Shuffle October 2007 content

[Magnus]

Last month I wrote “see you at GITEX” and indeed we see many of you at GITEX. Shuffle was flying out of the stands and many came back and told us they really liked it. That’s exciting and all of GITEX, even if it was really hard work, was also exciting. It was fun talking to people there about Apple, Macs, iPhone and more. When we’ve had various activities in stores and other places I’ve always thought it was very good for me to talk to existing and potential Apple customers. Having a chance to talk to them gives some insight into the problems they face, they issues they deal with. And we need to understand what they want in order to do a better job in our User Group and with Shuffle. Looking forward, the Middle East International Film Festival will start just after this issue has come out. The Hayah Film Competition, a section within the festival, arranged by EmiratesMac and Abu Dhabi Women’s College, is an exciting opportunity to try something new with the latest technology. We hope we get a lot of submissions from all over the Middle East. If the plans come together EmiratesMac will be at Emirates Palace during the festival so come see us then if you can. In the Apple world a lot of exciting things have happened, and I’m sure there will be a lot more before this year ends. We’ve been treated to two Special Events lately, one for the new iMacs, iLife and iWork, and one for new iPods. All of that was very exciting but most excitement I think was around the $200 price-drop for iPhone. Now it’s within reach of millions of more people and could end up being the number one gift this holiday season, closely followed by iPod Nano or Touch, I guess. But we still don’t know when the iPhone will be officially on sale in the Middle East, which is a shame. Here’s a huge market for it that is right now just being wasted.

[Magnus]

First Spots on the Leopard
by Magnus

Some time ago we got the chance to try the latest beta release from Apple of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. It was the version released to developers at WWDC, which is supposed to be “feature complete”, according to Apple. Since then a more recent version has been released by Apple, but we’ve not had a change to check it out yet. We won’t be showing you any screen shots, because we don’t want to get into trouble with Apple, but we wanted to share our first reflections.

Leopard
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is due to be released next month (October) and we know that many are waiting with great anticipation for this new version of Apple’s operating system. It’s been delayed and although we officially don’t exactly know why, Apple said that the iPhone and Apple TV had consumed so much resources in terms of software engineering that something had to suffer.

Dock
The Dock is new, mostly it seems in appearance. Now it looks like the glass floor of a room, where the room reflects in it’s shiny surface. So windows and other things on the screen reflect in it. Personally I don’t like this as much as the old Dock, I find it even annoying. It’s also really hard to tell whether an application is running. What used to be a small black triangle is now a small shiny blue and blurry dot. This dot, depending on the application’s icon, can be hard to see.

Stacks
This seems like a feature I would use a lot. I don’t like a cluttered desktop but I often end up with one anyway. With Stacks I can put related files that normally are on the desktop in a sort of folder in the Dock and with one click, the files “slide” out of the Stack and I can select the one I want. This should make organizing files much easer and I look forward to using Stacks on a daily basis.

Menu bar
The menu bar is now translucent, so the background shines through. This takes some getting used to and I’ll see what I really think about it after using Leopard for an extensive period. My initial reaction is I don’t particularly like it.

No more brushed metal
Apple has decided to unify the Mac OS X look and it’s now all void of the brushed metal look we’ve grown so used to. All windows are now of the smooth gray type that we’ve seen in some recent Apple software. This is a change for the better I think. I like this look better and it’s good that Apple is trying to unify the interface.

Quick Look and PDF improvements
Create PDF, enter title, subject, keyword, and set security options, like password for opening

live preview of actual document on icon
right-click, “Quick look”, previews document in a floating palette window, can switch to full screen mode

Mail and iChat

Time Machine
Time Machine is a great new feature and arguably the one with the most potential to affect regular users in a positive way. Apple could have done it easier though. Let’s say you could right-click on a hard disk’s icon on the desktop, then choose “Enable Time Machine for this volume” or something. And then pick a destination. Now it’s an icon in the Dock that leads to a System Preference panel, which in itself is a bit confusing. I’ve never liked the mix of applications an preference panels in the Dock.

