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How-To: Get the Most From Safari
I'll admit to having been pretty flighty about my choice of browsers in the past. Camino one month, Safari the next, Chrome the week after; I've been jumping from one browser to the next, chasing performance and features for quite a while now.

Recently though, I've made a commitment to spend less time worrying about what other tools might have to offer, and more time exploring the potential of those right in front of me. For good or ill, I'm casting my lot with Safari, and making sure I get the most from it.

Learn the Shortcuts

Like the guy in the movie says, "Learn them, know them, live them." Shortcuts get you where you want to go, only faster. There are tons of shortcuts available in Safari. If you want to have a look at them all, there's actually an HTML doc with an exhaustive list bundled right in with the browser. Setting out to learn them all at once would probably do more harm than good, so here’s a list of essentials to get you off to a good start:
- Tabs. I usually end up with a lot of tabs in my windows, so being able to deal with them without leaving the keyboard is nice. Pressing Control+Tab will select the next tab in the window, while pressing Command+W will close the current one.
- Bookmark(let)s. I'll talk about some essential bookmarklets a bit later, but pressing Command+1 will activate the first bookmark, Command+2 the second, and so on.
- Opening Links. I'll often just read through a page, clicking on interesting links and letting them load into tabs in the background while I continue on. To do this I've set my preferences to open links in new tabs on Command+Click. This is one of the few keyboard commands I've actually got mapped to my Magic Mouse, where it's a three finger click (mapping gestures on the Magic Mouse requires a third-party tool like Better Touch Tool).
- Navigating Search. The next one isn't strictly a Safari shortcut, but it really works well with all the rest. On its experiments page, Google has a Keyboard Shortcuts option that lets you navigate through the list of Google results using your keyboard. The J key selects the next result, and the K key will select the previous one. Combine this with Safari's Search Results Snap Back ( Command+Option+S ) which will jump back to the last Google results page viewed in the tab, and I can go from TextMate to search results and back, all without touching the mouse.
- Reading. In other browsers, I've used the great Readability bookmarklet to pull out text content from a site. It gets rid of all the clutter on the page and loads the text of the article into a nice, easy-to-read layout. In Safari 5, this is baked right into the browser; you can toggle this Reader mode by pressing Command+Shift+S. For scrolling, simply pressing the Spacebar will scroll to the end of your current view, while Shift+Spacebar will scroll up.
- Address Bar. This last one is simple but important. Pressing Command+L puts focus on the address bar and selects its contents. I use this all the time for quickly grabbing a copy of the current URL, for entering a new one, or in combination with a press of the Tab key to get to the search field.
Plugins and Extensions

When it comes to plugins and extensions, I'd prefer to have none if I could. Maybe that’s just because every Add-On you installed used to slow Firefox down when that browser first came out. It’s less of a problem these days, but I still like to keep my plugin library short.
- Click to Flash. This is a "must have" in my opinion. Simply put, it blocks all unwanted Flash objects on the screen until I want them; when I do, I just click on the placeholder to load the Flash.
- 1Password. Another "must have" as far as I'm concerned. 1Password helps me get a handle on all my credentials by generating and remembering complex passwords for me.
- Ultimate Status Bar. This nice little extension gives Safari an auto-hiding, Chrome-style status bar that disappears when it's not needed. It can also expand shortened URLs and display file size info.
- Type to Navigate. Type to Navigate lets me type the text of any link on the page to select and then open it. Pressing Command+G selects the next instance of the text on the screen and Command+Shift+G selects the previous. As a bonus, I can also press Command+I when focused on a link to send it to Instapaper. The potential for this one is huge, though I’ve noticed a couple pages it can’t quite seem to navigate
There is a crazy number of Extensions available for Safari these days, so do have a look and find the ones that best suit your needs.

Hidden Preferences

There's one hidden preference that's a required setting for me: forcing tabs. I hate having a bunch of new windows always popping up, so I set this option to force all new window links to open up in new tabs instead. To enable this, just open up Terminal.app (in your Utilities folder) and use the defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -boolean command.

