Apple’s changes to OS X in Leopard affected more than the basic desktop experience. The aesthetic changes permeate the applications and utilities of the operating system. Even applications that aren’t written specifically for Leopard take on the new look-and-feel to some extent. Here is a brief tour, in pictures, of how some of the bundled OS X application changed between Tiger and Leopard.

The Finder

The first major difference in the Finder is the total absence of brushed metal. The new Finder looks more lightweight, and it fits in with the overall OS X aesthetic much more naturally.


The Tiger Finder


The Leopard Finder

I am not a fan of the new folder icons, but I wasn’t too fond of the old ones either. Fortunately, they’re easy enough to change. The overall look is better, and I think the new sidebar is an improvement over the former. There’s not much else to say beyond that.

iCal

iCal also receives some slimming in the window department as it too loses the brushed metal motif that once adorned it. Some elements, such as the day-week-month buttons, are moved around, and I think the new calendar pane is easier to read.


iCal in Tiger


iCal in Leopard

Editing events in iCal has always been a bit of a hassle with an Event Drawer that would pop in and out as you selected events to edit. Now iCal will pop an editing dialog right next to the event in question. This new approach, while only slightly varied from before, makes adding and editing events a much quicker process.

Safari

Safari hasn’t changed much, but it’s yet another application to lose brushed metal in its chrome.


Tiger Safari


Leopard Safari

Safari has also gained security features that check for possibly malicious sites, and the interface for that feature is pretty neat.

Printing

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the improved printing sheets in OS X Leopard. Historically, it’s been easy for developers to use OS X’s standard printing services, but the results were usually pretty sparse. The Leopard printing sheet is much more robust that its predessesor’s, and it even previews the document without having to launch Preview (a feature Microsoft and Adobe have been offering in their applications for some time).


Printing in Tiger


Printing in Leopard

This improvement may be late to the party, but it’s welcome nonetheless.

Conclusion

This is hardly a comprehensive look at the visual differences between Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard, but I hope it gives you a good idea of how Apple is improving the unified nature of the system’s user interface. It’s easy to pick nits over little details, but it’s obvious that Apple’s team has sweated the details when designing Leopard’s interface. It now feels like a unified system rather than a collection of utilities and applications. Hopefully, Apple will continue to prioritize the user experience as it continues to refine its operating system with the impending release of Snow Leopard next year.

Tags: macintosh, leopard, tiger, os x

As noted in the last post (which was longer ago than I care to admit), by the time Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger was in the hands of users, the OS X interface had grown quite inconsistent. While not as glaringly distracting as the default Windows XP interface, it did seem evidence that Apple’s reputation as having an eye for detail was growing misplaced.

Leopard seeks to fix the growing divergence of UI elements, but some of the design decisions seem strange. Here are some comparisons and thoughts regarding some of the obvious interface changes between Tiger and Leopard.

The First Impression

For OS X veterans, the default Leopard desktop is immediately recognizable for it’s complete lack of blueness when compared to past OS X desktops.


TIger on my G5 and Leopard on my MacBook

Some of the change simply comes from the addition of a new desktop image, but other elements add to an altered user experience.

The New Dock

Tiger’s Dock


Leopard’s 3D Dock

The Dock has gone from a translucent rectangle to a glossy, reflective, three-dimensional plane. To me, it’s an extremely visually distracting piece of UI, and some icons don’t work well with this new Dock. (Read a detailed analysis of this issue here.) The Leopard Dock is a fantastic tech demo, but it fails from a usability perspective. Fortunately, a little command line work can restore the Dock to a more usable, two-dimensional state.


Leopard’s hidden 2D Dock. Much better.

The Leopard Dock also adds a new feature called Stacks, which bring their own share of positives and negatives to the OS X experience. I want to spend some more time of this feature, so I’ll be dedicating an entire post to Stack sometime later.

The Menu Bar

The menu bar in Tiger came under some criticism for its glossy appearance, even garnering some unkind comparisons to Windows XP. (Sorry if I’m criticizing XP too much, but I really don’t like its native UI.) The Leopard menu bar is a complete contrast to its former self.


Glossy and bright in 10.4


Translucent and subdued in 10.5

You can see the desktop through the menu bar with a slight Gaussian blur applied in Leopard. On the downside, while this menu bar is easier on the eyes, the translucency works better with some desktop backgrounds than others. Fortunately, you can make the menu bar opaque in the Desktop and Screensaver preference pane.

A strange side effect of this darker menu bar is that the menus themselves look out of place up against it.



The menus themselves look slightly nicer than in Tiger. The rounded edges are a nice touch, and the complete absence of pin-striping is welcome. I have to admit, though, that the slightly more translucent menus of earlier Leopard builds were even nicer. I know this seems to contradict my statements about the menu bar, but they were never quite that translucent.

Where’s the Love?

In the next post about Leopard’s interface, we’ll look at how some specific OS X applications have changed. It will be quite a bit more positive than this post, I promise. Windows and sheets have both been reworked in Leopard and with some very nice results.

Tags: macintosh, leopard, tiger, os x

In what is probably my latest OS X adoption ever, I finally picked up Mac OS X Leopard a month ago. As my Tiger overview demonstrates, I’m hardly a master at writing overly technical documents about a new operating system. However, I’m fascinated by some of the subtle and not-so-subtle user interface (UI) changes that have come with Leopard.

A Quick Retrospective

The interface of Apple’s Unix-based operating system has been in a state of constant flux since its introduction to consumers in 2001, and every release has seen changes to various parts of the UI. For some history, check out Steve Jobs introducing the new interface in Macworld 2000.



The bizarre thing about watching that video (outside of being reminded of what a pain dialog boxes used to be) is that OS X looks very little like that demonstration eight years ago even though many of the underlying principles remain intact. Take Mail and Finder, for example. Here’s how Mail evolved between OS X 10.2 and 10.4.


10.2 courtesy of GUIdebook.


10.3 courtesy of GUIdebook.


10.4 on my PowerMac G5.

Mac OS X 10.2 still looks very similar to Steve Jobs’ prototype of Aqua, but the interface begins to evolve in 10.3. Mail in 10.3 sports embedded widow controls as opposed to the floating jewels in earlier versions. Additionally, the pinstripes that once dominated OS X windows and menus are greatly subdued. Finally, Mail in 10.4 adopts an entirely new unified window style, loses the drawer, and sports a new style of pill-shaped toolbar buttons.

The OS X Finder has also seen its share of changes between OS X 10.2 and 10.4.


10.2 courtesy of GUIdebook.


10.3 courtesy of GUIdebook.

If examining screenshots, I have to admit that I’d be hard-pressed to tell the 10.1 Finder and 10.2 Finder apart, much like Mail. However, the visual change to 10.3 is jarring. Mac OS 10.3 Panther marks the height of Apple’s infatuation with brushed metal, and metal windows seemed to randomly litter the interface. Again, note how widgets have gone from floating to embedded. In 10.4 Tiger (not pictured), the Finder retains the brushed metal look, but it’s slightly slimmed.

Where Is This Going?

By the time Mac OS X Tiger was released, the UI was an inconsistent jumble. While Apple had been slowly phasing out old ideas like pinstripes and drawers, several new interface ideas were being introduced – without a consistent pattern. With the introduction of unified windows in Tiger’s version of Mail and a dark version of the same window in iTunes 5, OS X apps could sport any one of four windowing styles. Combine this with a variety of toolbar options, a new HUD palette, and completely custom interfaces like those found in applications like GarageBand, and you have a system interface that is growing more and more fragmented.

In the second segment, we’ll take a look at how Leopard takes great strides in unifying the user experience of OS X as well as its share of interface oddities. Get ready for lots of pictures!

Tags: macintosh, leopard, tiger, os x

I’m always interested in trying something new, especially when that something competes in a space where competition seems impossible. Take Macintosh music players for instance. There’s iTunes, and then there’s… Well, there really is nothing else because iTunes effectively killed the market by being both good and free. (I’m talking the Mac version of iTunes here; I acknowledge the debate over the quality of the Windows version.)


the 800-pound gorilla

Singing a Sweeter, Simpler Song

A few weeks ago, I came across an application called Songbird. It’s an open-source music player that runs on the Mozilla XUL Runner platform and is compatible with all operating systems supported by that runtime environment. It’s designed primarily as a music player, and is not ideally suited for podcast viewers or people who use iTunes to access TV shows and movies. The developers want it to do one thing and one thing well.


looking good Miss Morissette

The interface is very similar to iTunes, but there are only so many intuitive things one can do with a media player’s interface. All interface elements are responsive, and the UI looks fine on Mac OS X. I could complain that the scrollbars are out-of-place, but iTunes’ scrollbars are wrong too.

Songbird made some very good impressions on me right away. If you already have an iTunes library (or Windows Media library, I presume), the application will import your media and playlists on first launch – making migration initially effortless. Additionally, the application is pretty responsive, and it has access to several community-developed plugins that allow you to do things like download lyrics, get album art from LastFM, search for concert tickets for artists in your library, and sync with iPods and other MP3 players.

Managing your plugins is very simple with a built in manager that will check for updates automatically as well as recommend popular plugins from the Songbird website. To further simplify matters, Songbird features an integrated web browser that allows you to check out and download plugins directly from within Songbird.


browsing the web in Songbird

For users who think iTunes mini player is a tad large, Songbird also has you covered. The mini player in Songbird is just a few pixels tall.


this picture is full size

Finally, Songbird proved itself to be incredibly stable. It never crashed or hung once for me, but the folks at Ars did run into a couple of snags. Regardless, I find this release an impressive effort that’s worth checking out. It has some problems, but Songbird 1.0 does a great job managing and playing music files without a lot of clutter or distraction.

Some Sour Notes

With any piece of software, especially software as young as Songbird, there are going to be a few issues. Here are some I ran into.

• Protected AAC/WMA. Songbird will import your entire music library – even the stuff it can’t play. This leaves the user to remove protected music from the playlists.
• CD Ripping. Right now, you can’t import a CD into Songbird. The tracks have to be digital.
• iPod Ejecting. This doesn’t always work well.
• Album Art. I couldn’t find a way to automatically search for and add album art. Songbird also doesn’t import album art from iTunes.
• No Equalizer. Depending on your music collection, you may or may not miss this.

Final Thoughts

Whether or not you like Songbird will depend on how much you have invested in iTunes or Windows Media music. Since both of those stores lock their music to their player, you won’t be able to take those tracks to Songbird. However, if most of your music comes from your CD collection or from DRM-free stores like Amazon MP3, you might find Songbird a worthwhile download. It’s a simple application to get used to, and it strips away much of the bloat that’s becoming standard with bundled media players. Through downloadable plugins, you can make Songbird as simple or as complicated as you want it. If you just want a simple application to manage your music files, Songbird may hit all the right notes for you.

Tags: software, itunes/ipods, songbird

Apple finally turned their attention to my favorite part of their product line – the MacBooks. I’m always a sucker for the iMacs, but I’ve never owned one. iPhones and iPods are cool gadgets, but I have come to believe that laptops are the best things Apple does, so I was excited to see the news from Cupertino earlier today.

MacBook Air

image © Apple, Inc

The MacBook Air keeps its repuation for being an incredibly thin and light laptop while losing a few of the limitations of the previous generation. It’s still very short on connectivity, featuring only a single USB port, an audio-out port, and a Mini Display Port, which replaces the Micro-DVI port from the previous model. The new display port can support up to 2560x1600 pixels as opposed to the former 1920x1200 pixels.

Driving this new display port is a much more robust Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics processor which utilizes 256 MB of the systems 2 GB of memory. The internal processor has been largely unchanged, but internal storage has seen a massive boost over previous models. The last generation of the MacBook Air offered either an 80 GB HDD or a 64 GB SSD. Now it features either a 120 GB HDD or a 128 GB SSD. The new MacBook Air comes in $1,799 and $2,499 configurations with a few BTO options.

Update: I was wrong about the processors not being changed. While the clock speeds remain basically the same, the MacBook Air now uses Intel’s 45nm Penryn processor that runs cooler and has a faster FSB than the Merom processors in the older model. I apologize for the error.

MacBook + MacBook Pro

image © Apple, Inc

I’m combining the MacBooks with the Pro models because they are now so similar. What you see above is the new MacBook. The MacBook Pro is a bit wider and has visible speakers. That’s it when it comes to visual differences between the two models. The new MacBooks now feature the same embedded and backlit keyboard. They have new glass LED displays, and upgradeable components are now much more user-accessible across the board. The new MacBooks also feature a new glass buttonless trackpad that supports a variety of multi-touch and gesture commands.

Internally the MacBooks feature 2.0 or 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo processors with the Pro models going up to 2.8 GHz. The MacBooks have 160 GB or 250 GB HDDs with 2 GB of memory standard. They also feature integrated Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics processors with 256 MB of shared memory. The MacBook Pros have storage options of 250 GB or 320 GB with 2 GB or 4 GB of memory. The Pro models also come loaded with two Nvidia chips, one discreet and one integrated, that you can switch between depending on whether or not your MacBook Pro is plugged in. The discreet graphics card can come with 256 MB or 512 MB of dedicated memory.

Apple has dropped the matte displays, which was probably inevitable, but the head-scratcher is the lack of FireWire on the MacBook. The Pro model has a FireWire-800 port, but the consumer MacBook doesn’t even feature a FireWire-400. I find that odd. The new MacBooks and MacBook Pros run from $1,299 to $2,499. Also, you can watch a video detailing the design and manufacturing process of the new MacBooks right here. It’s worth watching just to hear Jonathan Ives pronounce aluminum.

Other News

• Apple has retained the white plastic MacBook for a $999 entry model. It features a 2.1 GHz Core 2 Duo and 1 GB of memory. I’m guessing this will just be around until Apple can get the new manufacturing process cost-effective enough to drop prices on the aluminum MacBooks. Curiously, this model retains the FireWire 400 port.
  
  
• Also, Apple revved the 17-inch MacBook Pro with a stronger processor, more memory and storage, and an updated graphics processor. However, it retains the old casing, making me wonder if this model too might be on its way out.
  
  
• Finally, Apple made an addition to their Cinema Display lineup with a 24-inch model that takes on the industrial design of the new MacBooks and the iMac. This display is specifically targeted toward MacBook users with its standard MagSafe connector and Mini Display Port as opposed to more standard interfaces. This is the first Apple Cinema Display to use LED backlighting and to feature an integrated microphone, iSight camera, and speakers.

That wraps things up for this round of MacBook updates. Except for the lack of FireWire on the consumer MacBooks, I can’t find anything to gripe about, so it must be a good update!

Tags: macintosh

If you haven’t checked out a web application called SUMO Paint, I highly recommend it. It’s an online painting and image manipulation application that features several shape tools, filters, artistic brushes, a symmetry tool, color picker, and much more. It’s very impressive as a web app, and it’s free to use.


SUMO Pain in Safari

I’m not very skilled drawing with a trackpad, but those of you out there with tablets will be able to produce some great work here. Be sure to check out the image gallery for some examples of work people have done in SUMO Paint.

Tags: software

With the release of the iPhone 3G, Apple's developers has given [dot] Mac a long-needed overhaul and have rebranded the effort as MobileMe. Email addresses that used to end with "@mac.com" now end with "@me.com" (though the former still works), "web.mac.com" domains can now use "web.me.com." However, "homepage.mac.com," like this site uses, does not translate into a me.com domain.

The services offered through MobileMe are targeted at both Mac users and PC users, particularly those who have an iPhone of iPod touch – a probable reason why the [dot] Mac moniker was dropped from the branding. MobileMe is designed to help keep things like email, contacts, and calendars synced between your computer(s) and iPhone/iPod touch while also providing a venue for sharing photos and limited backup options.

Logging In

There's nothing really special here unless you are a former [dot] Mac user. The login screen for [dot] Mac was terrible, and this is a huge improvement. Moving on.

iDisk

iDisk has been improved in many ways, using a column view rather than the old list view. Drag-and-drop works as expected between folders as well as the sidebar. Anyone who is used to the Macintosh Finder will feel right at home here. Down in the bottom left corner, a progress bar shows how much space is used on iDisk, and you can conserve space by creating compressed archives of items of folders. Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful getting this feature to work while testing.

Mail

Apple's web-based email interface is uncannily similar to their desktop email client. Like iDisk, if you are familiar with Apple's desktop application, the web application will seem right at home. Mail has extensive preferences, including junk-mail filtering, aliases, and the ability to check other accounts as well as automatically forward me.com mail to other accounts. Drag-and-drop support is pervasive throughout Mail.

Unfortunately, I ran into a significant bug using Mail. When I deleted a message, many times other messages would be deleted as well. Needless to say, this renders Mail pretty unusable until Apple irons this problem out.

Contacts

Contacts serves as MobilMe's answer to Mac OS X's Address Book application. After a slight delay, my contacts synced with MobileMe. Contacts can also import and export vCards, which are used by Address Book, Outlook, Thunderbird, and other contact managers. Adding and editing contacts manually is a simple task, and I did not run into the deletion bug here that was present in MobileMe's Mail interface.

Calendar

Calendar is very similar to iCal. (Notice a theme here yet?) Syncing went smoothly. Calendar supports day, week, and moth views. Adding and removing events is a breeze, but I didn't find a way of importing or exporting calendar data outside of using iCal, which makes me wonder how useful this service will be to Windows users.

Other Notes

• MobileMe supports double-clicks on items as well as the delete key. Unfortunately, many other keyboard commands do not work.
• Shift-clicking to select multiple items works as expected as does cmd-clicking.
• When MobileMe is processing something, there is a small progress indicator at the bottom right of the sidebar.
• Dragging a message to the trash in Mail circumvents the deletion bug I encountered.
• I couldn't get photo uploading to work, so that's why the Photo Galley is not included here.

