TidBITS#974/13-Apr-09
=====================
Issue link: <http://db.tidbits.com/issue/974>
Apple giveth, and Apple taketh away. In the "giveth" department,
Apple last week released an updated Xserve model with improved
performance and a fascinating SSD option. On the "taketh away" side
of things, Apple removed DRM from all music sold through the iTunes
Store, dropped one-size-fits-all music pricing, and announced that
the .Mac HomePage Web application would disappear in a few months.
Also in this issue, Glenn Fleishman opines that the addition of push
notifications to the iPhone could drive a nail into the coffin of
usurious SMS message costs, Doug McLean looks at the new features of
the DroboPro storage device, and Adam pokes deep within iPhoto '09
to reveal ten important changes that Apple has left undocumented.
Notable software releases this week include VMware Fusion 2.0.4,
WireTap Studio 1.0.11, WireTap Anywhere 1.0.4, Snapz Pro X 2.1.4,
TweetDeck v0.25, PDFpen 4.1.2, HoudahGeo 2.2, and Dialectic 1.4.
Articles
iTunes Drops DRM from Music, Initiates Tiered Pricing
.Mac HomePage Web Application To Be Discontinued
DroboPro Offers Improved Capacity and Connectivity
Apple Updates Xserve with "Nehalem" Xeon Processors
When iPhone Pushes, Text Message Fees Fall
10 Undocumented Changes in iPhoto '09 8.0.2
TidBITS Watchlist: Notable Software Updates for 13-Apr-09
Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk for 13-Apr-09
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iTunes Drops DRM from Music, Initiates Tiered Pricing
------------------------------------------------------
by Doug McLean <[email protected]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/10199>
During Apple's keynote speech at the 2009 Macworld Expo, Phil
Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide product marketing,
announced that the company would be removing digital rights
management from all of the music offered in the iTunes Store, and
would implement a new tiered pricing system (for more details, see
"Apple Moves to Unprotected Music, Tiered Prices", 2009-01-06).
Apple's FairPlay DRM limited music sold through iTunes to recognized
devices. On the day of the announcement, 06-Jan-09, Apple removed
DRM from 8 million songs in iTunes, but that still left an
additional 2 million songs to be switched over. Apple has now made
good on its promise in full by removing DRM from all music in
iTunes.
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9980>
In addition to removing DRM from music sold through iTunes, all
songs now use 256 Kbps AAC encoding, which was found previously only
in the subset of Apple's catalog known as iTunes Plus. The previous
bit rate, 128 Kbps, will no longer be available. Users will also
have the ability to upgrade previously purchased music to this
higher quality DRM-free format at the rate of $0.30 per song and
$0.60 per music video. To upgrade your existing music, click the
Upgrade to iTunes Plus link on the iTunes Store front page.
Reports on TidBITS Talk indicate that the switch isn't 100-percent
complete, with some songs having been removed from the iTunes Store
(possibly because Apple couldn't acquire resale rights for DRM-free
versions) and others simply not yet available in iTunes Plus format.
After upgrading, you can determine whether you have any of these
tracks by creating a smart playlist that looks for "Kind contains
protected" and "Kind contains audio".
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/2585>
Lastly, Apple has implemented a tiered pricing system. Previously
all songs were available at the flat price of $0.99, though
purchasing full albums could sometimes result in a discount. Now,
songs are available at $0.69, $0.99, or $1.29. Apple has not
commented on how exactly song prices are determined, though Schiller
did note during his presentation back in January that there are more
$0.69 songs than $1.29 songs.
.Mac HomePage Web Application To Be Discontinued
------------------------------------------------
by Doug McLean <[email protected]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/10201>
Apple has announced that on 07-Jul-09 it will discontinue the .Mac
HomePage Web application as a method for adding and editing content
on .Mac-hosted Web pages. HomePage is a legacy feature of the .Mac
service that enables users to publish simple Web pages using their
.Mac account; old versions of iPhoto also created photo albums that
could be edited via HomePage.
<http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2049>
While all .Mac Web pages will remain accessible at their current
URLs (as long as you maintain an active MobileMe membership), they
will become unmodifiable via the HomePage Web application after
07-Jul-09. However, you will still be able to modify HTML files in
your iDisk's Sites folder. Plus, if you want to remove any content
after 07-Jul-09, you'll have to delete the files manually from your
iDisk, since the HomePage Web app will disappear.