Parental Controls

Spaces
This is cool and one feature that I predict I'll use all the time. For me I see me setting up one space for web development, one for web browsing, one for email, etc. Keep related windows and applications in one space and switch easily between them. This functionality is not really something new and you can already before Leopard get it with third-party applications, but Apple’s implementation of Spaces is nicer than the other ones I’ve tried.

Final word
I’m excited about the upcoming Leopard release, but after trying the early version I’m a bit disappointed. It’s not as dramatically new as I would have anticipated. But I reserve to give my final judgement obviously until it’s officially out. Look out for a future review in shuffle once the Leopard has been let out of its cage.

[Magnus]

All new iPods
by Magnus

At Apple’s Special Event on September 5th 2007 Steve Jobs announced that the company was redoing the entire iPod product line and he wasn’t lying. Jobs first announced that Apple had sold over 3 billion songs through the iTunes Store, and that it’s the number 1 online music store in all of the 22 countries that have such a store. Unfortunately that does not include the Middle East since we still have no iTunes Store here. Arguably the most interesting and perhaps important statistic revealed by Jobs was that 32% of all music released in the US is digital-only meaning there is no CD released. Steve then moved on to talk about a new version of iTunes which supports Ringtones for the iPhone. Some 500,000 songs on the iTunes Store can now be made into Ringtones for 99 cents in addition to the price of the song (also 99 cents). This of course again requires an iTunes Store account which may be difficult for users in the Middle East to get and to use. In terms of iPods Jobs told us that Apple has sold over 110 million iPods since the start. So let’s get to what’s new with the iPods. First, and the smallest, is of course the iPod Shuffle. It was only refreshed and now comes in colors: silver, blue, purple, teal, and green. There’s also now a (Product) Red Shuffle, but as before we’re not sure if it’ll make it to the Middle East market. As far as I know the Red Nano was never officially sold her. The Shuffle has the same 1GB configuration as before and sells at $79. The iPod Nano received a much more substantial update. Now Nanos can play video. To support this Apple has put a bigger and brighter 2.0-inch display on the Nano and they’ve redone the design of the Nano. It’s now almost square, with rounded corners, and an all-metal case. It’s very thin and the display takes up most of the front of the iPod. The Nano is also colorful and comes in black, red, silver, blue, and green. In addition to video, there’s now also Cover Flow and games for the iPod nano, all packed into a new and improved user interface, making better use of the small screen. The new Nano comes in a 4GB version for $149 and a 8GB version for $249. What was previously just called iPod is now iPod Classic. They come in a similar case to the nano with all metal-casing and rounded corner. Starting out at 80GB and going up to 160GB the Classic is now even more powerful and has the same improved interface as the nano. Battery life has been improved. It now plays 40 hours of audio and 7 hours of video on one charge. The 80GB will sell for $249 and the 160GB for $349. But the big news at the Special Event was as I’m sure you know already the brand new iPod Touch. The iPhone Steve called “the best iPod Apple had ever made”, that is until September 5th. The iPod Touch looks and operates just like an iPhone, with a similar casing and multi-touch interface. It’s thinner than the iPhone though and at 8mm thin it should be amazing to use. But what’s different compared to iPhone? The iPod Touch does not have any phone functions obviously, but it also doesn’t have Bluetooth. It does have Wi-Fi though and since it comes with Safari you can browse the web as long as you have a wireless connection. Some applications are missing on the iPod Touch, such as Mail and Google Maps, but you can play YouTube videos. The new iPod Touch comes in an 8GB model which cost $299 and an 16GB version for $399. Among other news at the Special Event were a new collaboration between Apple and Starbucks. With the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store customers at Starbucks stores will be able to browse songs, download and purchase then via Wi-Fi. These songs later sync up with the customer’s iTunes library. Obviously it’s only available in the 22 countries that have iTunes Store, so again not for the Middle East. Apple also added a Starbucks button to the iPod Touch which will show when browsing the Wi-Fi network at a Starbucks shop and it will show the user what song is currently playing in the store. And the very last thing was a real bombshell going off. Steve Jobs announced that the iPhone got a lower price at $399, and that there is now only an 8GB version, thereby discontinuing the 4GB version.

