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Here’s a quick tip that will allow you to see a a mounted USB drive or CD/DVD from the terminal in Mac OS X Snow Leopard (though this probably works in all versions of OS X)… cd /Volumes This is the location of all mounted drives, including CDs, DVDs, USB Hard Disks, Flash Drives and even Mobile Me’s iDisk – they should all be available as folders below “/Volumes”.
My first sight of the thing was of Steve Jobs holding it up and I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was about the size of his head, 10″ screen and bezel included. I appreciate that this is an odd feature to look for but many of the rumours I’d read were touting a 7″ screen which to me (more later) would have been utterly pointless but 10″ is a good approximation of a page from a book or a small magazine. Sadly, along with this first sight came the bitter realisation that the thing was to be called the iPad, something I’m really going to struggle getting used to since it’s a crap name – please excuse my use of ‘the thing’ when referring to the new device. The design is very similar to that of the iPhone, except with a proportionally much larger bezel, making it look a lot more like a digital photo frame and though I’d bet money that this proportional imbalance will be reduced in future versions I also acknowledge that it may be intentional since you’re going to have to rest your thumbs somewhere whilst you’re not pawing at the capacitive screen. The weight is hard to gauge from presentations and so on but 1.5lbs seems weighty but maybe appropriately so, since you’ll want it to feel solid in your hands, I look forward to getting my hands on one to see what it really feels like to hold.
The price is an open verdict still since I’m in the UK but the dollar prices look pretty reasonable in my opinion, $499 for the 16GB WiFi version seems like a steal, though I’m sure I’ll end up getting the $829 64GB WiFi + 3G model since I’m highly likely to stick a tonne of video on it. If the UK pricing ends up being towards the harsher end of the scale (the British always get screwed but it’s usually by our own government so we’ve no-one to blame but ourselves) I may be tempted by the $699 WiFi-only version since I’m pretty sure I’ll be using it primarily at home.
The iPad is for people who want to grab their tablet off of the coffee table, quickly check their emails, see what’s in their calendar for the weekend and maybe pop open IMDB find out whether the guy in the film they’re watching is the same guy that was in Black Hawk Down and Enemy of the State*. A lot of people still have a PC situated at a desk which may be upstairs in a barely used room and unless you’ve taken the step yourself it’s almost impossible to express how your life can change when you go portable. It may sound overly dramatic but my life literally changed when I bought bought my Macbook, having my laptop constantly on standby down the side of the sofa means that any time I’m at home if I have an idea I can execute on it it, I can answer a question, book some tickets, contact my friends, etc. Through having the Internet by my side I’ve ended up in all sorts of adventures including Storm Chasing in the Midwest, discovering new music, attending festivals, going to gigs, exploring abandoned buildings and even meeting my girlfriend. Most people, especially families, warrant having a desktop – there are times when you need to sit at a desk and write essays, edit photos, etc. and because they’ve already got a desktop many people are put off buying a laptop as well and this is where the iPad comes in. Sure, you could have a laptop but this will be better at its core functions without any need for the complicated side of using a PC such as installing software, worrying about viruses and spyware, etc.
* Tom Sizemore BTW.
I’m not sure quite why people that make operating systems think that we’re all too stupid to understand what a file extension is, we need to know these things and sometimes we need to change the file extension but both Windows and Mac users have file extensions hidden by default. Here’s how to change this in Mac OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard… 1. Select Finder > Preferences…
2. Then tick the ”Show all filename extensions” on the Advanced tab.
3. Quit the Preferences pane any you’re done.
The install ran well enough, I was a bit confused at first about whether the default mode was an “upgrade in place” or an “erase and reinstall” because the installer no longer offers a choice – the default is an upgrade in place so you don’t have to worry too much about losing all of your date (though it’s always worth backing up first). On my old Black MacBook I chose to erase the disk manually and do a fresh installation, mainly because I don’t tend to store much data on there so it was easy to back it up and I wanted to see how it worked from scratch – I didn’t have to worry about losing the iLife suite either because I lost that in the upgrade from Tiger to Leopard anyway. I was watching TV and doing other things so I don’t really know how long it took but it was probably a shade over half an hour for a slightly tweaked install, my 24″ iMac however took at least an hour but I did do an upgrade in place (too many apps to reinstall otherwise) and imagine that’s a little more complicated. The only incompatibility I encountered (constantly being asked for Admin password) was something called Plug Suit, it came as part of Afloat – a great little utility to keep selected windows on top of everything else but sadly does not work with Snow Leopard, a few Googles later and I managed to remove the plugin (instructions here).
