I use Privoxy to filter ads and other assorted nasty stuff. It runs as a proxy HTTP server, so I set up my computer so that all my HTTP traffic is channeled through it rather than going directly to the web. The Leopard version is a little different from the Tiger version and it took a while to figure out how to make it work.

First I download Privoxy. There are two pieces, the utility and the application itself. I go to the download page and under the Mac OS X section selected Privoxy 3.0.8 Universal and the PrivoxyUtility.

Then, having unpacked them I instal Privoxy and run the utility to start Privoxy running. In the system preferences I go to Network, selected my Ethernet port and click on Advanced.... to set up the Proxy tab like this:

Now all accesses by applications that use the system proxy settings will go through IP address 127.0.0.1 (my local machine) at port 8118 where Privoxy is listening. I also set up HTTPS the same way. This setting does not affect Firefox because Firefox ignores the system and has its own proxy settings.

Done. Privoxy is now filtering ads.

But sometimes I want to turn it off, or make certain sites bypass the filtering. Configuration changes are done through a web browser. By going to a special URL (http://config.privoxy.org/) I can change the way Privoxy runs. The problem I found is that by default the Leopard version does not allow configurations to be changed this way: configuration change options are missing from the page.

From the available information, it is not obvious where the global configuration file for Privoxy is located. I had to look at the installer code to learn that it is in /usr/local/etc/privoxy. I use the Finder's Go menu and selected Go to Location... to open that folder and then drag the file config onto TextWrangler. I set the string enable-remote-toggle to 1. That allows Privoxy to be turned on and off via the http://config.privoxy.org/ address. I also set enable-edit-actions to 1 so I can reconfigure the filters.

To make the configuration file change have any effect I stop and then start Privoxy via the Privoxy Utility:

Now I get the option to toggle Privoxy on and off:

The first line gives me the ability to add web sites that I want to block or allow:

In the user.action file I can add lines to allow content through. The web interface shown above just makes it a little easier than editing raw text files.

Editing the raw files involves adding and changing lines like these:

# Allow all cookies from these sites
{ allow-all-cookies }
.smugmug.com

# Turn off filtering for these sites
{-filter }
.smugmug.com
.bagelturf.com

# Allow advertising through on these sites
{ allow-ads }
.slashdot.com
.dpreview.com

#No access to these sites
{+block}
.maxim.com

It's not difficult, but takes a little while to find out how to do some basic things because the terminology is not standard and there are a lot of macros to deal with. There is a lot more documentation on the Privoxy site.

Tags: Leopard, Privoxy, Advertising, Filtering

For anyone who is trying to make an export plug-in for Aperture: make sure you keep a copy of your Tiger development environment backed up somewhere. I installed Leopard and the dev tools and found that my Random Wok plug-in would not compile.

It failed at this line:

#import <PluginManager/PROAPIAccessing.h>

in ApertureExportPlugIn.h. The PROAPIAccessing.h file is missing because it and PROPlugInBundleRegistration.h are not included in either Leopard or the ApertureSDK 1.5.5.

To fix it , I copied across the Headers folder that contains those two from a Tiger back up. The full path is /Library/Frameworks/PluginManager.framework/Versions/B/Headers. There is already a soft link for Headers that is correct. It should look like this:

Tags: Aperture, Plug-ins, Bugs, Cocoa, Leopard, Random Wok

Apple is starting a world tour for Aperture on March 5th. I plan on being at the San Francisco event on March 26th.

Tags: Aperture, Learning, Apple, Photography

Updated With Eleven New Articles

I have updated Get Your Head Around Aperture 1.5 with eleven new Aperture articles that were published on the blog between the second edition and the release of Aperture 2.0. For full details of the changes see the Publication History page.

If you have purchased the book, you will have received an email with a download link that is good for 5 downloads or one year, whichever comes first. Just use that link and it will download this new release.

If you have not purchased the book, then I'm afraid it is no longer available. Aperture 2.0 changed so much of the interface and features (and fixed so many problems!) that much of the material in the book is now unnecessary, incorrect, or misleading, especially to beginners. All the material in the book remains freely available on this site. If you really want a copy, then let me know. If there is enough demand I will reintroduce it for sale at a reduced price.

