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- Psystar Declares Gutsiness With New Apple Clone
Apparently Psystar isn’t content to sit back and rest on their laurels (which consist primarily of being really good at making loud fan noise). Despite the ongoing legal battle between themselves and Apple, they just released yet another addition to their line of Mac clones. The new machine, called the Open(3), is obviously meant to compete directly with Apple’s recently released Mac mini refresh.And compete it does, when it comes to hardware specifications. The Open(3)’s base configuration includes a 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo E7400 processor, 2GB DDR2 800 RAM, a 500GB 7200RPM SATA HD, and a GeForce 8400GS 256MB graphics card. All of which nicely one-ups the Mac mini’s specifications at the same price point of $599. Of course, you don’t get the same small form factor that you do with the mini, but you do get the ability to upgrade to a 1TB HD, add in an extra HD, and choose from a bevy of other options.
It seems like quite the package, considering the price, but if you take a closer look at what isn’t there, it starts to look a little fishy. No FireWire, no Bluetooth, and no networking (Ethernet or wireless) are included at all at the $599 price point, and all are fairly costly add-ons. Plus, integrated Bluetooth isn’t available, and instead you get a USB dongle for your extra 40 bucks.
Psystar seems to be keeping the general price tag low by nickel and diming you on basic extras that should be included to begin with. Even if you still end up getting more muscle for your money in the end, I’m not tempted in the least by this offering. How future-proof is a Psystar machine, after all, even leaving aside the issue of their legal battle with Apple? Who’s to say that Snow Leopard, when it comes out, will be completely and permanently incompatible with Psystar hardware? You get what you pay for, and I think this is especially the case with these clone machines. That said, if anyone actually takes the plunge and decides to buy one of these, I’d love to hear about your experiences.
Переслать - Songbird Adds 7Digital Music Store Integration, Gains Ground on iTunes
The Mozilla foundation’s alternative media manager program, Songbird, recently got a nice new addition that brings its functionality even closer to that of iTunes, the Apple monopoly-holder it seeks to unseat. That addition is the ability to buy music from directly within the program, just like you can do with the iTunes store. You’ll be buying from 7digital, an online music distributor based in the UK.7digital is the UK’s number one digital media distributor, and has localized stores for seven other European countries. Their library is nothing to sneeze at either, with 6 million titles and clients like EMI, Sony-BMG and Universal. That’s not too far behind the iTunes store’s roughly 8 million tracks, although the selection might differ according to the very different markets to which each store caters. Prices are similar to the iTunes store, with individual tracks priced at 99 cents. Track quality is excellent, too, thanks to DRM-free, 320kbps MP3s. You can also turn on 7digital’s recommendations engine to get suggestions from the service based on your purchases.
The 7digital music store is available as an add-on for Songbird 1.1.1, and appears in your left-hand menu under the sub-title “Stores,” which seems to imply that Mozilla plans to partner with other content providers in the future. They’ll definitely have to go elsewhere if they want to offer video for sale once they eventually get Songbird’s video playback features up and running. It’ll be tougher to crack the dominance of iTunes in that market, since there aren’t as many small, independent distributors with big-name contracts.Plus they’ve got that little issue of adding device support for iPods and the iPhone before I can seriously consider throwing off the shackles of iTunes. Maybe Apple will play nice and help them out? That’s about as likely as me getting a Zune and any WinMo powered phone.
Переслать - The Dell Adamo: An "Ultra-thin, Portable Aphrodisiac"
Those aren’t my words (thank heavens), but rather Dell’s own. Check out this video. It’s OK to admit it — I almost threw up, too.
All this talk about the “love of industrial design” and “exceptional materials” coming from Dell is rather odd. And could they copy Apple any more in terms of their design discussions? Let’s see.
- Edge-to-edge glass? Check
- Made of one solid block of aluminum? Check
- Backlit keyboard? Check
- Jon Ive wanna-be designer, complete with accent? Check
“Created to elicit desire and redefine the image of power.” Really? You know, between that comment and the whole “aphrodisiac” thing, this laptop might be illegal in 17 states.
So, aside from all the Harlequin romance language, what’s this thing really about? Well:
- Dell couldn’t resist going with a lower-cost 16:9 display even in a premium product. Blow two grand at Dell and still not get 800 vertical pixels.
- The “lightning fast” Intel processors are 1.2 or 1.4GHz; it’s pretty slow lightning.
- Front-side bus is last year’s 800MHz, as is the speed of the DDR3 memory.
- No graphics listed, likely Intel integrated.
- On the plus side, you do get a 128GB SSD.
- OS is Windows Vista.
- Minimum price is $2,000.
Even a cursory comparison with the MacBook Air reveals the Apple to be a better deal. Faster, a better screen, better graphics, and all in a 25 percent lighter package.
Maybe I should at least give Dell kudos for trying, but the video is a little… strange. “Adamo resulted from the union of technology with pleasure.” (Um, make that 23 states.)
Переслать - Fonts 301: Managing Fonts and Font Problems
Who needs font management? If you have ever installed additional fonts on your Mac, then you do.
Because of the Mac’s wide adoption in the desktop publishing and design world, managing fonts in OS X has long been an important, if unpleasant, task. The Apple tools have always been meager, but Leopard has made important improvements to Font Book, the system utility for managing installed fonts. However, there are still circumstances in which you may want to enlist the help of additional tools to get your fonts into shape.
Continuing our Font School series, I will outline the areas where font management software can help. Also, be sure to read our overview of Font Management Apps for the Mac.
Why Do I Need to Manage Fonts?
There are two general reasons why you would want to enlist software to help manage your fonts. The first, and most obvious, opportunity is simply to get a better handle on the fonts that are available for use in your designs or documents. If you work in a group or team, then it becomes even more important that everyone have the same fonts so you can more easily pass work around without experiencing weird font substitution problems.
The second opportunity is to improve system and application performance. Mac OS X Leopard does just fine with several hundred individual font variations in a few hundred families. When you get beyond that, into thousands of fonts, the system starts to slow down and certain applications take forever to update font menus or even launch. You will want a tool that can activate only the fonts that you need to keep things running nice and lean. Also, some applications like Adobe Creative Suite, QuarkXpress, and Microsoft Office manage their own fonts and font management tools can help you consolidate control.
When Fonts Go Bad
The other important reason for good font management practices, and good font management tools, is to provide you with some assistance in sorting out problems. The most common problems are the system locking up or dropping into a kernel panic when trying to load a bad font or in the event of a Font ID conflict. Good font management software should help you find corrupt fonts and ID conflicts and deal with them. Other problems are generally caused by bad font substitution (the system picking the wrong font and displaying gobbledygook in your email or browser) or corrupt font caches (gobbledygook characters written on top of each other and other nonsense). Good font management software helps manage these issues or at least helps clean up the mess.
Common Problems
Font Cache Corruption
The System, Word, and Adobe all keep their own font cache to speed up on-screen rendering. If the cache becomes corrupt, you will see all sorts of weird behavior. The symptoms include weird characters all printed on top of each other. The fix? Simply flush the cache. In the case of the system cache, you will need to restart the computer when you do so. Most font utilities include a tool to flush these font caches. I like the free Linotype FontExplorer X myself.