Conclusions

In all honesty, MobileMe is not very compelling at the moment. It promises great features, and it is beautiful to look at, especially when compared to other online calendar or email services. However, the bugs are deal-breakers. Photo Gallery refused to upload any photographs. Calendar offers no standard importing of exporting options, and deleting messages in Mail can result in unexpected behaviors. Hopefully, these issues are resolved quickly.

If you already subscribe to [dot] Mac, MobileMe makes sense to keep. It improves on the previous service in almost every way. If you use an iPhone or iPod touch in combination with a computer for managing messages, contacts, calendars, and messages, MobileMe might be worth subscribing to for the simple syncing features. Unfortunately, MobileMe can't compete with similar online offerings for general users until the kinks are worked out.

Update: It's important to note that Apple has apologized for the troublesome MobileMe transition and is providing all subscribers with an additional thirty days of service, free of charge.

Tags: mobileme, software

While I'm preparing for a Simply Presentation workshop this summer, I've been browsing the TED Talks website for possible examples to share with the attendees. This involves watching every TED Talk I don't instantly recognize as one I've already viewed or downloaded. One of the joys of this process is discovering some of the technical demonstrations that happen at the TED conference every year.

In this video, Blaise Aguera y Arcas of Microsoft Live Labs shows off a piece of software called Photosyth. The demo is simply jaw-dropping.



Another joy is the outright bizzare but astonishing talents some individuals share. This video has Arthur Benjamin showcasing some unimaginable mathematical skills.

Tags: microsoft, ted

If you are the type of person who likes downloading and trying different web browsers (like I am), then today was chock full of goodness. Not only was Firefox 3.0 officially released today, but the Flock 2 Beta is out as well! (Thanks to Ars for the head's up on Flock.)

Here are links:

• Firefox 3
• Flock 2 Beta

Give them a try. Maybe you'll find a replacement for Internet Explorer if you haven't already. Seriously, if you are viewing my site in Explorer, trust me that it looks better in just about anything else!

Tags: flock, browsers, firefox

The WWDC keynote presentation has come and gone, and I think we can all agree that there is such a thing as too many software demonstrations! Other than that, here is the new stuff for today.

iPhone3G

Take pretty much any complaint against the the original iPhone – too expensive, no Exchange support, no third-party applications, no GPS, no 3G networking – and they've been addressed in the new version. Additionally, the software upgrades will be available to current iPhone users for free.



The new iPhone features Internet access over WiFi, EDGE, or 3G now, resulting in web pages rendering roughly twice as fast on the new model. For enterprise customers, Exchange support has been added, and businesses can even internally develop and distribute custom applications for iPhone. App Store for third-pary applications will launch soon, and the keynote featured many applications that will be available at launch.

I'm not going to cover every demonstrated application in detail, but we saw some games, a couple medical applications, a music creation tool, location-based apps, TypePad and eBay clients, and a couple news and video applications. Prices ranged from free to $9.99. In addition to application support, Apple is providing a way for these apps to give you notifications without extraneous background processes through a push notification service.

The biggest news here is arguably the price. When it was released, the iPhone cost $499 to $599. Now the two models cost $199 to $299.

MobileMe

I have to get this off my chest: that font reminds me of Windows Me. There, I've said it. Now let's move on.



MobileMe replaces [dot] Mac. It retains the same price point but adds a few new features and doubles iDisk storage. Webmail, calendars, iDisk, contacts, and image galleries have all received nice web-interface facelifts (with contacts and calendars new to the suite of tools), and information edited here is automatically synced to any Mac, PC, iPhone, or iPod touch set up with the service. Likewise, editing info on any of those devices causes it to be synced with the others.

According to MobileMe's transition FAQ, [dot] Mac subscribers will transition to MobileMe at no additional charge, and anyone with a mac.com email address or webpage will be able to keep using the same address for the foreseeable future. In all, MobileMe looks like a nice upgrade, but I'll miss typing "[dot] Mac."

SnowLeopard

Mac OS X 10.6 will be a departure from Apple's OS strategy of the past few years. Instead of showcasing a handful of impressive new features, Snow Leopard's development seems to be focused squarely "under the hood." It's all about making Mac OS X run better and more stable than ever. Little info about Snow Leopard has trickled out so far, but here's a snippet from an Apple press release:

Rather than focusing primarily on new features, Snow Leopard will enhance the performance of OS X, set a new standard for quality and lay the foundation for future OS X innovation. Snow Leopard is optimized for multi-core processors, taps into the vast computing power of graphic processing units (GPUs), enables breakthrough amounts of RAM and features a new, modern media platform with QuickTime® X. Snow Leopard includes out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 and is scheduled to ship in about a year.

Personally, I think the Exchange support is going to be a big selling point. Speaking of selling, I wonder if Apple will retain the $129 price-point for Snow Leopard or if it will see a smaller upgrade price due to its less-ambitious feature set.

That covers it for today, but we'll probably see some more Apple-related announcements over the next several days.

Tags: apple inc, iphone, os x, snow leopard

From Disks to Discs

image from stock.xchng

Like the floppy disk of the eighties and early nineties, the CD-ROM has become ubiquitous with computing. Apple, along with Sony, was among the first computer manufacturers to eschew diskette drives in their computers to rely entirely on optical media. The iMac, released in 1998, was widely criticized for its lack of a floppy disk drive, abandoning a technology that was still widely used. In fact, it's not unusual to still see floppy drives on computers these ten years later. By contrast, it was not long before all Apple computers were without floppy drives in standard configurations.


image courtesy Apple, Inc.

Apple bet on a few things. Hard drives were growing large enough to store user documents and files without the meager additional space allotted by floppies. CD-ROMs would become the dominant media for shipping and installing applications, and email would provide a viable means of sharing documents with others. All of these came to be, but early adopters of Apple's diskette-less products did have some hurdles to overcome initially. I remember because I was one of them.

Today, floppy disks are all but useless. Zip drives, SuperDisks, and Sony HiFD all failed to revitalize the technology. Optical disks became the dominant portable media for computers, and they remain so to this day.

Imagining a World Without Discs

While not the first laptop to ship sans optical drive (Lenovo does and Gateway used to), the recent MacBook Air has probably received the most attention for this omission. Apple products garner a great deal of hype and media coverage – more than any other computer hardware manufacturer – so it comes as no surprise this anti-feature is at the center of much attention.


image from stock.xchng

In the case of the MacBook Air, Apple is doing something that they never did for the omission of floppy disk drives. They are offering first-party solutions, Remote Disc and a USB-powered SuperDrive in this instance. However, the move cannot be denied. Does Apple view optical media as becoming obsolete – at least in terms of computing? Will future Macintosh products begin dropping optical drives the way they recently dropped modems?

This may seem far-fetched, but some replacements to optical media are already on the horizon. For one, we have flash drives. If I need to quickly share documents or files with a nearby computer, I simply toss those files onto the flash drive attached to my keychain and pop it into an available USB port. As far as backup goes, external hard drives and flash storage devices (for small stuff) are already affordable enough to offer a compelling alternative to burning CDs or DVDs of data.

I don't think it's beyond the realm of imagination to envisions packaged software coming on small flash drives as opposed to optical media in the future. Even the most complicated of professional software is seldom more than a few hundred megabytes. With the exception of games, commercial operating systems are the only form of packaged software I can think of more than a couple gigabytes in size. Could you imagine installing Office by popping a USB flash drive into your computer rather than a CD?

Digital distribution is the other potential replacement for optical media. Already, films, music, independent software, and many video games can be purchased and downloaded online. Services like iTunes allow you to purchase or rent feature length films without having to open a box. Games as large as Halo: Combat Evolved and Burnout 3: Takedown are available for download on XBox Live Arcade. Isn't it feasible to imagine purchasing Photoshop directly from Adobe, downloading the entire application as a disk image, and then installing the software from that disk image? I could even back up the image to an external hard drive or flash drive in case of deletion or a system restore.

These solutions are not without problems. Affordable bandwidth comes to mind, and sometimes you just want to burn a DVD of some special event to share with others. However, the solutions will come with time, perhaps even through wholly unexpected means. The MacBook Air may be currently handicapped by its lack of an optical drive, but, ten years from now, we may be considering those same devices largely useless.

Tags: opinion, technology

Safari is the default browser on my MacBook. I've tried several others, but I just keep coming back to. It has some intangible quality that just makes it enjoyable to use, so I thought I'd try out Safari on my XP machine at work. Since I use Safari at home, nothing about its core functionality came as a surprise to me. I'm used to how it renders fonts. I'm aware of its limitations. I know exactly what it does well and where it could still use growth. When Safari was released on Windows, those individuals who downloaded it did not know what to expect, and the initial reactions reflected that. Rather than focus on those details, I just want to write about what the user experience is like on XP in general.

Using Safari on XP is, in short, a strange experience. Apple does nothing to make Safari feel like a Windows application. In fact, they seem to go out of their way to make it look and feel as much like a Mac application as possible.



This is what Safari looks like on Windows XP – almost exactly how it would appear on Mac OS X. It's almost as if Apple is using their flagship browser as a not-so-subtle advertisement for their operating system. From the toolbar icons, to sheet dialogues, to the scrollbars, Safari stands out with its uniquely Mac experience. This could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your perspective.




Even the menus, toolbar buttons, and in-page drop downs look like the come directly out of OS X. Almost every interface element is customized to look exactly like the browser's Mac counterpart. Again, if you've ever used Safari on a Mac, then you will know exactly what to expect on Windows. Very seldom did any Windows-like elements appear while I used Safari on XP. One of those times was in printing. A standard Windows print dialog appeared, which was rather visually jarring. The other Mac to Windows difference I noticed is in the browser window's controls, which more closely resemble what you would expect on Windows in shape and position, though they were not the default XP controls.


mac controls and windows controls

In the end, what does this experience mean to Windows users? If you are looking for an application that provides a peek into the general Mac experience, Safari might provide an interesting insight. However, users merely looking for a browser to replace Internet Explorer might be put off by the sheer unfamiliarity of the interface. Quite frankly, Safari does not fit in on Windows, and this inconsistency seems intentional. It's as if Apple is sticking an ad for OS X in front of WIndows users every time Safari is launched, and that will likely prove off-putting to many individuals. In this case, I think Apple should have tailored Safari's interface to fit better into Windows, allowing users a more seamless experience, rather than making it so obvious this is a piece of Macintosh software.

As an experienced Mac user, I personally love using Safari on Windows. It's a far better experience than using Internet Explorer, and I can't get Firefox to function properly on our machines at work. However, experienced Windows users may be quickly turned off by the nonstandard interface, never giving the application a second glance because it is so glaringly out-of-place. The Windows browser market is a pretty crowded place, with IE dominating the casual users and Firefox entrenched with more tech-savvy users. Apple is going to have a hard time gaining a following in this market, and I think they are sabotaging their own efforts by not creating an experience that fits in with Windows more seamlessly.

Tags: software, safari, browsers

Flock 1.0 was released for general consumption late last week, and it offers another browser alternative for Mac, WIndows, and Linux users. It bills itself as a social web browser, and it integrates functionality with several social networking and media sites to bring a richer experience to your web browsing. If you never use online services like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or Flickr, Flock may not be for you. However, if you are a fan of Web 2.0, you might want to give this browser a try.

Cool Features

Flock stands out from many browsers with some very sleek and useful features, though some could use some refinements in their implementation.

The Media Bar is unique and presented well. It's function is to allow access to media streams from various video and photography related sites like YouTube and Flickr. The Media Bar can either appear along the top or the bottom of the browser window.


interesting images from Flickr


top rated YouTube videos

The Media Bar allows you to interact with the videos and photos in various ways. You can save media or send videos and images to online friends trough simple drag-and-drop. You can copy code to embed objects web pages, and, if you are using a blogging engine that Flock recognizes, you can add these images or videos to your blog with a single click. It's a handy addition for individuals who browse a lot of online media.

The People Sidebar is another unique interface feature to Flock. It allows you to integrate services like Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr directly into the browser. For example, Flock can track recent Tweets made from Twitter as well as recent comments made about your Flickr images. I couldn't test the Facebook or YouTube integration since I do not have an account on either, but I did have problems with the Twitter interface sometimes not showing the most recent Tweets (when compared to my Twitter page or results in Twitterific). Still, for individuals hooked on social websites, these features may be great time savers.


twitter in the sidebar and the web clipboard

Another interesting sidebar feature is a Web Clipboard. This clipboard allows you to save links, text, and images from websites for later use. I immediately found this useful in gathering information to possibly use in link posts. The tool is self-explanatory, and it worked flawlessly.

Complimenting the Flickr and YouTube integration, Flock allows for direct uploads to these services. The Flickr uploader was pretty good, but it lacked the ability to add a photo to a specific album. However, it does support writing descriptions, tagging, and privacy settings.


uploading to Flickr

RSS integration is a standard browser feature these days (though I still prefer using a dedicated aggregator), and Flock provides a nice interface for subscribing to feeds. When a site has an RSS feed available, an orange icon lights up in the address bar. Pressing this button will open the feed up in Flock.



Once you are viewing the RSS feed, you have the option to subscribe to this feed with a single click. Flock offers single column or double column views, and articles are marked as read once you scroll past them. You can also choose to view article titles, truncated posts, or full posts (for those RSS feeds that supply full articles). It's well implemented, but I wish there was a way to customize how often it refreshes subscribed feeds.



Flock can additionally be used to edit blogs if you use a service like Blogger, Typepad, or WordPress. (I am unfortunately unable to test this feature thuroughly.) Other nice touches include instant search results, and you can add any site to the search bar that has an integrated search engine. Finally, links that would usually open in a new window automatically open in a new tab, avoiding the hassle of multiple browser windows. In all, Flock contains many unique features that cater to primarily individuals who enjoy social networking, and these features are implemented pretty well. There's some room for improvement, but the package is enjoyable to use as a whole.

The Interface

One of the challenges with creating an application containing so many features is in creating an interface that remains simple and accessible. Here, Flock runs into a couple of small problems. For one, the interface can become very cluttered very quickly if you have the Media Bar and sidebar open simultaneously – a natural side effect of so much accessible information and media.


Also, the default theme is pretty busy. Fortunately, Flock will support themes later this year, so hopefully something a little more subdued will become available soon.



Otherwise, there are some other small elements and widgets that look a little out of place (especially in the bookmarks bar and the preferences window), but this is standard for Firefox-based browsers on OS X at the moment. We'll see if any of the work on the upcoming Firefox 3 addresses those issues.

Technical Issues

I ran into few real issues while testing Flock. The RSS reader does not seem to automatically update your feeds without a relaunch of the browser, nor could I find a way to schedule feed updates. (Someone correct me if I missed something.) Likewise, the Twitter sidebar seldom had the most recent Tweets from individuals I'm following, and I would have to visit Twitter to see their most recent comments anyway – negating the usefulness of the sidebar. Finally, I ran into some slowdowns if I had more than a couple tabs open, and the application crashed a couple of times while I was using it. However, none of these issues negate the usefulness of Flock. They merely diminish that usefulness.

Update: About refreshing feeds (from the Flock FAQ):

Every hour Flock will check feeds for updates. You can refresh individual feeds by using the Reload button while viewing a feed.

Final Thoughts

Saying all this, I do like Flock. Does it need work? Sure it does, but it functions well as a 1.0 product, and it has something going for it most other browsers lack. Flock has personality. It's fun to use. Take Internet Explorer, Camino, Firefox, and a myriad of other browsers. They all have unique features and issues, but they all essentially feel the same to use. Flock stands out from the pack because it dares to be a little different, and, as a Mac user, I can appreciate that. I seriously doubt Flock will be replacing my usual browsing routine of WebKit + Vienna + Twitterific anytime soon, but it's caught my interest. I'll be keeping my eye on this browser as it continues to grow and receive updates, and I recommend you check it out as well.

Tags: software, flock, browsers

I like Paul Thurrott. Really. However, his recent post regarding some users having installation issues with Leopard is just unfortunate. In it, he begins by taking Apple to task for an unwise icon choice for representing PCs in Leopard.

"Apple is so lame and so childish that the icons it uses in Leopard for networked Windows PCs are CRT displays with a Windows blue screen of death. Normally, I'd see this for what it is--typical juvenile stupidity from Cupertino..."

He goes on to point out that some users are experiencing installation issues that also results in a similar blue screen.

"You see, Leopard has its own blue screen of death. And it's happening to an alarming number of people who buy the new OS and install it on their Macs...Have fun with those blue screens, Apple. My advice: Describe this as feature number 301. Heck, you might be able to wrangle 3 or 4 new features out of it."

The problem I have here is that he is acting every bit as childish and immature as he claims Apple is being with this icon (which I'm sure few users will ever even see). He also foregoes any fact-checking as to the root causes. He just reinforces bad stereotypes of Mac-bashers, a stereotype he usually doesn't fit. This tirade is below him.

Fortunately, John Gruber comes along to straighten the facts out regarding the mystery of the blue screen:

"But, as far as I can tell, there is no mystery involved. There is one and only one known cause for this problem: old versions of Unsanity’s Application Enhancer, a.k.a. APE."

There are some exceptions to this statement (which Mr. Gruber admits to in his write-up). However, by and large, this problem is created by Application Enhancer, which is used for unsupported system modifications. The problem turns out to be that several Logitech mouse users may have an old version of APE on their systems without knowing it.

"Logitech Control Center currently installs APE 2.0.3, but previous versions of their installer used older versions of APE, which versions render Leopard unbootable. This is particularly pernicious given that most people installing Logitech’s software have never even heard of APE or Unsanity, let alone realize that Logitech is installing it on their system."

Most Unsanity customers would disable APEs without prompting. We know we are messing with the untold depths of the system and need to undo it all before performing a major upgrade. However, the story is different for someone merely buying a mouse. The issue here is not how Apple let this flaw exist in their software. The issue is why in the world a respected company like Logitech relies on an unsupported system hack to make their hardware work with Mac OS X.

