This week a bit more on iPhoto with a look at Faces plus the way it exports to Facebook, Flickr and MobileMe. We have also been playing with the Safari beta a bit more, so some comments on that.

iLife (2): iPhoto Faces, Flickr and Facebook

I think that this week, I also have to decide on the usual 20 minutes and some cuts or extending the podcast. Decisions, decisions.

A few more days with the new Safari, that Paul Thurrott hates and claims that Apple stole from Google's Chrome, which itself uses Apple's Webkit, had me making some changes with the tabs and getting them back to the normal place under the URL bar, plus adding the progress bar and some toolbar changes too. All compliments of that Random Genius page I mentioned last week. We start Terminal, copy and paste the relevant command at the command line, press Enter, then restart Safari.

What I had been sorely missing was the ability to drag tabs off the page, reposition the, on the page or move them from page to page: as I go through a day downloading lots of articles, I end up resorting. The tabs bar on top stopped that and it was only possible to move a tab to make a new page using a right click menu item. This was one of the complaints that resonated round the web with so many commentators that I would be surprised to see it included; or if it is, I am sure it will be easy to move them with a check box in the preferences.

Thurrott was particularly caustic about the Cover Flow feature but as I have been using this for the last few days I would say he is utterly wrong and may not have given Safari a proper examination. What am I saying, of course he didn't and probably had pre-formed ideas that, (A) it is Apple so, (B) it is bad.

The Coverflow feature is accessed using the search bar in the Top Sites page, although I would like it accessible directly it is so useful. I often find myself going back two or three days, or even more, trying to find a site or page using the History list. Some of the items are pure URLs and this does not make identification easy. With this new feature, you can scroll through the pages of the history and when the right page comes up -- it could be in a series of similar pages -- it is much easier to identify and thence click on.

What does not show up are pages that are accessed via the secure pages system and these are indicated in that feature by a black page with a grey lock near the centre.

And as a note, Paul Thurrott please note Safari was benchmarked last week and I found this a couple of days after its release. It was found to be 42x faster than IE 7 and 3.5x faster than Firefox 3.

Must be magic. Last week I mentioned in the podcast that I had heard nothing about any 10.5.7 update and less than 12 hours later, AppleInsider reports that this has now been seeded to developers and they describe it as "a sizeable maintenance and security update" and report that in its current form it is some 440MB. What do we think: 2 weeks?

Aldan Malley in AppleInsider also reports on suggestions about how Snow Leopard might include some new graphics support after the discovery of five new kernel extensions.

An occasional correspondent wrote this weekend asking for some suggestions, but it looks as if he has a broken hard disk. Let us hope that data was all backed up. While the emails were going back and forth, he commented on a couple of Windows users he knows who had moved from the dark side and could not understand why they had not done it years before. As I replied, I should have called the column Cassandra after the daughter of the Trojan king, Priam, who had the gift of prophesy, but also the gift that no one would believe her.

The man with the broken hard disk also had a more personal illustration when a colleague was asking him about music, CDs, and ripping. The colleague insisted that it could not be an easy procedure with iTunes and a Mac. He showed him how to import a CD and he then insisted that he must have done it all wrong. It was all so easily effected.

He tells me he gave him his CD back and said thanks for the songs as he played them with the colleague standing there looking at him as if he were Merlin the Magician. He comments finally that "It seems the Microsoft/Windows brainwashing techniques are still very strong."

The Apple shareholders' meeting last week was notable for a couple of things. Steve Jobs was not there as had been predicted but some of those attending sang happy birthday anyway, even if it was a day late. More interesting, apart from the side-stepping and a confirmation from Tim Cooke that Steve would be back, the board was re-elected.

PC World's David Coursey is sure, however, that Steve Jobs will never return and writes about this. I have left the link to the MacDailyNews item as it is taken apart fairly well there, with some positive input.