In lieu of HomePage, Apple recommends that existing MobileMe users
use iWeb (included with iLife '06 and later versions) to publish new
pages to their MobileMe accounts. Additionally, MobileMe members may
use iPhoto or iMovie to publish photos and movies directly to
MobileMe Gallery. Instructions for migrating HomePage photos and
movies to MobileMe Gallery can be found on Apple's Web site.
<http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3484>
<http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3485>
Finally, while Apple has not officially confirmed it, some users
posting on Apple forums say that Apple support techs have indicated
that HTML pages published via .Mac and made using tools other than
HomePage or iWeb will continue to work via their current URLs.
DroboPro Offers Improved Capacity and Connectivity
---------------------------------------------------
by Doug McLean <[email protected]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/10198>
Data Robotics has announced the latest model in its lineup of smart
storage units: the DroboPro. The latest model increases storage
capacity and connectivity options, while maintaining the trademark
features of the original Drobo, such as hot swapping, smart volumes,
and RAID-based protection against data loss.
<http://www.drobo.com/products/drobopro/>
<http://www.drobo.com/products/drobo.php>
Aimed at creative professionals and IT administrators, the DroboPro
doubles the bay capacity of the original model, enabling users to
insert up to eight bare hard drives for raw data storage of up to 16
TB. 3.5-inch SATA I and SATA II hard disk drives are supported, and
you can mix and match disk brands, capacities, and speeds, something
that's generally not possible with RAID boxes. The DroboPro also
offers a triple interface, adding a gigabit Ethernet port that
enables iSCSI transfers while retaining the USB 2.0 and FireWire 800
ports of the second-generation Drobo, which remains available.
Despite the addition of the Ethernet port, the contents of a
DroboPro cannot be shared across a network directly, as the
company's DroboShare add-on makes possible, although the DroboPro's
host computer can make its data available on the network.
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2009-04/DroboPro.jpg>
<http://drobo.com/products/droboshare.php>
Aside from these performance enhancements, the DroboPro continues to
offer the flagship Drobo features. Drobo units intelligently handle
tasks like swapping out disks during data transfers, and create and
juggle a pool of virtual disk space. The company's BeyondRAID
technology allows other features beyond hot-swapping disks, such as
re-ordering volumes on the fly, mixing drive capacities, and storage
virtualization, which reports the largest possible volume size to
the computer so the Drobo's actual capacity can be increased or
decreased without updating the computer's file system. BeyondRAID
can also cope with hard drive failures automatically, alerting users
to the presence of a failing disk and attempting to route around bad
sectors if possible.
<http://drobo.com/resources/beyondraid.php>
With its added storage capacity, dual disk redundancy is now
available for the DroboPro. The original Drobo creates a RAID that
protects you against the failure of a _single_ disk by spreading
your data across multiple disks. With dual disk redundancy, the
DroboPro can protect data even if _two_ of your disks fail
simultaneously, allowing you to continue running without
interruption (though popping new disks into the DroboPro in place of
the failed disks would be a good idea). Using dual disk redundancy
reduces your active storage space even more for data protection, so
if you start running out of disk space and don't absolutely require
dual disk redundancy, you can switch back to single disk redundancy
in Drobo's software utility. Data Robotics tries to make all this as
easy as possible, simplifying what can often be fairly complicated
disk management.
All this self-managing RAID business protects against data loss, but
it considerably reduces your storage space in comparison to bringing
the same number of drives online individually. A calculator
available on the Data Robotics Web site determines what actual
storage volume a DroboPro would provide depending on the number and
size of the drives you plan to install into it.
<http://www.drobo.com/calculator/drobopro.php>
The DroboPro is available unpopulated or pre-populated with Data
Robotics-installed disks (sold, unsurprisingly, at higher prices
than at independent retailers). Without any drives installed, the
eight-bay DroboPro costs $1,299. The second-generation Drobo, with
bays for four drives, remains available for $499.
Apple Updates Xserve with "Nehalem" Xeon Processors
---------------------------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[email protected]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/10197>
Apple has released a major update to its rack-mounted Xserve, taking
advantage of the significantly increased processing power of the
latest Intel "Nehalem" Xeon processors and new system architecture
used in the recently refreshed Mac Pro (see "New Mac Pro Uses Intel
'Nehalem' Xeon Processors," 2009-03-03).
