If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

One of my favorite features in iPhoto is its ability to compare changes you’ve made to the original with the press of a button. In previous versions, it was assigned to the CTRL key. With iPhoto ‘08, this no longer works. For days I was hating the new iPhoto because it seemed they removed this feature. After a little digging around, I found that Apple has not removed the feature but just moved it to the SHIFT key. I’ve actually found this to be a welcome change as I check against the original a lot and the SHIFT key is much easier to locate and press.

I finally picked up iLife ‘08 and iWork ‘08 this weekend after Apple’s announcement last week. I’ve been waiting for iLife ‘08 since Macworld as I use iPhoto on a daily basis and Garageband when I record my podcast. iDVD and iWeb are pretty useless to me but iMovie was something I always wanted to get into but never did. Mostly due to not having a video camera. iWork on the other hand i rarely use and really have no idea why I picked it up but I did anyways.

First thing I did was try out iPhoto for obvious reasons. Now mind you, I never really “got” iPhoto but in the past 8 months I’ve gotten use to it. The first thing you notice is that Events now replace rolls. I think this will actually work out for me in the long run. My favorite upgrade so far is the keyword, no more drag and dropping. It has a more traditional tagging interface now which i love. I’ve only really played with the new iPhoto for a little bit so far and its mostly due to the fact it now runs like shit on my Macbook. As I write this I am rebuilding all the thumbnails, database and permissions hoping it will help. When scrolling and editing pictures, the CPU jumps to 100% and everything crawls. Anyone else having the same issues?

The other iLife apps I haven’t played with too much yet. iWork I’ll probably almost never use due to Google Apps but I have it if i need it.

Keynote
I didn’t go to the keynote this year. $200 and standing in line for 5 hours didn’t really appeal to me too much so I did what everyone else did, followed everything online. I followed mostly everything from Macrumors and Engadget with a few refreshes of a couple other sites.

What did I think?

Apple TV
I’ve been waiting for this. I like what they did and will probably pick one up but its definitely not the perfect device. I don’t want to move all my movies into iTunes. I keep everything on a separate drive and you cannot stream from a folder.

The interface is slick and it can sync with iTunes just like a iPod so you don’t have to keep your computer running. I’m probably going to pick one up anyways since I get all my TV Shows from iTunes and its convenient but I’ll probably find another device down the road to replace it.

iPhone
This thing is amazing. I’ve said it before that when Apple drops there phone I would be be first in line to buy one. After all is said and done, I’m probably not going to get one.

Reasons:
1) Cingular. I’m a T-mobile customer.
2) Price. $599 is kinda steep tho I do think its worth every cent.
3) I’ve fallen in love with my Blackberry’s push email from work and I’m not sure if the iPhone can do that.
4) Doubt its going to work with the Nike+iPod kit.

June is along time away, half a year. As more details get announced, I’ll weigh in on my choice.

In other news, if Apple released a 120G touch widescreen iPod, that I will buy.

Apple AirPort Extreme
Nice, real nice. I want one but kinda pricy and my Macbook doesn’t have N in it.

Disappointed
After dropping a bombshell like the iPhone I still felt a little disappointed with the keynote. Why?

No new iPod, no Leopard and no iLife ‘07.

I was actually looking forward to new Leopard details, maybe even a release date and what’s new in iLife ‘07. I’m really hoping they overhaul iPhoto.

My guess is all that stuff will be announced soon and wasn’t at Macworld do to the iPhone stealing everyones thunder.

One of my firsts apps i install when I got my macbook was FlickrExport. FlickrExport adds an export option to iPhoto to send photos directly to your Flickr account. It was a very useful program at a great price, free. When version 2.0 came around, the author decided to start charging for it. Since 1.x was working great, I saw no need to upgrade.

Well, with Project 365 in full effect, as much as it can be after 4 days, I decided to buy FlickrExport 2.0. The new photoset and pool options are what sold me. With 1.x i had to upload then goto Flickr.com and add all the photos i wanted to a existing set or pool. It was $22.32 for the plugin which i think is a little much and one of the reasons I never upgraded before. If it was something like $9.95, I would have bought it months ago. But it should pay for itself in no time….I hope.

Connect360 was just updated today to support Video streaming. Connect360 allows Music, Picture and now Video access from your Mac to your Xbox 360. It will scan your iTunes and iPhoto libraries and share them to your Xbox 360 over the network. I love this program and is a must have for any Mac and Xbox 360 owner. Version 2.8 just added streaming Video support that was added to the Xbox 360 in the Fall Dashboard update. After you install the new version and start the service, it will index your “Movies” folder . Right now its only WMV support as thats all the Xbox 360 supports but I’m hoping they will find a way to support transcoding mpeg4 files somehow.

[Trial Download]