Macgasm

I have a background in graphic design, so buying Adobe’s Creative Suite was a no brainer. I used it in classes, and then I went on to use it for projects later in life. However, I have recently come to the conclusion that I just don’t need the Creative Suite anymore. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of design professionals feel the same way.

The apps are built off of ancient code, so that makes them slow as molasses. Don’t get me wrong, the applications in the Creative Suite are unarguably the most full featured applications in the field. That doesn’t make them the best, though. I have been doing work with Acorn, and it offers a different way of going about image manipulation. Of course there is also the ever-popular Pixelmator as well. These aren’t Photoshop clones. They have their own unique take on the problem. They don’t have every single feature you can think of, but they offer innovative and fast way to edit your images.

Sometimes you have to use Adobe’s software. I know that. If you’re working with CMYK, good luck using anything else. Also, a lot of firms pretty much demand that you use what they tell you to use. That said, I don’t think that you should box yourself into only using the Creative Suite if you don’t have to. Look around for other, smaller apps from independent developers. You might just find something you like more.

Photo Credit: jeff, the rhino

If you’re tired of complex todo apps that do a lot more than create ToDo lists, then you might want to give Today a try on the iPhone. The UI is pretty interesting, and while it’s not the most intuitive off the blocks, it certainly makes sense once you check out the instructions. I know it makes sense, and it should probably be the first thing we do.

The concept is pretty much taking your ToDo list and giving you the info in the moment. There’s three phases, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. You click the sun, or moon, and you flick. Day turns to night, and today becomes tomorrow. It’s pretty fun to look at, and starts making quite a bit of sense. It’s as simple as it gets, and there’s no bells and whistles, which is actually kind of refreshing. There’s not categories, no overkill, just a beautiful looking, running log of your todos. Just like when we used to use the old pen and paper.

A little quirk

The no button approach that the Today team implemented really threw me for a loop. Again, I probably should have read the instructions, but it took me a while to accidentally stumble upon turning my phone into landscape mode to bring up the ToDo entry forum.

The second thing that I’m struggling with is not being able to see past tomorrow. I spent a couple of days using the app to actually try and accomplish some work, and I seriously missed seeing what I had to do on day three when I came time to book a couple of appointments. I get why the cut it out, but it’s hard to roll back the time machine when it comes to my todo list expectations.

If you live in the moment, and don’t really plan your days until you’ve woken in the morning, than this application is for you. If you’re like me, trying to manage a couple businesses at once, with multiple clients, and multiple project, things might get a little bit crazy if you use Today as your primary ToDo list. That being said, a lot of people use nothing more than iCal’s todo list program, so if that works for you, this would as well, and Today is a lot better looking.

Today pro is 4.99 on the AppStore.  There’s also a free version if you’re feeling particularly cheap today.

Today, it has come to light that the Apple App Store has lost $450 million due to piracy. Ironically, as much as I’d love to jailbreak my iPod touch to get the functionality I long for, every single application I have on my iPod touch comes from Apple’s store legitimately. I’m embarrassed to say how many apps I own, in fact.

Piracy is abundant in the digital world. People who grow up with the mindset that digital means free just won’t pay for your stuff even if it was $0.10. Free a concept to them, and they’ll get their hands on freebies with whatever it takes.

There’s another element to this. Jailbroken iPhones exist for a reason. People, including myself, feel limited with the current iPhone’s feature sets. Multitasking? Nope! Apple doesn’t give a damn to offer you such a nice benefit. I won’t jailbreak my iPod touch because I don’t want to break core functionality, despite the abundant availability in games everywhere under the sun, but the thought has crossed my mind more than once.

Apple products are pretty cheap. $0.99 for a great playable game? Check. But while I’d love to support the Apple economy, I’m sure I’m in a minority of Apple iPhone/iPod users who think that Apple has a sense of entitlement it doesn’t deserve. I think the fanboyism needs to stop. Apple is not receptive enough to respond to legitimate customer complaints because it feels like it’s above everyone else.

We’re seeing a digital transition in the interconnected online space. Customers expect companies to care about them. If they can’t take heed to suggestions and feedback, they might as well die out.

Apple’s choice of removing the only functionality I relied on on the iPod touch was the final straw. I’m no longer planning to support an Apple economy. Until they show me that they appreciate my financial investment in their products, I’m done. I bought a product with a set of expectations and Apple changed those expectations during the course of my ownership to further their own agenda.

Until Apple shows that they care about their customers, customers should do what they want to avoid supporting the Apple regime. And if you’re building Apple apps, as much as I’d love to continue supporting you, you’re shit out of luck anyway; the App store is too saturated for anyone to buy your apps. You should consider the Android platform which isn’t run by greedy bloodsucking money mongers.

