Original iPhone:
“Oh wow! Is that THE iPhone? — May I touch it?”

iPhone 3G:
“Dude, is that the new iPhone? How do you like it? Worth the upgrade?”

iPhone 3GS:
” — ”

iPhone 4:
“How’s that iPhone working for you? Lots of antenna issues, huh? Sucks!”

And there you were, thinking it’d be all about the FaceTime…

The iPhone DevTeam will soon release a jailbreak and unlock for ALL iOS devices running on iOS 4.0.1. iPod Touch, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, you name it, each and every device will be covered. This is very good news for any potential jailbreaker. However, as soon as Apple releases 4.1 (which is currently in beta) you may lose this opportunity.

Even if you never update to 4.1 intentionally, your iPhone may freeze up one day and you’ll have to do a full system restore to get it back up running. Trust me, this has happened to me before! This means that you will have to restore to whichever version of iOS is the latest at that moment, since Apple doesn’t allow us to restore to previous firmware versions anymore starting with the iPhone 3GS. That’s why you want to save your SHSH blobs for 4.0.1 RIGHT now. The SHSH blobs will allow you to restore to 4.0.1 even after 4.1, 4.2, or even 4.3 are out.

Don’t ask any more questions! Saving your SHSH blobs will take you one minute. Just do it! You can thank us later.

Here is how:

1) Download TinyUmbrella. The official website is here, but I found that the download from this unofficial mirror is currently more reliable.

2) Place TinyUmbrella in your applications folder and open the program.

3) Connect your iPhone.

4) Make sure the correct iPhone is selected. Then press advance and verify that Device/Version is set to your iPhone and 4.0.1. Next choose ‘Cydia’ in the ‘Request From:’ field. Take a look at the screenshot below for an iPhone 4 example.

5) Click ‘Save My SHSH’ on top.

6) Make sure you get the ‘SHSH SUCCESSFULLY saved!’ message you can see in the screenshot above.

7) You’re done! The SHSH has been save on your hard drive as well as Cydia. You can request it in the future to restore your iPhone to iOS 4.0.1!

Optional: Click on the ‘Click Here to Open’ link and save the file that will pop up in a safe location. This will prevent you from accidentally deleting the local copy of your SHSH in the future.

Seriously. Just do this! And do it soon!

You’re welcome!

The official Wordpress app is a disaster. The comments on the app will tell you that, as will anyone who has ever had the misfortune of using it. Even the esteemed Andy Ihnatko has nothing but harsh words for it. This mess of an app has lost more than one draft for me, and offers no real formatting options. It’s terrible at posting pictures, even worse at plain ol’ text, and generally a waste of time, space, bits, and money (it’s free, still too much). Other apps have equally poor reviews, and after my experience with the Wordpress app for iPad, I had no desire to test them.

I ran a quick google search to see if the standard standard web interface for posting to a wordpress blog would work using Mobile Safari on my iPad. According to everything I read, it wouldn’t. Frustrated with the lack of a quality app, I thought I would try it for myself. The result: everyone else is wrong. You don’t need an app. The standard web interface to wordpress works just fine!

I wrote this post entirely on my iPad, including taking and uploading the screenshots.

Here are a few tips to make your experience better:

On the iPad, you can scroll inside a text box by dragging with two fingers. This is not new information to most people i suppose, but it was news to me. This is important, since you will be typing your post inside a text box on the website.

The buttons on top of the text box work as expected. To make text bold or insert a link, just tap and hold to select the text, then tap the desired button.

Uploading images is the hardest part of using the web interface. Since the iPad has no user-accessible file system, you cannot tap the image button and expect to upload a picture. You can, however, use that same button to select any image that has already been uploaded to your blog, and insert it into your post. I used the previously mentioned crappy Wordpress app to make a draft post, and attached the images I wanted to that draft. The pictures got uploaded to my site, and I was then able to go back to Safari and select them from the “Media Gallery” and insert them.

The website I tested on is powered by wordpress software running on it’s own server. I have not been able to test the interface on a wordpress.com hosted site, but I assume that interface is the same. YMMV.

Happy Blogging!

Amazingly, many of the tools I use the most seem to work right out of the box, even without the apps being updated for the iPad. Here is the current state-of-the-art:

Cydia, which is installed by default by Spirit, runs fine. It is even built to run in fullscreen mode, iPad native. Despite numerous scary warnings on the front page, I have not experienced any issues with Cydia.

Backgrounder: Works just like the iPhone version. In fact, it runs at iPhone size. Amazingly, jailbreak apps behave just like any iPhone app, presenting a 2X option to fill the screen.

3G Unrestricter: This $2.99 app was one of the most important reasons to jailbreak my iPhone, as it allowed me to use Skype and other apps that would normally only work on wifi over the 3G network.