<http://www.apple.com/xserve/>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/10111>
Power-saving and performance-enhancing technologies that first saw
the light of day in the Mac Pro should be especially welcome in the
Xserve, whose non-stop use makes power savings important. In
particular, TurboBoost enables the Xserve to shut down idle cores
and boost the clock speed of active cores, and Hyper-Threading
allows two threads to run simultaneously on each core, providing a
more-efficient use of resources without needing more physical (and
thus power-consuming) cores. Thanks to the new processors and
architecture, Apple is claiming an 89 percent improvement in
performance per watt over the previous-generation Xserve and a 19
percent reduction in idle power use.
<http://www.apple.com/xserve/features/architecture.html>
<http://www.apple.com/xserve/performance.html>
The new Xserve comes in two basic configurations, a quad-core model
with one 2.26 GHz quad-core Intel Xeon processor for $2,999 and an
8-core model with a pair of 2.26 GHz quad-core Intel Xeon processors
for $3,599. The 8-core model can be upgraded to a pair of 2.66 GHz
Xeon processors for $1,400 or a pair of 2.93 GHz Xeon processors for
$2,600. Each processor has 8 MB of shared L3 cache and its own
three-channel integrated memory controller to reduce memory latency
and improve performance.
Both Xserve models default to 3 GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC RAM, but the
two models differ in RAM expansion options. The quad-core model has
only 6 DIMM slots for RAM. Apple's maximum build-to-order
configuration maxes out at 12 GB. The 8-core model has 12 DIMM
slots, but Apple will sell you only up to 24 GB of RAM, not the full
48 GB that would theoretically be supported. That may be because Mac
OS X Server 10.5 supports only 32 GB of RAM; I suspect that limit
will disappear in Snow Leopard Server.
<http://www.apple.com/xserve/specs.html>
The Xserve ships by default with a single 160 GB SATA Apple Drive
Module in one of three drive bays. For the moment, the Apple Store
allows you to configure an Xserve only with either a 160 GB SATA ADM
or a 1 TB SATA ADM, but the onboard SATA/SAS controller also
supports 15,000 RPM SAS drive modules. Oddly, you must buy SAS ADMs
separately from the Apple Store, which seems like an unnecessary
hassle. As before, you can replace the SATA/SAS controller with an
Xserve RAID Card for $700. For more information about Apple Drive
Modules, see "Going Deep Inside Xserve Apple Drive Modules"
(2009-03-27).
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/10166>
But what's innovative about the new Xserve in terms of storage is an
optional 128 GB solid-state drive for $500. If added to the Xserve,
the 128 GB SSD is automatically configured as the boot drive and
doesn't take up one of the Xserve's drive bays. According to Apple,
the SSD consumes less than 1 watt of power, compared to 12 to 18
watts for typical drives. Plus, the SSD reportedly features
random-access performance that's up to 20 times faster than a SAS
drive and up to 48 times faster than a SATA drive. Apple makes no
claims about reliability, but it would also seem likely that the
lack of moving parts would make a solid-state drive less prone to
hardware failures; perhaps there isn't yet enough data to say that
about SSDs.
Video support on the Xserve is now provided by the Nvidia GeForce GT
120 with 256 MB of GDDR3 memory. In keeping with Apple's model-line
push, the Nvidia card offers only Mini DisplayPort output, thus
requiring adapters - sold separately - to connect to VGA or DVI
monitors.
Relying on Mini DisplayPort in the Xserve feels like a mistake,
since no data center will be using Mini DisplayPort-equipped
monitors. Chuck Goolsbee of the Web hosting and colocation firm
digital.forest, agreed, "Switching to Mini DisplayPort for video is
unwise, as no KVM sold today is Mini DisplayPort-compatible. That
means adapters will be required, adding to the costs of deployment
and complicating troubleshooting, which often is done remotely."
Other standard features include an unlimited client version of Mac
OS X Server 10.5, an 8x SuperDrive, two PCI Express 2.0 x16
expansion slots, two independent gigabit Ethernet ports, two
FireWire 800 ports, two USB 2.0 ports on the back and one on the
front, and a DB-9 RS-232 serial port. Dual redundant power supplies
remain optional.
Physically, it appears that Apple chose not to respond to criticisms
of the Xserve industrial design, making the new Xserve nearly
identical to the previous Xserve (see "New Xserve Goes Eight-Core
Too," 2008-01-08). Digital.forest's Goolsbee commented, "Apple
hasn't addressed the weaknesses of the Xserve's case design compared
to similar offerings from competitors in the server space. It's
still way too deep, and it still lacks a video port at the front of
the unit."
