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- The Smart Mac: Smart Folders in OS X
Mac OS X offers a computing experience that, according to many, is still unparalleled by its competitors. Built on a rock solid UNIX foundation and continually adding refinements that make interaction easier, OS X has a lot of powerful functionality that many users were unaware existed. One of these is the idea of "Smart Folders" and with a little primer, you can begin using them to make your Mac experience easier (and faster).
A Brief History
The idea of these Smart Folders are not unique to OS X. In fact, the idea started originally in the mid '90s with the now defunct BeOS. When Dominic Giampaolo, a software developer for Be, began working for Apple in 2002, some of the best elements of the BeOS made their way into Apple's modern operating system. We know these features as "Smart Folders" and Spotlight, both of which launched in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, two years after Giampaolo began working for Apple.
A "Smart Folder" (or "Search Folder" as Windows Vista calls them when Microsoft introduced its version in 2006) is based on the idea that this folder is basically a "virtual folder" of its actual contents. This virtual folder doesn't physically store copies of its contents inside but rather utilizes a database to store attributes about the files (defined either by the system or the user). This offers several advantages: they have a small file size, the ability for on-the-fly fine tuning of the criteria used to define the content as well as allowing the content to dynamically update as new files meet the criteria. Whoa. What does all of that mean? We're getting there.
Smart Folders Save TimeIn short, Smart Folders save you time. You basically give them a list of rules to follow and they automatically fill themselves with content based on the criteria you've defined. It's important though, to realize that these Smart Folders do not actually represent copies of the content, but merely virtually link to them. If you delete a file out of a Smart Folder, you've also deleted it from its original location.
How To Make Smart Folders
Making a Smart Folder is quite easy. In fact, if you're running Leopard or Snow Leopard, several of them have already been created. You might recognize them due to their trademark purple folder icon (also used to serve the same role in other applications, but we’ll discuss that in future articles). In the left side of a default Finder window, you'll see an area called "Search For" with entries for "Today," "Yesterday," "Past Week" and some more. These are built in smart folders that automatically search your entire system for files meeting those criteria. But we can do far more powerful things with Smart Folders if we make our own.
- To get started, when in the Finder, go to the File menu and select "New Smart Folder." You'll have a Finder window that looks like a search window. (You can also start this process simply by searching from a Finder window.)
- Next, using the bar beneath the title bar of the window, select the location you'd like this folder to search. The default options are your Mac, your home folder and Shared (any other computers you may connected to). If you'd like it to confine the search to a specific folder, simply navigate to that folder and use the Spotlight function built into the Finder window. (Type something into the field to bring up a search; you can then delete what you typed to move to the next step).
- Unless you've specified some phrase or string in the Spotlight search region in the upper right of the window, at this point you're not going to be seeing any search results. Let's give it some actual criteria to search.
- Click the round plus (+) icon on the right side of the window to show another bar beneath the search location. Where it says "Kind" and "Any" is your first search criteria. These work in pairs. You can change "Any" to documents, images, movies or anything you want. Instantly, you'll see your search results start to populate based on your selection. Perhaps instead of searching by kind, you want to search by name, contents or date. Clicking "Kind" will allow these changes as well as a mystical "other" option which gives you tons of options for a plethora of different uses. Since OS X is media friendly, you can also select criteria that corresponds to metadata in your media files, such as aperture value of a photo, sample rate for an audio file, video bit rate for video files and more.
- You can continue to add additional criteria by clicking the plus and adding another row of criterion. Each additional criterion further fine tunes your search. For an item to appear in the results, it will need to meet every rule you have created for it.
- If you want to save a Smart Folder search, click the Save button in the upper right of the window. Your searches are saved in "Saved Searches" inside the Library folder of your home folder. There's also a checkbox to automatically add your new search to your Finder sidebar.
- Editing a Smart Folder is as simple as right clicking it in the sidebar and selecting "Show Search Criteria" or selecting the same option from the gears menu once you've double clicked a saved Smart Folder.