I am also interested to know what kind of information you would want to see in a future Bagelturf publication about Aperture or anything else.

Tags: Get Your Head Around Aperture, Aperture, Books, PDF, Updates

Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie make up Fight of the Conchords, a kind of parody folk group from New Zealand. Click the image above to see them sing Business Time live on stage. "It's Wednesday, and Wednesday night is the night we make luuurve... Conditions are perfect; there's nothing on TV". They are clearly having a ton of fun.

I prefer their live performances over the music videos. Be sure to watch The Humans Are Dead, Jenny, Albi The Racist Dragon, Bowie Song, Something for the Ladies, Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World, and Issues.

Tags: Interesting Stuff, Fun, Movies, Music

James Duncan Davidson compares the performance of Aperture 2.0 and Lightroom 1.3 at 3200 ISO. He's a Canon user.

At the Money:Tech 2008 conference a few weeks ago in New York City, I mostly took the high ISO approach and shot almost exclusively at ISO 3200 with my Canon 1D Mark III’s. Of course, an ISO 3200 image has noise in it. The question is how well does the combination of camera and RAW processor render that noise.

Tags: Aperture, Lightroom, High ISO, Canon

I discovered that all the graphics in my PDF book were fuzzy if I viewed it on Leopard using Preview. Here is a screen capture of a 400 x 400 pixel area:

Using Safari to view the same page, again at 400 x 400 pixels gave me this instead:

The graphic is sharp, as I remember it on Tiger. So what is going on? Something is making Preview scale the image up and the resampling is introducing blur.

The answer is that Preview on Leopard has an extra PDF preference that is enabled by default: Respect screen DPI for scale, so even if I display at Actual Size, it's not pixel-for pixel on most screens. Once that preference is unchecked, the pages showed exactly the same way as before:

Tiger's Preview does not have this option:

And so I never have the problem on Tiger.

Update: Tiger does have the option to respect image DPI under the Images tab:

on Leopard the same option is there, and adds screen DPI as well:

But these older settings apply to images, not PDFs. And Tiger only applies image DPI, not screen DPI.

Tags: Preview, PDF, Leopard

This article on CNET asks you to vote:

The good news is that there's some competition again for software to edit and catalog raw images, the detailed and flexible file formats from higher-end cameras. The bad news is that anybody buying the software has a harder choice to make.

Tags: Aperture, Lightroom

David Hassler has been comparing the performance of Aperture 2 with Capture NX for skin tones on this Flickr page.

Tags: Aperture, RAW, Adjustments

The oddest menu in Leopard is this one:

A choice for a completely graphical and spacial concept presented to the user as a linear list of numbers.

Tags: Leopard, Spaces, Obstacles

James Duncan Davidson has posted an interesting article about his meeting with Apple's Aperture team. He told them what irked him about Aperture as a photographer and they went off and fixed it. But how did they fix it?

I've looked a little at the internals of Aperture 2.0 and there are some striking differences between the two. It looks as if the whole core of the application has been rewritten.

Here is one thing I found. That diagram below is the data model for Aperture 1.5. The boxes represent information stored about things like versions, albums, vaults, adjustments etc., all the things that are carefully managed by Aperture and kept in a consistent state, all the things that are needed to display and manipulate images through the interface:

What matters is the number of lines in the diagram. I reckon there are about twenty. Each one is a relationship between the data in the boxes and many lines means much complexity and lots of work to keep things in order. And the impact of complexity grows very quickly as the number of items increases.

Now have a look at the data model for Aperture 2.0:

Still plenty of boxes, several more in fact, but hardly any lines. And only two are actual relationships, the two in the center representing inheritance instead. This means that Apple has eradicated the complexity inherent in the data model and moved it elsewhere, clearly to something faster.

This is at least partly why Aperture 2.0 is so much faster than Aperture 1.5. The other benefit of removing the complexity is that reliability should increase, so I'm hoping for a more stable, less buggy application.

