OK, that's not exactly true. I was keeping the Missing Manuals fort warm in Cambridge, Mass. today while many of you were in the Moscone Center in San Francisco for Macworld. Hopefully those of you who are out there are checking out the many great authors at our O'Reilly booth.
I, of course, wasn't the only one who wasn't at the show. Apple CEO Steve Jobs, just in case you hadn't heard, also passed on the event citing health issues.
So here I sat, watching literally hundreds of tweets fly by during today's keynote address, led by Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing.
My intention was to pluck some of the best tweets and do another "missing feature" post. But, quite simply, I couldn't keep up. There were so many people twittering about the keynote that it dominated Twitter's Trending topics list.
In journalism, they talk about the "Five W's" (Who, What, When, Where and Why) which are the questions you answer to write a story. But this is 140-character Twitter, so I revised the plan and went with just two W's: "Wow" and "Why."
Wow!
Many people who were impressed with features they liked from the keynote included a "wow" in their tweets.
chris24 was impressed with the new 17-inch MacBook Pro.
Many, including jamesbressi, Thracks, sowens, and dlodewyk gave a big "wow" to the news that Garageband is set to include "lessons" from celebrity artists including Sting and Sarah McLachlan.
Twitterers weren't quite as busy saying "wow" to the news about iTunes ditching its digital rights management (DRM) restrictions. That's probably because the complexity of the deal takes a couple minutes to sink in. By the end of March, Apple said there will be three pricing levels (69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29) and users with existing iTunes libraries can pay to upgrade their music to DRM-free versions.
Following the news, thepixelpuncher appeared pleased with his procrastination. "Glad he waited to spend his gift card to the itunes store."
Why
This was far from an earth-shaking keynote address, as there was nothing on the level of an iPhone being introduced, or even updated one for that matter.
A search of the "why" tweets included some interesting feature requests and laments.
aulia asked "Why aren't Apple integrating iWork.com into MobileMe? Where are the promised additional MobileMe modules?"
fafner was one of many who lamented the absence of a Snow Leopard announcement "I just wonder why they didn't introduce Snow Leopard. Basically the only disappointing thing about this Philnote."
sib1013 doesn't necessarily think bigger is better when it comes to Apple's 17-inch MacBook Pro laptop with an extended, non-removable, 8-hour battery. "Why can't I get a 15" version of new MacBook Pro (extended batt, hi-res matte screen, ...)? I don't want a huge freakin' laptop!"
aulia was fairly fixated on Apple's new iWork '09 and announced iWork.com web site. "Why aren't Apple integrating iWork.com into MobileMe? Where are the promised additional MobileMe modules?"
[Speaking of iWork, this is a good time to "re-tweet" ourselves. Many of you have been asking for an iWork book from Missing Manuals for some time, and with the advent of iWork '09, we are happy to say that this is on the way. We can't say when yet, but we will keep you posted.]
PawLuxury doesn't deny that there were letdowns, but thinks some people need to take a deep breath. "Many were looking for iphone 2.3 update...This is why Apple is pulling out... We expect too much...Let them make it right, no rush"
The common theme of the day appeared to be the absence of Jobs. Many, like jamesbressi were defiantly predicting a surprise from Steve. "You will hear "one more thing" and Steve Jobs takes stage :) Out in style. He is a rock star."
No incorrect prediction, however, was more entertaining than that of kenyatta, who was "half expecting Steve Jobs to make a surprise #macworld appearance to announce his full recovery & a new product called iMmortal."
Roundup
ecc1977 #macworld keynote didn't disappoint me as much as others. all the things i use (iLife, iWork, and iTunes) got updated.
drcongo @peterandall no OpenDocument support as far as I can see on the site. That makes them as bad as Microsoft. #apple #iwork #macworld
zackmcdougall GarageBand '09 makes me want to start using it. New Learn to Play feature. Artists like Sara McLaughlin and Sting show you how! #mwsf09
TimRogers @jayen #mwsf09 Apple would make an absolute killing from doing GarageBand on Windows.
OmegaSpreem Numbers 09 will be more like Excel, less like Lotus Improv. Yaaaay. #Macworld
wpgrant Am I the only one who thinks iWork = Keynote? Numbers and Pages is not for me, good for a home user maybe. #mwsf09
shtikl Guess I am the only one on Twitter who thinks that iPhoto 09 rocks, and Pages w/ iWork.com and EndNote is a gamechanger. #macworld
We're back with some more dips into the Twitterverse. And man, is that space large and growing. It is impossible to find everything people are talking about out there, which is our way of reminding you to follow us on Twitter (@missingmanuals), or comment below to share the Missing Features you'd like to see.
iPhone-related requests continue to dominate
Multi-tasking with Pandora What's better than an iPhone app? Multiple apps running at the same time.
We've been noticing a rise in requests for multi-tasking on the iPhone, with the online radio service Pandora being the common denominator. @pgkiran and @meg624 echo the sentiments of @kessler, who wrote "Really wish Pandora could run in the background on the iPhone. I want to listen to jams and tweet at the same time. Arghh."
Picture this The camera and accompanying software for the iPhone has motiviated some to ask for even more functionality. @samuelcotterall, after using CameraBag wants an iPhone camera that is more than 2 megapixels. @coolgrljen wants to camera to have zoom.
Meantime, @jasonfried might have stumbled onto a business opportunity. "I wish you could order framed prints from iPhoto. Just a few simple frame options. Simple wood, simple metal. A couple colors. The basics."
Twitteriffic has a lot of fans There's many ways to tweet, but one popular service for iPhone users is Twitterific. While popular, people like @bobreturns (sync Twitterific to an iPhone and a Mac) and @forbetaorworse (make Twitterific "always scrolls to the most recent tweet") have some improvements. @ampersandee, would like Twitterific to help achieve a workaround to the lack of Flash support on iPhones. "Wish there was a *quick* way - in Twitteriffic on the iPhone - to send a tweet for later review on computer (eg. link to flash content)."
We've been busy at Missing Manuals, working on several upgrades. While we're still in the middle of that, we have begun using Twitter. You can follow us at http://twitter.com/missingmanuals, but you should know that we're also following many of you.
Every day, more and more people are posting feature requests for what they'd like to see their products and software contain and do. We've collected some of them and plan to periodically showcase them in this space. If you'd like to make us aware of features you'd like to see, feel free to post in our comments section or tweet @missingmanuals or #mmfeature and we'll be sure to add you to the list of candidates.
I love my iPhone, but ...
People love their iPhones, that much we already knew. But they would love them even more if they had a few enhancements.