Over at the Dolby shareholders' meeting, however, a couple of additional people joined their board. One of these was Avie Tevanian who left Apple a couple of years back. He was with Steve Jobs at NeXT and is widely credited with being one of the main driving forces behind the NextStep operating system of their computers which evolved from Mach and which later became OS X.

An app that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Documents to Go from Dataviz, is getting nearer. They sent me some update information this week with a link to some screen shots and some positive comments from some independent people who have looked at the development version.

Michael Dell said famously a few years ago that Apple should be broken up and the money given back to the shareholders. well, Apple shares might be wallowing a bit in recent months along with the rest of the economy, but not as much as Dell. MacDaily News has a link to a piece from Jim Goldman who says that the company is in a mess and will continue to be. MDN calls it karma (locally, Kum) and sometimes the things we say turn round and bite back.

I like to use MacDailyNews directly sometimes rather than the original that the item links to, as they have some amusing observations. MDN picks up on an item concerning the Microsoft approach to survival out of Dow Jones, by Andrew Morse. Reporting on Redmond's strategies, Morse comments that MS is starting to copy Apple, with reference to the retail stores it is planning. And My Phone, and the GUI, from Windows 3 right through to Vista and Seven. MDN, almost explodes. Starting?

Ballmer is at the iPhone again and this is interesting with what follows this item. He dissed it from the word go and although seemed to temper that a few weeks back, is now in full flight again claiming the iPhone is all hype. Again, some interesting feedback from MacDailyNews.

If you think the iPhone is hype, speak to a friend of mine who went for a flashy LG Secret. After a couple of months he is hating it: the touch screen doesn't sometimes, it is impossible to sync with a Mac and Bluetooth is, at best intermittent and usually requires a restart to transfer a file.

A couple of stories here arrived separately but seem to me to be related. First we hear from Eric Savitz in Tech Trader Daily that there appears to be some increased demand for the iPhone and offers an analysis of why this might be.

Then Electronista reports on speculation that Apple is buying up large amounts of flash memory and the price has begun to rise because of this. If there is a new iPhone and increased demand anyway, that might be the answer. Watch this space; but don't blink.

Another inventory question concerns the iMac and its lack of availability in some stores. That is often a sign, Electronista comments, that there may be a new product or upgrade on the way.

And in perfect timing, those rumours became concrete with not one, but five releases. To begin with a new Mac Mini, a new MacPro and a new iMac. Not only that, but they were immediately shown on the Thailand Apple store.

Let me start with the iMac. There is a single 20" version with a 2.66Ghz processor at 45,900 baht; and three 24" iMacs. 2.66GHz for 57,900, 2.93GHz for 68,900 and 3.06Ghz for 84,900 baht. The first two are running the GeForce 9400M graphics processor, while the two dearest have the GT 120 and GT 130 respectively. Hard drives are 320G, 640G and 1TB for the top of the line. There is an estimated shipping time of 7 - 10 days.

There are two Mac minis both with 2Ghz processors. One with 120G disk and the other 320G at 23,900 and 31,900 respectively.

These also have the 9400M graphics chip and as per the rumour last week do indeed have 5 USB ports.

The Mac Pro. What do I say. So you want to make Lord of the Rings? There are two basic computers but, even more than the others, these are highly configurable. we have the 2.66GHz Quad core using the Intel Nehalmen processor, 3G RAM and a 640G hard drive for 95,900 baht. While the other is advertised as 8-core with 2, of the 2.66Ghz Quad core processors plus 6G RAM for 125,900 baht.

Both the iMac and the MacPro look as if they have the same body as before.

Not only do we have new Macs, but the WiFi equipped units have been updated too. As well as the normal 2.4Ghz band, these now operate in the 5Gz band as well, simultaneously.

The Airport Extreme Base Station and the Time Capsule are listed in the Apple Store for Thailand but both are marked, "Pending for Agency Approval". No date is given for shipping.

But we are not finished. There was also a minor update to the MacBookPro which now gets a 2.66Ghz processor and that can be upgraded to 2.93Ghz if you wish.