Font ID Conflicts
Font ID conflicts prevent the system from loading all the fonts properly. The most common symptom is that the computer will simply not boot except in safe mode. If the system boots, but then hangs when trying to login to a user account, you probably have a conflict (or maybe a corrupt font) in the User font library. Font management software can help you find ID conflicts and resolve them.
Corrupt Fonts
Fonts, just like other files, can become corrupt. If this happens, the system will often hang because fonts are loaded at such a low level in the operating system. There are a few font utilities that can scan for corrupt fonts. FontDoctor and Smasher are two that are available today. Good font management software will scan for corrupt fonts as they are added to the library and FontAgent Pro will also check as fonts are activated.
Font Substitution
Many times, documents specify the font that they are using in a non-specific way. A great example is a CSS stylesheet that asks for Times. There are several variants of the Times font and sometimes your system will pick the wrong one when trying to render the text on the screen. If you see nonsense text or characters in your email or your web browser, you almost certainly have a font substitution problem. The fix is to deactivate the problem font.
Pro Tip: If you see gobbledygook in email or in your browser, try deactivating Helvetica Fraction or Times Phonetic because these seem to be the most common problems. If you need more help, check out the very well written, and relatively inexpensive, e-book from TidBITS publishing titled, Take Control of Font Problems in Leopard.
Переслать - Five Developers React to iPhone 3.0
With all the big announcements from Apple’s iPhone briefing yesterday, the web has been abuzz with talk about the impact this will have on the iPhone. I managed to corner a few iPhone developers that have paid releases out in the app store now to get their first reaction to the news.
Smule
The team at Smule, the people who brought us Ocarina, Sonic Lighter, and Zephyr, were featured in the briefing with Apple yesterday. They demoed a new app that will take advantage of the peer-to-peer API’s in the iPhone 3.0 SDK.Yeah, we offered a sneak peak of our new product, Leaf Trombone: World Stage, the first massive multi-player social music game (that’s a mouthful sir). We demonstrated a duet over their new Peer-to-peer API. In effect, this allows to devices to discover and pair, regardless of wifi/cell, etc. The discovery capability is quite neat. And the bandwidth is pretty darn good.
Ge and David performed “Phantom of the Opera” as a duet over bluetooth on two iPhones, which everyone can now enjoy by streaming the presentation. Of course, we haven’t seen all the magic that has become possible with the iPhone 3.0 SDK.
We have held back some of the more significant components of the leaf trombone for when we launch the product…
Iconfactory
Craig Hockenberry is a principal at Iconfactory, the collective of creative minds that brought us App Store favorites Twitterific and Frenzic. When asked about his reaction to today’s announcements, Craig was most impressed by the forward momentum of the iPhone platform.“The thing that's most positive in my mind is that today showed us how serious Apple is about this platform. They are not resting on their laurels: this release includes major enhancements for users and developers alike. “
Gedeon Maheux, another princiapl at Iconfactory, expressed his excitement and concerns about the new SDK.
We’re very excited about the potential opportunities that 3.0 represents, but there are also the possibility of pitfalls such as creating “content-free” apps that need paid upgrades to really deliver.
When asked about other changes, Craig felt that it was going to take some time to see how the App Store in-app payment mechanism would affect their current and future products. When pushed for further reaction, no single feature seemed to elicit enough excitement to bring out the CHOCKLOCK today, but expect some ALL CAPS tweets once developer.apple.com is back up and Craig can get his fleshy palms on the 3.0 SDK.
GroceryIQ
Jason Boehle is the co-founder of Free State Labs and one of the developers behind GroceryIQ. The company has since been acquired by Coupons, Inc. and development continues on the next version of the GroceryIQ app which will include syncing shopping lists between phones.The most significant new feature announced today for Grocery iQ is push notifications. For example, you can know when your significant other adds an item to your shopping list. We are working on phone-to-phone sync right now, and push notifications will make that feature more useful.
While Jason is relieved that cut, copy and paste and MMS have finally found their way to the iPhone, like many others, he was most impressed with the bright future for the platform.
The 3.0 software is hugely important for the iPhone platform, as it shows Apple is continuing to innovate and blur the boundaries between phone and computer. iPhone developers should be very excited, as Apple is allowing more access to the hardware and software inside the device, and is providing us with much better ways to monetize our apps over time.
Marketcircle
Alykhan Jetha (better known as AJ) is the CEO of Marketcircle, the Mac business software company. They are working to bring their Daylite productivity management solution to the iPhone with the imminent release of Daylite Touch. Marketcircle is keen on the push notification service for Daylite Touch.I also think that cut & paste and Spotlight will make the iPhone or iPod even more productive for a lot of people. We are looking forward to see how apps like ours can participate in Spotlight as well as how the whole thing works.
Still, there were some disappointments too.
I was hoping for background processes, or even periodic background processes, but no luck with that. I think that for a lot of apps, being able to run in the background every 30 minutes (or X hours) when the user is not using the device as opposed to always running would significantly reduce the battery problem. These things wouldn’t have to run for long. For example our typical sync takes less than 20 seconds.
Double Encore
Dan Burcaw, CEO of iPhone development consultancy Double Encore, was one of the early movers in the iPhone market and led the team behind the Brightkite iPhone app. Dan was also on hand for Apple’s announcements and was still riding the Apple high after he left 1 Infinite Loop and spoke with me on the way to the airport.This definitely keeps the ball rolling. It was going to be hard for competitors to catch the iPhone and the App Store anyways, but I think Apple said, “We need to be flexible so we can keep this snowball rolling.” Everyone I talked to, my peers, other companies, are saying, “this thing just got better in a lot of ways.” Sure, Apple addressed the specific things that people wanted to change, but this is a really solid, broad release.
Since Dan was in the briefing, I was curious about the announcement that got the most attention from those present.
<laughing> You know, the Apple people kept asking that question too. I’m not sure, but as soon as the video goes up, look for this… When the ESPN app gets a push notification, the alert sound is the ESPN jingle. Da-da-da. That was cool. iPhone 3.0 gives people new ways to extend their brand. The new business models are going to allow companies to extend their brand to the iPhone in a big way too. All these changes to the SDK will bring the big boys into the game that had been sitting on the sidelines, now that they can use their branding in a bigger, richer way.
If you haven’t thought about building an iPhone app, you might want to look into it. This thing is going to be a runaway train by the time 3.0 hits.
A Runaway Train
The strong consensus among all the developers that I spoke with is that the 3.0 announcements have renewed their confidence in the iPhone platform. With 30 million devices out there (iPhone and iPod touch) and the momentum of the app store, existing developers are probably more excited about the iPhone than ever. If I could share one insight, it would be to keep an eye on what happens with the new accessory communication options. I heard several rumblings that this opens up a whole new round of innovation for the iPhone.