I didn’t expect that I would have much of a reason to use Unrestricter on my iPad. Well, that was before I saw YouTube on 3G. The quality was so degraded that i couldn’t read text, even big text, in a video. Unrestricter lets me watch YouTube, Netflix, and ABC in full quality (at the expense of loading time, of course). I also tested Skype, and successfully made a nice sounding phone call over 3G from my iPad. To the best of my knowledge Unrestricter has not been updated to be iPad specific (it runs like an iPhone app too), which really just adds to my amazement that it works. Best of all, if you have purchased it previously for the iPhone, you get to use it again, free of charge, on the iPad!

SbSettings: Works. Used it to change my screen brightness. Move along.

And Finally-

MyWi: Here is an app that I REALLY didn’t expect to work on the iPad. MyWi uses your mobile data plan, and rebroadcasts that connection as wifi, turning your device into a MiFi card style mobile hotspot which you can use to get your laptop online. To my surprise, MyWi works on the iPad and even carries benefits over using a dedicated device.

Consider the following: you could buy a MiFi from sprint or verizon for $199 and a $60 per month data plan which is limited to 5 gigs. The MiFi has a battery life of around 2 hours, and is limited to 5 users connected at a time. The MyWi app has no such limitation and will last as long as the iPad battery. I used the app for three strait hours on battery power, downloaded 150 megabytes, and only saw a 14% drop in battery, from 92% when i started to 78% when I stopped. That equals a 4.67 percent drop in battery per hour, or an estimated total of 21.4 hours! On top of that, the data plan costs half as much per month and has no limit to the amount you can download!

I used MyWi with the “Rock” management system so that I could take advantage of the 10 day free trial. There were some bugs while I tried to sign up for my (free) Rock account, but once i got past those everything was smooth sailing.

Final Verdict on jailbreaking the iPad-

While it would be great for these apps to be upgraded to an iPad specific interface, the functionality of my favorite jailbreak tools seem to be 100%. If you have been waiting for things to settle down before you jailbreak, I don’t think you have to wait any longer. Spirit works great and is even faster than blackra1n, and MyWi alone makes the whole process worthwhile.

Footnote: Tethering is against AT&T’s terms of service. Try not to ruin everything for the rest of us by bittorrenting Avatar over your 3G connection.

The series will be broken down into four parts: “Going Paperless”, “Organizing Time”, “Keeping Track of Bills & Payments”, and “Accessing Screen/Files From Anywhere”. Each part will be a mix of workflow suggestions, as well as software & hardware review.

A fair warning: The series is written with a somewhat serious office warrior in mind. Hence, our focus isn’t as much on price but usability. If you’re running a business, however, these products will help you stay on top and you’ll be able to expense them at the end of the year. So keep your receipts!

For now, let’s dive right in. First up:

Going Paperless

You’ve probably known for a while, that digitizing all the paperwork in your drawers would make life a lot easier. Still you’ve never come around to actually implement a paperless workflow. The challenge seems to big. It doesn’t have to be! With the right tools you can digitize your entire paper office without much pain or fuss.

That being said, a sensible solution should offer the following:

• Quick & easy scanning to PDF
• Broad file format support
• Preserving original documents
• OCR (Optical Character Recognition) engine
• Multiple database support
• Folder, subfolder, & smart-folder support
• Mobile access/syncing
• Easy exporting
• Active development & user community

Also: Only a solid workflow that seamlessly integrates hardware and software will keep you going throughout the year. Therefore, we’re going to review a combination of DEVONthink Pro and Fujitsu’s ScanSnap S1300.¹

DEVONthink Pro

There are a few solutions for the Mac to organize your digital documents. DEVONthink, Paperless, and Evernote being just a few of the more well known contenders. In our opinion, however, all of them, beside DEVONthink Pro, fall short in one or more of our pre-requisites.

While Evernote can trump with a strong user interface, ease of use, OCR support, and syncing across all important devices (Mac, iPhone, iPad, Windows, and Android), it can’t replace a paper-workflow for anything but the smallest home-office. For one, Evernote doesn’t support sub-folders, which become crucial once your database grows. More serious, however, is the fact that Evernote imports all documents into its own proprietary file format making it almost impossible to migrate the documents to another solution in the future. Also, there may be privacy issues since all documents are saved on Evernote’s servers in the cloud. The basic version is free and easy to use, however, so I still recommend using it for quick documents on the go such as flight inteniaries and travel plans.

Evernote Screenshot

Paperless seemed liked a great solution a few years ago. Its simple user interface is easy to understand and all documents remain untouched. It also supports multiple databases so you can keep your personal documents separate from you business. However, Mariner Software has fallen behind both in terms of user interface and features. Paperless still doesn’t support subfolders, OCR (for anything but receipts), or syncing of any kind, for example. More serious: Paperless can’t search through anything  but titles and keywords. So even if you make your documents searchable with a third party solution, it won’t do you any good in Paperless.