For anyone wondering how I got hold of the data models for Aperture; it was easy. I just decompiled the .mom file in the application with Xcode.

Tags: Aperture, Cocoa, Core Data, Xcode

If you use one of the popular Canon DSLRs, there's a good chance that there is no tethering for you! There is a tally of which cameras work with the tethering feature and which ones don't at 20SEVEN. Mine, a Canon 30D, does not. It stays busy. It is still possible to use Automator and a hot folder with the Canon software, so all is not lost. Nikon is much better supported than Canon.

The tethering feature is accessed via the File > Tether... menu. From there you can define import settings and start the session.

Tags: Aperture, Tethering, DSLR, Bugs, Automation, Canon, 30D, Nikon

Aperture started hanging on me today. I launched Aperture and it just hung at the splash screen. Renaming preferences and the Application Support folders did nothing. In the console I get this message:

2/18/08 1:54:59 PM Aperture[501] *** NSRunLoop ignoring exception 'Exception in Aperture: *** -[NSURL initFileURLWithPath:]: nil string parameter
Backtrace:
0x0006ffdc (in Aperture)
0x93c77eb7: +[NSException exceptionWithName:reason:userInfo:] (in CoreFoundation)
0x93c78023: +[NSException raise:format:arguments:] (in CoreFoundation)
0x93c7806a: +[NSException raise:format:] (in CoreFoundation)
0x92ef5039: -[NSURL initFileURLWithPath:] (in Foundation)
0x92ef4d28: +[NSURL fileURLWithPath:] (in Foundation)
0x002cfc00 (in Aperture)
0x002cfd3a (in Aperture)
0x002cdc64 (in Aperture)
0x00351982 (in Aperture)
0x00359b79 (in Aperture)
0x92ee602d: __NSFireDelayedPerform (in Foundation)
0x93bfeb5e: CFRunLoopRunSpecific (in CoreFoundation)
0x93bfed18: CFRunLoopRunInMode (in CoreFoundation)
0x92a7f6a0: RunCurrentEventLoopInMode (in HIToolbox)
0x92a7f3f2: ReceiveNextEventCommon (in HIToolbox)
0x92a7f32d: BlockUntilNextEventMatchingListInMode (in HIToolbox)
0x963227d9: _DPSNextEvent (in AppKit)
0x9632208e: -[NSApplication nextEventMatchingMask:untilDate:inMode:dequeue:] (in AppKit)
0x0035e62a (in Aperture)
0x9631b0c5: -[NSApplication run] (in AppKit)
0x00954e5a (in ProKit)
0x00003652 (in Aperture)
' that raised during posting of delayed perform with target 0x13b7230 and selector '_delayedFinishLaunching'

And a sample of the process just gives me a bunch of threads all waiting.

I did get Aperture back. First I reinstalled Aperture and renamed my Aperture Library file. Then I launched Aperture with the option key held down and selected to make a new library. That brought Aperture up. Then I could quit and relaunch and open other libraries with option launch. Finally I renamed my library back to Aperture Library. Somewhere in there I did remove the option to share previews with iLife and iWork, but I don't know if that had any effect.

Tags: Aperture, Bugs

A reader pointed out to me that the workflow described in Use Albums and Stacks To Manage Adjusted Images no longer works. Aperture 2.0 has changed the behavior of album picks so that creating a new album from non-pick images no longer automatically makes those images the album picks in the new album. Send feedback to Apple if you want the old behavior back.

Tags: Aperture, Bugs, Stacks, Album Picks, Workflow

My Aperture export plug-in, Random Wok, runs just fine [Update: not quite; see below] with Aperture 2.0 and Leopard. The version I'm using internally has some additional features and I have recompiled it using XCode 3.0, idea being to release an update as soon as I can muster the time. My big hang-up was trying to localize the plug-in. This is a tremendous amount of work and requires lining up volunteers to do the translation and much on the management side of things. So going forward I have decided to not support localization.

Note that Aperture 2.0 no longer displays a sheet to show progress. Instead, it exports in the background and progress is shown in Aperture's tasks window. Look at the bottom of the window next to the tools to see what is happening in the background:

Clicking on the spinner shows more detail:

A new feature in Aperture 2.0 is the ability to pause activity. That plus background operation makes exporting so much nicer.