While no one picked any one single software feature, API, or Core service as the Next Big Thing, everyone was thrilled with the breadth and depth of the changes to the SDK. A theme developed that these developers felt like the wide range of features announced today made a strong statement about Apple’s commitment to the future of the iPhone platform. A future that, frankly, I’m pretty excited to watch unfold as well.
Переслать - iPhone Developers: What 3.0 Means for You
Greetings iPhone Developers! It seems you’ve got a lot to digest after yesterday’s iPhone 3.0 announcement. Certainly the wheels are turning on how you can implement all the nifty new features.
By now, (if you’ve been able to access the developer page at Apple.com) you’re probably even scanning all the new documentation for the stuff you’ve been waiting months to get at. But since you’re all in it for the untold fame and fortune, you should stop and think about your customer, too. Let’s recap some of the high points that you should consider from yesterday’s announcements, and how they will affect your paying customers. (Developers of free apps may, of course, follow along as well.)
Business Models
From the sounds of things, you’ve been clamoring for this capability quite a bit. Now you’ve got it, so what’s next? Roll out a solid application framework and you can submit content updates that customers can optionally download to expand on your app’s experience. New playable levels, media content, location-specific data — the world is your oyster. Not a shabby way to expand on your own revenue streams for hard work, eh?
Beware however, the weary customer. Recently the soothing sounds app, Ambiance, got quite the backlash when they went to a downloadable model — and they weren’t even charging for those audio files. So while these new business models will open many doors for existing and future apps alike, be sure to make your intent clear with your customers to avoid headaches later.
The next question becomes, ‘What does the downloadable content approval process look like?’ Hopefully it doesn’t too closely resemble that of the full applications. For those developers who like to put out regular updates of their apps to support their faithful customers with new levels (I’m looking at you, Pocket God), this will hopefully become a giant time-saver. We shall wait and see.
1,000 New APIs
There’s nearly a crap ton of new APIs to start sifting through. The extremely capable hardware that resides within the iPhone is now more at developers’ finger tips than ever before. Get real-time GPS coordinates for turn-by-turn style apps. Communicate with other iPhones and third-party peripherals using bluetooth or the dock connection cable. Yet another revenue stream, as accessory makers and iPhone developers work in tandem to create a whole new array of tools to hook up to our iPhones!
While Apple revealed some exciting ones today, there are probably plenty of diamonds yet in the rough. Undoubtedly many a developer will be looking for a handful of APIs to do things that they aren’t currently able to with their apps.
It’s just a feeling, but as Apple begins allowing developers more access to the iPhone hardware, and to code without the proverbial hand tied behind their backs, we could really begin to see some amazing products as a result. Considering only the APIs announced yesterday, I think the level of utility people will get from these capabilities will be exponential. And as the level of quality offerings rises significantly, developers may be able to start charging more for the well-crafted on which apps they work so hard.
The Upgrade Road Map
So now the difficult part. While the geeks among us will be foaming at the mouth to upgrade to 3.0 when it finally drops “this summer,” many more are probably going to hang back. Some will wait out of concern from a dot-oh release, and others probably just aren’t going to be dialed into the news. (Until Apple/Wireless Carrier sends out their text message reminder, that is.) At what point do you require your customers to upgrade to the iPhone 3.0 firmware to use your application?
I, for one, welcome our 3.0 overlords and the functionality that comes with it, and say, ‘Bring on the new features!’ But there are bound to be paying customers who may be resentful of leaving their happy, secure place on the 2.x platform. For the developers of free apps, maybe this isn’t such an issue — the users paid nothing for it, so supporting their stay on 2.x may be a moot point. Either way, the migration to 3.0 features should be one you consider carefully, and communicate clearly to your customers.
Another possibility is maintaining 2.x and 3.x branches of code. Keeping two versions of code is no light burden by itself. And who’s to say how Apple will address that particular developer approach? It’s something to consider as you lay your plans. Of course you’ve got about three and a half months until the iPhone anniversary (June 29) if that is indeed Apple’s definition of, “this summer.”
Conclusion
You’ve got a lot to play with in the new 3.0 beta SDK. If I were a fart-app developer I’d be pinpointing stinky geographical locations, so that audible notifications could be pushed to phones when they are nearby — the closest thing to Smell-o-Vision. All kidding aside (please, let that remain vapor-ware), figure out what adds the most value to your applications, while also taking the best care of your paying clientele. Amazingly, not everyone will be on board on day one, (and perhaps even on day 60). But if you keep them informed of your intentions, and put out quality 1’s and 0’s, there’s bound to be a brave new world available to you come “this summer.”
Переслать - Initial Thoughts on iPhone OS 3.0
The blogosphere will be “all OS 3.0, all the time” for a while. I wanted to wait a little bit and see some reaction to the update.
Predictably, Paul Thurrott didn’t approve. He cherry-picked a few things and claimed they should have been there from the start. He conveniently ignored the new APIs and other enhancements, and then just griped about there being no hardware announcements. At a software event. The man gets less relevant about Apple every day.
To me, the biggest surprise came from another GigaOM network site, jkOnTheRun. An article there noted that 40 percent of the readers polled were “underwhelmed” with the update. A few even said the announcement “pushed” them to the Palm Pre.
What announcement did they watch? Seriously, there were some things introduced that, had Palm announced them today, I’m sure would have been proclaimed as incredible, stupendous, colossal, way ahead of the iPhone, etc.
What I liked best about the announcement was that it was typically Apple. Sure, it included some “obvious” features, but it also included things no one had thought of or discussed.
Peer to Peer
This one is extremely interesting. As a developer you can write a device that will talk to another iPhone or accessory in question. It utilizes Apple’s proven Bonjour technology and wireless connection via Bluetooth (no Wi-Fi needed). No pairing is required, either.
This makes it a great impromptu setup for, say, the back seat of a car where your kids can play games with each other. The ability to talk to accessories is also big, and can be done over the dock connector as well as using BT.
1,000 New APIs
No, this isn’t big at all (*rolling eyes*). I still believe the biggest question mark on the Pre is using HTML/JAVA/CSS for app development. Some good stuff for the iPhone was written in this manner, but nothing like what we’ve seen since the bona-fide SDK. How will the Pre fair any better?
Meanwhile, the powerful SDK for the iPhone just took a leap ahead. You’ve got in-app e-mail capability, the proximity sensor is now available, the built-in iPod library is accessible, streaming audio and video over HTTP, a shake API is included, Apple’s data detectors are available, and even an in-game voice chat capability.
And that’s just scratching the surface of the new APIs for developers.
There’s also the push mechanism, which I think is great for background notification, though lacking elsewhere. I wrote about that here.
In-App Purchases
Another developer-enticing feature — and it’s hard not to see them excited by this — now you can sell your app for $5 or $10 but not allow every level, or every control. You can upsell for the more serious users willing to pay more, while still allowing the casual user to obtain an affordable version of your app. This makes a lot of sense to me.
Meanwhile, I applaud Apple’s decision to allow in-app purchases only for purchased apps. Some developers may balk at not being able to give it away and then upsell, but that’s borderline “bait and switch” in my opinion. I think Apple’s correct to claim that a free app should not prompt you to purchase anything.