<http://www.apple.com/xserve/design.html>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/9382>
The Xserve's 30-inch (76.2 cm) depth forces awkward spacing in
standard racks, and the lack of front-mounted video (and FireWire)
ports complicates arranging Xserves in "hot" and "cold" aisles that
provide significantly more-efficient cooling. (Arranging servers
such that adjacent aisles have the backs of servers facing each
other creates a "hot" aisle that can be contained from the
front-facing "cold" aisles. With contained "hot" aisles, requiring
user access to the back of the Xserve is troublesome, both for the
technicians doing the work and for maintaining the cooling.)
This isn't rocket science - many, if not most, rack-mounted servers
from the likes of IBM, Dell, and HP replicate user-focused ports
like USB, video, and FireWire on both the front and back panels, and
relegate system-focused ports like Ethernet and power to the back
panel.
Overall, the new Xserve offers extremely welcome performance
improvements, and it's excellent to see Apple putting so much
thought into reducing power requirements at the system architecture
level. Plus, the optional solid-state drive is a fabulous addition.
But it's too bad that Apple didn't rethink the Xserve's physical
design with regard to the overall environment in which Xserves
commonly operate.
When iPhone Pushes, Text Message Fees Fall
------------------------------------------
by Glenn Fleishman <[email protected]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/10203>
Text messages cost phone companies nearly nothing to deliver, and
yet messages are billed at rates a thousand times their actual
expense. This has become well known, even as carriers in the United
States have raised pay-as-you-go rates for SMS (Short Message
Service) from 10 to 20 cents a pop in the last year. (Randall Stross
explained it well in a New York Times column in December 2008.)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/business/28digi.htm>
It doesn't have to be that way. A revolution is brewing from the
inside. When phones - specifically the iPhone - can notify their
owners of incoming messages in a way that parallels SMS, how can
such a ridiculous pricing structure continue to stand?
**A Message You Can't Refuse** -- Text messages use cellular network
control channels, and, at no more than 160 characters per message
plus some routing information, consume a handful of terabytes a day
spread across all U.S. carriers' entire network systems. (The cell
industry trade group says U.S. cell users sent 1 trillion SMS
messages in 2008, or about 3 billion a day. Double that for the
bandwidth to send and to receive, multiply by 150 characters, and
you get 3 TB per day. But divide that by the number of base stations
in urban areas, and you get only megabytes per day each.)
In handling all the administrative trivia of allowing hundreds of
millions of cell phones to communicate via hundreds of thousands of
base stations, these control channels pass far more data than text
messages consume. Even assuming some additional cost to carry the
current volume, a text message might cost a fraction of a cent in
separate expense - say .01 cent or 1/10,000th of a dollar.
Why do we pay so much when we have various instant messaging
services at our disposal? I have AIM on my iPhone, iChat and Skype
on my Mac, Google Talk in my Web browser, and Twitterrific on my Mac
and iPhone. But I still use SMS myself, even though my AT&T plan
limits me to 200 incoming and outgoing messages a month.
<http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=281704574&mt=8>
<http://www.skype.com/download/skype/macosx/>
<http://www.google.com/talk/>
<http://iconfactory.com/software/twitterrific>
Why SMS then? Because it's an almost guaranteed disruption.
Recipients have to pay attention. Phones are designed by default to
annoy us with SMS, and we generally like that for this particular
category of notification. (If not, most phones let you turn off
buzzing or chirping notification.)
SMS is also an always-available store-and-forward system. If your
phone is off or out of cellular range, messages appear when you come
back online. Whenever you're on a cell network (which is almost
always for most people), SMS deliveries can happen.
Finally, SMS works with nearly all cell phones, from the cheapest on
up, and among all major U.S. cellular networks. American carriers
made great strides a few years ago to ensure delivery and provide
standard pricing regardless of originating and receiving networks.
To combat overage charges, instead of allowing subscribers to stop
receiving SMS messages, carriers added all-you-can-eat plans from
$10 to $20 per month. Carriers make much more from you sending 2,000
texts at $10 a month than 200 texts at $5 per month, so it's good
for them.
The reason companies charge so much is because we pay it. We don't
have to text.
(In fact, if you don't want to get an SMS, it's rather hard to avoid
it. Some parental monitoring add-on packages from cell carriers
allow limits to be set. Ostensibly, you can call a carrier to ask
SMS reception to be turned off, but posts in cell forums make that
sound like a frustrating proposition.)