Paperless Screenshot

Which leads us to DEVONthink. The software from DEVONtechnologies comes in three flavors: Personal ($49.95), Professional ($79.95), and Pro Office ($149.95). We tested the Pro Office version which adds OCR engine, Fujitsu SnapScan Support, and a web server. Depending on your needs you may get away with using the cheaper, professional version, however. (For your OCR needs you could use the SnapScan engine for example — more on that later.)

DEVONthink Screenshot

At first sight, DEVONthink can appear a little overwhelming due to its broad usage scenarios. It can be applied to note-taking, research, bibliographies, and document organization. The initial time investment is well worth it, however, as it will pay off with great flexibility in the years to come.

First of all, DEVONthink lets you manage multiple databases so you can keep your personal office separate from your business(es). Secondly, it’s the only program we tested that supports folders, sub-folders, and smart-folders. Let me illustrate why this is so important:

You’re a freelance web designer. You need to organize your invoices for tax purposes but also need a quick way to separate paid from outstanding invoices. For your tax records you can simply set up a yearly subfolder structure within your “Invoice” folder. To keep track of unpaid invoices you tag them with a keyword such as “due”. A smart-folder can now collect all invoices independently from the folder structure they reside in. Once the invoices have been paid, you simply remove the keyword and the invoices disappear from the smart-folder. Your specific usage scenarios may vary, but the example illustrates why having these options is important.

DEVONthink Pro can also OCR your documents during import. This will create searchable PDF documents so you are not constraint to title or keyword search. If you prefer to have your scanner (or Adobe Acrobat Pro) do all the OCR work for you (more on that later) it’s possible to disable this option in the settings.

A searchable PDF allows you to highlight, copy, and search text in scanned documents.

A genius little tool for your paperless workflow is the DEVONthink “Sorter”. Connect the Sorter to specific groups in your databases and drop documents or clippings to them even when DEVONthink is not running or hidden from view. Similarly, DEVONthink places a link to your main inbox into the Finder’s sidebar. Quickly drag and drop files onto this shortcut and sort the files into their specific folders whenever you have some time to spare.

The DEVONthink sorter DEVONthink script support

Once you’re ready to take your paperless office to the next level, DEVONthink also allows almost each aspect of the workflow to be automated via integrated Apple Script support. While this may not be your cup of tea, it’s nice to know that you could expand in that direction. The active and well moderated (great experience, actually!) user forum will help you to get started.

DEVONthink isn’t perfect, however, and there are a few shortcomings that we’d like to see addressed in a future release.

While you can access all of your documents — on the go — through DEVONthink’s integrated web-server (any device running Safari, including iPhone and iPad, works), the experience isn’t nearly as slick as Evernote’s synchronization service. First of all, the computer running your DEVONthink database must be turned on at all times to access the files. Secondly, novice users may find it difficult to set-up port forwarding on their routers. A static IP or a free service such as DynDNS is also strongly recommended. Lastly, there is no offline access to your database.

The DEVONthink web interface can be accessed from any computer running Safari. Above: A screenshot from the iPad.

Once the server is up and running, however, one can not only view and download, but also upload files from the easy-to-use web-interface. Still, it’s a far cry from optional cloud storage and native iPhone/iPad support. Eric Böhnisch-Volkmann, president of DEVONtechnologies assured us, however, that native iPhone/iPad support and some sort of MobileMe supported iDisk syncing will be forthcoming in a future update.

Another gripe with DEVONthink is the fact that there’s no easy way to change a document’s creation date once it has been imported into the database. This is a glaring shortcoming for anyone who needs to organize files by date and doesn’t always create PDF’s on the day the documents were issued or received. Only when you scan documents directly into DEVONthink do you get a chance to enter a custom date. Mr. Böhnisch-Volkmann states that this “omission” is actually a “feature” since some government agencies may not allow date-changes for paperless workflows.

Fortunately, there’s a nerdy workaround: Remember those action scripts? This is a perfect scenario for them. Download this small action script and place it into: YourUserFolder/Library/Application Support/DEVONthink Pro 2/Scripts/Dates/. Now highlight the document(s) you’d like to change and select Scripts/Date/Set Date from the DEVONthink menu bar. Enter a new date and you’re done.

Dates can be changed through apple script support.

Also, don’t rely on DEVONthink to password protect your database. Even though, you can enter a username and password for each database, this only takes effect through the DEVONthink user interface. A skilled individual could easily get to your documents through the finder with a simple “show package contents” command. According to Mr. Böhnisch-Volkmann the company is aware of this issue and they are working on an optional encryption solution. For now, important documents should be password protected through Adobe Acrobat Pro or Preview. Alternatively, one could create an encrypted DMG file (via Disk Utility) and place the database within this protected shell.

Even though DEVONthink isn’t perfect, it is among the best if you’re serious about eliminating every single piece of paper in your office. Fortunately, the team behind DEVONthink is very responsive to community concerns and seems to be working hard on improving an already strong solution.

