I discuss what I deem to be important changes made to the iLife suit with this release, mainly focusing on the redesigned iMovie and updates to iPhoto as well. Music this week is “Teenagers” by My Chemical Romance.

 

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Here is the welcome video you get the first time you turn on a Mac running Leopard.

Bundled with the background, found here, it seems that Apple is moving to an outer space type design. Phill Ryu talks more about the interface changes and what that means for Aqua.

Personally, I’m excited about the innovation and clarity of the design. The user is visually shown the chronological relation of their files and it’s very intuitive to use. As far as pure beauty, I’m not sure that I’m all for it, but the concept and implementation will evolve and become more polished with future releases.

Freeridecoding announces a major update for its straightforward backup tool SmartBackup v2.1. SmartBackup supports sorted archiving of deleted or changed items, file exclusion, handling of multiple backup sets, one-click restore and automation using iCal, Automator or shellscripts. Version 2.1 includes many important improvements.

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Freeridecoding announces a major update for its straightforward backup tool SmartBackup v2.1. SmartBackup is the ideal application to backup personal data to hard drives, network sharepoints, webDAV, usb sticks, iPods etc.

SmartBackup is very easy to set up. It supports the use of Spotlights “saved searches” as backup items or to define exclusion which makes creating dynamic backups very simple. SmartBackup supports sorted archiving of deleted or changed items, file exclusion, handling of multiple backup sets, one-click restore and automation using iCal, Automator or shellscripts. Be smart - backup different.

New in 2.1:
* launchable with superuser privileges
* Improved cleanup and archiving
* Improved handling of metadata
* Improved backup to network shares
* Updated interface
* German localisation
* New automator action
* Several bugfixes

System Requirements:
* Intel or PPC Mac
* MacOSX 10.3
* MacOSX 10.4 for Spotlight support
* Ready for Leopard

Languages:
* English
* German

Licenses: Single 15 Euro (appr. 21USD), Family Pack 30 Euro (appr. 42USD), Site licenses available.

Read more about SmartBackup here.

All Out Software announces their first release of Hana 1.0, a web-browser-type application to specialize in the support of web-apps, such as webmail, calendars and organization systems. Based on the built-in WebKit, Hana is a Universal Mac OS X application designed to work with any web site that supports Apple’s internet browser, Safari. Hana strips away all of the superfluous features of ordinary browsers and leaves the user with the tools to get their work done.

Eureka Missouri - Aug 6, 2007 - All Out Software is pleased to announce their first release of Hana 1.0, a web-browser-type application to specialize in the support of web-apps, such as webmail, calendars and organization systems. Based on the built-in WebKit, Hana is a Universal Mac OS X application designed to work with any web site that supports Apple’s internet browser, Safari (versions 1-2.x).

Hana brings order and focus to working with web-apps by stripping away all of the superfluous features of ordinary browsers, leaving the user with just the right tools to get their work done. An applications tab strip replaces the address bar and toolbar. Once a user sets up a web-app in Hana, it appears in a tab and will remain there until the user deletes or deactivates it.

What are web-apps?
A web-app is a service or web site in which a person will do something other than simply read the content. Web-apps provide a unique way for the user to communicate with others or to create, or edit content in some way. Notable uses are webmail, web calendars, photo sharing, photo editing, project management, word processing and more.

Where does one find Web-apps?
In addition to Hana’s release, All Out Software has published the Web-app Directory. This directory will be community driven and collaborative, to include user submitted web-apps that Hana supports. All Out Software will also be evaluating web-apps to add to this directory as well. The Hana Web-app Directory is available online on the Hana page at the All Out Software website.

Pricing and Availability:

Hana 1.0 can be purchased from the All Out Software web site and from within the application for US$19.91. For a limited time, Hana is available at a US$10 discount via the All Out Software website only. The full version of Hana, including a 14 day unrestricted demo-mode is available via download from the All Out Software web site.

Hana 1.0 is available for Mac OS X 10.4.4 and higher, Universal Binary, and works with Safari 1-2.x.

Read more about Hana here.

Download a copy of Hana now.

I just wanted everyone to know that I’ve moved out of the parent’s place and into an apartment, which currently means I’m lacking internet access. I’m sure we’ll fork over the money and get it up and going here shortly, but at least for the next week or so, I have practically no access to anything, including email.

If you’ve sent me something, I’ll respond as soon as I can.

Not that it’s any major surprise, but I thought that I would share a quick screenshot to remind everyone that Leopard is indeed on its way to us. Read: “An audio preview lets you audition Garageband projects in the Finder, Time Machine, and other applications, but takes longer each time you close a project.”