Again, the beauty and power of Smart Folders comes from the fact that once you've defined the rules, this folder will automatically continue to update as new files are created or saved that meet its criteria.
Folder Inspiration
Smart Folders sound great and once you've set one up, you'll see the process is pretty simple. It's also pretty powerful but, for inspiration, here's a few examples of interesting and useful Smart Folders that you could create on your system.
Recent Documents: To view all your recent documents, set the kind to document and the last opened date to within the last 3 days.
Important Files: If you use Finder labels, select "Other" and choose "File label." Then pick the file label that matches your desired results.
By Device: Have several cameras? You can use "Device make" and "Device model" to specify a particular camera (as well as any other EXIF data).
Do you use Smart Folders? Have any tips you'd like to share or comments on this post? Let me know what you think; I'd love to hear your feedback.
Переслать - Estimate Places Total App Store Piracy Cost at $450M
An interesting article at the financial blog 24/7 Wall St. today estimates the total cost of pirated apps to the App Store, for both Apple and developers, to be somewhere near the $450 million-mark. That number depends on a revenue estimate of between $60 million and $110 million per quarter, which is probably less than the actual number since those figures are based on a slightly older report by Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi.The article also notes that finding good solid numbers related to both the number of jailbroken iPhones that are out there, and the number of those devices that are actually pirating games is difficult to do. After reviewing numerous sources of information, 24/ Wall St. arrived at the conclusion that an estimate of 75 percent piracy rates for paid apps was most accurate.
That means that for every paid app download, there have been three pirated downloads of the same app that result in no revenue. Given that the researchers behind the report also estimated that around 17 percent of the 3 billion app store downloads, or 510 million, were paid apps (though we found 1 in 4 in December, so that number seems to be growing), that means that the number of pirated apps is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.53 billion apps. Not a number you’ll see Apple using in its promotional material anytime soon.
Even considering that only around 10 percent of those who pirated apps would’ve purchased them instead if the illicit option was not available, this represents a loss of around $459 million for both Apple and the app developers working with the Mac maker. Doesn’t seem like an insignificant number.
Insignificant or not, Apple isn’t doing much to quell piracy rates, either. Sure, it counters the most recent jailbreak exploit every time a new model of the iPhone is released, but those countermeasures are usually pretty easily overcome. Apple could do more on the software side, with apps themselves, but that would only spark another arms race-type situation between the company and the hacking community, and allowing users to jailbreak and pirate frankly helps Apple sell hardware, which is the real cash cow.
It’s a troubling report for developers who can’t afford to just eat these kinds of losses the way Apple can. But it also makes the assumption that piracy will continue to grow, which I think is a false one. Yes, it’s easier than ever to jailbreak your iPhone, but as Apple continues to work on the operating system behind the platform, there is less and less reason to do so.
Many users only jailbreak to get some extra functionality out of their device that already exists there, rather than being set on trying to get software for free. As long as iPhone 4.0 introduces true multitasking, I think we’ll see overall jailbreak rates fall off considerably, and likely piracy numbers will follow, too.
Переслать - Opinion: Flash is the Real iPhone Killer
When Flash appeared near the end of the last millennium it promised a bright new world of rich multimedia content creation and delivery via what would otherwise be drab old web pages. At a time when Geocities was the best the Web had to offer, Flash was a tempting — and not to mention dazzling — new kid on the block.Over the years, as web technologies evolved and matured, Flash proved to be problematic; for those who make websites (and care about accessibility and web standards in a way ordinary people just don't) it has gradually aged into an unwieldy, outmoded platform.
Even for those enjoying the most remarkable fruits of early Flash labor — for instance, YouTube relied on the technology heavily in its formative years — Flash was simultaneously the bringer of video entertainment and the most common reason for all browser (and a great many System) crashes. Also — did I mention the security vulnerabilities?
I hoped (foolishly, it seems) that it was only the big movie studios who, paranoid we're all stealing their stuff, were still insisting on Flash-based content delivery, but according to Erick Schonfeld over on TechCrunch, there's a whopping two million Flash developers out there, and they're simply dying to bring their Flash-authored wares to the last platform on Earth that has, so far, remained blissfully Flash free — your iPhone.