[Magnus]

Amazon.com offers non-DRM MP3 downloads
by Magnus

On September 25 Amazon.com launched a new music download service. So what’s so special about that, you may wonder, and rightly so. Amazon has followed in Apple’s footsteps and offer music files for purchase and download that are without DRM (Digital Rights Management). You probably know that when you previously bought music from the iTunes Store - and this still applies to most music on iTunes - you were restricted in what you could do with that music. You could only put it on certain number of Macs and iPods, for example. Apple had basically encrypted the files so they could control what you can and cannot do with the files. Now Apple sells select songs on iTunes that are not DRM’d and now Amazon is as well. This is good news for consumers because we don’t want to get locked into a particular service. You may be happy with Apple and iTunes today, but tomorrow you may want to go to some other service. If your music is then DRM’d, you’re obviously restricted in what you can do. The selection on Amazon seems pretty limited for now, but I’m sure it’ll grow eventually. You can play a short clip of songs before buying. Most albums cost around $9 but there are albums at $4 and even lower. I tried Amazon’s service and it worked well. You pick what you want to buy, put in your credit card details (UAE credit card added to an Aramex Shop & Ship PO Box in the US worked well) and then you have to download and install a small application, the “Amazon MP3 Downloader”. When your purchase is complete, you download a small “.AMZ” file from Amazon.com. Then you open that file in their downloader application and your music is downloaded to your hard drive. Once finished it can be automatically added to iTunes. And the files are regular, unprotected MP3-files, so you can take them to any other software or service. In conclusion, Amazon’s new music download service is not as smooth and integrated as iTunes, that’s for sure. But it’s also not too bad, and perhaps it’ll improve in the future. Something to be excited about is that it’s non-DRM’d music and you can purchase it with your Middle East-based credit card.

[Magnus]

Experiences of an Apple Fan:
Buying a Mac and Book reviews
by Senthil

Now that I have covered my experiences of being an Apple fan and an Apple experience explorer in Dubai, India, Thailand and Hong Kong, I wanted to take a break and write about something different but then I had a few more places to cover. I still did not cover my experience in Sydney and Brisbane as well as Barcelona. I am sure all of you have had doses of my experience and am also hopeful that you could pick up something useful.

As usual, I had great difficulty in picking up where I left my piece last time. I could not figure out if I should straight away dive into another of my experiences or convert this into some kind of sharing of my overall experiences with the Apple world.

After a lot of deliberation, I decided that I am not going to write about my Apple experiences in different parts of the world as I felt there is nothing new to share other than giving the names of the places where one could experience Apple. What I felt would be better to share would be my experience with the Apple world between the articles. That way I can share, review, write, criticize and praise everything about Apple and what happened in the Apple world in the last one month.

There has been too much happening with respects to Apple and that in itself is something to write about. First and foremost, I got myself a new Macbook the purchase which I had been postponing for almost a year. The price and the scheme offered on the Macbook in Calcutta was too good to not take it. The 2.16Ghz, 120GB HDD, 1GB RAM, MS Office for Mac and Windows at just AED 6,250 ($1700). I still can’t figure out such a huge difference in price between UAE and India. One of the reasons for such competitive pricing could be that the current Apple dealers don’t want to lose their customers with the imminent tie-up of Reliance Group to set up Apple stores all over the country. Reliance is rumored to be investing almost Rs.100 crores, approx $25 million in this business, hence the desperation of the current dealers to sell at practically nil margins and throw in the MS Office and Windows free to ensure they don’t loose customers. That’s what competition does to prices. All that matters to me is that I got a great deal on my MacBook.