Flash - @DogHouse is one of many who asked out loud for iPhone to support Flash, which it currently does not: "Shoot! The debate is starting and I'm not home. Glad I'm recording it. I wish iPhone supported Flash, then I could watch on myspace." Similar requests were made by @wuperruper, @adamengst, @twittem, @DrJohnnySpin and @jessejanderson.
Apps - There are a wide variety of Apps requests as well, including Google Analytics (@joshmishell), green apps (@mylifebynorules) and the ability of the iPhone to "detect how hard you tap, for a velocity-sensitive musical instrument app " (@mike3k).
@dmetzcher hopes the YouTube app can become just "Web video" in order to "support Viddler and others."
Apple's App Store has gained just as much attention as the apps themselves and @ericsuh hopes they loosen up the reigns a bit in the future, saying "I really wish the iPhone App Store had more shareware, especially since the user experience is such an important criterion."
@Javadog, meantime, is looking for a "'serious' iPhone app comparison site. Like, which one of the dozen ambient sound apps is better and why."
Etc. At least two Twitterers (@feliciaday and @cupcakey88) are waiting to be able to play World of Warcraft in their iPhone, three requested keyboards for it (@lionchild, @kcnickerson, and @cherp) while @tdhurst had might night be available for a couple editions: "I very much wish my iPhone had a breathalyzer."
Roundup
Below are more iPhone requests, as well as hopes for Excel, Facebook, iPhoto, iPod, iTunes, Leopard, Outlook, Photoshop, Typepad, Windows Vista, and Visual Studio:
"i wish there was a google analytics app for iphone." - @joshmishell
"Wish the iPhone map app could sync my custom maps with google" - @marcusramberg
"I detest safari on iPhone/ipod touch's auto-refresh feature. With a passion. Wish I could turn it off." - @sarahintampa
"What is the first thing you say to a friend who just got an iPhone? for me "don't believe the battery meter" Wish it was something different" - @ianfinity
"@fteter iPhone is great just wish I could sync with my work calendar" - @timdexter
"Really wish iPhone would learn words that weren't in it's dictionary. It always thinks words I use are typos and auto corrects them. Rea ..." - @CompanyConvos
"I know this sounds backwards, but I wish there was someway to remotely control my iPhone's iPod via iTunes / my Mac." - @tollie
"I really wish I could easily listen to podcast on my iPhone without using iTunes or another feed reader. Come on Apple, loosen up! Sheesh." - @thepete
"I wish iTunes would show me what percent of my iPhone backup time was for each application. Someone adding an hour to my backup == DELETED!" - @joshlewis
"I wish the iPhone would save my iTunes store password. I hate continuously entering it in." - @kittygutz
"The Great iPhone wish list Having used the iPhone for about a month there’s a few things that I fin.. http://tinyurl.com/3w6637 @vkoser
"I wish I could get a lesser plan on my iPhone. 450 minutes? I used 33 this month, and my bill is coming up next week." - @kniob
"Kinda wish I could use iPhone remote to control the iPod in my glovebox" - @kitchen
"Just did a restore on an iPod shuffle. That took about 2 seconds. Wish an iPhone restore was that fast!" - @jphil301
"Wish there was an on-screen indicator that silent mode was on on my iPhone..missed some called 'cause I had forgotten to turn the ringer on." - @erlingmork
"I wish every app on the iPhone could do wide screen. Seems like safari is the only app" - @brendonvh
"i wish seesmic made a Qik style application on iPhone or something similar, cmon Loic!!!" - @alexiaco
"I wish there a mobile skype that runs on BB or iPhone that only uses your data connection" - @Shadowz
"@fraserspeirs also wish iPhone had programable text shortcuts, on my BlackBerry I coded things like "zzt" to add a "thanks" email signature" - @extraspecial
"I really wish the iPhone had a system-wide snippet insertion method. For example, typing my email address to log into every website sucks." - @fraserspeirs
"@jiparker I wish I could schedule recording stuff on TiVo via my iphone..:)" - @umaparker
"I wish I could delete tweets on the iPhone!" - @bhays81
"I wish I could type in landscape mode on the iPhone." - @freitag
"@indieradiochatt Damn I wish my iPhone had WMA streaming support for one more reason." - @ZicklePop
"Trying to decide if the iPhone is for me, already have an iPod, wish the iTouch had GPS." - @GaffR
Excel
"I wish Excel 2008 would spell check as I typed." - @TwisterMc
Facebook / Social Networking sites
"adding people's photos and additional details to my address book from facebook. i wish there was a contact export feature." - @naterkane
"One of the things I like about LinkedIn is that you can always see what "non-registered users" see. I wish all SM sites had that feature." - @gahlord
iPhoto
"iPhoto ’09 wish list • Perspective correction. </list> @ahruman
"It's my daughter's turn with the sharing bucket, so I'm building a collage for her to share. Wish iPhoto did this or that I knew PS better." - @cozthegrov
"Moving older photos out of iPhoto library onto an external drive to free up laptop drive space. Wish there was a better way." - @RandomDude
iPod
"I wish my iPod touch had copy/paste capabilities :(" - @_Darryl
"I wish ipod had a longer charging cable. Hospital bed isn't close enough to a socket to use while plugged in :(" - @wowpoetry
"i wish the iPod had a delete option for songs and a reverse sync with the album - my collection would've been a lot cleaner that ways." - @prsn
"Since I bought my iPod Touch, I've found myself using my MacBook less. Portable internet is just so cool! Wish it could display Flash, tho." - @grace2design
"I wish iPod touch could use the location feature, or at least let me SET my location. Otherwise it's a nice iTunes remote." - @Yourbrokenoven
"dear apple, next ipod wish - bluetooth, with waterproof around ear headphones." - @samirb
"It sucks being in traffic by yourself. I wish my ipod could talk to me. :(" - @ohhayitssarah
"Two things I wish the iPod touch had. 1.) iChat. 2.) A microphone. Skype any one?" - @Xela501
"I wish Loopt worked on my iPod Touch ... :(" - @laughinglizard
"I wish my ipod was synced with my brain and i would play the songs i think of. Get on it steve jobs." - @shannnon
"Wish I could script my iPod to open Wi-Fi, update Mail, Twitter and one web page. All scheduled daily, before I depart for my morning train." - @aidenkenny
iTunes
"really wish iTunes had a folder watch feature" - @shuag
"is impressed with iTunes' new "Genius" feature. Wish it included tracks beyond my library, but helpful in remembering good music I have." - @sethjames
"Really diggin' iTunes' Genius feature, but I really wish I could designate start, ending, and unlimited through- points. THAT would be nice." - @greghuntoon
"I really wish iTunes would add a Pandora client as part of their Radio feature." - @BrentN
Leopard
"in leopard i wish there was a way to hide other app windows for a *space*" - @bryanl
"Man, I really wish Leopard's finder had Drop Stacks like Path Finder." - @epilnivek
"I wish leopard's Quick Look showed all file types correctly. Don't get em wrong, I LOVE quick look, but some files just don't show up right." - @Heartagram
Outlook
"I wish outlook had an obvious "delete calnedar entries earlier than..." feature" - @MrGuilt
Photoshop
"I wish there was a way to transfer Photoshop between OS's. Offer it for download and let owners transfer like they do their licence..." - @chrisgaunt
"Wish Adobe had a small bundle with just Photoshop and Illustrator. I don't need the other crap." - @dustinwilson
"Me "I wish there was a version of Photoshop without all the filters and wizards." Dan "Yeah, like a professional version."@thebigreason
"So the new Photoshop will have a Rotate Canvas feature. I wish the new Illustrator has it as well. If not, I'll to buy a Cintiq." - @BrianDenham
"The one feature I wish Photoshop Elements had is the ability to change the space between characters." - @nestep
Typepad
"@DowntownWoman I wish Typepad had "auto-save" feature. I've had that happen to me too. And I cursed in front of my kids too. ; )" - @ParentopiaDevra
Windows Vista
"Really wish WIndows Vista could REMEMBER my dual screen configuration." - @Finja
Visual Studio
"I wish there was a zoom feature in Visual Studio's designer view. The only way I know how to do it is to lower my resolution. Bad hack." - @wusher
The beauty of the new iPhone 3G is that you don't need one. Almost all of the juicy stuff actually comes with the iPhone 2.0 software and the online App Store, both of which run perfectly well on the old iPhone as well.