Limitations
The iPhone has always been marketed as a breakthrough Internet device, in spite of two limitations considered by some people to be significant — the iPhone’s browser, Mobile Safari, has never supported Java or Flash.
While the absence of Java is no big deal (honestly, is there anything more horrid than Java web plugins?) the lack of Flash support on the iPhone was considered debilitating enough that, in the UK, the Advertising Standards Authority upheld viewer complaints and banned one of Apple's iPhone commercials for 'misleading' customers with the line "All the parts of the Internet are on the iPhone." It sounds rather like an over-reaction, but consider that in his 2008 WWDC keynote, Steve Jobs proudly announced, "Mobile browsing has gone from nothing to 98 percent with iPhone." With so much mobile browsing going on, it seems any limitations matter profoundly. So, after almost three years browsing the web on our iPhones, how has the lack of Flash truly affected us?
Here's the answer to that in three succinct syllables; not at all.
Seriously, has it so greatly inconvenienced anyone that they were driven away from the iPhone forever? (That rhetorical question will be read by our resident comment trolls as an open invitation to loudly proclaim their Android-based phones 'superior' because they do support Flash.)
Schonfeld offers an ominous prediction for 2010.
Adobe is going to bring its 2 million Flash developers to the iPhone, with or without Apple's blessing. As it announced in October, the next version of its Flash developer tools, Creative Suite 5 […] will automatically convert any Flash app into an iPhone app. So while Flash apps won't run on the iPhone, any Flash app can easily be converted into an iPhone app. This is a bigger deal than many people appreciate.
While Schonfeld thinks Apple's lack of Flash support represents a "gaping hole in iPhone's arsenal" I rather think the opposite is true. For all the iPhone's inimitable prowess as a mobile computer, it's not supposed to replace a laptop or desktop-class machine. What the iPhone brought to mobile phones (both in terms of functions and ease-of-use) was revolutionary in ways we readily take for granted today. But just think again of that figure; 98 percent browsing? That had never happened on mobile phones before, and it happened despite the lack of Flash.
Steve Jobs announces 98 percent of iPhone owners are using it for web browsing
But while I (perhaps incorrectly) assumed the lack of Flash was a usability consideration on Apple's part, Schonfeld thinks the decision was motivated by a less obvious, and far more cunning, desire.
[Apple] wanted a chance to become ingrained with developers. Apple had to hold off Flash not so to control the video experience on the iPhone, but because it needed to establish its own Apple-controlled iPhone SDK. The last thing it needed was a competing developer platform getting in the way.
But Adobe Creative Suite 5 will provide precisely the magic button developers need to port their Flash apps to the iPhone.
…those 2 million developers will be able to keep working with Adobe tools and simply turn them into iPhone apps automatically. …if you thought there were a lot of iPhone apps now, just wait until the Flash floodgates are open.
This, frankly, scares me. I've rarely seen a flash site that I enjoyed. Even those which I thought impressive at first-blush rapidly became cumbersome and slow. And don't get me started on the platform's propensity for random crashing. If developers are granted the freedom to assault the stable, clean and comfortable world of my iPhone with gaudy, pointlessly-animated applications with inconsistent, ill-conceived UI's, I can only hope there's a quick and easy way to identify them in the App Store so I can avoid buying them altogether!
Schonfeld thinks CS5 will result in an avalanche of Flash-authored iPhone apps; I hope he's wrong. Even on the desktop, Flash is something I prefer to avoid when I can. (I use three browsers — all of them employ a flash blocker — and as a result I feel my experience of the web improved markedly.) I honestly thought that, as 2010 gets under way, we'd all come to the same conclusion; that Flash is an antiquated technology whose security vulnerabilities and performance issues make it deeply undesirable.
If Apple can block these flash-authored apps, would it? Should it? Tell me how wrong I am, and why I’d better embrace it, in the comments below.
Переслать
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