DevonThink Professional Office can be purchased for $149.95 directly from the DEVONtechnologies website. A 30 day trial is available as well to get you started.

ScanSnap S1300

I can’t stress enough how much of the success of your paperless office will be based on an excellent document scanner. While you may be able to put up with a standard-mill “all-in-one” solution during your initial enthusiasm, you will catch yourself pushing paperwork to an ever growing “to-do” stack once daily routine kicks in. Unless the scanning and archiving process takes as little effort as possible, this WILL happen rather sooner than later.

And while we would love to receive all documents digitally, this unfortunately won’t be a reality for many years to come. Also: It’s probably a good idea to start archiving your existing paperwork. Hence, we need a quick and easy way to get all these pesky paper documents into our DEVONthink databases.

This is where the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300 comes into play.

The ScanSnap S1300 is a small, lightweight paper-feed scanner that takes up very little space on your desk; perfect for any small office setup. Furthermore, it can be powered via USB so you can take it with you on the road. The ScanSnap S1300 is also a breeze to set up. Simply install the provided software, connect the scanner, and you’re ready to get scanning.

DEVONthink Pro will automatically recognize the scanner and offer to set-up a custom tailored profile for your ScanSnap. Simply select this profile, insert a stack of papers, and press the blue button. ScanSnap will immediately start to scan all the pages into a single PDF document and hand it off to DEVONthink Pro where it will run through the OCR engine and ask you to title, date, and file the document. Done!

The ScanSnap S1300 is a small, lightweight paper-feed scanner.

To take full advantage of the scanner, you can (and should) create additional custom profiles. A “receipt” profile which will turn every scanned page into its own PDF document turns out to be quite helpful for example. In addition, you can also set the software to omit empty pages (often the case with double sided scanning) automatically.

Another great option is to set the scanning resolution to “automatic” which will scan smaller documents at a higher resolution. This is important since the S1300 allows you to scan documents with different sizes in one batch.

Additional profiles can be created quickly in the ScanSnap Manager.

The scanner’s best feature, however, is its incredible speed and reliability. Not only does the ScanSnap S1300 support double sided scanning, it also scans documents at an approximate speed of 8-16 pages per minute. Even long documents (ever gotten a receipt from Ikea?) are no problem for the ScanSnap S1300. Simply press the blue button for three seconds and even long documents are scanned with ease.

Take look at the short video below to see the ScanSnap S1300 and DEVONthink Pro in action:

It’s this effortless scanning experience that will keep you motivated to continuously digitize your paperwork.

And even though we were extremely impressed with the S1300 we did notice a few shortcomings worth mentioning:

You can’t scan Credit Cards, or similar plastic documents. These require a flatbed scanner. Also, the ScanSnap S1300 only supports 10 sheets at a time. Hardly enough if you’re running a large office, with rows of paper cabinets.  If that’s an issue for you, you may want to take a look at Fujitsu’s ScanSnap S1500M which can process up to 50 sheets at a time. We weren’t able to test the unit at this time, however, so proceed on your own risk.

Also, slim paper receipts often “jumped” over the adjustable side-sliders during scanning. This either jammed the paper feed or resulted in diagonal scans. More often than not the auto-rotation feature of the ScanSnap Manager was able to put everything back into perspective during post-processing, however. Still, a more rugged pair of side-sliders would have been a nice addition.

The side-sliders are a little to shallow to hold slim receipts in place.

The OCR engine for both the ScanSnap and DEVONthink seemed to perform equally well in our test, by the way. Still, I found that Adobe Acrobat Pro tended to do a slightly better job at smaller file sizes. Hence, if you already own Acrobat Pro you may want to include this handy little script in your workflow as well. Simply drag and drop multiple PDF files onto this script and Acrobat will not only OCR, but also compress the files automatically. This is an additional step, but may be well worth your time if file size and marginally higher OCR accuracy are important to you. For me the DEVONthink Pro engine was good enough, however.

In conclusion, the results of the quick and reliable ScanSnap S1300 in combination with the feature-laden DEVONthink Professional Office are hard to beat. Once set up and configured to your liking it is possible and — perhaps even more importantly — fun to maintain a paperless office with minimal effort.

Unlike paper documents, which are only accessible in one place at a time, you now have access to every single document right at your fingertips on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad, no matter when and where you may need them.

So, do yourself a favor and get rid of the paper!

The ScanSnap S1300 is available on Amazon for $264.99

Questions, thoughts, or comments? Contact me on Twitter @eierund and I’ll be in touch.

Next up: Organizing Time. (Coming soon!)

1. Link to Amazon Associate Account

Focus on providing a consistent experience in all orientations, even if the layout of secondary information might change. A comparable experience in all orientations allows people to maintain their usage patterns when they rotate the device.

Screenshots from Apple’s Pages for iPad application:

Horizontal:

Vertical:

Not exactly maintaining my usage patterns.

