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June 19, 2005
Home | Pictures | iPhoto
If you had a digital snapshot camera, here's how you'd use it with your Mac. After you took a bunch of pictures, you would plug it into your iBook: iPhoto would then launch, and copy all your pictures from your camera to your computer, and remove them from the camera so you could start shooting more. It would store all the pictures in a folder called "iPhoto Library" in your Pictures folder.
iPhoto will do for your photos what iTunes does for your music. iPhoto is photo album software. It will keep track of all your photos. And you can create your own photo albums. In iPhoto, an album is simply a collection of photos. You can print your own photos with a cheap photo printer and get glossy pictures that are comparable to what you'd get from a photomat. Or with a few clicks you can order prints or a book of the photos for delivery from Kodak. It all happens within iPhoto. I think you'll find yourself wondering how you could do so much — so simply.
You can also view your photos as a slide show. If you've transferred your music CD collection to your iBook, you can pick a song to play with the slideshow. Pick the right music with the right photos and you can actually make 'em weep. And if you want to share a slideshow with someone, you can save it with the music as a QuickTIme movie. Slideshow movie files are relatively small, so you can email the movie to a friend. You can also click a button to send a particular picture to someone by email.
If you ever thought about getting a snapshot camera, there's never been a better time. Digital cameras just keep getting better and cheaper, and will undoubtedly continue to do so. A 3 Megapixel camera is probably all you'd need. More Megapixels cost more. Smaller cameras cost more.
A Megapixel is just a unit of measuring how big your pictures can be printed without looking terrible. 4 Megapixels is probably equivilant to an 8" by 10" photo, ie. far bigger than you'd normally get from the photomat. So you'd probably want a relatively cheap 3 Megapixel camera.
In the meantime, if anyone emails pictures to you, you can add those to iPhoto too. It's a great place to store them, view them, share them, and find them later.
Here's an iPhoto Tutorial. It's like the iTunes one for music.
Posted by Brad at 03:50 PM | Comments (0)
Home | Music folder | iTunes
If you transfer your CD collection to your iBook, you would store the music files in your Music folder, which is inside your Home folder. Each song is a separate file. You transfer your CDs with iTunes.
iTunes will turn your stereo into a music jukebox. It's like a 5 disc CD player, but with an unlimited number of CDs. And you can quickly create your own musical collections to suit your mood, type of activity, or social occasion. Your iBook is set up to wirelessly send the music to the stereo, so the songs on your laptop will come out of your stereo. If you want to find, or buy a song or album, you can do that through iTunes as well. Once you register an account at Apple's iTunes Music Store, you can find a song, download it, and be playing it through your stereo in about 5 minutes.
Check out this excellent iTunes Tutorial from Apple. It's a series of movies introducing and explaining what you can do with iTunes. Look for the "Watch the Movie" buttons. The movies have sound. Note: there's no movie on the first page.
Posted by Brad at 03:46 PM | Comments (2)
What to file?
I was once advised against getting a day planner. I'd mentioned that I was getting so busy, I needed one.
"If you get a day planner, it will just fill up. Don't do it."
"Yah - that's kind of the point. I can't keep track of the things I need to do."
"It will fill up and then you'll have even less time."
"Is this like - if you are bored you will live longer?"
"Yes."
If you feel too busy and can't keep track of all the things you have to do, then a day planner isn't going to help. The day planner is really a machine for making sure you are busy all the time. A day planner is a dangerous technology which changes how you think, restructuring time to resemble the grid on it's pages. The day planner's little boxes want to be filled in. At some point the user may begin to wonder whether the day planner is working for her, or if she is working for the day planner.
So in response to your comment, Mom - maybe not having any documents to file is a good thing. Travel light.
What might you have and where might you file it?
You want to store all your documents in your Home folder, which has a house icon. Your Home folder will have folders inside it for sorting files. If you did have files, you'd want to store them in one of the subfolders in your Home folder, like Mom's Docs, Movies, Music, or Pictures.
Note: Most Macs don't have the equivalent to "Mom's Docs." That's a special folder I created because some applications use "Documents" to store settings and data that no one ever really wants to know exist. There's no reason to have to mix that stuff up with documents that might have some relevence.
I'll follow up with separate posts.
Posted by Brad at 03:37 PM | Comments (0)
June 14, 2005
Finder | Move a file
As you are probably aware, there are many ways to accomplish the same task. Often people learn one way of doing things, and stick with it and make it a habit. When I started using OS X, I struggled with breaking old habits and learning new ones. I did this quite self-consciously because I just couldn't cope with the range of new options. I need a standard way of doing things.
Here's a relatively new and smart way of moving a file while avoiding wrestling with window clutter, ie. having a bunch of windows open which obscure each other. It's a good, standard approach.
How to move a file:
1. In Finder, navigate to the folder where you want to put the file - but don't open the folder. You'll know you are there when you can see the folder you want to put it in. We'll call this the destination folder.
2. Grab the destination folder and drag to the left sidebar of the Finder window.
3. Now navigate to the file you want to move.
4. Grab the file you want to move and drag and drop it onto the destination folder you added to the sidebar.
The file will be moved to the destination folder.