**Push Off, Eh?** But what if a service existed that would alert you
on your iPhone when a message arrived from another service? A
message that was included in your unlimited cellular data plan or
could also be received via any Wi-Fi network to which you were
connected? Where's your precious text messaging now, cellular
carriers? (Evil laugh here.)
In fact, that's precisely what Apple will offer when the company
finally launches push notifications for the iPhone 3.0 release. (See
"Apple Previews iPhone 3.0 Software," 2009-03-17.)
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/10144>
All it takes is one killer application that provides push
notifications and ties into a common messaging platform, and several
such applications are waiting in the wings. Skype is already
available for the iPhone (see "Skype Coming to iPhone," 2009-03-30),
with calls available over Wi-Fi and chat over Wi-Fi and cellular
networks. Twitter and other platforms have APIs which have been used
in conjunction with iPhone applications, too.
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/10175>
Take my primary use of SMS. If I can text my wife via a direct
message on Twitter and have a notification pop up on her iPhone,
there is essentially no difference between an SMS message and that
Twitter message.
There are more than 400 million registered, active Skype users, tens
of millions of Twitter users, and billions of combined accounts at
various instant messaging services. Yes, there's more management
involved in reaching someone other than knowing their phone number,
an "address" that works worldwide with no additional interface. But
mind the cost.
We don't know yet whether Apple will charge developers a fee for
push notifications. There has been no public discussion, but I have
a hard time believing that developers will be allowed to distribute
an unlimited number of push notifications for free, given that these
notifications must be mediated by Apple's servers.
I'd be happy to be wrong about this, but it seems that Apple will
either need to limit the number of notifications per user or
notifications per developer unless it charges a fee to deliver high
numbers of messages and shares that revenue with carriers. Of
course, these push messages will be so short as to represent
negligible data channel traffic. Sounds familiar, no?
Apple also doesn't appear to be guaranteeing that push notifications
will arrive. From what I can tell, it will be a best-effort system:
Apple will try to deliver all messages, and hold messages for later
delivery to devices that can't be reached. But some push
notifications may never arrive, and that's where SMS seems to shine.
I also wonder whether carriers outside the United States will balk
at supporting an easy method of eroding their high-margin SMS
services. Deutsche Telekom has already said that Skype for iPhone is
an unacceptable abuse of its service, whether over 3G (where it
doesn't work) or over Deutsche Telekom's Wi-Fi hotspot network.
Deutsche Telekom claims that the problem is network usage, not a
subversion of high-cost calls. Still, one could imagine a carrier
making the same pretense about push messaging, too.
I don't like to peer into a crystal ball much, as I'm generally a
reporter of what I see, rather than a prognosticator about what I
can't know. But there's a huge tension created when people find
themselves paying either 20 cents a message or up to $20 per month
for an essentially cost-free service.
If Apple could shift the utility of SMS to another delivery
mechanism that has a similar ease and reach with far less cost, at
least iPhone and iPod touch owners might wave goodbye to SMS's
egregious fees.
10 Undocumented Changes in iPhoto '09 8.0.2
-------------------------------------------
by Adam C. Engst <[email protected]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/10204>
I know we're starting to sound a bit like a broken record in our
criticism of Apple's patronizingly minimal release notes. However,
this isn't selfish whining - you, the users of Apple software, are
the people who are hurt by Apple's refusal to describe exactly what
changes from version to version of different programs, iPhoto in
this case.
Sure, some changes are things that will simply work better the next
time you perform that particular task in iPhoto. But with other
actions, as the saying goes, once burned, twice shy. For instance,
in the initial release of iPhoto '08, if you dragged an iPhoto
library package onto iPhoto's Dock icon to open it, iPhoto instead
imported the contents into the current iPhoto library. That was
horrible behavior, and after seeing it happen once, who would ever
try it again? Well, I did, when I was updating that page in my
"iPhoto '09 Visual QuickStart Guide" for Peachpit (which I've just
handed in to Peachpit, and will also be turning into an ebook soon
too), and I was happy to discover that Apple had indeed fixed this
egregious error.
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321601319/?tag=tidbitselectro00>
So what follows are my top ten undocumented changes in iPhoto, some
of which appeared in iPhoto '09 8.0 (that's Apple's official name
and version number, confusing as it is), and others of which changed
between the initial release of iPhoto '09 and iPhoto '09 8.0.2, the
most recent release. If you've found any other significant changes,
do let me know!
