Category Archives: Mac OS X
When the iPad arrived in April I had high hopes (I still do) for it to become a great tool for photographers and in many ways it has. More photographers showed their portfolios at Photoshop World this past September electronically than they did in print. Just recently I published my list of 8 Must Have iPad Apps for Photographers. Yes, progress is being made, but yesterday Apple released the long awaited update to the MacBook Air and the more I looked the specs the more it made me think about this new MacBook as a better choice for photographers in the field.
The iPad appeal
The iPad is/was appealing because it was small, lightweight, has a relatively long battery life, relatively large display and is capable of importing images via the Camera Connection Kit. It can do moderate photo editing on the go. Also the instant on and not having to manage a file system are pluses in many ways.
The NEW MacBook Air offers so much more for not much more money
The most fair comparison I can make is to compare the 64GB iPad Wi-Fi model ($699) with the new 64GB 11.6" MacBook Air ($999). Yes, the MacBook Air is $300 more and weighs 0.7 lbs. more. The MacBook Air is also a few inches bigger.
| MacBook Air | iPad |
Size and weight
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Size and weight1
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Once you get past the slightly larger size and weight of the MacBook Air, you can then start to justify it for what it offers over the iPad. The MacBook Air (MBA) has the ability to run your standard Mac applications (or even Windows Applications using Parallels or other Virtualization apps). So instead of trying to find replacement Apps on the iPad, it can actually fun Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5. Instead of having to use the Camera Connection Kit with low power/speed CF Cards/Readers, you can plug in any standard USB Card Reader and Import photos from any memory cards. With the MBA you can also more easily offload your images onto another hard drive just by plugging it in to the USB port and doing a standard file copy. Also since many photographers publish their websites using Adobe Flash, you can view those sites on the MacBook Air by installing the latest Flash Player if you choose to. Lastly, and probably one the biggest reasons is that the you can shoot tethered to a MacBook Air and see your images on the nice big 11.6" display. Lightroom 3 already does native tethering and that means that the MBA can already do this. Yes, the MBA is $300 more, but you get a much more capable device for that $300.
What I would have liked to have seen
There are two things that I would have liked to have seen on the MacBook Air. The first is a built-in option for 3G connectivity. That's one of the things I love about my iPad is that I can take it out of my bag and get online pretty much anywhere. Sure I can use my MiFi or a 3G USB Stick, but a contract free 3G option built-in the MBA would have been killer. The next thing I would have loved to have seen is a TRUE HYBRID between these two devices. Imagine a MBA in the same form factor, but if you open the lid and flip it over it becomes an iPad and can run iOS Apps. While it's true that a touch screen on a vertical display would be a pain, there's no reason that the display has to stay vertical if it swiveled and reversed. That would have truly been the best of both worlds!
What will I do now?
Believe it or not I have no plans to get a MacBook Air pretty much for the same reasons that I didn't buy myself the first model. When I travel for business I need the most full featured and powerful MacBook Pro available and the MacBook Air just isn't enough muscle for what I do. Since it's not going to replace my current MacBook Pro I see no need to travel with TWO laptops. A MacBook Pro and iPad will continue to be my tools of choice. However, if you're a photographer that doesn't demo software for a living like I do, then the MacBook Air might be a GREAT tool for you! If I didn't need the power of a MacBook Pro, I would seriously consider the Air!
September 20th, 2010
12:16
Parallels 6 is Fast!
Parallels 6 above running Windows 7 64bit Ultimate Edition and Windows XP on a Mac Pro/Mac OS X 10.6.4 running Photoshop CS5 Extended – click the image to enlarge
Most of my day to day work is done in the Mac OS. However, there are times when I need to run Windows app/utility here and there. I can remember the days when I used to carry two laptops for work. I had a PowerBook for doing demos to Mac customers and an IBM (now Lenovo) Thinkpad for doing demos to Windows based customers. Once the the MacBook Pro hit the scene I was quick to jump on board because I could now use this one laptop to run both Mac and Windows Apps. Apple allows you to enable a feature called "Boot Camp" right in the Mac OS itself. With Boot Camp you setup a partition (size of your choosing) and natively install a copy of Windows (not included) on it. Then you can choose to boot up the computer in either OS and Windows running under Boot Camp is just as fast as running Windows on any other similarly spec'd PC. While you do get to run Windows as fast as your Mac hardware can, you have the disadvantage in that you can only run one OS at a time. In other words while you're booted in Windows in Boot Camp, you don't have access to your Mac apps. This is where virtualization Apps come in. The two top contenders are Parallels and VMWare's Fusion. I've had experience with both Apps in their latest versions and given the choice I'd go with Parallels.
