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.

Macworld 2009 Starting Up

Macworld 2009 has started, and the Phil Schliller’s keynote is set to start at 9am PST, 12pm EST. This will be Apple’s last Macworld appearance, at least in a keynote capacity.

Live Feeds:
MacRumors thread was hacked somehow.
http://live.gizmodo.com/

MacRumors MacWorld 2009 Rumor Roundup

Rumored Products/Updates:
* iLife and iWork 2009, with possible online components
* New Mac mini, iMac, and possibly Mac Pro models
* New 17″ MacBook Pro
* OS X 10.6 Release Information
* New iPhone
* Some kind of media/home server

April 1st, 2007: Apple’s 31st Birthday

On a more serious note, seeing as how we are all really into birthdays, don’t forget, Apple is celebrating their 31st birthday today - originally founded as Apple Computer, Inc, and now known (as of January 2007) as just Apple, Inc.

Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Ronald Wayne, along with Mike Markkula (who co-signed on a $250,000 bank loan to help provide the startup funding) founded the company on April 1st, 1976. The Apple II was released in 1977 and the rest is history.

Wikipedia article:
Apple was founded on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne (and later incorporated January 3, 1977) to sell the Apple I personal computer kit. They were hand-built in a garage of Jobs’ parents, and the Apple I was first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club. Eventually 200 computers were built. The Apple I was sold as a motherboard (with CPU, RAM, and basic textual-video chips) — not what is today considered a complete personal computer. The user was required to provide two different AC input voltages (the manual recommended specific transformers), wire an ASCII keyboard (not provided with the computer) to a DIP connector (providing logic inverter and alpha lock chips in some cases), and to wire the video output pins to a monitor or to an RF modulator if a TV set was used.

Jobs approached a local computer store, The Byte Shop, which ordered fifty units and paid $500 for each unit after much persuasion from Jobs. Jobs then ordered components from Cramer Electronics, a national electronic parts distributor. Using a variety of methods, including borrowing space from friends and family and selling various items including a Volkswagen Type 2 bus, Jobs managed to secure the parts needed while Wozniak and Ronald Wayne assembled the Apple I.

The Apple II was introduced on April 16, 1977 at the first West Coast Computer Faire. Despite a price higher than competitors, it quickly pulled away from its two main rivals, the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, to become the market leader (and the symbol of the personal computing phenomenon) in the late 70s due to its color graphics, high build quality, and open architecture. While early models used ordinary cassette tapes as storage devices, this was quickly superseded by the introduction of a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drive and interface, the Disk II…

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Any Updates on iRoots, iRoots Pro?

It’s been a year since we heard about iRoots and iRoots Pro - has anybody heard about any updates since then?

This is a partial reprint of the article linked above:

Could Apple be getting into the genealogy software and DNA testing market?

Apparently there will be two versions of iRoots. “iRoots Express” will ship with iLife ‘07. It’s limited to 2,000 people, 10 photos, 3 hours of audio, and one hour of video per person, .

The “iRoots Pro” version is limited only by your Mac’s memory and harddrive space, and adds full photo, audio, and video editing capabilities. It ships separately. Among other things, it can suggest who and what you should research, based on how interesting it thinks the people will be. It has the ability to fill in missing gaps in your genealogy as well as break through brickwalls. For example, If you don’t know your GGGG-Great Aunt Mary’s husband’s name, it can actually suggest what the name probably was, based on the popularity of names of men who lived in the area at the time. The “Pro” version also has the ability to fill in parts of the 1890 census that are relevant to your family, if you have the iDNA kit.

Sources also said that Apple was considering a hardware add-on, a “iDNA” kit that allows you to test yourself and your family members’ DNA, and then the results are developed right there on your Mac, using a USB or Firewire-powered device about the size of the iSight. The results are automatically uploaded into iRoots. You can buy family sample packs, where you get 200 swabs and test tubes to send out to family members, and they are pre-packaged/pre-postage paid, and with just a few minutes of their time, they take the sample, and send them back to you to process through the “iDNA” hardware.

If you have the “iDNA Express”, you can process around 10-15 samples an hour. If you upgrade to “iDNA Studio”, you can process around 200 samples an hour (depending on whether you are running a MacBook, Mac mini vs iMac, MacBook Pro, or Mac Pro). No word on a package discount for “iDNA Studio” and “iRoots Pro” being purchased together.

Mac OS X - 6th Birthday (March 24, 2001)

MacDailyNews mentions that today, March 24, 2007, is Mac OS X’s 6th birthday. They’ve posted the original press release online.

“CUPERTINO, California—March 21, 2001—Apple® today announced that beginning this Saturday, March 24, customers can buy Mac® OS X in retail stores around the world. Mac OS X is the world’s most advanced operating system, combining the power and openness of UNIX with the legendary ease of use and broad applications base of Macintosh®.

“Mac OS X is the most important software from Apple since the original Macintosh operating system in 1984 that revolutionized the entire industry,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We can’t wait for Mac users around the globe to experience its stability, power and elegance.”

Rest of press release at MacDailyNews

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