On first boot you could quite easily think “hold on a minute, this is Leopard” because nothing really seems to have changed, the Welcome video and the nebula desktop are exactly the same, I even went to About This Mac to check that the version number had been upped from 10.5 to 10.6 (it had) to make sure I was actually using Snow Leopard. I really think Apple missed a trick here, for a company that’s usually so focused on marketing and user perception it seems bizarre to me that they wouldn’t take this opportunity to reinforce the value of the purchase in the customer’s mind by having an even cooler welcome video and a brand new (maybe very similar) default desktop background. I also think there should have been a (skippable) video or slideshow demonstrating “What’s new in Snow Leopard” just to help people appreciate the benefits they’ve got from the time and money they’ve put into the upgrade, it’s not that it’s really much money or time but I consider the fact that Apple didn’t do something like this as a ball dropped.
So you’ve probably guessed already that in the first instance I was a little disappointed, I even went to Apple’s Snow Leopard Refinements site to see what I could test and play with to get some inspiration. After using Snow Leopard for about half an hour though I was pretty certain of the speed improvements, even performing simple activities such as running the mouse along the Dock and opening TextEdit so I began to think to myself that for $29 (or in my case £39 for a 5-license Family Pack) the upgrade was worthwhile for the peformance increase alone.
It took a few days but I slowly began to realise that I was begining to feel the benefits of Snow Leopard, beyond the performance increases it’s the little changes that started to make a difference in how I used the OS. The most noticable change to me is that Exposé is now much cleaner and clearer, previously in Leopard the window arrangement was haphazard and therefore harder to comprehend in a split-second. I noticed that rather than command-tabbing through apps I kept coming back to Exposé, the new grid based layout is much clearer and makes it possible to switch tasks in sub-second times. I can’t really see what use I’ll get out of the Dock Exposé or the new Stacks as I’ve never really found a need for them in my workflow but they’re pretty slick and I guess it’s nice to know they’re there. The same goes for many of the other features although I’m quite excited about the potential applications developers might find for some of the ‘under the hood’ functionality such as Grand Central Despatch, Open CL and the future of 64-bit computing. I guess the new Quicktime is pretty sweet with its YouTube integration and screen/cam capturing but I’m not really planning to be the next LonelyGirl15 just yet so I’m not sure if I need that either.
If I were asked whether or not to upgrade right now I’d say almost certainly yes to home users but ‘wait’ to anyone that uses the Mac for their work, it’s still early days in terms of finding compatibility problems which is always a worry if your livlihood depends on your IT infrastructure. Other than that, I think it’s a great OS and I’ll look forward to making the comparison to Windows 7 when I get my pre-ordered copy in October.
Today for the first time I used Apple’s Genius Bar, for those of you that haven’t used it (or don’t own a Mac) I’ll explain what it is. Essentially it’s an in-store helpdesk, if you’ve got any problems with your Mac hardware, software or accessories you can pop into the store and they’ll do what they can to help you out. The other day the scroll-wheel on my wired mouse stopped working an (as I Twittered) it felt like having my arm cut off. I’m just so used to scrolling as part of my web workflow that everything felt so much slower without the ability to scroll up and down without moving the cursor. Luckily I had a spare Logitech wireless keyboard/mouse combo so I switched to that for a while but the ergonomics aren’t quite the same and I much preferred the plain Apple white mouse – I had to get if fixed. So this morning after visiting a costume hire shop (my work’s Christmas party has a 70’s theme) I thought I’d pop up to my nearest Apple store and get them to have a look. I booked a slot at the Genius Bar on the web so that I didn’t have to wait around (it’s a Saturday leading up to Christmas, it’s busy), after wandering around the shopping centre buying imported American cereal, chilli sauce and cornbread mix I went to the Apple store in time for my 12:40pm slot. I just walked right up to the concierge, she checked my time slot and summoned one of the ‘Geniuses’ over to help. We sat down at the bar (it really is laid out like a bar, complete with bar stools – no beer or free nuts though), I explained the problem, he tested the mouse on his laptop and then set about performing a