When you have two apps that basically do the same thing, you have to look at "how" they do it?
Both Apps are great and both apps have very similar feature sets. Although I get to use VMWare's Fusion at NO COST TO ME because my company has a site license and offers it to any employee that needs it, I prefer to use Parallels (and buy it out of my own pocket). Both Parallels and Fusion allow you to use Windows on top of the Mac OS. This means that you are running both OSs at the same time and can launch apps in either. Both are going to run a bit slower than running natively in Boot Camp if for no other reason, they are sharing resources with the Mac OS running at the same time. However, being able to run the occasional Windows app without rebooting is worth the small performance hit. Both apps allow you to either run Windows from a "file' on any hard drive (including an external drive) or even use your Boot Camp Windows installation. So if they both seem to do the same thing, what makes one better? SPEED!!! Parallels with version 6 continues to have the advantage over the competition with SPEED! No other way to say it other than it just runs Windows FASTER. According to Parallels, version 6 is up to 80% faster than version 5. It's 64 bit and boots Windows more than two times faster than Fusion 3.1. Parallels 6 scores more than 2 times better on 3D graphics than Fusion 3.1.
It's running so fast as a matter of fact that I may never use Boot Camp again
Continue reading “Parallels 6 is Fast!” »
August 31st, 2009
3:59
A Weekend with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
My copy of Snow Leopard (Family Pack) arrived via FedEx Friday afternoon and since I had already done a clone backup using SuperDuper and of course I stay backed up with Time Machine too. I was ready to install the minute I opened the package. As with most Mac OS X installs the package contained the installation DVD and simple brochure that covered the basic installation steps and the top new features.
Installing
The Snow Leopard Installer was quite different than the Leopard installer. I expected to get to choose between an Upgrade and Archive and Install and the next thing I know, it was installing and I never saw the usual options. So I canceled it! Yep, I stopped the installation a few minutes after it got started because I wanted to verify some options. Good thing I did, because there are some defaults you need to be aware of. The first thing is that Rosetta is no longer installed by default. Rosetta is Apple’s technology to run non-intel native apps (apps built for PowerPC) on an intel Mac. While most people are probably OK here, I have a couple of apps that aren’t Intel native. Quicken comes to mind. Now the good news here is that reports say that if you didn’t install Rosetta and you try to run an app that needs it, Mac OS X will offer to install it right then and there via the Software Update utility. However, I just thought that since it only takes a few megabytes, why not at least alert the user and give them the option to install it without the user having to know to enable it it via the Customize feature?
I still never got a chance to choose Archive and Install over Upgrade, but that OK since it appears that Snow Leopard (SL) now does an Archive and Install by default. This is good as I wanted to do this option to hopefully clear up a few weird issues I was having with Leopard (see "What got fixed" later). The installation took somewhere between 40-60 minutes on each of my Macs.
Installing it on my MacBook Air – When I bought the MacBook Air for home/family use, I also bought the external Super Drive. However, I purposely didn’t open it. I still have it in the original shrinkwrap. I wanted to see if Apple’s claims were true and that I could get by with a Mac with no optical drive. So far I have been doing just fine without it. However, this was the first major OS upgrade that I’ve had since getting the MacBook Air last year and I still wanted to see if I could do this without opening that Super Drive. So I put the Snow Leopard DVD in one of my iMacs and enabled CD/DVD sharing. I clicked on Remote Disc on the MacBook Air and within a few seconds I was installing Snow Leopard on the MacBook Air. It worked perfectly and the Super Drive is still in the shrinkwrap.
Continue reading “A Weekend with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard” »
August 26th, 2009
3:41
Snow Leopard is Coming this Friday! Well……?
Apple has announced that Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is shipping this Friday! As you might have guessed, I’ve already got my copy on order. While I’m sure I could go ahead and install a developer release GM copy right now. I kinda like to wait for the real deal disc. Also in this case I’m really not in any real hurry.