Also: Why does the guideline text render so horrendously on iPad? And how come I can’t copy from it? Someone should inform Apple that actions speak louder than words.

Questions or comments? Let me know: @eierund on twitter.

For as long as I can remember Apple and Microsoft have competed for market share in personal computing. No matter how you feel about the giant from Redmond, one has to admit that they have clearly pulled ahead in this battle. Yes, Apple has increased its market share quite impressively in the past few years, but it remains doubtful that they would be able to dethrone Microsoft anytime soon. At least not by the terms that we would define victory with TODAY.

What would happen, however, if Apple would simply change the terms that define the outcome of the war? Change the game from Windows vs. Mac to something entirely different?
I believe this is exactly what is happening in Cupertino right now. A few years ago, Apple seems to have shifted its strategy away from their laptop and desktop lines and focused their energy on iPhone, iPod Touch, and — most importantly — iPad instead. With the recent release of iPad and the months long delay of a refresh to the laptop lineup this is now more apparent than ever. Furthermore, these iDevices are not an incarnation of the Macintosh, they are pitched as a brand new platform. A unique group of gadgets in which Apple is the clear market leader.

This, of course, is move of genius on Apple’s part. Instead of competing in the saturated desktop market, Apple simply invented a new one in which Microsoft is all but a blip on the radar and Google & Co are desperately playing catch up. (In terms of market share, mind you.)

Here, the choice isn’t between Windows or Mac anymore. It’s between iPad and Microsoft Courier, or Android Tablet; neither of which have even been officially announced yet. Basically it’s a choice that clearly favors Apple.

The big question remains, however, if Apple’s lead in this new sector could truly have an impact on Microsoft’s bottom line. After all, the traditional computing market is substantially larger than all iDevices (Apple or not) combined. And in that market, Microsoft remains the undefeated leader. Therefore, it would be reasonable to argue that Apple’s strong lead in mobile platforms can not affect Microsoft’s stronghold on desktops. This argument may only stand true for the time being, however, since I believe that Apple is thinking big picture here.

For Apple, the current lineup of iPhone’s, iPod’s, and iPad’s is nothing but just the beginning of a transformation of the personal computing landscape. Not only will Apple add more power to its iDevices each year, they will also — and perhaps more importantly — hand their customers additional tools with every passing generation. At this point in time, the iPad may stand a chance as a full-on computer replacement for only the very basic computer user, the kind that wouldn’t even come across this website. Think email and internet for your grandparents; a tiny sliver of the overall computing market share.

In two or three years to come, however, the iPad may offer a more serious alternative as a laptop replacement for a broader user base. Think additional content creation tools and relaxed app store policies. And even further down the road — I’m talking ten years or more here — the techies among us (you!) may even be able to rely on an iDevice for their sole computer needs. Think ample horsepower and accessibility to development tools.

Therefore, the percentage of users that rely solely on an iDevice will steadily increase while the computer market as we define it today will decrease. This will affect both Apple and Microsoft, of course. But it will disturb Microsoft’s operations disproportionally stronger since they not only have more to lose, but customers are also more likely to switch to an Apple iDevice over a Microsoft one. Unless, of course, Microsoft finally starts to compete in the market that Apple has all but jump started two weeks ago.

What about connectivity, though? Opinion on the internet has it that Apple’s iPad couldn’t possible replace a desktop without a USB port (better yet: three or four), display dock, LAN jack, and Floppy Drive. Again: I believe that we must think big picture here. In ten years wireless technology may be powerful enough to cut cords altogether. And even if it doesn’t, don’t forget about Intel’s Light Peak technology, in whichʼs development Apple is rumored to have had more than a helping hand. What if Apple would replace the traditional dock connecter with an optical, lightweight, Light Peak port in the iDevice generations to come? A port that will not only multiply the speed with which you can sync your files, but also let you connect a plethora of devices, including keyboard, camera, 30-inch display, or whatever else you’d might want to jam into your iPad. One simple port. Unlimited connectivity. Light Peak could be the answer.

What I’m trying to say is this: Look at Apple’s iWork apps and keyboard dock. Can’t you see the signs — early they may be?

Whoever believes that devices like iPad donʼt have a chance to take over the computing market, doesn’t see the big picture. Microsoft, of course, will fight to remain relevant during all of this change, but it isn’t difficult to argue that Apple set the rules this time around. For the first time — in a long time — Apple stands an actual, realistic, chance to grab the crown from Microsoft. Not in the Windows vs. Mac war — that one will be all but irrelevant in twenty years — but in the iDevice war. Thatʼs where the market will be heading after Apple ignited the fire. All Apple needs to do in order to win is to keep innovating and growing their line of iDevices while holding on to that dominating market share for dear life. The remaining pieces will fall into place automatically.

Tick, tock, tick, tock, Microsoft. Time may well be running out on you.

Questions or comments? Let me know: @eierund on twitter.