Just for fun, here's the controversial icon:


I include this for a couple of reasons.

1. So you can see what all the fuss is about if you don't happen to be a Mac user with Leopard installed and sharing Windows PCs.
2. Just to demonstrate how huge Leopard icons are. Yes, this is the actual icon.

Irony or potential humor aside, this small problem has gotten too much attention. Maybe if Windows included something silly like this, I'd be on the other side of the fence, but I'd like to think not. Anyway, the Leopard BSOD can be prevented by having the latest version of APE on your system or by disabling it altogether before installing, and I bet that icon will change within the first couple of point releases.

After all, this is nothing. Does anyone remember the Panther File Vault bug that would eat your Home folder? Now that was worth writing home about.

Tags: macintosh, software, apple inc

One of the things that really bugs me about the interface of Internet Explorer 7 is the menu arrow at the end of the address bar. If you are on a standard website, the arrow is in one place, but if you visit a secure website, the arrow moves to make room for another interface element.





See that lock icon. Yeah, it makes the address bar menu jump about 30 pixels to the left. Like I pointed out back in this post, I don't like moving targets. Really, who does? Would it not have made more sense to stick that icon inside the address bar perhaps? What about directly under the Refresh button to the left of the Home icon?

I'm not a professional designer, but it surprises me that both Microsoft and Apple let this mistake get past. People rely on motor memory instinctively, and moving interface elements impede that simple element of human adaptation. If you want to make your application more learnable and usable, all clickable elements of the main interface should consistently appear in the same place – not suddenly move due to a specific circumstance. The only one who should be able to move interface elements around is the user.

Tags: software, microsoft, browsers

Sibelius 5 is the most recent version of the composition and music layout tools by Sibelius Software. It is also the first version to ship as a Universal Binary for Macintosh computers – making a very anticipated release. The previous PPC versions run terribly on Intel Macs, so I was excited to download a demo for the most recent version.

Installation was as simple as can be hoped with any OS X application. Simply drag the application to your Applications folder, and you're done. The rest of the application feels much more Mac-like than version 4 did, but some strangeness still exists. The most obvious example is the application toolbar, which just looks out-of-place.


Other visual bugs exist throughout various dialog boxes, but this strange piece of UI design stares at you all the time Sibelius is open. Regardless, the rest of Sibleius' interface is very simple an unobtrusive.


clean and simple – Sibelius does a good job at avoiding distraction

The New Features

Sibelius 5 features features some enhancements and new functionality over previous versions. Panorama view removes all page breaks from your score and views everything in one infinitely continuous horizontal system, creating a simpler way of viewing the music you are working on.


an instrumental part in Panorama view

Sibelius 5 also makes it easy to extract parts. This was really a new feature with version 4, called Dynamic Parts, but, since I'm still using Sibelius 3 at home, this feature continues to impress. You simply write your score, choose a part from a menu, and the part immediately appears. This is a huge timesaver.

Another innovation to Sibelius 5 is the Ideas Hub. Using this feature is pretty similar to using loops in programs like GarageBand, and it's a fantastic addition to this application. SImply put, if you think of something off the top of your head, you can notate it out, open the Ideas window and save the clip of music until you are ready to use it – a simple process of copy and paste. Even better, you can listen to the music clips in the Ideas window, and double-clicking one of the snippets allows you to edit the notation.


viewing and editing an Idea

When I wrote about SIbelius 4 (which I never bought because the Intel Macs came along), I was pretty critical of Sibelius' fairly lame selection of quality samples when compared to Finale. While I still feel Finale has the better sample collection, Sibelius 5 has drastically improved in this area, including over 150 high quality instrument sounds. (Of course, many more can be purchased separately.) Also, Sibelius has gained support for VST and Audio Units – giving users greater flexibility in choosing virtual instruments from other manufacturers.

Other improvements include an improved equalizer, special measure numbering, easier cues, and instrument doubling in parts. Sibelius 5 also includes a font that writes the name of the note inside the notehead – a great addition for those of us working with younger musicians.

Conclusion

Overall, Sibelius 5 is a very nice improvement over previous versions. Unfortunately, some interface bugs are annoying, and I'm beginning to question the priority of Macintosh development at Sibelius Software in recent years. Back in the early days of OS X, Sibelius showed up the competition time and again in adopting new Macintosh technologies quickly and effectively. Recently, however, the Mac versions of Sibelius feel more of an afterthought. I hope I'm wrong, but $600 is an awful lot to spend on software that sometimes just feels buggy. Fortunately, bugs can be fixed.

Compared to its competition, SIbelius feels much more intuitive than Finale, and it is far more capable than Encore or other similar products. Both Finale and Sibelius have distinctive strengths and weaknesses as composing solutions, but Sibelius has the edge in my book. For the most part, it gets out of the way and lets me concentrate on my creativity, which is exactly what this kind of software should do.

Tags: software, sibelius, opinion

iWork '08 was released on August 7 with some improvements to the existing presentation and page layout applications and a brand-new spreadsheet application called Numbers. Over a series of three posts, I'm going to take a look at the new features introduced in this version of iWork.

• Keynote
• Pages
• Numbers

I will be the first to admit that I have a hard time wrapping my head around spreadsheets and spreadsheet applications. I find that Pages (or Word) does all I need for the tables and charts I usually need. Consequently, I rarely touch applications like Excel, so some trepidation went into writing this overview. However, the more I used Numbers, the less daunting the application seemed.

Usually, when you open a spreadsheet application, you see something like this:

a blank spreadsheet in NeoOffice Calc

This interface is daunting in its sheer lack of guidance. Of course, you could always follow a Wizard of some sort, but those can be equally as frustrating. It was with some surprise that opening Numbers (and choosing one of the offered templates) resulted in this:

Numbers' grade book template

Templates are present in Excel as well, but the simple flexibility of the templates in Pages makes them much more attractive to use.

Numbers takes an approach to spreadsheets very similar to creating a basic document. Sheets are arranged along the side as page thumbnails would be in Pages or slides in Keynote. Tables themselves are treated like objects and are each self-contained spreadsheets within your larger document. If you are comfortable with how the other iWork applications handle document objects, Numbers will feel pretty familiar. On the other hand, users who are very comfortable in Excel might need some adjustment.

selecting tables and basic formulas from the toolbar

Fortunately, this document-like approach makes it much easier to create spreadsheets that will print out predictably – something I've always had problems accomplishing the few times I've used Calc or Excel. For even further refinement, Numbers features a print view that is fully interactive and allows you to have complete control over how the spreadsheet document looks.

Working with data seems intuitive in Numbers as well. For example, if a cell is set up to calculate a formula, an editor appears atop to the cell when you select it (as opposed to being at the top of the screen or inside the cell where it might not fit).

editing an equation in cell E3

I also noticed that selecting a graph tied to the data in a specific table highlights the table, clearly indicating how the data is correlated. It's a small touch but a nice one.

the colors in the table match up with the graph

As far as Excel compatibility goes, I haven't been able to test the exporting quality, but NeoOffice Calc has had little success opening Numbers-exported Excel documents. Importing a very large Excel worksheet I have from school resulted in very few errors, and Numbers informs you of any issues when you import.

import errors

Numbers furthermore lacks support for Excel macros as well as AppleScript (a strange omission). I found little else to complain about, but I've read that performance suffers if you create large tables.

In all, Numbers adds a needed component to the iWork suite, and it does so with an approach that is both fresh and accessible. Serious power users and businesses might find the application limiting, but Numbers should capably fill the needs of most home users. I could write for quite a while about how simple conditional formatting and equation editing is, about how much easier Numbers is on the eyes when compared to other spreadsheet apps, or a plethora of other topics. However, I'll just wrap up by saying that I could actually see myself voluntarily opening and using Numbers – something I cannot say about any other spreadsheet application I've used before.

For further reading on Numbers:

• Mac Thought Crime: Numbers rocks: how I forgot about the review and ended up doing my budget
• Macworld Review: Numbers '08

Tags: software, iwork, opinion

iWork '08 was released on August 7 with some improvements to the existing presentation and page layout applications and a brand-new spreadsheet application called Numbers. Over a series of three posts, I'm going to take a look at the new features introduced in this version of iWork.

• Keynote
• Pages
• Numbers

Pages was packaged with Keynote in 2005 in the first iteration of iWork. Pages received decidedly mixed reviews, but Apple has continued to improve its page layout application over time, resulting in the most recent version.

Initially, Pages was not a word processor (like how most people use Microsoft Word). Rather it focused on page layout more akin to Microsoft Publisher or Adobe FrameMaker. Indeed, you could use Pages for simple word processing, and I have done so on many occasions. Unfortunately, Pages has offered such a fundamentally different approach to creating documents than Word that a perceived learning curve is in place. This harmed Pages popularity quickly.

Now, in version 3, Pages is truly reaching maturity as a product. However, compared with other documenting applications, its interface is very clean and uncluttered. Compare the screenshots below of Pages running on Mac OS X and Word 2003 on Windows XP.

x

A lack of clutter is not indicative of a lack of functionality, however, and Pages is packing a lot of enhancements and a few new features under its hood. The first thing I noticed was a detail that might skirt by most users – its install size. One would expect Pages 3 to be larger than Pages 2, but quite the opposite is true.

x

As you can see, Pages has lost considerable weight from one version to the next – dropping nearly 600 MB. (Also, Keynote has lost about 1 GB off its size. I wonder how they trimmed the applications' weights to such an extent.)

When the Template Chooser is brought up, there are many new templates to choose from, and they are now divided between "Word Processing" and "Page Layout."


Word Processing offers much more basic templates than Page Layout

Regardless of the mode you use, Pages behaves basically the same once you begin creating your document. Like, Keynote, Pages has had a toolbar facelift and has received Instant Alpha and Photo Frame capabilities. Pages has also gained a contextual Formatting Bar, and this little widget quickly makes the application much more usable as a word processor. Prior to this release, to change fonts, you had to open a separate pane, and all basic formatting options were most easily accessible through a pane called an Inspector. (On the upside, I personally grew very comfortable with keyboard shortcuts. On the other hand, this turned off several potential users.)

Now, similarly to Office 2007, a small bar is present beneath the main toolbar icons that customizes itself to the part of the document you are currently working with.


working with text


editing chart properties


editing a picture

This Formatting Bar is extremely useful and all but eliminates the need to resort to the Inspector for anything but the most tedious of settings. This is a welcome addition, and the only criticism I have is that the bar is very small. There seems to be no way to make the bar larger, and this could prove a problem for users with less than ideal eyesight.

Pages has also gained some more refined equation editing for charts that seems to come directly from Numbers, the new spreadsheet application bundled in iWork '08. In the Inspector, you can set conditions and basic equations with a simple click, and the formula editor automatically appears overs selected cells that are set to respond to formulas. I'm not sure if all of these features are new to Pages 3, but this is the first time I've noticed them – making certain tables much easier and more intuitive to generate than before.

setting conditional formatting


the new equation editor

Finally, Pages 3 features better compatibility with Word documents than its predecessors – even compatibility with Office 2007 Office Open XML files. This also applies to change tracking, which would not translate from Pages to Word or vice versa prior to this release. Now Mac users can use NeoOffice or iWork to interact with Office XML files. Ironically, a version of Microsoft Office for the Mac featuring this capability is not due out until early next year.

With Pages, Apple has made some relatively small changes that drastically effect its usability. In some regards, it feels like a new program altogether. I've been fond of Pages since its release and have used it pretty regularly. These enhancements will only serve to increase my use of and enjoyment with this application.

For more reading on Pages:

• Apple's Pages site
• Macworld: First Look at Pages '08

Tags: software, iwork, opinion

iWork '08 was released on August 7 with some improvements to the existing presentation and page layout applications and a brand-new spreadsheet application called Numbers. Over a series of three posts, I'm going to take a look at the new features introduced in this version of iWork.

• Keynote
• Pages
• Numbers

Keynote is the original member of what would eventually become iWork. It was released in 2003 and has seen three major updates since them, each bringing new functionality as well as general improvements.

One thing I noticed immediately in Keynote '08 was that the toolbar icons seem to have received some attention. I think this may be the first facelift the toolbar has received since the initial release. The toolbar is now unified, and the new icons are more illustrative than photographic.

Keynote '06 toolbar

Keynote '08 toolbar

The toolbar icons do not seem to be resolution independent, nor does the application icon support a 512x512 resolution, both expected due to the impending release of Leopard. However, digging through Keynote's packaged resources, I did find some icons for iChat Theater, which is a Leopard feature. Perhaps new icons will come in a software update. (I also noticed some other organizational differences in the package that I'll have to keep in mind when digging for resources.)

As far as visual enhancements to presentations go, Keynote '08 comes with a few new themes, transitions, and build effects, along with a new way of animating text and objects called Smart Builds.

You can see all the new themes above. My wife is very fond of Harmony, and I like Vellum and Industrial the most. I'm not too fond of Craft or Stock Book personally, but many of you will have different opinions. No Keynote themes seem to have been removed from the previous version in this upgrade, which is a first.

There are a few new 3D slide transitions: color planes, confetti, and swap, and there is one new 2D transition called Blur. New build animations include comet, confetti, drift, flame (which is terrible), and sparkle. Text builds contain all of these plus blast, bouncy, confetti, convergence, and squish. Some builds and transitions are amusing, needing to be avoided in professional presentations at all costs, while others like blur and drift can be quite dramatic.

Smart Builds create a sophisticated animation between objects – rotating or flipping between images. Really, seeing is better than explaining, so here's a video:

Click here for video

Another new visual flair comes by way of path animations, called Action Builds in Keynote. Basically you can determine a path for text or an image to follow, but the neat thing is that the object can change states while progressing along its path. For example, an image can change size or opacity during its transition. You can set items to move along a straight or a curved path. Again, showing is better than explaining:

Click here for video

Keynote has gained some interface refinements in a smart formatting bar (which I will talk more about in the Pages overview) and live image resizing within a mask – making the task of resizing masked objects far less tedious than the preceding version of Keynote. Also, you can now record your voice in sync with your slides and animations. Couple this with the fact that Keynote integrates with iTunes and Garageband, and you have a nice way of sharing your presentations with audio. The recording options are limited, but patience will yield decent results.

Another advertised new feature is Instant Alpha, which brings another image editing capability to Keynote (like shape masking and Image Adjust in the previous version). Instant Alpha is designed to quickly and easily remove backgrounds from photographs.

x

It's important that the background is pretty solid and distinctly contrasts from the main image. Otherwise, the results can get messy. It's a feature that works well enough to be a timesaver, but it can't altogether replace a more professional graphics app if you use alpha transparencies a lot. (Hint: using shadows can hide rough edges in the Instant Alpha transparency.)

FInally, it's possible to add special frames around images in Keynote slides outside the usual shadows and lines. In the object inspector, there is a Picture Frame option under "Stroke," and you will be able to choose from twelve different frames available to that theme. It's not a huge feature, but both my wife and I would have loved this option with some projects we did last year and earlier this year.



That covers most of Keynote's new features. Most of it is good stuff, and I've only run into a couple bugs so far. The only problem with all of these great improvements is avoiding going overboard when creating a presentation. If you have a Mac, you really should own iWork, and I think that will become more evident as we look at more of this application suite.

For more reading on Keynote's new features:

• Apple's Keynote Page
• Keynote User: Quick Keynote '08 New Feature List
• Macworld: First Look: Keynote '08

And don't forget to check out my iWork tagged Flickr photos!

Tags: software, opinion, iwork, keynote

In 1999, Apple released a humble product called Mac OS X (pronounced "ten") Server 1.0. In look and feel, the operating system was very similar to Mac OS 8 (and 9), but, beneath the interface, the system contained some drastic changes that would eventually revolutionize the entire Macintosh software line. It eschewed the classic Mac OS nanokernal for the NEXTSTEP hybrid kernel, and it contained a hybrid of classic Macintosh features and NEXTSTEP features – even requiring an emulation layer to run classic Mac OS applications. This Mac OS was unlike anything that had come before it. In fact, it was really Mac OS in name only.

A Little Background

In 1986, two years after the introduction of the Macintosh and and the Mac OS, Steve Jobs found himself ousted from the company he helped create. Ever the entrepeneuer, he quickly launched into two new ventures – one was an unwanted animation studio that would become Pixar, and the other was a new computer company called NeXT.

NeXT computers were technnically advanced for their time. They were released in 1990 with 25MHz processors, 8 MB RAM, an ethernet port, 256 MB storage, and a 1120x832 display. In contrast, typical machines of the time would have had 16MHz processors, 640 kb RAM, no networking, 10-40 MB storage, and 640x350 displays. NeXT Computer is considered a pioneer in brigning networking to desktop computers. The first email programs and web browsers were developed for NeXT. Unfortunately, the NeXT hardware was doomed to failure (mainly due to prohibitively high costs), but the operating system would live on.

NEXTSTEP was released in the days of Windows 3.1 and Mac OS 7, and it stood out from its competition both visually and in capabilities.



Mac OS 7, Windows 3.1, and NEXTSTEP. These screenshots are all courtesy of Wikipedia.

NEXTSTEP was based on the Mach kernel and BSD. It featured object-oriented programming based on the Objective-C language. It was meant to be viewed on higher-resolution displays, and it included many software tools for networking and collaboration. Additionally, NEXTSTEP was the first general operating system to handle color standards, advanced sound processing, modern typography, and internationalization. It's interface featured real-time scrolling and window dragging as well as window notifications and transparency. Again, this was all in the early 90's, well before the world would be captivated by Windows 95.

NEXTSTEP faded into obscurity after the mass adoption of Windows 95, but it would find a strange rebirth in 1996 when it was acquired by Apple, and Steve Jobs returned to the company that had rejected him ten years prior.

