iMovie 08, I Like It

The new iMovie really has some people up in arms.  I’m not sure if it is just a vocal minority or Apple’s got everyone mad.  What happened is Apple dumbed it down.  Gone is the timeline as well as several other tools.  In is a really cool skimming feature and much simpler formatting and transitions.

So, I’ve been reading about all these rants and decided to give it a try.  I had about 20 minutes of miscelaneous footage on my hard drive taken with the video function of my point-and-shoot Kodak that I haven’t gotten around to processing in Final Cut because I just haven’t had time.  Sounds like a perfect opportunity to try this new “controversial” software.

I didn’t crack the manual  and just went for it. Importing the video was easy but time consuming.  The program builds that skim library for you so it spends a little while chuging through.  Rather than watch it go through that process, I had every intention of catching up on email but instead ended up playing frisbee with the neighbor’s dog.

I came back about 15 minutes later and it was done.  I don’t know how long it took, but it was done.  Then it was really easy.  You scan the clips and drag the mouse to select the portion you want to use.  You then drag the selected clip into your project.  You can drop in transitions, titles, and music very easily.  Frankly, I can’t get over how quick and easy it was.

With about 10 minutes work, I had all the video cut down to a 7 minute funny clip with titles, transitions, and music.  I then uploaded it to my .Mac account and had an email out to relatives across the US, London, and the Philippines.  Apple, I get it.

For John Q Public, this program is excellent for getting video cut and completed with very little trouble.  I also use Final Cut and I’m not willing to give up those extra tools but I also really like iMovie 08.  If you want those extra tools you can still use iMovie 06, which remains availbable, but I recommend buying Final Cut Express.  You get LiveType, Soundtrack, and all sorts of tools to unleash  your inner Spielberg.  The other nice thing about the new iMovie is you can export directly to Final Cut, which helps streamline my workflow for the serious stuff as well.

So at the end of the day, the new iMovie is a definite improvement in my video production.  I appreciate the complainers, sort of.  But with iMovie 06 still available, and the very powerful tools you can get with the $300 Final Cut Express, I also think they need to get over it.

Review – iWork 08 Numbers

There is a reason why I waited until last to do the review of Apple’s new spreadsheet program. I’ve never been very good at them. Frequently I find it useful to create little spreadsheets and graphs. My Excel sheets are generally pretty small. I’ve made more complex spreadsheets, but it usually seems more trouble than it is worth and, frankly, Excel is not always friendly to casual users.

So Apple now has a spreadsheet, Numbers, that is supposed to be “for the rest of us.” I decided to give it a try to see if it lives up to hype.

The first thing that strikes you with Numbers is the layout. All the spreadsheets I’ve used (even back to the DOS days) always had one sheet per page. That is the rule. Isn’t it? Who would think to put more than one sheet on a page and move them around willy-nilly? Well, apparently someone at Apple did. If you haven’t seen any of the screenshots on the web, Numbers allows you to make multiple sheets of various sizes and formatting and even graphic objects, text, and graphs on the same page. No longer does changing the column width for one data group muck it up for the other groups below. It is really convenient.

Not only does this make it easier to build a spreadsheet. It also makes it easier to print. You can move your elements around the page so you have them just the way you want. So many times I’ve had to fiddle with the column widths just for the sake of printing. With Numbers it is easy. Click and drag. It also previews your print so you can see exactly what you are printing.

The support for graphical objects, titles, and graphs is also very smooth. These features tie into the powerful OS X graphics features making drop shadows and other effects both familiar and good looking. Moreover, they move, resize and manipulate very easily.

The templates in Numbers are typical of Apple, clean and useful. For the lazy among us, the templates satisfy a lot of the typical uses for a spreadsheet: budgets, loans, investments and several other common uses. I can hardly wait to see what interesting templates the user community comes up with. The Numbers templates were so useful that it made me go back and look at the Excel templates to see if I was missing something. I wasn’t.

In terms of data input, I found it more intuitive than Excel. It self populates and generally could figure out what I was up to. The available formulas were not as extensive as those in Excel.

