Kibbles & Bytes Blog

Ed and I will be back with you next week. Thanks for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes! Kali & Ed

For this week, we’re offering an Apple refurbished 17-inch MacBook Pro with a 2.66GHz processor, 4GB of RAM (upgradable to 8GB of RAM), and a 320GB hard drive. This MacBook Pro has glossy widescreen display. Since the machine is Apple-refurbished, it includes a full one-year Apple warranty and is eligible for AppleCare. And since it’s eligible for AppleCare, we’re including it with this MacBook Pro.

Originally, the 17-inch MacBook Pro was $2299. We’re listing it refurbished for $1949.99. AppleCare for the MacBook Pro is usually listed for $289.99. We’re offering both bundled together for $2139.99 – a savings of $100!

The 17-inch MacBook Pro is a great computer for great people. Get one and be great today!

Hipstamatic is my new favorite app for iPhone. Hipstamatic is a camera app that seeks to recreate the experience of using an old analog camera as accurately as possible. Any by “old analog camera,” I primarily mean a “cheap analog camera,” the kind with mass-produced plastic lenses.

The app is named for the inexpensive plastic Hipstamatic camera, which was known for its ability to swap lenses and take multiple film formats (with rather dodgy image quality.)

I love the Hipstamatic app because it’s fun to use and produces very cool, retro-flavored original-looking images. These images look like they were taken with vintage film through a vintage lens. Many of the different film types feature interesting, processed borders. You can mix and match different lenses, gels, and flashes to get completely different photo effects (mostly vintage or grungy in appearance.) You switch these up with a swipe of the finger.

The Hipstamatic comes with the John S Lens, the Jimmy Lens, the Kaimal Mark II Lens, the Standard Flash, the Dreampop Flash, Ina’s 1969 Film, and Kodot Verichrome Film. You can purchase additional lenses, films, and flashes directly from the app as HipstaPaks.

Photos can be posted directly to Facebook and Flickr, and can also be emailed directly from the app. On iPhone, HipstaPrints can be viewed in-app via a cool scrolling interface, and they can also be viewed in your regular photo library.

Now, I probably wouldn’t use the Hipstamatic app to capture an important event like baby’s first steps. But for taking photos out around town, or just around the house or in the office, Hipstamatic is truly fun. It gives everyday objects and events a unique look that stands out.

Many of my complaints about the Hipstamatic app have recently been addressed in the “Model 150” update. Warm-up time has recently been improved, but it can still take a few seconds from launching the app to being able to snap a photo. But you can now take photos a “High Quality Prints” mode (1200px square for 2G/3G, 1536px square for 3GS), significantly better than the previous 525px x 525px size.

Read more about the “Hipstamatic app here.”:http://hipstamaticapp.com Purchase the app for $2.99 in the “iTunes store by clicking here “:http://hipstamaticapp.com/buy_hipstamatic.html?clk=support_footer (clicking this link will open iTunes on your computer.) Check out real-life HipstaPrints in the “largest Hipstamatic Flickr group here.”:http://www.flickr.com/groups/hipstamatic/pool

Thanks to everyone who wrote in regarding my article, “The Skinny on Pages’ TOC” in “last week’s Kibbles & Bytes.”:http://blog.smalldog.com/kibbles/?c=kb662

I’ll post some of them here, as well as any response or elaboration I might have.

H. J. Jackson writes,

bq. __”Pages is a wonderful program, and iWork is a real bargain. The very best book for learning and using Pages and the other iWork applications, in my opinion is iWork ’09: The Missing Manual by Josh Clark, published by Pogue Press/O’Reilly.__

bq. __It is the only iWork book that starts teaching Pages before going into the less used Keynote and Numbers, and it provides the practical information you need to get the best results using these programs.”__

I agree 100%. I also like the official “Apple Training Series book on iWork,”:http://www.smalldog.com/product/74027/apple-training-series-iwork-09-book certified by Apple.

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Paul S. writes,

bq. __”Hi Kali, I’m unsure about your statement, ‘and AppleWorks never transitioned into the vibrant OS X Cocoa world.’__

bq. __I’m using a MacBook Pro and OS 10.6.2 and I use Appleworks’ Word Processor and Spreadsheet regularly although I’m certainly not a heavy user and don’t demand all the features. No slam against Pages, which I use as well, not wanting to be out in the cold when AppleWorks will no longer work.”__

Paul, thanks for the email. I was just referring to the fact that AppleWorks was never fully redeveloped into “Cocoa,”:http://developer.apple.com/technologies/mac/cocoa.html and even though it works in versions of OS X, it’s still considered a “Carbon”:http://developer.apple.com/carbon/ application.

(For more on the difference between Cocoa and Carbon, “click here.”:http://blogs.msdn.com/rick_schaut/archive/2004/02/10/70789.aspx)

I was surprised to read that you’re using AppleWorks in 10.6, as Apple deemed it incompatible with Snow Leopard (they officially discontinued support for AppleWorks in 2007). So, I did some searching, and found that there are others who use AppleWorks with 10.5 and 10.6, running under Rosetta, and without the full spectrum of features, as you mentioned. Great to know!

“For more on this, check out a thread on Apple’s forums here.”:http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2116594&tstart=133

Of course, it’s good to know that you’re incorporating Pages into your workflow for when future OSs actually do break the functionality of AppleWorks.

