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Check out the ever-evolving Mac Net Journal at its new home!
Mac Net Journal is moving! Over the next couple of days I will complete my move of Mac Net Journal from its current home to a slightly different URL: http://www.whiterabbits.com/MacNetJournal. I am making this move to bring the site more dynamic features and to move to the new Radio 8.0 Weblog and content management program from Userland Software. I used to do Mac Net Journal under a previous version of Radio, but I opted last June to start hand-coding my pages because the old version of Radio didn't run under Mac OS X. Now it does! If you are at all interested in writing on the Net and would like to start your own site with easy to configure features, check out Radio 8.0. And please, everyone change your bookmarks because the new Mac Net Journal is going to be bigger and better in 2002!
-- Qualcomm has released Eudora 5.1b18 tonight - the first update to the beta version of Eudora for OS X since last April...[posted at 8:44 p.m. PDT] -- MacCentral has a recap of the "Power of X" presentation given by Apple at Macworld Expo this week...[posted at 5:56 p.m. PDT] -- Dave Winer has now posted an explanation for my confusion about the forthcoming Radio 8.0 software. He has updated the Radio Web page, but the software is not expected to be released until tomorrow. Every downloaded version will be a 30-day trial version, and folks can then pay their $39.95 for a full year's subscription and up to 10 megs of storage for their Weblog on Userland servers. If Weblogs, outliners or content management are something you are interested in, be sure to check out the screen shots and details about the program before loading it onto your OS X box tomorrow...[posted at 9:33 a.m. PDT] -- Professional photographer Rob Galbraith offers his take on iPhoto: "If you're a Mac user running OS X 10.1.2, iPhoto may well be worth checking out. But don't expect it to be a replacement for most any professional browser you're using now."...[posted at 9:21 a.m. PDT] -- Oops...I may have jumped the gun a little. I cannot get the download for Radio 8.0 to load just yet, so maybe it isn't quite live and ready to go yet. I will check back on it later...[posted at 8:46 a.m. PDT] -- Aha! It is time to start playing around with Radio 8.0, the Weblog and content management software from Userland Software. Radio 8.0 runs natively on OS X and although it is now for-pay software, the price tag of $39.95 is a bargain!...[posted at 8:31 a.m. PDT]
-- A quirky note: Apparently the QuickTime slide show features of iPhoto don't render correctly out of the box on Web browsers other than Internet Explorer. I just tried looking at one such photo show on someone's iTools page with a recent build of Mozilla and I could see navigation buttons, but that was it. No images would show up on the page...[posted at 1:01 p.m. PDT] -- Apple has added more printer driver updates and a new revision of the DVD player application for OS X to the software available through the Software Update panel...[posted at 12:56 p.m. PDT] -- One of the major limitations of iPhoto in its first incarnation is that the application wants all of your photo files to live in your Pictures folder in your home directory. Today I am seeing a number of users' tips for working around this limitation. Accelerate Your Macintosh has one such tip...but beware...most of the workarounds I have seen so far require you to dig around in the Terminal application and issue text commands to change the behavior of iPhoto...[posted at 12:35 p.m. PDT] -- The folks at OmniGroup have done it again. Today they release an iPhoto plug-in that allows you to export an iPhoto album into OmniGraffle...[posted at 12:27 p.m. PDT] -- It looks like Userland Software's Radio 8.0 (formerly referred to as Radio 7.1), the first version of the Weblog and content management software to run natively under OS X, will ship either Friday of this week or the following Monday, according to a note on Scripting News this morning...[posted at 8:51 a.m. PDT]
One of the most overlooked announcements by many from yesterday's Macworld Expo keynote was the proclaimation that starting this week, all new Macs will ship with OS X as the default operating system. OS 9.x will still be on each machine, and people can decide to switch back to it, but it is a huge step that now OS X is no longer the operating system of the future for the Mac, but it is now the OS of the present. Maybe this will send a not so subtle signal to Adobe to get their flagship Photoshop application up and running under OS X. After all, Adobe has been showing demonstrations of an OS X pre-release version of Photoshop for more than six months. It is time to stop the foot dragging...
