Matias Tactile Pro 2.0 Keyboard for Mac (and Windows)

I bought a non-Apple Mac keyboard a few months back, replacing the Apple kb I'd grown to loathe. Alas, I'd never head of the Matias Tactile Pro 2.0 Keyboard. I came across it today by way of a review of Apple's new products. That review discussed Apple's latest evil keyboard (ok, so it's slightly less evil than their old evil desktop keyboard) referenced a 3 yo review of an older version of the Tactile Pro 2:

I realize that some may find it odd that I wax rhapsodic about something as mundane as a computer keyboard, but those who've had the pleasure of using Apple's old Apple Extended Keyboard (code named the "Saratoga" for its battleship gray color and size) and have had to put up with lesser keyboards from Apple and others, will be thrilled to know that there's a modern, USB keyboard that's nearly as nice as the Apple input device of old.

That keyboard is Matias' $100 TactilePro. The folks at Matias use the same keyswitches found in the Apple Extended keyboard and it shows. The keyboard is a bit noisier than my old Saratogas (more clack) but it's just as springy and responsive. Like the older Apple keyboards (and unlike the current Apple offerings) the TactilePro includes a Power button for switching on and off compatible Macs (not all Mac models will respond to pressing this button). And like Apple's new keyboards, the TactilePro includes Volume Up, Volume Down, Mute, and Eject keys (F14 and F15 are used by Mac OS X to adjust screen brightness, though the keys aren't marked that way).

The new version of the Matias has dual UBS 2.0 dock (how do they power it?) and Mac key symbols, but the price has gone from $100 to $150 (!!). The web site doesn't discuss device drivers, but most non-Apple kbs have them.

Google apps: feeble.

How feeble are Google's vaunted "Apps"?

So feeble that a new user going to the calendar site doesn't see the group calendar. They see only their own calendar.

So feeble that Page Creator has been stuck at the "intern's summer project" level for years.

Feeble.

Update 8/10/07: There are so many bugs and oddities I think I'll just keep adding them to this post ...

1. Start page: click the "even more" link in the google tools hieararchy and get:
   Not Found
   The requested URL /intl/en/options/ was not found on this server.
2. Creating and editing the common start page has very limited control options.
3. In order to allow a user to edit a single web page, you have to give them admin control over the entire domain.
4. You can change a user's name in the user controls, but this doesn't propagate to the calendars. Even if you manually change the name in the calendar, the name shown as "calendar owner" will remain incorrect.
   

iPhoto 7 (iLife 2008): again, no Library merges

[Update: the link won't work because Apple deleted my post within 2 hours of my posting it. I'm not surprised. Maybe their vigilant reaction is a sign they're feeling some heat about this issue. There are very active complaint threads this morning about library merging.]

From my post on Apple's Discussion group (corrected because iLife 2008 is iPhoto 7, not iPhoto 8)

Apple - Support - Discussions - Feature request for iPhoto 8: Import ...:

You're traveling with your MacBook. Organizing photos, adding metadata, creating albums, slideshows, etc. You get home. You want to import your travel library to the main library, preserving ALL the versions and metadata.

You have just married the Mac Geek of your dreams. You need to merge Libraries into the shared folder (which can't be shared over a network, but let's just ignore that). How do you do that?

You created and used separate Libraries back with iPhoto bogged down at 2000 images. Now you want to combine them, preserving version relationships, album relationships, descriptions, titles, keywords, roll information, photo books, slideshows, etc, etc.

Yes, I know about iPhoto Library Manager. I license and use it. It does miracles with Apple's limited merge support, but some metadata is lost. I also had so many issues with earlier version merges that, even though I use it all the time, I'm gun-shy. Sorry, merging Libraries is very complex. It's hard to believe that anyone but Apple can do it safely.

iLife 2008 (iPhoto 7) is the fourth release in a row to disappoint those of us asking for Library management.

Choices? Aperture, which Apple clearly intends us to buy instead, doesn't allow one to edit dates on images (good-bye scans!), is dog slow (appallingly slow - still) by design, and can't handle video. Others? They don't import iPhoto Libraries. I ain't redoing metadata on 14,000 images.