I liked the drag and drop calculations that allow you to quickly put together similar calculations of different data. I also really liked the custom cell formatting that lets you work with sliders and fixed intervals. The checkbox feature was also nice for my family budget. I can include and exclude certain lines with a simple check. I tried to find similar features in Excel, but couldn’t. It may be there, but simply beyond my paygrade. But that is the problem with Excel.

The only word I can use to describe the charts is “pretty”. Quite often my spreadsheet charts end up in a Keynote presentation or attached to a document. A lot of time my Excel charts end up looking like a train wreck. This isn’t really Microsoft’s fault but my own lack of subtlety. Thankfully Numbers’ default charts and colors look nice so long as I restrain myself from altering it too much. Like the formulas however, Excel has more variety in the types and formats of charts.

The Excel compatibility worked fine for me. I looked through my Excel files. Over the years I’ve prepared about seventy-five sheets for various work and personal projects. I loaded about twenty-five of them and they all seemed to work fine. A few times I got Apple’s little on-screen warning telling me where it had some heartburn over the conversion but it never seemed to make any difference. I also exported a few Numbers sheets to Excel. They didn’t look as nice, but also worked.

From reading the web I understand that the Excel compatibility isn’t perfect. There are quite a few formulas in Excel that Numbers doesn’t support. Also, thankfully in my opinion, Apple didn’t put macro support in. I think Apple probably put a lot of thought into Steve Jobs’ comment that Numbers is a spreadsheet “for the rest of us” because that is exactly what it is. I think the real high end macro jockeys should stick with Excel. If you need macros and some of those high end formulas, Excel is the only game in town. I doubt many Excel power users will be switching to Numbers. But then again, I also doubt Apple cares.
Regardless, I’ve found myself doing more complex spreadsheets with numbers than I ever did with Excel. Part of this may be my infatuation with this new spin on spreadsheets but part of this is also that it is just easier. It is for this reason that I can recommend iWork for the third straight week. If you have need of any of the iWork applications, the $79 is a no-brainer.

iPhone Web Apps I Actually Use

Having just taken a small vacation and coming up two months of iPhone ownership, I thought I’d take a look at the web apps I routinely use on my iPhone. There are a lot of very nice iPhone web apps out there programmed by very bright and imaginative people. I’ve probably got about 50 of them linked on my “iPhone Applications” favorites bar but I’ve been making a conscious effort to track those applications that I actually use and thought I’d report on them here.

NewsGator Mobile

Not long after I switched, I went ahead and purchased a license for NetNewsWire which is an excellent news reading program loaded with features and constantly being refined by an active, committed Mac developer. It came with a free subscription to the NewsGator service which is an online reader component. It syncs with NetNewsWire and their iPhone app is really clean and easy to use. I toyed a bit with Google Reader which is free (that is always a good thing) but found the NewsGator/NetNewsWire combo easier for me to use.

Anyway I can check my subscriptions anytime on the iPhone and read through, trash, or clip for later viewing on my Mac very easily from anywhere (including the Edge network). This is my most frequently clicked iPhone web application.

Tadalist.com

I’ve previously blogged about how I use this simple online to-do application from 37Signals with its accompanying browser application for grown up computers to drive shopping lists and other to-do items between my iPhone and OmniFocus. It is free and Edge friendly. My good friend, Darren over at MacWingnut.com prefers todoist.com which is, frankly, much sexier in a geeky sort of way with gmail integration, quicksilver support and other things that sound fun but I like the simplicity of Tada. This is partly because I view it only as a stepping stone to getting tasks in my actual task vault, OmniFocus, wherein Darren (I believe) uses Todoist for the whole nine yards.

I am also trying 37Signals’ accompanying product BackPackit for a month to see if it is worth the trouble. This is sort a Kluge to get around the fact that Apple does not sync the Notes on my iPhone or give me a way to secure them. Ugh. I’ll report more on BackPackit at later date when I’ve had more time to work with it.

Traffic

A necessity for living in Southern California. This is a great supplement to the little red lines I keep seeing in Google Maps.

Applists.com

This is a collection of all the various iPhone web applications that appears to be updated more than most and gives you a simple place to look for what is new.

There are others. Many, many others. But as pretty and neat as they look, I really don’t load them very often.