strange trick with the mouse and a piece of A4 paper. Essentially the little wheel was gummed up with finger-grease (eeew) and after testing the up/down and left/right scroll capabilities we were all done. In retrospect I could’ve tried that myself and considering the fact that I’m a techie (or ‘IT Professional’ in résumé-friendly lingo) I probably ought to be ashamed of myself. But I’m not – in fact, I’m kind-of pleased with myself. I’m pleased because I took that leap of faith in Apple, I had a problem with some Apple stuff so I took it to the shop and they sorted it out. This seems like a very simple concept but the fact that they’ve got a dedicated area of the store with dedicated staff just to help people out with problems to me seems brilliant. You won’t get that level of service with a Dell, an Asus or a Compaq that you buy from a regular high-street retailer – you’d be lucky if the Saturday jobber in Currys even bothers serving you. Now I know that my problem wasn’t exactly quantum physics and I’m sure that these ‘Geniuses’ have their limitations but the fact that they’re there gives me comfort, especially as I tend to buy gear online. Knowing that theres someone in-store to help me out if I need it is great, especially given that many retailers have utterly disconnected physical and web presence. It’s absurd how many times I’ve heard something like “Oh, we can’t help you with that – you bought it On-Line, it’s a different department.”. Usually you’re asked to email something like: wasteofmytime@uselesscustomerservice.com and they get back to you with a within three working days with a ‘ticket number’, the whole thing ends up taking a pathetic amount of time to solve and often involves sending physical (i.e. snail mail) letters to confirm x, y and z. In this case I think that Apple have definitely got it right, my only criticism is that there aren’t that many Apple stores around the country and even I had to travel for an hour to get to my nearest – at least I got to play with the ’shake’ functionality on the new iPod Nanos, damn they’re sweet.
Having had my Canon 400D for around a year and a half now I no longer consider myself a beginner, I’d say perhaps that I’m an intermediate-level amateur and so I’d like to share what I think are my 10 top tips that I’ve learned over the past year or so. I appreciate that it can be a bit daunting going from a point & shoot camera up to a fully-fledged DSLR with interchangeable lenses and so I’m aiming here to provide a little bit of guidance that worked for me that said these tips might not work for everyone and you don’t have to do them all on day one, if you have any questions feel free to get in touch.
It’s easy to think that you’re doing something wrong, or it’s just too difficult but that’s most likely not to be the case. Photography is a learning experience but it’s not like learning your times tables by rote, over time you’ll develop a sense for what works and what doesn’t but even then you should push yourself beyond that and experiment as it usually pays off. Some days you’ll go out shooting and come back with loads of great photos, other days you’ll come back with a card full of average shots but don’t let that get you down – if you take 100 shots and only one of them turns out to be a ‘keeper’ then it was still worth the trip for that one shot. I’ve taken thousands of shots and I’d probably only pick out 10 that I really like, then again – they’re not the same ones that other people like so I guess it’s down to taste!
This one is all about research, I won’t provide precise suggestions for where or how you do this but if go down to your local book shop or library you should find plenty of books that talk about photography in general otherwise you could always go on the Internet – remember Google and Wikipedia are your friends. In terms of what you research, you really need to understand how light gets into your camera and how that affects your photography – key concepts you’ll need to grasp are:
Once you’ve done your research you’ll be in a good position to start using the manual settings on your camera, I strongly recommend that you immerse yourself in the world of manual settings (leave the lens on autofocus though) and completely ignore any of of the automatic or semi-automatic (Tv, Av, etc.). modes. At first you will find yourself being quite slow and you may miss a shot or two through fumbling with the controls but with practice you’ll be as quick as you like and you’ll really understand when to use the semi-automatic modes and when you need full control. From the moment I first bought the camera I pushed myself hard to understand the manual settings and it really paid off for me, now I spend 80% of my time on manual but I’m beginning to use the semi-automatic modes when I’m shooting in variable light conditions (e.g. tracking a flying bird).