Snow Leopard is a different kind of upgrade
Each full version of Mac OS X is usually packed with hundreds of new features and enhancements. However, this time around Apple chose to basically make what was already good about Mac OS X, better with the much needed under the hood improvements to give us great 64 bit support and speed. This is also reflected in the upgrade price. If you’re a Leopard user the cost of upgrading (for the OS) is only $29 ($49 for the Family Pack) this time around. I am looking forward to one major new thing and that is the native support for MS Exchange 2007. We use Exchange servers at work for email, calendar, etc. and currently I have to use MS Entourage for work stuff. I’d love to be able to ditch Entourage and just use Mail, iCal and Address Book for everything. Looks like that day will come soon. So I’m very excited about that and of course who can complain about things working faster?
Continue reading “Snow Leopard is Coming this Friday! Well……?” »
June 8th, 2009
10:21
Apple WWDC Keynote Video posted and a few more things…
Apple has posted today’s Phil Schiller keynote from WWDC. See the video here.
A couple more interesting tidbits from today:
Upgrading to the iPhone 3GS may cost you more than you think. The $199 and $299 prices for the 16GB and 32GB models are the prices NEW customers or customers eligible for upgrades will pay. As you know, you signed a 2 year contract when you got your existing iPhone 3G (if you did it on AT&T). The policy for upgrading at a reduced rate is typically 18 months. So even if you bought your iPhone 3G on the day it was announced, that’s only 11 months ago. Most likely you won’t be able to upgrade for those prices. You can check your eligibility right on the Apple Store online or log onto your wireless.att.com account to see your upgrade eligibility. Those on the original iPhone should be all set as your two year contract is almost at an end (provided you bought on day one in 2007). Prices could be as high as $599 and $699 for early upgraders. Which, by the way at that point you’d be better off signing a NEW contract, canceling it, and paying the early cancellation fee of $175.
MobileMe get’s some much needed love. Every year many customers ask themselves, “why am I paying for this?” Each customer has his or her own reasons as to why they deem the service worth the price. For me, I like the syncing of info between all my computers. I like the syncing of data (except Contacts, maybe I’ll try it again after 3.0) with my iPhone. I also like the hosted web stuff and email. However, with iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3.0 you get new benefits. First of all Apple showed off “Find my iPhone”. This feature allows MobileMe customers to locate a missing iPhone on a map. If that iPhone happens to be in your house, you can even send a command to it to ring even if the ringer is on silent! You can also remote wipe a lost or stolen phone so that your info is no longer on the device. Although I wish this feature would actually password lock the phone so that it couldn’t be used or randomly wipe it so that the thief couldn’t really use it. Yes, I know about serial number blocks that the carriers can do, but this is much more fun. It also seems like iPhone users will FINALLY be able to access their iDisks and the data stored on them, with an upcoming iDisk iPhone App. Also in case you missed it, MobileMe now syncs your notes from Mail and soon from your iPhone running the 3.0 update.
AT&T is the weakest Link
I’m typically not one of those users who likes to bash the carrier. All of the carriers have issues! However, I’m becoming increasingly frustrated by AT&T’s apparent inability to keep up with their growth. The iPhone has been missing some key features like MMS messaging and data tethering since day one. These features are probably not hard to implement. As a matter of fact we’re getting them in iPhone OS 3.0 next week. The problem is that AT&T says that MMS messaging won’t be available until “summer” and tethering, well, um it will come to0 at some point, with additional fees. No wonder other countries laugh at us when it comes to our data networks. Oh and don’t get me started about the crippling of the SlingPlayer app to only work over Wi-Fi! If the iPhone was available on multiple US carriers, AT&T would be forced to compete for our business. However, with this exclusive multi-year deal, AT&T gets another free pass. AT&T do me a favor: stop advertising your network if you can’t actually do anything on it!
June 8th, 2009
4:35
Updated MacBooks, iPhone OS 3.0, iPhone 3Gs and more
I thought I’d give a quick recap on today’s announcements since my friends are already ringing my phone off the hook anyway. 
There certainly was no shortage of announcements from this morning’s Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) keynote. Of course you can go to apple.com and get all the details of each and every item. This post is just serve as a quick recap for those that just want to know “what’s new?”
