Shuffle October 2007 content

[Magnus]

When Apple finally released iWork 08 we had been waiting for about eight months after the expected launch which never happened at MacWorld Expo 2007. Now finally iWork 08 is here and with the usual price tag of $79 (AED329), is it worth upgrading? Let’s take a look. Pages received some not so noticeable but yet very important updates. The one that’s going to affect your work with Pages is the dual mode. You can work with Pages in word processor mode, which is good for when you enter text. The pages follow after one another with breaks and you can concentrate on writing the text. In Layout mode you see the design of the pages, can place and move around graphics, etc. The Layout mode is much what previous versions of Pages was like. Now they’ve strengthened the word processing capabilities. Another new thing is the contextually aware format tool bar. It sits at the top of the document window and changes its content depending on in which mode you work and what is selected. Here you have access to commonly used features like setting text as bold, etc. This format bar exists in all three iWork applications. Apple also built in tracking into Pages, which is a welcome addition. With the few Word documents I tried, tracking information seemed to carry over just fine. But Pages tracks just changes in text. If you add or edit a picture or something, that doesn’t appear in the tracking information. Apple still only allow mail-merge with Mac OS X’s Address Book, so those who mail-merge a lot will want to keep Word around for a bit longer. KeyNote is the oldest application in the collection so perhaps it’s understandable that it’s not getting as much new things as the other applications. One new feature which is in all three applications is a new alpha-channel editor. With it you can with a few clicks set transparent areas on any graphics you import. This will probably be more useful in KeyNote than in the other applications. The Smart Build function makes it easier to position a series of pictures and make them into a sort of animation on one slide. Previously you had to use many slides to accomplish the same. Animation has finally arrived in KeyNote and now there’s support for what’s called path-based animation. You basically draw a path on which you want to animate something, specify a start point and an end point and how the animation should look, then KeyNote does everything in between. If you’ve ever done motion tween in Flash you get the idea. Last but certainly not least we come to Numbers. Including a spreadsheet application in iWork has arguably been one of the most popular requests since iWork made its debut. Apple has taken a novel approach to spreadsheets and that’s good so Numbers can be set apart from Excel more. Numbers is like an empty canvas on which you can place any number of independent grids. In Excel each worksheet is an entire grid on its own. It’s hard to explain without you seeing it, but trust me, it brings a whole new dimension to spreadsheets. The most common functions you’ve come to expect are there in Numbers and you can also write formulas, construct graphs, etc. For the casual spreadsheet user Numbers is easier to use yet more flexible than Excel. For the more advanced user it can be limiting, especially if you depend on macros. One thing I personally miss in all three applications is the ability to work directly with Office files. I mean you can, for example, open a Word file in Pages, but then you can’t just hit save, and it saves back to that Word file. You have to go to Export. This adds an extra step which could be avoided. But other than that I’m very happy using iWork in an Windows and Office environment. In the weeks I’ve been using iWork 08 there has been a few times when Office documents have not converted correctly. iWork 08 is a very solid upgrade and I’d say it’s a must have for anyone using it on a regular basis. And if you want a spreadsheet application it’s a no-brainer to upgrade.

[Magnus]