“Check out Apple’s support page for AppleWorks.”:http://www.apple.com/support/appleworks/faq/

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Cyrus R. writes,

bq. __”Thank you for your interesting articles, which I share with members of my user group. But, I think you were unfair in the subject article. First off, I don’t find Word 2004 to be slow and cumbersome. I don’t know what you mean by ‘vibrant Cocoa world,’ but why care about how ‘pretty’ an app appears to be on the screen when it does what is needed?__

__Now, I will admit that Word and AppleWorks are not good page layout apps. Pages is far superior at that. But Both Word and AW are far superior word-processors, with many convenient features not offered in Pages (especially when it comes to find-&-replace). Secondly, as for the TOC feature, Word offers a similar feature, with somewhat similar procedures.”__

Cyrus, good points! I’m a tad biased, because as a designer by trade, I get hung up on user interface and the overall look and feel of things. (I’ve been known to refuse to use an app on my iPhone because the icon is ugly. Seriously, I’m that ridiculous.)

I’ve been drawn to the post OS 9 Mac OSs because they’re crisp, clear and all laid out in a way that my brain understands–when I used a PC, I always felt that things were counter-intuitive, and I think Word carried that feeling over for me. However, you’re right that it’s just as important for an application to do what it needs to do!

(It should be noted here that Cyrus is the Chairman of an Apple User Group, so he’s an unbiased, bipartisan contributor!)

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Thanks again for all the responses–there are a lot of Pages fans out there! As for those who were not mentioned here, I’ll be getting back to you directly to hopefully help with the ins and outs of Pages!

Snow Leopard includes a brand-new version of QuickTime Player, called QuickTime X. It’s optimized with a new media architecture ideal for playing back high-definition video. It offers a clean, uncluttered interface with controls that fade out when they’re not needed. It also offers some new features not previously available in earlier versions of QuickTime player.

For example, QuickTime Player makes it easy to capture live audio and video directly from your built-in iSight camera, FireWire camcorder or microphone. Just click the Record button in QuickTime Player and start capturing your audio or video to disk. You can also catch the action on your screen with screen recording–perfect for creating instructional media or when you want to show a friend (or, in our case, a customer) how to do something on their Mac. With QuickTime X you can also quickly remove a portion of the beginning or end of a movie, to make it shorter or remove unwanted content.

The newest version of QuickTime Player makes it easy to convert digital media files into formats optimized for use by iTunes and iPhone, iPod or Apple TV, with optimal settings for each destination. After conversion, QuickTime Player automatically delivers the content to your iTunes library. You can also use QuickTime Player to easily publish your media to MobileMe or YouTube without worrying about formats or resolutions.

When QuickTime X came out, at first people were thrilled that it included these export options for free. In the past, there were always two versions of QuickTime–the basic Player version and the more powerful Pro version. QuickTime Pro was designed for more advanced multimedia encoding. One of the most popular uses of QuickTime Pro was to convert media formats, as it exports
media to over a dozen different video and audio formats. I often use it to export audio as a .wav or .aiff file out of a video file.

While the limited export options of QuickTime X are enough for many people, some of us still depend on the more robust export options in QuickTime Pro. Luckily, QuickTime Pro is still available for $29 from Apple. You can read more and purchase “QuickTime Pro by clicking here.”:http://store.apple.com/us/product/D3380Z/A

QuickTime Pro will export compatible media files to 3GPP ,3GPP2, AIFF ,AMC, AU ,AVI, BMP, DV Stream, FLC, Image Sequence movie exporters, JPEG/JFIF, JPEG 2000, MacPaint, MIDI ,MPEG-4, Photoshop, PICT, PNG, QuickTime Image File, QuickTime Movie, SGI, System 7 Sound, Targa, Text, TIFF, and WAV.

As Don suns himself in Belize, Ed and I are here in Vermont, watching winter slowly fade away into -mud- spring. I, for one, could have used one last good snow, but I guess I shouldn’t count it out just yet (at least that’s what Art would say!).

I’ve been here for almost three years now, but I have only recently partaken in a the official Small Dog rite of passage: I got a dog (Maggie, left)! Having never had a dog before, now I understand why everyone here is so passionate about their companions, and why they love having them at work. I am now truly an equal-opportunity animal lover!

With that said, Maggie (or Weenus, as we affectionately call her) is still relatively young–eight months–so my husband and I are in the midst of training her to be a respectful, obedient (and happy!) dog. We’re reading the books, watching the videos and talking to our fellow dog lovers here, but I’d love any words of wisdom you seasoned dog owners may have–feel free to email me at “kali@smalldog.com.”:mailto:kali@smalldog.com

Which brings me back to Kibbles & Bytes. Don, Ed and I work hard to make K&B an interesting newsletter filled with tidbits that you’ll actually use in your daily Mac life. Are there things we’re missing? Things we do well, but not enough of? Just so perfect you can’t wait to tell us? Let us know–email “me”:mailto:kali@smalldog.com or “Ed,”:mailto:ed@smalldog.com since you know, Don’s reception on the beach may be a little limited!

And finally, a fond farewell to Jerome York, member of Apple’s Board of Directors, who died yesterday at age 71. He believed in the company when many others did not, and was often referred to as a “turnaround master.” I think it’s safe to say that he got a chance to see Apple turn it around. Rest in peace, Jerry!