German Review: http://bit.ly/co8aRe

English Google Translation: http://bit.ly/986iDt

Video Review:

Questions or comments? Let me know: @eierund on twitter.

Update 03/29/2010: Shipped!

Questions or comments? Let me know: @eierund on twitter.

A quick call to Apple support confirmed that both the iPad and iPad 3G are being “prepared for shipment”. (At least for our orders.)

We’re currently trying to get a hold of a representative to shed some light onto this situation.

Update 4:26pm PST: An Apple representative told us that these authorizations are placed to verify the credit card information. Even though the automated system states that the iPad 3G is “being prepared for shipment” this is not the case, according to the representative. We’ll keep checking into this. Stay tuned.

Update 03/28/2010: Looks like the iPad 3G won’t ship early after-all.

Questions or comments? Let me know: @eierund on twitter.

Open Image Sequence
Clip Trimming
Clip Copy and Paste
Exporting to specific codecs
Clip resizing
and more

If you find that QuickTime X doesn’t provide the features you need, you probably need to “downgrade” to QuickTime 7. Fortunately, you can install both versions side-by-side in Snow Leopard, and even specify which files to open with either version. Unfortunately, if you try to install QuickTime 7 from the internet by downloading it, Snow Leopard will kindly tell you that you already have a newer version installed.

QuickTime 7 can be installed from the Snow Leopard disk, but almost everyone hates having to find the disk. Everyone else got it from the bittorrents.

This handy guide tells us that if we right-click on a .qtz (a Quartz Composer file) and select “Open with QuickTime,” Snow Leopard will offer us the chance to download and install QuickTime 7 automatically.

My problem is that I don’t have (or can’t find) any .qtz files on my computer! Here is where I can make your life 100% better. Ready?

Open TextEdit
Hit (shift)+(command)+T to make the document plain text
Save the document and change the file extension from .txt to .qtz

Bingo, now you have a perfectly legit .qtz file. Open it using QuickTime X and you will be prompted to install QuickTime 7.

Multiple sources are reporting to us about telephone conversations they’ve had with Apple reps regarding changing their iPad orders from delivery to in-store pickup.

Multiple iPad buyers have been told that in order to do such a change, the delivery order would have to be cancelled and a new in-store pickup order completed, but that iPad orders (which began this morning at 8:30am EST) have been “so overwhelming” that new iPad orders may not be available for in-store pickup on April 3.

The story quickly spread to sites such as Macrumors, 9 To 5 Mac, and Electronista. Served with catchy headlines such as “iPad retail already dry?” or “Apple Already Running Low on iPad Supplies for Launch Day In-Store Pickup Reservations?” Frankly it’s become to large of a “story” to ignore.

Yet, everything about it stinks. Think about it for a moment. Put the hype aside, take a deep breath, and THINK about it. Twelve hours after this story broke, Apple is still taking reservations on new iPad orders for April 3rd. So why would it be a problem to change an existing order? And even IF there is a problem, why not simply put in a new reservation and cancel your previous order? There’s no queue for in-store pickups. It doesn’t matter if you reserved at 6:30am or 6:30pm, as long as Apple is still taking reservations (which they are).

Who are these people that are having an alleged hard time with this?

Basically, what I’m saying is: I don’t understand the point of this story. None of it.

I believe someone is trying to artificially hype the iPad launch. Be it Apple’s marketing team or click-hungry rumor sites. I don’t know. But let’s admit it: It’s just too much fun to give in on the hype of such a fantastic story. Wouldn’t it be fun if Apple were to sell out on day ONE of pre-orders? Tasty!

Well, they didn’t. So let’s all just move on. There’s nothing to see here. Sorry to burst the bubble.

Questions or comments? Let me know: @eierund on twitter.

John Gruber:

It’s probably pretty clear to regular DF readers that I don’t care for Flash, and that I’m hoping Apple never includes it in the iPhone OS. Might as well make my biases clear. Why? At the core, because Flash is the only de facto web standard based on a proprietary technology. [...] There are also practical issues. One, Flash’s aforementioned crashiness on Mac OS X. Second, crashiness aside, its performance on Mac OS X is not as good as it is on Windows. And for video playback specifically, Flash’s performance pales compared to H.264 played through QuickTime.

Prompting replies from Adobe’s John Nack:

Adobe isn’t in the Flash business. Seriously. It isn’t in the Photoshop business, or the Acrobat business, or the [take-your-pick product name] business, either. It’s in the helping people communicate business. [...] Flash has stepped in to fill some gaps heretofore left by other technologies. It is, however, just one possible means to an end–always has been. Adobe will of course continue to invest in making Flash better, and it’ll keep investing in other ways to help creative people reach customer eyeballs.

And Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch:

In Flash Player 10.1 we are moving to Core Animation, which will further reduce CPU usage and we believe will get us to the point where Mac will be faster than Windows for graphics rendering. [...] With Flash Player 10.1, we are optimizing video rendering further on the Mac and expect to reduce CPU usage by half, bringing Mac and Windows closer to parity for video.