**Open iPhoto Libraries Directly** -- In earlier versions of iPhoto,
there were a number of tricks for switching among different iPhoto
libraries, most recently holding down the Option key when launching
iPhoto and choosing an iPhoto library in a standard Open dialog. You
might ask, "Why can't I simply double-click an iPhoto library
package file to open it, or open it as I would any other file?" Like
so many other things with iPhoto (remember how many years it took
before iPhoto let us name photos directly, rather than just in the
Information pane?), this basic concept eluded the iPhoto team for a
while.
Apple has finally seen the light, and with iPhoto '09, iPhoto
library packages act like normal documents. You can double-click
them to open, drag them to iPhoto's icon in the Dock, or open as you
would any other document. iPhoto can be running or not - it doesn't
matter, and it remembers your last-opened library on subsequent
launches of the iPhoto application. In my testing, iPhoto will
occasionally become a bit confused and will still prompt you to
select the double-clicked iPhoto library package again in a custom
Open dialog (often with duplicated entries), but overall, it works
cleanly.
**Sharing via the Shared Folder** -- Another major annoyance with
versions of iPhoto prior to iPhoto '09 was that you couldn't just
put your iPhoto Library in the /Users/Shared folder to share it
among multiple accounts on the same Mac, since iPhoto always set the
permissions on thumbnails to the account that imported the photos,
preventing other accounts from editing those photos and having the
edits reflected in the thumbnails.
That limitation has now been fixed in iPhoto '09, so you can share
an iPhoto library merely by moving it to /Users/Shared and then
double-clicking it to open in iPhoto from each account. You may be
prompted to repair permissions on the first access - click the
Repair button to do that. Note that this also works for storing an
iPhoto library on an external hard disk that's shared among users or
on a network volume for access across a fast network.
Only one person may access a shared iPhoto library at a time.
**Movies in Slideshows** -- In another one of those inexplicable
lapses, iPhoto '09 still can't play movies internally;
double-clicking a movie opens it in QuickTime Player. But it does
have one new movie-related capability - movies can play in iPhoto
'09's totally revamped slideshows. Just add them as you would a
photo, and when the slideshow gets to them, they'll play in their
entirety before the slideshow moves on to the next photo.
**Thumbnails in Slideshows** -- This feature falls into the category
of something so subtle that you might never notice it. When you play
a slideshow in iPhoto '09, moving the mouse pointer causes the
slideshow controls to appear, as before. But if you move the mouse
pointer to the bottom of the screen, a row of thumbnails appears,
with a white outline sliding left to right that shows the currently
displayed photos. You can even drag the white outline to jump around
in the slideshow. (iPhoto does display the thumbnails very briefly
before it shows the slideshow theme picker dialog, so at least
there's a possibility that you'd discover it on your own.)
**Faces Plus Address Book Equals Facebook** -- In the first two
versions of iPhoto '09, when you named an unrecognized face, iPhoto
would autocomplete the name from previous entries, but that was it.
Starting with iPhoto '09 8.0.2, iPhoto also suggests names from the
contents of Address Book, complete with email addresses.
If you've already created a name in iPhoto, you'll see two entries
for that name in the menu of suggestions, whenever you're naming a
face. To solve this, rename the person's snapshot in the Faces
corkboard, selecting the suggestion from Address Book. In my testing
in iPhoto '09 8.0.2, this works only if the original name in iPhoto
differs from the name from Address Book, so you may need to rename
the snapshot to a different name first, then connect it with the
Address Book entry. Once you've connected the snapshot's name with
the Address Book entry, you can change the snapshot's name to
anything you like, and it will retain the full name and email
address from Address Book.
No one will miss noticing this addition, but you may not realize why
it's important. When uploading photos to Facebook, for them to
receive tags linking to the Facebook profiles of the people pictured
in the photos, you must have each person's email address in the
Information dialog (select a snapshot in the Faces corkboard and
either click the i button or press Command-I). It's important that
it be the email address the person has used for Facebook, so check
their profile if you're unsure of which email address to use in
iPhoto.
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2009-04/Faces-Info-dialog.png>
The full name field is also important when uploading to Facebook.
You probably want to refer to family and close friends purely by
first name in iPhoto, but when you upload to Facebook, iPhoto uses
the full name field, so "Tonya" becomes "Tonya Engst" on Facebook.