Now let’s see what else happened in the last one month. New product launches from Apple, new iMac, ilife’08 and iWork’08. I missed all the launches, which means I could not access the virtual Apple world to share the excitement of these launches as I was traveling on my annual holidays. Normally I would be tracking these launches on various Apple related sites and also our own EMUG and would have shared the excitement with other Apple fans. I was eagerly waiting for iLife’08 since the beginning of the second quarter of ’07. Now I can’t wait to lay my hands on the iLife’08. By the time you read this article, there would have been enough reviews about iLife and iMac though I would add my thoughts on these products later on.

Another great thing about being an Apple fan in UAE is that you can share the same passion for Apple with other fans at the monthly Mac user group meetings. This month’s meeting as usual was great fun to attend. Rumors and other Apple related stuff were discussed to keep the excitement flowing.

In the last one month, I have read two books related to Apple. One being iCon and the other being iWoz. According to me both of them were a big disappointment. I would say iWoz by Steve Wozniack was a better read than iCon. iCon is a big con on the readers who would buy this book with great expectations of knowing more about the ‘greatest second act in the history of business’. Instead of ‘the greatest second act in the history of business’ one gets to read a diatribe against Steve Jobs. The potrait of Steve in this book is akin to ‘Big Brother’ of 1984. Nothing he does seem to please the authors. All products designed by Steve are either by accident or by some one else. Every decision of Steve is supposed to have taken Apple to brink of disaster in his first avtar as a founder/Chairman of the company. Only do they grudgingly give credit to Steve for iPod, even here he is supposed to have crushed the team to get what he wanted. Credit for launch of iMac is given to Gil Amelio, who incidentally is the only person who comes out without escaping the wrath of the authors. Pixar is entirely the baby of John Lassister and all credit is given to John and Steve is portrayed as the destroyer and who is supposed to have taken credit where it is not due.

I don’t mind reading books that critique Apple and Steve but am completely against those who seem to have a one point agenda of destroying others reputation.

According to the authors, Steve is supposedly ruthless, insensitive and ungreatful to all including friends and employees. He is supposed to be a micromanager and puts tremendous pressure on his employees to get them to do what he wants. All others views are either ignored or rehashed and again presented as Steve’s views. He is also supposed to have denied stock options to all deserving employees since they don’t belong to the so-called coterie of Steve’s men.

I bought this book with great anticipation since reading iWoz, I thought there could be insight into how Steve managed this greatest comeback of all times. This book is a big disappointment to me not because it is a anti-Steve book but because it did not live up to the expectations of the title. There was nothing new in this book other than what is available in public. No new information, no new insight or the palace intrigues that must have gone through when Steve was bought back to head Apple once again.

In this book with the exception of Gil Amelio and to some extent John Lassister, every one is painted black. John Sculley is described as a wimp, Micheal Spindler as a bad dream which needs to be erased. Not a single character is spared. I can’t understand how one can have only shades of black and lead an admired organization like Apple.

If what the authors write is true then it would be difficult to, leave alone admire Steve but even like him.

One of my favorite on Apple is ‘Pepsi to Apple’ by John Sculley. I really liked this book. I also plan to pick up ‘On the firing line’ by Gil Amelio where he is written about his Apple experience. This would be a nice read to understand what circumstances made him take the decision to bring back Steve. Another book which I intend to pick up is Steve Jobs – The journey is the reward by one of the authors of iCon.

[Magnus]

Final Cut Studio 2: Modifying your Workflow
by Stephen Bennett

Initially I was going to write about how well FCS 2 handled round-tripping (going from FCP to Motion and back as well as the other components of Final Cut Studio). I assumed the upgrade would be painless and the transition minimal. Like me, you probably read all the ?first look? articles online and in the Mac magazines and read Apple’s press release. It?s all very impressive, but when it came to actually implementing the upgrade and modifying my workflows to accommodate the changes, well that’s where the problems came in. You will hear about round-tripping another time. Perhaps, with a fresh install of Mac OS X and a new installation of FCS2, the potential for problems would be minimal, but in the real world not every video editor has extra Macs available to do this. I do have a laptop I use for other purposes, and it had the original FCS on
it, so I began by upgrading that system to FCS2 to experiment with after first receiving it. I was completing a project in FCS 1 and I needed the new 3D capability of Motion 3 so I did a stand-alone sequence and exported it out using the animation lossless codec with an
Alpha channel and imported the file into the older version of FCP without a problem. I did not have a set deadline for my next project, so I decided to go ahead and upgrade my desktop edit bay (a Dual 2.7GHz G5 PowerMac) to FCS2. I then started going through the preferences settings to make sure I had everything
the way I like it. One common complaint from users about FCP6 is that on larger monitors, you can’t read the window tabs and file browser contents without lowering the resolution on your monitor. Apple added the ability to change the font size settings in FCP6, including it’s browser and timeline film clip titles, but you still can’t change
the size of the font for tabs and timecode settings (see Figure 1).

