Apple iMovie ’09

Posted on January 6, 2009 by Michael Brewer

Apple has updated iMovie as part of its iLife suite during Macworld 2009. And possibly the greatest new feature of iMovie is automatic video stabilization. This has the potential to save a lot of hand-held video. It analyses your video and then performs complex calculations on it in real-time to reduce shakiness. The demo was impressive.

They’ve also added support for travel maps that show where you’ve been through a variety of 2D or 3D animations à la Indiana Jones. This meshes well with the location-based improvements in iPhoto.

They’ve also improved their drag & drop system with new features, increased the precision of the editor for more control, included advanced video effects, as well as bringing back Themes from iMovie HD. Having themes in iMovie once again is a big win as far as I am concerned.

Apple has created a guided tour video that explains the new features of iMovie ’09.

Apple iPhoto ’09

Posted on January 6, 2009 by Michael Brewer

iPhoto was updated today during Macworld 2009. It represents one of the three applications of the iLife suite that received major improvements in the newest version.

Apple has added two new ways to organize your photos in iPhoto . The first way is by Faces! It uses face detection and recognition features to assist in tagging the right people to the right photos. When iPhoto finds a new face it doesn’t yet recognize, you tell iPhoto who it is and iPhoto applies that person’s name to (almost) all photos they appear in. It will have difficulties always detecting the faces due to different angles or obstructions, but this will probably be the fastest way you’ve ever tagged a photo. Once iPhoto recognizes your friends and family, you can select the Faces library to see everyone you know. You’ll be able to double-click on their face to see all of the photos that they appear in – similar to how you work with Events today.

They’ve also provided organization by Places in addition to Faces and the existing Events. This uses GPS that is built into some cameras (i.e. iPhone) to automatically tag them with a location. You can set the location for photos by typing its name, entering an address, or dropping a pin on a map if your camera doesn’t support GPS. Then you can view your photos by location by selecting the Places library. This will provide you with two ways to look at your photos. You can either see pins on a map representing where your photos were taken or you can look at them using a column browser (similar to the Browser in iTunes with Genre, Artist, Album columns).

iPhoto also integrates with Facebook and Flickr now without the need for third-party plug-ins. As a bonus, if people on Facebook add names to the faces in your photos, that information is sent back to iPhoto. You can now out-source your photo library organization work to your friends!

Photo editing has been improved as well. A new slider has been added to the Adjust panel called Definition that tries to improve clarify and bring out detail. They’ve added the ability to change the saturation of your photos without affecting skin tones. The Retouch brush can now detect edges so that they aren’t blurred when you’re retouching a spot near them. And, finally, Apple has tweaked red-eye removal in iPhoto once again. This time they’re using their new face detection features so it only requires one click (hopefully it also does a better job of it).

Slideshows in iPhoto have also been upgraded with support for themes, using face detection to position photos and keep faces on screen, and support for syncing them to your iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV. Hopefully those devices will also be updated to support these new iPhoto Slideshows features, otherwise that means the slideshows will probably be unnecessarily large movie files once they’re exported to iTunes.

Apple has made a guided tour video available for iPhoto ’09.

How to take screenshots with iOS

Posted on January 5, 2009 by Michael Brewer

Did you know you can take screenshots with iOS? Taking a screenshot is pretty easy to do. All that you have to do is simultaneously press the Lock button (on the top-right, sometimes referred to as the Sleep/Wake button) and the Home button. You’ll see the entire screen flash white and hear a camera shutter sound indicating that you’ve successfully taken a shot.

But where is it? There isn’t a desktop or a clipboard for the shot to be placed on. Instead, press the Home button and select the Photos application. You’ll find your screenshots in the Camera Roll photo album.

So, what can you do with it? They are synchronized to your PC just like you can with normal photos you’ve taken while out and about. But, you can also use it from within some of your apps like Twitterrific so you can your upload images to Twitter.

How to take screenshots on your Mac

Posted on January 5, 2009 by Michael Brewer

Taking a screenshot in Mac OS X is very similar to the way you do it in Windows. There are two kinds of screenshots to take in Windows. You can take a screenshot of your full screen by pressing the Print Screen key. You can also take a screenshot of just the current window by pressing Alt and then pressing the Print Screen key. Both of these keyboard shortcuts place the image in the clipboard so that you can paste them wherever you like. Some people like pasting them into a Word Document while others paste them into Paint to save them or simply just paste them wherever they need to use it – like an e-mail.

Keyboard shortcuts for taking screenshots

On the Mac, you basically have the same two kinds of screenshots. You can take a full screenshot by holding the Shift and Command keys while pressing the 3 key. Doing so will result in the screenshot being saved to your desktop as a PNG image file.