[Update: A couple of problems have appeared if Random Wok 1.0 is used with Aperture 2.0. See below]

If used with Aperture 2.0 the behavior with respect to clashes with existing files has changed. With Aperture 1.5 Aperture would never supply an existing file name. However with 2.0 it does not check, and so plug-in exports will overwrite existing files with the same version name. Export to empty folders to work around.

If used with Aperture 2.0 the behavior with respect to clashes with existing random files has changed. Random Wok 1.0 will issue a warning if random files are exported that have a name clash, as before. However with 2.0, Aperture does not think that the export has finished and will show the export continuing forever in the background. This is usually only an issue if Freeze is used and repeated exports to the same place are performed. Quit Aperture and relaunch to fix.

Tags: Aperture, Leopard, Plug-ins, Exporting, Cocoa

Now that Leopard 1.5.2 is out, Aperture 2.0 is out, SuperDuper has been updated, and a host of other bits and pieces are working well, I finally upgraded to Leopard. I did an Update Install -- the least recommended, but the one I always use.

I had only one hitch: my keychain was unpopular with Leopard and it created a new empty one. I copied across my old one from a back up and used Keychain Utility to repair it and make it the default. My update precautions included getting both my back ups up to date and making a separate archive of my entire disk on a spare Firewire drive so that I can still pull data off in a year.

Leopard runs well. Very smooth and fast. A little buggy here and there (Finder's list view for instance), but entirely pleasant to use. Aperture is faster I think.

Tags: Leopard, Updates

RAW 2.0 on the left, RAW 1.1 on the right. What happened to my yellow?

That's a screen shot of a zoomed-in pair of versions of the same master. That's a startling difference. Neither has been adjusted in any way. And I was unable to get the yellow back without affecting the rest of the image. That may be my lack of understanding of the myriad controls, but I thought it would be straight-forward.

Update: The consensus among the comments is that RAW 1.1 is the culprit here and that I should be glad the bug has been fixed.

I am also noticing that Aperture now sharpens thumbnails. That has the effect of making some images look harsher than they really are when viewed in the browser. Again, RAW 2.0 on the left, RAW 1.1 on the right:

But RAW 2.0 does better on the highlights by default.

Tags: Aperture, RAW, Photography, DSLR

After playing with the free trial of Aperture 2.0 yesterday, I purchased the upgrade package and receive my key today. The Aperture menu has an Authorize entry and I could put my key in immediately and get full use of the product.

The next thing I did was update my library. I did a couple of smaller libraries first as a sanity check, and all was well. My 90GB library with 32,000 images took about ten minutes to convert. Inside I can see that the original Aperture database has now been split into two. The original database pretty much doubled in size, while the new one is obviously dedicated to Blobs (binary large objects) and is quite small.

The surprise can when I quit Aperture: quitting took more than 20 minutes! The sheet said Writing Files... and I believe it was updating the database. It also used up an ungodly amount of RAM. I only have 3GB and it sucked up everything it could find. I sampled the Aperture process while it was doing this and saw 16 Exabytes in use -- about 5 billion times what I actually have:

It did finish, and all was well. My guess is that this delay was because I am still on Tiger and this is a Core Data efficiency problem.

Next I looked at the possibility of migrating my images to the new RAW converter:

Entire projects can be converted, or just individual selections. I selected Migrate and got this rather confusing dialog:

Upgrade existing RAW images
This means that of the images selected all the non-RAWs will be left alone. The RAW images will have their RAW converter changed to 2.0 and the versions and previews updated. While I can't go back on this, I can individually set the RAW conversion back to 1.1 from the RAW Fine Tuning adjustment panel if I want:

I can also create new versions manually and compare the RAW 1.1 and RAW 2.0 converters side by side for individual images. Note that none of this affects the masters. The reference to "images" should be to "versions".

Create upgraded versions of existing RAW images
This works exactly the same as Upgrade existing RAW images except that a new version is created (in a stack) with the original and the converter changed to 2.0 for that new version only.