That, incidentally, is also the beauty of "iPhone: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition." It covers both the old and the new iPhones, because it covers the 2.0 software, the iPhone App Store, and so on.
Here are a few of my favorite tips from the book.
At the top of the screen, little icons indicate how you're connected to the Internet: an E for the vast but dog-slow AT&T Edge network, a 3G icon if you're on the faster but limited-area AT&T third-generation network, and radiating signal bars if you're on Wi-Fi.
The tip here: The two cellular icons (E and 3G) disappear whenever you're on Wi-Fi. That's not a mistake. The iPhone assumes that Wi-Fi is faster and better than any cellular network, and if you're on it, you don't care about E or 3G (and it's right).
Unfortunately, 3G is a battery hog. If you don't see a 3G icon on your iPhone 3G's status bar, then you're not in a 3G hot spot, and you're not getting any benefit from the phone's 3G radio. By turning it off, you'll double the length of your iPhone 3G's battery power, from 5 hours of talk time to 10.
To do so, from the Home screen, tap Settings->General->Network-> Enable 3G Off. Yes, this is sort of a hassle, but if you're anticipating a long day and you can't risk the battery dying halfway through, it might be worth doing. After all, most 3G phones don't even let you turn off their 3G circuitry.
More ways to save power: turn off more features. In Settings, you can turn off Bluetooth; Wi-Fi; GPS; "push" data; and the cellphone radio. Each saves you another bit of power.
When typing on the on-screen keyboard, you can save time by deliberately leaving out the apostrophe in contractions like I'm, don't, can't, and so on. Type im, dont, cant, and so on. The iPhone proposes I'm, don't, or can't, so you can just tap the Space bar to fix the word and continue.
To produce an accented character (like é, ë, è, ê, and so on), keep your finger pressed on that key for 1 second. A palette of accented alternatives appears; slide onto the one you want. (Keys that sprout these alternative versions: A, E, Y, U, I, O, S, L, Z, C, N, ?, ', ", $, and !.)
Even if you've engaged the silencer switch on the side, the iPhone still sounds any alarm you've set. Good to know.
You probably already know that you can rearrange your Home screen, and even set up multiple Home screens (up to 9). Just hold your finger down on any one icon until they all begin to wiggle. Now you can drag them to rearrange them (even onto the Dock of four special icons at the bottom), or drag off to the right to create a new Home screen.
And what if, in the process of downloading and then deleting new App store programs, you wind up with unsightly gaps on your Home screens? Here's a quick way to consolidate them onto a smaller number of full Home screens, without gaps: tap Settings->General-> Reset->Reset Home Screen Layout. If you'd put 10 programs on each of four Home screens, you wind up with only two screens, each packed with 20 icons. Any leftover blank pages are eliminated.
If you come to the iPhone from another, lesser GSM phone, your phone book may be stored on its little SIM card instead of in the phone itself. In that case, you don't have to retype all of those names and numbers to bring them into your iPhone. In Settings->Contacts, the new Import SIM Contacts button can do the job for you. (The results may not be pretty. For example, some phones store all address-book data in CAPITAL LETTERS.)
If you've indulged yourself by downloading some goodies from the App Store, then you may find yourself wondering where you're supposed to adjust their preferences. Turns out they often get stashed away in a completely different program--in Settings. That's where Apple encourages software authors to locate their own setting screens. For example, here's where you can edit your screen name and password for the AIM chat program, change how many days' worth of news you want the NY Times Reader to display, and so on.
Don't type http://www or .com when entering Web addresses. Safari is smart enough to know that most Web addresses use that format--so you can leave all that stuff out, and it will supply them automatically. Instead of http://www.cnn.com, for example, just type cnn and hit Go.
Don't type .net, .org, or .edu, either. Safari's secret pop-up menu of canned URL choices can save you four keyboard-taps apiece. To see it, hold your finger down on the .com button. Then tap the common suffix you want.
The iPhone can now geotag the photos you take with it. Geotagging means, "embedding your latitude and longitude information into a photo when you take it." After all, every digital picture you've ever taken comes with its time and date invisibly embedded in its file; why not its location? So the good news is that the iPhone can geotag every photo you take. How you get to see this information, is a bit trickier.
Once the photos are synced to your computer, you can view the geotag information in iPhoto (the Get Info command reveals latitude and longitude), Preview (the Inspector window shows a map), Picasa (use the Tools->Geotag menu to see the photo's location in Google Earth). Unfortunately, the iPhone strips away the geotags whenever you send a photo by e-mail. That's a good argument for using the free downloadable program AirMe instead of the iPhone's built-in camera program. It avoids that geotag-stripping problem and many others.
David Pogue's iPhone Tips
Fresh off writing iPhone: The Missing Manual, Second Edition, David Pogue shares some of his favorite tips for both the original iPhone or the iPhone 2E.