Reinventing the Mac OS

When Steve Jobs came back to Apple through the NEXT acquisition, Apple had already put massive efforts into overhauling the Mac OS through the Copland and Taligent projects (though some Copland features were eventually incorporated into OS X). Both of these systems were laid to rest in the late nineties in favor of Rhapsody, an operating system based primarily on the OPENSTEP (neé NEXTSTEP) operating system. Rhapsody eventually became Mac OS X Server 1.0 which would lead to the public beta of Mac OS X.


OPENSTEP and Rhapsody (both courtesy GUIdebook) side by side

Though called Mac OS, system 10 shared little in common with the previous Mac operating systems outside some superficial interface elements. Like NEXTSTEP, Mac OS X is based on the Mach kernel and BSD Unix. They are both object-oriented environments based on the Objective-C programming language. Both feature a dock, system services, managed memory, and preemptive multitasking. In fact, if you crack open the UI of most Mac OS X applications, you will find files with the extension ".nib" contained within. NIB is short for NeXT Interface Builder.

Like Mac OS X Server 1.0 and the Rhapsody developer builds, Mac OS X is incapable of natively running applications written for previous versions of the Mac OS. These applications were relegated to a "blue box" called Classic, and they could not take advantage of Mac OS X's more advanced features. The Classic layer, effectively the final vestiges of the original Mac OS, lost support with the recent Intel-transition of Macintosh computers, placing the final nails in the coffin of the system that served Apple since 1984.


System 1.1 (from GUIdebook) next to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (from Apple)

As John Siracusa wrote last year (on the fifth anniversary of Mac OS X), "The Mac is dead. Long live the Mac." OS X is Mac OS in name only. Truth be told, Mac OS X is the never-released NEXTSTEP 5, for the system shares much more in common with that legacy than with the Mac OS legacy. Apple took a daring move with Mac OS X in that they completely pulled the rug out from under their current OS foundation and replaced it with something entirely new – a feat that other OS vendors have been reluctant to attempt.

As Mac OS X becomes a more mature product, it resembles NEXTSTEP more and more while retaining the style and simplicity Mac users have come to expect. NEXTSTEP and the classic Mac OS were products doomed to failure – the former for being too far ahead of the times and the latter for being to far behind – but Apple has created a powerful and stable operating environment from the ashes of both, similar to each but ultimately original and innovative.

Tags: software, macintosh, leopard, os x

I saw this a while ago but forgot to post about it. It seems Microsoft is subtly trying to steal thunder from Ubuntu nowadays. Compare below and ask, "Could this be mere coincidence?" I think not.


Here is the Ubuntu logo.


Here is the Microsoft Alumni Network logo.

Aping a Linux distribution logo? I mean really. Props to whoever pointed this out to me...

Tags: technology, microsoft, opinion, linux

RapidWeaver 3.6 was released a couple of weeks ago by Realmac Software. Since this site is maintained using RapidWeaver, I am very interested in this application's progress. Over a few separate posts, we're going to explore new features and improvements in the software, areas that are problematic, and we'll finish up with some final thoughts and advice.

Posts in this series:
Improved Blogging • Other Improvements • Picking Nits • Alternatives and Wrap-Up

Now that we've looked at RapidWeaver's improvements and drawbacks, this post will be dedicated to looking at two of RapidWeaver's alternatives on the Macintosh as well as some useful add-ons for RW.

iWeb – Apple; Preinstalled; $80 (part of iLife)
If you've bought a Mac in the last year or so, you have iWeb already. iWeb is part of Apple's excellent iLife suite of lifestyle applications. (iMovie, iDVD, Garageband, and iPhoto are also part of the iLife package.) iLife is geared toward making blogs, online newsletters, and photo galleries a simple process. It succeeds in this admirably as long as you are okay with its limitations.

Like Apple's iWork applications, iWeb is heavily template based. You choose what kind of website you want to create, and iWeb offers a set of templates you can choose from. As expected, the templates are well designed and visually pleasant.


choosing an iWeb template

Once you pick a template, editing the site is much like editing a document. You plug in images and text where appropriate, and the process is very fast and fluid. Performance is snappy, and it's possible to generate a nice looking site with little effort and no specialized web knowledge.


editing a site in iWeb

The iWeb experience is great, but the limitations become apparent quickly. First and foremost, straying from the template layout can become a pain – especially in blogging where every new entry reverts back to the default settings. Blogs do not support tags or categories, and there is no easy way to install custom templates or permanently modify those included. Finally, iWeb defaults to PNG images, which are great, but some browsers (read: Internet Explorer) do not always handle them correctly. This means your iWeb page may not look the same in different browsers.

iWeb is a nice application, and I actually prefer working in iWeb over RapidWeaver, but RapidWeaver is far superior in terms of flexibility, features, and browser compatibility.

Sandvox – Karelia Software; $50 (standard), $80 (pro)
Sandvox was introduced scant weeks before the introduction of Apple's iWeb as an alternative to RapidWeaver. Like these other applications, it's purpose is to give non-web designers a simple way to create great looking sites. Sandvox comes in two editions with the Pro version allowing for more direct code interaction and modification. Sandvox has a very unique interface and some interesting options in creating web sites.

Like iWeb and RapidWeaver, Sandvox is template based.


the template gallery

Similar to iWeb, you get to directly edit the site visually. Whenever anything is changed in a sub-page, the homepage is automatically updated to reflect that content. Also, one feature I really like in Sandvox is something called Pagelets where you can add Digg links, Flickr photostreams, RSS feeds, page counters, and other useful content to your sidebar with one click. Sandvox also boasts some nice eye candy in browsing and changing site themes.


editing a site in Sandvox

I feel like Sandvox's blogging tool is awkward, and, like iWeb, there seems to be no support for categories and tags. The templates' properties (like page-width and colors) are not easily modified, and, in stark contrast to RapidWeaver, the developer's website does not facilitate easy discovery of third-party themes, pagelets, and plug-ins. Additionally, sites created in Sandvox have a default homepage that you can't manually bypass or remove.

Out of these three apps, I like Sandvox the least, but your personal preferences may differ. Sandvox is a nice step up from iWeb, but it still falls short of RapidWeaver's standard in my opinion.

Buying Advice: RapidWeaver – Realmac Software; $50
My money went to RapidWeaver before iWeb and Sandvox were even available, but my purchasing advice hasn't changed. RapidWeaver does have a higher learning curve than these alternatives, and it does have some issues, but it is the best way to quickly and inexpensively produce a nice-looking site. It supports every feature a modern website is expected to have, and an active development community creates even more possibilities for the application.

If you already have iWeb on your computer and it meets your needs, go with it. It's a great program and produces nice web pages. However, if you want to move past iWeb's limitations, get RapidWeaver. You won't regret it.

Useful RapidWeaver Resources

Themes. The first place you might want to start expanding RapidWeaver is in your theme collection. There are a number of first and third-party themes available for free and for purchase. Some theme developers include: elixer graphics, Blue Ball Design, Multithemes, and seyDesign. Additionally, Realmac offers some additional business themes and blog themes of their own, and they showcase themes by other developers. Finally, a site called Charcoal on the Wall is a good place to go to browse and preview additional themes.

Plug-ins. Plug-ins extend RapidWeaver's functionality. For example, RapidFLV makes embedding Flash videos a simpler task. RapidBlog integrates RapidWeaver with Blogger, and YourHead Software offers a number of plug-ins designed to give your website some additional style and polish. Again, be sure to visit Relamac's page of plug-ins for even more great add-ons.

There is even more – downloadable theme styles, code snippets and even some utilities are available to enhance the RapidWeaver experience. In addition to the add-ons section of RapidWeaver's site, the RealMac forums are a great place to discover more about this application and complimentary products.

That wraps up this look at RapidWeaver 3.6. I hope you found it informative and useful – if not at least interesting. RapidWeaver is a great application for simplifying the process of making a web site. It's reasonably priced for the features it offers. It has a great development community built up around it, and I'll definitely be purchasing an upgrade license in the near future. If you have a Mac, and you are interested in setting up a website, you can't go wrong with RapidWeaver.

Tags: opinion, software, rapidweaver

Steve Jobs outlined some more info about Leopard during his Keynote speech at this years WWDC, and Apple's website has even more. Here are some of the overall impressions I've gained.

Eye Candy Is Important

One of the big changes (improvements may be debatable) in Leopard is in the visuals. Everything seems geared toward visual impressiveness. This user interface (UI) is intended to make people look at Vista and think it looks clunky.

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all images from apple.com

I've read many power-users bemoaning the fact that visual flair is becoming too emphasized in modern operating systems, and it doesn't look like that trend is reversing anytime soon. Personally, I like visual enhancements so long as they do not come at a cost to usability. The only complaint here is in the menu bar. The menus look out-of-place when invoked.


it's translucent now

iTunes = Mac Experience

Apple wants iTunes users to feel right at home in the Leopard UI – iTunes being the only Apple interface many potential users have daily contact with. As a result, the majority of the system resembles iTunes. Nowhere is this more evident than in the revamped Finder.


image from apple.com

From the window design to the sidebar to Cover Flow, the Finder basically recreates the iTunes experience in file management. The message: "If you enjoy using iTunes, you will enjoy using a Mac."

Organize Your Way

Stacks, the Dock, smart folders, Cover Flow, Quick View, Spaces – all of this gives the user greater flexibility in how he or she uses a Mac.


a stack of documents (from apple.com)


Quick View in Time Machine (from apple.com)

It's all about giving you greater flexibility and more options in how and where you access your files, media, and applications. Content is king, and Apple is giving us many ways to experience, organize, and access that content.

One Size Fits All

Steve Jobs made a joke during his talk that Leopard will come in three editions – Basic at $129, Premium at $129, and Ultimate at $129. He thinks most people will buy the Ultimate Edition. The simple fact is that you don't have to worry about which version of the OS to upgrade to because there is only one. Ease-of-use is a hallmark of the Macintosh experience, and that simplicity begins with the purchasing process.

Personally, I can't wait to get my hands on Leopard in October.

Tags: software, opinion, macintosh, leopard, wwdc, os x

RapidWeaver 3.6 was released a couple of weeks ago by Realmac Software. Since this site is maintained using RapidWeaver, I am very interested in this application's progress. Over a few separate posts, we're going to explore new features and improvements in the software, areas that are problematic, and we'll finish up with some final thoughts and advice.

Posts in this series:
Improved Blogging • Other Improvements • Picking Nits • Alternatives and Wrap-Up

As much as I respect and enjoy RapidWeaver as a product, there are some areas in which the software could still use improvement in the new version. Fortunately, RapidWeaver recently saw a 3.6.1 update that resolved a couple of the issues I was going to write about, so that was a welcome surprise.

Inconsistent Performance

iWeb is not one of my favorite Apple products, but one thing it has going for it is performance. It can open and save my website (100+ MB) in mere seconds, sometimes perceptually instantaneously. RapidWeaver is another story. In fact, this is my biggest complaint about RapidWeaver, and, if this one problem was fixed, I'd be satisfied. The simple truth is that loading and saving large documents in RapidWeaver is a pain, and the new version shows no significant improvements in this area.

To test performance, I ran these tests 3-6 times, depending on application crashes and tester errors. I then averaged the numbers. The only open applications were Pages, RapidWeaver, and Activity Monitor. The test computer has a 2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo processor and 1 GB of memory. The document is 122 MB.

Here are the averages of opening my site in RapidWeaver 3.5 and RapidWeaver 3.6:

RW 3.6 only shows real improvement in CPU usage here. RapidWeaver 3.5 suffered two application crashes in this test, and version 3.6 suffered zero. Anecdotally, I've had version 3.5 take up to two minutes to load my site document on several occasions.

Here are the numbers for saving:

Note that version 3.6 is actually more resource-hungry that 3.5 in saving the same document. Neither version crashed while saving. Annoyingly, my computer becomes basically unusable during the saving process, and, again, I've encountered numerous occasions where RapidWeaver 3.5 has taken much longer to save a file than these numbers show.

FInally, take a look at RapidWeaver's overall memory usage. This is memory usage while completely idle:

While using RapidWeaver, it gradually consumes more and more resources. Unfortunately, after quitting, those resources sometimes stay tied up, leaving the computer in a state where performance is going to be generally poor – forcing a restart to reclaim that memory.

This is my biggest complaint about RapidWeaver, and again, I would be happy if performance was the only big issue the Realmac team tackled for version 3.7. I don't know how many other RapidWeaver users share this opinion, but fantastic new features can be tarnished when the most basic tasks – loading and saving – are an aversive experience.

Other Issues

I really only a few additional complaints about RapidWeaver 3.6. The inability to create tables within the application is a pain. (The tables in this post are screenshots of Pages.) Not all included themes take advantage of the Theme Styles I praised in the previous post. All new themes have flexible color settings while many of the older themes do not. It would also be nice if user's could link to hosted images rather than embedding them into the blog file. Finally, there is still no easy way to set a site's default font. If I want my blog to be in a different font, I would either have to edit the css file or change the font one entry at a time.

That's really it as far as criticism goes. RapidWeaver is a very nice application with just a few small issues. For me, performance is the biggest issue, and, if that could be resolved, RapidWeaver 3.6 would be a near-perfect application for my purposes.

In the next post about RapidWeaver, I'll share some info about competing products, useful add-ons, and buying advice for version 3.6.

Update: You can in fact link to images in the blog editor. You just have to use "img src=" bracketed by < >. (I was making a mistake!)

Tags: software, opinion, rapidweaver

RapidWeaver 3.6 was released a couple of weeks ago by Realmac Software. Since this site is maintained using RapidWeaver, I am very interested in this application's progress. Over a few separate posts, we're going to explore new features and improvements in the software, areas that are problematic, and we'll finish up with some final thoughts and advice.

Posts in this series:
Improved Blogging • Other Improvements • Picking Nits • Alternatives and Wrap-Up

Though the blogging tool is certainly the most important to me, RapidWeaver has seen some further improvements in its most recent point release. In this post, we'll take a look at some of those other enhancements.

Photo Albums

The interface for creating photo albums has hardly changed at all, except for the removal of picture previews and the ability to add some text at the top of the album page. Those seem like strange omissions, and it makes me wonder if I am perhaps merely missing something in the interface.

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3.5 on the left; 3.6 on the right

The real change comes with the way the photo album module handles Flash slideshows. The previous version looked nice already, but the new slideshow offers better navigation, background audio, a variety of transitions, and the "Ken Burns" effect.

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3.5 on the left; 3.6 on the right

FInally, the photo album offers integration with Flickr photostreams. All you have to do is have a Flickr RSS feed, and RapidWeaver will showcase your hosted pictures.

Theme Styles

This feature has been pretty heavily emphasized, and I have to admit that it's a welcome addition to the software. In previous versions of RapidWeaver, a theme might have a predetermined set of color schemes, but, for real control, you had to resort to opening the theme package and editing the css stylesheet.

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3.5 on the left; 3.6 on the right

This new feature gives you nearly unlimited control over the way colors are used on your site. However, for control freaks, some css editing might still be necessary. This features is not currently implemented consistently across all themes, and we'll take a look at that in my next post.

The Kitchen Sink

RapidWeaver 3.6 also boasts a number of other small improvements that make the software even better. A Snippets pane allows you to store commonly-accessed HTML code for easy retrieval. The application has improved making lists. The various inspectors have been consolidated and simplified – making for better usability. The software also performs better overall (with a couple of caveats). In all, RapidWeaver 3.6 is an impressive update filled with great new features and welcome improvements.

In the next installment, we'll take a look at some of the issues I've run into using this software. Stay tuned!

Tags: software, opinion, rapidweaver

RapidWeaver 3.6 was released a couple of weeks ago by Realmac Software. Since this site is maintained using RapidWeaver, I am very interested in this application's progress. Over a few separate posts, we're going to explore new features and improvements in the software, areas that are problematic, and we'll finish up with some final thoughts and advice.

Posts in this series:
Improved Blogging • Other Improvements • Picking Nits • Alternatives and Wrap-Up

I spend most of my time in the blog editor of RapidWeaver, so I'm going to concentrate on that component for the entirety of this post. You can see in the screenshots below that the interface for editing blogs has not changed much since the last version. Some interface elements have been added, but little else has changed. However, those small changes add up to some welcome new capabilities.

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3.5 on the left • 3.6 on the right

Instead of using drop-down menus for categories, RW 3.6 uses a text field that will auto-complete as you type. Tapping Return/Enter will add the category. This text field also facilitates adding multiple categories to a post – a welcome enhancement to RapidWeaver's blogging tool.


title and category in 3.5


title and categories in 3.6

Tagging works much the same way in RW 3.6. This generates a tag cloud in your sidebar with frequently-used tags appearing in larger text than more infrequently used tags. This is another feature I'm excited to see appear.

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a couple of RapidWeaver tag clouds

The only other real difference I noted in blog editing is the fact that you can now choose whether or not an entry is published from the main list. In the previous RapidWeaver version, you had to select a post first, then choose to publish it or not.



Overall, the enhancements to the blog editing tool in RapidWeaver are welcome changes. The typing of categories and tags really goes much more quickly than menus. (Fortunately, tapping Esc will bring up a list of categories and tags.)

The enhancements look minor, but they bring a lot of nice functionality to blogging with RW. I've already begun converting the blog portions of this site over to RapidWeaver 3.6, but it's going to take a while due to some snags I've run into with the migration process. (That will be a topic for a later post.) Next time we'll take a look at some of the other new features – including a nicely improved photo gallery.

Tags: software, opinion, rapidweaver

It's the last week of the school year, and things are insane. Here are some quick bits to keep you entertained until I can formulate a more substantial post.

•••

I just finished supporting one of our fourth grade teacher's movie-making project with her class. The children wrote, directed, and starred in their own production. A good time was had by all – except for us adults who had to piece everything together in the end!

