Andrew’s Mac Tips Weblog

Late this year, after the introduction of the iPhone, Apple will introduce the new Leopard OS. The all-new iMac will be introduced at the same time. As is usual for Steve Jobs, at some point in the presentation he will say: “So far, this year we’ve introduced the iPhone and Apple TV, and now OS 10.5 Leopard and the all new iMac—so how does all this tie together?” Then he’ll do that tight lipped smile that says, “Hold onto your seats,” and he will introduce some new technology that is in Leopard; that has been lying dormant until now in iPhone; and that is fully realized in the new iMac.

That technology will be a common file type that will bind together all the devices—a file type that you may already have been using on your phone without realizing its power, until now. That file type will be fully scalable from quick notes to giant documents, and it will visually scale to automatically look good on everything from the phone to a TV display from across the room.

Using the wireless keyboard from the new iMac you’ll be able to navigate this new type of document, as well as edit and create it from the couch—using your TV as the monitor; on the train—using your phone, or even with no monitor at all as the keyboard itself will include a small multi-touch display; once the keyboard or the phone come back within range of the iMac, all the devices will get back into synch and share the same updated documents.

For those who want the portability, but don’t yet want to upgrade their Mac, the keyboard will be available separately and will work with any Mac running Leopard. Later, there will be a tablet that will work as a pseudo notebook computer when combined with the keyboard. Even stand alone—the tablet will act as a document browser with limited editing capabilities, thanks to its own multi-touch interface.

Don’t be biased by the “document” moniker; these will be powerful files that can present text, images and even animations attractively. You don’t need to bother with the formatting chores as the smart folks at Apple will have already designed various style enclosures that will best show off the content, no matter what it may be.

To summarize: By Christmas OS X will the the operating system that you use to give you the portability that you now enjoy entertainment-wise with iPod and Apple TV, only this time it’s your email, books, articles, web pages, schedules and projects; that you can access and edit anywhere and everywhere—depending on how big your pockets are as you leave the house.

Starting with the full blown apps included in the desktop OS, each will have the facility to present selected snippets of its content in the new file type, and those snippets will automatically be copied over to the iPhone, the keyboard, the Apple TV, perhaps even to an online account. When you’re away from the desktop system and using any of the associated devices, any modifications that you make to those snippets will be stored and re-synched back to the desktop system; either through the online account or when the devices are next paired.

As with most Apple introductions, the initial feature set will seem rather simplistic (in the proper sense of the word), but as people catch on to the concept more and more innovation will be introduced. The genius in all of this will be presenting this new feature set in such a way that those who are savvy to it can run with the concept, while those who are half connected to it (like iPhone users who run PCs, and Tiger users) aren’t hampered and frustrated by features that are in their face, but not accessible through being grayed out, or worse-still, presenting an error message (the same way that cars used to have blank switches for all the options you didn’t order).

The slogan?

All of your Stuff, Everywhere You Look
Forget the Desktop. Think: The World

Journler is a “Multiple Documents in One Interface” application that adopts a familiar iApps-like appearance. Use it to quickly write entries without having to name or save them—or, take the time to categorize them and assign tags and labels to aid future searching and filtering…

Andrew’s Mac Tips — Quick Review — Journler

My iMac G5 has, or should I say, had, 512 megs of ram. Then, I recently acquired a PC. The PC is great for running simulations (games) such as Microsoft Flight Simulator, and GTR: a driving sim. It’s more than great — it’s spectacular. It’s a very highly specced machine and the games are as smooth as silk.

The underlying OS which happens to be XP is horrible, but that’s of little concern. My setup is basically: Flying and driving on the PC, everything else on the Mac.

I noticed that the PC has 2 gigs of ram installed and I got to wondering whether that ram would work in the Mac. Turns out it does! I took out the Mac’s single piece of 512 megs and replaced it with the two 1 gig pieces from the PC and, as Steve would say: Boom. Instant transformation.

I should clarify that; it’s not like the Mac is suddenly much faster in everything it does. It is, however, much more relaxed at handling many tasks at the same time, and at re-launching applications. An example would be iPhoto, which always seemed such a resource hog before. I have a lot of very high resolution photos in iPhoto; in the past I’d wait about 15 to 20 seconds for it to launch from cold, and when I closed it there’d be quite a delay while it shut down.

Even after it shut down there was this almost subliminal drag on the rest of the system as if iPhoto was still holding onto some resources. Not now though. iPhoto now launches in half that time, and even if it does leave something cached in reserve when it quits, the gobs of available ram merely shrug it off.

Even after having several apps continually open, and having launched and used several others, iStat tells me that I’m still looking at 1 to 1.5 gigs of ram free. In the past that number would have been 100 to 200 megs free.

Maybe I don’t need a whole 2 gigs of ram, but I sure like the fact that I do.

Getting back to the PC, what happens now? Will it work with the Mac ram? Turns out it does, and not only that, there’s only a negligible loss of performance in the sims that I run; almost none at all.

The OS wasn’t too thrilled though. Just swapping out the ram caused it to ask for re-activation. This pissed me off because I’d vowed to never connect the thing to the internet — fearful of all those viruses and Trojans and all…

Once I’d set up the modem and fought my way through all those pop up warning bubbles and dialog boxes, it accepted my mods and re-activated itself. So now, best of both worlds.

My next Mac will probably be an intel with XP running inside Boot Camp in order to have all this goodness inside one gorgeous machine. I can picture myself being happy with that setup — XP being banished to a separate partition and a separate booting session; if it were running within OS X as with Parallels, I think I’d be continually nervous that it might leech over and infect the Mac side somehow.

It’s creepy enough just having its ram.