Excerpts from iPhone, The Missing Manual, Second Editon:
You can get to the App Store in two ways: from the phone itself, or from your computer’s copy of the iTunes software.
Using iTunes offers a much easier browsing and shopping experience, of course, because you’ve got a mouse, keyboard, and big screen. But downloading straight to the iPhone, without ever involving the computer, is also wicked cool—and it’s your only option when you’re out and about.
Shopping from the Phone
To check out the App Store from your iPhone, tap the App Store icon. You arrive at the colorful, scrolling wonder of the Store itself.
Across the bottom, you’ll see the now-familiar iPhone lineup of buttons that control your view of the store. They include:
Featured. Here are the 25 programs that Apple is recommending this week.
Categories. This list shows the entire catalog, organized by category: Books, Business, Education, Entertainment, Finance, Games, and so on.
Tap a category to see what’s in it.
Top 25. Tap this button to reveal a list of the most popular 25 programs at the moment, ranked by how many people have downloaded them. You can also tap the Free button at the top of the screen to see the most popular free programs. There are lots of them, and they’re one of the great joys of the App Store.
Search. Scrolling through those massive lists is a fun way to stumble onto cool things. But as the number of iPhone programs grows into the thousands, viewing by list begins to get awfully unwieldy.
Fortunately, you can also search the catalog, which is a very efficient way to go if you know what you’re looking for (either the name of a program, the kind of program, or the software company that made it). Tap in the Search box to make the keyboard appear. As you type, the list shrinks so that it’s always showing you only the matches. You might type tetris, or piano, or Disney, or whatever.
Updates. Unlike its buddies, this button isn’t intended to help you navigate the catalog. Instead, it lets you know when one of the programs you’ve already installed is available in a newer version. Details in a moment.
Once you’re looking at the scrolling list of programs—no matter which button was your starting point—the next steps are the same. Each listing shows you the program’s name, its icon, and its price. About a third of the App Store’s programs are free; the rest are usually under $10, although a few, intended for professionals (pilots, for example) can cost a lot more.
Best of all, this listing shows each program’s star rating, which may be the most important statistic of all. You can think of it as a letter grade, given to this program by everyone who’s tried it out so far and expressed as an average. (In small type, you can even see how many people’s opinions are included in this score.)
Why is it so important? Because, ahem, not all of the App Store’s goodies are equally good. Remember, these programs come from a huge variety of people—teenagers in Hungary, professional software companies in Silicon Valley, college kids goofing around on weekends—and just because they made it into the Store doesn’t mean they’re worth the money (or even the time to download).
Sometimes, a program has a low score because it’s just not designed well, or it doesn’t do what it’s advertised to do. And sometimes, of course, it’s a little buggy.
So we all know that iPhoto has a great slide show function, and you can build these wonderful slide shows very easily, but what it doesn't have is a way for you to make your title slides, right, the beginning and the end slides that look like this, where you actually have you take one of your pictures and you have a little background, and you have some text and things like that. It doesn't have an easy way to do that, so you end up having to go outside of iPhoto to create your title slides. But you actually don't have to do that, and I'm gonna show you how right now. We're gonna make one.
So let's say that I wanna make a title slide with this right here, so I just click on my thumbnail, and I go down to card. This is the greeting card function. Now this was designed for you to be able to make your own greeting cards. You upload them to the greeting card service, and they send you back paper cards, and it's actually quite nice. But I'm just gonna click on it once right now; we're gonna do something else with it. It brings up the greeting card interface, and the first thing that I do is I'm gonna change it to postcard 'cause I don't want four slides to deal with. All I need is a title slide.
Let's say that I'm doing a wedding slide show for this couple, and I wanna have an intro slide, so I'ma click postcard, and then I'm gonna find a template that I like here, and you have all sorts of stuff and you have a, we have wedding and love. Let's see what we have here. Do we have anything we like? Let's go for the simple linen. We'll go for simple linen; that looks very nice, and I'm just gonna choose that right now. So the first thing that iPhoto does is that it's gonna build a simple linen design for me, but I wanna add under this. This is a title slide, so I wanna have some text, so you go here to design, and you have these options. Ooh, I kinda like this. I have a nice option, so now I can put maybe we'll put "our wedding" 'cause I mean they're the ones looking; it'd be their wedding not mine, right, so it'd be "our wedding" right here, and I go, "Okay, that looks nice." But for a title slide, I'd actually like it to be a little bit bigger, so I can go to settings. That's a headline. This is considered the headline, and I can change let's say that I wanna go with a calligraphy. I'd like to know how this is gonna look, and we'll make it bigger, say 24 point and click OK. Oh, I went too big. I went too big; it dropped down to so that's okay. Calligraphy's not the way to go. I'll go with handwriting. Will it let me do handwriting that big? Let's see. Maybe and we'll drop this down a little bit.
All right, we can play with this for quite a while, but we're not going to because you'll all get up and leave me, so I'll just leave it right here. We'll just say "our wedding". We'll assume that you get the type exactly the way that you want and you do that right here in the settings control and play with the headline. That's how you get there, so we have our design picked up. Now here's the key. Here's how you take what we have right here, and instead of going out on the Internet to the postcard making folks, here's how you end up with a title slide. You go to print right here and it brings up the print dialog box. Now all I want is this first card. We actually have two pieces here, the front and back. I don't care about the back right now, so I'm gonna go to advanced and just do from one to one. Go to advanced and just one to one, so now the way it's set up right now, if I were to hit the print button, and I had a printer connected, this front card that I've created here would come out of the printer and make my own print. But I don't want that. I want a title slide for my slide show.
I wanna keep it electronic, and I don't want a lot o' hassle, okay, so I'm gonna go over here to PDF and look at this. There's this magic thing right here: Save PDF to iPhoto. This is way cool. You can use it for other stuff too, but it's very nice for this. Save PDF to iPhoto, I'm gonna select that, and it actually starts running in Apple-script. It's gonna ask me, okay, do I wanna create a new album with this? No, I actually have an album where I'm working on all this stuff. We'll put it, ooh. I have a few albums here. Have you noticed? I like albums, so we'll put it in my Mac World album. I'll click continue. It goes back to work, does all sorts of fun things. Now right here in Mac World, here's my title. I'm gonna give it a new name. It was called "Title". This is just so I can keep track of it. I'm gonna double-click on it, and now I have a title slide for my slide show. It's a full, it's a 1200 by 800. It's big enough for most uses. It can even scale up a little bit, and it's been converted to a .jpg, all automatically for me, and you can create as many o' these as you want. And if you want just a text screen only, then instead of using the front part with the picture, you can use the back of the card with the text and you can create text, and you can style it the way that you want. And you can put these things in the middle of your show. You can put 'em in the, at the end o' the show, anywhere you want. It's an easy way to create titles for your thing.