5. If the destination folder is not something you will go to, or add files to on a daily basis, you can remove it from the sidebar by grabbing it and dragging it to the right. Once it passes the divider marking the edge of the sidebar, you'll see a cartoon rendering of a puff of smoke appear under the folder and you can let go. It will disappear in a puff.
Tip: If you are unfamiliar with adding items to the sidebar, it's easiest if you add them to the very bottom of the list.
I found this approach a bit difficult initially, because I would normally think of the file first, then where I wanted to put it. So it took a bit of work to get in the habit of thinking first about where I wanted to put the file, then putting it there. Nonetheless, it's still better than opening multiple windows.
With these instructions Mom, I've used words that are verbs for fairly basic tasks, like grab, and drag and drop. I'm testing to see what I can get away with abbreviating, so do leave a comment to let me know which are meaningless nonsense.
Posted by Brad at 08:57 PM | Comments (1)
June 12, 2005
Finder | Switch to Finder & open new window
I talked to Mom on the phone about what info would be most helpful to her. Apparently she uses a shared computer at work, and doesn't keep any of her own files on it. So while she is fairly comfortable with web and email, she doesn't have much experience with working with files. So I'm going to drip feed her the basics for working with files, ie. working with the Finder.
(It's odd that many of us refer to it as The Finder. I notice it really is just called Finder. Where did we get the additional the from? Did Apple change the name?)
How to switch to Finder and open a new window with one click:
Click on the Finder icon in the Dock.
The Finder icon is always the first item on the left in the Dock (the strip across the bottom of the screen). If there are no Finder windows open, it will open one. If there is already a window open, it will bring the open window to the front.
Posted by Brad at 11:09 AM | Comments (0)
June 08, 2005
Tiger | Woods
Anna left a comment asking when you were going to get Tiger, so I got you this. (Sound's like a lot of birthdays, doesn't it?)
If you don't know my Mom, she's a serious golfer. If you don't know Macs, Tiger's the new version of Mac OS X. If you don't know golf... never mind.
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003 Demo (60MB)
http://www.macgamefiles.com/download.php?item=17718
This is a direct download from MacGameFiles. If you click this link Mom, a free demo version of "Tiger Woods PGA Tour" will download to your desktop. It will probably take about an hour to download, but it can do that in the background, even if you're doing web and email.
Tiger Woods PGA Tour is like a 1st person shooter, ie. you see from the point of view of the character, but you hit around golf balls instead of killing truckloads of hapless bystanders (or violent monsters - granted). You may have seen TV ads for this game: Tiger Woods is lining up a shot in a sand trap which suddenly sinks into the earth until it's about 30 feet deep. - ? - Maybe not.
From MacGameFiles.com:
This 4-hole demo of Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 2003, featuring the Sahalee Country Club, holes 10-13.
Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 2003 brings golf to life on the computer in a completely 3-D world with a brand new course and PGA TOUR golfer lineup. Put every skill to the test on eight pro courses, including the exclusive St Andrews Golf Links and Pebble Beach Golf Links. New rendering effects allow the grass to grow around your feet, making the rough rougher; weather effects let you "feel" the sun, the wind and the chill as the fog rolls in.
Initially, I was very skeptical about the whole idea of virtual golf. I couldn't imagine how one would hit the ball. Would you press a button? What's the point?
But the game is good. You use the mouse to make Tiger swing the club. It requires some timing, but it makes sense and feels very natural after a while in a very uncanny way. And I found the quality of every aspect of the game design really impressive. The environmental soundtrack consists mostly of birds, wind, and a crowd that responds in keeping with the quality of your shots. The sounds of the club swinging and the ball hitting the fairway are the epitome of high realism.
The editing is really good too. It seamlessly mixes TV style golf coverage with more cinematic transitional shots of Tiger addressing the ball. (It's funny the lingo that seeps in unaware. Where'd I pull that one from? ;-) The level of attention to detail is evident in the way the designers have cut from one shot of the ball in the air to the next while keeping the ball composed in exactly the same position relative to the frame. It makes it easy to follow the ball from one shot to the next.
In any case, it's certainly worth the download. And here's a tip: try playing very badly. Make Tiger embarrassed and ashamed. It's very amusing.
The file that downloads is called "Tiger 2003 Demo.sit". It will download to your Desktop. If you double-click it, after a minute of processing, it will create a new folder on your desktop called "Tiger 2003 Demo." That's the game. If you look in the folder, there's a text file called "ReadMe.txt." Open that and read "Playing the Demo." You only need to read until it's explained how to hit the ball and aim. And then you're swinging!
Oh, and Mom will get Tiger once she wears out her current version, Anna ;-) Otherwise everything will change just as it's become familiar and her book would be out of synch with her Mac - and I don't think the Tiger version of the The Missing Manual is even out yet. She'll have to make do with Tiger Woods. (Heh. I hadn't noticed - he has a golfy name.)
Posted by Brad at 11:33 PM | Comments (0)