Bookmarklets

I manage all my proper bookmarks over at Pinboard, but I do have a few key bookmarklets that I need to make sure are available from Safari:
- Read Later. This one sends the current URL over to Instapaper for later reading. I use it any time I come across something I know I’ll want to read when I get the chance.
- Send to Pukka. I use Pukka to manage all my bookmarks over at Pinboard. This bookmarklet sends the current URL, along with any selected text on the page over to Pukka, creating a new bookmark on Pinboard using the selected text for the description.
I'll probably add a new shortcut or two as I need them, but for the most part, I'm happy with the functionality this provides. I spend so much time in the browser these days that it only makes sense to learn to be as efficient with it as I can. No matter which browser you use, do yourself a favor and take some time to learn the shortcuts, explore the preferences, and find the add-ons that best suit your needs.

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Office for Mac 2011 Now Available
Office 2011 for Mac, the latest version in Microsoft’s workhorse suite, is now available at your favorite retailer or Microsoft’s web site. In this version, Visual Basic macros are back, but Entourage is out. Entourage has been replaced with a brand new, all-Cocoa version of Outlook.

One warning, though: If your enterprise still uses Exchange 2003, you can only set up Outlook to access Exchange via IMAP. Also on the list of current gripes is the lack of calendar sync with MobileMe. Microsoft said it rewrote the entire Sync Services component from scratch, and that just didn’t make the launch window.

Even though 2011 incorporates the ribbon interface from the Windows version, Microsoft has tried to tailor the suite for the Mac, says Eric Wilfrid, general manager of Microsoft's Office for Mac team. "From day one, we focused on making the user experience be both Mac-like and recognizably Office," Wilfrid says. "Over many, many years, we've figured out different ways to make sure that the end product is something that we as Office and Mac users would want to sit down in front of every day and depend on to do our work."

Word 2011's Document Gallery.

While Apple’s iWork suite is a fantastic product, if you need to round-trip Office files with collaborators, you need the Office suite. In my experiences with iWork and Office translation, it does a good job most of the time, but when it doesn’t do well, the results are often disastrous.

There are quite a few things I’m looking forward to in Office 2011. PowerPoint has a new dynamic reordering feature making it easy to move items between layers — before the only way to handle this was using the awkward and dated “Send Backward” and “Bring Forward” commands; Visual Basic macros, eliminated in Office 2008, are back; Word now has a built-in equation editor; Finally, early reviews indicate the suite is much snappier, a welcome improvement over the often-lethargic Office 2008.

PowerPoint's new "Dynamic Reorder" feature.

Office 2011 is available in the following versions: Microsoft Office for Mac Home & Student 2011 (does not come with Outlook, $149.99); Microsoft Office for Mac Home & Business 2011 (includes Outlook, 279.99); and Office for Mac Academic 2011 (includes Outlook, $99.99). I’m especially happy about the last version. Getting the educational version of Office usually wasn’t available at launch. As a student, I’d have to wait until after launch to take advantage of the discount, but not any longer.

We’ll be posting in-depth reviews over the next few days, so stay tuned.

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More Proof: Businesses Like iPad
During the last Apple conference call, Steve Jobs crowed about Apple’s growing enterprise presence. Today, a new report illustrates just how well iOS in particular is doing in business; 4,000 new iPads and iPhones are ready to be put to use at a major pharmaceutical company, the report says.

Issued by OpenTrust, a software security provider that was tasked with creating a secure network for the devices, the report doesn’t reveal which pharmaceutical company is bringing in the Apple hardware. It does note that the new customer has a large international presence, spanning more than 100 countries, and claiming more than 100,000 employees worldwide. That’s right around Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline territory, in case you were wondering.

Apple touted its presence within top companies last Wednesday, when Jobs noted during the conference call that the iPhone is being piloted or deployed by 80 percent of Fortune 100 companies, while the iPad has presence at 66 percent.

The OpenTrust announcement reveals some interesting usage information about how iOS devices are operating in corporate IT, too. The company’s focus seems to have been on enabling secure remote access for distributed employees dialing in from abroad. If remote workforces are pushing the enterprise drive toward iOS adoption, then that’s promising news for Apple, as the number of employees who commute virtually is on the rise.