**Make Unnamed Faces Smart Album** -- Another highly welcome feature
that's new in iPhoto '09 8.0.2 is the enhancement of iPhoto's smart
album capabilities with regard to faces. In iPhoto '09 8.0, there
was a Name criterion, and you could enter text to match against. Now
the Name criterion has been renamed to Face, and when you choose
either Is or Is Not as the match, you get a pop-up menu to choose
from. The first item in that pop-up menu is "unnamed," so if you
choose it, you get a smart album that contains all the photos for
which iPhoto has detected faces, but to which you haven't yet
assigned names.
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2009-04/Unnamed-Faces-smart-album.png>
As an added bonus, once you name each face in a photo while in that
album, iPhoto updates the album on the fly, immediately removing the
now-named photo from the album and displaying the next photo with an
unnamed face.
One more thing. iPhoto sometimes identifies random objects or
textures as faces. When it does that, just click the X button in the
corner of the white rectangle surrounding the thing that isn't a
face to remove it. Deleting incorrect face rectangles (or even
rectangles around the faces of people you don't know) will remove
the photos from your Unnamed Faces smart album.
**Naming Suggested Faces Directly** -- You're training iPhoto to
recognize your friend Sally's face, so you double-click her snapshot
on the Faces corkboard, and click the Confirm Name button to confirm
or reject photos that iPhoto suggests might also contain Sally's
face. Let's say iPhoto does a good job with Sally, and most of the
suggested photos are indeed her, but one or two are of Sally's
sister Jane. Starting with iPhoto '09 8.0.2, you can Control-click
one of the close-ups of Jane, choose the Name command from the
contextual menu, and enter Jane's name. Previously, you would only
have been able to reject the pictures of Jane while training iPhoto
to recognize Sally.
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2009-04/Naming-faces-directly.png>
**Detect Missing Faces** -- In organize mode, if you Control-click a
photo or selection of photos, the contextual menu as of iPhoto '09
8.0.2 contains a new command: Detect Missing Faces. My understanding
is that sometimes iPhoto does a poor job at identifying faces in
pictures on its initial scan, and this command lets you force it to
run again on a subset of your collection, with less stringent
guidelines. I've tried using Detect Missing Faces on photos that
contain faces that iPhoto didn't identify the first time, but only
once in a number of attempts did it actually detect a previously
missed face. Oh, and for reasons known only to Apple, the little
lozenge that appears under faces that you haven't yet named now
contains the text "unnamed" instead of "unknown face." Go figure.
**Rescan for Location** -- Also new in the contextual menu that
appears when you Control-click a photo in iPhoto '09 8.0.2 is a
Rescan for Location command. Although I haven't been able test this,
I believe that the point of this command is to enable iPhoto to pick
up geotags that are added to photos by third-party tools like Houdah
Software's HoudahGeo and Ovolab's GeoPhoto. I also gather that
iPhoto '09 8.0.2 now allows you to enter latitude and longitude
values directly when geotagging photos. Personally, I'm waiting for
a GPS-enabled Canon PowerShot camera before I get more involved with
Places.
<http://www.houdah.com/houdahGeo/>
<http://www.ovolab.com/geophoto/>
**Descriptions, Not Commands?** Last, and absolutely least, Apple made
several truly minor changes in the new black Information dialogs
that debuted in iPhoto '09 for photos and face snapshots. Initially,
iPhoto used imperative tags: "Enter photo location," "Enter
description," "Enter full name," and "Enter email address." Starting
with iPhoto '09 8.0.2, Apple switched to purely descriptive tags
that lack the capitalized "Enter" command: "photo place,"
"description," "full name," and "email address."
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2009-04/Info-dialog-80.png>
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/2009-04/Info-dialog-802.png>
Most people should be able to figure this out, and once you've
entered a full name or an email address in those fields, you'll know
how to do it in the future. But overall, I think losing the "Enter"
command is a move in the wrong direction, especially since these new
black Information dialogs indicate that something is a
user-addressable field only with bright white text (gray text is
read-only) and with a field border that appears only on mouse-over.
It may be attractive, but it's not very discoverable, and the text
change makes it worse.
TidBITS Watchlist: Notable Software Updates for 13-Apr-09
---------------------------------------------------------
by Doug McLean <[email protected]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/10200>
VMware Fusion 2.0.4 from VMware is a stability and security update
to the popular Windows virtualization software. The latest version
addresses a critical vulnerability in the virtual machine display
that could enable a guest operating system to run code on the host.