Get organized
A word of advice: get organized BEFORE you begin importing and capturing clips into your project. Looking at the items in the browser bin in Figure 1, you will see that I have created several folders, marked AUDIO, BACKGROUNDS, CAPTURE,
CLOSE, EFFECTS, etc. This is how my project folder is organized on the hard drive. What is in my FCP clip bin mimics the file structure on my hard drive. I can find logo elements, imported audio, stills, etc. I can keep track of the names I give to multiple versions of the same exported vdo clip, by simply “cleaning up” at the end of each session and putting appropriate sequences
or imported files into each “bin” I can go back later and quickly find what I am looking for. The other half of “getting organized” is telling FCP where to put your capture files, autosave files, thumbnails, etc. I put my project files
on one hard drive that is RAID3. It
is slower, but if one drive fails, a mirror of it is available to use. Next, I use my fastest hard drive array to capture uncompressed video, render files, and other temporary files. If disaster strikes, I can recapture from tape, and put it on the replacement drive. Only files that are hard to find, like specific graphics files, special exported rendered animations, etc. go in the project folder. I put the AutoSave folder in the Project hard drive, not with the capture files. See FIGURE 2. Another
new decision to make is in what format and codec do you want to edited sequence to render in. If what you choose in the Easy Setup menu doesn’t match the clip you are dragging into the timeline, FCP offers to change the timeline settings to match the clip. IF THAT’S NOT WHAT YOU WANT, you have to say no and let FCP render your footage to match. In my opinion, you may want to export your multiple format footage into one codec,
just to have all your footage the same.
Wait a minute, you say. Isn’t it one of the new features of FCP 6 is to drop anything in there and work with it in the timeline? Well, yes and no. If you don’t have one of the newest Macs there will be a limit as to how much real time previewing you will get as you add filters, transitions, etc. This means your Mac will get bogged down as you do your edit, and if it isn’t a minor difference, you won’t be able to
view that portion of your timeline without rendering. Gotcha! You see, unless you have one of the newest Macs, don’t plan to have realtime edit preview
capability of HD footage, even if converted to Apple’s ProRes HQ setting. This is a machine intensive version of the codec that really needs the newer machines to be able to play back video
that’s been changed without having to render. Apple’s in the business of selling hardware and this has always been the best way to “move” people along into upgrading to new hardware, right? Apple’s ProRes codec for SD does work fine on my Dual 2.7GHz PowerMac, however. It’s best to put capture files and other “restorable” files on a separate hard drive than your project and backup, backup, backup! Not just work in DV Because ProRes 422 for SD gives me the greater colorspace of 4:2:2 than DV for SD which is usually 4:1:1. This means
greater control of color correction, less jaggies when using greensreen chromakey effects, etc. Now, back to actually doing a project with FCS2.