I hate to encourage theft.  In fact, that’s not my typical philosphy.  I’m not explicitly endorsing it either.  This post serves to understand where the others are coming from.  Apple has a “holier than thou” attitude that compels people to defy.  Good for those people.  Apple needs to get off its throne and walk amongst the average man to understand where those folks come from.  Once someone turns to jailbreaking to enable necessary functionality, all is over for Apple when these customers realize the goldmine of “free” apps that are available outside the confines of Apple’s store.

A couple months back I wrote a well received post about what I love about the Mac community. It highlighted a bunch of things that I loved, the number of which far out weighed what I dislike about the community. Actually, there’s only really one thing I hate about the community, and it could be argued it’s more aimed at blogger/journalists, then it is the Mac community. But, this example clearly illustrates everything that’s rotten in the state of blogs and in this particular case mac blogs.

Lack of ethical source citation

“find |f?nd|
verb ( past found |found|) [ trans. ]
1 discover or perceive by chance or unexpectedly : Lindsey looked up to find Neil watching her | the remains of a headless body had been found.”

There’s only so much news that happens in a day, so overlap between the other Mac blogs is to be expected. Hopefully the commentaries on each of the articles are unique enough to provide valuable insights into what’s being talked about in an article. For the most part I’m okay with this. I enjoy the commentaries more than I do the news. But what I’m not okay with is pawning off information as if you came across it by chance, when two major blogs have reported on the issue before you.

I’ve been in this game a short while (since 2007), but I’ve been around long enough to know what’s going on, and it has to change. Trolling RSS feeds on a hourly basis is the norm for anyone who’s trying to write about the news, and when you’re focusing on a niche product, you tend to have an RSS feed geared heavily towards the news you’re trying to keep an eye on. If you’re writing about Apple and you’re not following every other major source commenting on your niche, you’re doing it wrong. I know what’s going on at most major “networks” in my niche and a lot of them provide inspirations for some of the posts that we write here. We try to always post sources, but never do we claim to “Find” something on the internet from anywhere but the source.

Taking news that’s been reported over at Unplggd first (pay attention to Date, Time, and Source links), then Gizmodo, and then pretending you just happened to stumble across the same flickr photo, making it a Flickr Find (see definition above) without tipping your hat at the source says a lot about the state of ethics in the blogging community. When you have a “source” section in your post footer, you should be citing your real source, not cutting out the middle man and claiming the “find” for yourself.  It’s called the Apple Echo Chamber for a reason.  It’s because we all watch each other, then report the same stuff.

Moving Forward here at Macgasm

We’re not all perfect, and it could be a simple mistake, lord knows I make my fair share of them. We’ve missed our source links in the past. I feel crappy about it when people point it out.  We know what it’s like to struggle to get traffic. But, it happens in the fast paced world we live in.  It’s no excuse, but it happens. That being said, I’m now on a mission. From this moment on, every single Macgasm article that sites any snippet of news is going to have a source section. We’ll leave a trail of information for you guys to track back through. It’s time to give credit where it’s due, and it’s time to stop falsely laying claim to article findings.

Did you hear that Macgasm Team? It’s time to bring some ethics back to the blogging community. You’re on notice.

For all the heat Gizmodo gets these days, it’s nice to see someone taking their source citations seriously.

Image Credit: Robert S. Donovan

We got my 8 year old daughter the Kodak Zi8 Pocket Video Camera for Christmas.  This is a great video camera for its size and price.  It records video in 720P and 1080P onto an SDHC card.  The video quality is quite impressive.  It also takes 5 Megapixel pictures with a 4X digital zoom.  Due to the size of the camera an optical zoom is not practical.  It also comes with an HDMI mini to standard cable, for viewing on your HDTV.  This is a nice addition.  My Canon Vixia HF100 did not come with this cable I had to buy it separately.

Before buying the camera I made sure that it would work with iMovie, since we are a Mac household.  I wanted to make sure my daughter would be able to use iMovie to capture her videos from the camera.  According to Kodak’s specifications and their website they said that the Zi8 is compatible with the Mac and iMovie.  Here’s where my frustration and enlightenment begins.  If you ask my wife she would say it was a lot more frustration than enlightenment.

After my daughter had used her Zi8 to take videos on Christmas day, I decided to show her how to capture her videos with iMovie.  We connected the camera to her iMac, and launched iMovie.  I proceed to show her the steps for capturing video.  This is where I hit a roadblock.  When I pressed the capture button in iMovie I only saw the iSight camera, and not the Kodak Zi8 camera.  So, I unplugged the camera from the computer, and I plugged it back in still with no success.