iLife 08 is the much-anticipated upgrade to the iLife suite and it comes with some surprises as well as a few disappointments. Let’s start with iPhoto. In iLife 08, iPhoto gets a pretty extensive face lift in terms of the interface and many new functions are introduced. Moving away from focusing on rolls of photos, iPhoto 08 introduced the concept of Events. And frankly it makes sense since most of our photography focuses on some kind of event, like a birthday, a wedding, a party, or something. One feature I really welcome is what’s called “Lift” and “Stamp” in Aperture. When you’ve done adjustments to a photo you can apply the same adjustments to other photos. Also borrowed from Aperture is that iPhoto now saves any number of versions of photos that you edit. Previously it only saved one copy. Tied in to new features in .Mac is the new Web Gallery. It’s more fully-featured and makes albums look much better than before. Albums can be password protected, but they can also be opened up so other users can submit photos. New additions to the Adjustment panel and the Retouch tool should make it easier for users to touch-up their photos. iMovie is the other major application in the suite and it has for 08 been completely rewritten. It’s basically a new application inside and out. The focus has shifted from editing and making movies to capturing and organizing movies. Those who have become used to the editing in earlier iMovies will probably be disappointed with the new version. On the other hand those who love iPhoto will probably also like the new iMovie. Like others have said, iMovie 08 is iPhoto for movies. I think Apple is trying to make more of a difference between iMovie and the higher-end applications Final Cut Express and Final Cut Pro. Skimming is probably the coolest feature in iMovie. When you have your clips in iMovie you can seamlessly scroll through them and it plays them live. It makes editing much easier than before, trying to find what to cut. An improved Adjustments panel gives users more control over how they movies turn out, and support for more video formats are all good news. Something else that was strongly promoted by Apple is that you can now publish directly to YouTube from iMovie, and to the new .Mac Web Gallery. There’s also pre-set export formats for Apple TV and iPhone. Something that will disappoint many is that plug-ins from previous iMovie versions will not work in 08. In fact there is no plug-in support at all in iMovie 08. iDVD was almost ignored in iLife 08 and is virtually the same as in 06 so there’s not much to say about it. The new iDVD comes with 10 new good-looking themes and it now includes professional level encoding through two-pass variable bit rate (VBR) encoding. Garageband has always been a fun and easy application to use, with which anyone could create a podcast or even compose some music. The previous version of Garageband was all about podcasting, now Apple turns their attention back to music. The most noticeable news in Garageband 08 is Magic Garageband. It works like a virtual orchestra, where you can pick instruments that play together, in a simple interface. There are also other news like multi-take recording which should be of value if you record live music, an arrangement feature which helps in the editing process, and 24-bit recording and export. iWeb is like the black sheep of the family and the newest addition. The new iWeb still produces the same heavy-coded web pages as the old version. It does produce very nice looking pages though. iWeb 08 focuses on improving the photo gallery functionality by letting users subscribe to RSS feeds for photos and leave comments. One cool addition is that you can now use your own domain for you iWeb site, but it’s rather complicated to set up and not something that most users will bother with, I think. You can also use widgets for Google Adsense and Maps on your iWeb site by just a few clicks. In conclusion, iLife 08 is a worthy upgrade to the suite of applications we’ve come to love and depend on. Is it an upgrade that you should run out and buy? Not necessarily. It’s not a must-have upgrade, but a good upgrade nonetheless.

[Magnus]

Name: Ali Al Juneidi (ali@istyle.ae)
Title: Senior Sales Executive
Store: iStyle Ibn Battuta Mall, Dubai

Q: When did you start working for iStyle?
A: July 2006

Q: What did you do before working at iStyle?
A: I studied for a Bachelor Degree in Computer Science at Yarmuk university in Jordan.

Q: When was the first time you used a Mac and what was your first impression?
A: That was in July 2066 when I joined iStyle. I remember I was really impressed by the ease of use and the performance of operating system.

Q: What's the best part of your job?
a: Getting more people to use Mac especially those who really never seen one.

Q: What is your favorite Apple product and why?
A: 12-inch Powerbook because it's so small I can take it everywhere and it does everything.

Q: What is the most challenging part of your job?
A: Trying to convince someone who used Windows for all their life.

Q: Do you have a funny story about something that has happened in your job?
A: One time a group of guys came into the store. They started looking at the MacBooks. One of them looked at the Apple logo in the display and said So iPod is making notebooks now?

Q: Is there any particular product you wish Apple would release?
A: That's easy a 12-inch MacBook Pro.

[Magnus]

Q: I like Safari but I use Firefox most of the time. It just seems to make pages look and work better. I have a .Mac account so bookmarks in Safari sync okay, but how can I make my bookmarks in Firefox sync between my Macs?

A: It’s actually really easy and works well with something called FoxMarks (www.foxmarks.com). FoxMarks is an Add-on (formerly called Extension) to Firefox and with it you set up a free account on their servers to which your bookmarks are synchronized. You can select if it should be done automatically on a schedule or manually when you choose to. Recently, FoxMarks introduced a mobile service for phones, PDAs, and other devices. You can find it at my.foxmarks.com/m/. You can log in to your FoxMarks account on the mobile device and get access to all your bookmarks. That’s a very nice addition to the service.

