Hey gang, I’m back after landing on my back with the flu. Thanks everyone for writing to ask what was going on. So anyway, yesterday I did my usual routine of diving into OS X upgrades without blinking. It worked out fine except SugarSync garbled up on one of my machines. Today, when I finally started feeling human again, I emailed them and had a response back within 30 minutes with the required fix. Impressive.
You may be familiar with Plasq. They’ve brought us applications like Skitch and Doozla. But before those applications existed they had a very successful application called “Comic Life”. The first iteration of Comic Life gave you comic book formatted pages in which you could drop your pictures or artwork and add talking bubbles. In essence, it allowed you to produce your own electronic comic books. I first heard of it when it shipped on my daughter’s iMac.
Plasq has now reinvented Comic Life with the recent release of Comic Life Magiq. This new release represents a significant interface and feature upgrade over the original Comic Life. Booting up Comic Life Magiq, you are presented with a series of potential themes. Of note here is that these themes are not all comic book related. They have themes like “road trip”, “memories”, and “birthday”. In other words, the folks at Plasq figured out what we were all using the application for and have embraced it. Of course, if you don’t want a ready-made theme, you can make your own. It will be curious to see if web sites start sprouting up devoted to sharing Magiq themes.
Once you load up your theme, there is an updated but somewhat familiar Comic Life interface that allows you to start dropping your pictures and artwork into the template. One nice feature is that in addition to your iSight camera and iPhoto album, Comic Life Magiq can browse your Aperture library. It is all very easy to comprehend and without cracking the manual you’ll find yourself changing the layout and otherwise modifying pages an options in no time. The text effects are also fun with a variety of comic friendly and not-so-comic-friendly fonts to choose from that can be dropped into any one of several included bubbles or simply drawn across the page.
While these features represent a welcome update to a very fine application, the most notable new feature in Magiq is the image editor. Plasq has joined a growing list of OS X developers dabbling image editing. Actually the term “dabbling” really doesn’t do this effort justice. The Magiq image editor is quite powerful with different layers, each of which can be easily reset.
The Color layer gives a variety of common photo editing tools such as sharpen, exposure, hue, and crop. The next layer has a very easy set of tools to do a more than average job of removing an image from a background. The method, which requires two sets of rough outlines on the area to be removed and the area to be kept is very intuitive and consumer friendly. As an example, my eleven year old probably has no interest in learning photoshop, but in Comic Book Magiq she was all over this tool. The next layer allows you to warp objects with a variety of familiar tools from the OS X core image assets such as pinch, bulge, twirl, and squeeze. If that isn’t enough there are additional layers to allow you to put an overlay on the image and filter the effects, such as blur on the image. Finally, there is a paint brush that allows you to draw in what could not be accomplished in prior layers. While most of these tools were intuitive to lear, others took some experimentation to figure out. I think some degree of complexity is inevitable with this many tools.
Once your masterpiece is done you print or export it in a variety of formats including FLickr, HTML, PDF, and iWeb.
Comic Life Magiq requires Mac OSX 10.5 Leopard and reliant on some of the Leopard tricks. Strangely, Magiq can not read older Comic Life files. I hope the developer releases a conversion tool or adds this functionality to a later release.
The inclusion of the robust photo editor really transforms Comic Life Magiq into a significant upgrade over its predecessor. It gives you one application to create the layout and do the photo edits. This seems to be just one more example of convergence in OS X software. There are videos and a trial download at Plasq.com. If you are looking for a fun way to present photos, go take a look. Comic Life Magiq can be purchased from Plasq directly for $44.95 for a full version or $29.95 for a cross-grade from Comic Life. They also have a limited time introductory $5 discount for the early adopters.
This is the kind of thing that could give a fellow nightmares. I think I just threw up a bit in my mouth.
Dockless is an application that tells OS X to keep certain applications out of your dock. I first read about Dockless in the Spamsieve manual but was a little leary of it. I’ve been bitten before by life on the wildside of OS X altering applications and I was a little nervous about it. Then my friend Katie at the Mac Core very nicely told me during the last Mac Roundtable to get over it and give Dockless a try. I installed it and sure enough I am liking it. The Spamsieve and Menucalendar clock icons are now officially banned from my dock. Unfortunately, the SugarSync icon is Dockless resistant but two out of three ain’t bad. If your geek gene runs as deep as mine and you actually get annoyed with extra icons on your dock, head on over and download Dockless.