I am hoping Apple opens the iPhone up. If I could get an iPhone version of OmniOutliner, OmniFocus, and Yojimbo, I would be one very happy camper.

Review – Pages 08

I was not a fan of Pages 06. I’m sure it was perfectly fine for making brochures and flyers, but unfortunately I never had much need for brochures and pamphlets so there it sat on my hard drive, unused and neglected. That being said, I wasn’t particularly happy with any other of the word processors on my Mac either. I played a bit with Bean and NeoOffice but when it came down to it, I usually ended up in Microsoft Word. Word reminds me of one of those RV’s you see driving down the road. The kind with bicycles tied on the back, a boat bolted to the roof, and spare luggage falling out the window. Like the old RV, Word has every possible feature bolted on and wedged into the various menus. While it has everything you could possibly need (and quite a few you will never need) it drinks system resources and is a real chore to use. Nevertheless, I, like many others, have been using Microsoft Word for more than 15 years and anything else I try will be compared to it.

So Steve Jobs announced the new Pages 08 and explained that now it is a word processor in addition to being a page layout tool. It is in this new word processing mode that I spent most of my time kicking the tires on Pages 08.

All word processors are fundamentally the same. From the days of my 8-bit Atari computer to sitting here with my fancy MacBook Pro, I still am forced to put the words together and get them onto the screen. When it comes to word processing, the devil is in details.

The details in Pages 08 are very nice indeed. There is a contextual format bar that monitors your activity and puts the applicable tools in easy reach. Whether you are typing text, working in a table, or inserting shapes and diagrams, Pages puts the related tools in the top bar.

Pages also incorporates several of the graphical tools added with iWork 08 to this Pages program. This allows for Instant alpha, customizable frames and other graphic tools. They work just as slick as in Keynote. I don’t think I’ll have a lot of need for these tools in a word processor but it is nice to know they are there.

Change tracking has also been added. This is a very important feature for my work. I often exchange documents with others where change tracking is critical. The implementation of change tracking in Pages is both easy and slick. Even more important, it has worked flawlessly with Microsoft Word. Since most of the people I am working with are using Word, this is critical.

Another new feature is automatic lists. This, of course, has been the bane of existence to all Microsoft Word users for years. Apple’s implementation of this feature is a bit more forgiving. It actually adopts your formatting instead of imposing its own. For instance if you type a number 1 and then period and two spaces, it will apply the same with the autoformatting.

The compatibility with Microsoft Word is generally good but not perfect. I put some format heavy contracts into it and made several adjustments while tracking changes. I then exported them to Word format and viewed them in Mac Word 04 and and Windows Office 2003. They looked fine and my windows colleagues were none the wiser. I also tried this with a legal pleading document and the conversion was a mess. Legal pleadings have a very specific format with lines down the left side, line numbering and a variety of other formatting requirements that don’t make a lot of sense but hey .. its the world I live in. Anyway, while the Word pleadings imported just fine into Pages, they did not export to Word properly after changes in Pages. The page formatting, font sizes, line numbering, and just about everything else were screwy and unusable without plenty of work. So for me that means I need to do pleading work in Word or just do it as a text file and send it to others for formatting.

Another issue I never quite sorted out was exporting to different versions of Word. Apple beat Microsoft to the punch with compatibility with Office 2007 but I don’t run Office 2007 so I can’t report on that issue. I tried to figure out if there is a setting to export to Office 2007 or Office 2003. Perhaps if I could sort that out it would solve the problem of exporting pleadings properly but after spending an hour trying to figure it out on the internet, I’m officially kerfluffled on that issue. In short, if you need to work with Word files and use complicated formatting make sure to give it a test run before you commit.

Pages 08 runs much cleaner than Microsoft Word in OS X. It loads quickly and happily exists far down in my activity monitor. As I typed this review in Pages, it ranged between one and ten percent of the total system resources. When I clicked out of Pages it pleasingly dropped to zero percent.

The included templates are very well designed and cover just about any need. It is telling of just how much of a stranglehold Microsoft has on the word processor market that my biggest problems with Pages are not its own feature set but its ability to play nicely with Word. Separating that issue, running Pages is easier and less intrusive than Word. It allows me to think less about the program and more about the words on the screen. While the feature set is more limited, it has everything I need. While Word still remains on my hard drive, I’m quite pleased to leave the Winnebago in the garage.