All images
Means all selected RAW images. The other two selections are similar.

I don't recommend updating converters en masse. I am finding that the new converter is quite different, particularly for heavily adjusted images. Here is a quick example: RAW 2.0 is on the left here:

The new RAW converter does do a much better job with highlights.

Tags: Aperture, Updates, Library, Migration, RAW

You can purchase Aperture 2.0 from Amazon via the associate links on my site. Doing so shamelessly contributes a small percentage of each transaction.

Buy Aperture 2.0 Buy 2.0 Upgrade

Tags: Aperture, Updates, Shameless Commercialism

To get started with Aperture 2.0, download the trial version and wait for the key to arrive in email. Then before launching it, rename your current Aperture application and rename your Aperture library. Renaming makes sure that 2.0 doesn't stomp on 1.5. I added 15 to the end of my application and my library. Also, make sure you have your 1.5 key handy. If you launch 1.5 after running the 2.0 trial, you'll have to reenter it.

The installer requests the key and the application installs. It creates a new Aperture Library and you can fill it with images and use that as a sandbox for a while.

Aperture 2.0 is fast. Adjustments are much faster, though there is a short delay before they are active. Even traditionally slow adjustments like Straighten and Shadows and Highlights are very responsive. I have a lowly 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac 24" and it really flies now. Scrolling is like iPhoto, and the new Quick Preview mode (P key) prevents Aperture from doing the RAW conversions, so making scrolling through images in the viewer very fast indeed.

Tags: Aperture, Updates, Speed

Apple has a support page for Aperture with more information. From there you can download the Late-Breaking News PDF. That document reveals that Aperture 2.0 supports trackpad gestures.

The troubleshooting links on the page are also handy (they are Knowledge Base articles). XLR8YourMac has collected a bunch of them together into a list which reproduce here:

• Aperture 2: Tips on migrating images to RAW 2.0
  
• Aperture 2: Some tips on Baseline DNG support
  
• Aperture 2: RAW 2.0 not available with some cameras
  
• Aperture 2: Some referenced images may be reimported even when Do Not Import Duplicates is selected
  
• Aperture 2: Newly supported images may not display properly after upgrade from Aperture 1.5.x to 2.0
  
• Aperture 2: Avoid making manual changes to your library structure
  
• Aperture 2: Avoid putting the computer to sleep while shooting tethered
  
• Aperture 2: Date on exported master image may be different in rare circumstances
  
• Aperture 2: Externally edited images are automatically located alongside originals
  
• Aperture 2: Tips on tethered shooting
  
• Aperture 2: Duplicate Images in library when tethering

AUPN has two articles that cover the new features: Part 1 and Part 2. As AUPN points out, lost in all the hoopla is the fact that Aperture 2.0 supports editing plug-ins. This will lead to all kinds of interesting things.

Tags: Aperture, Updates

I've collected all the links for the Aperture 2.0 videos together in one place for convenient clicking. If you use Firefox you will be able to download everything for offline viewing with a tool like FlashGot.

Quick Tours

Streamlined UI
Adjustment Tools
Platform Integration

Tutorials

Exploring the Interface
Customizing the Keyboard
Importing Basics
Tethering
Using Aperture and iPhoto Together
Making Multiple Selections
Using the Loupe Tools
Using the Zoom Tool
Using Quick Preview
Using the Sort Tool
Applying Ratings
Using Compare Mode
Using Stacks
Using Stack Mode
Assigning Keywords
Viewing Multiple Displays
Filtering and Searching in Aperture
Skimming All Projects
Creating Albums and Smart Albums
Using Light Tables
Using RAW Fine Tuning
Cropping and Straightening
Adjusting White Balance
Adjusting Exposure
Recovering Highlights
Enhancing Your Images
Setting Levels
Setting Advanced Levels
Adjusting Highlights and Shadows
Improving Color
Using the Retouch Brush
Applying Vignette and Devignette
Applying Black & White and Color Effects
Sharpening Images
Using Lift and Stamp
Editing Metadata
Adjusting Date and Time
Embedding and Exporting Metadata
Exporting Versions, Masters, and Projects
Making Prints and Contact sheets
Making Books
Creating Web Pages
Creating Web Galleries
Creating Slideshows
Using Export Plug-ins
Exploring Presets
Using Aperture and iPhoto Together
Creating Advanced Slideshows with Keynote
Making Photo Movies with iMovie
Accessing Aperture through Leopard