Now with egg on my face after telling my daughter how easy it will be to upload her videos to iMovie, I turn to Google for answers.  You might be asking yourself, well did you read the manual or checkout Kodak’s support site.  My answer to your query would be yes.  This was part of my initial research before purchasing the camera.  Consequently both Kodak’s website and the manual had the same one line sentence that read, “Upload your videos to iMovie on the Mac.”  This is a loose quote of the actual quote, but I think you get the picture.

After searching the Internet for an answer, and not finding much on this issue, I found one post.  The author of the post suggested that I use the import feature in iMovie.  I went ahead and did this, and I was able to upload the video.  However, I felt that there were too many steps involved in this process.  After all I’m using iMovie, and I thought to myself that there has to be a simpler process than this for capturing video.  Here comes my enlightenment.

When I connected the Zi8 to the iMac it launched iPhoto.  I decided to upload both the videos and pictures my daughter took.  After the upload was complete, I opened iMovie to try and attempt a simpler import.  When I opened iMovie I received the following prompt:

I clicked Now, and I was presented with the following window:

Once it completed generating the iPhoto Video thumbnails I was able to view the captured videos.  This is a an unorthodox way of capturing video, but it was less steps and simpler this way.  I guess iMovie sees the Kodak Zi8 as a still camera and not a video camera; when in fact it is a video camera.  I just wish Kodak had a little more information on their site regarding capturing video on a Mac.  But, I figured it out, and I hope this will help others that have encountered similar issues.

With that now behind me.  I once again showed my daughter how to capture her videos to iMovie.  The next step now is to show her how she can harness iMovie’s features to make some great looking videos.  This is where the real fun begins.

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Apparently Google Docs will support uploading of “any file type ” in the near future. Sadly, the skeptic in me doesn’t believe that anything actually means “anything”, and instead means “a couple more things”, despite what all of those flashy news titles might be saying.

“Now, Docs users will be able to store all their important files in a single place online, where they can access them from anywhere and share them with other people, according to Google.”

Does “anything” mean we’ll be able to upload audio, video, and iWork file types?  The news seem to indicate that we will be able to, but the reality is that very little specific information is being reported currently.  The facts are that we’ll be able to upload some stuff, but we have no idea what “anything” really means. If you’re a graphic designer, audio engineer, or video editor you should be included in the broad stroke of “anything”.  But again, the realist in me thinks we’ll still be excluded, unless we pay up for a premium account.

So, where do we stand? Who the heck knows with all the vagueness being tossed around.

In real news, Google docs will be extending their upload capabilities to include some additional file formats, but it’s still far from the gDrive that people have been hoping for. They’ve partnered up with some 3rd party groups to provide more options for Premier Google Apps customers (aka, people paying 50.00 per user, per year). Some of the features will also be rolled out to the rest of us using the free version, but to what extent we still don’t quite know.  Don’t go running out to cancel your MobileMe subscription just yet.

I recently purchased the Apple Magic Mouse.  It replaced my Apple Mighty Mouse that has been on the fritz for some time.  The scroll wheel would tend to get stuck intermittently; however, this time I was unable to get it working again.  I’ve been wanting the Magic Mouse for sometime, but couldn’t justify the cost because my other mouse was working.

At first use I was really impressed with how quickly my iMac recognized the Magic Mouse.  I also took note of how smooth the mouse glides on the desk.  With its glass surface the top of the mouse is smooth as well.  With no discerning left or right buttons or scroll wheel, you would think that this mouse was a single button mouse without any scrolling capability.  That’s were you’d be wrong.  It is capable of these functions plus many more.

The Magic Mouse employs many of the same functionalities that you would find on a MacBook Pro’s Touch Pad.  For example by performing a two finger swipe to the left you can go back a page in a browser, or by swiping to the right you can go forward a page.  This however is not limited to just a web browser.  You can perform these same actions in the iTunes Store.  This makes navigating the iTunes Store a lot smoother.

Another feature to note is the horizontal scrolling,  This can be performed by simply swiping a single finger in either the left or right direction on the surface of the mouse.  The vertical scrolling is performed in much the same way.  Instead of swiping left to right, you swipe up and down.

Apple has dramatically improved on the Power Management.  My Mighty Mouse would go through batteries like crazy.  However, I’ve had the Magic Mouse for about two weeks, and it’s only decreased in power by 13%.

Apple has out done themselves on this mouse.  From it’s smooth surface, to its touch interface this mouse has it all.  I would like to see Apple top themselves with their next input device.  Who knows they might come out with a gesture based input device.  Can we say Minority Report?