Okay let's go to - let's go to importing. One of the things that I talk about constantly is that you should always have a camera with you right? Always; some sort of camera, and the reason being if you don't have a camera with you, that's when life gets really interesting. How many times have you been walking - and San Francisco is perfect for this. You're walking down the street and you go, "Oh my gosh - look at that, you see that? I wish I had a camera with me."
Yeah, so you always wanna have a camera with you. Yes, well these make good cameras too right? So the iPhone is actually a pretty decent camera. So you have shots on here, the iPhone works great with iPhoto. Now it could be because they both have I's at the beginning, I'm not sure. It could be that they're both made by Apple. But on your camera here and I'll just slide this to unlock this. I have a 2 megapixel camera and one of the things that they've done, some of the secret sauce in iPhoto or in the iPhone is that it has a great automatic white balance function, better than most regular digital cameras. So you know you can use this thing for all sorts of stuff.
Now what a lot of folks like to do after they take a picture is then they, you know since you have email connectivity, you know go ahead and email it to somebody and that's nice but what the iPhone does, if you do that, it samples it down. It samples it down to about what, 640 by 480 I believe. Well it's a 2-megapixel camera. That means it should be - it shoots at 1,600 by 1,200. The way that you can get full resolution from your camera is with iPhoto and all you have to do is plug it in, we've plugged it in right now, connection has been made, and it shows up here under devices and then all the images that you have on your camera show up here.
Now I'm gonna show you some tricks on how to manage these images cause in the old days, in the old days, you know way long time ago, like a year, you had to actually import everything at once and then if there are duplicates it'll say do you wanna import this one? You already have it. And you go no, I don't want it. Well now that's all changed and I'll show you that in a minute but I wanna talk a little bit about camera phone stuff.
One of my favorite, I like shooting, well I like shooting all sorts of stuff. I like shooting outside of airplane windows but one of the things that I love and what I think one of the best uses for camera phones is where you park. When you go - and this is particularly important if you fly, have you ever gone somewhere for like a week, Hawaii, you go to Hawaii for a week and you have a little bit of rum and you relax and then your brain just goes to mush right? Which is - that's what we go to Hawaii for. We don't go to get stressed out, we go to have fun and relax.
So you come home, the plane lands, it's like 9:00 at night, you get on the bus back to the car where it is and they drop you off and you go, "Where are we parked again?" You know, "Did I write it down?" So here's what you do. When you get there, get out of your car, the first thing you do is pull your camera phone out of your pocket, take a picture of where you're parked and just have it there on your camera phone. Once you do that, you don't have to worry about it again.
And then what's fun is you end up with this kind of interesting collection of shots of all the parking garages you've ever visited but that's another issue. But it's a great memory device. And while you're at it, remember that even though it's a camera, what it is really is a data-recording device. So if you see, like for instance on this Kline Tree Service, well first of all I thought this was kinda interesting but what if I really wanted to call the guy?
Do I have to pull out the notes function and dut-dut oh darn, dut, oh darn. No! Put it in camera; just take a picture of it. Take a picture of things, take a picture when the restaurants open and close; take a picture of little signs. You can take a picture of anything, it's a lot faster than taking notes and since it connects so well with your computer, then you can grab those pictures right off.
All right now what we could do, we could import all of the photos here but I don't wanna do that. I only want one of the things that you can do in iPhoto 8 is that you can just grab, you know any old one shot that you want. So let's say that I wanted this sunset shot. I could just click on it and do import selected. That is a major improvement over what we had before cause we had to import everything. So I could do that or if I wanted to, let's say I just wanted to add it to the project that we're working on right now. This is a MAC. A MAC means you can just grab it drop it.
Now don't do this. Don't delete originals, you know do that on your iPhone okay? So just say you know what, thank you iPhoto but I'll keep my originals. Now we go over here ... there's my photo right there. Now if you'll notice in the information box here, down here in the lower left, I have the full 1,600 by 1,200, I got a full 2-megapixel shot now, whereas if I just emailed it to myself, I only get 640 by 480. so if you want full resolution, the way you have to do that is just drag it into iPhoto. I'm gonna click once to put it away.
Now of course, once it's here, I can just drag it onto my desktop. Okay now I have it, I'll just drop it onto preview so we can take a little peek at it and there's my photo right there. So it's really easy. Now you can't drag out of the import window onto your desktop, it wants to go to iPhoto first but you can just connect your iPhone, see the shots that you want, drag the ones into iPhoto, you know play with em and then you can just drag them onto your desktop. It's really fast and it's a great way to interact, to have your iPhone interact.
Now if I wanted to retouch, we have a new retouch tool, so wait, it's all the way down here. There it is right there. It's actually gotten better from the old days. So sometimes when you retouch, maybe you just want to work on a certain area so I'm gonna hit the 1 key that brings me into 100% and let's say I just wanted to retouch right here, maybe we'll even go to 200%. There we go.
So I could go all the way down here, find the retouch, now in the old days we didn't have a way to really determine how big of an area we were retouching. We just got a crosshairs and then iPhoto says I'll take care of it and you go, "I know but what are you doing?" Don't worry; I know what I'm doing. Well you know actually a lot of times it really didn't know what it was doing so now with the new retouch tool, oh we have something where we can actually decide how big of an area we're gonna retouch just by moving this little slider thingy-bob here. So let's just say that we only wanna retouch the area that's affected, like right here. So I just put it right over that and then all I have to do is just click. And look at that, it's all gone. It's very nice. And then when you're done, you can just click right here, and that closes the tool.
Now I can hit 0 and go back out. There is a keystroke command for retouch too. Anyone wanna guess what it is? What? No! What made you think the R would be retouch? It's T. Of course, you knew that right? Its T is the retouch tool for reTouch. It's like that, that's all you have to say, reTouch so I'm gonna retouch this photo and if you wanna get rid of it, then you just click the X key right there.
No, the R is for Redeye. That's why, that's why. So if there hadn't been two R's I think we woulda been fine. We had it we woulda been fine. Speaking of redeye, so I'm gonna go ahead and apply this edit so I'm gonna hit the return key and brings me back. Let's go to redeye. This is - oh I love this redeye shot here. This is really gruesome. Oh! I know, poor guy.