Developer Demos
Depending on your interests, these ranged from interesting, to boring, to outright bizarre. But remember this was a software OS event. Sometimes there’s no better way to describe the use of a new capability than just to show it being done by others (some of which may be your own competition). These are, if you will, a “necessary evil” in an SDK demo.
I found ESPN’s demo pretty cool, and the medical apps amaze me as well.
Search
Apple’s implementation of this is sweet. Not only can you search in an app, like Mail, but they have a spotlight search page as well. I can search for songs, artists, calendar entries, etc. Bottom line is Apple brought Spotlight to the iPhone. Pretty obvious, but very nice.
Another cool feature is that for email it will search not just the 200 mail messages you have on the phone, but continue the search on the server as well. This is great! In fact, I may drop back to only 100 messages or so locally since I can now search them all anyway.
The Checklist Stuff
Then there’s the stuff Apple supposedly had to have. I say “supposedly” because Apple sold 17 million of these devices — 30 million with the touch — and 800,000,000 apps without any of these allegedly mandatory features.
- Copy and paste looks well done. Frankly, until I can get my grubby little fingers on it and try to drag the targets, etc., I won’t know how well it works in practice, but it looks good.
- I didn’t need MMS, but I’m glad I’ll have it. Some people I know don’t have smartphones (gasp!), so emailing a picture is pointless. They use MMS and I’d like to, too. Sucks that my 1G iPhone won’t support it, but I’m buying a new one with OS 3.0 anyway.
- The landscape keyboard is a big thing for a lot of people, though it means nothing to me. I don’t use my thumbs to type. Still, it’s a pretty obvious feature to add and will likely make a lot of people happy.
- I really like the improvements to the Messages app (formerly SMS?). Nice that I can delete specific messages and not the whole conversation. Also nice that I can forward messages.
Other Stuff
And then there were the things mentioned right at the end, with no further explanation or demo.
- Notes syncing. I’ve avoided a lot of notes for this very reason, choosing instead to use an open email or text file on iDisk so that I’d gave access to it all. Now I can just use notes and be done with it.
- Auto-Fill and anti-phishing should help Safari a lot.
- Auto Wi-Fi login. I use Easy Wi-Fi now and can tell you this is a very handy feature.
And More…
The above is just a rough summary of today’s announcements. There’s clearly a lot more there that wasn’t touched on.
It’s going to be interesting to see reports out of the developer community who got the beta today. As they play with the above features, we’ll see how they are implemented and get more details.
Anybody who thinks this upgrade is anything other than huge is deluding themselves. If 2.0 was the Enterprise upgrade with implementing Microsoft’s ActiveSync technology, then 3.0 is back to the developer and consumer community. Opening the floodgates on more useful and interesting apps while tossing in many of the “checklist items” people felt they needed.
I’m impressed with the breadth and scope of this release.
Переслать - Background Apps: They're Not Just for Push
So Apple announced their push facility for iPhone OS 3.0 today. I think that’s great. Unfortunately, it’s only half a solution, and the other half is pretty important, too. At least it is to me. Let me explain.
If you want an app to let you know of something going one while you’re not looking — so you can do other things and stay informed — then push is great. In fact, I agree with Apple that keeping the whole app running in the background is overkill for this. In that regard, their push solution seems a great addition, keeping us from running numerous apps (and burning CPU cycles and battery life) for no other reason than we don’t want to lose touch. I’m with Apple on this solution all the way.
But sometimes it’s not about notification. Sometimes it’s just about switching.
Every single day I use NetNewsWire on my iPhone to read RSS feeds. I do this an hour or more each day. During that time I also stay in touch with friends and work via email and chat. Since I use Apple’s Mail and SMS apps, I already get background notification (further proof I know how necessary that functionality is). However, when I go to mail or chat to read/respond, I have to quit NNW. And when I go back to that app it must relaunch, and then I have to navigate back to where I was. This is frustrating enough that sometimes I delay responding until I hit a more convenient point in the text.
Why does it have to be this way? My point is that I don’t always want an app in the background for notification purposes. Sometimes I want it in the background because I’ll be switching right back to it. I’m only leaving for a few minutes; I’ll be right back. Why do I have to quit the freakin’ thing?
Push does nothing to address this usability issue. This is where allowing it to stay open in the background is a great solution.
To be sure, an app might be written to try to remember where it was, but even then I still have to relaunch it and let it figure that out. Why can’t I just switch to an app and back to another?
Way back when Switcher hit the Mac (and DOS before that), it wasn’t about background notifications. It was about not having to feel restricted to one app at a time, and not having to wait for an app to startup. I think those are still valid reasons for switching today. I wish the iPhone would allow it.
Make no mistake, the push facility is huge, and will be a great improvement. It addresses a critical portion of backgrounding in a better and more efficient manner. It also levels the playing field in giving third-party functionality that Apple’s apps already had. But it’s not the whole story, and it appears I’ll still be stuck with my switching problem even with a sleek new 3.0 iPhone.
Переслать - Apple iPhone 3.0 Event: A Grab Bag of Much-Needed Additions
Today was Apple’s iPhone 3.0 Software event, and iPhone users will now have to think up a bunch of other things to moan about in its wake. Among the laundry list of over 100 new feature additions are some of the most frequently talked about omissions, including Cut, Copy & Paste, MMS, landscape keyboard support for all main Apple applications, and push notification for third-party apps.New iPhone SDK
But that’s just a taste of what was revealed at Cupertino today. Developers will probably be a very happy crowd, since the new developer’s SDK gives them access to over 1,000 new APIs.
Push Notification
That includes the above mentioned push notification API, which allows developers to provide audio, text or badge icon notifications for their apps. Just to be clear, the apps aren’t actually running in the background, which Apple says is too costly in terms of battery life. Instead, updates are pushed from the developers server using Apple’s own notification system.
Google Maps
Other highlights for developers include Google Maps integration, so that maps will open right in the apps, instead of redirecting users outside to the official app. Some apps have tried to get around this by using their own maps, or maps from Yahoo, but the result has been clumsy at best.
Peripheral Support
Also noteworthy is hardware-specific app integration, which allows apps to be designed to work with different peripherals, connected to the iPhone via either the proprietary dock connector or Bluetooth. Demos of how this might work included using the iPhone as an equalizer for a stereo dock, and as a blood glucose monitor with a blood-testing device for diabetics.
P2P
Bluetooth can also now be used for peer-to-peer support, allowing iPhones to communicate with each other for multiplayer gaming, and other applications. App developer Smule showed off using this to perform a musical duet with their new Leaf Trombone instrument application.
Turn-by-Turn Navigation
The iPhone will also be able to support turn-by-turn navigation when 3.0 is released, although developers will have to provide their own maps due to licensing issues. Still, expect to see Garmin or some of the other big names jump on this bandwagon early.