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Updated MacBooks/MacBook Pros
Apple updated the specs on the 15″ MacBook Pro, 13″ MacBook (now Pro) and MacBook Air while at the same time reducing the prices!
The 15″ MacBook Pro now gets the same built-in battery as it’s 17″ sibling, boasting 7 hours of battery life. It can be configured with up to 8GB of RAM as well as a 500GB hard drive. Probably the most controversial move here is that they removed the ExpressCard Slot and replaced it with an SD card slot instead and they replaced the removable battery with one that’s built-in. The new prices are $1,599, $1,899 and $2,099.
The New 13″ MacBook Pro. The MacBook has been upgraded to MacBook Pro status. It now features an SD slot as well, configurable up to 8GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive, and it now has a FIREWIRE port! Apple has seen the error of its ways in this regard. Probably the most exciting feature of the 13″ MacBook Pro is the price. The 7 hour battery is also built-in on this model. They start at $1,199 which is cheaper than the older model which had less features.
Lastly the MacBook Air gets a price reduction as well. Now the MacBook Air starts at $1,499.
See the new MacBook Pros here.
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Safari 4.0 Now Available
The Safari web browser had been in beta for the past couple of months and now it’s officially available in its release form. It was already available via the Software Updates when I ran it a few minutes ago. I’ll have to see if they fixed a couple of the bugs I was having in the beta. Namely, posting links on WordPress on this very blog. Apple bills it as the fastest web browser on any platform.
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Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
As you might expect, the spotlight was on Snow Leopard today. Apple showed off a miriad of enhancements and the one that got me most excited was the Microsoft Exchange support which means that I’ll finally be able to say goodbye to Microsoft Entourage for work email. There were all kinds of other neat UI enhancements to the Finder and the OS in general. The big focus was on 64bit as well it should be. Lastly, Snow Leopard will be available in September for only $29 for existing Leopard users. That has to be the lowest OS price that Apple has ever charged since they’ve been charging for OS upgrades. Snow Leopard is only for Intel Macs!
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iPhone OS 3.0 Update
No surprises that Apple also showed more about the iPhone 3.0 update, which had already been previewed. It’s going to fill many of the gaps that the iPhone has had to date including MMS support, Tethering, Cut, Copy & Paste, background notification for 3rd party apps, Turn-by-Turn directions, peer-to-peer gaming, etc. This update will be FREE to existing iPhone users ($9.99 for iPod touch users) and available next week on June 17th! Yes, you know where I’ll be that day.
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New iPhone 3GS
The most anticipated news of course was the new iPhone hardware. Today Apple introduced the iPhone 3GS. The main points are:
- Faster processor
- 7.2 Mbps HSDPA
- 3MP Camera with better low light, auto focus and macro modes
- Video Capture, trimming on the iPhone, share via email, MMS, YouTube, or MobileMe
- Voice Control
- Compass App
- Nike+ support built-in
- Hardware Data Encryption
- Better battery life
Available Friday, June 19th – 16GB model (black or white) $199, 32GB model (black or white) $299
8GB iPhone 3G now only $99 and available today!
June 8th, 2009
1:02
WWDC ’09 Live Feed
These guys are attempting a live video feed of the WWDC News. Kudos to them and very cool if they are able to pull it off!
June 8th, 2009
5:27
It’s WWDC Day
It’s that time of year once again! Today kicks off the Apple World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco. As usual, it’s anyone’s guess as to what Apple will actually introduce today. Here are the latest rumors and possibilities:
- iPhone 3.0 software update
- New 3rd generation iPhone 3g – hardware (16GB & 32GB models)
- Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
- Cheaper ($99 or $149) iPhones (4GB or 8GB)
- Larger “tablet” sized iPod touch type device
- More powerful MacBook Air (4GB RAM, integrated 3G wireless) to compete with netbooks
- MacBook updates with 3G wireless capabilities
- iPhone Movie/Videos direct downloads
As usual, this is only speculation/wishful thinking and nothing is definite until it actually happens. The keynote kicks off at 1PM ET. Popcorn in hand, let’s see what’s what?
June 4th, 2009
6:32
Anti-Phishing Tip
We all get those emails that look legit, but aren’t! It could come from a bank or your credit card company. Usually there’s a “problem with your account” and they need you to log in and give them some information or reset your password. My favorite is when they claim that through a computer mishap that they lost all my information, yet miracously they still have my email address. Also another dead giveaway is the first line that says “Dear Valued Customer.” If I was really your valued customer, wouldn’t you know my name and address me directly.
