Apple September Event Earlier Today

I’ve posted my thoughts about Apple’s September Event that was held earlier today over at MobileGenealogy.

I thought it was a pretty good event. We knew going in that it would be focused on mobile devices, and that’s exactly what happened. iTunes 10 adds some new features that I think they will be useful to a lot of people. The iPod nano, shuffle, and touch updates were really good if you are in the market for a new iPod.

Keep in mind this wasn’t a Mac event or a developer’s event, it was a music-related event with TV and movies thrown in, and the vast majority was focused on portable devices.

Anyways, if you’d like to read my comments and how the new devices/updates relate to genealogy, head over to Mobile Genealogy.

Apple’s September 1, 2010 Event, Plus Autocad

Apple has sent out an alert stating that they will be directly streaming tomorrow’s event live:

Apple.com – PR

What:
Live video stream of Apple’s September 1 event

When:
Wednesday, September 1, 2010, 10:00 a.m. PDT

Where:
www.apple.com

Requirements:
* Apple Mac running Safari on Mac OS X 10.6
* Also can be accessed on an iPhone or iPod touch running iPhone OS/iOS 3.0 or higher or an iPad.

Basically it’s going to be streamed over HTML5, showcasing the standard that Apple chose for the iPhones and iPads over Flash.

Meanwhile, this week it was confirmed by Financial Times that Autodesk would be bringing AutoCad back to Macs. It’s a big deal since it dominates its market and is the first time AutoCad has been seen on Macs since the early ’90s. This is on par with Family Tree Maker for Mac 2011 coming back to Macs.

Update: I’ve posted my thoughts about the September Event over at Mobile Genealogy.

Apple iWork 09 9.0.4 Update – Adds ePub Support

While I’ve recommended Apple’s productivity suite, iWork to to plenty of people doing family newsletters or related documents, I normally don’t mention it here except in passing, but iWork 09 9.0.4 fixes some issues in all three apps – Keynote, Pages, and Numbers, including with tables.

More importantly the word processing app, Pages, now has the ability to export to the standard ePub file format. This is a very big deal as you can now export your documents and newsletters to a format that can be read across a lot of mobile platforms, including iBooks on the iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, Barnes and Noble’s nook, Sony’s Reader, plus Google’s Android platform.

Changes:
Keynote 5.0.4
* Addresses an issue when printing handouts with rule lines.
* Fixes an issue with the slide switcher.
* Resolves an issue when automatically resizing some images while changing slide size.
* Fixes an issue with tables.

Pages 4.0.4
* Fixes an issue with tables.
* Includes compatibility with the standard ePub file format (for use with iBooks) when exporting.

Numbers 2.0.4
* Fixes an issue with tables.

This is the official support article: Support.Apple.com/kb/HT4165.

If you already have it installed, check your Software Update – it showed up on mine this morning.

If you don’t have it, but are interested, you can pick up a free trial (30 days) from the iWork trial downloads.

It can be purchased through there for $79, however it’s on sale through a retailer on Amazon.com for $49.

Apple Magic Trackpad Announced

It’s been speculated about for a while, due to FCC filings and the like, but it’s finally here. Today, Apple introduced the Apple Magic Trackpad. It’s based on the same multi-touch technology behind current MacBook Pros and can either replace or simply compliment your existing mouse. It has a glass surface similar to the MBPs and is 80% larger than the touchpads on MBPs. It connects through a Bluetooth wireless connection.

From Apple’s PR:

The new Magic Trackpad is the first Multi-Touch trackpad designed to work with your Mac desktop computer. It uses the same Multi-Touch technology you love on the MacBook Pro. And it supports a full set of gestures, giving you a whole new way to control and interact with what’s on your screen. Swiping through pages online feels just like flipping through pages in a book or magazine. And inertial scrolling makes moving up and down a page more natural than ever.

Why would I bring that up here, you might ask.

Simple, anybody who has played around or used any of the current iOS genealogy apps for iPhones and iPads (iOS / iPhone / iPad Genealogy Software at MobileGenealogy.com), knows how easy it can be to navigate around some of them using a touch interface. Obviously those apps are built for such an interface, and I’m not sure how/if genealogy applications running on regular Mac OS X based systems can really take advantage of this in the same way that iOS-based apps do – there maybe a way for developers to build it into their software to allow you to navigate visual family trees.

Even if that’s not the case, we all do a lot of scrolling and zooming in and out and might benefit from this. Using the Virtual Tree in MacFamilyTree as an example, it would be easy to zoom in and out and move around it.

I may pick one up in the next few weeks, and if so I’ll post a review here. I am going to have to try one out in a store, but having used a MacBook Pro extensively, I think I might just be able to use it.

iPhoto ’09 – Overview

I have to say, I’m very impressed with iPhoto ’09.

“Faces” has been added to iPhoto as a way to organize and tag your photos. Once you’ve started assigning names to photos, it automatically “recognizes” photos with those other people, and labels them accordingly. Facial recognition is something I’ve seen in other software, but to see it added into iLife/iPhoto is nice.

When you have a new photo or an unidentified photo, it pops up a “corkboard” that shows the faces for people you’ve already named and suggests matches for the new/unidentified photo.

“Places” has also been added as a way to organize and tag your photos. While they emphasized the geotag aspects (GPS coordinates added to a photo’s EXIF information by your camera), it’s also handy to manually do it, and it plots out your photos on maps.

They’ve also added a “Travel Books” feature where you can have books printed out with maps and photos of the places you visited or are interested.

Both of these features could end up being very useful to genealogists in the long run. I have my doubts about how accurate the facial recognition will be when it comes to older or smaller photos, but even if you have to do some manually, it seems like a good way to keep track of everything.

Next Page »