This tip depends on which lens(es) came with your camera but as a rule, the kit lenses are not the ‘best of breed’ lenses and usually compromise on both build and optical quality. A dead giveaway is to compare the ‘body only’ price and the ‘kit’ price for your camera, my 400D cost £500 with a kit lens but if I wanted to buy a body-only package it would cost £490. No lens that retails for £10 is going to produce great results! I replaced my 18-55 kit lens with the Tamron 17-55mm f2.8 and it revolutionised my photography, it’s probably the best £300 I’ve spent ever. My advice for you here is whatever you do, make sure your replacement lens is wide (goes down to 17mm or 18mm), goes up to a ‘normal’ focal length (e.g. 50mm) and make it at least an f2.8 – the Tamron is perfect because it is f2.8 at 17mm and 50mm.
One problem of shooting with the camera in your hand is that you’re limited in the shutter speed you can select, if you choose a slow shutter speed there’s a good chance that you’ll get blurring due to unsteady hands. In low-light conditions you can always increase the ISO but that introduces grain, a pretty simple and straight-forward solution is to buy a tripod to keep your camera steady. When you choose a tripod go for one as light as your budget can afford but you don’t have to spend a fortune to get the benefit, I picked mine up for £45 and it’s far from the lightest tripod out there but it does the job. Another addition to your kit is a cable release, I picked up an unbranded one on eBay for £10 and it does the job perfectly. Cable releases for DSLRs are not quite the same as on old film cameras, mine is a small thumb-sized box with a button and has a 1m cable that plugs into the side of my camera. This allows you to take a picture without even touching the camera which is important if you’re on uneven ground, also the button can lock down so that if you’re doing a variable ‘bulb’ exposure you can keep the button held down for as long as you like and you’re finger won’t get tired or slip off.
Your DSLR will likely have several options of how to record your photos, shooting in JPEG (possibly with various quality levels), shooting in RAW and probably the option to do both (JPEG+RAW). So, what is RAW? Your camera has a digital sensor that captures light and records certain information about that light (colour & intensity), if you have your camera set to JPEG mode it converts this basic information into a compressed JPG file and discards the detailed data. RAW files on the other hand contain all of that detailed data and allow you to perform a much deeper level of processing after you’ve moved your photos to your computer, in many cases I have taken photos in RAW that look under-exposed but have been able to alter the exposure on the computer and turn a bad photo into a good one. The down-side of using RAW is that you must process them afterwards (most DSLRs come with sofware to do this), although it may seem daunting to have to process hundreds of photos a lot of the work can be automated and it gives you a good opportunity to review the day’s results.
Most Digital SLRs are bundled with some software from the manufacturer, whilst it may be possible to get by with this software I would strongly recommend moving up to a premier photo editing & management tool, the leading packages are Adobe’s Lightroom (PC + Mac) and Apple’s Aperture (Mac only). Both packages have advantages and disadvantages but they both do a great job, if you’re on a Mac and have to choose between them I would recommend downloading a trial and using both. Personally I use Lightroom and have never used Aperture, whilst I’m on a Mac now I used to do all of my editing on a PC and just moved my Lightroom catalog over to the Mac. These tools allow you to organise your photos in a variety of ways (names, keywords, collections, tags, by lens, by ISO, by camera) and also to alter many factors about the image to really make your photos ‘pop’, amongst other things you can alter the white balance, exposure, contrast, brightness, saturation, correct for vignetting & chromatic aberation and alter the composition (through cropping).
Taking your photos and looking at them on your own will only get you so far, to improve your photography and your interest in photography you should share your photos with others. For months I have been sharing my photos with the members of a video-gaming forum who are also enjoy photography over at the Gamercast Network, following on from that I joined the massively popular photo-sharing site Flickr where you can upload photos and other people will post comments on your work. There are also Flickr Groups where you can find communities of people that are interested in the same thing and these range from broad subjects such as ‘Black and White’ to narrow subject such as ‘Graffiti’, or ‘Dogs’. In these groups you can ask for constrictive criticism of your photos and find tips on how to photography you favourite subjects.
I just mentioned joining Flickr to share your photos but remember that sharing works both ways, you should explore and comment on other people’s photos and you’ll learn about the composition and styles that other people like and use. The best part of looking at other people’s photos is that they will often give you ideas for shots you could take and it can be a great inspiration, if you can’t get the same results as someone else then you can get in touch and ask them how they acheived a certain ‘look’.