-- Glenn Fleishman is at Macworld Expo and he offers some additional details about the hardware and software unveiled by Apple yesterday...[posted at 8:11 p.m. PDT] -- While Apple fans are whooping it up in San Francisco, computer industry wags are listening to Bill Gates at another conference. Funny, but an E-Commerce News article titled Gates 'Hitting Apple where it hurts' makes a few good points, but they seem to miss one major thing - while Gates is talking about his "Freestyle" and "Mira" hardware that will run with Windows XP, Apple is introducing real products that people can go buy right now. Windows fans will have to wait until the end of 2002 to see the futuristic add-ons from Microsoft. Hmmm...I wonder what Apple will come up with in nine months that they didn't announce as vaporware?...[posted at 1:57 p.m. PDT] -- Jeff Keller at the Digital Camera Resource Page has published a first-look review of iPhoto...[posted at 10:10 a.m. PDT] -- MacCentral also notes that Microsoft has unvieled a test drive version of Office v. X. The test drive software will run for 30 days after it is installed, and it includes access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage...[posted at 9:53 a.m. PDT] -- Microsoft has finally decided that you don't need to pay $300 to buy Office v. X in order to get the OS X version of Windows Media Player. Starting today, WMP is available for download...[posted at 9:46 a.m. PDT] -- Another preview version of backup software from Dantz has been released. Retrospect Backup 5.0 preview for OS X requires OS X 10.1.2 and it doesn't currently offer support for backing up to SCSI CD-RW drives. According to the press release, Dantz plans to release the final version of the full backup solution for OS X by the end of the first quarter this year...[posted at 9:42 a.m. PDT] -- A new version of the must-have clipboard enhancement program CopyPaste X 1.02 was released yesterday. It brings bugs fixes and some minor enhancements to the $20 shareware application...[posted at 9:38 a.m. PDT] -- Roxio has released the final version of Toast Titanium 5.1, bringing full OS X support to the CD authoring package that goes above and beyond the simple CD creation tools included in OS X. It also can be used for DVD authoring...[posted at 9:32 a.m. PDT]
My impressions of the keynote and the announcements after two hours of watching the Macworld Expo keynote this morning: Steve Jobs goes a good job selling his vision. The new iMac is a big improvement over the old model, although I still think that last week's hype oversold the thing. It has a great price though! And the new iBook with a 14-inch screen is a great improvement. But the killer product from today's announcements is iPhoto. It won't do everything that I need to do with my photos...and there was no mention of how it will work with photo formats other than JPEGs, but it will be a great thing for novices! More later...it is time to get away from the PowerBook for a few minutes... iPhoto lasted about two hours on my PowerBook before I decided to remove it. It is a great all-purpose program for novice photo users - the exact audience that it should serve - but using iPhoto to work with all the images I go through each week and month would eat up my hard disk space too quickly. For instance, today to test the program I imported two JPEG images using my PC-Card CompactFlash reader. The images imported fine, and I could look at them in iPhoto, resize them, rotate them, even run a red-eye filter on them. The problem with iPhoto came when I imported a couple of months worth of images I already had stored in my Pictures folder on my Mac. Importing the photos makes complete duplicates, creating multiple copies of all of my images and eating vast amounts of disk space. In addition, the thumbnails that iPhoto creates eat up additional space. What would be a 14 meg folder of images in the Finder turns into a 16 meg folder once it is iPhoto-ized. Then, when I went to remove the extraneous photos from my iPhoto folder using the Finder, I managed to screw up the program. I will try reinstalling it and seeing how I can alter my workflow to use the program...
-- new iMac: goal was to make it the ultimate digital hub machine. - 15 inch LCD screen -- Upgrades to iBook...low-end model goes to $1199...and a new 14-inch iBook: 600 Mhz processor, 256 megs RAM, combo drive, still 1.35" thick, under 6 pounds, long battery life - $1799 -- iPhoto announced: import, edit and print are the three main goals of the software...iPhoto will launch automatically when a supported camera is plugged in...photo editing, cropping all can be done under iPhoto. And then printing, unifying the printer controls under iPhoto to optimize printing photos from your Mac. The program also integrates ColorSync...Also can assign photos to digital "film rolls". iPhoto will also offer slideshows and allow you to put your own music to the show...iPhoto integrates with iTools to make photos available from your Web page...also iPhoto offers the ability to order a hardbound book of your photos from Apple - the program includes a built-in page layout program that automates the process of creating your own book -- Steve details the idea of the Digital Hub...and how the computer is the center of the Digital Hub...Detailing the last 12 months of the the Digital Hub - iMovie, iTunes, iDVD all rolled out and improved throughout the year -- Starting today, all new Macs will boot up into OS X...it will take the rest of the month to transition. OS 9 will still be on the disk, and folks can switch back, but all will default to OS X... -- LucasFilm next showing how they are using Mac OS X...More than 4,000 shots for Star Wars II have been created with OS X...Demo shows Maya at work rendering a sample scene and animating it...Also working with After Effects 5.5 for OS X... -- Games next up with a presentation from Aspyr Media...preview of the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer Stone game...The game should be available in a couple of weeks. The Sims Hot Date is coming to the Mac, as well as a new Star Wars Galactic Battle game... -- Next, a presentation about Mathematica 4 from Wolfram Research...A funny quote from the demo: "OK, so it is math, but look at the typography on that!" -- Final Cut Pro 3.0 upgrade demonstrated next...Demo shows real-time effects engine, making editing on the fly much more natural...Also shows real-time titling... -- Palm presents about its products for OS X, calling the Mac an important platform for Palm. The team demonstrated Palm Desktop for OS X, and they invited folks to download the public beta from Palm's Mac page... -- Adobe also says InDesign 2.0 is close to release, and they showed off the pre-release version of Photoshop...Steve joked about a running countdown to the release of Photoshop, to chuckles from the crowd... -- Adobe announces After Effects 5.0 now shipping for OS X, Go Live 6.0...