I mean I did it - I did this on a person whose actually, he's actually a GQ model but you know I purposely wanted redeye so we did everything, we did all the bad techniques so I'd have a good redeye. So now look right here. I 'm not in edit mode right? I don't have my edit - that's cause I just double clicked and I didn't hold down the option key. So what I need to do is hold down the option key and double click; now I have my edit tools down here. So if I hit the R key, I get the redeye removal right here.
Again, you have two ways. You have the automatic way, which iPhoto has always had and all I have to do is just put it right here on their eye, click, iPhoto finds the area that needs to be retouched and does it and it does a really good job. In iPhoto '08 you get an upgrade. You get manual mode where you actually get to set the size of the slider so this allows you to make redeye correction mistakes because I never quite get it right. I mean we're gonna really make a mistake now but if you get it wrong on the diameter, oh wait, it still fixes it.
Okay so what this really means is it doesn't make any difference for the most part. I would just leave it in automatic and I wouldn't worry about making sure that it's the right size. iPhoto's really good at finding those changes. Now if I decided I didn't want to apply the redeye, I could get out of edit mode just by hitting escape, we come back here, I'm gonna double click just to show it and our edits are not applied. So remember, return applies your edits; escape does not.
Okay, so there's - that's some fun stuff. Now what if you wanna see a before and after of your work? Well let's show you this one here, this is a fun one. We're gonna - I'm gonna go to full screen mode. The enhance button is pretty good. I like it and it's particularly good on images like this that are low contrast and don't have - you know it was kinda overcast, your subjects don't have a lot of contrast. That is a perfect candidate for the enhance button. It's right down here. It's a one-click thing. Watch what happens when I click it. Brightens it right up, brings up the contrast, does a very nice job.
Now if I wanna see the before and after, does anyone know what the before and after key is? It used to be command, they wanna keep us on our toes, they changed it; it's the shift key now. so you hold down the shift key and you can see the before and after. Not too bad. You go - you know what? That's a better edit but I decided I don't want it because I have two more of these demos to do so I'm gonna hit escape and we'll get out of there.
So the - this down here - and then one more, I wanna show you the black and white. The black and white is so much fun. It's actually one of the things I'm gonna be talking about today. We'll take our bright here and I'll do shift, command, option command, I'm sorry, option command F; well go here to full screen mode. I'm gonna hit the E key right? For effects, and this effects palate is pretty, pretty nice. So I can hit black and white right here, automatically converts my image to nice black and white.
Now if I hit the A key for the adjust palate, then I can even make some finer adjustments beyond that and play - this is like an up the contrast if I wanted, give it a little bit more punch. I could darken or lighten the exposure. You have highlights and shadows to play with here. And one of the things that I noticed, is that even the temperature slider, this is a secret. Well I mean it's not a secret any more but it was a secret, that when you convert the black and white, bring up the adjust palate, my favorite adjustment; the one that seems to work the best is the temperature slider. It's very subtle and it holds the tones better than a lot of the other adjustments right there.
So all you have to do is hit the E key to go to effects, click on your black and white, then bring up the A, hit the A key to bring up adjust, make your temperature slider and you've got a nice black and white photo and if you have a good photo printer, these things print up very nice, very nice. So then I just, now all I have to do is hit the A key again, hit the E key again, I don't have to move the mouse over to try to hit the little X, I don't have to do any of that sort of stuff. I'm not gonna apply these edits right now so I'll hit the escape key and we come right -
Now once we have stuff in there, sometimes we want to edit them, we want to play with them a little bit. So let's just take, we'll take my iPhone. By the way this is out through an airplane window; I'm gonna hold down the option key and I'm gonna double click on this, this shot here and so I have my thumbnails up here and I'm in edit mode now and the reason why I know I'm in edit mode is because I have my editing tools down here.
Now the first thing that you should remember is that you can zoom in and zoom out very easily in iPhoto so you can get a better look at stuff. So let's say I wanted to see - well, you know do I have a lot of image noise on the shot or whatever. It says easy as 1, 2, 0; 1, 2, 0. I just put the mouse wherever I want a 100% view; push the No. 1; I get a 100%. Push the No. 2, I can go to 200% and if I wanna go back to fit in window, that's where the 0 comes in. Okay so zooming is as easy as 1, 2, 0, really rolls off the tongue doesn't it? 1, 0, 2, 0, you can just go in and out; it's very easy. And that way you can get a good look at your image and wherever you put the mouse, say we put the pointer up here, that's the are it'll go to. So it follows where your pointer is. Let me go back to 0.
Now if I wanna go to full screen mode, you can try to remember where the full screen mode icon is. Where is it? Oh, now I don't see it, I don't see it, you know what? I'm tired of trying to guess, just do option, command F. Option, command, F - that will get you in the full screen mode. Now when you're in full screen mode, your thumbnails may or may not be up here and you can hide them if you want. And then down here are all of your editing tools. But when I'm in full screen mode, what I really wanna do is enjoy my picture. I don't wanna have to come down here and sorta fool around.
And we have some very nice editing tools. We have you know the adjust palate, which you click on and you can do all sorts of fun things, play with the exposure, contrast, you can bump up the contrast, you can have all sorts of fun and if you don't like what you've done you can just hit the reset button. So we do this and now I gotta go all the way back down here; all the way over to here. I'm gonna hit the effects button. This is fun.
This one I like especially, you can convert to black and white or sepia or you can boost the color. We'll go over here to boost, let's - oh let's punch up that. Now if you hit it again it'll boost it some more and you go again and again and - oh wait - that's too much. So you can go backwards by hitting the little arrow key. All right? And then if you go - you know what? I'm just going wacky here; go back to original.
So you have effects, really fun now I'm gonna go all the way back down here, go all the way over here. You got retouch which I'll show you in a minute, redeye, enhance - so you have all these tools, they're very nice but they're not really conducive so those of you who have pen and paper, you might wanna write this down although they're easy to remember. I'm right here, I'm in edit mode, hit the A key. You get adjust, hit the A key again, adjust goes bye-bye.
I wanna change it to black and white, that's in effects, hit the E key. Hit the E key again, good-bye. I wanna crop, hit the C key. Oh cropping is fun, cropping has really changed in iPhoto. Now in - back in the olden days when we were all like a year younger, cropping a lot of times meant that you were actually throwing away information. That's a lot of pressure right? You know because if you made a crop then you better like it. Well now, we're just gonna move the cropper thing around and I'll just grab a corner here. Let's just say I want this little portion of this sunset. I'll bring it down a little bit like this. I get it the way I want and I hit apply and now I have a nice crop, just like before.