The thing that strikes me about “Minutes” is the wonderfully obvious nature of its interface. Just grab the pointer and wind it round and round the widget to set the desired minutes remaining. At the same time, a smaller display shows the time at which the alarm will sound, so it’s also an alarm clock; so obvious, yet never seen before…

Andrew’s Mac Tips — Quick Review — Minutes Widget

ExifRenamer takes the image files from your camera and renames them. It replaces the cryptic names that the camera assigns with new names based in the exact time that each photo was taken. It gets this information from the file’s EXIF data –hence the name…

Andrew’s Mac Tips — Quick Review — ExifRenamer

Funny thing about design: When it comes to cars, planes, computers, gadgets and clock radios I like things that have almost no detailing at all.

When it comes to bicycles, motorcycles, mountaineering gear (not that I’ve ever climbed a mountain), I like the detailing the most. They must bristle with exotic machined anodized expensive hardware.

Each philosophy has its distinct place.

I was reminded of a documentary about life on a submarine; a psychologist was explaining how, unlike an airliner where all of the technology is deliberately hidden behind plastic panels, earthy colors and subtle lighting to soothe the passengers, in a submarine all of the real hardware is laid bare. The arrows and labels and bright colors are all designed to make the crew member aware of the technology, and to be able to see when things are breaking down, and to handle with caution.

On some caveman-like level, we crave comfort and simplicity whenever we are helpless passengers. When we’re active participants — especially when danger is involved — it’s the other way around.

Right now though, in the general scheme of things, there’s a blurring going on in that design thinking. Take cars for a moment: with manufacturing techniques so well perfected, it was possible to really tighten up the gaps, crisp the edges, mix the materials — the result being more upscale classy cars; Cars, where the form — and the quality of the detailing, defined the identity of the different brands.

Then almost overnight, all that went out the window. It wasn’t the quality of the detailing, but the sheer amount of the detailing that mattered. Subtle was replaced by gnarly. The car as a submarine, but without the rationalization. As to the form: elegant was replaced by funky. Form followed funk instead of function.

Take BMW as an example. In a nutshell, they were generally handsome, and looked expensive. Put a Hyundai badge on one and people would laugh. Today BMWs are just plain stupid looking, and if you put a Hyundai badge on one, people would say: “Oh, the new Hyundai…”

Home stereo systems now look like Japanese cartoon robots from the ’60s; they shout at you even when they’re turned off.

Brand name computers now look like home made kits, with miss-matched panels and fuzzy blue lights…

On a personal level, I cringe at what’s going on. If I won the big lottery and could go out and buy any car at all, I’d walk past the new cars and choose a used model about two generations old. But that’s just me.

The rest of the world seems to love this new “Stupidness,” also known as “Lifestyle” design. The new BMWs sell like hotcakes; the Audi Q7 is a massive hit…

Which brings us to Apple, and why I’m nervous. Every brand has their heyday, or, sweet spot in time. Getting back to the cars it was 2000 to 2005 for Audi. At the time I was thinking: “I hope no-one poaches their chief designer, or all this could go out the window…” Then someone did, and now we have the Q7.

Apple is now in the middle of its heyday. Analysts recently put some enormous “billions of dollars” value on the contribution of Steve Jobs to Apple’s worth. I think Jonathan Ive, the man who defines the design, is right up there; Give him whatever it take to make him happy. Let him and Steve force their good taste on the buying public. They know what’s best for us. Don’t follow the crowd’s Stupidness fixation; what would they know?

I think the crunch will come with the new iMac. Will I say, “Yes!” Or will I say, “No, no, No!”

Apple is not the submarine — it’s the airliner. Have a smooth flight.

Right now I’m evaluating this app for renaming image files. Drop the files into its icon and it renames them with their date and time that they were shot. It also files them in a new folder with the date and time.

qdev.de - ExifRenamer

At last, a handy reference to all those keyboard-based tools for selecting text, along with a couple of other shortcuts I didn’t know about (Opt-Mute to bring up the System Preferences? Who would have known?)

Dan Rodney - Mac OS X Keyboard Shortcuts

An excellent piece by John Gruber on Apple Inc.

In short — Don’t Panic. These are smart people, and so is he…

Macworld: Opinion: Apple’s computer, incorporated

I’ve already read every book written about Apple, so when iWoz by Steve Wozniak found its way to the bargain bin, I read that one too. I’d read several interviews with Woz in the past, as well as audio of his speeches and keynotes; so I was pretty well armed with expectations.

Those expectations were that, yes he seems an amiable fellow with a few amusing stories, but how can he spin it out into a whole book? He struck me as a genius when it came to the creation of the Apple I and the Apple II, but beyond that — a bit of a twit.

Looks like I was right.

I’d mentioned in a couple of previous posts how class, or cool, could mean simply doing nothing; as in the saying that a gentleman is someone who knows how to play the banjo, but chooses not to. Woz likes to talk about how he was, and still is a close friend to Steve Jobs — and yet he still feels this compulsion to rehash how Steve ripped him off over the Atari bonus.

He admits that the only reason he invented the Apple I was so that he’d have a computer of his own, and something to show off at the Homebrew Computer Club. It was rip off artist Steve who wanted the whole world to have one, as a consequence making Woz a gazillionaire.

Yet Woz never acknowledges that fact. In fact, quite early in the book he simply walks away from Apple to play with his fortune, without so much as a by your leave. Where’s the class in that?

Finally, by page 257 Woz rips off the oldest “bit” in comedy; you know: the one where a guy undoes three suspicious screws under the carpet of his Moscow hotel room, only to hear a chandelier crash to the floor in the room below…

So, that was enough for me. Nothing more to see here.