Business Models/Payment Schemes
Last but not least, apps will be able to offer paid content, upgrades, and subscriptions from within, sidestepping the App Store altogether. This means the doors are open to a whole host of new business models, which could decrease a lot of the current clutter with regards to different versions of apps depending on price, and the litany of stand-alone book and comic apps. EA demoed the Sims 3 to show how this system can be used in terms of additional downloadable content in games.
iPhone 3.0 for End-Users
Copy/Cut/Paste
Developers aside, iPhone end-users will be pleased to find that many of their prayers have been answered. A full, cross-app, platform-wide Copy/Paste solution is present in 3.0, and it works exactly like Kevin Rose described yesterday. HTML copy is supported, as is image cutting, copying, and pasting, and you can now paste multiple images into an email as attachments.
Landscape Typing
The landscape keyboard can now be used in Mail, Notes and the new Messaging app, which replaces SMS. Good news for the chubby-fingered, like myself. This is a huge plus, since it’ll decrease some app store clutter and free up some space on my home screen.
MMS and A2DP
Messaging now supports MMS (iPhone 3G only), including picture, audio, contact and location messages. A2DP stereo support is also now present for owners of the 3G model iPhone, so you can break out those neglected Bluetooth headphones and enjoy being wire-free.
Voice Memo
A new Voice Memo app takes the place of the many third-party recorder apps currently available, allowing you to record, save, and email audio files natively.
Spotlight
Also completely new is Spotlight, and iPhone version of the Mac’s integrated search. Accessible by swiping left from your home screen, it gives you one-stop searching across your phone. Search is now present in Mail, SMS and basically every default Apple application. Spotlight will also search the names of third-party apps, so you can use it as a launcher if you have lots of pages on your springboard.
Overall, iPhone 3.0 seems like a long overdue correction of a number of oversights, with some exciting development tools thrown in. Don’t get too excited yet, though, since most of us will still have to wait for summer to take advantage of the new features. Developers can get their hands on a development beta right now, though. When it does drop, the update will be free for iPhone users, but iPod touch owner (both generations) will have to pay $9.95 for the update.
Переслать - Fonts 201: Font Management Apps for the Mac
If you are a designer, then you know the joy of having thousands and thousands of fonts available to use in your projects. You probably are also familiar with the despair of waiting for apps to launch, font menus to draw, and the horror of kernel panics when you get Font ID conflicts, the stray corrupt font, or your careful layout explodes when your app makes the wrong font substitution.
Font management has always been one of those dirty little secrets that no one really wants to deal with, but if you are serious about fonts, you need to enlist some tools to help you manage those fonts and fix common problems.
Continuing our Font School series, here’s the rundown on what font management apps are available for your Mac.
Font Book
Font Book has been included with OS X since Panther (10.3). The latest release in Leopard includes the ability to print out a book of fonts (so you have a ready reference for what the typefaces look like), validate fonts (to check for corruption), and the new ability to automatically activate fonts as they are needed (so that your documents display correctly even if the required font had been deactivated on your system).
Font Book manages your system and user fonts and helps provide easy activation and deactivation of individual fonts or collections (user-defined groups of fonts). Leopard also has a new feature to protect system fonts and replace required fonts if they have been removed by the user — something to be aware of when making changes with any of the following tools.
Linotype FontExplorer X
The only free option, besides Font Book, is the excellent Linotype FontExplorer X, which has just recently seen its last release. FontExplorer X improves on Font Book with better tools for managing fonts, auto-activation plug-ins for Adobe CS1-CS3 and QuarkXpress 6.5 and 7.x, and utilities to fix common font problems. You can buy fonts from the Linotype online store directly within the application.
I recommend Linotype FontExplorer X for anyone that needs font management and can live with the plug-in support (that is, you don’t need CS4 or QuarkXpress 8). Besides being free (a key factor in my recommendation), Linotype FontExplorer X is easy to use, gives you feedback when it is making changes (integrated with Growl, if you like), lets you clear font cache problems and quickly identify conflicts. I like how the application allows you to copy your fonts into the library and manage them in sets that can be automatically activated as needed for certain applications. The interface borrows heavily from iTunes, but this makes it easy to use.
FontExplorer X Pro
FontExplorer X Pro adds the fancy new suffix to its name in the latest 2.0 release along with a switch to a paid model. For $79 you get plug-in support for Photoshop CS3, the CS4 Suite and QuarkXpress 8. FontExplorer X Pro also works with the new FontExplorer X Server for central font management. Other improvements over the free version include a configurable toolbar and a new Quick Install feature that lets you automate the installation options to duplicate your settings on other machines in your shop. WYSIWYG view is relatively fast thanks to pre-rendered font previews.
If you have been using FontExplorer X, then upgrading to Pro makes sense if you need plug-in support for the latest Adobe and Quark apps. The server features could be nice in a shop that requires centralized control or licensing management. Otherwise, consider using the free version until you need the features in the paid version.
FontAgent Pro
FontAgent Pro 4 by Inside Software is another choice for full-featured font management, available for $99. This application has a very similar feature set to FontExplorer X Pro, including plug-ins for the current versions of Adobe Creative Suite and QuarkXpress for automatic activation of font sets. FontAgent Pro does a nice job of automatically categorizing your fonts as it imports them and giving you options for organizing them.
The WYSIWYG view is reasonably fast thanks to background processing of font profiles and previews. The search feature lets you enter multiple conditions or use keywords to find precisely the font you need. These conditions are also used to create smart sets, or dynamic groups of fonts (think smart playlists in iTunes). You can buy fonts directly inside the application from myfonts.com. FontAgent Pro comes with the Smasher utility for organizing and fixing font suitcases.
Suitcase Fusion 2
Suitcase Fusion 2 by Extensis has a long history that goes back over a decade to its early days as Suitcase by Symantec. This latest version is quite good and much improved over previous incarnations. It includes many of the same features as the previous apps. You’ve got auto-activation, font classifications, smart sets, previews, printable font books, and more. Plug-ins are limited to InDesign and Illustrator CS3 & CS4, and QuarkXpress 7 & 8. If you want auto-activation for Photoshop you will want to get FontExplorer or FontAgent.
There are two small details that I really like in Suitcase Fusion 2. One is the preview windows for fonts or sets can be “torn” off and hover on your display. You can mouse over these preview windows and use them to turn on (or off) font sets. This is a great addition to auto-activation and gives you another visual clue about which fonts are currently activated. Another detail I like is that the auto-activation process is managed with a new system preference item. The other apps launch a background daemon and place it in your login items without really telling you what it is doing. This invisible daemon is difficult to turn off. Suitcase requires that its daemon be running in the background to operate (as do all these programs) but I really like that I could go to the System Preferences pane and turn it off if I wanted to, say, test a bunch of font management apps that would otherwise conflict. Suitcase Fusion 2 includes the Font Doctor utility for resolving common font problems.
Fontcase
Fontcase is the new kid on the block, only released this past January. For a 1.0 release, Fontcase shows a lot of polish and the price is reasonable at $46. This app does not have auto-activation or plug-ins to manage Adobe or Quark application fonts, but it does an excellent job of displaying your font library and allowing you to create sets (including smart sets). The font browser is the fastest of the bunch, especially in grid view (the font card view in the screenshot below). Outline view (similar to the views in the other apps) is a tad slower, but still faster than the other apps in WYSIWYG mode.