SmileOnMyMac has been putting in overtime on TextExpander lately. They released version 2.1 recently followed very quickly by version 2.1.1 and now they are releasing 2.2. The newest version adds a snippet group for common CSS code for all the web design jockeys. It also limits “Adapt to Case” to lowercase snippets and to abbreviations with two or more characters to avoid problems with those expansions.
I’ve been using the upgraded version today for awhile and still occasionally run into a problem when typing fast and the text gets jumbled into the snippet. That frustration aside, TextExpander is still one of my all time favorite applications on the Mac. Lets hope they figure a way to put their magic onto an iPhone where this application could be extremely useful.
I joined in on the Mac Roundtable recording last week and it is now up for download. This episode has a lot of guesses and speculation about what happens next with the iPhone and it could be a perfect record of just how wrong we all were in a few months. Either way, it was a lot of fun recording it. You can download it through iTunes or right here.
After watching all the hubub about the new VMWare Fusion, I decided it was time to give VMWare a spin. I’ve been using Parallels since it first hit the streets and I hadn’t bothered with VMWare because for the very few applications I need windows, Parallels works just fine.
But I thought it was time to look at the competition. I actually planned to write a comparative review of the two applications. So I’ve been struggling with getting it working. The Parallels converter failed on me so I tried a fresh install. The first one stopped in the middle because windows said some obscure file didn’t copy. I tried again and it finished but the first time I booted it up, Windows informs me my license code has been registered too many times and I need to buy another copy of windows. Just to be clear, I bought this copy of windows for Parallels. I’ve used it a total of one time. So now I have to choose between spending more money on a windows license or becoming a pirate and going to find a cracked license code. Actually, I’m leaning toward a third option and just sticking with Parallels.
I’m sure VMWare is an excellent program but if I had to choose between spending another hour trying to get Windows to work or sticking my hand in an electric socket, a little shock doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. There was a reason I switched.
I’ve been without a machine capable of doing video for about a month but now with the shiny new MacBook Pro, the screencasting machine is warming up again. This is a short one about the various ways to take screen shots in OS X. Enjoy!
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The rumor mill has been working overtime lately with respect to Apple’s .Mac service. In my experience this has been one of the most controversial Apple products in the last few years. Some people swear by it while others seem to hate it. For my part, I find it very useful but probably overpriced. Of particular note are the recent rumors that with the iPhone 2.0 software, .Mac is going to start pushing email, calendar and contact data to our iPhones. I don’t like to get hung up on rumors but let me just go on record to say that is something I’ve been lusting after for some time now. I generally sync my iPhone to the MacBook Pro but that usually stays at my desk at home while the MacBook Air follows me around during the week. Even though my calendars are synced (via BusySync) and contacts are synced via .Mac, if I sync the calendar and contact data on the iPhone on both Macs, inevitably things start hiccuping. I would much prefer that stuff (which are very small data packets) just show up on my phone and forego that type of wired syncing altogether.
This would also be fantastic for families and small businesses that don’t need an Enterprise but still need the convenience of push syncing. I’m crossing my fingers that this rumor comes true.
I’ve been producing screencasts now for almost a year. While I cannot claim to have the superhuman skills of my friend Don McAllister, I do want them to look nice. Up until a few months ago I accomplished this through a byzantine series of steps in multiple applications that was both time intensive and spectacularly underwhelming in its result.
Well this all changed a few months ago when ScreenFlow came on to the stage. ScreenFlow is the screencasting application for the rest of us. It gives you one application to capture video and audio and perform sophisticated editing. So let me break this down a bit.
First there is the capture. By this I mean you turn it on and the little invisible camera over your shoulder starts taking pictures of the screen. At least that is how I think of it. ScreenFlow does a dandy job of capturing your various clicks, drags, and actions on your screen. It also will record audio from either your built in microphone or your own plug-in microphone. I use a Blue Snowball for this purpose and while it is not perfect, it does an acceptable job. You can also elect to record or ignore your system sounds and, if you are really brave, your iSight feed so people can look at your mug while you record your screencast. I tried this but ultimately decided, as the old line goes, I have a face for radio.
You can capture multiple takes into one project so you can break larger projects into small bite-sized chunks. Now for most Screencasting applications, that is where the story ends. You then are required to submit those clips into iMovie or Final Cut for editing and processing.
