Apple has been a busy, busy bee – OS X, and iOS News

OS X - Ten Years Old

Yesterday Apple surprised a few people with an unexpected announcement. The announcement of OS X 10.8 or Mountain Lion as it will be known. With lots of iCloud integration, iMessage which would be fun and useful (downloading it now to test).

There was also an unofficial leak of iOS5.1, its expected that this will be released with the iPad 3. Looks like another busy year for Apple.

While many of the new features announced in OS X 10.8 are added polish and tweaks, one of the features that could help project users from malware is Gatekeeper. This feature is also worrying many users.

Basically if your an Apple developer you can get a signature with which you sign your applications. By default Mountain Lion will only install applications that have been signed (you can over-ride this). If a developer is found guilty of publishing malware then the signature can be revoked disabling the software out there.

A useful feature to help project new and inexperienced users; or and example of Apple being big brother and controlling what you can do with your own computer?

It really depends on where they go with this. As its proposed it sounds like a good idea. New and inexperienced users are protected by default and advanced users can turn this default behaviour off.

Snapseed – iPad App of the Year

One of my faviorate iPad Apps has won Apple’s iPad App of the Year.

Its a tremendously useful photo editing application, but one of the key reasons I purchased it was that it can deal with RAW files.

On all the photographic trips I have undertaken this year, I have left the laptop at home and just taken the iPad.  I can backup my photos to it, and using Snapseed tryout some editing ideas.

A great app and well worth it, if your a digital camera shooter and have an iPad.

See Scott Kelby’s website for more details.

Heres a few Photographs I edited with Snapseed on the iPad.

 

Sony A55 Firmware Update V2

This week I finally got round to updating the software in the Sony A55 (Don’t worry I am still a Nikon User).

Sony EVIL Hybrid SLR

Its a simple executable you run while your computer is connected to the camera via USB. There is a Windows version and a OS X version for Apple Macintosh’s.

There was one slight hiccup. The Mac version is 32 bit only and will not work if you have the 64 bit kernel. I run OS X Lion on my MacBook Pro and the software would not run.

This was easily fixed via a quick reboot while holding down the 3 & 2 keys on the keyboard. This forces the computer to restart with a 32 bit kernel, and then the software would run.

Sony A55 Panoramic

The update went smoothly but once it had finished the Camera would not operate. Removing the battery and then putting it back fixed this and we were operational again.

For more details check out the Photography Blog.

Problems with Blackberry and iPhone

There has been a lot of complaints this last week about RIM’s Blackberry outage and people unable to access their email or use BB Messaging.

We have also had a lot of gloating from Android user, as Apple’s Update to iOS5 caused major problems with service providers (thenextweb.com demand-for-ios-5-and-icloud-was-so-high-apple-almost-broke-the-internet).

My update went fairly seamless, only the update to iCloud took some time due to the load on Apple’s servers.

We now rely on technology more and more and as the world moves ever faster it seems we have less patience. I think i’ll logoff the internet for a while and read a book instead.

Now where did I put the iPad/Kindle, LOL.

iCloud

With the Launch of iOS5 we now also have iCloud.

Having syncing between my Mac Laptop, iPad and iPhone is very useful.  The key features are the Photo Stream for Photographers.  I tested this out this afternoon, where I took a photo with my iPhone, then checked the iPad and there was the photo I had just taken.  Not only that but because I have Lion OS X (10.7.2) on the laptop and the latest version of iPhoto (Aperture also supported), when I got home and fired up iPhoto, there was the photographs I had taken on the phone.  No syncing or any effort from myself.

I also tried updating a spreadsheet on the iPad then accessed iWork.com from my work Windows Laptop and was able to continue to work on it.

Only down side so far has been the time its taken to update to iCloud.  As can be expected, Apple’s servers are under a lot of stress at the moment as the worlds iPhone 3GS and 4 users update, but with a bit of patience it gets there and it can only get better.

As Apple improve there integration between there devices and the web, there making it very difficult for a user to want to move away.

iOS comes of age: A True Smart Phone Arrives

Today iOS 5 is released, and with it the iPhone truly becomes a Smart Phone.

As a bit of a geek and working in IT, I have used PDA’s and Smart Phones since the Psion3.

Smart Phone’s and PDA’s have come and gone. The great Sony P series running Symbian OS and various Palm devices over the years.

These phones & PDA’s were punctuated by different Windows devices, these often had the most potential and the most ability, but were always handicapped by reliability and a frustrating OS that hindered rather then helped.

I always seemed to come back to Palm.

Then I saw Steve Job’s present the iPhone in 2007 and I thought this had great potential. A colleague of mine could be described as an Apple fan boy and within a matter of days of the original iPhone launch had one shipped over to the UK. This gave me the chance to try one out.

As a Smart Phone it was a joy to use, the terms delightful and magical, often used to describe the iPad is was came to mind.