Fascinating stuff, right?

While I absolutely agree with John Gruber in terms of Flash being a de facto web standard based on a proprietary technology which needs to be replaced (at least for video playback) by HTML5 — I’ll still need to rely on Flash until the transition is complete. Therefore, I find myself in a weird juxtaposition of hoping for Flash’s demise on one hand, while rooting for the Adobe engineering team to make noticeable improvements on the other.

Lucky for me, Adobe has made available a public beta of Flash 10.1 for OSX with Flash engineer Tinic Uro providing some interesting info on Flash & Core Animation, highlighting some of the bottlenecks that the teams are now overcoming.

Flash Player 10.1 implements the Core Animation drawing model [...] Instead of using a CGImageRef + CGContextDrawImage to get the bits to screen we pass a CAOpenGLLayer to Safari and use an OpenGL texture of type GL_TEXTURE_RECTANGLE_ARB to get our bits to the screen. [...] Given the now almost perfect integration of Core Animation plugins into Safari I hope that future versions of the Flash Player will take advantage of more capabilities of OpenGL.

Techie stuff, indeed. Don’t worry, you don’t need to understand the CL_TEXTURE_Jibberish. The gist of it is coming down to this: If you’re running Flash 10.1 on OSX 10.6 with Safari 4 you should notice some distinct performance improvements. And while I’m not claiming to understand all the nitty-gritty developer-talk either, I am able to see some fascinating improvements with my very own eyes thanks to my (completely unscientific) testing methods.

And so can you!

See the video below? You should be able to play this embedded 720p Vimeo video on any recent Mac running Flash 10.0. Now try to blow it up full screen on a 27 or 30inch screen (little icon on the bottom right-hand corner). See the difference? STUTTER-CENTRAL!²

Now upgrade to Flash 10.1 beta for OSX (if you’re into that new-frontier kinda stuff — don’t come yelling at us if it breaks your stuff) and re-run the video above. Still runs fine embedded? Great. Now blow it up full screen. Whoa! Smooth as silk. Even on that 30inch Cinema Display.

Pretty nifty, eh?

So while I’ll still be impatiently waiting for HTML5 to mature to the point of replacing proprietary Flash as the main resource for web-video — I do appreciate and take notice of the improvements Flash 10.1 will offer in the meantime.

Hopefully this will ease the transitional pain. I already took the pill. Will you?

Questions or comments? Let me know: @eierund on twitter.

1. Adobe Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch also stated “I can tell you that we don’t ship Flash with any known crash bugs” less than a week before Product Manager Emmy Huang admits to shipping Flash with a known bug since September 2008. Some reassurance.
2. Tests performed on 2006 MacPro/2x Xeon Woodcrest 2.66GHz Dual-Core / 30inch display & 2009 iMac/3.06GHz quad-core Core i5 / 27inch display.

First of all: Congratulations to you and your team on the announcement of iPad. It’s exciting to imagine the possibilities this new device will offer us in just a few weeks. As an early adopter of eBooks (Specifically on the Kindle) I am particularly enthusiastic about the iBooks application and the accompanying bookstore. Both look extremely promising. There’s something, however, that seemed oddly amiss in your announcement: An integrated solution for electronic periodicals.

While I understand that iPad is still under development and additional details may still be announced, it concerned me that the New York Times was asked to present a dedicated iPad application during last week’s keynote. Does this suggest that publishers should develop one application each for every newspaper and magazine subscription? While this is certainly a possibility I’d like to take this opportunity to outline a few weaknesses to this approach:

• Subscriptions will clutter the home screen.
  I already find myself shunning iPhone applications that do little more than displaying the content of one particular blog; dedicated RSS readers can pull all my favorite blogs into one place without cluttering up my home screen.
• Hassle to maintain.
  Users will need to monitor each application separately for new content. I’m concerned that they might simply forget about the applications; leaving them behind — unchecked for weeks at a time — on page five and six of their home screens. This is neither practical for us (the user) nor profitable for the publisher. Eventually subscriptions will expire or be canceled.
• Dilution.
  Each magazine/newspaper will create its own user interface, syncing mechanism, and bookmarking system; unnecessarily convoluting the experience.
• Steeper (than necessary) learning curve for publishers.
  Producing a magazine/newspaper within an application requires a set of complex programming skills that many independent publishers may not wish to acquire or even have the resources for; hence, artificially heightening the barrier of entry.
• Noise.
  Magazines and newspapers may get lost among the “real” applications in the iTunes store.

On the other hand, an integrated subscription service (or one integrated within iBooks) would offer the following advantages:

• Easy access.
  All subscriptions will be loaded in one place, at the same time, ready for instant consumption.
• Integration.
  Articles can be bookmarked, synched, shared, and searched, all within the same application. A unified interface will also help transition users from a physical to an electronic experience.
• Exposure.
  Periodicals will stand out from the noise of the iTunes ecosystem. This will be especially important for independent and self-publishers.