Even though the signs are clear in some cases, people get tricked into clicking the links, winding up on an fake site and divulging tons of private information.
Here’s a tip for Apple Mail users
If you’re an Apple Mail user (the mail app built-in to Mac OS X), then you’ve got a way of quickly verifying where a link goes without actually clicking on it. Take this “Bank of America” email that I got yesterday. Although I wasn’t even remotely tempted to click on the link, I was curious as to where it led to. So I simply hovered my mouse over the link to reveal a popup display that actually shows the REAL URL that you’d go to if you clicked on it. Needless to say, it wasn’t bankofamerica.com.
Although I didn’t click the link, I’m sure if I had it would have taken me to a website that looks just like bankofamerica.com.
This tip also works in Mail on the iPhone
As I wrote in my iPhone Book 2nd edition. You can do this same tip by holding down your finger on a link in the Mail app on the iPhone/iPod touch to see where the link is actually going to take you.
What if you don’t use Mail or are on a PC?
Even if you aren’t an Apple Mail app user, there’s a simple tip for you. DON’T CLICK ON LINKS IN EMAILS! If I thought that this email was legit, the safer thing to do would be to fire up my browser manually and key in the URL myself or use a bookmark. That way I’d know for sure what site I was headed to. Even if you are a Mail user a clever programmer can create a link that spoofs the original site. So bottom line, don’t click the links. Chances are if you get an email requesting that you go to a website, login and give them information, it’s an attempt to gain access to your information, passwords, user names, etc.
Be safe!
May 7th, 2009
9:11
MetaX completes me
In yesterday’s post I talked about my project to convert all of my purchased movie DVDs into MP4 format for streaming playback to any TV in my house (via Apple TV). I got lots of questions about the workflow and some of the questions revolved around Movie Poster artwork. When you rip your Audio CDs iTunes happily finds the missing album art for you and inserts it. It also looks up the track names and other info to help with the process. However, for movies iTunes doesn’t offer much help at all. I was quite content just having the name of the movie and the DVD artwork. I was manually looking up the artwork on the web and copying and pasting it in via the Artwork tab in iTunes Get Info area. It was working! However, the one thing I thought would be nice to have is the Movie Ratings (G, PG, PG-13, R, etc.). Even if I wanted to put these in manually, iTunes doesn’t allow access to this field. So I just decided to live without it.
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MetaX rocks!
The one thing I’ve found out about blogging is that if you blog about a product or workflow, there’s usually someone out there reading that post that’s either done the same thing you’re doing or tried other products that do similar things. I’ve gotten some of my best tech recommendations from the comments area of my posts. Well my blog readers were very quick to offer suggestions to help with my project this time too. Blog reader “Noel” suggested an app called MetaX, which would pull in the Movie Poster art AND other data. Well of course I went to go check it out and I was floored by how well it works!
MetaX Interface, click to enlarge
MetaX polls a variety of databases to grab not only the Movie Poster art, but the description, ratings, actors/acrtresses, chapter names and more! You can go movie by movie and tell it what you want from each database by checking off the boxes in the interface and then let it batch write those tags into your movie files. Be prepared as this process can take 5 minutes per movie on average. I ran it on all the movies I had already ripped and it’s still going as of this morning (almost done though). Speaking of Movie Art, this app even has the ability to allow you to manually crop off the annoying white background that some Movie Posters will come in with.
click to make larger
As you can see above the top two movies have no extra metadata and the bottom two have been run through MetaX to grab the rating, genre, year, description and the movie art (which isn’t shown here).
Believe it or not MetaX is free to download. The author requests a donation via PayPal, which I will be happily making today! It also works great for TV shows. MetaX is a Mac only App. I don’t have a similar solution for Windows users. However, if one exists I’m sure someone will chime in in the comments and let us know.
Thanks Noel for the suggestion! You’ve helped make this project even better than I imagined it would be. My workflow now puts MetaX right in the middle. I go from HandBrake to MetaX and then into iTunes.
I will cover the technology, gadgets, events and cool toys that have affected me in some way. I will also give recommendations on the products that I have actually used.
October 21st, 2010
3:25