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editing the film in iMovie & iDVD

On a related note, I'm also trying to finish up this year's fifth grade memories DVD. Even though I'm ahead of schedule compared to previous years, it still feels like this project will never be done! Throw a talent show into the mix, and things just get nutty!

•••

In totally unrelated news, I noticed that the most recent version of NeoOffice displays the correct "close" widget on unsaved documents! You might remember that I noted this as a flaw in my overview of NeoOffice earlier this year.




•••

Finally, this made me utter a hushed "woot!" of awe:



To paraphrase the cinematic trailer – it's about time, indeed.

Tags: work, video games, technology, neooffice

It's been a busy week in the world of indie Mac developers. Instead of creating several tiny links to these products, here's a quick look at some of the bigger releases in the past week:

Panic – Coda
From the site:

So, we code web sites by hand. And one day, it hit us: our web workflow was wonky. We’d have our text editor open, with Transmit open to save files to the server. We’d be previewing in Safari, running queries in Terminal, using a CSS editor, and reading references on the web. “This could be easier,” we realized. “And much cooler.”

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Coda is simply a one-stop solution for individuals who like to hand code their web sites. Right now, it's a bit over my head, but I'll keep revisiting it as my coding skills improve. John Gruber has some interesting thoughts on the product right here, and I was also pointed to this post on Upstart Blogger with thirty tips and tricks for Coda.

Coda is a very accessible application, and the UI is gorgeous. The price is a bit steep, though, at $99. However, Panic is offering Coda for $79 right now.

MacRabbit – CSSEdit 2.5
This is another product aimed at web developers, and it is specifically designed for editing CSS stylesheets. It is a very nice-lloking application. The feature-set is good, and the price of $30 is not bad at all for the functionality it offers.

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CSSEdit is especially handy for tracking downs specific elements you might want to change, and you can preview those changes live. This application just keeps continuing to impress me. I've had some experience manually tweaking CSS stylesheets, and this product is just fantastic for that.

Peter Borg – Smultron 3.0
Smultron is a free text editor that is aimed at beginning and advanced coders. It supports syntax coloring (for several different programming languages from .ASP to Fortran to Ruby to Lua), split window editing, line numbers, Java compiling, code validation, and may other advanced features. Is it as comprehensive as something like TextMate? I don't actually know, but it's pretty good, and the price can't be beat if it meets your needs.

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Rogue Amoeba – Fission 1.5
Like many great applicaitons, Fission is a very simple tool. It's aimed at editing and converting audio files losslessly. You can copy and paste audio files, split long files into shorter segments, cut unwanted sections, or tweak volume levels. The interface is clear and accessible, and, as an added bonus to Rogue Amoeba fans, the applications integrates tightly with Audio Hijack Pro.



Fission costs $32, but owners of Audio Hijack Pro 2 or higher are eligible to buy it for $18.

Freeverse – Periscope
Periscope is a utility from Freeverse software that is intended to make life with your webcam a little simpler and more fun. It allows you to set your webcam to capture images when certain criteria are met. You can add text, logos, or timestamps to the pictures taken, and the application makes it easy to share your photos via .Mac, email, Flickr, iPhoto, etc.



The only bone I have to pick with this application is that it is kind of ugly. It does not use standard OS X widgets, and the window behavior is ... odd. It just does not feel like an OS X app, and, for $30, it should. I don't think it offers enough functionality to justify the price tag, so a little more polish would go a long way in making that price easier to digest.

Acqualia – Picturesque
Picturesque is a very simple image editor aimed at dressing up your pictures for websites. It's opening interface is very reminiscent of AppZapper with the user dragging an image into the empty application window. Once you open an image, you can add shadow, glow, reflection, curved corners, or edges. A background color can be specified, and the image can be resized using a simple slider.



It's functionality is pretty limited, but it performs its purpose. I do have one little gripe though. Where can I specify what percentage of the actual size I'm viewing the image at. That seems like a setting I should be able to change. Picturesque is $20.

Acqualia – Soulver
Soulver is, in fact, pretty cool. The concept is simple but unique. Make a calculator that lets you enter equations as plain-English phrases. This allows you to think of math in more practical terms that we usually would using a standard calculator.



The problem is that the language you use has to be pretty specific (as the screenshot above illustrates), and this limits the real-world usefulness of this product. I especially had a hard time getting subtraction to function reliably. Still, it's a great concept, and I hope the developer keeps working on improvements. Soulver is $18.

I've probably missed more great software releases, but these hopefully provide some good highlights. Most of these are probably being overshadowed by the release of Coda, but if you are a Mac user in search of a few good downloads this weekend, there is some good stuff here.

Tags: macintosh, technology, software

In the fallout of the misconduct documented on and affecting the primary author of Creating Passionate Users, conversation has started on the merits of promoting a "Blogger's Code of Conduct" spearheaded by tech-blogger Tim O'Reilly who is also a friend of Kathy Sierra. (A working draft of the code can be viewed here.)

In his initial post, O'Relly writes:

A culture is a set of shared agreements that allows us to live together. Let's make sure that the culture we create with our blogs is one that we are proud of.

I agree with this whole-heartedly, and I think the best blogs around create a very good culture by setting a positive example when they write. Robert Scoble, Garr Reynolds, Kathy Sierra, and Guy Kawasaki are all great examples of this tack. As a result, by and large, the people who participate in the micro-community developed around these blogs tend to follow the given example.

The New York Times has an overview of the potential code, and the concept has seen support and adaptation from some like David Weinberger and BlogHer (whose guidelines actually served as inspiration) while gaining some thoughtful criticism from others like Jeff Jarvis and Robert Scoble.

David Weinberger writes:

We've always been responsible for comments: There's always been a line we wouldn't allow commenters to cross, or if there's been no line, we've been responsible for that as well. But we need to be OK with setting out explicit guidelines.

On the other hand, Jeff Jarvis counters:

You either trust me and respect me based on what I say here or you do not, and there are plenty in the latter camp. Transparency and publicness are what drive that. Not some silly code and badge.

The way I see it is that Matthew 7:12 states it plainly: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Confucius said, "What you do not wish upon yourself, extend not to others," and the Mahābhārata states, "This is the sum of duty; do naught unto others what you would not have them do unto you." I could really go on and on here. What we refer to as the Golden Rule has seen incarnations in several religions and cultures in varying points of history. If we try to live by this principle offline, then we should also do so online.

I don't enable comments on this site. (I don't have the time to read and respond to them at my current point in life.) My readership is more than welcome to send me a message at the email address on the About Rob page. However, even if I do enable comments in the future, I still don't think I'll adopt the O'Reilly code verbatim. There is value in anonymity as well as danger. I don't feel I own your words. However, I do expect you to engage me the way I would engage you in conversation – fairly and respectfully.

Quick Links:

• Stop Cyberbullying
• Techmeme: Draft Blogger's Code of Conduct

PS - I resent the New York Times article title. It does a little too much to equate "nasty" with "blogs" in the public mind. Also, those web badges on the O'Reilly draft are ... not pretty.

Tags: blogging, opinion

This is a quick update to my original series of posts looking at NeoOffice 2.0, a free suite of office applications based on the OpenOffice project. If you missed the initial overview, the original series is listed below:

NeoOffice: Writer First Impressions • NeoOffice: Look + Feel • NeoOffice: Impress First Impressions
NeoOffice: The Rest of the Package • NeoOffice: Wish List • NeoOffice: Final Thoughts

Last week, NeoOffice recieved an incremental upgrade to version 2.1. Notable new features include support for Office 2007 OpenXML Word documents with support for Excel and PowerPoint OpenXML in a future release. Support for Excel VBA macros is reaffirmed – important because this will be the only tool on the Mac with this feature once MS Office 2004 is discontinued. The default icon set is now Akua, and version 2.1 gains more support for native Aqua widgets.

The first thing I noticed is that NeoOffice 2.1 launches in about one-quarter the time version 2.0 did on my MacBook Pro. Unfortunately, the application is still modular with no way to select which module opens upon launch. I'm poking through the application package to see if I can find an easy workaround for this. I'll make a new post if I can come up with a solution! OpenOffice for Windows is treated like a suite of applications, so this derivation should be able to emulate that feature.

As advertised, NeoOffice looks much more like a Mac OS X application upon launch, and the Akua toolbar icons look right at home.



The close widget still does not behave correctly when a document has unsaved changes, though, and dialog boxes as well as contextual menus still look like the are emulating aqua. They are close to being right, but the difference is noticeable. (This is true for drop-down menus and tabs too.)

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so close yet so far...

Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents all seem to import just fine. The only problem I've had with opening Word documents is if the document uses non-standard bullets. With PowerPoint files, sometimes image formatting and transitions may be lost or altered. I haven't been able to test macro support as I have no documents requiring that feature. As far as Open XML Word documents go, I've downloaded three sample documents and none of them have opened correctly. However, like Excel macros, this may not be a feature I'll use often enough to miss.

Overall, this update does little to make NeoOffice 2.1 more compelling than version 2.0. It's still as reliable as it ever was, but it still feels slightly out-of-place on Mac OS X. That said, it does make for a compelling (free) alternative to MS Office 2004, and the performance gains alone should be enough to encourage existing users to upgrade. Especially if you are an Intel Mac user tired of Office's Rosetta-dependent performance lag, download NeoOffice, and give it a try. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Tags: software, macintosh, neooffice

Links to other blog entries would usually go on my Links Blog, but this is too big. However, I want to warn you, this link is more graphic and disturbing than I would usually post here, so consider that before clicking:

CPUs: Death threats against bloggers are NOT "protected speech" (why I cancelled my ETech presentations)

One of the scariest things about online communication is the fact that anyone can hide behind a wall of anonymity and behave in the most depraved ways their minds can imagine. For some reason, they think this is okay. However, what we say and do, anonymously or otherwise, has real effects on real people.

My thoughts are with Kathy at this time. Her blog was a major inspiration to me when I set up this site over a year ago and it continues to be. In all, this site has seen 462 entries made to its various sections during that time, but not one entry comes close to matching the material I would find on Creating Passionate Users. Her voice is an important one, and I seriously hope that a few jerks don't end up silencing that voice.

I'm sorry, but I have no sympathy with the individuals associated with the activities she mentions. Even if you are not directly involved, the actions you condone by your silence and the character of the individuals you choose to associate with speak about your true character. If you don't want people to think bad things about you, choose your preferred activities and associations accordingly.

We're all humans. Let's please treat each other that way. Kathy, I hope to see you posting again soon. Until then, I'll keep you in my prayers.

(3/27) Update 01: An individual who had founded one of the sites involved in this mess (now taken down) has posted an apology and explanation of his original intentions for said site. You can read his post right here.

(3/28) Update 02: Computerworld has an interview with Kathy Sierra regarding this situation. She sounds very discouraged but reasonable. I've linked to the Macworld version of the article because its all on one page. Macworld: Death threats force blogger to sidelines.

(3/28) Update 03: Kathy has updated her original post, closing comments. She says even more grief and abuse has come from this attention, and now personal information of hers has been leaked onto the 'net by anonymous sources. This is truly tragic.

(4/2) Last Update: I promise I'm ready to move on now. Just two more links:
• Kathy Sierra: Update/Joint Statement with Chris Locke

• Chris Locke: Coordinated Statements on the Recent Events

Tags: opinion, blogging

I've heard about the project known as OpenOffice on many occasions as a viable alternative to Microsoft Office, and I was pleased to find a Macintosh version of the office suite on the project's website. What did not please me was the X11 requirement for the OS X version. Fortunately, it was not long before I discovered a project called NeoOffice written in a combination of Cocoa, Carbon, and Java. It's based on the OpenOffice 2.0 code base but runs natively in the OS X aqua environment.

Over the course of a few posts, I'm going to be looking at the text editor, NeoOffice Writer, and the presentation module, NeoOffice Impress, to see how they compare to Microsoft Word 2004 and Microsoft PowerPoint 2004 in daily use. These articles are not going to be deeply technical or philosophical. They are just going to reflect my thoughts and feelings as I take the software through some paces.

Current posts:
NeoOffice: Writer First Impressions • NeoOffice: Look + Feel • NeoOffice: Impress First Impressions
NeoOffice: The Rest of the Package • NeoOffice: Wish List • NeoOffice: Final Thoughts

As I wrap up these posts on NeoOffice, I can't help but be impressed by the software. Are there rough edges? Yes. Are there some usability issues that need to be resolved? Yes. However, the size and scope of this project is just impressive, especially when considering the small size of the development team and the fact that this is not commercial software – it is entirely free. Its very existence (as well as that of its parent project OpenOffice) sternly challenges the notion that we as consumers are obligated to continually pay for expensive productivity software.


Will NeoOffice supplant my normal workflow involving Keynote and Pages? Probably not. I like these two applications too much to give them up, and I will happily upgrade to the next versions of these applications whenever Apple rolls them out. On the other hand, can NeoOffice replace my Office installation? That is a more interesting question.

On my PowerMac G5, Microsoft Office outperforms NeoOffice at every turn. It's more reliable, and it is more stable. On the other hand, NeoOffice and MS Office are very comparable in terms of performance and stability on my new MacBook Pro. I still see some weird redraw issues in NeoOffice, but not near what was present on the G5. (By the way, these performance gains support my theory that the PPC version of NeoOffice is being throttled by the Java code.) The fact that I like the layout of NeoOffice's interface better than the mess of floating toolbars that is Microsoft Office 2004 is additionally helpful.

I think I'm going to try to supplant Word and PowerPoint with the NeoOffice equivalents for the next couple of months and see how things go. Those are my two most commonly used Microsoft applications, so this will grant me plenty of opportunities to grow even more familiar with NeoOffice and grow accustomed to its quirks. However, I will probably still upgrade to Office 2008 when it becomes available later this year, especially if I can still get it through the university.

As a couple of final notes, starting February 27, the NeoOffice team will begin seeding a new milestone of their product to members of their Early Access Program. One key feature of this release is support for OpenXML documents and VBA macro support. Also, the OpenOffice team is currently working on a Mac OS X native version of the original, and I'll be checking that out when it becomes available. Ideally, I think it would be great if the OpenOffice team and the NeoOffice team combined resources as opposed to creating competing free products.

By and large, I've really been getting into NeoOffice. As I learn more about coding, I will definitely look into contributing toward ways I hope the product can be improved. It amazes me that something like this can exist in an economy that has become so centered around commercial solutions and specific vendors, and I hope NeoOffice continues its development for many years to come.

Tags: software, opinion, neooffice

I've heard about the project known as OpenOffice on many occasions as a viable alternative to Microsoft Office, and I was pleased to find a Macintosh version of the office suite on the project's website. What did not please me was the X11 requirement for the OS X version. Fortunately, it was not long before I discovered a project called NeoOffice written in a combination of Cocoa, Carbon, and Java. It's based on the OpenOffice 2.0 code base but runs natively in the OS X aqua environment.

Over the course of a few posts, I'm going to be looking at the text editor, NeoOffice Writer, and the presentation module, NeoOffice Impress, to see how they compare to Microsoft Word 2004 and Microsoft PowerPoint 2004 in daily use. These articles are not going to be deeply technical or philosophical. They are just going to reflect my thoughts and feelings as I take the software through some paces.

Current posts:
NeoOffice: Writer First Impressions • NeoOffice: Look + Feel • NeoOffice: Impress First Impressions
NeoOffice: The Rest of the Package • NeoOffice: Wish List • NeoOffice: Final Thoughts

So far, my experience with NeoOffice has been a positive one, but I can't help but feel this application seems out of place in Mac OS X. Here are some points I've accumulated. Please note that some would be far easier to implement than others. In an ideal world, any of these could be achievable, but I understand that the NeoOffice team is very small, so few or none of these wishes may make future versions.

Native Interface Components

NeoOffice seems to rely on Java's cross-platform interface elements to fit into Mac OS X. As noted in the post about look-and-feel, this works – but only to a point. Some interface elements, like the close button, don't behave as they should, and many Aqua-fied Java elements just look awkward. Moving forward, it would be nice if NeoOffice began to slowly adopt an entirely Aqua native interface that fully blended into the Mac OS X environment. Right now, the interface still feels foreign despite its shiny exterior.

iLife Media Browser

This one may be harder to implement since I don't think Apple has a public API for interfacing with the iApps. Still, some programs like RapidWeaver and Swift Publisher have pulled it off. There is even a shareware application called Media Browser that gives users a universal iLife media browser. This would hopefully be a part of making NeoOffice play nicer with iPhoto and iTunes media.

Drag & Drop Improvements

I noticed many times that I tried to just drop an image into a NeoOffice document window directly from the Finder or iPhoto, the image did not appear. I had to go through the "Insert > Image > From File..." method. If you are like me and keep all images in iPhoto, this is not a fun solution at all. Hopefully, future versions will offer better drag-and-drop support.

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Drag & Drop or a media browser (like the one shown here from RapidWeaver) are both more efficient than browsing for an iPhoto image.

Modular or Not Modular

This last one is pretty big in terms of what philosophy NeoOffice is following. Right now, NeoOffice is a modular application. This means you open one application to access all of its components. This is in contrast to Microsoft Office or Apple iWork, for example, which are application suites. The programs work together, but you open the application unique to the kind of document you wish to create (presentation, spreadsheet, text document, etc.). The problem I run into with NeoOffice's modular state is that I must open a Writer document first, regardless of what I wish to create. Then I can choose a different document type from the application menu or the Dock menu.



It would be nice if, when NeoOffice is launched, a project selector of some kind would appear. I'm partial to the one that appeared when launching Appleworks 6 that gave you access to each module, your recent documents, and some templates and assistants (think wizards) by way of a series of tabs. It was clan, uncluttered, and it got the job done. If NeoOffice wants to remain modular, it really should adopt a project launcher like this. Otherwise, each module should be a separate application, making NeoOffice into an application suite instead.