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Apple Store iOS App Updated With Check-Ins, More
Long ago, there were rumors that a concierge app would come to the iPhone platform and bring reservations and other services to the device. Now, those features are here in version 1.1 of the Apple Store app, just released. It brings new location-based abilities and more.

The update comes on the heels of fresh rumors that did indeed predict the new services. Those services include the ability to reserve products for local pickup at Apple retail, add your Apple Store appointments to iCal, and check-in with the store when you arrive to let employees know you’re there.

Finally, if you’re making purchases through the app, you can add engraving and gift wrapping, features which are timed very nicely with the beginning of the holiday shopping season and the arrival of free iPad device engraving.

You can grab the updated app now for free in the App Store. It requires OS 3.0 or higher, though the new check-in and iCal features will only work on devices running 4.0 or above.

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Free iPad Engraving Now Available Through Apple
One of the benefits of buying an iPod direct from Apple online is that you get to engrave a free message on the back. It helps you easily identify your device, and it works well for gifts. The iPad lacked an engraving option at launch, but it’s here now, just in time for the holidays.

Apple updated the buying options for all models of the iPad to include free laser engraving earlier today. The option automatically comes up as you go through the process of ordering your iPad, and uses the same live preview feature that’s been standard for iPod engraving.

Note that even though it may seem like a cool addition, you might want to think twice before you brand your iPad. It does take a little longer to ship customized devices, and you can’t return your engraved order in the event of a spelling mistake. Plus, unless the product doesn’t work out of the box, you won’t be able to get a refund or exchange on your device, if the iPad policy is the same as the one for engraved iPods.

I’m not sure I would’ve gone for this even it was available when I picked up my iPad, but if you’re giving someone an Apple tablet as a gift this year, and you’re pretty sure they won’t want to return or exchange it, at least you now have the option. Special request for Apple: Let me engrave my MacBook Air.

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Is Skype Speeding Along its Own Demise?
Skype is making it clear that it doesn’t want third-party clients using its services. First, Fring for iPhone lost Skype support (though there was debate regarding who was in the wrong), and today, another popular multi-service IM and calling client, Nimbuzz, had its Skype privileges revoked.

Skype certainly isn’t making itself any friends by blocking these clients. Both boast a large user pool. Nimbuzz is used by 30 million people, on Mac, PC and all major mobile platforms. That’s a lot of people who are finding themselves seriously annoyed at having to look elsewhere for Skype support starting Oct. 31.

I’ve already said that Skype is missing the boat by not prioritizing its Mac and iOS clients above those for other platforms. Skype’s iPhone efforts are one of its major sources of revenue, but now, I think it may be on its way toward being squeezed out of the Apple ecosystem. Even if Apple doesn’t lock it out entirely, as it has done with Flash on iOS, it could render Skype redundant by expanding its FaceTime efforts. In fact, even the planned North Carolina data center could be part of an effort to prepare for increased server demand resulting from FaceTime. Nimbuzz already announced that it would be bringing FaceTime to its client, and it probably won’t be alone.

FaceTime’s arrival on the Mac as a standalone app from Apple also can’t be good for Skype’s prospects. If I can do phone-to-computer or vice versa between Apple-branded products using Apple-branded software, I’m not very likely to go looking elsewhere for a solution. And if Nimbuzz and other multi-service clients expand that capability beyond just Apple-made devices, then I’ll have an end-to-end video and voice calling solution that covers all the bases.

Apple probably won’t move to actively block Skype, but it will give preference to its own solutions first and foremost, like it’s beginning to do on the Mac by not shipping machines with Flash pre-installed in preparation for the arrival of the App Store on OS X. Skype may find itself on the outside looking in, especially if they continue to alienate third-party apps that could guarantee them a continued presence on Apple devices.