Now unless you come from a photographic family or know a professional photographer they’re pretty hard to come by and probably don’t have too much time to spend helping out beginners like us, even though many of them would like to. The solution that some professionals have arrived at is podcasting, if you don’t know what podcasts are they’re essentially like radio shows (although some include video) that you can download from the Internet and listen to anytime (and anywhere) you like, the most common place to look for podcasts is through Apple’s iTunes store and a perfect way to listen to them is on your iPod on the way to work. I’m sure there are many photography related podcasts but the two I’d recommend are This Week in Photography and Tips From the Top Floor, I listen to TWiP religiously and find it both entertaining and informative, they regularly have professional photographers on as guests and cover everything from tips, news and equipment. Well that’s it for my tips, I hope you find them helpful – if you want to ask any questions or offer suggestions please feel free to get in touch. If you want to look at a collection of my photos please find my pages on Flickr
In case you hadn’t guessed I’ve just upgraded to the new Sony Ericsson W960i, now I’m still not 100% sold on the phone itself (more info to follow as I decide) but I’m jumping in with both feet and making it my primary phone right away. In order to do that I need to be able to sync the phone with my Macbook (without which my life would fall apart), the problem is that blessed Sony Ericsson have thusfar failed to release a plugin for iSync. Fortunately the Internet came to the rescue (see here), in case the file there gets knocked off of the file host I’ve decided to host the files myself here: Sony Ericsson W960i iSync Plugin. All you need to do is extract the contents of the zip and place the entire ’Contents’ folder in the following directory under Macintosh HD: /library/PhonePlugins/SonyEricsson_W960i_isync_plugin_v1_07.phoneplugin/ Restart iSync and you should be able to connect to the phone, it worked a treat for me and I even received a call whilst the phone was in the middle of the sync and the call had the real contact’s name on it! I will submit a more detailed review soon but for now it’s worth noting that the aside from the lack of an iSync plugin (which I’m certain will come) the W960i does work as a Mass Storage device out of the box and charges from USB so whilst there’s no actual software it’s Mac-friendly enough that I can get away without switching on the dreaded Beige Box in the corner.
I told myself for months that I wasn’t going to upgrade to Leopard right away, instead I thought I’d wait to see what bugs came out of the woodwork and if there were any other annoyances. Even on release day I was still working to plan, none of the confirmed features were killer-apps for me until I heard the Macbreak Weekly panel saying that Leopard’s networking is so much faster and slicker. I own two Macs, a 13″ 2GHz Core 2 Duo Macbook that’s my main machine and an old 500MHz G4 PowerMac with 512Mb of RAM that I rescued from a skip last year sometime. Obviously the Macbook would be fine but I wasn’t so sure about the G4 so when I finally went down to the Apple Store on Regent’s Street in London I asked one of the clerks in the store who assured me it would be fine (having asked how much RAM I have in it). So based on the clerk’s recommendation I bought a family pack (allows up to 5 machines) only to find out when I got home that Leopard has an artificial floor of 867MHz for the processor. My emotions ran through a journey of being pissed at Apple to pissed at the clerk from the Apple Store to determined to make the damned thing work. I did some checking on my own but couldn’t find the file responsible for the limits, thankfully I found a collection of sites with some helpful info: Forums on Macrumours.com Unfortunately neither method exactly fit my situation so using info from there and some general knowledge I did the following…
Well, the install launches and it’s taken ages so far and still says there’s 30 minutes to go but once it’s done and I’ve got some use out of the system I’ll let you know how it runs.