Q: I am a PC user but I’ve heard a lot of good things about Macs so I’m considering buying one. What I wanted to ask is if all Macs play HD movies? I travel a lot and bring movies with me on the hard disk and I want good quality video.

A: No problem, all Macs can play HD video in any resolution. You may want to get a player that can handle any video codec. VLC is a great choice (www.videolan.org/vlc/). If you are really concerned about getting the very best quality it may be worth considering that it is currently only the top-of-the-line 17-inch MacBook Pro that can play 1080i at native resolution. It goes up to 1920x1200 which means it can pixel-for-pixel play 1080i movies in full resolution (which would be 1920x1080).
Q: Sometimes when I try to get a file off of my external hard drive, my Mac seems to just freeze. I can force quit applications, and even restart the Finder, but it won’t be okay again until I restart. If I don’t have the external drive attached and don’t use files on it everything is okay. The drive is a MyBook 500GB.

A: I would be very careful about using that external drive. You should try to copy as much information from it as you can and then try to reformat it. You do that with Disk Utility (in the Applications > Utilities folder). If the formatting fails then there’s not much you can do to save it. If formatting works you can still use the drive but don’t rely on it for anything critical as the problem may be a sign of it going bad. If copying files from the drive or formatting fails then you can try something like DiskWarrior (www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/) or TechTool Pro (http://www.micromat.com/index.php?op...ask=view&id=31). They are rather expensive and in my experience they rarely work, but if you have really important data on the disk it may be worth it.

Q: Recently I’ve been working with some colleagues on a project where we need to share documents. We’d like to do this online so we don’t have to email them to each other all the time. We’re mostly Mac users but there are some Windows people too. What’s your suggestion?

A: You have many options from commercial solutions to building your own web site. The solution I would recommend, and it’s free, is Google Docs (docs.google.com). It’s an online storage, editing, and sharing facility for word processing and spreadsheet documents. You only need a GMail address to get going and you can get that for free (gmail.com). Once you start creating documents in Google Docs, they are all stored in your account online. For each document you can share it with others. You can decide if the other users should be able to view a document or edit it. You can even publish the documents as web pages for even easier sharing of information. If you have MS Office documents already you can import them into Google Docs and from Google Docs you can export back to files on your hard drive.

[Magnus]

Recipe: Apple Cobbler

With the temps outside getting cooler, it is nice to have something that will warm your tummy. The Apple Cobbler is one of the best ways that I know how to do that. The only thing that would be better is to add a big scoop of ice cream or whipped cream to that Cobbler. I hope you enjoy this dish as much as I do. Serves 6-8. From www.simplyrecipes.com.

INGREDIENTS

Filling ingredients:
1/4 cup sugar (or more, up to 1/2 cup, to taste)
1 1/2 Tbsp four
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
4 Tbsp (1/4 cup) unsalted butter
3 lbs. tart apples (such as granny smith), peeled, cored, and sliced (about 6 large apples)
3 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Crust ingredients:
2 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp unsalted butter, chilled and cut into small pieces
2 Tbsp coarsely chopped crystallized ginger
Zest of one orange
1 cup heavy cream, plus more for glaze


PREPARATION

1. Filling directions: Melt the butter in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Stir in apple slices, lemon juice, cinnamon, sugar and flour. Cover partially and cook until just tender, about 10 minutes. Stir in vanilla. Transfer to buttered 10” pie dish. (This recipe has the crust only on the top).
2. Crust directions: In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Cut in butter with a pastry blender or your fingertips until mixture resembles fine crumbs. Stir in ginger. Stir orange zest into cream; then, using a fork, stir cream into flour until the doug holds together. Gather dough into a ball; knead briefly then roll out to a little larger than pie dish. Transfer to dish; trim off excess. Score the center so the steam can escape while baking. Brush with cream.
3. Bake 10 minutes in a 450º oven. Reduce heat to 375º and bake 20-25 minutes. Serve warm with whipped cream.

Crystal is the founder and editor of EmiratesBaby.com. She writes about various kinds of issues of interest to parents in the UAE. Crystal will be bringing us a new recipie based on apples in each edition of the newsletter. She promises it will be an exciting and mouth-watering mix of dessert, main courses, snacks, and more.