Log and capture
My first challenge was when I started to log and capture video. There is a new option for logging and capturing video that is already in digital form. Examples include the new Panasonic P2 media, Firestore capture drives, and other hard
drive media. This option allows you to log portions of these files to bring into FCP6 rather than importing the entire file. If you are using Apple’s new ProRes codec, for example, you can render your logged portions to that codec and then your original files can go offline and
you can work with the rendered files until you are ready for your final render. Then, you will need your original files online again. The original log and capture option is still there and you can bring up the video scopes to monitor your material for potential problems (See Figure 4). Many production workflows don’t bother with logging before capture. They capture the whole tape before logging. There’s a good reason now, though, to log only the portions you intend to use. Apple’s new SmoothCam filter feature must analyze the entire clip that is imported into FCP 6, so if you import an hour long mini-DV tape, it could take up to
18 hours to analyze! (at least that’s how long it took on my PowerPC dual 2.7ghz desktop- See FIGURE 5). By pulling in only the portions you are likely to
use, your clips will be smaller. SmoothCam enlarges the video and attempts to stabilize any shaking or moving. The first clip I tried failed to work. Apparently SmoothCam is a bit picky
about how a clip is imported into FCP before it “agrees” to analyze the video. There are two ways to analyze the clip. You can apply the filter to a video clip in your timeline (NOT a nested clip) or you can tell FCP to analyze it in background. This is less straightforward, but allows the Mac to grind away on the calculations when you are away from the computer or not using it for other “heavy lifting”. After capturing a vdo clip, you can find it in the browser window. Right click in the column headings at the top of the browser and select “Show SmoothCam” to see that column heading.
Scroll your FCP browser window until you
see the SmoothCam column and right click in the same row as your vdo clip. You will have the option to “Run Analysis”. If you stop the analysis before it is finished, you lose ALL of it, there is no resuming. This is why it’s a good
idea to run this analysis only on the shaky part of your video. Or export the portion of video you want to apply this effect and import it as a smaller, separate clip. After importing my vdo clips, I import my other files as needed,
like my still photos, photoshop files, and additional audio soundtracks (I have up to six sound tracks synchronized with my video shoot using a separate digital
recorder connected to the camera).

Recap
To recap, I have covered the following suggested steps for FCS 2
workflow:
1. Establish your browser clip bin scheme and mimic it in your hard drive project folder.
2. Log your existing digital (like
Panasonic P2 media) files using the Log & Transfer feature.
3. For tape, use the regular Log &
Capture feature. It is suggested to Log
before capture if you plan to take advantage of Apple’s new SmoothCam filter because it analyzes the entire clip before you can use this feature and that can take a long time. Otherwise, be prepared to export those shaky portions of your video and reimport them in order to let SmoothCam analyze the smaller clip.
4. Import remaining media files, or add as needed.

Next article
In my next article, we’ll explore any problems encountered with the actual editing experience when compared with the previous version of FCS.

[Magnus]

Apple, for all its amazing products and good reputation for design excellence and creativity, has also come under criticism in different areas. One such area is the environment. In 2006 Greenpeace International published a document entitled “Guide to greener electronics” (http://www.greenpeace.org/internatio...ics-apple-rank), which gave Apple a ranking of 2.7 out of 10 on “global policies and practice on eliminating harmful chemicals and on taking responsibility for their products once they are discarded by consumers”. In the lead are Nokia and Dell. Among the worst offenders, according to Greenpeace, are Apple, Motorola, Lenovo, and Acer. Greenpeace’s report states about Apple, for example, “No voluntary takeback for every country where Apple has sales of its products and not for every type of product.” Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced in May 2007 that Apple Inc. were changing their policy (www.apple.com/hotnews/agreenerapple/). Jobs wrote: “Apple has been criticized by some environmental organizations for not being a leader in removing toxic chemicals from its new products, and for not aggressively or properly recycling its old products. Upon investigating Apple’s current practices and progress towards these goals, I was surprised to learn that in many cases Apple is ahead of, or will soon be ahead of, most of its competitors in these areas. Whatever other improvements we need to make, it is certainly clear that we have failed to communicate the things that we are doing well.” He outlines what Apple is doing in terms of making the company and its products more environmentally friendly, including minimizing the use of lead and restricting other toxic substances in products, and Greenpeace seems to agree that Apple is improving. To look at this issue a bit more in depth, we asked a few questions of Zeina Al Hajj, Greenpeace International Toxics Campaign. You can read that interview below. We also contacted Apple IMC ME about this issue and they told us “Arab Business Machine Ltd. does not have a recycling program in the Middle East”. That is a bit disappointing and we would like to urge Apple IMC ME as well as other electronics sellers and distributors in the region to take a more active role in protecting our environment. In the early stages it may cost a bit of money, but in the long run the positive PR will be more than worth it, as well as the good feeling from knowing that you’re doing the right thing. Let’s hope for a greener Apple future.

