Final Cut Express, but overall I think I was able to show the product off really well. The HD support is excellent, from 720p24 all the way up to 1080i60. You could even play back HD video from a Powerbook hard drive, which is an impressive feat considering the video bandwidth. On the dual-processor 2Ghz G5, it can run four HD streams simultaneously in real time. But overall, the product pretty much sells itself. I was especially pleased by all of the people who stopped by raving about how great the product is. You can get a top-of-the-line G5, a 23-inch Apple Cinema HD Display, and the Final Cut Pro HD software for $6000. For a full HD editing system, that is an amazing deal.
Motion was the application that impressed me the most. It’s a little difficult understand the full scope of the program without actually seeing it, but I’ll try to explain it. Basically, it’s a full-motion animation and titling application, with behavioral animation and real-time previewing. So for example, you could set the title text for your movie, then apply a Fade In behavior, use Throw to have the text get thrown in from offscreen, then have another object come in and knock the letters away using real-world physics and simulated gravity. Or you could easily create a field of butterflies that constantly fly around another object. Then you change the color of some of the butterflies, add a Glow filter to others, maybe add a Blur effect…and you can do all this in real-time, while the butterflies are continuously flying around. It is really spectacular, and you should see it. Motion is expected to ship this summer.
Even if you don’t know what Shake is, you have definitely seen movies that used the software. In fact, the last seven Academy Award winners for Best Visual Effects were all made with Shake. (For the record, the movies were Titanic, What Dreams May Come, The Matrix, Gladiator, and all three Lord of the Rings movies, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King.) Again, look at the web page to get more details, but basically Shake is a compositing program that can handle movie-resolution projects. They did a demo at the show using plates from a scene in Return of the King: They started with a 4K (4000 lines of resolution) background plate of Mordor, added in an animation of the Eye of Sauron, punched up the glow on the top of the volcano, added smoke effects, model shots of the two main gates, and animated orcs on the gates. Then, they composited in lots of 2K plates of actors in orc costumes, shot against a blue screen, which were then matted out, color corrected, and placed in the scene. To fill out the back of the crowd, they had tons of shots of computer-generated orcs and trolls that were all composited together, along with rotoscoped outlines and a height map that was used to put in additional dust and haze effects. Then all of the elements were color corrected and adjusted to fit in the film frame. If you have any interest in film effects at all, it was a beautiful sight to behold. I even recorded the demo on video, so I will be able to show it to all of my friends.
I actually didn’t spend much time looking at DVD Studio Pro, and I don’t know many of the new features that were added for this release. The only one I can remember offhand is the graphical display of your DVD layout. They did show a full workflow demonstration, where a video was edited in Final Cut Pro HD, titles were added with LiveType and Motion, music was added with Logic Pro, then everything was output to Compressor to prepare it for DVD, then those files were imported into DVD Studio Pro where addition menu effects were added using Motion, and then the entire project was burned to a DVD. And this all took place in about a half hour, maybe less. It was truly a wonder to behold. I haven’t begun to scratch the surface of what DVD Studio Pro can do, but it really is easy to use and extremely powerful. I hope I can get many more chances to use it in the future.
This page contains an archive of all entries posted to Pocket Universe in the Macintosh category. They are listed from oldest to newest.
Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.