AppleWorks Starting Points. Image from Wikipedia.

Conclusion

There are other things I would like to see – soft shadows, better translucency effects, better scroll-wheel support in drop-down lists (like the font menu) – but these are really some of the bigger elements that would make NeoOffice an even better experience for end users such as myself. None of these are really deal-breaker quality exclusions, but including features like these would help NeoOffice blend in even better with Mac OS X and other applications.

Tags: software, opinion, neooffice

I've heard about the project known as OpenOffice on many occasions as a viable alternative to Microsoft Office, and I was pleased to find a Macintosh version of the office suite on the project's website. What did not please me was the X11 requirement for the OS X version. Fortunately, it was not long before I discovered a project called NeoOffice written in a combination of Cocoa, Carbon, and Java. It's based on the OpenOffice 2.0 code base but runs natively in the OS X aqua environment.

Over the course of a few posts, I'm going to be looking at the text editor, NeoOffice Writer, and the presentation module, NeoOffice Impress, to see how they compare to Microsoft Word 2004 and Microsoft PowerPoint 2004 in daily use. These articles are not going to be deeply technical or philosophical. They are just going to reflect my thoughts and feelings as I take the software through some paces.

Current posts:
NeoOffice: Writer First Impressions • NeoOffice: Look + Feel • NeoOffice: Impress First Impressions
NeoOffice: The Rest of the Package • NeoOffice: Wish List • NeoOffice: Final Thoughts

In addition to Writer and Impress, NeoOffice includes modules called Calc, Draw, Math, and Base.Each of these has unique functions and adds value to the overall NeoOffice package. I am not a heavy user of these features, so I am not ready to speak to the quality of these products. This post will just let you see what they look like and what functionality they provide.

NeoOffice Calc

This is a very important component for MS Office compatibility – the spreadsheet application. Excel is used and misused in many work environments for a variety of tasks. Calc is the only Excel alternative on the Mac platform that can run macros in the spreadsheets, and when Office 2008 ships for the Macintosh, NeoOffice Calc will be the only solution for macro-embedded Excel files as the next Mac version of Office is dropping macro support. This fact alone should make Calc alluring for Macintosh business users.

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Excel & Calc side-by-side

I simply imported an Excel spreadsheet I use a lot at school to see how it works in Calc, and I'm happy to say that everything seems intact. As you can see, some of the formatting in the top cells disappeared, but that is hardly mission critical. The little I know about Excel works as expected in Calc, and I have to say that the NeoOffice alternative is much less cluttered. (As an aside, MS Office 2008 for Mac is finally ditching those annoying floating toolbars.)

Math & Base

I really can't say much about either of these as I have no experience with math and database programs. However, it is important to note that these programs fill voids in the world of Macintosh productivity suites. No Macintosh office suite ships with a database solution – not even the most expensive version of MS Office. I suppose you could count AppleWorks, but Apple doesn't really support that suite anymore as iWork is slowly assuming its place in Apple's software matrix.

Math seems to be a very straightforward equation editor, and I had little trouble figuring the application out. Base has a much steeper learning curve, but it looks similar to the limited exposure I've had to Access. Database users should be comfortable here, and the program is fairly flexible, supporting Access, MySQL, and other popular database formats.

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Math and Base in action

Draw

Many Mac users remember the drawing module that was a part of AppleWorks. Unfortunately, while Pages and Keynote have some nice drawing tools, there has not been a simple drawing application included with Macs for quite a while. While Draw was fun to use, like MS Paint on Windows, I really couldn't see myself ever using this module (although it is much more flexible than Paint).

Conclusion

NeoOffice is a very complete package. Basically every element you would expect to find in a business-class productivity suite is here, and the entire package is free. While I have some reservations about the current version of NeoOffice, the value of the suite is undeniable. There is a ton of functionality packaged here, more than is available with any single commercial Macintosh productivity package. That fact alone makes it worth downloading and trying out.

Stay tuned. For my next NeoOffice-themed post, I'll be delving into a small wish-list for the application.

Tags: software, opinion, neooffice

If you're attending online courses, there is a pretty good chance you've had to use Macromedia Breeze Meeting at some point (Now Adobe Acrobat Connect). The most recent version of the software supports Intel-based Macs, but all previous versions are PowerPC only.

"No problem," I hear you say. "Apple's Rosetta technology should do the trick." And you would be right if Breeze functioned as a standalone application, but it does not. It is a browser plug-in. Safari runs natively on the x86 processors, but this requires any compatible plug-ins to also be developed as Intel binaries. (This same issue faces Photoshop users. PPC Photoshop plug-ins will not work in the Intel-native Photoshop CS3.) This presents a problem if you ever have to present in Breeze.


On an Intel Mac, you will likely get stuck right here.

Fortunately, there is a workaround for this issue, but it will slightly slow down the browser you are viewing Breeze in. Simply find your browser in the Applications folder. Press command-I or choose "Get Info" from the File menu, and select "Open using Rosetta" in the info pane.

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Now, when you visit your Breeze session, the plug-in will load correctly. I recommend using this trick on a secondary browser if possible. That way your everyday browsing habits are not slowed down by the Rosetta layer. My daily browser is Safari, but I use Camino (a Firefox based browser) for Breeze meetings.

Tags: macintosh, software

I've heard about the project known as OpenOffice on many occasions as a viable alternative to Microsoft Office, and I was pleased to find a Macintosh version of the office suite on the project's website. What did not please me was the X11 requirement for the OS X version. Fortunately, it was not long before I discovered a project called NeoOffice written in a combination of Cocoa, Carbon, and Java. It's based on the OpenOffice 2.0 code base but runs natively in the OS X aqua environment.

Over the course of a few posts, I'm going to be looking at the text editor, NeoOffice Writer, and the presentation module, NeoOffice Impress, to see how they compare to Microsoft Word 2004 and Microsoft PowerPoint 2004 in daily use. These articles are not going to be deeply technical or philosophical. They are just going to reflect my thoughts and feelings as I take the software through some paces.

Current posts:
NeoOffice: Writer First Impressions • NeoOffice: Look + Feel • NeoOffice: Impress First Impressions
NeoOffice: The Rest of the Package • NeoOffice: Wish List • NeoOffice: Final Thoughts

I'm going to get something out of the way right now. Subjectively, I like NeoOffie Impress better than MS PowerPoint 2004. I'm going to be critical of a few points in this post, so I just wanted to get that out of the way first. Having said that, let's move on...

Upon opening a new Impress document, I had to sigh when I saw another wizard greeting me. Fortunately, you can jump out of the Wizard by clicking "Create," and it's possible to disable this Wizard altogether in the preferences.


It looks like my work computer!

Impress has an interesting tabbed interface atop the main document window, and these tabs cycle between different views for your presentation. The choices are Normal, Outline, Notes, Handout, and Slide Sorter. Of these, I thought Notes was particularly useful because this feature could be used to create annotated slide handouts like the one's I discussed in this post.

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The Normal and Notes views


Slide Sorter view

The interface for NeoOffice impress is at once more inviting and more prohibitive than MS PowerPoint. It's more inviting in that the interface is much less cluttered than PowerPoint's. One of the more interesting ways in which this is accomplished is through toolbars that appear and disappear as they are needed. For example, if I select some text, the picture formatting toolbar is replaced by the text formatting one. Also the use of thumbnail slide's in the navigator is far superior to PowerPoint's habit of only showing the slide's text. (I know this problem is unique to the Mac version of PowerPoint.)

Unfortunately, the interface is more prohibitive in that many features are buried in subcommands and dialog boxes. Doing something so simple as changing the background color of the slide requires jumping through a few hoops, but I felt like this dialog box served to illustrate this issue best:



Yup, that's a dialog box for cropping an image. This is what you get when selecting the crop tool from the toolbar. In every other app I know, cropping (or masking) is done directly in the document window and applied to the image live. By contrast, in NeoOffice Impress, you have to manually choose the dimensions of the image. This can be much more accurate, but it is less intuitive to the average user. Fortunately, that thumbnail image previews your changes before you apply them.

My other main criticism of Impress centers around performance. It's bad. It makes my G5 feel like a G3 trying to run Unreal Tournament 2004. It is that painful at times. Dragging objects around slides always left visible screen artifacts on my machine, and I was finding myself continually minimizing and restoring the document window to minimize the clutter created by these artifacts.



Unfortunately, bringing the document window out of the dock carried its own hazards. Sometimes, it would take Impress a few minutes to redraw on the screen, and the whole application locked up once in the process of redraw.


I had to eventually Force Quit the app to escape from this.

Again, my experience tells me that the Java code in NeoOffice is the culprit here. I don't care what the theory says, in practice complex Java code runs poorly on PPC processors. If I'm correct, these performance issues practically disappear once I get a chance to test this software on an Intel-based Macintosh.

Other small quirks persist. For example, drag-and drop support for images is inconsistent at best, making the use of iPhoto images tricky (though I found copy-and-paste to be a good workaround for this). Copying and pasting elements from one slide to another does not always work, and customizing toolbars proved to be a futile task. It was easy enough to go through the customization process. The problem is that Impress would revert to the defult toolbars every few minutes.

After these criticisms, it may be hard to believe my first pragraph – that I like Impress better than PowerPoint – but it is true. At this point, Impress canot supplant PowerPoint when I need to create more PC-friendly presentations due mainly to performance issues. However, Impress just feels more thought out than PowerPoint does, and that is a great testament to the power of Open Source. One example of that really connected with me was in adding text to a formatted object or image. In PowerPoint, you have to either select the object and choose "Insert Text..." from a contextual menu, or you just create a separate text box and place it atop the image. In Impress (as in Keynote), all you have to do is double-click the object – it doesn't matter if it's a drawn shape or a photograph.

NeoOffice Impress shows great petential, but it is hampered more severely than Writer in terms of bugs and performance. If Impress were more responsive and more predictable in its image-handling, then it would easily supplant PowerPoint. As it is, NeoOffice Impress is an application I really like but can't see myself using on a daily basis.

Tags: software, opinion, neooffice

I've heard about the project known as OpenOffice on many occasions as a viable alternative to Microsoft Office, and I was pleased to find a Macintosh version of the office suite on the project's website. What did not please me was the X11 requirement for the OS X version. Fortunately, it was not long before I discovered a project called NeoOffice written in a combination of Cocoa, Carbon, and Java. It's based on the OpenOffice 2.0 code base but runs natively in the OS X aqua environment.

Over the course of a few posts, I'm going to be looking at the text editor, NeoOffice Writer, and the presentation module, NeoOffice Impress, to see how they compare to Microsoft Word 2004 and Microsoft PowerPoint 2004 in daily use. These articles are not going to be deeply technical or philosophical. They are just going to reflect my thoughts and feelings as I take the software through some paces.

Current posts:
NeoOffice: Writer First Impressions • NeoOffice: Look + Feel • NeoOffice: Impress First Impressions
NeoOffice: The Rest of the Package • NeoOffice: Wish List • NeoOffice: Final Thoughts

The look-and-feel of applications is pretty important to the Mac experience. Well designed Macintosh applications have a polish to the user interface that is seldom present on other platforms. Therefore, if NeoOffice is going to gain a healthy following among the Mac-faithful, it is important that it have the Macintosh feel correct. This aspect may be somewhat abstract and trivial to alpha-geeks and power users, but the user experience cannot be ignored when developing an application for the Mac.

Saying this, how does NeoOffice do? Put simply, I've seen better, and I've seen worse – much worse.

Upon launch, I found the toolbars to be immediately distracting. The icons in them were spartan at best, and it really looked like a stereotypical open source project. Toolbars are nearly indispensable in office appications, so this was a difficult flaw to overlook.


The default toolbar appearance in NeoOffice Writer

Fortunately, it didn't take me long to figure out that you could change the toolbar's appearance within the preferences. Also a program called Iconic allowed me to install additional sets. Here are some variations for the toolbar:


The Industrial style


The Crystal style


The Akua style

The default style would be at home on Windows 95. Industrial looks very GNOME to me while Crystal makes me think of Windows XP. I bet you can guess which of these icon sets I'm using right now in NeoOffice. (Hint: It's phonetically identical to "aqua.") Fortunately, some small changes in the preferences can really lead to a more pleasant visual experience with NeoOffice.

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Before & After!

Unfortunately, even after some tweaking, a few elements still seem very out-of-place. Many small widgets in the interface lack the Aqua look-and-feel emulated by the rest of the program. Some text looks incorrectly placed in tabs, and the floating toolbars are boxy and Windows-esque (with the window controls on the wrong side of the toolbar).

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Another Aqua discrepancy I noticed was in the window controls of the main application. In most OS X applications, if you have unsaved changes in the documents, the red "close window" control has a dimple in it. Otherwise it is smooth as the other buttons. In NeoOffice, the red "close" button is smooth whether your document has unsaved changes or not.

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Pages shows the document has unsaved changes. NeoOffice does not.

Despite these shortcomings, NeoOffice does integrate well with Mac OS X in some key areas, including the print, save, and open dialog boxes/sheets. The application uses the standard controls for printing and saving that you would find in any native OS X application. This is a nice touch of familiarity in the application, and it keeps the user experience in these areas consistent with what you would expect for a Mac application.

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Here are some native dialogs in NeoOffice.

Overall, NeoOffice succeeds in almost feeling like a native Mac application, and, when compared to the X11 version of OpenOffice, that is a pretty impressive accomplishment. Some minor issues hold the product back from really creating an immersive Macintosh experience, but it is important to remember that this product is a work in progress. It is only consistently developed by three guys who are (for all intents and purposes) unfunded. NeoOffice 2 is the product of hard work and dedication. Yes, the interface has some inconsistencies and could use improvement, but it is a solid starting point.

In their wiki, the NeoOffice team states (regarding the use of Java): "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then to the end user it's a duck, and end users have made it pretty clear they want a duck; whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." Right now, I can tell that the duck is drinking coffee even without diving into the documentation. However, at this rate, it won't be long until NeoOffice can seamlessly blend in with my other Macintosh applications.

Tags: technology, software, neooffice

I've heard about the project known as OpenOffice on many occasions as a viable alternative to Microsoft Office, and I was pleased to find a Macintosh version of the office suite on the project's website. What did not please me was the X11 requirement for the OS X version. Fortunately, it was not long before I discovered a project called NeoOffice written in a combination of Cocoa, Carbon, and Java. It's based on the OpenOffice 2.0 code base but runs natively in the OS X aqua environment.

Over the course of a few posts, I'm going to be looking at the text editor, NeoOffice Writer, and the presentation module, NeoOffice Impress, to see how they compare to Microsoft Word 2004 and Microsoft PowerPoint 2004 in daily use. These articles are not going to be deeply technical or philosophical. They are just going to reflect my thoughts and feelings as I take the software through some paces.

Current posts:
NeoOffice: Writer First Impressions • NeoOffice: Look + Feel • NeoOffice: Impress First Impressions
NeoOffice: The Rest of the Package • NeoOffice: Wish List • NeoOffice: Final Thoughts

Upon launching NeoOffice, I was immediately greeted by a setup “wizard,” which immediately set within me a sense of foreboding. “Wizard” is not a very Mac-like term, but I went through the process, which, in and of itself was fairly painless. The only real nit to pick is that registering the product took me to a sign-in page for existing NeoOffice users – not a page to create a new account.



That aside, NeoOffice Writer looks a lot like MS Word for Windows. This is by no means a slight. It just means that Office users will feel right at home in the interface. On the other hand, it does look alien on the Mac desktop as even the Mac version of Word looks very different from its Windows counterpart.

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NeoOffice Writer on the left; Word on the right.

In terms of functionality, Writer has pretty much everything users have come to expect in a word processor. The only notable absence has been a built-in Grammar Check. On the other hand, NeoOffice seems to have some drawing tools, like curve, circle segment, and pie that are not present in Word. Also, NeoOffice has a built-in bibliography database available in the Tools menu. Unfortunately, I can't get it to format a bibliography automatically the way EndNote will in Word. Another good bit of news is that NeoOffice has extensive macro support – a feature that is scheduled to be eliminated from the next Mac version of Office.


Writer open with the database browser and macro dialog box.

As far as other features, Spell Check seems on par with Word, and you can right-click on a marked word for spelling suggestions – just like in the Microsoft alternative. In fact, you can do an awful lot with text formatting by right-clicking on it, something I think MS Word is definitely trailing the OpenOffice team on.



You can export a document as a PDF directly from the app, a task which is roundabout in Office 2004 for the Mac and nonexistent in Office 2003 for Windows. Included templates and clip art is minimal, but templates found here and clip art here work fine with the NeoOffice applications. Since I seldom use templates or clip art, this doesn't really bother me.

I opened a few MS Word documents with NeoOffice with varying results. Basic documents opened without a hitch. Many that contained drawings or shapes also opened fine, but the shapes would occasionally be in the wrong place. Some opened and could be edited while others opened as "read-only" and I had to "Save As..." to edit. Bullets points were consistently lost in the transition, but, surprisingly, most clip art and images survived the transition. Overall, the application's compatibility with Word documents is pretty good.

On the downsides, the look-and-feel (which I'll talk about more in another post) doesn't quite fit in with Mac OS X despite efforts to aquify the application, and performance is sluggish on my G5 PowerMac. This is especially true in redrawing elements like toolbars. On my PowerBook G3, the performance is downright dismal. I suspect the combination of PowerPC and Java elements is the culprit. On the other hand, there is an Intel build available, and I'll be interested in trying that out whenever I get around to updating my hardware.


Just waiting for the rest to show up...

In conclusion, I can see where NeoOffice could supplant MS Office for the budget-conscious. While it has some issues, it is very capable on its own and in working with Microsoft-compatible formats. Stay tuned for some more posts like these in the near future regarding NeoOffice!

Tags: technology, software, neooffice

The record labels just never seem to give up. Time and again, they have thrown their weight around to suck as much money out of their customers as they can, completely disregarding anything that resembles decency and ethics.