Fontcase offers a really polished interface for managing and interacting with your fonts. If you like the iTunes metaphor in FontExplorer X Pro, you will love Fontcase. I really dig the tagging system, which is perfect for fonts and a bit more accessible than the keywords or notes features in the other apps. The printed font books are beautiful and miles better than what is available in competing apps. The downside is that you are lacking some of the really useful and practical features of the other apps like auto-activation, tools to resolve font problems, and background operations for activation/deactivation. Those features are apparently being planned, but the current lack of tools may deter professionals that are looking to take active control of thousands of fonts. Many people will be better served by the free Linoype FontExplorer X.
One feature that many people will find useful is the Bonjour font sharing technology in Fontcase. You can share your font vault over the local network and other Macs running Fontcase can download fonts into their own vault. This provides a simple way to keep workstations in the same shop in sync with fonts. Fontcase does not offer centralized license management or monitoring like the dedicated font server apps do so you’ll have to watch things yourself to make sure that you are legal with your font usage in a design shop setting. Be cautious with this feature though — sharing of fonts around the office is what usually gets people into font management trouble in the first place.
So Which is Right for Me?
First thing is to check out Linotype FontExplorer X. If you are working with Adobe CS3 (or earlier), this is a no brainer. You get excellent font management, utilities to fix problems, and auto-activation with the plug-ins for your apps. If you are using CS4 or QuarkXpress 8, then you will want to check out FontExplorer X Pro. The other pro apps (FontAgent Pro and Suitcase Fusion 2) are comparable. I would encourage you to download the free trials that are available for all of them and check them out for yourself.
If you are a home user or just want pretty font books, then by all means check out Fontcase. It allows you to manually manage your font sets fairly well and I love the UI for classifying and organizing fonts, but the auto-activation and features in the other apps are a real life-saver for a design professional that is working with a library of thousands of fonts.
Which font management application do you prefer (and why)?
Переслать - An Important Thing About iPhone OS 3.0: It's Not About the Pre
There's a story going around that some of what Apple may announce today for the iPhone 3.0 OS will be to counter Palm's Pre. Kevin Rose mentioned this, and it's covered in a few places, including right here.
Personally, I think such discussion is Pre-mature.
The Pre was announced little more than two months ago, and it’s unproven. There’s no way Apple would interrupt ongoing development to push new functionality to counter this device. No. Way.
- First, the Pre is vapor. Why in heaven's name would Apple begin rushing a new feature into the iPhone (possibly causing more harm than good) solely for the sake of a device that we won’t see for many months? And when it’s finally available it could be a freakin' disaster for all we know. Until the Pre hits the market with a big splash, it's no more an “iPhone killer” than the Prada, G1 or Storm were before it.
- Second, if you think Apple shipped iPhone OS 1.0 with no plans for 2.0, and then shipped 2.0 with no plans for 3.0, you haven’t paid much attention to Apple over the last decade. These guys have an OS (and for that matter, hardware) plan that they're following, and the announcement of one new device is not going to derail that.
- Third, developing an OS takes time. Even if they wanted to, just how much do you think Apple could get done in two months (and less than six until it likely ships)? Very little. For example, if background processing is announced for 3.0, are you going to believe it's because Apple slapped it together in a couple months in a state of panic, or because they were working on it all along? Obviously, it’s the latter.
What I’m trying to say is that if Apple fills "gaps" in the iPhone feature list tomorrow, it's because they've been working on them for a while, not because of any vapor device.
I’m sure this “Apple is worried about the Pre” meme will continue well after the OS announcement today, but I’m not buying it. Frankly, it makes zero sense at this stage in the respective devices’ lives.
Finally, none of this meant to disparage the Pre, which I'm as interested in seeing as anyone. Once it’s on the market for a month or two we’ll see what it really is. But, right now, the idea that Apple is worried enough about it to deviate from what has proven to be a hugely successful smartphone strategy is just silly.
Переслать - Game Developers Hit Paydirt With iPhone Apps
Gaming on a mobile phone is a relatively new phenomenon when compared to the decades that games like Pacman and Tetris have been around. However, the mobile gaming industry is exploding, and developers who have spent years creating games for the Mac are now jumping ship to create them for the iPhone instead.
Brian Greenstone, creator of the popular iPhone game Enigmo, says his company, Pangea Software, has sold over 800,000 copies in the last six months and netted $1.5 million in the process. Though the company at one time only created games for the Mac, the success of Enigmo has persuaded them to focus exclusively on developing games for the iPhone.
Greenstone says the company didn’t originally plan to go that route. In an interview with The Guardian online, he said, “The iPhone SDK came out, and we were just going to do some apps for fun. The next thing you know, the apps were making the Mac stuff look like a joke. The Mac stuff is like lunch money compared to what the iPhone does so there’s basically no point in going…back to the Mac.” He also says the iPhone is a much more entertaining platform to develop for and makes “50 times more” than similar games for the Mac.
Is this a sign of things to come? Not necessarily. As mocoNews.net’s Dianne See Morrison points out, random luck had a lot to do with Enigmo’s success. “For a start, [Greenstone] concedes that Pangea, as a long standing maker of Mac games, ‘got a lot of love from Apple,’ including being highlighted in the App Store.” Of course, getting a spot in the App Store’s Top 100 didn’t hurt either.
Randomness and good luck aside, it’s entirely possible that Mac game development will slow as the iPhone continues its march toward ubiquity. As evidenced by the wide array of productivity apps that we cover here, the iPhone is gaining traction as a plausible stand-in for a laptop. Add to that the fact that many people haul around a Nintentdo DS or PSP around for gaming-on-the-go, and it’s easy to see that there’s a niche ready to be filled by mobile gaming apps. I’m not ready to sound the death knell on games developed especially for the Mac, but I definitely expect it to take a downturn over the next couple of years.
Переслать - Apple's iPhone 3.0 Designed to Defend Against Palm Pre
With trademark confidence, Kevin Rose was pretty vocal about what we could expect to see from the new iPhone 3.0 software this Tuesday, and he claims to have it on good authority from a source who’s “been right before.” The basic purpose of the update, according to Rose, is to anticipate and match features that the Palm Pre is advertising that the iPhone does not yet have. Chief among these features is that mythical beast of iPhone legend, copy and paste.Rose described the upcoming feature, which he claims is definitely in iPhone 3.0, in his Diggnation podcast this past Sunday. The implementation sounds similar to the copy and paste we’ve already seen from MagicPad, which, you may recall, was the first individual, official app to bring copy and paste to the iPhone, though it was not platform-wide. Cutting, copying, and pasting will occur when you double-tap an insertion or selection point in text, which will bring up a magnified area. From there, you can drag to select an area to copy or cut, and choose from three buttons (Cut, Copy, Paste) to perform each action.