You can listen to this review on Surfbits MacReviewCast Episode #122.

Review – Keynote ‘08

Presentations and word processing are my bread and butter. That is, I earn my living writing and presenting. I have been writing Power Point presentations for years. I’m actually very good at them and occasionally freelance for my geek challenged colleagues. It is with those years of experience in mind that I was initially skeptical about using Apple’s presentation software, Keynote. That was, at least, until the first time I saw a Keynote presentation.

I think Keynote (even before this recent update) is superior to PowerPoint in both ease of use and final product. With the release of Keynote ‘08, the gap has just grown larger. For the purpose of this review, I’m going to skip over a lot of the features that already existed in Keynote and focus on the new additions. If you are not familiar with Keynote, even before the upgrade it was full of stellar templates, transitions, and text effects that made producing convincing presentations a breeze. Indeed there are even more new transitions and effects but that is just the start of some fantastic changes and additional features.

With the new point to point animation you can tell an object where to go on the screen and how to get there. For example, if you have a map of the forest and want to show exactly how the wolf went to the three little pigs homes, you can plot the motion paths with a one click procedure for each stop and Keynote does the rest. With each click during your presentation the wolf will move across the screen at the speed, acceleration, and motion path that you set. The way I used to accomplish this was a very convoluted procedure involving Final Cut’s Motion program and a lot of praying. Now its a breeze.

Another new feature is one I didn’t even realize I needed but now I couldn’t live without. Its called “Instant Alpha”. It allows me to incorporate picture, pdfs, and other objects and remove the background. I’ve talked about how much I like using OmniGraffle but what I’ve never posted on is the frustration of making a beautiful diagram in OmniGraffle and then having to look at that ugly white background when I import it into Keynote. I guess I could have removed the background all along in Photoshop Elements, but to be honest I never really thought of it. Regardless, with the new Keynote, you just tap the “Instant Alpha” button and then put the mouse inside the color you want to remove. You click and drag and it removes the background on screen for you. When you get it just right, you hit the enter key and its done. It is really easy and extremely useful.

Inevitably, every slideshow I prepare has a run of pictures. A lot of my work involves construction projects and buildings and pictures are essential for demonstrating particular issues. The new keynote has an excellent feature called “Smart Build” that lets you put an entire series of pictures into one slide and easily pick a transition that is flashy or subtle.

Keynote will also now insert a frame around a picture or text box. This is really nice for setting a picture or highlighting text I pull out of a document image. In powerpoint this took two separate images and it was an absolute pain. No more “send to back”. No more resizing and moving multiple objects. Just one clicky. Thanks Apple.

Navigating and sorting also got easier with adjustable sizes and new views. Formatting and auto-correcting also got a lot easier with new tools to make production of your keynote faster and more efficient.

Apple also improved the movie import and export function. You can now key a quicktime movie on a mouse click instead of it starting automatically on the slide transition. It also allows you to export your presentation to Quicktime. This export is not, however, just a static movie but you can actually set it to advance on clicks just as if you are viewing it in Keynote. Are you getting this? That means you can take your Keynote and play it on any machine that has Quicktime. Even a beige box that has requires Norton and is covered with stickers that say “Intel inside”. This feature will be extremely useful to me when I have to give a presentation using somebody else’s windows rig. It will also leave them all wondering, “How did he do that?” And that is a wonderful thing.

So in case you haven’t figured it out I’m giving the new Keynote two big thumbs up. You can purchase it as part of the iWork suite for just $79 or $99 for the family pack. Next week I’ll be following up this review with my look at Pages ’08.

You can listen to this review on the Surfbits MacReview Cast Episode 121.

Review – MacWare’s FontLibrary

You can hear this review on Surfbit’s Macreviewcast #120.

