The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

Rounding up on 9 months of Vista being on the market, Microsoft is of course at work on Service Pack 1 which is slated for an early 2008 release. At the official Windows Vista blog, Brandon LeBlanc has offered extensive details on what the focus of Service Pack 1 is, and while much of it is targeted at businesses and independent software vendors, an interesting section outlining some of the fundamentals mentions that support for the EFI booting standard is on its way (under the Introducing Windows Vista Service Pack 1 section; there aren't any anchors I can link in this extensive post, so you'll have to search for that title or simply 'EFI').

In their hype and marketing for Boot Camp, Apple makes a pretty big deal about Intel-based Macs supporting EFI while "Windows XP, and even Vista, are stuck in the 1980s with old-fashioned BIOS" (check the sidebar of the Boot Camp page). So what could it mean if Vista catches up to the EFI bandwagon? I'm not quite sure yet. It could likely make the Boot Camp engineers' lives a lot easier, and while I know less about virtualization software like Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion, they might be able to sleep better at night as well. Ultimately, if EFI support in Vista makes it easier for Apple to support running Windows on a Mac, this could likely yield even more sales from swtichers - especially those who need Vista for things like work or gaming. As to speculation on whether this could bring some of the wilder stuff like running Windows apps in Mac OS X without the need for the Windows OS or virtualization tools, I'll leave that to the tin foil hat enthusiasts in the audience.

Thanks Adam

In an education world where parents make all the decisions and administration knows less about teaching than the students, teachers can use all the help they get. While I wait for Assistants R Us to open in the Denver area so I can take some of the burden off my wife's high school English-teaching shoulders, educators of all kinds might be able to take some solace in Planbook from Hellmansoft. Designed and developed by Jeff Hellman, a 9th grade physics and science teacher, Planbook aims to do away with the clunky ways of writing lesson plans with paper by providing tools to plan, attach files, print, publish and search the digital way. Teachers can plan out lessons for one or multiple classes for the week, month or year, attach files the students will need for homework and publish it all to the web via FTP or to a local folder. Students, parents and administrators alike can then view the site, the daily lessons and download the files at their leisure. Still need paper versions? No sweat - Planbook can print out customized reports for students and administrators, great for handing out or posting in class.

Since I am the farthest thing from a teacher, my wife graciously offered to give this software a whirl and share her thoughts. To be honest, after a minute or two of poking around, she was absolutely thrilled. She was impressed with Planbook's feature set and how easy it was to start writing plans for multiple classes. She loved the publish-to-web idea since her school already provides some digital records for parents to check from home, but I am sad to report that there was one killer deal-breaker that took the bounce out of my wife's step - Planbook is Mac-only. Now my wife is a Mac user through and through, but her school lives in the Windows world making Planbook ineligible for consideration.

[Update: Jeff Hellman stopped by to comment that he's one step ahead of me; he actually is working on a Windows version and hopes to enter beta this weekend. This could certainly boost Planbook's appeal in Windows and mixed-OS environment and for teachers who live on both sides of that fence between the home and office.]

If you or your teaching friends are fortunate enough to work on the Mac side at school, I (via my wife) definitely recommend you take a look at Planbook. Even as a 1.0 product it sounds like Hellman has hit most of the large nails right on the head, and more interest and support can only make a good product get better over time. Check out the Planbook site for more information, including an example published Planbook, as well as IM support and a Yahoo! Groups link. Individual licenses are $30, while volume licenses begins at up to 10 teachers for $100, going all the way up to 65+ teachers for $300. As a bonus, the volume license allows teachers to use Planbook on both their home and work computers.

Watch out Delicious Library, you finally have some competition on the way. Koingo Software's upcoming Librarian Pro for Windows and Mac will bring some interesting new features to the media cataloging table. While its standard UI doesn't look quite as flashy as Delicious Library's (though it features a 'Gallery mode' that displays everything by cover art that the company hasn't posted a screenshot for), Librarian Pro allows users to catalog PC hardware and software in addition to books, movies, music and games. In fact, it can scan your hard drive (I assume both Macs and PCs) to automatically catalog your software. Users will be able to create smart collections for organizing their stuff any way they please, and Librarian Pro allows for multiple media databases to help keep different collections separate (say, one for your home stuff and another for your work-related books and software). Speaking of staying organized, Librarian Pro can also display a panel of contacts from Address Book to show you who borrowed what, when and how many.

