Google Earth Flight Simulator

GE includes a flight simulatory game ...

Flight Simulator Keyboard Controls - Google Earth User Guide

This document describes the various keyboard combinations that you can use with the flight simulator features of Google Earth. To enter the flight simulator mode, press Ctrl + Alt + A (Command/Open Apple Key + Option + A on the Mac). Once you have entered flight simulator mode for the first time, you can re-enter the mode by choosing Tools > Enter Flight Simulator. To leave flight simulator mode, click Exit Flight Simulator in the top right corner or press Ctrl + Alt + A (Command/Open Apple Key+ Option + A on the Mac)...

Desktop Pictures: the quality source

Sometimes Google can be dim. Search on "desktop pictures" and you get a lot of sites that, at least to me, aren't very useful.

On the other hand, the old "About this Particular Macintosh" site maintains a Desktop Picture archive that's free and excellent. A bit of a hidden gem I guess.

Personally I prefer gray scale images because color images make it hard to find my desktop icons, but I'll try switching some of these to gray scale. The one exception is that in XP at work I use Microsoft's desktop manager, and in that setting I reserve one environment for desktop operations. The other two can have full color backgrounds, and I rely on the backgrounds to tell me what environment I'm in. I'll be using these ...

Apple's iClip 1.0 (iMovie '08) shaft: what they should have done

iClip 1.0 (aka Movie '08) is a nasty trick. It has real promise and some real innovations; with another year of development it could be a great application. It needs a real media management solution, probably extending some of the approaches Aperture takes to managing a media library. iPhoto doesn't cut it as a media management solution. It also needs some of the core functionality that once belonged to iMovie HD. Most of all, it needs another year of work.

In fairness to Apple engineers, maybe it originally relied on functionality that was part of 10.5, and what we see now is a hack designed to work on 10.4. Or maybe it was supposed to be much more than it is, and as schedules slipped Apple threw it out the door in desperation.

Alas, it may well be a great commercial success. That happens. It doesn't change the shafted feeling iMovie HD users are going to experience.

The honorable thing for Apple to have done would have been to provide iMovie HD users with an upgrade path to Final Cut Express (which might also require some updates to FCE, I'm not sure how serious Apple is about that product). In a bit more detail, this is what they could have done:

1. Announce iClip (iVid?): a promising solution for rapidly sharing clips stored in iPhoto.
2. Announce that iMovie was, regrettably, being discontinued.
3. Let iLife '07 users have the option of a $75 transition to Final Cut Express. Some would choose to spend their money on FCE instead of iLife '08, others might choose both.
   

If Apple had taken that route I'm sure some users would still grumble, but they'd be spared the nasty reviews. There's still time for them to reconsider.

Sad Apple moments: Apple abandons file reference indirection

I think the single greatest innovation of the original MacClassic OS was the implementation of unique file identifiers.

Instead of hard coded paths and file names, files were identified by permanent unique identifiers. Applications called the Toolbox to get the current path as needed. Files could be "moved" (renamed, relationship to folders changed, etc), but references didn't break. Everything just worked (as long as the files stayed on the same physical drive).

Since Apple migrated to OS X they've been moving away from this. I looked a few months back and could find almost no documentation of indirection at the file system level in OS X HFS+. Increasingly Apple's applications seem to require fixed paths.

Apple's warped iClip (called iMovie '08 by Apple) is another nail in the coffin for indirection:

Gordon's Tech: iMovie '08: How the heck is it supposed to work?

As an experiment I relocated the iPhoto Library that iClip (iMovie '08) was referencing. I found, again, confirmation that Apple has abandoned file redirection in favor of hard coded paths.

Somewhere an group of former Apple engineers are mourning a great contribution that has been pointlessly abandoned. Whoever you are, wherever you are, thanks team. I appreciate what you did.

Update 2/26/09: A Stack over flow question pointed to the an Apple tech doc on The "/.vol" directory and "volfs" that demonstrates how badly this key innovation was hurt in the switch to OS X:

... This directory is used as the mount point for the "volfs" file system. The "volfs" file system is a key component for supporting the Carbon File Manager APIs on top of the BSD file system. Historically, BSD systems only allow you to access a file or directory by its POSIX path. However, the Carbon File Manager API also allows you to access an item by its catalogue node ID (CNID, a file ID reference or a directory ID). "volfs" provides a bridge between these two models, allowing the Carbon File Manager APIs to work on top of the BSD file system.

So Apple hacked BSD to enable file IDs with OS X, but Carbon is their deprecated API and file IDs are tied to HFS, a decrepit file system. I wasn't able to find mention of a Cocoa API for accessing CNIDs...

iMovie '08: How the heck is it supposed to work?