[Magnus]

How the iPhone changed (almost) everything
by Magnus

Some time in the future, when we look back at this time, we’ll probably think something like “remember when the iPhone was launched, how it changed everything?” Perhaps it was the same way when the iPod first arrived, but I doubt it, because I’m guessing it would have started selling here officially not too long after it was out in the US. And there would have been none of this unlocking stuff going on. The iPod obviously changed a lot of things for Apple. It gave Apple a product that could be sold in a lot of places that would not have thought about selling Apple products before that, and it brought a whole new set of customers to Apple. The famous - or infamous - “halo effect”, whether it’s real or not, at least is an interesting concept to consider, meaning whether by selling iPods to customers, the same customers may also be interested in buying Macs. Now a similar thing is happening, where new customers are being brought to Apple and this time it’s the iPhone. The iPhone is a different beast than the iPod though. For one, it’s in most customers’ minds a mobile phone. This means that a lot of people who would not care about an iPod are interested in iPhone. It also means that Apple is now playing in an industry that they’ve not been in before, and some people would argue, an industry that they don’t understand. With the iPod, Apple depended to some degree on the music and movie industries, but with the iPhone, at least the way Apple has gone about it, they depend on mobile phone operators like AT&T, O2, T-Mobile, and Orange. What that means in terms of bringing iPhone here, we still don’t know. So far iPhone has been launched in countries where most mobile phone customers have monthly contracts and handsets are subsidised by operators. Not so in the Middle East, where most users are on pre-paid and there are no subsidised handsets. On EmiratesMac.com we’ve seen a direct effect of the iPhone arriving, albeit unofficially, in our region. A lot of users are interested in the iPhone and many have bought it and unlocked it. We’ve also had issues with people wanting to sell iPhones. In terms of these sellers, many individuals and companies that would never have sold Apple products before are now selling iPhones. This means that a lot of people who have not been around Apple, Apple culture, and Apple users, are now exposed to those very things. And I think it can be a bit of a culture shock sometimes, for someone who’s not been around Apple fans, to get exposure to group of Appleholics. And I think we’ve seen examples of that right here on our site. I would say, and I may be wrong, that Apple fans are generally well-informed users, who have made a conscious choice to buy from Apple. It’s more likely that someone actively chooses a Mac over a PC, than someone choosing a PC over a Mac. The PC is kind of like the default or the standard, and to go away from that requires an active choice on the part of the user. And that’s a good think, I think. It forces the user to make a decision, which in turn means they should consider their situation more carefully. If the PC is the default choice, making that choice requires little or no thought put into it. This would then mean, arguably, that Mac users, since they’ve made a choice, are more conscious of their situation, what they have in terms of a computer, etc. Some in our community blindly accept anything out of 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, but by and large Apple fans are really not the easiest customers to satisfy. We demand a lot from “our” company and their products they bring out, but we are also loyal. I am a long-time Mac user, going back to the late 1980’s. So I’ve been around through most operating system versions from Apple even way before Mac OS X, through the transitions from 68k to PowerPC to Intel, through Steve returning to Apple, etc. So it’s with that perspective I now look at what’s happening. And to me the iPhone is exciting, and it’s a remarkable product, but Apple to me is still at the core all about Mac, and I think the financial figures from Apple still backs this up. It’s the Mac that started it all and it’s still at the center of what they do. Most other products still require a Mac (or a Windows box) to perform certain functions. Publicly I’m not sure that’s the view Apple portrays anymore though, intentionally or not. They are doing great things with Macs still, but the big launches are iPhone, AppleTV, new iPods, etc. What changes this brings for Apple in the future we obviously don’t know, but my bet is that we’ll keep seeing Macs playing a critical role in Apple’s strategy. There will be other big launches like the iPhone, but Mac will always be there, at the heart of the whole ecosystem of devices that Apple is building up. So do you think that some day we’ll look back at what’s happening now and say that the iPhone changed everything? In the TV show “Heroes” there’s a character called Hiro. He can travel through time, and even stop time. From some point in the future, you travel back to today by using some of Hiro’s capabilities, what do you think your impressions would be of what’s happening?