Macs, iPods, and the like

Back in 2006 I linked to Flight Of The Hamsters, an addictive Flash-based online game. The object is to launch some intrepid flying hamsters into the air and use a variety of tricks to glide them as far as possible. It’s silly but an enjoyable distraction when you have some time to kill, especially with the included soundtrack from “Flight of the Valkyries.”

Now when you have time to kill and you’re away from your desk, you can keep playing Flight of the Hamsters, at least if you have an iPhone and 99 cents. Apart from a modification of the method for launching the rodents to compensate for the different controls of the iPhone, the game is just like its online version with all the same graphics, the same power-ups, and the same stirring soundtrack and sound effects. It’s also just as addicting.

Have fun.

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is next week and as usual in both Apple fandom and the media, everyone is trying to predict what Apple is going to announce. I pay pretty close attention to Apple and have done so for the past 25 years so here are my predictions for what we’ll see at WWDC:

 
1. New iPhone operating system, which we’ve already seen, will be given a ship date. I think we’ll also see some more new features demonstrated, including video.
 
2. New iPhone hardware is also a given. We’ll see larger capacity models at 16GB and 32GB, video-capable camera which will also do higher resolution stills, and a compass to go with GPS (so it will know what direction you’re facing in addition to where you are). I don’t think we’ll see an FM transmitter or receiver, to cite another of the more common prediction. Form factor/design will get minor updates, nothing dramatic.
 
3. iPhone ship date will be just before the release of the new iPhone software.
 
4. OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, which has already been announced, will be reviewed and developers will get a close-to-final beta. I don’t think it will ship until the 4th quarter, probably September.
 
5. The mythical iPod touch tablet, i.e. an iPod touch in a larger form like a tablet computer. Less confident about this, but if Apple does announce it, it will be just to show it so iPhone app developers can begin modifying their apps to work with the larger screen and form factor. We’d see a new version of the iPhone App development software.
 
6. No new iMacs or Mac Pros or minis or AppleTV or iPods or Macbook Pros. We might see new aluminum Macbooks since the low-end white plastic Macbook now has better specs than the low-end aluminum Macbook at a lower price. That won’t last long.
 
7. One More Thing: The keynote is being given by a team of Apple executives, but at the end one of them will say the now-infamous phrase “One More Thing.” Steve Jobs will walk out to thunderous applause from the audience and return to his duties at the company.

So that’s my list. How will I do? It’s anybody’s guess since Apple has a track record of doing the unexpected. But I feel like I’ve struck a middle ground between the extremes of predictions I’ve seen so far. Let me know what you think you’ll see.

Photo credit: Flickr.com user Steve - Boston,Ma. Used under a Creative Commons license.

A few months ago, I purchased an iPod touch to replace my old broken iPod. What sets the touch apart is the applications it can run next to the music functions. In fact, it was essentially an iPhone without the phone or built-in camera and it was indeed quite spiffy.

But when the new iPhone 3G was released in mid-July, Apple also released an update to the operating system that runs the older iPhone and iPod touch too. Among the improvements, the biggest was the opening of the device to third-party applications. Suddenly there was a whole world of new functionality available. I’m not exaggerating when I say that it’s like a whole new device. Let me give you some examples, based on programs I’ve downloaded from the store. I will point out that a very large proportion of what’s available in Apple’s iTunes AppStore is free and of the apps I’ve purchased, most have been less than $5 and only one was $19.

The app of most interest to my Catholic readers would be the Universalis Catholic Calendar. From the fine folks who brought you the Universalis web site, which gives you the Mass readings and Divine Office readings every day, the Catholic Calendar is a free app that tells you the feast or memorial of the day, and a brief biography of the saint or saints for the day. Apart from offering customization for the English-speaking country you live in, as well as any provincial peculiarities, that’s about it. Nice, but not earth-shattering.

However, if you’re willing to pony up $32.99, then you can get the full Universalis app, which gives you all the Mass readings, all the Liturgies of the Hours, all the Offices of Readings, everything! If you’ve ever seen the multi-volume breviary plus a daily Missal, then you know how compact this is. Plus, they do all the organizing of the different sections for you, so there’s no more page-flipping, back and forth, and no more rushing out to buy the little calendar update at the end of the year. While $33 may sound like a lot for an iPhone app, I may be working this into my budget in the future.

Helping me get things done

Another indispensable app on my iPod is Omnifocus. This is a companion to the desktop version of the productivity and task management software based on the principles of David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” book. Some reviewers have called it complex, but I’ve been able to fit it into my workflow. The nice thing about the iPod app is that it synchronizes with the desktop app over wifi, which means it happens on a regular schedule, not just when I connect the iPod’s cable.