So how is that never should have been released "iClip" (so-called iMovie '08) supposed to work?

This is my best guess, after making a movie from some digital camera AVI files:

1. The clips are stored in iPhoto. (Despite my previous comments that Apple appeared to be abandoning iPhoto as a mixed media store.) This is pretty odd since iPhoto almost ignores AVI files, can't export them, can't share them, etc. Nonetheless, this is how iMovie/iClip expects to work. It has NO facilities itself for managing an clip store, it only manages references to clips. Now do keywords between iPhoto and iClip? I'd be amazed if they did.
   
2. The outputs from iMovie (.mp4, forget those other formats) are to be stored and managed in iTunes. Not in iPhoto.

Now if you think about this a while, your first question will be ... how the heck do I move an iClip project, or a set of clips, from one machine to another?

Very good question.

My guess is, you can't. Ever. Move. Anything. Otherwise, all the projects will break.

Is it easier to use with clips than iMovie '07? Minimally, maybe. Once you learn the weird UI and application model you can throw something together very fast. You can also draw from a large number of clips for a series of different outputs. On the other hand, iMovie was far more powerful than iClip, and you could actually backup, restore and move your projects between machines.

iMovie isn't as big a fiasco as, say, Vista, but I'd line up to throw a (harmless) pie at a cartoon of the iLife product manager ...

PS. It's not been much remarked, but this is the first Apple software that has Intel only features. The newest digital video compression formats are supported only on Intel.

Update 9/2/07: As an experiment I relocated the iPhoto Library that iClip (iMovie '08) was referencing. I found, again, confirmation that Apple has abandoned file redirection in favor of hard coded paths. The video files were still on the local drive, but iClip could no longer find them.

The following Event used in this project is not currently available:
iPhoto Videos - MN State Fair Sept 1, 2007
The portions of the project which reference this Event will show black frames.

Update 3/25/2008: A Flip Video experiment exposed what a lousy product iMovie '08 is. Any longtime Mac users would expect that iMovie '08 would be able to import any video source that QuickTime can recognize.

Wrong.

iMovie '08 imports DV, .mov (quicktime) and MPEG4. It doesn't leverage QuickTime's infrastructure.

This is a truly miserable product.

iMovie '08: It's so unfinished that ...

iLife 2008 iMovie is so unfinished that there's no help entry for "join clip". "Join Clip" is the name of an item on the Edit menu.

iMovie 2008 would have been ready around October. Yech.

OS X 10.5, btw, won't be ready until April 2008. My prediction.

Update: The string "join clip" doesn't appear in the PDF tutorial either. It's as though the feature wasn't implemented, but Apple forgot to remove it from the menus. I'm starting to feel like the Emperor has no clothes and I'm the only one who's saying anything ...

Update: I figured out by experimentation what split clip does. If you move a clip to a project, then click and drag to select a portion of the clip, you can then split that portion out. If I could ever figure out how to select more than one clip at a time I could probably join them, but again the help file is useless.

How to uninstall an iPhoto plug-in

I had no idea there was an official uninstall, I'd previouslly opened the package and deleted inside the plug-in folder:

Picasa Web : Frequently Asked Questions

We hope you love Picasa Web Albums Exporter for iPhoto, but we won't be mad if you want to uninstall it. Here's how:

* Quit iPhoto if it's open.
* In the Finder, open the Applications folder.
* Click iPhoto once to select it.
* Choose File > Get Info to open an Info window.
* Find the section of the Info window labeled Plug-ins. If necessary, click the little triangle for Plug-ins to see the list of items in that section.
* Scroll through the list until you find PicasaWebAlbums.iPhotoExporter. Click that entry to select it.
* Click Remove.
* In the scary alert box that appears, click Continue.

Apple needs more QA testers: Version XIXXIII

Apple doesn't have enough QA people. Maybe Apple's culture disdains the entire idea of QA testing. Grumph!

Latest episode. The Child account on our machines has a locked Dock. When I installed iPhoto 2008 Apple's own installer stuck an iMovie icon on the locked Dock. I can't remove it unless I escalate the Child account privileges, remove it, then restore them. A real nuisance.