Another cool new feature takes Amazon integration one step further by allowing you to shop the site from within Librarian Pro, immediately adding anything you purchase to your collection. Fortunately, Librarian Pro works with Amazon Canada, United Kingdom, Japan, German and France, and the database is fully UTF-8 compatible spanning both Mac and Windows systems.

Librarian Pro will be available for download and purchase on September 1st (I have no idea why they announced two days early) for $29.95, with a 15-day trial available to get your feet wet.

[Update: By the way, I forgot one thing: to help facilitate switchers, Librarian Pro can import from Delicious Library, DVDpedia, Bookpedia, CDpedia and Gamepedia.]

Hi, my name is David Chartier, and I'm an RSS-aholic.
[your collective response: Hi David]

The last time I refreshed my newsreader was... well, probably a minute or two ago, and then 30 minutes before that. You see, I'm obsessed with news, and I've been using some sort of a newsreader for around three or four years now. Since I began writing for TUAW and Download Squad, I've probably tossed my OPML (an exported list of your RSS feeds) into more newsreaders than I can imagine, and one of my greatest loves has always been Adriaan Tijsseling's endo, which we've mentioned a few times before on TUAW. While I typically use NetNewsWire as my main reader, I'm giving endo a thorough run-through again as it has really matured into a great, stable product, and it has a lot of pleasant surprises and unique features that make sifting through large amounts of feeds and headlines a pleasure. In fact, with how well things are going, I wouldn't be surprised if endo upset my newsreader balance, at least for my regular reading. See the rest of the post to find out why...

Read more →

The Mac and PC networking challenge is legendary. If you have both on a home or work network, it can be an adventure to get these two machines to see each other, share files or printers. Fortunately, Pure Networks has an app for both Mac and PC called Network Magic which hopes to change all that, as it allows you to easily set up file and printer sharing, diagnose slow networks and more. It offers what looks like a simple interface for managing all this, though I should note that printer sharing only works with the list of printers that Apple officially supports and provides drivers for right in Mac OS X (i.e. - if you can plug a printer in and it works without having to install extra software). While the Windows version is a bit more powerful than the Mac component, folks who need to maintain a mixed network and are after the primary features mentioned here will likely be happy with Network Magic, though licenses are sold at a slight disadvantage for Mac users: packages of licenses begin at $29.99 for 3 PCs (5 PCs for $39.99, etc.), but it's $19.99 for each Mac you want to add to the package. Still, Network Magic looks like one of the easiest networking tools I've seen in a while, and perhaps if its popularity among Mac users grows over time, licensing can become more fair for both operating systems.


[via MacMinute]

Many folks who were used to the array of features iMovie '06 offered were understandably upset when iMovie '08 uprooted just about everything they knew. After all, they had the figurative rug pulled out right from under them. Eric at no one sequel, however, doesn't see this as a bad thing. Eric's entire post is definitely worth a read, but to summarize: while iMovie '06 is a good product, it doesn't exactly live up to the Apple and iLife reputation of "just working." iMovie '06 users need to learn a little too much about video editing - time codes, time lines, "rendering", etc. - causing a significant portion of the public to avoid the practice altogether. I agree with Eric - perhaps it isn't Apple's job to bring pro features and workflows to the general user. Instead, maybe it's their job to to eliminate the need for those features to exist in the mind of said user, greatly simplifying the barrier to entry in video editing so that more can use these otherwise complicated tools.

By completely rethinking the practice of video editing and redesigning iMovie around the new paradigm, iMovie '08 could perhaps be the first product that really captures the attention of the larger mass that hasn't caught the bug yet (no pun intended). Sure iMovie is lacking a few features everyone can enjoy, such as a few effects and transitions, but users no longer need to learn what a 'timecode' is just to cut together the summer vacation or a cute puppy montage. It's just skim, click and drag and poof - a video.

Isn't that the way Apple products are supposed to work?