Now, if I had an iPhone it would have another amazing ability: location-awareness. One of the principles of GTD is that when you record your “next-actions”, you put them in a context, which is the place or situation you need to do them. For example, office, home, grocery store, client A, client B, and so on. The theory is that when you’re in a particular context you can do all the appropriate next-actions, regardless of the project they’re attached to. Since the iPhone has a built-in GPS, it knows where you are. You can imagine the possibilities for that! Imagine going into the grocery store and Omnifocus presenting you with your grocery list. Or you’re at the mall, and it shows you the five items you needed in three different stores. Or you go to your doctor’s office for a check-up and it presents a list of all the questions you’ve been meaning to ask him.

While the iPod touch doesn’t have GPS, Apple’s iPhone OS can triangulate location based on known Wifi hotspots as well. It does pretty well for my home and office so that’s nice. Plus, I can now record new tasks and projects right into my Omnifocus as they occur to me; I don’t have to be sitting at my computer.

Another “like magic” set of apps are those that provide streaming music. While iPods have always let you carry your music around with you, now with an Internet connection (always-on for iPhones or when around WiFi networks for iPod touches) you can get streaming music from a variety of sources. The free Pandora Radio connects you to the excellent Pandora web application that plays music for you based on how you train it regarding your likes and dislikes. The iPhone app will play that same music for you without requiring a computer. Who needs a radio?

Streaming music

And if you want to hear the music you’ve already purchased on CD or via online music stores, there’s the awesome Simplify Media (also free). First, you download the free desktop client from the Simplify Media site (available for Mac, PC, and Linux). Then you launch it, create a free account, and point it at your iTunes software. Then on the iPhone/iPod launch the client and enter your account info and your entire iTunes library appears. This is great for me since I only have an 8GB iPod, while my music library is over 31GB. Now, when I’m near an open WiFi hotspot, I can listen to anything in my library, not just what I’ve fit on the iPod.

I haven’t even touched on Simplify Media’s other function, which is that it will let you listen to streaming iTunes music from up to 30 of your friends as well!

I could go on and on—I haven’t even touched on the fun, little games to keep me occupied, for example, while waiting in line—but you get the idea. What the new iPhone and iPod capabilities show is that this is no mere PDA or smartphone, but a whole, new computer platform that opens up a whole world of possibilities. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Can’t wait to see what they come up with next.

The latest version of Mac OS X, 10.5 aka Leopard, includes a nifty screensaver setting that makes one of those mosaic patterns. It starts off with you looking at one photo and then zooms out to show dozens of other photos and then when it zooms out enough you realize they all make up another photo. And then it continues ad infinitum.

I’ve had this set to a smart folder in iPhoto that gathered all my pictures of Isabella based on the keyword of her name. And that worked well until Sophia came along and I wanted to include her as well. Now, I know I could have gone through an re-tagged all my photos of Isabella with a new tag like “my kids” and then tagged all of Sophia’s with the same and then created a smart folder for that tag and made the screensaver run from that … but that sounded like too much work.

Instead, I decided to use nested smart albums. Except, I found to my chagrin, iPhoto doesn’t supported nested smart albums. What do I mean by nested smart albums? Smart albums are photo albums constructed not one by one, but automatically by the program based on criteria you give it, such as keywords, dates, ratings, etc. What I was hoping was that one of those criteria could be whether a photo was in another smart album. Unfortunately, that’s not possible. Thus, plan B.

I created three smart albums: “Isabella”, “Sophia”, and “Isabella and Sophia”. The critera for each were:

 
1. [Isabella] Match all: Keyword contains “Isabella”; Date is after “5/17/2006” (the day before Isabella’s birthday); and Keyword is not Sophia (i.e. photos of just Isabella alone)
 
2. [Sophia] Match all: Keyword contains “Sophia”; Date is after “3/3/2008” (the day before Sophia’s birthday); and Keyword is not “Isabella”.
 
3. [Isabella and Sophia] Match all: Date is after “3/3/2008”; Keyword contains “Isabella”; Keyword contains “Sophia”

So now, I have smart albums of the two girls alone and then together. Now I just drop those in a folder called “The kids” and in the Desktop & Screensaver Preference Pane, I point it at this folder and voila!

Just don’t ask me what I’ll do when the third child comes along. Maybe by then Steve Jobs and Apple will have added nested smart albums. Whew!