You can also take a partial (or selective) screenshot. But, on the Mac you’re not limited to just taking a shot of your current window. Holding the Shift and Command keys while pressing the 4 key will change your pointer into a cross-hair with two sets of numbers indicating the coordinates of the current pointer position. You can click-and-drag the cross-hair to draw a rectangle on the screen that frames whatever portion you want a screenshot of. If you’d rather just take a screenshot of a window, simply move the cross-hair over the window you want a shot of and press the Spacebar. Your pointer will turn into a camera and the window that you’ll take a shot of will be highlighted. Click to take a shot of the currently highlighted window.

Both of these methods will will result in the screenshot being saved to your desktop as a PNG image file. But, if you don’t have a need to save the shot as an image and just need to use it temporarily, you can modify either of those two keyboard shortcuts by also holding down Control before hitting either 3 or 4. This will place the shot into your clipboard and you can then paste as you usually would wherever you’d like. Using the extra Control key modifier will give you a behavior more like Windows.

Selecting a backup drive

Posted on January 1, 2009 by Michael Brewer

Now that you know what Time Machine is, you’re probably interested in finding the right drive to use with it. I have a general rule of thumb that your Time Machine backup drive should have twice the capacity of the drive or drives that you’re backing up to it. This allows you to back everything you have up, and then gives you plenty of room for Time Machine to do its rolling backups of changes so that you can go back in time (I can generally go back 6 months) to restore a lost file. To make this easy for you, I’ve broken down some recommendations into a good one and a better one for each of Apple’s current Macs.

MacBook & MacBook Pro

The average hard disk drive for the new MacBooks is 250GB, so you should try to get a least a 500GB hard drive as your backup.

The LaCie Rugged Hard Disk is a good option for a MacBook. It’s rugged so it will stand up better to being packed into a bag and lugged around along with your laptop and it is is available in 500GB sizes. It connects to your Mac over Hi-Speed USB 2.0 which is bus-powered so you don’t have to bother plugging in a power cable too. It doesn’t have any other connections which helps keep the cost down and meshes well with the new MacBook (non-Pro) which no longer has a FireWire port.

A better option, however is probably the Apple Time Capsule. It is a disk drive and a Wi-Fi base station built into one tiny box. And it is also offered in a 500GB configuration. Anytime your MacBook is within range of the Time Capsule’s Wi-Fi network, it will seamlessly backup without you having to make any cable connections – or even think about it really.

If you’ve upgraded to the 320GB hard drive on either of the MacBooks, you’re probably good but you might want to consider stepping up to a 1TB (1,000GB) hard drive. LaCie has their Little Big Disk Quadra or the Big Disk Extreme+ (the Little Big Disk Quadra is pricey but it is bus-powered over FireWire so the MacBook Pro users can leave the power adapter at home) in 1TB sizes. And Apple offers the Time Capsule in a 1TB version as well.

MacBook Air

The Air maxes out at 128GB with its solid state drive. And its 120GB hard drive isn’t far away from that. So, you’ll want to get at least a 256GB backup drive.

The LaCie Rugged Hard Disk is also a good option for the MacBook Air. Although, for the Air you can save some money by opting for the 250GB version. But, getting the 500GB capacity version of it certainly wouldn’t hurt.

I still recommend the Time Capsule as the better choice for the MacBook Air, but the lowest capacity Apple offers is 500GB.

Mac Mini

The average size hard disk drive for the Mac Mini is 120GB, so a 250GB hard drive is ideal.

The LaCie Mini would be great in its 250GB capacity, but unfortunately they’ve discontinued it. You may still be able to find these on clearance around the web.

Instead, get the Iomega MiniMax drive that is at the lowest price. They should all be at least 500GB.

A better option is to get the LaCie Big Disk Extreme+ Triple because it offers incredible value. A 1TB drive is only $200 at the time I’m writing this. You’ll have plenty of room left over to store non-critical files that you don’t mind not having a backup of.

iMac

The average iMac probably has a 320GB hard drive in it. So, you’ll want to get a 1TB backup drive for it. Like most things with the iMac, deciding on the right backup drive is easy. Get the 1TB LaCie Big Disk Extreme+ Triple and connect it to your iMac with a FireWire 800 cable. If you’ve opted for a larger internal hard drive, just upsize to the 2TB version of this drive.

Mac Pro

OK, I’ve been suggesting hard drive models and capacities up to now. But, the Mac Pro is highly configurable, so I am going to simply suggest the drives. Size them according to the storage you’ve configured your Mac Pro with – and don’t forget to double it for your backup drive.

A good option, and actually what I use right now, is the LaCie Big Disk Extreme+ Triple. I really like this drive and it hasn’t failed me yet.

A better option is to go with a Drobo from Data Robotics. The two major benefits of the Drobo are that it provides fail-safe storage (one of the drives can fail without losing any data) and it allows you to expand its storage capacity terabyte-by-terabyte all the way up to 16TB on a single volume as disk sizes increase. You can buy it empty and add your own drives or you can buy it pre-installed with 2TB or 4TB worth of drives. The Drobo is a great option, but it is pricey and that’s why I don’t have one yet. So, make sure to price it out with how ever many drives you want before committing to this as your backup solution.