Tags: Aperture, Updates, Video

Aperture 2.0 has shipped. It needs Tiger 10.4.11 or Leopard 10.5.2. It's $200, down $199 from 1.0, and an upgrade is $99. If you purchased 1.5 recently then you can get it for $9.95.

Apple claims 100 new features that I have not had time to read yet.

Apple's Aperture page has many details. including the specs. The features page has some Quick Tours to watch and there are many tutorials. You download the User Manual, and a publication called Exploring Aperture. There is a compatibility checker that will see if your system can run it.

As usual there is active conversation (maybe less whining?) at Apple's Aperture discussion page.

Tags: Aperture, Updates, Anticipation, RAW, DSLR

As you can see the blue september folder has photos in it directly, there used to be several projects in the september folder, now just the folders are there with no projects. Also you can see that April, May, June also have no disclosure triangles next to them indicating they have lost their projects as well. Other months may be missing some projects as well. Also note the project caelyn books near the bottom, this had books in it but is now empty. Ever see anything like this?

If you have projects disappearing but not the images they contain, then you probably have selected Recent Projects at the top of the library pane. Change that to Show All and everything will be back to normal.

Recent Projects will show projects and blue folders that have been recently modified. What is confusing is that clicking on the blue folders will show images, and yet there can be no projects inside the selected blue folder to contain them. For example, I have 2005 selected and images are visible:

Tags: Aperture, Q&A, Library, Projects, Lost Images

Go grab 10.5.2! It supports the Nikon D3 and D300 as well as others.

Update: My Headline is wrong (still on Tiger here, and no Nikon). Comments are saying things like this:

Unless I'm missing something-- 10.5.2 supports the D3 and D300 with everything BUT aperture. iPhoto, Finder, Preview... all open D300 RAWs... not Aperture...

The only remaining question is whether there will be a RAW update for Tiger or not. There is also a Leopard Graphics Update available that only appears in Software Update after 10.5.2 is installed. This all bodes well for a new Aperture coming soon.

Tags: Aperture, Nikon, Leopard, Updates

Adam Tow has posted an Applescript called Aperture Caption that allows captioning of a series of images without all that frustrating switching between the mouse an the keyboard. You can use FastScripts Lite to create a keyboard shortcut for invoking it, so removing even more mousing.

Tags: Aperture, Applescript, Captions

Berend Hasselman has a page dedicated to Aperture scripts he has put together. He needed to get at the metadata that Aperture stores but doesn't give access to, like Lens ID and Auto Focus point used so created these scripts. They run fine under Tiger and Leopard.

Tags: Aperture, Metadata, Applescript

Wolf Rentzsch has posted the first video from the C4 conference that took place in Chicago last year. It's entitled Indie Ethos, and talks about the place of independent Cocoa developers in the world.

Here is the complete list. One will be posted each week.

• Wolf Rentzsch: Indie Ethos
• Wil Shipley: Monster Marketing
• Daniel Jalkut: Application Acquisition
• Shawn Morel: Virtualization Vivisection
• Bob Ippolito: Exploring Erlang
• Adam Engst: Hacking The Press
• Tim Burks: RubyObjC & Nu
• Cabel Sasser: Coda Confidential

If you are interested in what is happening at ground level in the Cocoa developer world, watch these.

Update: Will Shipley's talk about hype is up now.

Tags: C4, Fun, Interesting Stuff, Nerds, Movies, Cocoa

SuperDuper, the application I use for my back ups has finally been released for Leopard. That was the last item I needed before updating my iMac, but I may wait until 10.5.2 is released before going Leopard, since reports are that it is close to completion. I'm sure that Aperture will appear soon after, so I'll have plenty to play with.