ScreenFlow, however, is different. This application includes its own editor. So once you have your screencapture completed you can arrange them in ScreenFlow’s handy editor. This editor reminds me of the old iMovie. It is timeline based but not quite so intimidating as Final Cut. Despite the simple interface, however, there are some powerful tools.
Using ScreenFlow I can select portions of a clip and resize the screen, call out the front window and blur the background, zoom up and zoom down, and just about any other fancy trick within reason to make it easier on your viewer. I’ve done some of these effects in prior screencasts using Final Cut. In fact, you can do just about any screen effect with Final Cut and Motion. The trouble is, unless you are very proficient in those applications it will involve a lot of time and, most likely, a few tears. With ScreenFlow things are much easier. I still do some transition work and introductions and closings in Final Cut but with ScreenFlow, all the complicated stuff is already done for me.
The list of features in the edit process is long but just to point out a few of my favorites I like the way you can spotlight the mouse with a circle the size of your own choosing and feather the edges. I also like the way you can easily resize the image and, if you are feeling really spunky, add a reflection. You can also have it automatically display key presses but I’m not a fan of the way it zooms your keypresses across the screen. I hope they add some more options in future releases turning down the dazzle and up the functionality of this feature. For the time being, I’m continuing to use a great freeware application called Keycastr to handle keyboard display duty.
In addition to doing a fine job recording audio, ScreenFlow gives you some other audio tweaks such as the ability to add a keyclick sound. I can definitely see where this feature would be useful.
The biggest improvement to ScreenFlow with the latest version 1.1 is the addition of presets for lossless video and AppleTV. They have made huge strides on the output side and, for me, transformed the application from merely interesting to essential. ScreenFlow is like chocolate cake with ice cream and frosting blended in. One big pile of sugary screencasting fun. For ScreenFlow’s competitors, the bar has been set high.
I think we really are at the very beginning of mainstream screencasting. More and more people are making them. Not just to sell software but also to teach friends. In addition to my MacSparky screencasts, I use screencasting in my day job to drop little helpful movies into presentations. This is interesting because the developers at Vara Software actually started ScreenFlow with the idea of being able to record keynote presentations for the internent. Using ScreenFlow my production time has gone down and quality has gone up. This comes at a price however. A license for ScreenFlow will set you back $99. At this price point you probably need more than a passing interest in screencasting to justify the purchase but when you consider what a license for Final Cut Studio or Express costs, this really isn’t that bad. If you are serious about screencasting, you really should take a look.
I’ve had it with Spam. It seems that lately I’ve been getting an endless stream of email about great mortgage rates, killer deals on watches, and enlarged body parts. I’ve been trying to get Mail.app’s built in junk mail filter to resolve the problem but it doesn’t seem quite robust enough. So I am trying the Spam program everyone seems to swear by, Spamsieve. I’ve just got it started the last few days but it is already catching spam that Mail.app did not. I’ve also already got a few false positives but I’m sure this will need a week or so to sort itself out. Hopefully that will be before the free trial period ends.
One issue with using Spamsieve is that while it will (hopefully) do a good job of catching Spam on my Mac, that doesn’t help me when I check mail on my iPhone. I’m thinking that one way to help with this issue is to have the MacBook Pro on my desk at home check IMAP email every 5 minutes. Therefore, it should (at least in theory) catch Spam every five minutes so there would be little of it cluttering up the iPhone. It is a theory at least. I’ll set it up and report back.
How are you managing the Spam onslaught?
So I’ve been sucked into all the hype concerning the new VMWare Fusion. After using Paralells pretty much since its launch, I’m installing and trying the beta of Fusion 2.0. I’m going to run this experiment for about a month and then write up a comparison. Any advice from Fusion veterans is much appreciated. Stay tuned.
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Update - 5.14.08 10pm
The Parallels to VM Converter failed to create a usable virtual machine. Windows keeps crashing. It looks like tomorrow I’ll need to break out the Windows install disk and do it from scratch.
I’ve already written about how much I like and enjoy BeeDocs’ Timeline application. I’m pleased to see they have now released a new 3d version. I’ve just started playing with it but expect a full review and (possibly) screencast in the near future. In the meantime, go download the trial and give it a spin yourself.
Google has quietly released a beta of its improved iPhone reader. I’ve only been using it an less than an hour but can already attest it is an improvement over the prior version. I do all of my newsreading through Google Reader. This arises partly from the way I read news.