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Pro vs. Consumer: How iLife '11 Blurs the Lines
As a musician, I’ll never forget seeing Apple’s professional music studio software Logic for the first time and thinking, “Here we go baby!” Back then, GarageBand paled in comparison, so any semi-pro audio technician would only use it for quick work. But iLife ’11 is blurring the line between the two programs.

iLife Narrows the Gap

Apple’s professional apps (Logic, Aperture, Final Cut) have had several complete makeovers and a dramatic drop in price since I first started using Logic. Ten years ago, could you have found a fully-loaded “Nashville-quality” recording suite with effects and tools galore for $499? Not a chance.

Even more surprising is that iLife is quietly creeping up the feature parity path. With the release of each new version of the media suite, starting especially with iLife ’08, I’ve noticed a trend: Apple is blurring the line between professional and consumer features. Remember when Faces first allowed you to automatically identity people in iPhoto? What a great feature! Did Aperture have it? Not for over a year. What about how easy it was to use iMovie? We had to wait a bit for Final Cut to catch up.
With the Wednesday release of iLife ’11, boasting movie trailers, advanced photo maps, and even more guitar effects than before, you have to wonder, is Apple breaking down the line between what we typically call professional and consumer software?

Flex Time, not just for Logic users anymore.

Expanding the Creative Talent Pool

GarageBand ’11 boasts the Flex Time feature that lets you quickly make changes to timing and tempo. While you had to buy Logic only days ago to utilize this amazing tool, now Aunt Susie can fix her parakeet’s faulty rhythm on her iMac, too.

For now, I’m actually on board with Apple’s drive towards simplicity and ease of use. Logic 8? A pain to operate. GarageBand ’11? You’d be surprised how close it comes to Logic’s quality, minus the massive learning-curve headache. While Aperture has its place, iPhoto allows me seamless editing and organization. And Final Cut? Well, I can’t boast much knowledge there, but iMovie sure does the trick for my purposes.

Maybe the day will come when pro and consumer app divisions are no longer necessary. Will we lose some features we once considered vitally important? Probably. But how much more will we gain in terms of the quality of content produced? How many great creators will be given the chance to create without excessive time commitment and learning barriers?

The Garden Path

No matter what you think about Apple’s growing influence over the software that appears on its platforms, iLife ’11 is one step further in the blurring of the pro/consumer line. But as that line fades, what do we lose in the bargain? Do high-end tools get cut to avoid confusing less skilled users? Do we trade the ability to do more things for less granular control over each thing we can do? Mac-based pros especially need to watch carefully as Apple software continues to evolve, and let the Mac-maker know if it swings too far in the direction of simplicity.

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Windows Phone 7 Connector for Mac Now Available
It took BlackBerry a long, long time to release a proper media sync app for Mac. Microsoft seems much more keen to play nice. Today, it released Windows Phone 7 Connector for Mac, which allows you to sync music, videos, photos and podcast from iTunes to your Windows Phone 7 device.

The platform itself only launched earlier this month, so it’s nice to see Microsoft moving so quickly to support Mac users. Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 also hits OS X tomorrow, and it’s a major improvement from previous incarnations from what I’ve seen so far. Maybe Redmond is tired of fighting against the tide, and just wants to ride the Apple wave. Though not everyone associated with Microsoft is embracing Cupertino.

Windows Phone 7 Connector for Mac is a free download from the Windows Download Center, despite requiring Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) or higher.

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Apple's Next MacBook: An $800 Mac for the Masses
The MacBook Air is a bold move forward in mobile computing. It has flash storage, and no real need for an optical drive. But Apple’s greatest achievement with the MacBook Air, and the thing that will have the strongest influence on its other notebooks, is the price.

Two Sub-$1000 Notebooks

The entry-level 11.6-inch MacBook Air, without upgrades, costs $999. That’s Apple’s second laptop under $1000, including the $999 MacBook. Offering two models that cost less than a grand provides more options for buyers looking for affordability. You no longer have only one choice from Apple if you’re looking for a sub-$1000 notebook.

The MacBook has a better processor and better battery life than the MacBook Air, but it has the same amount of RAM, same graphics card, and uses a traditional HDD instead of flash memory. Aside from a little more speed, and battery life that may or may not actually be better (Apple has new testing methods, announced last week) there isn’t much to recommend the MacBook over the air.

