Macgasm

I spent a week in a Cuba with an iPod touch acting as a “secondary” camera, and I have to say that I’m extremely disappointed in the photos and video that it took. I was so glad that I took a handheld camera with me on the trip, and that I didn’t rely on the iPod touch as my only device. I would have been devastated when I got home. It was my own fault for not looking into the camera quality before I left, but it turns out the iPod touch sports a 0.69 megapixel camera. That’s a long way from the 5 megapixels that come with the iPhone 4. I was very disappointed.

Now, I’m pretty sure that most people won’t be carrying around an iPad as a camera, but if the rumors from 9 to 5 Mac are true, and the iPad 2 is going to support a 1 Megapixel camera, then a lot of people will be very disappointed. Before we get a barrage of emails about photo sensors and all that jazz, you should know that I’m not a photographer, and don’t really know the ins and outs of a camera. But, I do know that 1MP pretty much blows in today’s age.

My Cuba pictures are proof positive of that. The iPad 2, according to rumors, will be slightly better than my iPod touch, but by the numbers it won’t be all that much better. Don’t get me wrong—the photos and videos looked great on my iPod touch, but I won’t be printing these things for a photo album any time soon. Proof below.

Maybe, in the grande scheme of things, Apple’s moving towards a printless world, where photos are viewed on iPads and iPod touches. If that’s the case, a 1 Megapixel camera isn’t all that bad, but personally I’m not there yet, and I’m pretty sure that the 1 Megapixel camera will disappoint.

As a caveat, we should also be aware that this is a rumor based on an iOS beta. The 1 megapixel camera could change between now and ship date.

Article Via 9 to 5 Mac

The good folks at the coffee shop Joe are using an iPad-based cash register at their location in Grand Central Terminal, New York. As seen in this video, it’s compact, fast, and efficient:

Shopkeep.com is the company behind the iPad register, and provides the software and hardware to make your iPad into a cash register. Designed specifically for coffee shops, bakeries, or specialty shops with fewer than 150 items, the iPad POS prints receipts and even pops the cash drawer, but takes up very little space. A simple cash drawer, receipt printer, and stand for the iPad starts at $850, with add ons for credit card scanning and barcode scanning available. They also provide BackOffice, a web-based back end that syncs all the information from the register to the cloud, allowing businesses to easily keep track of daily sales, backup data, and export the information straight into QuickBooks.

Touch screen cash registers are nothing new, but this is the first to integrate a consumer tablet device into the system. Of course, if you don’t need a cash drawer, receipts and back end monitoring, something simple like Square allows you to accept credit cards and issue email receipts from an iPad or iPhone.

The iPad is not included, and monthly fees for ShopKeep start a $49/mo.

Article Via Cult of Mac

Q. What’s the best way to migrate data from one Mac to another?

A. Well, this depends on the situation, but for most transfers I would recommend Apple’s own Migration Assistant. Some of you just pffffttt’d me. I know that Migration Assistant has a bad reputation with some of you. It’s not perfect. There’s always a tiny bit of clean up to be done, but for the most part, it does an amazing job. I did the math and I can say that I have done, at minimum, 400 cutovers from one Mac to another using Migration Assistant. None of these have ever gone terribly wrong. I may, however, have the professional experience and background to know when not to use it. So, let’s cover Migration Assistant as well as some other options and why you might opt for them instead.

Migration Assistant:
Over the years, Migration Assistant has gotten really good. It does an excellent job of bringing over all your applications complete with support files and information intact. It brings over all your user data with your customizations (like dock content/position, desktop items, etc). Snow Leopard Migration Assistant will not, however, bring over applications that it deems incompatible with your new system. This is very hit and miss, so be sure to not erase the old machine until you are sure you have everything you need.

When to use Migration Assistant:
• You get a new Mac and your old one is running at least 10.4.11. Some people are very eager to start up their new Mac and set up their user. This will actually lead the less savvy down a confusing path. I prefer to start up the new Mac and transfer data from the old Mac first thing before you even get to the user setup. This way you don’t end up with multiple users that both appear to be you.

• You can also use Migration Assistant to transfer installed software (you have legit licensing, right?) from one Mac to another. Migration Assistant can actually be launched at any time and used to do this transfer. Nice way to get all your software setup at once without the hassle of hunting down your installers and serials.

• Migration Assistant also works well for transferring data from non like machines. Say you are upgrading from a G5 tower to a new MacBook Pro. It should be fairly seamless. Just be sure to turn off the option to transfer network settings. While the majority of you wouldn’t notice or care that it transferred a network connection for a second ethernet port, it will drive some of you crazy (it’s really just a simple delete of that connection but some of you are truly obsessive and will blame any oddness on this).