As a Smart Phone it was ‘smart’ in a limited fashion. As a phone it was basic. No third party apps, no cut and paste, no multitasking (not quite true), no integration with Microsoft Exchange (essential for me).

But, and it’s a big but. What it did, it did better then any other mobile device.

  • Email – True HTML email
  • Web Browser – real web, not WAP, and do not even try and compare it with that sorry excused for a browser that was on Windows Mobile
  • The Best iPod Experience
  • Plus things like google maps, YouTube, stocks and shares app, notes, contacts etc.

    Still even with its limitations I left my frustrating Windows Mobile Phone in the car to act as my GPS SatNav and bought a iPhone one day one of there release in the UK.

    Gradually each new version of iOS has counted these points, added apps, more multitasking, Exchange Synchronisation and cut and paste.

    Now with iOS5 the iPhone becomes a true Smart Phone. Better alerts, over the syncing and upgrading.

    I have always been a bit slow to upgrade my hardware. I kept my iPhone1 until iPhone4, and now instead of getting the iPhone 4s (Siri May tempt me) I’ll just be upgrading my OS.

    Have to admit really enjoying iOS5. Little things like Landscape calendars, and finally a ToDo App, do not sound like much, but the geo fence features of the ToDo list are very cool. Having a reminder go off when I arrive or leave a destination is genuinely useful. Photo lovers will like the fact they can now create Photo Albums direct on the device.

    I had an issue with the ToDo’s at first, as I had Exchange sync switched on, it had my Exchange ToDo list, which of course does not understand GPS information, once I created a new ToDo list on my phone the GPS option appeared.

    My favourite is the notifications, finally we have caught up with the old Windows Mobile and with Android.

    A nice touch is being able to swipe between apps on the iPad, just like Alt-Tab (Command-Tab on OS X) in Windows.

    Also a four fingered swipe brings up your running apps, together with the five finger close, means you can use the iPad now just with gestures and not have to touch the home button.

    All together loving it. Simple, easy to use, whether your are a geek like me, or a Pensioner like my mother. And now a truly powerful iOS.

    RIP – Steve Jobs

    A sad day today.

    One of the driving figures of modern computing has left us, but his influence will remain with us for a long time.

    The vision to take ideas and develop them, from Xerox’s initial ideas of a GUI which he developed into the modern Bit Mapped Screen driven by Mouse, to produce the Macintosh.

    Creating Next Computers, a computer that was instrumental in the development of the world wide web and the Next Operating system which became OS X.

    Taking Pixar to the pinnacle of modern animated film making.

    Making MP3 players simple to use and popular throughout the world.

    Creating a Smart Phone that could be used by Grandmothers as well as geeks.

    http://www.macrumors.com/2011/10/05/steve-jobs-has-passed-away/

    http://www.bluepoof.com/2011/10/herestothecrazyones/

    Tablet Market – Sony gets interesting

    Sony have always been a company to admire, producing some interesting designs over the years.  I have a Sony TV, Sony PVR, and for a long time was interested in the Sony P Series mobile phones.

    Over the years they have produced a number great products and have now entered the Android Tablet Market with the Sony Tablet S and P models.

    I was hopeful that the HP Tablet running WebOS and RIMs new Playbook was going to give Apple some competition, now it looks like Sony are going to be taking up the challenge.

    From a photographers point of view unfortunately they don’t offer any real advantage over Apples iPad.  Maybe the next version.

    A quick review from a photographers point of view is here at Luminous Landscape.

    Light It – iPad Magazine

    The new photography magazine Light It, has been released, from the Kelby Media Group, its a great magazine with light tips for all levels.  I downloaded it yesterday and really enjoyed it.

    Unfortunately instead of getting praise for introducing another means of reaching photographers, all they seem to be getting is hate posts by iPad nay sayers.

    Kelby Media Group provide printed magazines, internet videos, pod and web casts, seminars (and not just in America), books and DVD’s and now an iPad magazine.  Lots of different ways to reach photographers, whether you have a computer or not, and plenty for none iPad owners.  Yet all it seems people can do is complain.  How dare they produce a magazine for the iPad.  How sad, why cannot trolls get a life.

    Now where did I put that CTO Gell, I want to try that sunshine camera flare technique!

    http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2011/archives/21059

     

    Lightroom Performance Tweeks

    I have been doing a bit of reading recently, on optimising Adobe Lightroom to get the best from it.

    One thing you can do to help, if you have the disk space available, is to increase your Adobe Camera RAW Cache. This will make your Develop module that little bit quicker when you start to use Develop.

    The Lightroom previews used by the Library are different to those used in the Develop module. The Library previews can be generated on import, or when your first zoom into a 1 to 1 view.

    Develop uses a different cache and this cache by default is set to 1GB. Now most of use can spare more disk space then this and its well worth increasing. On a desktop machine the up to 200Gb is commonly used by many photographers. If your working on your laptop then space often at a premium so 5 – 15Gb is more common.