Many months ago when I started this blog I’d just acquired a PowerMac G4 having rescued it from a skip, I installed OSX and started using it. I enjoyed the experience but the Mac quickly fell into disuse as I still had all of my regular apps, email, music, etc. on the PC. I couldn’t have switched to the G4 as my PC was newer and more powerful and besides that I didn’t really want to abandon the PC as a platform, until now. In order to make traveling easier and provide me with a little more flexibility I decided to get a laptop, I thought this would be an ideal time to make a first serious step into the Mac world so I went to the Apple Store on Regent’s Street (London), watched their “Switch at Six” talk and spoke with a few employees about the practicalities and after much deliberation I bought the 13.3″ Macbook. Whilst the extra power of the Macbook Pro would be great I think the size makes it much less portable and when you start thinking about spending that much money on a laptop you might as well say “screw it” and buy an awesome desktop for the same money. I’ve had it for a few weeks now and I’m enjoying it, I’ve found that I’m using the Internet much more for fun as I can sit in the living room with the TV on and talk to my flatmate at the same time, I also can just pick it up and take it out with me if I need to. I plan to clear some space on my desk so that I can run a cable to my 22″ CRT to get a better experience for editing photos, etc. – but these are just benefits of having a laptop – so how am I finding the Mac? Overall, it’s been positive, I’ve had difficulty overcoming certain hurdles (lack of right mouse button, the fact I hate Preview) but in general I love some of the cool features such as: pressing F9 tiles all of your open applications and allows you to pick which one you want to use and F11 pushes all of your apps to the side of the screen so you can get access to your desktop. They’re only little things and probably exist in Vista but that’s one of my reasons for switching – based on everything I’ve heard to date I really don’t want Vista and am getting fed up of being tied to Microsoft software so this is my first step towards application freedom. Now I barely use my PC and I’m wondering whether or not the Macbook will become my primary computer – time will tell I suppose.
This week Macworld saw the launch of the Apple TV (formerly iTV), on the surface it’s a pretty good device allowing wireless transfer of video, music, So the Apple TV has a big hill to climb but if anyone can push it up that hill then surely Apple can. One light at the end of the tunnel which might generate some additional sales is the already mooted prospect of installing Linux on the Apple TV and using a Linux media player distro to do the rest - |
Whilst I’m mildly reluctant to admit it, I was one of those sad people so excited by Apple’s scheduled July 27th announcement that I stayed behind at work so as not to miss the Engadget live-blogging coverage and despite the fact that every man and his dog will be blogging about the iPad over the coming weeks (and yes, 
In terms of actually using the device, the demo shots of browsing the web, watching films and thumbing through Google maps all look absolutely superb, very slick, very iPhone, very Apple. I was especially impressed by the look of the calendar since the iPhone has been a godsend in terms of managing my personal life and anything that can help me remember where I’m supposed to be and when is a real boost for me! Despite being a gamer I really wasn’t that interested in that part of the presentation, there seems to be an obsession with trying to present the iPhone and now the tablet as hard-core 3D gaming platforms when I’m quite sure that they’re both rubbish for racing sims and first-person shooters. I’m not saying that games don’t have their place in a mobile lineup but the physics-based genres are far better enjoyed on the XBox 360 or PS3, the real strength of a touch-screen mobile platform is for genius-like casual games such as 
The biggest leap forward provided by the iPad is by far and away it’s use as an e-book reader and for reading newspapers, whilst the rest of the features are stunning by themselves the real revolutionary change that this device (and devices of it’s ilk) will bring is in how we consume ‘print’ media. Steve’s presentation really made me feel sorry for Amazon’s Kindle, seeing a photo of the chunky white keyboarded 1980s-style device followed by as shot of a Jonathan Ives masterpiece must have ripped the heart out of the Kindle team at Amazon. That’s not to say that Amazon as a whole lose out here, their app will most likely work on and compete with Apple’s own iBooks offering and that sort of competition can only be good for end users – my only big worry with the e-book future is that so far all of the major stores are using DRM, meaning that if you bought a book on one store you won’t be able to transfer it to another.
So, what’s the point of the iPad then? I’ve heard a few people saying that they really don’t see the point and that’s it’s nothing more than a big iPod and to an extent they’re absolutely right, it’s not portable like a phone and it’s not as functional as a laptop. I don’t even think Steve’s cheap shots at the netbook market were quite warranted since I’ve no doubt that the iPad would be useless if I were trying to work remotely from a Starbucks typing emails and using a VPN client to remote control my work desktop. This is something I have done on little Dell Mini 9 many times and it really does work, the tablet market isn’t meant for people who want a laptop and it isn’t for people that want a netbook.
Like many an Apple user I’d been looking forward to getting my hands on Snow Leopard for a while, perhaps since Bertrand Serlet’s presentation at WWDC 2008 announcing “zero new features”. That might sound silly but the vibe given was clearly that Apple weren’t planning to mess with the user interface too much but instead focus on improving performance and tweaking existing functionality and that sounded great to me given that Leopard already catered for almost all of my OS requirements. So coupled with the “evolution not revolution” approach and the price announced at only $29 I was practically on the edge of my seat with anticipation.