When not to use Migration Assistant:
There have been only a few times in my career that I have opted not to use Migration Assistant. This usually involves Macs that have been set up in editing studios with lots of peripherals and installed cards. Usually these setups are expensive, and they keep them until they run them into the ground. They usually are skipping processor generations and will find that they need all new peripherals and cards. Instead of bringing over drivers and software that will not be compatible with the new versions, you would set up the Mac Pro and then manually transfer user data and files. It will be a painful process getting everything back to perfect, not going to lie to you.

Cloning one Mac to another:
There are other tools out there, but I use Disk Utility. Why? It’s available on every Apple restore DVD and any Mac I come in contact with, plus it’s never failed me. I use the term “Clone” but it’s actually called a “Restore” in Disk Utility. It’s extremely simple to do—a couple of drags, drops, a few clicks and you’re on your way.

When to clone:
• You are wanting to put your data onto another Mac that is the exact same make and model as yours (shipped with the same exact version of OS). This would be if say your display on your MacBook died and your office has a fleet of these machines, so you are able to just use another one instead of waiting for a repair.

• You are upgrading your internal hard drive to a bigger drive. You’ve installed the new drive and you clone your data from the old drive from an external enclosure. Two things to do in this instance: make sure the new hard drive’s drive partition scheme is bootable for your Mac. You can do this in Disk Utility as well, under the Partition tab, under options. If your original hard drive was bursting at the seams for space, you would want to not check the “erase destination” check box when doing your restore. This way it lays your files out in a nice organized manner on the drive. If your drive wasn’t over crowded, then go ahead and click “erase destination” as that will do a straight block copy and finish much faster as well.

• You are putting your data on an older Mac that didn’t ship with the version of OS X that you are running. I do this quite a bit with clients that like to trickle down their machines every time they get a new one. This works when they have older Macs that have a newer version of OS X installed. Example: client has older MacBook Pros that shipped with 10.4 and 10.5 but the whole office has been upgraded to 10.6. Since they will all run 10.6 and didn’t ship with a special flavor of 10.6, I can freely clone the data to any of these machines.

When this shouldn’t be used:
• Non like machines. Don’t clone portables to desktops or vice versa.

• Don’t clone with different versions of the shipping OS. Example: you have two machines that are a year apart but both shipped with a version of 10.6 on it. While it looked like we were getting away from machine specific OS, that it is not currently the case. So a boxed copy of 10.6 is not equal to 10.6 that shipped on a specific machine. If you clone data with retail purchased 10.6 onto a machine that shipped with 10.6, you may run into problems. From some services not working, kernel panics and possible boot issues. In this case, play it safe and use Migration Assistant.

Manual Migration:
I spend a good deal of time with very smart techs and savvy users. They often speak of this “fresh start” when they get a new machine. Let me give you a little insight on how this generally goes. Basically you’ll end up spread across two machines for about two weeks until you work out all the quirks and get everything set up just right. For some that’s fine. For me, I’m too busy to deal with not having everything set up so I can do my job. I don’t have time to hunt down serials, or figure out why my new machine isn’t recognizing my 1Password data (I live by this app). You are far better off using migration assistant and tossing out the extras you don’t need post transfer.

Steps to do no matter what path you choose:
Deactivation and deauthorizations: be sure to deactivate your various apps and deauthorize iTunes. Empty your trashes (Aperture, iPhoto, Mail, your system trash). Why copy over items that you know are trash?

Bottom line:
It’s hard to give you all the knowledge I’ve gained on the job for the last decade for when to use what. If you’re not sure of the best way to go about it, hit me up on twitter or email from the link below as I’m more than happy to point you in the right direction.

Have you had issues when migrating data? Let us know in the comments. If you have a Mac question that you would like answered, please email ask@macgasm.net

According to PatentlyApple.com, in a new patent application released on January 20, 2011, Apple is looking to patent the addition of a touch display on the Magic Mouse. The touch display would serve numerous functions, offering up perhaps a numeric keypad, or virtual buttons mapped to often used application commands.

I hope this is just one of those ideas that never makes it. Why? The reason I learned to touch type was so that I wouldn’t have to constantly look back and forth from the screen to the keyboard. Having a mouse with virtual buttons presented via touchscreen seems counterintuitive. Because there are no physical keys, hitting the right spot on the mouse will require you to look at the mouse, taking focus away from the screen. If the mouse is showing a numeric keypad, for example, you will have to look down to see where the numbers are, since you can’t feel them.