Since the ePub format seems far too limited for heavily formatted magazines with thoughtful layouts, multimedia content, and a specific set of font choices (and PDF’s seem too “inflexible” to make for a great periodical file format), I would like to suggest that Apple introduces a dedicated — open source — file format for magazines and newspapers.

“eMag” (for the sake of this argument) should support all technological enhancements of a modern day multimedia experience but under the constrains of the publisher’s formatting choices. A plug-in converter or dedicated authoring tool (think iLife) should be made available by Apple to publish content to the new format. (Companies such as Adobe can later extend the format to additional platforms.)

If any company could gather the necessary support to establish a new — modern day — file format it would most certainly be Apple. As a matter of fact, I would deem it borderline negligent if Apple didn’t at least take a chance on this narrow window of opportunity and try to hurtle the cluttered publishing industry into the 21st century.

Even if the big publishing houses were not quite ready for a tightly controlled distribution system via an electronic ecosystem such as iTunes, I argue that Apple should still go ahead and lay the foundations for a periodical subscription system within iBooks. As the established players continue to struggle in the old markets, new players may be ready to experiment with the future. With Apple’s implementation of eMag, easy to use authoring tools, and the iTunes ecosystem, the barrier of entry to become the publisher of a weekly, bi-weekly, monthly (or even daily) newspaper or magazine will vanish right in front of our eyes. A few talented writers with a strong business model, a unique subject matter, and a healthy helping of pioneer-spirit could be all that is required to launch exciting new magazines and newspapers onto the iPad platform for millions to discover.

With just a few success stories from independent publishers I’d be willing to bet that some of the larger publishing houses will quickly follow suit. And while I am not expecting for Apple to change the publishing industry overnight, I would love for you and your teams to at least provide the technological opportunity.

All said and done I truly believe, that the public is still yearning (and perhaps even willing to — gasp — pay) for well-researched content — presented in a visually stunning format. Even — or rather specifically — in the fast paced reality of HTML. The Internet didn’t kill the newspaper industry. Their stagnant business models — which were merely exposed by the Internet — did. And with newspapers going out of business all over the country, Apple now has the exhilarating opportunity to not only revive the existing publishing industry but also (or dare I say: even more so) open the doors for new and exciting players with the introduction of eMag on iPad.

A periodical subscription service could therefore be one of the most exciting opportunities the iPad might yet have to offer. All I can hope for is that Apple will seize this opportunity — with all the vigor of embracing a new frontier — and help re-ignite our love for newspapers and magazines. You’ve done it before; you can do it again!

Thank you for listening.

Sincerely,
Philipp Eierund

Questions or comments? Let me know: @eierund on twitter.

Google announced this feature, available in major cities, in August. It gathers data from a variety of sources, including pulling speed information from smartphones running Google’s Map application. Herein lies the problem. My experience has shown that this traffic data is less than accurate.

I noticed this problem while driving across town and trying to choose between freeways and side streets showing all yellow and red. I was traveling at night, around 9pm, and suspected that the street traffic may not be as bad as the Maps application on my iPhone indicated. None the less I was worried about this large red patch on my route:

When I arrived to the problem area, I was not surprised to find that the traffic was not nearly as bad as the map was showing. In fact, I snapped this picture right after taking the screenshot of the map:

As you can see, I am the only car on the road! Notice also that traffic on the other side of the street shows yellow on the map, and is also extremely light in reality. I suspect that the problem comes from how Google utilizes the data it gets from mobile users of its Maps application. For example, if the application polls the speed of a user while they are sitting at a red light, and the speed is returned as 0, how does google treat this anomaly? What about when someone is parked in the car and looking up directions? I know that the data displayed by Google is close (but not exactly) in real time, but the red block in question existed for 30 minutes before my arrival and continued to be red for ten minutes after I had passed through. The issue did not seem to be a jam that cleared just before I arrived. Further, traffic jams do not clear immediately, they should change from red to yellow to green as the traffic lightens.

As with any crowd-sourced technology, valuable data comes from the collective average of all users, not from any one specific user. I suspect that the way Google is treating the data relies too heavily on individual results, rather than a more accurate average of many users. These issues are likely to become less of a problem as use of the Maps application becomes more widespread, especially if it is integrated in the iPhone’s Map application.

Save Now on Select TomTom GPS

According to Armen, his line is one of the heavyweights, with a herd fat sweaty nerds 300-400 strong. The store manager has made an appearance stating “I don’t think the people here will go home disappointed,” indicating a large iPhone shipment waiting inside!

Also of note, Armen reports a man offering up to $2,000 dollars for a spot near the front of the line! Expect a detailed report of this later.

As long as our batteries and internet connections hold out, keep your eyes glued here for continuous updates throughout the night.

If YOU are currently in line, drop us a note in the comments!