Tags: SuperDuper, Updates, Leopard

With the iPhone SDK coming soon, I'm looking forward to a new kind of application, one that installs in two or more places and uses the mobility of the iPhone to extend the Macs that we currently have on our desks in a new way.

Many iPhone apps will offer this:

The app installs on the phone and that is it. It runs on the iPhone and doesn't talk to anything. Think of games, utilities, and the like. Of course the iPhone has internet access, so we'll also see apps that do this:

Safari already does it, so it's no big deal. Weather, stocks, and other simple gather-the-data-and-display-it apps will be numerous. There will be others that have a server end and an iPhone end:

The Google map application does this. Note that Google/Apple writes the code for both ends of the connection; if you don't have both, nothing happens. There is no browser in use here, and not necessarily any standard protocol. But most software developers don't have a huge server infrastructure like Google. And there are all sorts of scaling and billing problems with this kind of application if you are a small shop. So what do you make?

What I'm thinking of is an application that looks like this:

This is one application from one vendor that comes in two parts: one part that is installed on the iPhone and one part installed on the Mac. There are no scaling problems since for each customer only a few iPhones connect to a few Macs. The customer owns both ends. Billing is also not an issue, since it's not the Mac that is a precious resource here. This kind of app extends what I have on my Mac to my iPhone. Quicken could do this (but I bet it never will). Back up software could do this to tell me what had happened and get my response.

Another type of application could look like this:

The iPhone accesses data on the internet and the home Mac to get its job done. The Mac supplies personal information, maybe passwords, home address, account information, and the internet servers supply the other data needed. The idea here is that the Mac has the personal knowledge and the internet servers have the world knowledge. The two are combined to do things that could not be done in any other way.

Probably a better way of doing the same thing given the much larger storage and bandwidth of the home Mac is this:

Apple is already doing this with iTunes, but nobody else is. The iPhone can now use all the accounts that the Mac can, so there is no extra work. Privacy and billing are handled by the same mechanisms that the desktop uses.

Let's say you were running Delicious Library on your home Mac. With an app from Delicious Monster running on the iPhone you could access your media library in real time. With that, you could use your iPhone to lend things out, look up books you found on your travels to see if you already had them or needed just that one to complete a set. You could add voice annotations to books that you have at home. You could browse your home media collection and compare what you paid with those in front of you at the thrift store. Or compare what you see with what is currently selling on eBay and be sure you don't already have it. And a zillion other applications that create value by extending the personal desktop computer to the mobile hand.

Tags: iPhone, Applications, Crazy Ideas

That's my take on the Yahoo/Microsoft takeover. The original image was stolen from The Fail Blog who claim to have stolen it from Fark.

Yes it will go through. Yes the Yahoos will hate it. Yes the results will not be pretty. It's a huge opportunity for all the other players in their respective spaces to welcome customers and their money with open arms and great products. Google still has the small issue of creating new products that generate income to deal with, but it will be good for them. Apple will keep focusing great products on the customer.

Fake Steve sums it up best.

Tags: Fun, Crazy Ideas, Bone-Headedness, Microsoft, Yahoo, Disasters, Yes They Will, Google, Apple

Sometimes I have an image that I want to adjust to look like another in some way -- maybe the same brightness or color. This is easy to do because Aperture can display both at the same time and I can adjust one while using the other as a reference.

The first thing I do is press the S key to select Primary Only. This has no effect on adjustments (adjustments can be applied to only one image at time), but it does very conveniently make the currently selected image very obvious. Only the selected image has a white selection ring in this mode.

Here I have the upper image displayed as a reference and am adjusting the lower image:

This also works in full screen mode (F key) and with zoom on (Z key):

If I need to adjust two images at the same time, this is possible too. Clicking on an image changes the selection to that image and I make adjustments. This technique can be applied to as many images as I can cram on the screen.

Tags: Aperture, Adjustments, Workflow, Comparing

I've added Bagelturf to MacCreative. MacCreative collects together sites and links to all things creative in the Mac World. You can vote for sites and write reviews if you like.

Tags: Blogging, Aperture, Site Focus