Apple’s entry-level consumer notebook is due for a refresh. In the past, it’s gotten an update in October alongside the rest of the Mac line, but this time around, Steve Jobs clearly wanted the focus to be firmly on the new Air. This Apple ultraportable will own the holiday shopping season.

But a new Apple MacBook is due soon, by spring 2011 at the absolute latest. And when it does arrive, it’ll be Apple’s ticket to a much broader Mac user base.

Apple Learns to Make More for Less

It may seem like Steve Jobs is being sarcastic whenever he issues one of his “We don’t know how to make a good [product x] for [price y]. When we do, we’ll let you know” decrees, but he’s actually revealing exactly how Apple pursued product development. Apple tries to hit lower price points for its products, it just doesn’t cut corners to get there, as do some of its primary competitors.

Apple has little to gain by pitting its two sub-$1000 laptops against each other. Instead, we can see a new, lower price point for the next iteration of the MacBook. Prices on Macs have been steadily dropping, as we’ve seen with the latest MacBook and MacBook Air. At this point, considering the price of components, how far Apple’s gone in terms of refining its manufacturing processes, and how much better of a negotiating position it holds with suppliers, there are few barriers to a $799 MacBook. And a sub-$800 Apple notebook will a huge hit with consumers (not to mention enterprise users) who’ve been priced out of a purchase till now.

Product Cannibalization?

But wait, what about the iPad? The most expensive iPad is $829. Won’t a cheaper MacBook mean fewer iPad sales? The answer is probably not. The sales data in Apple’s latest financials reveals that consumers look at the tablet as a supplemental device, rather than a notebook replacement. If people aren’t getting the iPad instead of a new Mac notebook, then logically, they wouldn’t buy notebook instead of an iPad, either. Especially if iPad prices fall, as some predict.

I don’t know whether Apple really will put in flash storage and take out optical drives in all of its next MacBooks. Maybe a few years from now, yes, but there are probably still a significant number of users out there who aren’t as willing to leave the past behind as prospective Air buyers are. No, the defining feature of Apple’s next MacBook will be its price tag.

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Twitterific 4: The Tweetie Replacement We've Been Waiting For?
I use Tweetie on the Mac as my primary Twitter client, despite its long period of neglect. But now that it looks like it might actually become vaporware (despite assertions to the contrary), I’ve started to look elsewhere. That’s why I was thrilled when I saw the Iconfactory’s blog post today previewing Twitterific 4.

I’ve used Twitterific in the past, both on the iPhone and on the Mac, and I always appreciate the attention to detail Iconfactory puts into its UI design. But the app never felt robust enough for me, especially as a user who needs more features for managing multiple accounts. However, I’m not a fan of TweetDeck, which, though powerful, frankly just seems ugly and cluttered.

There are other candidates when it comes to Mac Twitter apps, including Nambu, Kiwi and Socialite. While each offers a decent experience, they all either lack the polish I’ve come to appreciate from companies like Atebits and Iconfactory, are missing key features, or just aren’t focused enough for my purposes.

Tweetie’s questionable future means that there’s a space to fill in the Mac Twitter arena. While there’s no firm release date for Twitterific 4, Iconfactory clearly wanted to stake its claim on that spot. And it looks like a strong claim, too. The screenshot they’ve released (yes, there’s only one) shows a window that looks clean and minimalistic, but seems to have multiple account support and easy access to all your basic features.

I’d still prefer a sidebar to a dropdown for account switching, but there’s no way of saying whether or not that might simply be an option not pictured. Either way, it looks promising, and it should at least be much more current in terms of Twitter’s recent changes to its API and features.

Twitterific is a promising start, but it’d be great to see others enter the arena. The gap left by Tweetie’s long hibernation could be the means by which another up-and-coming Mac dev studio makes a name for itself. Neither Twitter nor the Mac are markets lacking in growth potential, after all.

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How To: Restore iMovie's Timeline Feature
Between iLife ’06 and ’08, the timeline view was removed from iMovie. Instead of being displayed in a timeline, the video wraps around like text on a page. If you have iMovie ’11, there’s a way to get back the original timeline view, where the video is in one scrollable line.