While Rose doesn’t go into detail about what other features will be included, a quick glance at the Pre’s specs can give us some clues. Looking at Gizmodo’s comparison, I find it hard to see what else Rose could be referring to with regards to other features Apple can introduce to bring the two devices more in line. Maybe tethering and stereo Bluetooth support, both of which would also be long overdue, and built-in multi-network instant messaging support?
What I’m more concerned with are the features he claims will be left out this time around. Aside from copy and paste, the three things he mentions as not being made available in iPhone 3.0 are arguably three of the most desired functions on anyone’s list. First, no background apps, which obviously doesn’t fit with the overall goal of beefing up the iPhone’s software to match the Pre, since this is one of the Pre’s biggest advantages. Also getting a miss this time around, according to Rose, are video recording and MMS. The latter is supported by the Palm Pre, though whether or not the forthcoming device will be able to handle video is not yet known.
I was very much looking forward to tomorrow, and I’m still interested, but Rose’s claims have taken the edge off of my excitement. If Apple shows up tomorrow with little else in hand besides copy and paste, which it should have included at the iPhone’s launch, then Palm’s upcoming device is going to look that much more fetching.
Переслать - Premium App Store Rumors Surface Once Again
On the eve of the iPhone 3.0 event, rumors are once again circulating that Apple will introduce a Premium section of the iTunes App Store, in order to provide a venue for developers to present higher priced apps without having to vie for attention with the many, many cheap independent apps currently available. The existing average price point of applications for the iPhone, which is trending even further downward, makes it impossible for big studios to devote a lot of time and energy to the development of big budget titles.When we first brought news of the rumored “boutique” app store, it was supposed to be reserved for games only. The latest rumors, courtesy of Wired.com, don’t limit the premium section to games, although it does say they will make up most of the section’s offerings. Wired doesn’t cite a source for the renewed rumors, but they do claim the possibility that the premium app store will be introduced alongside iPhone 3.0 at tomorrow’s official Apple event.
The base price for apps in the new section would start at $20. Considering the cost of the average DS or PSP new release, iPhone users would probably still be getting a better deal than most. Hopefully this will see iPhone and iPod touch users getting the best of both worlds, since the vast catalog of cheap apps will still be available, but there will also be ample room for better quality apps to occupy their own competitive space.
An introduction of this service at the iPhone 3.0 event does make sense, since it isn’t really news enough to merit its own separate event, but it will help add to the buzz surrounding the upcoming software overhaul. Add the fact that EA hasn’t introduced a big name title since Sim City, which makes it seem likely that there’s a reason they’re waiting, and I’d say the chances are pretty high that we will see the App Store get a little more classy in the near future.
Переслать - Fonts 101: A Font Primer
Over the next few days, I will be covering everything from font management apps to how to deal with font problems. By the end of the week you’ll hopefully have a solid handle on how to manage and troubleshoot fonts on your Mac. We’ll begin this series by taking a look at the history of fonts and the various formats that fonts exist in.
It might sound crazy today, but fonts were one of the first things that really got me interested in computers. Computer typography was a constantly evolving industry in the ’80s and ’90s. A certain part of my personal interest developed because I went to high school with a kid whose dad turned out to be a rock star of computer typography. You see, his dad invented a method to describe a font using a mathematical “language” rather than just a set of dots. John Warnock, along with partner Chuck Geschke, left Xerox PARC to start Adobe Systems to commercialize this breakthrough in computer science. The key to Adobe’s Postscript technology was the ability to describe a font as an outline rather than a set of dots. The bezier curves that made up the outline could be scaled to any resolution and then filled with the dots on the printer so that all the edges looked smooth. Totally tubular!
Steve Jobs got wind of Postscript and went to Warnock and Geshke to convince them to adapt their technology to make a printer language that would work with Apple’s forthcoming LaserWriter. The Mac was revolutionary, in part, because you could see fonts displayed on the screen that looked like the fonts you could output on a printer. What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) was a huge selling point for the Mac and the reason for its early dominance in desktop publishing and graphic design.
Fonts and the Mac
Because Apple was involved with fonts and typography from the very beginning, the Mac has support for a number of different font formats as they have evolved over the last 25 years. Here are the major formats that are found on the Mac that you can expect to see on your own machine.
Type 1 Fonts
If fonts were people, Postscript Type 1 Fonts would be the old men that sit around on the porch and gripe about how things used to be back in the day. The original outline fonts, Type 1 fonts are printer fonts (outlines) which must be kept together with their corresponding screen fonts (bitmaps) in order to render the text on screen. Even though they date back to the 80’s, Type 1 fonts have survived to this day and are still present in the font library of many designers.
Because of the problems caused by separate screen and printer font files, Adobe released Adobe Type Manager as a utility to render the outline fonts on screen. This was largely a response to TrueType and was successful in making all the designers who had invested lots of money in collections of Type 1 fonts very happy. If you have Postscript Type 1 fonts around today, you will want to make sure that you keep them with their bitmap fonts.
Type 1 Fonts have the file type LWFN. This type ID came from “LaserWriter font.”
Bitmap Fonts
Bitmap fonts are really out of use in the operating system, but remain as a legacy item. Bitmaps are basically fonts that are rendered at a specific size to be displayed on screen. They are not outline fonts, but rather a grouping of dots or pixels. You should only see these in conjunction with Postscript Type 1 fonts.
Part of the reason that Bitmap fonts stuck around is that font faces are typically adjusted by the font designer at small point sizes so that the proportions look correct. Bitmaps were carefully designed for each point size to look right at different sizes. Adobe came up with “hints” and in Postscript fonts to make these small adjustments on the fly and similar techniques have been employed in more modern font formats. Thus the need for hand-tweaked point sizes has diminished over the years and bitmaps aren’t really needed.
TrueType
If Type 1 fonts are the old men on the porch, TrueType fonts are having a mid-life crisis as they realize that they never really reached their potential and are being pushed aside by the new kids coming up. Invented by Apple and brought to market in 1991 along with System 7 to try and break the stranglehold that Adobe had on the desktop publishing and laser printer markets, TrueType fonts integrate the concept of screen and printer fonts so you only have to manage one file, called a font suitcase, which contained both. The format became widely popular for cheap or free fonts but, despite the sophisticated kerning and ligature features of Quickdraw GX and Apple Advanced Typography, never really took off among designers who continued to prefer the typefaces available in Postscript format.
Apple licensed the TrueType technology to Microsoft, so TrueType fonts are supported in both the Mac and Windows operating systems. Unfortunately, the fonts are implemented differently on each platform, so you will see Mac and Windows versions of the same font family in the TrueType format. Today, new TrueType fonts would only be released in the Windows format since the Mac also supports that format.
Because TrueType was envisioned as an alternative to Postscript, a number of TrueType fonts were created in character-width compatible sets for popular Type 1 fonts like Helvetica, Times Roman, and Courier. The familiar TrueType fonts that correspond to the venerable Postscript fonts are Arial, Times New Roman and Courier New. One particularly frustrating aspect of font management is figuring out which fonts are simply replacements for the same typeface in a different format so that you can standardize your designers on the same font.