I frequently find myself stuck places and often will “triage” my news feeds clearing out articles I’m not interested in and starring other’s for later reading. The trouble with the prior version of the iPhone google reader was that starring an item required the page to re-load which slows down the process and could be annoying. With the new version it works just like in a conventional browser. There is an empty star next to the headline and you can light it up with the touch of a button. This is both more intuitive and faster.
Once I go through and star the items I want to read in detail I clear out everything else. Quite often the actual reading takes place at my Mac, but not always. In addition to a better system for marking articles, the interface is a bit cleaner and the “Feeds” button also includes tags for starred items, notes, and shared items. Overall, it is a significant improvement.
In terms of beta stability, it hasn’t given me any trouble in the one-hour workout I gave it. It is beta however, so use at your own risk. You can check it out by pointing your iPhone/iPod touch at google.com/reader/i/.
Things seem to be heating up concerning Apple’s release of the iPhone hardware version 2. Many Mac websites are reporting shortages of the existing phones and, most recently, the Apple online store reports the current version of the iPhone as “unavailable”.
Now this could mean the iPhone 2.0 is imminent. It could also just mean they need to restock. Either way I don’t think you can really call the existence of an iPhone 2.0 product a secret. Apple is always pushing forward on its product line and there should be no more doubt about a new generation iPhone than a new generation MacBook or iPod. The question (and secret) is, however, its features. I think 3G is a given. Well, actually, it appears to have been promised by AT&T as well as referenced in this last spurt of new carrier contracts all over the world. As to other features, your guess is as good as mine. I have no idea but I do have an opinion:
1. Better Camera, please.
I’d like to see some improvement on the camera. Maybe a better lens and software that allows me to control exposure. Currently I find it difficult to take good pictures with the phone.
2. GPS? … Eh.
I have a Garmin NUVI in my car that gets me anywhere I need to go. I don’t see the iPhone replacing it even with a GPS system. It would be nice to have GPS on board but certainly not critical. I’m also curious to see what effect that would have on the battery.
3. Faster Processor Speed
Even if we had 3G, the iPhone still can be slow loading web pages. John Gruber did a post on this and he is right. The iPhone takes about 15 seconds to load a page even on wifi. A faster processor would fix this.
4. More memory .. a given.
With the application store going live next month. Our 8 gig iPhones are going to start feeling very small. I expect a 32 gig model before long.
5. Bluetooth Keyboard Support
My own personal crusade. I had to say it.
I’ve only touched upon the obvious points. What may even be more interesting are the new features that are not on this list. Time will tell. So am I upgrading you ask? Eventually, but probably not* right away. My daughter’s contract with Verizon ends next February so I’ll most likely wait until then to make any moves.
* I’ve learned not to categorically state I will not be buying any Apple products. It just never seems to work out.
So I’ve written about the issues that led to AppleCare replacing my MacBook Pro. I’m finally getting time to set it up and I couldn’t help from stopping to wax poetic about the LED screen. I knew it was special when I saw it on the MacBook Air, but on the MacBook Pro, the LED just looks fantastic. The resolution is higher than the standard screen. On the 17″ MacBook Pro it is 1920 x 1200 and noticeably sharper. Further, with the LED screen the whites are whiter and the color more vivid. So the next time you are looking to upgrade your laptop, take a long hard look at the new screens.
Thank you to all readers writing in and asking what has happened to their daily dose of MacSparky blogging goodness the last few days. I’d like to tell you I’ve been quiet because I’ve been busy perfecting the cure for cancer but, alas, I’m just swamped with work from the day job. In fact, I’m so busy that my brand new MacBook Pro (courtesy of AppleCare) is sitting in the corner looking at its new owner rather dubiously for who could ignore such a pretty new computer.
Things should be coming around later this week and definitely by the weekend although I’ll have to take a pass on this week’s Surfbits podcast. The good news is the review I am currently working on is ScreenFlow and hopefully I’ll be able to put up a new screencast once I get the new machine configured.
Thanks for your patience and stay tuned.
So as I’ve been working with the Apple gang to sort out the troubles with my MacBook Pro, I’ve had the opportunity to spend a lot of time behind the MacBook Air and I thought I would check back on my impressions after using it a few months.
To begin with, the underlying assumptions of my original review haven’t changed. It still is very light and thin and the slowest Mac laptop in the Apple lineup. It also still fits in every bag I use and effortlessly goes with me just about anywhere.