Fire up iMovie ’11 and open up a project. The first thing you’re going to want to do is swap the project view and the events view so that the video you’re editing is along the bottom of the screen. To do this, click the ‘Swap Events and Projects’ button on the middle toolbar — it’s the one that looks a bit like a refresh button.

Swap Events and Projects button

Once you’ve done that, there’s one more step. Just underneath the middle toolbar, on the right-hand side of the window, there’s a new button introduced in iMovie ’11 — it looks like a row of boxes. This is the ‘Single-Row View’ button. Click this and your project will rearrange itself into one long row which is scrollable to the left and right.

Single-Row View button

So there you have it, an emulation of the old timeline view in iMovie ’11. It seems Apple must listen to user requests after all, because iLife users have been complaining about the lack of a timeline view since it was removed two versions ago. It also suggests, along with the new audio editing features, that Apple is trying to make iMovie seem much more like its Final Cut products, which is great news for amateur videographers.

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Apple's New North Carolina Data Center Ready to Roll
Apple’s $1 billion data center in North Carolina made headlines when the project was revealed in May 2009. New reports indicate that the facility is set to open for business “any day now,” according to local officials talking to Data Center Knowledge. It also looks like additional construction might double the facility’s size, as recent rumors had suggested. But what is the size increase for?

The report assures readers that the data center, located in Maiden, a town of about 4,000 residents, is ready to “ramp up production.” The 500,000 square foot facility won’t actually be producing anything, but will instead operate as a server farm. The specific purpose of those servers isn’t yet known. During Apple’s recent conference call, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said only that the data center was on schedule, with an expected completion (and usage) date of late 2010.

Apple’s plans for the facility must indeed be big, since aerial footage (see video below) seems to confirm the recent Digital Daily assertion that Apple was indeed thinking about doubling the size of the center, adding another 500,000 square feet to its already considerable footprint.

The site will be at least five times the size of Apple’s largest current server facility, located in Newark, California. Size alone suggests more than just an evolutionary upgrade in Apple’s server capacity. So why the sudden, massive capacity increase?

Apple TV: Well, most obviously, Apple just announced that it sold 250,000 Apple TVs in that device’s first three months on market. Since the new Apple TV is a streaming only product, offering on demand streams of video, that should translate into a much greater strain on Apple’s servers. But reports seem to indicate that iTunes rental service streaming to Apple TV has been largely without issue to date, which would suggest that capacity isn’t an issue yet. Taken alone, the Apple TV’s streaming demands can’t account for the need for a new data center this big, even if Apple had massively undersold its own expectations for the device, which doesn’t appear to be the case.

MobileMe: Apple also has MobileMe, its own cloud-based services including email, contact, bookmark and note syncing, and virtual cloud storage. The service allows subscribers to keep their information up-to-date and synchronized across multiple Macs and iOS devices. I doubt the MobileMe subscriber base is expanding exponentially, or we would’ve heard about it at the conference call, but there is another possibility: Apple is planning to open up the service to all Apple device owners. If Apple introduced a tiered system, with limited access for free users, it would be a huge incentive for prospective hardware buyers.

iTunes in the Cloud: Finally, there’s the old chestnut of Apple’s plans to bring iTunes to the cloud. A streaming music subscription service has often been rumored, but hasn’t yet materialized. Maybe Apple was simply lacking the infrastructure, and didn’t want to launch a service before quality could be assured.

Whatever the case with music, media streaming and cloud services seem to be written in stone for the future of computing, so Apple’s North Carolina data center, even at one million square feet, makes a lot of sense. And given Oppenheimer’s schedule for facility to become operational, we’ll see what Apple has planned for the site sooner rather than later.

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Yojimbo 3 and Yojimbo for iPad Released
Yojimbo, the personal organizer for the Mac from Bare Bones, has been updated this week, alongside the introduction of a new companion app, Yojimbo for iPad. Yojimbo now lets you sync over Wi-Fi with the app for iPad, so you can view all your Yojimbo items on the go.