RIAA's Earned Reputation

I can think of no other industry that holds its consumers in such general contempt as the recording industry (except, perhaps, the oil industry whose executives hold our very planet in contempt).

In fact, let's take a stroll down memory lane:

• Ars Technica: RIAA says CD ripping, backups not fair use
• Arts Techica: RIAA defendent argues damages are excessive
• Ars Technica: RIAA lawyers bully witnesses into perjury
• WinInfo: Microsoft caves to Universal in music deal (I might also mention that this Internet Nexus post claims Micrsosft has had to enter into similar agreements with the other music labels.)

This is but a small sampling of the RIAA and music labels stepping on others' feet, and all but one of these links is from this year! Again, the only explanation is that they hold their customers in absolute contempt.

The Latest Offense

Now, record executives aren't just being disrespectful to their source of income (read: you and me). They are now claiming too much profit is making its way to the hands of recording artists trough new avenues of distribution such as iTunes, the Zune Marketplace, and cell phone ring-tones.

The IGN article states it well:

"At best the RIAA is kicking artists when they're down via this action, and at worst has fully revealed that despite repeated claims that artists need to be protected from piracy, the organization is very much the tool of the major labels and publishers who have famously never really cared about the artists in the first place."

Growing Irrelevancy

Middlemen – that is all the record labels are. They are to music what Dunder Mifflin is to paper. They take stuff others created, package it up, overcharge for it, and then take the lion's share of profit for themselves. Again, except for the oil industry, can you think of another industry so willing to alienate all around them for the sake of profits?

Unfortunately, the record labels are slowly becoming irrelevant, and they know it. However, instead of evolving with the times and redefining their roles in the marketplace, the big labels are merely throwing their collective weight around, trying to cash in on as much as they can before the axe falls.

What would be great is if major online music retailers like Yahoo! Music, iTunes, Urge, and Zune Marketplace would allow artists to submit tracks and albums directly, bypassing the publishers entirely. The problem with this, of course, is that the artists still rely on the music labels to provide studios and equipment to record with. Also, the studios often own the copyright to an artists work rather than the artist him-/herself, and there may be no quick solution for these issue.

Regardless, the RIAA has become a dinosaur that has become both carnivorous and cannibalistic in its attempts to maintain a stranglehold on its profits. These executive don't care about the artists they represent, nor do they care about the consumers that purchase their product. If the record labels and the RIAA continue their reign of terror, it won't be long until artists and consumers start looking for ways to eliminate them from the equation entirely.

Tags: riaa, opinion

Usually, I would just stick something like this in my Links Blog, but this one actually makes me want to jump up on a soapbox.
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A new HP camera is actually being marketed with the idea that it can slim the subject of the photograph. Yes, friends, if you think your significant other is just too heavy looking in a shot on your vacation, no problem! Merely adjust a slider, and you can help him or her virtually shed unnecessary pounds! Here are some shots of it in action (straight off HP's site):





Now let's take some notes:

• The models on HP's site are only females – talk about gender stereotyping.
• The models look fine as they are. HP marketing is essentially saying healthy-looking women are in need of slimming, so you must be too.
• Can we talk about social pressures regarding anorexia at this point?

I may be a bit harsh here (which, you have to admit, is very unusual for me), but this whole concept is being promoted in a very irresponsible way. "You are not good enough. You look fat on film. Let us fix you." I can admit that, by and large, many Americans are overweight. Even I'm not as fit as I could be, but is this how we need to solve the problem? Are we so incapable of caring for ourselves that we need to artificially create better selves? I hope not.

Stuff like this just boggles me. All this really does is vertically stretch the entire picture, but it just makes me a little sick-to-the-stomach that somewhere another boardroom has made a decision that only further exploits weight insecurities (specifically in women) at both extremes. I no boycotter, but when we get a digital camera, I doubt it will be a HP right now.


Also, Jason Fried of 37 Signals has made a post about this "feature."

Tags: opinion, technology, software

Yesterday's post about the iMac got me playing around, and I thought I would post a quick comparison of the iMac with other all-in-one desktop computers (and one "deskbook" computer) just to see how things shake out. This is not a comprehensive comparison, but it is kind of fun.

The Apple iMac

iMac comes in stock variations from $999 to $1999. Processors are Core 2 Duo across the board, 1.83 GHz up to 2.16 GHz. The base model has 512 MB DDR2 memory, and the others have 1 GB. Hard drive capacities run from 160 GB to 250 GB. The base model has an Intel GMA 950 video processor with 64 MB of shared memory; the middle models feature ATI Radeon X1600 cards with 128 MB, and the top model has an NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT with 128 MB. Except for the base model, all come with 8X CD/DVD burners. (Please note I am excluding BTO options.)

Every iMac comes with Mac OS X + Front Row, an Apple Remote (except the base model), an optical mouse, and a keyboard. Each is packaged with iLife and a variety of other software titles, and they all feature built-in Bluetooth (except the base model) and Airport (WiFi). Screen sizes come in 17, 20, and 24-inches.

Gateway Profile 6

The Gateway Profile comes in one stock configuration with several upgrade options. The stock Profile has a 3 GHz Pentium D processor and 512 MB DDR2 memory. It has a 160 GB hard drive. Graphics acceleration comes from an Intel GMA 950 with up to 224 MB shared memory, and it has a 16X CD/DVD burner.

The Profile ships with Windows XP Home, Office Basic 2003, Acrobat Reader, and six free months of AOL. It comes with an optical mouse and a keyboard. No wireless connectivity is built in, and it has a 17" screen. The Profile sells for $1,199. (Oh, and the Profile is really ugly.)

Sony Vaio LS1

Other than the iMac, the Vaio is probably the nicest looking machine in this post. The Vaio sports a 1.83 GHz Core Duo processor and 2 GB of DDR2 memory. It's hard drive is 250 GB, and its graphic acceleration is provided by an Intel GMA with 128 MB of shared memory. It also has an 8X CD/DVD burner.

The Vaio includes Widnows XP Media Center 2005 and a TV tuner. It comes with a wireless keyboard and mouse (RF), and it has 802.11g wireless networking. Software-wise, the Vaio comes with a lot of Sony's own digital creation software as well as Photoshop Elements and Premier Elements. It also comes loaded with trial-period software including MS Office and MS Works demos. The Vaio has a 19" screen and costs $2,099. There seem to be no BTO options.

Dell XPS M2010

I will be first to admit that this is not entirely fair, but it's the closest thing Dell has to an all-in-one, so I'm going with it. While technically a laptop (at 18 pounds!), it is considered a desktop replacement. The M2010, comes in three stock configurations with several BTO options. Those models all have 2 GHz Core 2 Duo processors with 1 GB - 2 GB of DDR2 memory. Each has an ATI Mobility X1800 with 256 MB and an 8X CD/DVD Burner.

The Dell comes with Windows XP Media Center 2005, some anti-virus software, and MS Works. It has an integrated keyboard, trackpad, and camera. It offers wireless networking, and each model has a 20" display. Prices range from $3,499 to $4,050.

Conclusion

When it comes to the all-in-one design, Apple seems to have set a bar that is difficult to match. The Sony here is the most compelling Windows alternative, but I can't help but be surprised how difficult it was to find other all-in-one computers. Really, the Dell doesn't count because it is a "laptop," so I could only track down two other currently available alternatives easily. When it comes down to it, Apple has defined all-in-one design with the iMac, and it's easy to see why that computer has become the machine most people define Apple by.

The new iMac is a competitive machine, and I hope people can get around their Mac-predjudices and give it a whirl. Even if you end up hating Mac OS X after a few months of ownership, remember Macs can now run Windows, and it's not like the iMac commands a premium over similar computers. I love all-in-one designs myself, and I was sad that I had to pass up the G4 iMac as my current desktop. (I ended up with a Rev A PowerMac G5 instead.) Fortunately, with the direction Apple is taking their consumer flagship, I have no doubts that I'll be able to return to my favorite Mac in the future.

Tags: macintosh, technology, dell

Sheesh. How long has it been now since the MacBooks were released? Why haven't I posted about them yet? The truth is out there somewhere, and I think it lies in the land of laziness!

The Basics

The MacBook is a nice little machine. You can choose between a 1.83 GHz or a 2.0 GHz Intel Core Duo processor. Models ship with either a 60 BG or 80 GB hard drive, and you can custom order up to 120 GB. Each ships with 512 MB DDR2 SDRAM expandable to 2 GB. The base model has a Combo Drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW), and the others have a basic Super Drive (DVD±RW/CD-RW). The MacBook has a built-in iSight, a 13.3" widescreen display, the usual array of Apple ports, and Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics.

In addition to the computer itself, the MacBook comes with the snazzy little Front Row remote, the iLife suite of applications, a nifty program called Comic Life, Freeverse Big Bang Board Games, Photo Booth, and Omni Outliner.

Prices range from $1,099 to $1,499.

The Surprises

The base price of the MacBook is up $100 from the iBook which started at $999. However, even the base MacBook is a much more full-featured laptop than even the $1,499 iBook was. For those who like more display real estate. The resolution of the MacBook display is 1280 x 800 as opposed to the iBook's 1024 x 768. The horizontal pixel gain is quite noticeable. Furthermore, in the display department, the MacBook supports extended desktop mode up to 1920 x 1200 (or a 23" Apple Cinema Display) and lid-closed mode up to the same resolution. The iBook only supports video mirroring.

Another nice addition came in the form of an optical digital input/line in. The audio port that used to be reserved for PowerBook G4s when they came out has finally filtered through the whole line. The lack of any audio-in port on the iBook used to be a major factor in me never considering one as a potential replacement for my PowerBook G3.

Finally, there is no Core Solo version of the MacBook. Because the entry level Mac mini features a Core Solo processor, I think most figured the MacBook would have one as well. In the end, I'm glad that the Core Duo made it in to these machines. Other nice features include the magnetic latch and the included Sudden Motion Sensor Technology. (Ooh, and the Front Row remote works with Keynote presentations. I know because the lady at the Apple Store let me try!)

Oh yeah, and it can come in black.

The Sacrifices

Where are the cuts that keep these 'books from being the Pro models? First of all, there is the graphics card – or lack thereof. The MacBook sports an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 with 64 MB of shared memory. Yes, this means the graphics chip siphons off of your system memory. The solution? Buy more RAM! Ordering a MacBook with 1 GB of memory instead of 512 MB only costs $90. Modern games will not perform well on a machine with integrated graphics, but the MacBook runs Keynote presentations as well as H.264 high definition movie files like a champ.

Problematic for few, the MacBook (like its Pro counterparts, iMac, and Mac mini) has dropped the internal modem. If you need a modem, Apple sells a $49 USB modem. It's not ideal, but it's not a deal-breaker either. The only other cutback I found is in the fact that no Mini-DVI to Anything adapter is included, meaning presenters will have to spring for a $20 adapter before hooking their MacBook up to an external display. Really, at $20, Apple could have at least tossed in a Mini-DVI to VGA adapter.

Hands-On

I made a quick visit to our local Apple Store to give one of these a spin, and my first impressions were quite good. Launching applications and resizing windows felt snappy. Various H.264 QuickTime movies played very smoothly (and this is a file format that gives me headaches on my PowerMac from time to time). Photo Booth is a fun little application. Finally, Keynote, an extremely important application to me, worked smoothly and flawlessly.

From a hardware point of view, I still prefer the classic white model over the more expensive black design. The magnetic latch works well, and the MagSafe power cord functions exactly as expected. The redesigned keyboard is firm and responsive, and the scrolling track-pad is neat. I especially like the functionality that allows you to use the track-pad for both left- and right-clicking. Furthermore, the glossy display is fine. The colors are crisp, and there was hardly any glare on the screen in the Apple Store (which is a very brightly lit environment).

Conclusion

Overall, I am impressed with MacBook. Apple has done a nice job of balancing form and function as well as features and price. It's a very unique product in its own way, and I'm glad for the improvements Apple has made over the iBook line.

For more reading, see Ars Techica's review of the MacBook (9/10), Time Magazine (Gadget of the Week), PC World's review (4/5), and MacWorld's review (4.5/5).

Tags: technology, macintosh

I have to admit that I have been Microsoft hating just a little more than I would like lately, so I thought I would balance the karma with a post about something Microsoft is currently working on that intrigues me.



This is a picture of the Ribbon in MS Office 2007 (yoinked from Jensen Harris' great journal about the evolution of the MS Office interface and all of the work that goes into a project like this). Basically, it takes the place of the complicated system of menus, submenus, and toolbars Office has been using for the last decade or so.

Why does this intrigue me so?

First of all, the Ribbon reminds me of the Inspector found in Pages and Keynote (probably inherited from their NeXT ancestors), which are two of my favorite applications. Now don't get me wrong. I am not saying Microsoft is copying Apple with the Ribbon. I think the manners of implementation are different enough to be considered distinct concepts. However, despite its shortcomings, I like the iWork Inspector, and I find myself drawn to the Ribbon in Office 2007 because of the noted similarity.

Additionally, the Ribbon seems like an effort on the behalf of Microsoft to demystify Office to a certain extent. How often have you or someone you've worked grown frustrated with PowerPoint, Excel, or Word because feature XYZ is so buried in a sea of menus and dialog boxes that a strategy guide is needed to traverse the apparent labyrinth? I know I have. With the Ribbon, more features are accessible at the highest level of interface – right in front of your face.

Unfortunately, the Office Ribbon still contains some of Microsoft's signature clutter:



I mean, really, where do you even begin with this mess? How can this be streamlined and simplified without losing functionality and meaningfulness? Right now, this Write Ribbon from MS Word 2007 is an aesthetic nightmare. In all respect, though, pretty much any setting you need for formatting text is very accessible. In direct contrast, the default toolbar for Pages 2 is very unobtrusive, but a user (who has not found the Inspector) may be left wondering how to do so much as make his/her text bold or change the font size.

Where is the happy medium? Where does usability meet simplicity, and how can feature- richness be communicated without visual clutter? Can the ideas of the iWork Inspector, the Office 2007 Ribbon, and the simplicity of an Apple toolbar be merged? To me, the Ribbon is the most interesting interface element to come out of Redmond in years, and I am interested in seeing how it evolves as Office 2007 nears completion.

Tags: software, microsoft

Not more than a couple of days after I learn about Monaco, I see this little entry on M-Dollar about Windows Live Product Search and Academic Search, and I've come to a conclusion. I don't think Microsoft purposefully sets out to be the big imitator it comes off looking like. I think this "me too" image is purely the result of not knowing when to say, "enough is enough."

For the past decade (give or take), Microsoft has basically owned the operating systems market. Atop that, they dominate the market for office productivity. These two markets are highly lucrative, but it doesn't stop there.

• The Internet becomes popular. Browsers begin to emerge, and, after a few years of watching, Microsoft decides it wants to own the browser market and releases Internet Explorer. Of course, for the best web experience, websites should be optimized for IE. Sure, it may damage how they render in other browsers, but that's just collateral damage.
  
  
• Microsoft wakes up one day and notices that game consoles have been popular for the last twenty years. Perhaps it's time to jump into that market and try to dominate it with the One Development Platform to Rule Them All (which only works with Windows-based PCs and XBox, but you didn't want to develop for anything else). However, Microsoft did get online console gaming right.
  
  
• Security seems like a growing market on PCs. After all, active viruses are only a small problem (and this list doesn't even count trojans as far as I can tell). Microsoft notices a couple of companies are making money selling security software, so they decide that they will try to own that market as well with OneCare.
  
  
• Digital music seems to be doing well. There are quite a few retailers of digital music, and many of them require Windows Media Player. This seems to Microsoft like a great market to jump in and try to dominate as well.
  
  
• Companies like Google and Yahoo do well with the search market. In fact, Microsoft has already been overtaken in the initial round of the search engine battles. Does this deter Redmond? No. Defeat merely serves to infuriate the giant.

Is this list comprehensive? It is not even close, but it does serve to illustrate how Microsoft comes off as a copier. In each of these instances, Microsoft was late to the market. In fact, the market was well established before the Redmond Giant lumbered in. They can't sit back and allow other companies to fulfill the various niches the technology market allows. Microsoft seems to feel it has some Manifest Destiny to dominate in each and every sector of the market. As a result, Microsoft has to play catch-up with the products already available to consumers, and feature replication (a la Froogle) becomes inevitable. In the end, Microsoft looks like a bully, and their "innovative" features are just variations on what is already available. Hence, "Redmond, start your photocopiers."

Tags: opinion, microsoft, software

As watermarked, this photo is from MacMinute.com.

You know, back in 2004, when Apple unveiled this poster and others like it at its World Wide Developers Conference, it seemed like a pretty snarky thing to do. Despite the snide approach, many Mac users would say it rings true. Even some Windows users attest to it:

"If you're familiar with iCal, you know all you need to know about Windows Calendar."

"...just know that a DVD movie making application, similar to Apple's iDVD, is on the way."

--Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for WIndows December Vista Preview 2.

Still, some of Microsoft's moves seem logical at the time. For example, Outlook will not be shipping with the Home & Student edition of Office 2007, so bundling a simple Calendar application with Vista makes sense. Microsoft Movie Maker (a blatant rip-off of iMovie) is already offered for XP. Adding a DVD creator is the next logical step. Okay, it would have been a logical simultaneous step, but we're talking about Microsoft here, and slow progress is expected.

In truth, up until now, I was never much of a "Microsoft copies Apple" screamer. I mean, really:

• Adding a nicer interface and finally making use of graphics cards just makes sense even though OS X has been concentrating on this aspect for a while now.
  
  
• Yes, Safari beat Internet Explorer to RSS support, but I believe Firefox had RSS even before Safari.
  
  
• Yes, Apple had iTunes before Microsoft added a store to Windows Media Player, but they could've gotten that idea from anyone.
  