Apple needs a knock on the head about QA.

iPhoto 7.02 breaks the old double-arrow scrollbar hack

I've had double arrows at the top and bottom of my scrollbars since I implemented this 10.1 hack:

macosxhints.com - Scroll arrows at both ends of scroll bars [10.1]:

... OS 10.1 adds an option in the General prefs to have double-scroll arrows at the bottom of the scroll bar. Scott R. wrote in with a quick preferences hack to enable double-scroll arrows at BOTH ends of the scroll bars. If you'd like to enable this feature, simply start a terminal session and type: defaults write 'Apple Global Domain' AppleScrollBarVariant DoubleBoth You then need to logout and login (or, perhaps, simply force quit the Finder) to see the effect ... but once you've done so, you should have double-scroll arrows at both ends of your scroll bars.

....To return to the normal mode, use: defaults write 'Apple Global Domain' AppleScrollBarVariant Single (or you could just open the [Appearance] pane in the System Prefs and check 'At top and bottom') or defaults write 'Apple Global Domain' AppleScrollBarVariant DoubleMax to put them together only at the bottom (again, this is equivalent to clicking 'Together' in the General prefs panel for scroll arrows).

Alas in 10.4.10 with iPhoto 7.02 one sees odd gaps at each end of the scrollbar. I turned off this old hack and iPhoto's scrollbars appear normal again. I'm not sure they don't have some new behaviors though ... they feel somewhat Leopardish.

The dead quality desktop webcam market

It's a sad truth that the primary market for webcams has always been "adult entertainment". This favors cheap devices with optics that leave much to the imagination (example, Microsoft's disappointing LifeCam VX-6000). Bad news then for business users who need a sub $300 desktop solution that will work with a typically stressed corporate LAN/WAN.

Until a year or so ago Mac users had a uniquely only good solution -- the Apple iSight. Firewire, not coincidentally. Even Apple couldn't make money off this market though, and they downgraded to a cheap embedded solution that won't work for sharing whiteboards (newer iMacs have a slightly better camera, but it still doesn't focus).

PC and Mac users alike had another solution -- about 3-5 years ago. Back then Canon (and others?) sold firewire connected digital video cameras with a "network mode"

...You can turn your Optura camcorder into a powerful webcam. Both the Optura 400 camcorder features a Network Mode that enables you to remotely control your camcorder through the DV Messenger2 software application. Control the focus and zoom of your camcorder from a computer while streaming the video via its IEEE 1394 terminal...

Those were the days of good articles on using a camcorder as a webcam and software to fill in what vendors left out. Not any more! I can't find anyone who sells a digital video camera with this kind of capability today.

So, basically, USB and lack of customer interest killed the mid-range high quality PC webcam market, and the Mac market may be little better*. I hope Cringely is right when he says that new teleconferencing solutions are just around the corner. There's nothing to do now but wait ...

*Andrew is going for his iMac soon, so I'll have an update on how well Apple's new embedded webcam works. A used iSight, btw, sells today for about what it sold for brand new.

Screencasting for XP: BB FlashBack Express $30

I'm quite happy with iShowU for OS X screencasting (screen video capture), but the XP equivalents I've seen have been quite expensive or poor quality. I've got a new one to try for my employer projects (XP): BB FlashBack Express for $30 with an excellent trial policy. It looks quite promising, I'll update this post with what I learn.

Update 8/30/07: That was quick. A complete flop. It died without a notice after the first trivial video capture and left a hung process I had to kill manually. I suspect it doesn't like dual monitor configuration. At least it didn't waste much time. I'll try doing XP video captures using an old digital camera from my closest, and if that doesn't work I'll run Windows remote desktop from a Mac and use iShowU to capture the XP video.

ConceptDraw can import MindManager files

The ConceptDraw MINDMAP application for OS X and Windows ($200) claims to be able to import MindJet MindManager files:

ConceptDraw MINDMAP: mindmapping and brainstorming tool overview

.. MindManager Import You can seamlessly open files created by MindManager users on both Windows and Mac OS...

MindManager is definitely the market leader (alas, Inspiration, you peaked too early -- though I do hope you hang in there) in this segment. It's a fairly expensive product however, and it's very much a "lock-in" play. You put your data in MindManager, you'll never get it out again.

Until now. MINDMAP looks like it's aiming for the MindManager market, and it supports OPML export. They need to drop the price though if they want to get serious -- MindManager 7 for Mac is $130! There's no way MINDMAP can charge $70 more than MindManager and be a serious alternative.

I suggest they think about charging $130 for a dual platform license -- for the same price as MM get the right to use both the Windows and OS X versions on all machines one uses.

iPhoto beware: sharing doesn't include movies

I ran across yet another iPhoto "gotcha".

The only semi-approved way to migrate files with some metadata (caption, comments and date*) between iPhoto Libraries is by "sharing". It's a poor substitute for import capabilities, but this is what iPhoto's Product Management has given us. Among other limitations this kind of sharing allows one to import the last version, but not the original. The original is lost.