In case you’re new to Yojimbo, you can check out our coverage here at TheAppleBlog. The app lets you store and tag all the flotsam and jetsam of your digital life for later use. You can drag and drop files and clippings using a handy Drop Dock applet, paste your current selection into the app with keyboard shortcuts, or type content into a pop-up Quick Entry panel. You can also send PDFs to the application directly from any print dialog.

Bare Bones also introduced the ability to scan documents or images directly using TWAIN-compliant scanners in the latest release of Yojimbo.

The new iPad app has the quality and polish one would expect from any Bare Bones release. While the absence of the ability to add new items will disappoint some, many Yojimbo devotees will be thrilled to be able to carry their database with them. I had a chance to talk with Rich Siegel of Bare Bones just before the release, and he explained that adding items on the iPad is something they would like to do at some point in the future.

The lack of iPhone support is another gap for the time being, but it makes sense from a purely practical perspective; the iPad is great for viewing content now and the iPhone will be great for adding items when that feature gets added.

Yojimbo 3.0 is a free upgrade for 2.0 users, and a $20 upgrade for those with earlier versions. An individual license will run you $39. Family and educational pricing is also available. Yojimbo for iPad is $9.99 in the App Store.

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Has Apple Given Up on iWeb?
iLife ’11, unveiled at the latest Apple event, brings no update for iWeb. Users should rightly wonder what the fate of the app will be. It’s a shame iWeb is being ignored, because it made web design accessible to all levels of Mac users, but maybe it’s just time for a new model.

iWeb’s Origins

The design philosophy behind iWeb is summed up best in the Keynote slide pictured below, from Macworld 2006. According to Steve Jobs, software was either too simple for producing web sites that looked good, or too complex for the average consumer. Instead of HTML editing, iWeb used customizable themes and a WYSIWYG interface.

It was easy to use, and things looked good, but cross-browser compatibility proved to be difficult. iWeb’s solution caused immediate problems, most notably the creation of multi-megabyte webpages that substituted .png images for elements like text to ensure iWeb designs looked the same in all browsers. Even then, there were issues with compatibility, and the HTML iWeb generated was pretty ugly.

Update History

Not surprisingly, a large update was quickly issued that addressed complaints about generating and publishing pages. A year later, iWeb 2.0 in iLife ’08 added more themes, blog comments, photo gallery pages, widgets, user-generated “HTML snippets” on web pages, and integration with domain names hosted on MobileMe. This was a big update, and demonstrated a high level of commitment to the software on Apple’s part, but then something happened.

With iLife ’09, iWeb got… more widgets. Development had dropped off sharply. Now, with iLife ’11, the drop has ended with a splat, as any development efforts seem to have become simply code maintenance. So has the program indeed been abandoned?

It probably has, and it could be that Apple had no choice, since making iWeb work across all platforms would be nearly impossible. But it could also be the case that iWeb’s replacement will be even more elegant.

iWeb’s Fatal Flaw

The main problem is the document model. In iWeb, a single bundle is created for all web pages and websites from which HTML pages are rendered when publishing. While this allows for an incredibly rich and easy-to-use development environment, it also means iWeb documents can balloon into huge files over time.

More importantly, the document file can only be accessed by iWeb from the Mac it resides on. That means you can’t create a gallery page with pictures just taken from your iPhone, or blog from your iPad. iWeb was created before these devices really became established as tools for producing content, and now its single-location model looks antiquated.

The Solution

Somewhat ironically, the solution to iWeb’s computer-centric dilemma is also built into the program: MobileMe. While iWeb does not strictly require MobileMe, server-side features like blog comments, passwords, search, and domain name association require it. The future of iWeb development is to fully integrate it with MobileMe.

For photos, that future is already here, too. MobileMe Gallery already duplicates the functionality of photo galleries in iWeb. You can even create a Flash—don’t tell Steve—widget in iWeb that links to a MobileMe gallery.

Why can’t the same services be set up for blogs, podcasts, and web pages? Now that Apple has finally announced the end of .Mac HomePages, perhaps that’s what will happen. Instead of giant documents on one computer and spaghetti HTML, we could have HTML5, Ajax, H.264, all kept in the cloud and accessed via MobileMe from anywhere.