Q: Tell us about your “Green my Apple” campaign. Why did you start it and what is your goal?

A: This is part of the campaign to “green” the electronics industry. The objective is to push the industry to produce and put on the market products that contain less hazardous chemicals, last longer and for companies to take responsibility for their products when they become waste. Apple being a leader in innovation and design within the industry was our choice to drive a change within this sector cause if Apple do go green others will follow.

Q: On your site it says that nine months after you started “Green my Apple”, Steve Jobs posted his “A greener Apple” piece. What kind of impact do you think your campaign has had on Apple and other electronics companies?

A: We believe the announcement of Steve was a direct response to our campaign and what the thousand of Apple users have been demanding Apple to do. The campaign has driven lots of participation from Apple fans asking the same questions we were asking for Apple “why a leader like Apple is not green”. In our campaign (www.greenpeace.org/electronic), we have been assessing the companies’ environmental policies and within a year of campaigning we have witnessed a huge change in transparency, access to information, and commitment to the elimination of hazardous component. This can be measured in the quarterly ranking guide that we use to monitor companies’ performance (http://www.greenpeace.org/internatio...panies-line-up).

Q: What responsibility, if any, in terms of taking care of our environment, do you think individual retailers or resellers should take, and what is the responsibility of a manufacturer like Apple?

A: We believe the corporation that designs the product have a bigger responsibility because if they amend or improve their design, then we will have better and greener products. Retailers and resellers have a responsibility for the consumers to provide them with the best available products not just in term of technology but as well on the environmental impact.

Q: Is Apple doing better lately? Is there anything in particular you would like to see them improve in the future?

A: Steve jobs in his annoucement said this is a first step and more should be expected in the future. Apple has made a positive step by becoming more transparent about their environmental policies and their plans in the future, but Apple is still far away form being a green company. Their products still contains some of the worst hazardous chemicals like BFRS (brominated flame retardant) and they still use the plastic PVC. We still expect improvements, and hope that Apple soon will put on the market a green product.

Q: In your campaign you’ve targeted Apple Inc. Do you have any plans to expand the campaign to markets covered by IMCs?

A: Our campaign aimed to move the electronics industry to produce “greener” product. The brands have the tools for change and we will keep pressuring them. Resellers/franchises of brand products should follow the guidance of these brands and promote the policies of the brands. We are not targeting resellers currently but we want to see changes in corporate policies and practices and we will act where and when needed to get that to happen.

Q: What is your suggestion to an individual who is thinking about getting rid of their iPod or Mac, in terms of disposing it in an
environmentally friendly way?

A: We believe it is Apple’s responsibility to secure that a proper disposal if the products is taking place in an environmentally sound way. This is why we are demanding from Apple and the other companies to provide a global take-back of their products wherever they are sold. We expect customers to demand the same. so once your iPod/iPhone/Mac or any Apple products is dead please return it to the same place your bought it from or an Apple reseller and ask them to deal with it. It is the brands’ responsibility.

[Magnus]

Tip: Your JPG not showing in the web browser?
by Magnus (EmiratesMac)

