This is cool:

http://www.softconnex.com/products/storage/OXUFS936QSE.html

Oxford’s 936 chip supports a four-drive RAID5 set, no drivers needed. I don’t know the price, but chances are it should allow for inexpensive RAID5 boxes in the very near future. FW400/800, USB, and eSATA in, supporting SATA drives. I’ll guess we’ll see empty cases in the $200-$300 range.

That’ll make lots of people (including me) very happy.

I restarted my MBP for the first time in a week. It’s amazing how much faster things run when my usual set of (roughly) 12 apps aren’t open. I’m maxed out on RAM though, just 2GB in this first-generation MacBook Pro.

The current model supports 4GB, but I’m hoping the next generation supports 8GB. If so, I’m all over it, with a 17″ high-res matte screen.

I was happy to see that ScreenFlow, which I mentioned in an earlier blog, won an Apple Design Award at WWDC. Well deserved.

★ The iPhone 3G Upgrade Question

For the rest of us who lack such common sense and are considering upgrading — yours truly included — it’s not a sure thing. The only significant differences between the iPhone 3G and the original iPhone are the 3G networking and GPS. That’s it. (Daring Fireball link & quote)

This has been going through my head, and is the common response whenever I’m asked if I’ll be in the lines for the new iPhone. I’m not even convinced there will be lines akin to last June 29. Nutty people like myself A) have a really good iPhone already, and B) know Apple will have plenty to sell on day two.

3G would be nice, but I haven’t missed it. I use my phone mostly for email. Despite the hype, email will rarely benefit from 3G. It’s just (mostly) text. Sure attachments will come in quicker but no big deal.

Most serious iPhone web browsing I do is within WiFi range. AT&T hasn’t added 3G to my local towers yet, so useless when elsewhere in town. Tethering would be great, but no tethering allowed.

I have a Garmin Nuvi 360 which is a great GPS unit. Thus far no traditional GPS direction software is on the iPhone 3G. We don’t know if the GPS chip is good enough, and some signs point to Apple refusing to even allow such software.

All the above is based on the existing iPhone software. The 2.0 iPhone OS upgrade is minor from a user application standpoint, and all iPhone users get it for free.

The key is the App Store. Will there be a killer app for 3G or GPS?

If someone creates a great app that, for me, demands 3G and/or GPS the scale may shift the other way.

3G I’m not so sure. The 3G Mystery App would demand high-speed access and would demand I use it when away from WiFi. That’s a possibility.

GPS intrigues me. Shortly before the iPhone 3G keynote I was telling a friend how I didn’t care if the new model had GPS or not. My Nuvi is great, and I don’t see the iPhone (a more generalized device) topping its capabilities. Frequently updated maps would be nice, but Garmin could do that too. The current pseudo-GPS tells me where I am, kinda-sorta. But I hadn’t considered what else a GPS might provide beyond getting me around town.

The first hint came from Apple itself, when I saw the iPhone beta OS included geotagging for photos. Hmmmm. Now the camera itself is just a tiny thing, and the pseudo-GPS I already have is good enough for how I’ll use it. I’d rather see true GPS on my DSLR. But I get the point. iPhone GPS isn’t about driving. It’s all about the apps I haven’t seen yet.

I really think the App Store, or more accurately the developers behind it, is the key to the iPhone’s leap to the next level of success.

So my current plan is to avoid the mall on July 11th, but keep a keen eye on the App Store.

Lots to say about WWDC08 (for starters, I wasn’t confused with the other Mitch Cohen this year). But I was able to get a decent video of Phil Schiller introducing the Barenaked Ladies at the WWDC party tonight. Well the audio stinks, as it was taken on my little digital camera. I thought this would be a good opportunity to join the digital revolution and post my first YouTube video. Edited and uploaded directly from iMovie ‘08.If anyone wants a copy better than what YouTube provides, leave a comment or drop a note.Turns out they’re huge Apple/Mac fans. I hope others post video from their show as they were lots of fun. I’d seen them a while ago at moe.down; slightly amusing that I’ve now seen them twice while at events for other reasons.One amusing thought. When I figured out who was playing (not pre-announced, but they taped the setlist to the stage so easy to Google) my first thought was “Wow, they got a real band for this little party.” Then I realized - Apple is the number one seller of music in the country. They could likely get anyone they wanted with little effort.[Update - seems YouTube wants to bump my 16:9 movie up to 4:3. Something to look at later.]

I’ve been meaning to get this off my chest for years. Header files are stupid.

I view header files as abstractions of programming code. In Cocoa, they not only tell the compiler what lives in a class file, but also tells Interface Builder what objects and messages it can use. Plus they let a human quickly determine what a class does. So it serves a tremendously important purpose.

But they’re still stupid. They shouldn’t need to exist. My problem is a conflict with my general theory of duplication - nothing should ever be typed twice. If data exists in one form, and it is needed in another form, that’s work a computer should do. Not a human.