Now wait just a minute. You might be thinking, “Isn’t that the same as the iPhone or iPad? Isn’t that the same with all touch screens? Yet millions of people seem to manage just fine typing really fast on their iPhones, why is this different?” The reason the touch screen keyboard works on the iPhone or iPad is because of the close proximity of the keyboard to the display area. They share the same surface; you can see both the keyboard and what you are typing in the same glance. Separate the two, and you begin to see some of the difficulties in having a touch screen display as an input device.

I’m all for assistive devices and increasing ease of use. For someone learning a new application or new to computers, a mouse that presents virtual buttons for often used application functions might make the use of that application easier.

It’s just not for me.

Article Via Cult of Mac.
Photo Credit: Patently Apple.

Yesterday, Apple released an update to iMovie:

This update improves overall stability and fixes an issue that could cause audio playback to be out of sync.

This update is recommended for all users of iMovie ’11.

The update is available via Software Update or within the Mac App Store, if that is where the application was purchased.

Personally, I look for three things in a GTD app — simplicity, syncing, and badges. 6 Wunderkinder’s wunderlist has the right combination of design and implementation that works for me, and it’s free to boot.

wunderlist is elegant. To-do items are separated into lists, and adding an item is as simple as tapping at the top of a list page and entering text. Nothing else is required. Due dates and notes can be added if desired. The touch-interactive list view of items is extremely intuitive with support for priority tagging, drag-and-drop reordering, deleting, and marking as done. One complaint regarding simplicity is that the user must go into a list to add a to-do. Top-level (unlisted) items would be a welcome addition.

6 Wunderkinder is committed to keeping wunderlist for iOS (as well as its desktop counterparts and accompanying syncing service) free. Registering for syncing is simple and painless, and can be done in-app. Like most iOS apps that sync over the air, syncing occurs when the app is loaded, not in the background.

Badges? Badges?? I need stinking badges! I have the same problem most people have with GTD apps, and that is actually GingTD. As an artist, I can admit that if that red badge of urgency isn’t mucking up the clean lines on my home screen, I’m not going to remember to see what’s on the to-do list for today. The app badge indicates items that are due today or overdue. As with syncing, badge updating happens when the app is active (no push notifications).

In a world of a million GTD apps, it often comes down to personal taste and working style. For my needs, this clean little app does the trick. Bottom-line, wunderlist ist wunderbar!

Trapster is an online service that warns iPhone users (and Android & Blackberry) of speed traps. They have recently started warning users that the service has been compromised and potentially millions of email addresses and passwords have been stolen.

The company has published an FAQ about this breach saying, “If you’ve registered your account with Trapster, then it’s best to assume that your e-mail address and password were included among the compromised data.” The way it’s worded makes it seem like they are just being cautious as they go on to add, “While we know that we experienced a security incident, it is not clear that the hackers successfully captured any e-mail addresses or passwords, and we have nothing to suggest that this information has been used.” It could be that they are trying to ensure that users don’t just panic and abandon the service.

The Trapster service is available as an iPhone app, but you do not actually need to register to be able to use the service. The company says that in reality, very few of their users do actually register with email, so although there are reports surfacing about many of their 10 million users possibly being affected, Trapster says that it definitely won’t affect all the users. Users do have to register in order to submit new speed traps.

This security alert is being compared to what we saw with the Gawker hack where 400,000 account details were stolen, so even if not all users were registered, it will still most likely end up to be a way larger number. Although there is no real danger from any information used on the account with that email and password combo, the issue will be if someone has used that same combination on other sites or services.

Advice given has always been to not use the same email / password combination on other sites, but many people do, and it may be that if these hacks get more regular and more data is compromised, people will have to take more precautions.

One security firm advises that, “People really should be changing their passwords twice a year,” said Andrew Storms, the director of security operations for nCircle Security. “Not because someone could have compromised it, but because someone has compromised it. Maybe we should all just assume all public site passwords will be compromised and accept it as a new fact of life.” It may be something to consider now that we all seem to be living more and more of our lives online.

Have you had one of your accounts hacked? Were you affected by this or the Gawker hack? Do you use iPhone apps that ask you to log in so that you can use them? Is this something that makes you not want to use the service?

Article Via Macworld

Header Photo Credit: kreg.steppe

Verizon has their first iPhone commercial, announcing that on 2/10/11 the iPhone will finally be available on their network. Check out the other Mac products 6 seconds in. Apple and Verizon must be best buddies now.

“To our millions of customers, who never stopped believing this day would come… Thank you.”

Article Via Cult of Mac