I have a particular affection for fonts. Back in 1987 I first learned the word “Fonts” when I leaned over a funny looking little beige computer in my college computer lab that said “Hello” when you turned it on. Granted that was a long time ago but the truth is the first thing that really impressed me on the Mac was the way that I could change the screen type. I’m sure I abused this newfound freedom turning in several papers with what could have only been called a font explosion. Does anyone else remember the original “San Francisco” font that bordered on anarchy?

So it was with this nostalgia that I installed the FontLibrary Library from MacWare. This package includes some 600 fonts in several categories including refined, classic, designer and creative. In addition to truetype, it also comes with the fonts in OpenType format. The FontLibrary fonts are licensed for commercial use in printed materials and electronic mediums.

You can manage them in Font Book but I liked the included Mac FontManager better which allows you to see all available and installed fonts and move them as you please. Not only does this let you put some of the new fonts on, it also lets you take the existing ones you don’t use off.

This package really gives you just about anything you could ever need in terms of fonts. I’ve become a bit more subtle since those early days but occasionally have a need for something unique and this package has it for everyone but the most demanding. It retails for about $50 online.

Review – Mophie Knox iPod Nano Case

This Review also appeared in the Surfbits ReviewCast #119

I’ve never owned a video iPod. For some reason, my nano always seemed to be just right for my needs. I like the way it fits in my pocket or drops into my car. Now that I have an iPhone, the Nano has taken a bit of a backseat but is still really useful for listening during my commute or working in the yard. The problem with this little Nano is that I abuse the heck out of it.
That is why I was really interested in Mophie’s Knox case for the Nano iPods. The Knox case is an aluminum bodied hinged case with a magnetic closure. The materials say that it is “aircraft grade” aluminum and while I’m not all that sure why that is important, it certainly sounds techy. The case also just looks cool. It has rounded edges and closes with a satisfying snap. It has a small hole in the bottom so you can plug in headphones with the unit still closed.

It is not just an iPod case however. It is also a wallet. It has a little clip on the inside that can hold your cash and a few bank cards. What is interesting about the Knox is you really get two cases.

It also comes with a two piece clear plastic case that snaps over your Nano. This is actually Mophie’s separate Relo product which is a second layer of protection. Once in the Relo plastic case it slides right into the Knox. So with this product you have your slim line plastic case and (for going out) your bigger Knox case.

One thing about the Knox case is that it is big. It puts a noticeable bulge in your pocket if you are traveling light.

I really like this case. It looks good and I like having the option to go big with the Knox or small with just the plastic Relo. It is really made for the G2 Nano but it will also work with a G1 so long as you only use one half of the Relo case. If your in the market for a way to secure your Nano, you will want to take a serious look at the Knox. It lists for $45 but I found several online sellers carrying it at about $30.

Review – OmniDazzle

The OmniDazzle love continues. This review was broadcast on Surfbits MacReviewCast #118.

Not long after making my big switch to Apple I discovered OmniOutliner which led me down the slippery slope that is all things Omni. These days I use a strange concoction of OmniOutliner, Graffle, Project, and the Alpha of OmniFocus to keep my personal and professional life on track. Throughout this wholesale adoption of the Omni Applications there was one that I resisted, OmniDazzle.

OmniDazzle is a collection of effects and visual enhancements that follow your mouse around the screen. They vary from the entirely practical to the completely whimsical. For instance, the “flashlight” module is very useful when trying to focus on one section of my screen. I use it in the MacSparky Screencasts all the time. They also have several other very useful modules including one that lets you highlight specific sections of a specific window and zoom in on specific portions of the screen.

They also have a few effects that are amusing but not all that practical. For instance, my mouse can leave a trail of pixidust or little footprints that follow you around your screen. There are a total of eleven different screen effects. Like everything made by the OmniGroup, the program is very clean and a breeze to use. I never cracked any manual and I’ve had no problem operating it. Some of the effects are graphics intensive and it may not looks so good on older hardware. Omni has a page that explains the various hardware limitations

The question with OmniDazzle that I initially faced was why? Specifically, why do I need all these fancy effects? I think that you see the whimsey and forget about the substance. When I decided to get a bit more serious about making screencasts it seemed to be a no brainer at $15 but I realize there aren’t a whole lot of people out there making screencasts. The thing that surprised me though is that I find myself using it under several other circumstances. Whenever I have my Mac hooked into a projector with clients in the room its invaluable.