And then let's say that I'm actually done okay? So I'll hit apply, I'll actually apply this edit. I'm gonna make this edit, this is an edit. By doing that of course, I hit the return key. Return key applies the edit. The escape key lets me get outta dodge without doing any harm but this time I actually wanna apply it, so I hit the return key, I've applied that edit, there we go, right there. All right but now let's say that you know what? I'm having second thoughts, I don't know if I want to crop that or not after all.
You always have the option of going back to the beginning right? You can always revert to original. But maybe you've done other things and you don't wanna get rid of that, all you wanna do, right is change your mind about the crop. So I'm gonna hold down the option key and double click. All you have to do is hit the crop key again, the C and look what happens.
The rest of your picture is still there and this is even after you've applied the edit, it's still there. It remembers that it's going - you know what? I know you. I know the way you are. You like to change your mind. I know that you're gonna do that so I'm gonna remember where everything is. You can come back, you can change your mind, you can apply it again, and there you go.
So that way if you do wanna change your mind on a crop you don't have to revert to original and throw away all of your other stuff. All you have to do is hit the crop key again and it will remember for you. So that -
So the first thing, I wanna go into the preference pane for a second. I want to show you a couple things. Again, we're in iPhoto '08. Now the number one thing you should do, how many of you work are in a network environment ever like at work or in a public network? Any network folks here? Not too many. What are the rest of you hanging out in the living room? Yeah, mostly? All right. All right, well that's okay. For, okay, so this tip is for three of you, so that's what I like to do. I like tips that apply to a lot of people.
The first thing you should do and the rest of you should do this anyway 'cause you may someday get out of the house and end up in public. Go to Sharing, right. It's okay to look for shared photos but don't have this box sometimes is checked by default. Don't share your photos with the world automatically. If this box is checked, and you're on a network, what'll happen is your photos will show up in other people's iPhoto pane right here. Now that may be okay. That may not be okay. Sometimes it's sort of shocking when you have people you know show up here, and you go, "Should I look at those photos?" They haven't asked me to look at 'em. So make sure that you turn that box off.
Okay, that's my num' - this is all part of one tip. We're still in one tip right now, so these tips have A, B, and C levels, okay, so that's one thing. Now there's some new things happening over in the general pane here, and one of 'em is double-click behavior. Double-click behavior in iPhoto '08 is very important and very fun. Right now what I recommend is that for double-click behavior you have magnifies photo, and I'll show you why. Most of the time when we're looking at photos, right, when we're in our thumbnails here, we wanna see them. We just wanna double-click and get a bigger picture. Now in previous versions of iPhoto, you would double-click and a lot o' times you end up in edit mode, all right. You don't really wanna edit most of the time. Hopefully, you don't even need to edit most of the time. You just want a bigger look at the shot, so in iPhoto '08, they gave you that option, so now when you double-click, right. When you double-click, you can just look at the photo, and you just have your regular rotate and email and all that kinda stuff, and you click again and it goes away. But you go what sometimes I do wanna edit, so do I have to like click on the photo and then go down here to the pencil in order to edit? You don't.
One of the most important keys in iPhoto - the key you should burn this into your memory - is the option key. The option key the engineers who made iPhoto love the option key, so now I'm just gonna hold down the option key. I'm gonna double-click. Now I'm in edit mode. That option key is very important. Now it comes to play in a lot of other areas too. Now what happens if you're in edit mode and then you don't wanna save your changes? Does anyone know what you do? Escape. You escape from edit mode. If you hit the escape key, and that's whether you're in full screen or any other edit mode, hit escape; you can get out of there and none of your changes are saved which is pretty important. It's pretty important stuff.
Now rotating photos is another place when you're in preferences, you get to choose which way you're gonna rotate your photos. When you hit the rotate key, right? And of course, you always know you think about we all know which way we're gonna hold the camera all the time, right? Do you always hold it the same way? Sometimes? No. You know what's really fun? You know a lot of things break up marriages, right, money and differences in religion and stuff like that. One thing that'll break up a marriage very quickly is if you're sharing one camera on a vacation because invariably, right, she holds it this way which she does rather close, and then hands it to him and then he holds it this way, right. And then you get your photos back and they're all catty-wampus, right, or sometimes he might hold it this way sometimes and then he changes his mind and is gonna hold it that way just to keep it fun. All right, that's not good, but iPhoto can help preserve your relationships and I'll show you how.
You do make, you have to make some sort of decision here but it really doesn't make any difference which way photos initially rotate. Like right now here we have a photo right here and we have the rotate button. Now it's set to rotate the wrong way. If I click on it and hit rotate, it's gonna put her on her head. I don't necessarily wanna do that, but we'll do it anyway. Okay, now do I need to go back to preferences in order to get her going the right way? What key would I probably use to go the other direction? Option key, absolutely! Hold down the option key and we can straighten things out, so this is how it saves your marriage. You don't care which way the photos are because you just go through with the rotate key and then if it's turned the wrong way, you hold down the option key and it goes the other way. You don't have to keep going back to preferences to change your preference there.
So this is two instances where the option key is really helpful. One is to go from double-click just to view, and then the other is, of course, to go double-click to edit, so the option key toggles that and then rotating in different directions.
Derrick Story, Digital Media Evangelist and co-author of iPhoto '08: The Missing Manual, wants to bring over the meta data with the images he drags from his iPhone into iPhoto.
J.D. Biersdorfer, author of iPod: The Missing Manual, Sixth Edition, longs for a radio component, and an in-the-box cable for her iPod that she doesn't have to spend extra money for.
At Macworld, Lorene Romero, president of the North Coast Mac Users Group, says she would love to be able to cut and paste on an iPhone, as well as to be able to do more with attachments.
By J.D. Biersdorfer on January 17, 2008 11:44 AM
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There are a ton of great apps out there designed to snag, convert and shovel big heaps of video onto your iPod and iPhone, and I talked about a few of them at this year's Macworld Expo 2008 in San Francisco. Among my absolute favorites:
QuickTime Pro. Apple's own multimedia powerhouse lets you convert a ton of different formats into iPod-ready video with just a simple menu command. It's only $30 and well worth the price.
TubeSock. This nifty little app converts your favorite YouTube videos from the Web and save 'em right into iTunes, where they're only a sync away from going with you on your iPod or iPhone. There's a free demo version that converts the first 30 seconds of video, and the full version is only $15 -- much less than a single movie ticket and a small stale popcorn in most cities.
Handbrake. If you've got a DVD movie from your collection that you'd like to take along on your iPod or iPhone, this little open-source wonder will convert it into a Pod-friendly file quite nicely.