We almost missed this one, but thanks to MacWorld for the heads-up.

Apple released a RAW camera update that affects users of iPhoto and Aperture who use Nikon D3X and Epson R-D1x cameras. It also addresses issues related to specific cameras and overall stability. This update needs a restart.

There is also a battery update, 1.4, for 13" Macbooks.

This week we also saw an Airport Utility Software Update, an update to iLife Support, Airport Client Update and an iPhoto Update to 8.0.1. Some of these require a restart.

The Airport Updates add some features of remote accessibility via MobileMe that became available with the new hardware released this week, while the iPhoto update may have fixed problems some people were having with the map displays.

You will note, there is still supposed to be an event on 24th March.

Too Good To Miss?

Fortune, by the way, have placed Apple at number one in the Most Admired Company list.

I also had to gasp a bit -- then I chuckled -- when I read the title of a Mac Night Owl newsletter item by Gene Steinberg: "Can Microsoft be blamed for the world’s economic climate?" Love that. Remember last week I mentioned they had asked for money from those they had made redundant when their software miscalculated what was due.

As he writes in the introduction, it may seem outrageous at first, but then with the insecurities and other problems, he has a go at supporting the idea. How many banks here rely wholly on Windows? The item which begins about a third of the way down, is not too long and worth taking some time over.

Going back to Safari for a moment, there was news at the beginning of this week from TG Daily (that's the name) that the beta release has pushed the use of Safari past the 10% mark for the first time with 11 million Safari 4 downloads in four days. There is a hefty statistical analysis of the figures and what they mean by Wolfgang Gruener.

Not that I am a football fan by any means. I mentioned Alex Ferguson in a negative light a couple of weeks back, but this time, his team may have won the Carling Cup thanks in part to an iPod. The goal-keeping coach had provided footage of Spurs penalty takers and the goalkeeper, young Ben Foster was seen viewing this just before the game. With the input, he was able to anticipate a shot and that made the difference. The MacDailyNews item has links to several sources each covering a part of this story.

A lot of sites were carrying the story this week that, like the Ballmer's, the Gates' home has banned iPods and iPhones for the kids.

In its investor relations section, Apple has an SEC filing of its current report and one of the little details tucked away in there is that the accountant has changed from KPMG to Ernst and Young. Reading the reasoning behind this one concludes that this is art of the disclosure mess that caused Apple much embarrassment and caused several heads to roll, just missing several others.

I have had a fair number of problems simply sending my articles to the Post in the last couple of weeks, although we may have fixed this. Not fixed is the Post's web presence. They had a makeover a while back and it is all so efficient that the RSS feed for tech stuff only ever has 7 items, of which Mac stuff is never included, so you have to go looking. the tech pages are a couple of levels down for a start, then you have to click on View All Articles, and it is a couple of pages on from that. I saw one comment last week from someone signed in as Stan who complemented the article and then said the URL was wrong: not that the URLs now get added as links to the items now, they are just there as text. He was right, it was wrong, so I went back to the original: that was right. Use my link to the Mac articles on my web pages, or the RSS feed directly.

I also saw that a reader complained about access to the Database Website and the Database reply agreed with the correspondent; while an email I wrote to the webmaster received a reply today, some 20 days later.

A couple of weeks ago we reported on the Author's Guild comments about automatic text reading, nay any text reading, being considered a performance and thus (they said) impinged on authors' rights. As indeed my mother must have done while I sat on her knee.

Amazon are reported to have adapted the text to speech feature so that individual book publishers can decide if this is allowed or not. Allowed, aloud? There is a pun there, although I am not sure the Author's Guild would see the joke. CNET's Greg Sandoval however, suggested that Amazon should have run the idea past the publishers before the release.

And we just heard that Amazon are releasing a free Kindle App for the iPhone. There is nothing online as yet, but I will post details as and when this arrives.

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