($79.99, free update, 186 MB)
<http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/>
WireTap Studio 1.0.11, WireTap Anywhere 1.0.4, and Snapz Pro X 2.1.4
from Ambrosia Software update the company's core productivity tools
for the upcoming Mac OS X 10.5.7. A shared framework among the
applications has been updated, which maintains compatibility with
the latest Mac hardware and supports the next maintenance release of
Mac OS X. (WireTap Studio retails for $69, WireTap Anywhere for
$129, and Snapz Pro X for $69; free updates)
<http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/wiretap/>
<http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/wta/>
<http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/>
TweetDeck v0.25 from Iain Dodsworth updates the popular Twitter
client with a fix for a memory leak, short URL previews, Twitpic
thumbnails, recording and sharing capabilities for 12seconds videos,
and added Facebook integration. Also new is the option to have
usernames auto-complete in the tweet box, the option to include
hashtags automatically when replying to messages, and the removal of
the capability to direct message oneself. (Free, 2.1 MB)
<http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/>
<http://12seconds.tv/>
PDFpen 4.1.2 and PDFpenPro 4.1.2 from SmileOnMyMac are the latest
versions of the company's PDF editing utilities. Both version
updates have added a new item in the File menu, Mail Document, that
enables users to send the PDF document they're working on via email.
When selected, the feature opens a new email message and
automatically attaches the PDF to it. ($49.95/$99.95, free updates,
12.2 MB/12.4 MB)
<http://www.smileonmymac.com/PDFpen/>
<http://www.smileonmymac.com/PDFpenPro/>
HoudahGeo 2.2 from Houdah Software updates the photo geocoding
software with a handful of new features. Changes include the
capability to write directly into the iPhoto '09 Places database,
all-new map based geocoding, a track library, access to Lightroom 2
folders, offline bookmark geocoding, and automatic altitude
information. ($30 new, free update, 4.7 MB)
<http://www.houdah.com/houdahGeo/>
Dialectic 1.4 from JNSoftware is a maintenance update to the phone
dialing utility. In the latest version, the Google Voice Dial Method
has replaced the GrandCentral Dial Method, the Fritz!Box Dial
Method's dialing has been improved, Daylite tasks can now be
integrated when making and receiving calls, and the Firefox
extension has been improved to add automatic highlighting and
hyperlinking of phone numbers when pages load. Also, several bugs
have been fixed, including one that caused dialing to fail when
using some VoIP Methods such as BroadVoice or ViaTalk, and one that
sometimes created an errant incoming task in Daylight when making
outgoing calls. Finally, several minor code optimizations and
improvements have been made, and the documentation has been updated.
($25, free update, 6.2 MB)
<http://www.jonn8.com/dialectic/>
Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk for 13-Apr-09
----------------------------------------
by Jeff Carlson <[email protected]>
article link: <http://db.tidbits.com/article/10205>
**Mac compatibility of Garmin Forerunner 305** -- Garmin claims Mac
compatibility, but has anyone actually tried it? And what about
other options? (9 messages)
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/2577>
**DVDs or hard disk for archiving photos?** Readers discuss the best
ways to archive digital photos, including online backup services.
(29 messages)
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/2578>
**Ten Surprising Uses of BBEdit** -- A reader contributes an eleventh
surprising use of Bare Bones Software's text editing powerhouse. (1
message)
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/2580>
**Slides Publisher for Screen Saver** -- Miss the old .Mac slideshow
feature that enabled you to publish photos that someone else's
screen saver would use? A reader figured out a way to get it working
again. (4 messages)
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/2581>
**When will a new MacBook Pro 15 come?** What's the likelihood that
Apple will release a new MacBook Pro soon? (13 messages)
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/2582>
**"Save As" in Leopard's Mail.app, v 3.5** -- The Safari 4.0 beta may
be interfering with the capability to save plain text and RTF files
from Mail messages. (11 messages)
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/2583>
**iTunes Drops DRM, Initiates Tiered Pricing** -- Now that Apple is
offering DRM-free music, it's possible to upgrade (for a fee)
existing songs to the higher-quality versions. But not all may be
available for upgrade. (8 messages)
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/2585>
**.Mac HomePage Web Application To Be Discontinued** -- Readers
clarify details about Apple's decision to remove the capability to
create Web pages online. (2 messages)
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/2588>
**10 Undocumented Changes in iPhoto** -- It's possible to merge two
Faces sets that share similar name information. (3 messages)
<http://emperor.tidbits.com/TidBITS/Talk/2590>
$$
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