-- I just tried out iPhoto and it was easy to download and install. Beware though...the install requires at least 129 megs of hard disk space, and the recommended hardware needed for the program includes at least a 400 MHz G3 processor and 256 megs of RAM. It does work with less RAM though, since it runs ok on my 192 megs on my Pismo PowerBook. iPhoto does seem to have problems displaying uncompressed TIFF files that I shoot at high resolution on my Nikon CoolPix 950, and while it is a cool program, the creators of full-fledged photo manipulation programs like GraphicConverter have no reason to worry about folks like me moving to iPhoto and abandoning their programs. iPhoto can resize photos, rotate them, run a red-eye filter, but that is about it...[posted at 12:33 p.m. PDT] -- Most Web sites carrying premature information about products that will be introduced at Macworld Expo today were taken down over the night. My fingers remain crossed that all the hype of the last week is not just for a new iMac...[posted at 7:52 a.m. PDT]
I will try to keep up with the significant events from Macworld Expo in San Francisco tomorrow and offer a real-world perspective on the hyped new products and improvements to key applications. Look for regularly updated news throughout the day, starting around the time of tomorrow's keynote address...
-- Dave Winer comments on the news from Time Canada: "Did I miss anything? Seems to be no wireless innovation here, no capitalizing on their pioneering role in 802.11b. Oy a week of teasing for an expensive high-design but otherwise ordinary desktop PC."...[posted at 9:38 p.m. PDT] -- OK...if this is the reason for all of the hype from Apple this week then Steve Jobs has spent a little too much time in his own reality distortion field. Time Canada has an article about the new iMac that sports major design changes, but it certainly offers nothing new...not from my first read at least...[posted at 9:34 p.m. PDT] -- Glenn Fleishman points out the unique capabilities of a Mac running OS X in his latest Seattle Times article, OS X lets you travel among three worlds...[posted at 12:51 p.m. PDT]
Enough of the problems associated with the Palm Desktop beta. Tonight I uninstalled it and I am going to install the good old Classic version instead once again, because over the last three days my once-stable OS X 10.1.2 system has been brought to its knees by kernel panics, applications freezing and other bad things. So tonight, after rebooting once again, I gave up and decided to move back to the old version of Organizer. And I may just give up on Palm all together and pay for a license to Personal Organizer from Chronos...
-- Use Software Update to get the latest batch of printer updates from Apple. The printers include a series of Epson, Cannon and Hewlett Packard models...[posted at 10:34 p.m. PDT]
I am remaining quiet on the speculation about what Apple will unveil at Macworld Expo next week because, while the wild rumors may be interesting to many, there is no point in reporting speculation. I have no guess what the big product annoucement will be, but I will sure enjoy hearing the real story on Monday more than I enjoy trolling the rumor sites for one hoax after another - each reported as if you could place your order for the new Whatzit on Monday...
-- Intranet Journal offers a unique look at Office v. X and its possibilities as a collaborative tool for working on projects over an intranet. The evaluation: wiat a year or two for collaboration tools to make it to the OS X version of Office. This part of the office suite is way behind the state of the Windows XP version of Office...[posted at 9:11 a.m. PDT] -- Speaking of organizer programs, I am now having fits with the Palm Desktop beta that I loaded and started using last week. I can launch the program just fine, but it will no longer work with my data file and the only way to get it to work is to create a new user and then merge my data into the new user profile. With every day I like this program less and less, and now I am pretty resigned to not use it at all except possibly to do hotsyncing. I may just reinstall Palm Desktop under Classic or bite the bullet and buy Chronos Personal Organizer, which is a more full-featured program anyway...[posted at 8:35 a.m. PDT] -- Chronos bumped Personal Organizer 4.02 and Group Organizer 4.02 up with releases that fixed some minor bugs. Personal Organizer is available for $59, or $39 for licensed users of previous versions. Group Organizer sells for $99, or $59 for the upgrade...[posted at 8:31 a.m. PDT] -- There was an interesting poll yesterday on Dave Winer's Scripting News site, asking his readers how many use Mac OS 9 or lower, how many use Mac OS X and how many use both. The results: of 471 users, 43 percent use Mac OS X (207 votes), 30 percent use both (146 votes) and 25 percent use Mac OS 9 or lower (118 votes). I threw my vote in for using OS X...[posted at 8:19 a.m. PDT]
Welcome to the new year! And let the countdown to the product announcements at next week's Macworld Expo in San Francisco begin...
-- The folks at OmniGroup were busy over the holiday week. Yesterday they released OmniDictionary 2.0, a front-end interface to Internet-based dictionary servers...[posted at 12:02 p.m. PDT] -- HotApp 1.0 is a shareware application for setting keyboard combinations to launch applications, files or compiled scripts...[posted at 11:32 a.m. PDT] -- Want a new version of the Moose? Moosepad X 10.2 offers spell checking, improved AppleScript support and a ton of other enhancements to the program that serves as a replacement for the Notepad program from Apple...[posted at 11:25 a.m. PDT] -- IdeaKeeper developer Glenn Berston has unveiled a preview version of IdeaKeeper 3.0d1 for OS X. He doesn't advise making the switch to this version of IdeaKeeper just yet though...this is just a developer release to show the progress he has made in converting the Classic version of the outliner and writing/data collection tool to the new Mac OS...[posted at 11:20 a.m. PDT]
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