[via Daring Fireball]

You know what they say: let the good times class action lawsuits roll! Or something like that. The latest in what I'm sure is to be a long list of iPhone-related class action lawsuits was filed in New York today over the iPhone's SIM card lock-in, as well as what the plaintiff alleges is Apple withholding of information on roaming data charges. The plaintiff, Herbert H. Kliegerman, wants the iPhone unlock code, and he also wants to restrain Apple from selling iPhones without disclosing both that the included SIM cards are locked to AT&T, and that users could incur roaming data charges when traveling internationally. We have a PDF of the lawsuit (sent to us directly by the plaintiff), but considering the facts that:

• Kliegerman's complaints seem to have much more to do with AT&T's practices than Apple's
• US SIM cards, to my knowledge, are always locked to their particular provider, meaning travelers have always had to purchase some kind of other phone service or an international SIM
• There's plenty of information available at AT&T's site about their international roaming practices, as well as extra plan options to provide for international calls and data usage

I don't think Kliegerman has much of a leg to stand on. Plus, he sent this to us himself, which reeks of digging for 15 seconds in the spotlight - but who am I to shoot down his hopes? Anyone, particularly those who travel and know more about US mobile phone company practices, care to place some bets as to how far he'll get with this?

If you're looking for the 'next thing' with which to boost your Facebook ninja status, Subsume just might be it. Right now it's an alpha so it's a little rough around the edges, but it primarily displays updates from your Facebook friends with Growl, a TUAW favorite that allows applications to display useful popup alerts when something happens (your song changes in iTunes, new email arrives, a buddy goes offline, etc.). Setting up Subsume is easy, just like with any other app that hooks into Facebook; you're taken to a Facebook login that prompts you for your credentials (if you aren't logged in already), then Facebook asks you to authorize Subsume to display your info. At an interval that Subsume's site doesn't describe yet (remember: it's an alpha folks), the app will check your Facebook account for any status updates from your friends, then display them in Growl's handy, unobtrusive update alerts. For the Facebook obsessed, this could turn out to be a great app that keeps you on top of what's going on without having to keep some kind of a window always open and taking up space.

Subsume is provided as free for now at subsume.info. I should note that the developer, Jacob Jay, developers one of my favorite picture sharing utilities: PictureSync, which we've mentioned on TUAW a few times before.

The new .Mac Web Galleries are great, but they unfortunately can only be built by iPhoto '08 and integrated into iWeb pages. Thanks to this RapidWeaver forum post from Günter, however, RW users have a trick for embedding those slick scrolling .Mac Web Gallery thumbnails into their pages. The trick more or less involves creating at least one or more .Mac Web Galleries, opening iWeb and using its new widgets feature to embed one of your galleries in an iWeb page, publishing to a folder and copying the specific piece of .Mac Web Gallery code out of that iWeb page and into a RapidWeaver Blocks page.

It isn't exactly pretty, but I think I know of a way to simplify this process, at least for some of you. The way I figure it, if you're already publishing an iWeb page to your .Mac account with your galleries embedded in them, you can just open your iDisk and drill down to Web/Sites, find the page you published with that gallery code and simply grab it from there. No publishing to a folder and creating more junk to manage and delete, since you're already publishing those pages and code somewhere.

As far as looking at the code on those pages, you can of course simply open them in a browser and use the View Source command, or you can find a text editor like TUAW favorite TextMate or even the free Taco HTML. For more questions on this you can try in the comments here since I know a good number of TUAW readers are also RapidWeaver lovers, but the original RapidWeaver support thread where I found this tip might be a better place if you want to get more thorough answers faster.

The 4th edition of our new TUAW Talkcast went pretty well last night. We had a good turnout of readers joining in on the fun, and we all had a good time discussing things like imaginary iPhone feature updates, that quirky new Apple Keyboard and how well one can type on a glass display without buttons. We also fielded more questions from show participants such as Windows gaming on a Mac mini and how to truly delete images from iPhoto, and I must say: that question & answer segment is becoming one of my favorite parts of the show.

We did have a few issues with audio quality, as I think Gizmo was misbehaving a little, but I tried cleaning up as best I could. There's only so much magic software can work on quirky audio, even in Mac OS X. Since we are still navigating the TalkShoe waters however, we appreciate your patience while trying to iron out the kinks, and we'll gladly accept any advice on how to improve audio quality (though we're aware of the basics, such as using a headset instead of built-in MacBook mics, etc.).

We're also kicking around some ideas for a different day and time for the show in an effort to make it easier for more of you to join us. If you would prefer something other than 9:30 pm ET on Thursday nights, be sure to sound off in the comments.

For now though, TUAW Talkcast #4 is available for download. It clocks in at just under 37 minutes and 33.7 MB. You can pick up the 'cast from our RSS & iTunes feeds, via direct download here, or via download and streaming over at Talkshoe.