Anyone interested in putting together an online petition to ask Apple to add Libary merge/import/management to iPhoto 2009? Picket Cupertino maybe?

I ordered it, of course. What choice do I have?

VueScan vs. Nikon Scan on OS X

I've published a few posts about VueScan; it's a well regarded cross-platform scan control software package that appears to be a one person show. The author's personal focus and prolonged dedication has produced an idiosyncratic product that, with a few quirks (auto-crop isn't what it could be) performs admirably well. I bought a "pro" license, so I get my updates as long as Hanrick toils away.

I've mostly used VueScan to do print and a few negative scans, but recently I worked on a set of my mother's slides. These range from about 40 to 50 years old, in various states of repair. I used Nikon CoolScan V I bought about 3-4 years ago, it's oddly still about state of the art for slide scanning (though slow now). I started out using Nikon Scan 4.02, downloading the latest OS X version from Nikon's support site (yechy non-Apple installer btw. I installed as admin, but the app works for a non-admin user). It's a quirky mix of various semi-integrated packages that Nikon resells, but it mostly worked. It was slow however, and I wasn't impressed with the results various image adjustment options. I got the best results turning everything off, working with the clumsy levels tool, and using Digital ICE for damaged slides. Performance on a G5 iMac was dog slow and, really, it was clumsy.

I then tried the same images on the G5 using the latest version of VueScan. It worked beautifully. Results were better than what I got with Nikon Scan. I didn't fuss too much with white balance or levels, I went with the very good initial results then dropped the 24bit TIFF into Aperture for finishing. From Aperture I exported high res JPEGs to store in iPhoto (note Aperture doesn't allow date editing, an incomprehensible defect). The processing was a bit slow, but the workflow was great.

Next I tried VueScan, which has full Intel support, on my dual core MacBook. Processing was 2-3x as fast.

If you're using a Nikon Cool Scan (CoolScan) with OS X, don't bother installing the ugly Nikon software. Buy VueScan (cheap at the price) and finish your TIFFs in a secondary image processing package (like iPhoto, Aperture, etc).

iLife '08

So true.

iLife '08 guided tour - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)... The 20 minute video gives you the highlights of the iLife suite and tries to convince you it is worth $80, but you're reading TUAW so I am guessing that you already bought it.

It was an easy buy since Aperture still doesn't support #$#!$!@$ date editing. Of course Apple didn't add the one iPhoto feature I wanted -- Library merge/import. I bought it anyway for the new photo editing tools and iMovie. It will be interesting to see if iWeb allows one to update a theme -- the last version had the fatal flaw that one's initial theme selections were the eternal theme selections.

I'll have my comments in a week or two -- I don't have time to mess with it for a week or so so I ordered it online.

8/20/07: Well, I shouldn't have bought it for iMove, but iPhoto 08 has some good features. Here's the link to download the last good copy of iMovie.

Freecycle: Given away free stuff

I've had a hard time giving away good stuff in the past. Next time I'll try this:

TidBITS: Freecycle: Disposing of Good Old Stuff

...I had heard about the Freecycle Network, an Internet service that connects people with stuff to give away with people who want free stuff, but until this point I had never tried it. It turned out to be extremely simple. I went to the Freecycle Groups page to find the Ithaca group, followed the link to its Yahoo Groups mailing list, subscribed, and read the ground rules (this is important, since some things - like the required Subject tags - are not inherently obvious to a newcomer), and then sent a pair of email messages to the list, describing the LaserWriter and photocopier.

FlickrDown: make Flickr tolerable

Flickr allows users to download full res images, but it's a tedious multi-click process. It's pretty clear from reading the help forums that Flickr/Yahoo discourages distribution of full res images using Flickr, so they make the process as painful as possible.

GMAN: FlickrDown to the rescue. This open source free app is downloading my SIL's (sister-in-law) photoset as I type, I'll dump them in iPhoto later today. There's a similar open source app for OS X apparently, but my son is occupying the iMac at the moment. This one seems quite fine.