This may be a tip that only a few of you can really benefit from, but if it can help at least someone then it’s worth sharing. If you’re developing web pages and use the JPG picture format it may happen that the picture doesn’t show up on the web page. You check the HTML code, the picture’s location on the server, and all those usual things, but still it doesn’t display. So what to do? The problem can be that your JPG is saved in the CMYK color-space rather than in RGB. CMYK (Cyan Magenta Yellow Black) and RGB (Red Green Blue) are two different ways of defining and specifying colors. We’re not going to go in to that in any more detail, perhaps another time, but a color defined in CMYK is not necessarily the same as a color in RGB, and that’s just the start of the problem. Computers think in RGB so when you do web graphics you should use RGB. In print CMYK is the choice so when we design Shuffle, for example, all the pictures have to be in CMYK. Now, to add to this interesting mixture, Apple’s web browser Safari is capable of displaying JPG pictures in CMYK, but Firefox is not. So the picture will show up great in Safari but Firefox will not show it at all or give you an error message. It may say something like “http://www.whateversite.com/images/whatever.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors”. So all pictures that you put on your web pages should be saved as RGB. The Sheridan Group has a brief but good article about CMYK and RGB (dx.sheridan.com/advisor/cmyk_color.html).

[Magnus]

Mac Models 101
by Magnus (EmiratesMac)

Selecting what Mac to buy can sometimes be daunting, especially if you’re new to Macs. Therefore we put together this short guide to the different models of Macintosh computers currently on offer from Apple.

Mac mini
The introductory model, petite as it is, still packs quite a punch. Don’t take it’s small size as a sign that it’s slow. It comes with Core2Duo processor of up to 2.0GHz, which is plenty for most things you’d want to do. It can also take up to 2GB RAM and 160GB hard drive as well as a SuperDrive. It’s limitation lies in that it’s very hard to upgrade, and it has integrated Intel graphics, so don’t expect to play the latest 3D games on a mini. Price from AEDxxx.

iMac
The ultimate home desktop computer, the iMac is the all-in-one that packs a punch. You can get 20 or 24-inch screen, up to 4GB of RAM, and 1TB of hard drive. The iMac’s selling point is the integrated package, which also happens to look really awesome.


Mac Pro
For the ultimate in power and flexibility, you can’t beat Mac Pro but it’s not cheap. You can get it up to an eight-core configuration, 16GB RAM, four 750GB hard drives, and two optical drives. You also have a selection when it comes to graphics card.

MacBook
The main attraction of the MacBook is obviously its size. It has a 13.3-inch display which has enough resolution for most things, but is limited for tasks such as design. Core2Duo processor of up to 2.16GHz, RAM up to 2GB, and hard drive up to 200GB. The MacBook is a lot of power in a small package. If mobility is your primary concern, this is your choice.

MacBook Pro
For the technology you can find inside them, the MacBook Pros are surprisingly compact. But no one can say that the 17-inch model is light and easy to transport. The 15-inch model is slightly smaller, and the both sport gorgeous, large display, up to 2.4GHz Core2Duo processors, 4GB or RAM, and 250GB of hard drive. If its power and large screens you want, MacBook Pro is your choice.

[Magnus]

MacOffice Professional is sold as “the most powerful and compatible office suite for OS X”. I doubt either of those claims are true, but it is a nice alternative to other more established Office suites as Microsoft Office. MacOffice Professional consist of modules for word processing, spreadsheet, presentations, relational database, equation editing, charting and drawing. Each module looks and works much like what you are used to from Microsoft Office. By all accounts MacOffice Professional is a packaged version of NeoOffice (www.neooffice.org). NeoOffice which builds on OpenOffice.org (OpenOffice.org: Home), is a free an open source office suite. This means it’s free for you to download and use. As far as I can tell MacOffice plays nicely with the open source licenses that it falls under, and you can even download the source code (www.macofficepro.com/MacOfficePro-source.zip), even though this is not noted on their web site that I can see. If you unzip the archive it even says “Intructions for Building NeoOffice” in the “Readme.txt” text file. Mac Office Professional comes with “unlimited tech support” which is good, but it seems to be only via email which makes it’s usefulness limited. On the DVD you can find “336 vector clip art pieces”. There are also “1298 high resolution photos” on the disk. But if you consider that 218 of them are of “cacti” and 95 of “roses”, you question how useful this collection would be unless you’re into gardening. Honestly, I wold like to be able to recommend MacOffice Professional to you, but it’s hard. Since you can download the same thing for free (NeoOffice), or pay a little bit more to get iWork, it’s hard to justify almost $50 for this application.