Just a quick mention of Time Machine, even though this software runs on Tiger.

I know that I haven’t released a podcast in ages, but I promise I haven’t been ditching the site entirely. In the time I would have been recording these last several weeks, I have instead worked on improving the aging and cluttered site, and my efforts are now online for all to see.

Changes include:

• New logo from aspiring graphic artist, Jimmy Xander.
• Cooler ‘banner’ images that take up less space in the window
• AJAX Searching - Super cool. It’s like Spotlight, try it out now and leave some comments
• New Comment System - AJAX-goodness. Instantly preview your comment before you post, quickly reply to another comment, Gravatar support for custom avatars on comments and improved styling overall
• Other minor tweaks, security fixes, and optimizations

I’m really proud of the work I’ve done, especially the overall feel and style. The banner images turned out pretty cool and I like the intense color and sexiness. The colored ‘candy-bars’ for the search results and comments turned out better than I had hoped as well.

If you find any bugs with the new theme, a quick comment would be appreciated!

Apple released a slew of Mac-related products on August 7 and after using a few of them already, I figured I would take the time to comment on the products themselves, as well as the strategy Apple is taking.

First, the ‘new’ iMac is new.  Sort of.  Yes, it has a redesigned keyboard and is now in a very professional, metal casing.  And the new iMac has a glossy screen, just like the Macbooks.  And it’s smaller.  But all in all, this is not the machine I was hoping for.  Performance-wise, the iMac is just as blazingly fast as ever and is a real competitor to other products out there.  However, the form factor hasn’t really changed in several years and I was hoping for, and indeed expecting, something radically new that would push the bounds of computing today as we know it.  I guess we got that with the iPhone and Apple’s designers need a rest for now.

Apple finally released some important software about eight months later than expected, iWork ‘08 and iLife ‘08.  We were led to believe that both of these products were pushed back because the software was heavily tied to new features and technologies only available in Leopard.  With this wee’s release, we now know that this isn’t the case and that leaves me a bit disappointed.  Let me elaborate.

First, iWork is a mixture of feelings.  Numbers finally made it’s debut, and a rather strong one at that.  I have used the software for about 30 minutes and it seems to be a robust and very elegant spreadsheet application.  Way better than Excel has ever hoped to be.  But Pages gained only marginal features (read: changes tracking) and poor Keynote just gained some new transitions and templates.  That’s not really a new release at all folks, who are we kidding?  UPDATE: Somehow I missed the ‘instant-alpha’ feature, to instantly erase backgrounds from images.  I haven’t tried this feature out yet.

When reading over the presentation notes, I was initially excited about one announcement in particular.  iMovie.  Not because I use iMovie that often, au contraire.  I was excited because I saw the phrase ‘video library’.  Jobs was on stage telling viewers that iMovie wasn’t really iMovie anymore, that it had been rewritten from the ground-up based on a new workflow and had gained a horrid icon.  But I was excited.  iTunes just isn’t designed to manage my video library.  And I thought that Apple had finally decided to fill this need with a new iMovie.  After reading more about the software, I realized that this wasn’t the case at all.  However, the software does seem promising and takes a new approach to film-editing.

For the other iLife applications, I can’t think of anything to say.  iTunes saw no update, apparently iTunes is no longer part of iLife in any shape or form.  iPhoto saw significant updates, using the term ‘event’ quite a lot, but I’m not interested in this update either.  Garageband gained 24-bit audio support and a live band feature, but nothing as groundbreaking as the previous release with iLife ‘06.  Oh, and iDVD received new themes.

It was exciting initially for Apple to release so many Mac products and let us know that the iPhone and the iPod are important, but not the only thing Apple does.  However, I feel like a lot was left out of this release at the same time and that projects were stalled and then hurried out the door to make a deadline, with a lot of features left out just to make some marketing buzz.

I’m just a little disappointed, but I’ll let you know more when my copy of iLife ‘08 arrives.

So evidently a lot has been happening over at RealMac Software these last few weeks and I’ve missed out on the action.  First off, Button Builder, a pretty cool application that allows you easily create attractive buttons for your website, has gone the way of open-source and is now free.  Pretty cool.  The updated website is just plain sexy as well.

To go with that, Realmac Forge has been launched, as an area to download Rapidweaver plugin SDKs, get the source for Button Builder and more.

And also of interest, is a new website being launched by RealMac Software called I Love RapidWeaver.  Right now it’s just an attractive blue page as a teaser, but could be promising.