If I have a class file I, even in my lowly state of knowledge, can create a corresponding header file. This isn’t an exercise of the mind, it’s menial duplication. Copy/paste with finesse.

Thinking in the opposite direction, if I have a header file, I can create the template of the class file. Not the code guts of course, but the raw objects and methods.

So why do I need to do this? Why can’t the computer? In my travels I’m certain to run across situations that might not fit the 100% bidirectional header<->class correlation. So fine, provide some manual override if needed.

Interface Builder gets a partial pass on this complaint. It can write a basic class file structure from within, based on the GUI. But only once; after that you’re supposed to do all editing in XCode (although I have successfully merged code from successive rewrites). One step in the right direction.

So in my ideal world, the header<->class<->IB relationship would be automated and semi-transparent to the programmer. Create anything anywhere, and all the other stuff should just populate. IB would be a bit more complicated but I think it could be done. But header<->class is an abstraction relationship which humans shouldn’t be bothered with.

I fully expect to re-read this when I’m smarter and be thoroughly embarrassed.

WWDC begins three weeks from yesterday. So I think it’s time to learn Cocoa. For real.

I’ve attended the last two WWDC’s. It’s not like I’m totally ignorant on Cocoa/Objective-C. I know the Mac’s innards rather well and can read ObjC/Cocoa code fine. I’ve messed around with all the intro examples known to mankind. I’ve done the Headstarts. I’ve gone through at least one book in moderate detail. I’ve written a few mini-programs on my own. But it’s all been to give me a broad knowledge, and I’ve long since achieved that goal.

I’m at the point where I think I can program in Cocoa, but when I open XCode I get the “uh ok what now?” look on my face. I can modify existing code but can’t quite remember where to start, simply because I only launch XCode once every three months. There’s a big difference between reading a language, and speaking that language.

It’s time for some “real” programming. To put pressure on myself, I’ll attempt to blog the next three weeks. I don’t expect many readers but someday, perhaps, I’ll look back on this and laugh at my early mistakes.

I bought the new Hillegass book, Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, 3rd edition. I’ve gone through the first three chapters quickly. I plan to re-read Chapter 3, on Objective-C, before continuing. Lots to take in, plus I committed the sin of reading while not actually doing the exercises.

I scanned the book’s TOC and index. I was a bit surprised to see no mentions of QuickTime (seriously, it’s not in the index!). But that’s ok I suppose - fundamentals first.

Let’s go!

MacRumors says… Psystar Demos ‘Open Computer’ on Video
What I want to know is, why does anyone care?

Since the moment Apple shipped Intel-based Mac, folks have figured out how to run OS X on homebrew PC’s. The only difference here is some folks are now selling those homebrew PC’s. Big freakin’ deal.

My prediction: They’ll sell a bunch of them opening day, then whisk into nonexistence with all due expedience. These barely specific PC clones will surely cause support and legal nightmares for the company, leaving their customers in a ditch. In a way it’s a nice business plan; they might make a few bucks before signing a settlement with Apple to close up shop.

News and rumors sites should stop covering this baloney, and simply wait to tell the inevitable footnote.

Technorati Tags: Macintosh

So here’s something I’ve been meaning to get off my chest. Why on Earth do I have to load iPhoto to import pictures from my iPhone?

Bear with me a minute. To sync my iPhone, I need to launch a large application, iTunes. There’s no need for that. In my Palm days (which are happily behind me) syncing was a near-background activity. Missing Sync launched quickly, did its thing, and went away. That’s how it should be. iTunes does a lot more than syncing - one shouldn’t need to launch a media manager to sync a phone. It doesn’t make sense.

But I’ll accept that as what it is, and move on.

iTunes happily syncs everything from my phone - contacts (iTunes isn’t a contact manager), calendar (iTunes isn’t a calendar app), etc. It will sync out photos. But it won’t copy them from the iPhone. Why the heck not? I have to launch another app, iPhoto, to do that. My iPhoto is loaded with photos, so it’s anything but fast to launch when all I want to do is import a few low-res images. Too many clicks, too much time, and thus too high a risk of losing photos because I don’t bother with the process as often as I should.

Now a few years back I was troubleshooting iPhoto, and figured out how it handled importing. I’ve long forgotten the details, but it copied everything first to a temporary folder within the iPhoto Library folder. Then it moved everything around. I learned this because something got stuck in that temporary folder, and iPhoto wouldn’t launch until I cleared it out. Probably a corrupted jpeg that wouldn’t import.

Since my first iPhone sync I’ve wondered why iTunes couldn’t just copy photos to some magical auto-import folder within the iPhoto library. Then, at iPhoto’s next launch, the photos would magically appear - even if the iPhone in question was long disconnected. iTunes could easily track which photos have previously been copied to prevent large-scale re-imports.