Tonight I tried sharing an iPhoto '08 Library from my MacBook to the main Library that sits on my iMac. (I've not yet updated to iMac to iPhoto '08 because I like to give Apple's releases two months to get the disastrous bugs out. One non-disastrous limitation is that Google's iPhoto Picasa Web Album plug-in doesn't work in iPhoto '08.) Sharing photos works, but movies aren't shared.

* I don't remember if keywords were preserved with iPhoto '07 sharing, but they aren't shared between iPhoto '07 and iPhoto '08.

So if you travel with one Library, then share your work back to the main Library on your return home, then delete the travel Library -- you lose your videos.

Lovely. Thanks again Apple!

PS. iPhoto '08 is a very good upgrade in most regards. There are lots of small fixes, overall it's a big enough improvement that even with the #$!$#!%! missing Library import it's well worth the price of iLife '08 to upgrade. I do recommend, however, using it in test mode only for at least one more month. Apple has a consistent history of disastrous iPhoto bugs with each major upgrade. Incidentally, there's something funny with the way the scroll bars work, they don't render correctly for me. I think that's because I enabled the "two arrow" hack years ago, I think I may need to undo that one.

Update 8/29: Wow, you can't even export movies from iPhoto 7.02 ('08). If you select movies then choose the "export" menu item, you get a "no item selected" message. The dialog's options make no sense for video only. It's pretty obvious Apple is trying to forget that they positioned iPhoto as a unified media library! You can click on the movie files and drag them to the desktop. When I copied them manually to my main Library they did keep the correct date attributes. I also saw my shared iPhoto 7.02 library vanish shortly after mounting in iPhoto 6. It took a while to get it back, I had to stop sharing the entire library and instead share a "smart folder" that had all photos but no movies. I was able to import all the versions (I compared counts). I confirmed that this type of "import" does discard the Originals.

DevonThink: Digitizing paper documents

The Mac has two persistent significant weaknesses. One is speech recognition -- there's nothing on the Mac comparable to the best XP solutions. Speech recognition is still a niche market however. The other has been imaging and document management -- a bigger market. The Mac OCR software I've seen has been a leftover from another era. So this Macintouch announcement caught my eye:

MacInTouch: timely news and tips about the Apple Macintosh

DEVONtechnologies LLC released DEVONthink Professional Office 1.3.2 and DEVONthink Professional 1.3.2, which update the top end of the company's information management software line. The Pro Office version adds support for MailTags 2.0 notes, an option to the resolution and the compression of PDFs generated by the built-in IRIS OCR engine, support for ExactCODE's ExactScan software to drive Avision document scanners, an option to set default encoding for email import, and better detection of URLs in text messages... DEVONthink Professional Office is $149.95 and DEVONthink Professional is $79.95 for Mac OS X 10.3.9 and up (Universal Binary).

DevonThink is a senior instance of the many information management solutions for OS X, like most DT suffers from the fatal flaw of proprietary data stores. All of these products have had to figure out where to go post-Spotlight; full text search eliminated a portion of their value proposition without introducing file format lock-in. DT seems to be focusing on the problem of managing paper document stores with PDF files, wrapping the old IRIS OCR engine with a modern software environment. If someone would only produce the scanner I want (very easy to do, so the failure to make a what I want puzzles me ) DT would be one of the first products I'd turn to ...

iPhoto '08 breaks Google (Picasa) web album Export

iPhoto '08 breaks the excellent Google (Picasa) export iPhoto Plug-In. Sigh.

I forgot, again, the #1 rule of life with Apple -- wait two months after any major update before use. Apple doesn't pre-release non-OS software to vendor partners, so they need at least two months to fix their software.

Update 10/13/07: It's been six weeks now. Google's Picasa Web Album Mac Tools page still says this:

The Picasa Web Albums Exporter is a plug-in that lives right inside iPhoto™. Select photos, choose Export in the File or Share menu, and upload them directly to your web album.

There's no mention that the plug-in no longer works. A month ago a developer commented on a post of mine saying that they were working on a fix, but there's been no communication since through any venue. Plaintive calls turn up every week or two on the Picasa Web Album Google Group.

I know a bit about the vertical IT market. In that market resources are very tight and timelines are long. This kind of thing happens in our market, but it's amazing to see it happening to Google. Microsoft moves with lighting speed by comparison, and they would have updated their publicly facing material weeks ago. Even Apple would have communicated better than this, and they're notoriously close mouthed.