The Mac TrueType fonts have the type FFIL while Windows TrueType fonts appear as .ttf files. Leopard is moving towards the Windows format .ttf files as the standard (as is everyone else).
Dfont files are a special case of TrueType where the font data has been moved in the data fork to support some of OS X’s unix underpinnings. These are only used for system fonts and you should never need to mess around with them.
OpenType
OpenType was announced in 1996, but became available around 2000-2001. This technology was jointly developed by Microsoft and Adobe to add additional capabilities to fonts and resolve the lingering conflicts of managing both screen and printer fonts. In particular, OpenType supports unicode character sets and non-Roman scripts like Arabic, though word processing or page layout software has to be written to expose those features to the user. At this time, Adobe’s entire library of fonts have been converted to OpenType and every other major font foundry releases their work in OpenType as well.
Although Tiger showed considerable support for OpenType fonts, Leopard goes much further and also includes support for Arabic script OpenType fonts.
OpenType fonts are .otf files in OS X.
Suitcase Files
In the old days of System 7, suitcase files held both screen and printer variants for TrueType fonts. The name still survives in OS X as a file type, but the implementation of font files in OS X has completely changed.
System Fonts
Mac OS X requires several fonts in order to display the menu bar and other UI elements. Because of this, OS X will often not boot at all if fonts are missing. Because fonts are loaded at a low-level in the operating system, problems with fonts can cause system crashes or performance problems. Leopard introduced the new concept of protected system fonts that will be replaced automatically if they are removed from the system font library to prevent such problems. If you remove some fonts and see them magically reappear, OS X may be helping you out by replacing the system fonts it needs.
Microsoft Word Fonts
Microsoft Office for Mac, partly because of Microsoft’s history of developing font technologies for Windows and partly to make Office documents more portable between Windows and Mac versions, includes a number of fonts in a standard install on the Mac. Some of these fonts are duplicates of fonts included with OS X and some are required by Office to render the toolbars and other interface elements of Office applications. These fonts were originally welcomed because they were better than the system fonts, but now the Leopard system fonts have surpassed the Microsoft fonts. Office 2004 and Office 2008 install fonts into different locations, so be aware of that as you try to clean up your fonts on your system.
Adobe Creative Suite Fonts
Adobe Creative Suite installs a large number of fonts in Mac OS X. CS3 and later put these fonts in the system library, but CS2 and the original CS placed them in an Adobe directory. If you are using Creative Suite, then you certainly want a large font collection, but you will end up with duplicates between Apple-provided system fonts and Adobe fonts. One of the most common font problems I see is a designer that has multiple versions of Helvetica installed that eventually conflict with each or simply cause confusion when choosing the right font for a project.
Get a Handle on Your Fonts
Tomorrow I will cover five software programs that help you manage your fonts: Font Book, FontExplorer X and FontExplorer Pro, FontAgent Pro, Suitcase Fusion X, and FontCase. In addition, if you really want an in-depth understanding of how fonts work in Leopard, I highly recommend that you check out two e-books from TidBITS Publishing: Take Control of Fonts in Leopard and Take Control of Font Problems in Leopard. Sharon Zardetto, who has been writing about the Mac for over 20 years, has created a really valuable resource for designers and support professionals alike. Tiger versions are also available if you are still supporting 10.4 in your shop. These books cover font technologies in far greater depth than I have here, and also explain how to fix a myriad of problems that may crop up.
Переслать - Weekly App Store Picks: March 14, 2009
Place your iPhone on the floor and prepare to dance a merry jig, it’s the weekend and that means I’ve prepared a selection of fresh picks from the App Store.
As ever, before we get stuck in to a hand-picked selection of the latest releases from the App Store, I’ve delved in to the week’s Apple happenings to bring you notable news from the past seven days.
First up, swiftly following the Watchmen movie release came the iPhone game. Featured in TheAppleBlog’s new App Review series, the game managed to earn our first Rotten Apple award. If this game were a person you’d be best off giving them a swift kick to the shins and walking away — it’s awful.
On Tuesday, the latest update of Tweetie — my fave app for tweeting — was blocked from release by Apple. It’s all to do with ‘objectionable content’ namely a very naughty word, our own Darrel Etherington explains everything.
Another column new to TheAppleBlog, Jailbreak, continued this week. Clayton Lai highlighted five must-know things about jailbreaking your iPhone. It’s all terribly informative, especially for those new to all this jailbreaking business.
And speaking of hacked iPhones, one thing that those with jailbroken devices might have problems using is the latest iPhone firmware. Version 3.0 of the iPhone OS is due to drop next Tuesday, March 17, at a special Apple event.
Finally, Apple released the latest version of iTunes, integrating several updates including a smart new DJ mix feature, and also squeezed out a brand new iPod Shuffle. The new Shuffle has been causing somewhat of a stir due to its buttonless design, moving controls over to the proprietary headphones.
On to the apps now, this week I’ve been looking at Remote, Eliss, Payback Lite and Topple 2.
Remote (free)
Strictly speaking this isn’t a new release — it’s the same old app from Apple that enables you to remotely control iTunes using your iPhone. However, the latest update to iTunes adds some interesting new functionality to remote — now friends with their own touch or iPhone can use Remote to request and vote for songs to be added to your iTunes playlist. It’s a fantastic concept, effectively transforming iTunes in to a social jukebox.
Eliss ($3.99)
Frankly I’m still not entirely sure how this minimal vector game works, but I’m pretty sure the satisfying bleeps triggered when I squish two planets together are a good thing. Steph Thirion has done just that with Eliss, a puzzle game with an ultra-retro look that involves blending planets to ensure galactic harmony. I’ll always get behind the indie game developers who are prepared to take risks and, in creating something a little different, design fun new experiences.
Payback Lite (free)
Then again, we don’t always need bold risk-taking to ensure that games are fun: Payback is a blatant rip of the Grand Theft Auto series, closely resembling GTA 2 in particular. The game packs in a suspension-bouncing soundtrack, big explosions and a selection of vehicles to speed about the city in while completing your illicit assignments. My favorite feature though is the poorly acted voice-overs, complete with awful cockney accents — it gives the whole game an endearing low-budget Guy Ritchie vibe. Try the free Lite edition before upgrading to the full game.
Topple 2 ($2.99)
The sequel to Topple — a totally weirded-out Tetris-esque game that involves balancing emotional blocks on top of each other — has just hit the App Store. The new version features some gameplay twists including Rescue and Power Tower, six different worlds with lush artwork and both Wi-Fi and email multiplayer. If you’re not familiar with the original, take a moment to grab the original — for free — from the App Store.That’s all from the App Store for this week. I’ll return during the week with TheAppleBlog App Review and, as always, on Saturday with my Weekly App Store Picks.
In the meantime, what apps have you been using this week?
Переслать - Thanks to TheAppleBlog Sponsors!
We’d like to say thanks to this month’s sponsor of TheAppleBlog:
- WunderRadio: Wunder Radio provides access to thousands of streaming Internet radio stations and on your iPhone or Windows Mobile Phone.
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