It also solved another problem I had when giving Keynote and Powerpoint presentations. Specifically, the perils of a laser pointer. When I am in front of a group and try to use a laser pointer across the room it inevitably starts bouncing around the screen. Put simply it is very difficult to hold a laser pointer perfectly still on a screen across a room. Add the stress of a judge, a jury, and a room full of spectators and it looks even worse. So using OmniDazzle I can draw attention to the screen without the dreaded laser and that is a good thing.

So in my life this little application is very useful. I think it would be for anyone else who regularly makes presentation or teaches using their monitor or a projector. I think a good test is your screen. If you frequently find yourself pointing at your monitor or have a bunch of fingerprints on it you should probably check this program out.

This week on MacSparky.com I uploaded a screencast of … you guessed it … OmniDazzle. In it I go through the all eleven effects and ramble with various degrees of incoherence on each one. But wait, there is more! I have been writing to the nice folks at OmniGroup and they have agreed for the week of July 27 through August 3 you can get $5 off the usual $15 license fee if you use the discount code ‚”SparkCast”. If you were thinking about OmniDazzle, this is the week.

Review – Tekkeon myCharger

This little gadget allows you to charge an iPod and just about any other kind of cell phone from a single AC plug. The myCharger device is compact charger with a USB female plug on the bottom. You can plug an iPod cord in the bottom and charge your iPod or iPhone directly. It also has a separate cord with a usb plug on one end and an adapter on the other end. It also comes with a series of plugs for the adapter that allows you to charge several different brands of cell phones including Blackbery, LG Mobile, Motorola, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson. I took it into the office and managed to charge everyone’s phone.

Tekkeon also sales add-ons to allow you to charge other 5 volt devices and international plugs for serious travelers.

There are many charging products on the market. I think the Tekkeon myCharger is really best for travelers or others who find themselves carrying several chargers. Using this product, you can cut down on the clutter in your bag. You can find the myCharger online for about $19.

Review – Airfoil

I really love all the creative things I can do with my Mac. Before going to college I used to play the saxophone and piano professionally. Somehow I’d lost touch with music over the past 20 years but since the Mac makes it so easy, I’ve found myself really enjoying a resurgance of music in my life. I’ve even posted a few of my songs up on MacSparky.com.

Anyway, one problem I ran into when recording music was decent playback. Specifically, when I’ve to several instruments playing at once it is hard to get a feel for the right levels through my MacBook’s speakers. Sure I can plug in headphones but I wanted more. I wanted to rattle the house with my subwoofer . I have an airport express that allows me to play iTunes through the stereo so why not Logic and GarageBand? I kept looking for a way to hack around my airport express but never quite got it to work. I was explaining this problem to one of my favorite Apple Store geniuses when he just smiled and said … “Oh .. you need Airfoil”

Well he couldn’t have been more right. Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil is the perfect way to unleash your Airport Express from iTunes only playback. Using this application you can route any source of audio from your Mac to your Airport Express. It worked with every Media Player I have, dashboard widgets, system audio, and even web sites. This really dovetails with my latest obession, Tim’s link to Soundsource.com in episode #115. I’ve been using that site, along with Airfoil, to make all sorts of strange sounds come out of my home stereo … from nuclear explosions to balloon animals. It’s all good. My wife, by the way, thinks I am crazy. But I digress.

Airfoil even can drive multiple Airport Express units. So lets say you have two stereos attached to Airport Express units in different parts of your house. The program synchronizes them both so you can really get the neighbors upset. It also has an equalizer and Applescript support.

One limitation on this application is delay. While normally this is not a problem, it does prevent you from watching video on your Mac with sound through your Airport Express. Rogue Amoeba explains this delay is built into the Airport express and there is no way around it.

Using this $25 application I got my wish. I can now hear playbacks when working in logic through my home stereo and much much more.

Edit 8.10.07

Just a point of clarification.  Airfoil’s delay applies to everything you pipe through it so when using it with Logic or Garageband it doesn’t work in real time.  It plays through the stereo on playback.  It doesn’t pipe through the stereo real time while I am playing the keyboard.  Cheers, D