Of course, it’s highly unlikely there’d be a way to integrate current iWeb sites into that MobileMe future, so iWeb’s past would be lost, but at least there would be some way to create “beautiful websites, so simply, so easily” from Macs and other Apple devices.

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Screencast: New iPhoto and iMovie '11 Features
iLife ’11 was announced on Wednesday at Apple’s press event. As it was immediately available (and not too expensive), I picked myself up a copy and got straight to checking out the new features. Here’s a peek at some of the suite’s most impressive new abilities.

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The Exciting Future of Apple's MacBook Line
In 12 months, Apple’s notebook lineup will be so different, we’ll barely recognize it. Physically, the computers may look the same, but the teaser that is the MacBook Air makes very clear the changes we can expect to see rolled out across the entire MacBook line.

“MacBook Air. The next generation of MacBooks.”

This is Apple’s tagline for the new MacBook Air. I believe it means everything that’s good about the Air will make its way into the MacBook and MacBook Pro within the next year. Let’s look at what’s next for Apple’s notebooks.

Battery Life

The older Air I own has a claimed battery life of five hours, but I never see more than three and a half with brightness all the way down and Wi-Fi off. The new Air claims seven hours of battery life in Apple’s “Web-test” which, according to the company’s performance page, “measures battery life by wirelessly browsing 25 popular websites with display brightness set to 50%.”

We can expect this new test to become the standard for how Apple measures battery life specs across the board going forward and I expect seven hours to be the new minimum standard for the rest of the lineup. Most Macs meet this now, in fact, so 10-12 hours may be a more realistic expectation from next year’s MacBook Pro, as long as Intel continues increasing the efficiency of its chips at the current rate.

SSD As a Standard

Solid State Drives (SSD) enable quick booting, instant on and faster launch times of applications. I believe every new MacBook Pro sold will come standard with an SSD, with an option to drop down to an HDD for $200 less if you just needs lots of storage (500GB+). For most users, 256GB is all they’ll ever need, and for huge media libraries, an external drive is always an option.

SSD is great, and it’s finally achieving a price point where Apple can include it as part of a base configuration. Remember, only a little over two years ago, a 128GB SSD add-on for the MacBook Air cost an additional $999. Now, the $1699 model comes with a 256GB drive standard.

Sorry, No Optical

I’ve talked to a lot of people in coffee shops, at conferences and even my less-techie friends and they all come to the same conclusion: Optical drives are kind of pointless. If all software manufacturers provided direct downloads or flash drives for physical installs, there’s be absolutely no issue.

The optical drive, as far as Apple is concerned, is dead. The company has the largest collection of digital media available for sale, and with the Mac App Store, Front Row and Apple TV, why would you ever need to burn content to a disc? The external Air Superdrive is still available, and it’ll probably gain compatibility with the rest of Apple’s notebooks as the internal drives disappear.

Thinner and Lighter

SSD and the lack of an optical drive will mean thinner cases across the board. The MacBook Air’s logic board in 2008 was a thing of beauty: smaller than the length of a pencil, and it powered the entire computer. I think the move to SSD flash storage that’s soldered to the logic board, paired with removing those gigantic optical drives, will mean most Mac laptops will slim down. We’ll see this in new revisions that come out in 2011.

Higher Resolution Displays

As I said in July’s post about iPhone 4′s Retina Display, Apple will be beefing up the resolution of all of its displays, starting with notebooks. The MacBook Air already has an improved display; the MacBook Pro is next. How high a resolution is too high? We’ll see how Apple navigates the line between display quality and the concerns of users with weaker vision or older eyes. Unlike on the iPhone, you can always change the resolution on your Mac if it makes for a better reading experience.

Conclusion

I’ve always been sure that the MacBook Air was a test bed for innovation, and a peek at what’s to come from Apple portables. Cupertino’s clearly gone “all in” techs like flash storage and battery improvements that it pioneered with the Air, and it’ll be genuinely exciting to see those developments trickle down to the rest of the line.

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