News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
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It's often hard to tell the difference between work and play on a Mac. And as Apple keeps piling on the goodies and making the whole experience more silky smooth and seamless — whatever that means — it gets harder. Or easier, if you're a glass-half-full person. I mean, give me a couple of interesting old photos to retouch for a friend and I'm definitely at play. Give me a hundred to do by day's end and it's work.
Anyhow here's how I relax with my Macs.
First if I'm working with text or images, gotta have a sound blanket. iTunes of course running through my ancient Sony SRS 002 sound system which is so old I only got one hit in Google. But it still sounds nice and warm with a comforting rumble through the subwoofer. I've gathered a collection of ambient, world and classical music with a modest dynamic range which suits my purposes. I generally pep up the morning shift with Haydn or Mozart and fade into evening with mellow ambience.
After work I'll often relive my non-existent glory days as a rock star in GarageBand. Over the years as a solo muso I've collected a huge range of midi files in every style imaginable. I'm in the process of picking out the best and rearranging them in GarageBand. I've got all the Jam Packs so I have a huge orchestra to choose from. There's also a neat little program — ReMidi — which does some interesting arpeggio and strumming effects. When I'm done I grab the chords and lyrics if I need them from the web, plug the Strat straight in to the Mac and wail away. Sometimes I'll connect my Rode Podcaster mic and hit Record. Other times I'll play along with some nice little jazz and latin pieces Band-in-a-Box has created for me from chord patterns I've given it. Fun, fun, fun.
More passively there's digital TV on the 24-inch iMac screen via Elgato Eye TV — especially corny old movies from the 40s and 50s. If there's nothing on offer here, a random trawl through YouTube invariably throws up some gems. Recently I picked up some high quality clips with first Mark Knopfler and then Eric Clapton jamming with Scotty Moore who strummed for the King. And some really cheesy clips from the 50s which is when I grew up (almost).
More recently I've been indulging in zero emissions air travel via Google Earth. I've been to the house in England where I was born, my old schoolmate's place in Perth where I'll be when this piece goes live and the little farm in Normandy where we hope to house sit next May.
Jaw-dropping stuff.
Sometimes I jump into the Photo Booth for some bizarre self-portraits (it's been unkindly suggested I don't really need to use the wacky effects) Anyway I put these into Comic Life Magiq with some simple speech bubbles and e-mail them off to the grandkids. To help them with their reading, of course.
Then there's the new (in Australia) iTunesU (for University) which I talked about in episode 31 of the Weekend Edition podcast. From iTunes you can download free audio or video lectures onto your iPod, and here's where the work/play divide really blurs for me.
For example: I'm watching a series of Ken Burns mini docos on the Second World War and carefully studying how he plies his craft. Because I'm in the same game. But at another level I'm simply enjoying compelling stories beautifully told. Or learning a little conversational French from another series. Or enjoying some fascinating music clips from all over the world in another.
In similar vein there's a bottomless bin of Australiana at the Australian Screen web site with some fascinating clips from the early days of film and television. Definitely addictive.
And then there's new software to play with. By definition that can't be work, can it? Recently I've had some fun putting Bento through its paces and testing the new features in Toast 9. Just mucking around.
When the hour grows late it's into horizontal mode with my favorite British comedy series on the iPod video before sleep and another day's work and play.
Well, that kind of came out of nowhere, didn't it? With little fanfare and even less fuss, Apple Australia flicked the switch on its iPhoto printing service this morning, meaning that for the first time ever Australian customers have the full feature set for our digital shoeboxes. And not a moment too soon -- we've been paying full price all these years too. It appears that the books at least are beeing printed overseas, so it's not a matter of Apple Australia having done a local deal in that regard -- just that Apple US has discovered international shipping. It's a little less clear with the prints, as the ordering process doesn't indicate they're shipping "from abroad" as the books do, plus a little "Print @ Fujicolor" logo appears on the print ordering page, indicating that Apple might be subcontracting that work out to www.fujicolor.com.au — which offers the same range of print sizes at comparable prices. This should mean that the prints are delivered fairly quickly. I'll be ordering a bunch, and I'll let you know when they arrive. The next question is of course printing from Aperture, Apple's somewhat higher-end application that does much the same as iPhoto but for professional photographers. In the US, Aperture users have the same range of services available as iPhoto users. In Australia, not yet. For all we know, that's this afternoon's news.
Matthew JC. Powell | Feb 6, 2008
Now that the Blu-ray Disc versus HD-DVD stoush has been declared a non-starter (without the market ever really having much of a say in it) does that mean that the future of content delivery has been decided? Hardly. Battles are still raging on a number of fronts and few surrenders are to be found. Concessions, however, are many. For example, 20th Century Fox has released a number of DVDs in the USA which include "digital copies" of the main content. This may seem an odd sort of terminology since the DVD itself is a digital copy. But the emphasis in that terminology should be not on the word "digital" but on the word "copy". The "digital copy" is a version of the film optimised for use on devices like Apple TV and iPod touch. I specify those devices because, in the case of Fox at least, the copy is still protected by Apple's FairPlay digital rights management (DRM) technology, just as if it had been downloaded from the iTunes Store. Which means it won't play on any non-Apple devices.
Matthew JC. Powell | Feb 22, 2008
Podcasting is really the 21st century version of mix tapes. Remember those? I spent many hours producing compilations of music on a 90-minute cassette and I even dabbled in recording some spoken word creations (don't ask). What was exciting about mix tapes is also what's exciting about podcasts: direct control over your listening experience. Of course, podcasting gives you so many more creative options but the principle is unchanged. GarageBand covers the bases pretty well for the beginner podcaster although any of the AMW team will vouch for the initial challenges one can face in producing podcasts -- particularly when it's a group effort.
David Holloway | Mar 11, 2008
Apple is reportedly contemplating, for its iPhone customers at least, a change to its iTunes business model that would allow customers unfettered access to the iTunes Store. It would fund this by adding a premium to the price of the devices, and that premium would then be divided between the major music labels based on their market share. Up until now, Steve Jobs has been vigorously opposed to similar models offered by other download providers. The problem is ...
Matthew JC. Powell | Mar 20, 2008