I thought about this today after scanning old photos for my wife. She wanted them in iPhoto on her Mac. I thought “Gee, wouldn’t it be swell if I just dropped them into some magical folder on her Mac, over the network, and they’d appear in her iPhoto at next launch.” So I took a peek at iPhoto ’08’s library structure. It’s now a package (overall a good move I think). Sure enough, there’s an “Auto Import” folder! There it is! There it is!

I even gave it a try. On my Mac, I copied a few jpeg’s into Auto Import. I launched iPhoto, and quite predictably the photos imported. Zowie!

So, I ask you dear reader, why can’t iTunes do this for me, with my iPhone? Apple, are you listening?

Oh, and a sad end to my tale… Alysa has an older version of iPhoto on her Mac, which lacks the “Auto Import” folder. I didn’t remember the name of the temp folder to create, so I couldn’t use this trick today.

Technorati Tags: iPhone, Macintosh

I’ve been on the hunt for a good screen recording utility, to produce occasional screencasts. Not so much for the blog (although one never knows) - more for client instructions on specific topics. I picked up Snapz Pro through the recent MacHeist bundle - it’s just awful for screen recording. I’ve played with iShowU, which is ok. Today I ran across two new products - Screenium and ScreenFlow. Screenium is a really nice screen recorder, but ScreenFlow goes beyond simple recording and is a very impressive application.

Most screen recorders do just that - record the screen, either the whole thing or some segment thereof. Screenium does the best job of those I’ve tried - it’s $20, which is a fair price.

ScreenFlow, though, takes recording as just the first step. They market it as a “Professional Screencasting Studio.” I don’t know about the word studio but it’s clearly aimed at getting excellent results. Think of it like iMovie for screencasting. Once you’ve recorded your screen, you then use ScreenFlow’s simple (but quite effective) timeline-esque editor to create the final movie.

But some of the tricks really do come from the recording. It obviously records in layers. In the editing process you can call out (highlight and/or zoom) the foreground window, the area around the mouse, and play many other tricks. This is what separates it from the concept of using a simple screen recorder and editing elsewhere. It’s reasonably simple to get it to do some very nifty tricks. It makes plentiful use of Core Animation, thus requires Leopard.

I won’t go through all the features, but I’ve put together a quick demo movie that’s worth a look (20MB Quicktime movie, 720×450px, 3m43s @ 30fps). I used nothing but ScreenFlow to make this movie, and I exported using the “Web - High Quality” preset.

This is akin to something I’ll likely produce for a client in the near future (instructions on converting a Video DVD to the Leightronix Nexus format using MPEG Streamclip). I haven’t bought ScreenFlow (at least not yet) so their demo watermark appears across the movie. That’s ok with me - there are otherwise no limitations on the downloaded demo.

At $99 it’s aimed at a higher-end crowd than the common $20 screen recorder. If you’re making videos for fun, this isn’t for you. If you’re making money in the process though - either by producing a commercial screencast or by charging for your time, it may be worthwhile. Instinctively I’d put its value at $79, but that’s just me.

I had one problem with ScreenFlow. There’s a feature where it will display the keys pressed while making the recording. It just didn’t work for me. A gray area appeared where I expected to see the keys, but no text at all. So I didn’t use that feature in my demo movie.

I can think of four features that would make this a better product:

• Normalize audio on export. I used my MacBook Pro’s built-in microphone (which admittedly isn’t so great). I boosted the volume as high as ScreenFlow would let me, but it’s still too low. Unless you process your audio separately you’ll likely run into this problem now and then. A great way to handle this would be a “normalize audio” checkbox in the Export window.
• The default exports have no (decent) iPhone-compatible preset. I suspect the Web/Low-Quality would work, but at 300K it wouldn’t look great. For some situations, it would be nice to have something compatible with the iPhone/iPod - 640×480 without frame reordering. Screencasts wouldn’t always be viewed on an iPod/iPhone, but it would be great to have one version usable in all circumstances.
• A simple title generator would be very handy. ScreenFlow can import images with ease, so I could generate a title in almost any graphic app. But titles are key to any video production. Just a simple centered title option would be great.
• The export dialog box isn’t Mac-standard - selecting a Save folder requires another window popup. A strange omission for an otherwise very intuitive Macintosh product.

I made my recording without much planning, intentional so I could really see what ScreenFlow could do. I ended up with a few Finder windows open in the background, which made things look less than ideal. If I make more of these, I’ll likely create a second account on my Mac just for this purpose, and keep it really clean. And (before anyone says so in comments) I recommend using a good microphone for anything. I’m not the first person to say bad audio is worse than bad video.

Technorati Tags: Macintosh

At this very moment Apple is down for updates, rumored for laptop upgrades. They do this purely for the hype; not like an online store really needs to go offline for product changes. Everyone gets all excited when the store goes down. (Yes, Apple fanatics are happy when they can’t buy anything. Such is the Power of Steve.)

This made me wonder… the Fifth Ave. store in NYC is open 24-hours… How do they generate this kind of excitement there? I did some digging and found out:

Now that’s amazing! :-)

Technorati Tags: Macintosh