And even though I talked about these in the O'Reilly booth at *MAC*world, all of these programs have Windows versions as well.
By Peter Meyers on November 1, 2007 1:05 PM
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Problem:
One cellphone doesn't fit every situation.
Missing Feature:
I've got more than one iPod and more than one computer. Why oh why won't my cell phone company take more of my money and let me have multiple phones? The cellular providers and mobile phone manufacturers are missing a golden opportunity. Just as I own different iPods for different occasions I can't be the only gadget geek who'd love to have multiple phones. My iPhone, say, when I'm traveling or at work. But how about a sporty little number for when I'm at the beach, or a sleek Vertu for when I'm at an awards show in my tux? I'd never give up my iPhone, but I'd love to have other phones in my mobile repertoire.
By J.D. Biersdorfer on October 26, 2007 8:02 AM
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As I wait impatiently for FedEx to get here with my copy of Leopard, I took a few minutes to take Safari over to the iPhone Dev Center page on Apple's site. With the company's recent announcement that a software developer's kit for the iPhone is on the way early next year, there's been a lot of buzz about the potential for new applications from third-party developers.
The iPhone Dev Center site has a lot of cool geeky stuff already -- sample code, videos, reference libraries, and Web development guidelines about app-crafting for the iPhone and iPod Touch. To see the goods, though, you need to have an Apple Developer Connection membership. Don't worry, you can sign up for a free online membership here. But as I was poking around the page, I saw a note saying you could also just sign in with your .Mac username and password. Rawk!
Once you get signed in, the links on the iPhone Dev Center site go live so you can start checking out the content. You can even download the seven iPhone Tech Talk videos on the page and watch them with iTunes. "iPhone User Interface Design" and "Managing Content and Synced Data for iPhone" are two of the titles -- nuke up the Orville Redenbacher!
By J.D. Biersdorfer on October 26, 2007 8:02 AM
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As I wait impatiently for FedEx to get here with my copy of Leopard, I took a few minutes to take Safari over to the iPhone Dev Center page on Apple's site. With the company's recent announcement that a software developer's kit for the iPhone is on the way early next year, there's been a lot of buzz about the potential for new applications from third-party developers.
The iPhone Dev Center site has a lot of cool geeky stuff already -- sample code, videos, reference libraries, and Web development guidelines about app-crafting for the iPhone and iPod Touch. To see the goods, though, you need to have an Apple Developer Connection membership. Don't worry, you can sign up for a free online membership here. But as I was poking around the page, I saw a note saying you could also just sign in with your .Mac username and password. Rawk!
Once you get signed in, the links on the iPhone Dev Center site go live so you can start checking out the content. You can even download the seven iPhone Tech Talk videos on the page and watch them with iTunes. "iPhone User Interface Design" and "Managing Content and Synced Data for iPhone" are two of the titles -- nuke up the Orville Redenbacher!
By J.D. Biersdorfer on October 12, 2007 10:35 AM
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Sorry for the long stretch o' nothin' between posts here. As you may have heard, Apple released a whole bunch of new iPods last month and for us in Missing Manual Land, that's a cue to get cracking on a new edition. And we have.
iPod: The Missing Manual, Sixth Edition is off to the printer and will be out in stores soon. In the meantime, here are a few tidbits gleaned from doing this new version of the book.
Quicker naps for your iPod.
There's a quick way to put your iPod Classic or Nano to sleep with one quick tap now—without having to hold down Play/Pause. You can add a "Sleep" option right on your iPod’s main menu. To do so, go to iPod -> Settings -> Main Menu and scroll down toward the bottom of the list. Select "Sleep" and press the center button to add it to your iPod's main menu, where you can select it anytime you want the iPod to take a nap and save its battery power for later.
Fetching missing album art.
Cover Flow on the new iPods makes your music look great, but you get a bunch of gray, generic covers if you don't have the actual album artwork embedded in your song files. You can make iTunes get it for you by choosing Advanced -> Get Album Artwork. Odds are iTunes can find a lot of your missing art, but if it can't, it pops up a message telling you it didn't find everything. But here's the handy part — it tells you which ones it couldn't find when you expand the bottom of the alert message. With this shopping list in hand, you can head over to Amazon and snag the missing image files yourself by searching for the album name. Once you see an image on screen, drag it off the Amazon Web page to your desktop — and then into the empty artwork window for that song in iTunes.
By Peter Meyers on July 18, 2007 6:51 AM
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Dudes, don't get me wrong: I love my iPhone. But this thing's definitely got a few signs of version-one-point-oh-itis. Exhibit A: Every time I (and apparently lots of others) try to use the phone's iPod program while browsing the Web, the iPod crashes. On the iPhone crashing simply means that the music stops. You've got to then finger click your way back to iPod to re-start the music...until it happens again about a minute later. Kinda takes the fun out of showing off your new gadget to all the (ok, both) Zune owners you know.
One poster to the Apple discussion forums advised powering the phone on and off (hold down the Sleep/Wake switch on the top of the phone for three seconds). I tried this to no avail. The prevailing opinion out there in Fix It Land seems to be that this bug will only (hopefully?) be fixed upon the release of Apple's first iPhone software update. Let's hope that comes soon.
I'll be the first to admit: my experience with first generation Apple products is they tend to be buggy.
By Peter Meyers on July 13, 2007 9:06 AM
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How easy is it to read long passages of text on the iPhone? That's a question I've been wanting to answer since the Holy Phone was announced this past January. I've long had a reading-related fantasy (trust me, this won't get dirty) that I could use the iPhone as a kind of auxiliary monitor. Stuff a few software-related how-to doc's onto the phone, and then perform the actual tasks on my main monitor. I don't know about you, but when it comes to reading documentation online I always end up printing it out since I can't stand switching back and forth between, say, Photoshop Elements and the info onscreen that's telling me how to use the histogram. Once I got my hands on an actual iPhone and saw firsthand the jaw-dropping clarity of its 3.5 inch 160 dpi screen, I couldn't wait to run a few tests.
I took a look at three different kinds of content: a book from O'Reilly's Safari online reading library, a Web site whose layout appeared especially readable on the iPhone, and a PDF.
The verdict? iPhone-friendly Web sites are the clear winner. Safari books take second place and are readable for about 10 pages or so at time. PDFs are as lame as ever on the small screen. Pictures, comments, and some suggestions after the jump.
Search. Scrolling through those massive lists is a fun way to stumble onto cool things. But as the number of iPhone programs grows into the thousands, viewing by list begins to get awfully unwieldy. 