I’ve found myself pulling it out in restaurants, court, meetings, coffee shops, and just about everywhere else I get stuck for more than ten minutes. I find it extremely useful for dealing with just about everything I do in my job (word processing, email, Omni applications, and keynote). It is also very handy for the blog. It could do Aperture and Photoshop but I haven’t used it much for that purpose. Likewise I’ve not even bothered trying to use it for screencasting. Logic isn’t installed but I have recorded Midi files into Garage Band and later transferred them over to the MacBook Pro. It can drive an external 22″ monitor with no trouble but struggles when I hook up an eyeTV. I’ve recorded several reviews on it and audio recording is just fine.
The drive space hasn’t been a problem. I sync my files with the MacBook Pro using SugarSync and have had very few hiccups. I don’t keep the Aperture library on the Air and the iTunes library is a very condensed version of my library with 4 gigs of my absolute favorites. Since I normally listen to music through my iPhone anyway, I’m toying with the idea of taking most of the music off it but since space is not currently a problem (still 31 gigs free) I probably will leave things as they are.
The battery has never lasted five hours but I have got over four hours out of it with Airport and Bluetooth off. With all the bells and whistles running I usually get slightly more than 3 hours.
The LED screen is gorgeous. I didn’t think there would be that much difference between the technologies but there is. This is especially true for white and light colors. Do your own comparison next time you are in an Apple Store and see for yourself. I like it so much that I’ve ordered it on my replacement MacBook Pro.
I still get a lot of comments on it. The most interesting comments are from those people who go out of their way to tell me what a bad computer it is. “Dude, my Dell could run circles around that piece of junk” The funny thing is they usually end up asking permission to hold it and look over my shoulder as I use it. It is baffling how much they want to get their hands on “the piece of junk.”
For a Mac user on the run, I think it is an outstanding machine. It probably is overpriced but that will likely change in the future. Put simply, the honeymoon is not over.
BBEdit is the 800 pound gorillla of text editors. People have switched to the Mac just to run this program. So what is so special about BBEdit? I’d have to say the answer is a combination of utility and pedigree.
BBEdit goes back System 6. This application is not a word processor but a text editor. While you could write a novel in BBEdit, it is more suited to prepare the web site promoting your novel or, better yet, the video game based on your novel. Put simply, this application is the equivalent of a super powered nail-gun in the tool belt of all code jockies.
BBEdit supports just about every software and internet development language you can think of. Using version 8.7 it support most, if not all, of the major languages including Objective C, Perl and Java just to name a few. Better yet, its plug-in architecture allows the creation of custom modules to support any language.
Getting back to its pedigree, BBEdit is a very mature application. The current version 8.7 has years of improvements and tweaks. Many of the innovations are obvious like code folding using Apple’s familiar disclosure triangles. Just as impressive as the big features however are the little ones that don’t show themselves right away. For instance, when you close BBEdit and then re-open it later, it remembers where you were when you left off and opens the same files in the same places. It even mounts FTP automatically. Additionally, BBEdit allows you to search and work on multiple files at a time and can handle enormous files sizes.
It tracks and allows the merging of changes in a way that is both smart and intuitive for programming. It also has a robust version control system.
One nice feature is the ability to turn down the down feature support. You can actually turn off language specific features for modules you don’t plan to use. BBEdit also includes a variety of Automator actions and Applescript support.
Having gone full circle with this application I began playing with it as a text editor and not a programming tool. Indeed, I wrote this review in BBEdit. It has some very powerful features when used in this capacity. I could particularly see using it when putting together forms with repetitive text strings. For everyday word processing however, I’m still using my concoction of Scrivener, Word, and Pages.
BBEdit actually has registered its logo phrase, “It doesn’t suck” and indeed is does not. I have to admit I was a little intimidated about reviewing BareBones BBEdit. Some people make their living in BBEdit and work in it every day. I thought, however, as a new user it would be interesting to see how easy it was to find these powerful features. Bare Bones did an impressive job of making these very deep features accessible to new users. That is no easy feat.
An individual license for BBEdit license runs $125. If you spend any amount of time in software development or web coding, you owe it to yourself to head over to Bare Bones Software and take a hard look at this application.
My friend and MacSparky reader Marie pointed me to Jumsoft’s free “Jam” download of Keynote 3d images. Several of them are useful for presentation work and definitely worth the download. Check it out. As a little Keynote tip, I actually keep a separate folder called “Keynote Source Documents” where I have slides and presentation with re-usable resources. If you haven’t done something like this yourself, this is the perfect place to start.
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