  
• Sure, Vista gadgets look like a Windows version of Apple's Dashboard, but Konfabulator and Desktop X were doing this first.
  
  
• Yeah, Apple supported drag-and-drop positively years before Microsoft did, but isn't drag-and-drop a natural evolution of GUI?
  
  
• Sorry, Windows had Fast User Switching before OS X.

Yes, Apple has beaten Microsoft to the punch with many things we now take for granted, but the tables have been turned from time to time. It is not a foregone conclusion that Microsoft just sits back and waits to see what Apple does so they can copy it. At least, that's what I thought.

Then I came along this – a project codenamed Monaco. I'm sorry, but how blatant and cheap is that? Let's see. Apple fulfills a niche market by offering GarageBand to its users through iLife, and Microsoft says, "Hey, they have a toy we don't! Let's do it too." It's not enough that there are plenty of third-party music sequencers for Windows. No, it seems that because Apple is making the product and bundling it with their computers (effectively making it seem like part of the OS), Microsoft absolutely has to do the exact same thing.

This is just sad. Redmond, start your photocopiers indeed.

Tags: software, microsoft, opinion, wwdc

Okay, so here are the (slightly truncated) system requirements for Office 2004 and iLife '06, respectively.

Office 2004

• Processor: G3 (Mac OS X compatible) or higher
• OS: Mac OS X 10.2.8+
• Memory 256 MB

iLife '06

• Processor: 500MHz G4 or faster, G5, or Core processor
• OS: Mac OS X 10.3.9 or 10.4.3+
• Memory: 256 MB (512 MB recommended)
• Video: 32 MB

So, my PowerBook has a 500 MHz G3 processor, Mac OS X 10.4.5, 512 MB RAM, and an 8 MB video card. For a recent slideshow I created to help my kids memorize words to their program songs, which application do you think ran more smoothly – PowerPoint 2004 (from Office 2004) or Keynote 3 (form iLife '06)?

If you guessed PowerPoint, you are WRONG.

As long as I used simple transitions, such as appear or dissolve, Keynote transitioned between slides much more smoothly than PowerPoint. We're talking multiple second delays in PowerPoint whenever I would tap the spacebar to change slides while Keynote was near instantaneous. (Again, I had to watch what I was doing.) Even when editing the slides, Keynote felt slightly snappier.

Look back at the system requirements now. My machine doesn't even meet iLife's base specifications while it exceeds Office's! Try to figure that one out...

Tags: macintosh, technology

Screenshots of a new build of Windows Vista (formerly known as Windows Longhorn) appeared on Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows a few days ago. Being the desktop voyeur I am, I couldn't help but pop over and ogle the screens for a while. For reference, here are links to his screenshots: Installation; Desktop, My Computer, and Network; Control Panel and Aero Glass Customization; and Applications.

Once I started to delve into the screenshots a couple of things struck me.

• Translucency and text can work. If you look at the screens, you will notice that translucency is subdued behind areas that need text, like the Start Menu and location and search fields. In the case of window contents, translucency is completely eliminated, and that looks almost out of place in Vista. Translucent elements are prevalent in Vista, but they are implemented in a fairly nice manner.
  
  
• What did they do to the Start Menu? The Start Menu has been receiving tweaks pretty much since its first appearance. Now they have removed "Start" from the icon that activates the window, and have made the icon into a sphere that awkwardly protrudes from the task bar. This protrusion carries over to the user icon atop the Star Menu (when active). The user icon proudly protrudes from the top of the menu like some royal crest. Let's hope they kill this whole icon protrusion thing before people come to accept it.
  
  
• Outlook Express has become Windows Mail. Alright, call this Apple copying if you must, but I feel the name change is logical and welcome. "Outlook Express" tells you nothing of the application's function unless you use Outlook in your workplace. "Windows Mail" is a much more user-friendly name, and it's nice to see this change.

Overall, Windows Vista seems to be coming along well. Installation is still an ugly process (visually), but I'm sure that will be cleaned up before the public release. After all, installation gives users the first impression of your system. I can't say I've ever been a fan of Microsoft's default user interface for any of its versions of Windows. (I was a user back in the days of Windows 95 and Windows 98.) However, Vista seems to be gaining a nice sheen previously absent from Windows.
x
Unfortunately, my mind keeps going back to Whistler. This was a nice evolution of the Windows interface that eventually transformed into the eyesore that is Windows XP. (Oddly enough, both Mac and Windows themers have created themes based on this visual style that never made it into a publicly available version of Windows.) Hopefully, Microsoft will keep these nice touches that are present in current builds of Vista and refine them rather than pulling out something completely different at the last minute. Windows XP is not nice to look at. Vista is, and I hope it stays that way.

Tags: microsoft, technology, software, opinion

"Open up my head and let me out." Do I have that song quote right? I'm a bit to sleepy at the moment to go look it up. Quite a bit has been going on lately, and I haven't had much time to post about any of it.

One of the more interesting tidbits lately has been some quotes attributed to Edgar Bronfman, Jr. of Warner Music Group where he attacks Apple's fixed pricing structure in the iTunes Music Store, and he claims right to a chunk of Apple's profit margins on the iPod because people buy the iPod to carry music they distribute. Interesting thoughts – however, I think this guy is only managing to confirm Steve Jobs comments about "greedy" record executives.

First, let's look at the pricing structure controversy. I agree with Mr. Bronfman completely on this. Charging $0.99 for every song is unfair. Prices should cap at $0.99/song for premium songs, and perhaps we can set a basement price of $0.49 for less popular material with prices in between the two limits for various material. That sound fair, right? Oh, you want to charge more for the popular tunes, even in 128 kbps encoding. Yeah, that's just greedy.

(By the way, I know Apple is responsible for the encoding quality of the songs downloaded from the iTunes Music Store, but I do think is should still be a factor in the price. If they start supporting 256 kbps or more, then we'll talk.)

Now let's examine the second point: The record labels deserve a cut of iPod sales. If we follow this reasoning, every publisher or developer that creates titles for the Macintosh deserve a percentage of every computer Apple sells. The same goes for Miscrosoft and Windows software. After all, who would buy a computer that runs no software? Every network and production studio should get a cut of every television sold. Every radio station should get a cut of every stereo sold. Every web site should get kickback from internet subscriptions.

I'm sorry, record labels are not special and do not deserve special treatment. They deserve no cut of the iPod pie any more than I deserve a cut of AOL's profits. Verdict: Greed.

I love music. I love listening to a wide variety of music from Bach to Bob Dylan, the Beatles to Dave Matthews to Philip Glass. However, it's sad to see the powers over such a worthwhile medium are so much more concerned with lining their pockets thatn they are the fair treatment of the consumers that support them. Then again, that really is one of the biggest weaknesses of the United States in general: "My money before your wellfare."

I know Apple has its own agenda, and it may be playing cards that just make the record labels take the bad PR when iTunes Music Store prices rise, but I hope Steve Jobs rakes people like Mr. Bronfram across as many coals as he can before relenting. There, end soap box rant.

Wow, I actually started this post feeling all calm and serene, and now I'm all in a huff. That means I don't even want to start addressing these other comments from our (edit: sorry, Finland's) beloved record industry! ; )

Tags: riaa, opinion

Lately, I have been playing around with the demo for Sibelius 4. For those of you who don't know what this is, Sibelius is a music application that can be used to notate, print, and play music. (It can actually do quite a bit more, but this is not an in-depth review.) Very simply put, a program like Sibelius is to music notation as MS Word is to word processing.

I have been a Sibelius user for quite some time now. I used to swear by Finale, but it took Coda Music Technologies (now MakeMusic Inc.) so long aggravatingly long to release a Mac OS X native version of Finale that I jumped ship after playing around with a demo of Sibelius 2 under OS X. Now I am using Sibelius 3 for my daily music notation needs, so the announcement of version 4 quite naturally caught my eye.

From the onset, Sibelius 4 behaves more like a Mac OS X application than its predecessors. Instead of being an app in a folder with a bunch of other files it requires to operate, Sibelius 4 is a "package." Also, Sibelius 4 uses Mac OS X standard directories for filing specialized information.

Once the application launches, there are many small refinements and touches that instantly distinguish this version. The main toolbar is smaller and less gaudy. More useful commands are in that toolbar, and floating windows support transparency effects (like the Formatting Palette in Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac OS X.)

Good Experiences

Dragging symbols and articulations around feels generally snappier. The Worksheet Creator is great and will save me a lot of time in the future. The Preferences dialogue box is much better than the one(s) in Sibelius 3. I like having the option to activate and deactivate floating windows from the toolbar, and the Mixer seems more responsive and less buggy than in Sibelius 3. Furthermore, the new ability to copy & paste into a word processor works as documented for the demo. It pasted fine into Word and into Pages, but it looked horrible. I can't complain, though, because it's a documented limitation of the demo.

Next up is Dynamic Parts. One word: Wow. Now here come several more words. In the past, once a score is completed, you would have to "extract" the individual parts. This is time consuming, and changes you make in the score later are not reflected in any parts you've already extracted. Dynamic Parts changes this. As a score is being written, you can choose any part from a menu n the toolbar, and it instantly appears on screen. Any changes you make within that part are simultaneously reflected in the score and vice versa. This could potentially be a huge time saver.

Another neat aspect of Dynamic Parts is the fact that you can pull up all the parts in one dialogue, set the number of copies needed of each part, and have them all print out in a tidy little package. While this feature can't be completely tested in the demo, it is functional enough to give you a good idea of how it will work.

Finally comes the much hyped video capabilities in Sibelius 4. Basically, you can have a movie open that you might be writing music for, and you can see exactly how the music lines up with the video. This would have been so great to have when I was working on our fifth grade "Virtual Scrapbook" DVD. I'm just beginning to figure this feature out, but I am seriously liking what I am seeing.

Iffy Experiences

Overall, the demo of Sibelius 4 is very good, and I am going to have to get pretty nit-picky here. (I love it when software is so good that I have to look for the flaws.)

First, there are a couple of visual bugs in the toolbar. The menus for Dynamic Parts and Page Zoom don't blend well with the toolbar, and the arrows to drop the menus down seem to be a few pixels off. Just as minor, launching the application seems to be slower than in Sibelius 3, but I'll write both of these off as quirks of pre-release software.

I'm not sure what I think of the playback controls being in their own floating window rather than in the main toolbar. It seems like unnecessary clutter. Also, in Sibelius 3, playback would begin from the last note you clicked on. Now you have to drag a slider to the point you want playback to begin at. This can be a real nuisance when working with long scores because the slider likes to reset at the beginning quite often.

As far as the keypad goes, it remains pretty much unchanged, but I would like to see it gain some flexibility. First, it would be nice if a tuplet section was added, so triplets, sextuplets, and the like could be controlled from the keypad. Also, a nice feature would be if the sections could be viewed simultaneously as expandable and collapsable sections. Again, I am thinking of something like the Formatting Palette in the Mac version of Office.

Expanding from that topic, many commonly used features, such as dynamic markings, tempos, clefs, and the like are buried in menus. While not suggesting that Sibelius gain the same visual clutter as Finale 2004, it would be interesting to see if they could include some kind of customizable toolbar in future versions of Sibelius where someone could keep commands they frequently use.

Finally, Finale has upped the ante on high quality audio samples by including 100+ sounds form Garritan Personal Orchestra in Finale 2006. Sibelius offers 100+ sounds with Kontakt Player Silver, but the real difference comes with the pitched instruments (instruments that can play a melody). Sibelius comes with 19 high quality pitched instruments. On the other hand, Finale 2006 will come with about 50 Garritan pitched instruments. To me, that seems like a point of competition which needs addressing.

The Unknown

There are some things about Sibelius that are still unknown. I've had some pretty weird bugs pop up when exporting to audio in Sibelius 3 from time to time, and I hope those are resolved in Sibelius 4, but that feature is unavailable in the demo. Also, as I understand it, Sibelius 4 will pre-load any sound libraries selected to eliminate the lag that exists when inputting notes or playing back a score for the first time. While this is sure to have benefits, I wonder this will affect Sibelius memory footprint. These questions won't be resolved until i can get my hands of a shipping copy, though.

Conclusion

Sibelius 4 is shaping up to be a very strong release. It retains the clean interface of Sibelius but almost to a fault. Again, the fact that many common items are buried in menus and dialogue boxes can be daunting to a user until they become well-versed in all of the keyboard commands. However, the benefits of Sibelius easily outweigh such small quarrels.

The only real point of contention I have with Sibelius is Kontakt Player Silver. In its current state, the high quality GPO sounds included with Finale 2006 soundly trump what is included with Sibelius, and I'm growing more of the opinion that Kontakt Player Gold should not be a separate $150 purchase, especially when comparing the lists of instruments included in Kontakt Player Gold and those included with Finale 2006.

As I said, though, Sibelius 4 has some strong features, but Sibelius needs to continue to innovate and provide value. Much of Sibelius' current Macintosh user base is probably a result of Finale ceasing to be a value for several years. Now that they have that base, they need to work to keep it.

Tags: software, technology, opinion, sibelius

Journals.ars has an entry posted in the M-Dollar section with screenshots of Longhorn Build 5203. For those of you unfamiliar with what I'm talking about, Longhorn is the code name for the next iteration of Microsoft Windows that is set to replace WindowsXP. Currently, Longhorn (or whatever it will be called) is set for release in late 2006, but some sources claim that the date will probably slip to early 2007. Being the geek that I am, I couldn't help but check the images out. Even though I'm a pretty die-hard Mac user, I still love ogling screenshots, especially desktops of any yet-to-be-released operating system (OS).

I can't comment on things like functionality or performance of this build. I personally haven't had the opportunity to play around with any Longhorn builds, so anything I say on those matters would be uninformed speculation. Therefore, these comments will be limited to the appearance of the Longhorn interface in this build. Please note that these comments may quickly become out of date seeing that this is unfinished software, and the interface may go through several revisions before the product's release.

Nice Comments

On the whole, the interface seems pretty sleek and elegant. It retains familiar Windows metaphors while visually separating itself from prior releases. With this release, Microsoft has definitely addressed the garishness of WindowsXP and the criticisms leveled toward the "plex" interface of previous Longhorn builds. Also, the icons are showing improvement. I especially like the Recycle Bin icon, but I wish the screenshots here included the full state of the Recycle Bin as well.

The "Computer" window in screenshot seven has nice progress bars visually representing how much of the disk space is currently being used. I have to admit that a similar function is lacking in the Mac OS X Finder. (Yes, I know that the FInder shows how much space is available at the bottom of the Finder window, but visual indicators are nice too.) Also the Spotlight...err, Search field in the Start Menu is a nice touch.

Concerns

Interface translucency is a very cool thing, and I am a sucker for glassy effects. However, translucency in the title bars may not be a good idea, especially in Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer where the location and search fields are also translucent. Some serious usability issues could come out of this (as Apple learned in the early OS X days when inactive title bars became translucent.) On the other hand, the blurring of the background through the translucent objects may alleviate this problem.

Another issue could be performance. Okay, now I'm speculating, but eye-candy like translucency and gaussian blurs eat processor cycles. Also, cool 3D effects have also been demoed – again more cycles. Hopefully the new Desktop Composition Engine (DCE, code named Avalon) will help take care of this, much as Quartz Extreme helps offload much of the eye-candy in Mac OS X onto the graphics processor. Additionally, Microsoft will probably let the user decide what eye-candy is active in the Appearance Manager.

Finally, Microsoft seems to be falling prey to the visual inconsistencies that have been cropping up in Mac OS X for the past few years. In Longhorn, there is a black gradient Taskbar which opens to a Start Menu that follows similar aesthetics. This contrasts with glassy windows in Windows Explorer as well as some applications like Paint and Internet Explorer. Furthermore, one of the screenshots shows navigation and information elements within two different file windows where the information has backgrounds of different colors. (Perhaps this isn't so bad because the different colors may represent different directories, but it still seems like overkill.) Then, also in this category, is Windows Media Player, which seems to follow its own set of rules separate and apart from the rest of the OS (much like iTunes does in Mac OS X).

Miscellany

What is with Microsoft's obsession with green elements? They are all over the place in XP, and here we see that the Star Menu's active state is green. Oh well, at least it doesn't clash with the rest of the interface like it does in XP's Luna style.

Is it me, or does the search icon in the Start Menu, Windows Explorer, and Internet Explorer look exactly like the icon for Apple's Spotlight and the search field in Safari? (Edit: I'll take this one back. After looking over GUIdebook, this icon seems a natural evolution of the icon Microsoft has used for search since Windows 95. Also, it's pointing the opposite direction from Spotlight's and Safari's icons.)

Conclusion

Microsoft is making progress with WIndows Longhorn, and it looks to improve on Windows' strengths while addressing some of its past weaknesses. It has hit some serious bumps in its development, and it will be some time before Longhorn reaches the potential that it initially promised. Regardless, this looks like it is shaping up to be a decent upgrade for Windows users, and while it may not inspire any switchers off the Mac (not me at any rate), it will have some of us wishing Mac OS X had translucent windows instead of brushed metal.

For further reading on Windows Longhorn, visit the Longhorn section of the SuperSite for Windows.

Tags: technology, microsoft, opinion, software

Okay, I don't know if Steve Ballmer really amuses me or really scares me. Between the developer's brainwashing mantra and the famous "monkey" dance, that man has demonstrated he has little to no dignity. I also love this article, where a USA Today reporter is interrupted three times by Ballmer. Ballmer claims that Microsoft "likes to be first" when the reporter is making the point that Microsoft is not always first to the market with a new idea or innovation. Actually, the reporter probably would have managed to put a positive spin on his point had Ballmer not been so belligerent.

Apple may not have the marketshare Microsoft has, but it can always point at Redmond and say, "Our CEO is cooler than your CEO."

Tags: technology, microsoft