Seems Doc is intrigued by the latest Palm Treo SmartPhone announcement. That is until he discovered the new Treo 700 would only be offered on the Verizon and Sprint Networks. Back in the day Verizon and Sprint were the only carriers pushing the CDMA standard — something I believe San Diego-based Qualcomm developed while the rest of the world was paving the cellular highway with GSM technology. I blew off Verizon more than 5 years ago. Why? The worst customer service and the lack of compatibility outside the 'walled garden' of Verizon's neighborhood.
Tavern Master Tavern Master is all about managing your medieval tavern. You start with a very small room, couple of benches and tables and build your way up to a huge successful tavern with a kitchen, rooms for guests, group of loyal staff and much more!
After a short stint with Nextel I moved to T-Mobile. Not that I'm a German sympathizer (Deutsche Telecom owns T-Mobile) but they offered the best value and they were early adopters in building WiFi networks (Starbucks). Plus, I could by any GSM phone and not be restricted by the petty offerings the carrier sold. Instead, I jumped in head first and bought a Symbian-based Sony Ericsson Smartphone – the P900. After I beat the crap out of that phone I moved to its successor the P910i. This phone offered unmatched international capability meaning I could use it on GSM networks in Central and South America, Asia and Europe. Sure, I'd pay out the nose for access. Or, I could simply by GSM chips as I traveled. But because these phones are rather pricey, the carrier doesn't offer it. However you can buy it directly from SonyEriicsson or any number of independent resellers.
Here in the USA the GSM phone offered adequate GPRS capability and with the 910i push-email. Combine that with compatibility to read PDF, MS Office and other ubiquitous files I had no reason to go back to the lame Palm OS I abandoned with my Verizon Kyocera Palm-based Smartphone in 2002. Good bye. There's no reason to be carrying a Windows CE device nor an antiquated OS like Palm. The Symbian OS is open source and the Sony Ericsson syncs seamlessly with Mac OS X 10.4.x. What more could I ask. Or could Doc for that matter?
- Mac's is a great little pub/sports bar. Comes about as close to the Cheers atmosphere as you can get. Darts/Pool, lots of tv for live sports, good basic tavern fare and friendly staff. They also have a nice big patio for live music in the warmer months, and a ping-pong table where my ping-pong group likes to get together and play.
- Bistro & tavern. History of tavern described in verse. NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if.
Now I'm waiting for the new Sony Ericsson P990. Though they've compromised some 'power user' features on the new phone, the addition of more memory, WiFi and more means I'll probably have to indulge.
You can call me a sore loser. That's right, a year or so ago I lost Apple's venerable, but often controversial photo management app Aperture.
I felt abandoned, alone, and yet hanging on in desperation that a white knight would come rescue Aperture and along with it bring new life into the forgone and lonely Aperture.
While many photographers, like lemmings, crossed the line and swallowed the bloatware that Adobe was, and still is peddling, along with its holding-hostage subscriptions. You see, I am sore. I used to like Adobe, was a happy stockholder at one time. Rather than innovate it appeared to me Adobe was more interested in capturing and retaining recurring paying customers—good for the bottom line, and for stockholders.
You can call me stubborn. I wanted, and still want, nothing to do with LightRoom. Oh, Adobe did try to cozy up with me, offering photographers the 'bundle' at $10 per month the privilege to use both LightRoom and Photoshop. I refuse the kool-aid.
Living With Apple Photos
Photos auto-generates a wacky selection of photo albums—some useful, others not.
So I gave in and tried to migrate and begin using Photos by Apple, which they promised would soon provide the features that would acquiesce and barely satisfy abandoned Aperture users. It would also surely confuse the casual photographers who use iPhoto. It was tough, frustrating, and painful to use Photos in the beginning. Yet as the application matured and with its latest release in conjunction with Mac OS Sierra, Photos is coming of age.
Living With Apple Photos
Photos auto-generates a wacky selection of photo albums—some useful, others not.
So I gave in and tried to migrate and begin using Photos by Apple, which they promised would soon provide the features that would acquiesce and barely satisfy abandoned Aperture users. It would also surely confuse the casual photographers who use iPhoto. It was tough, frustrating, and painful to use Photos in the beginning. Yet as the application matured and with its latest release in conjunction with Mac OS Sierra, Photos is coming of age.
But it's still frustrating and painful. I'm an optimist and have persisted and persevered in the most challenging situations—all over the world. I don't give up, and I'll continue to give Photos the benefit of the doubt while vocalizing my displeasures accordingly.
It's clear that Apple has relegated its B-team when it comes to UI/UX on photos. Instead of focusing on usability, the team appears to fancy shiny objects that look good to casual consumers, rather than nuts and bolts. Most notably the synchronization, integration and handling of iCloud Photos and its relationship to Photos. For example, I have several shared albums in iCloud Photos, and while the iOS Photos app and Photos on Mac OS share the same icon, the similarity ends there. Apple has buried the Shared Albums under the view menu, yet provides quick click navigation to a long list of mostly useless categories such as People, Places, Selfies, Time Lapse, and so on.
The nomenclature from Aperture to Photos has changed too. In Aperture Projects was the core categorization tool, yet in Photos Projects refers to books, cards, calendars, prints, or slideshows. It seems that Albums is what Aperure referred to as Projects, and includes auto-generated Albums such as those quick click categories of Bursts, Selfies, and such. Photos also automatically creates Albums for Instagram, SnapChat, and other iOS photo Apps, if they are used on your iOS device. Yet finding, using and sorting any of these Albums is far from instinctual. Photos should simplify your photography, not complicate it. Sadly, that's what the Photos UI/UX does.
Editing Images in Photos
There's more than meets the eye when it comes to built-in editing tools in Apple Photos
Tavern Master Full Screen
So beyond Apple's fail—and opportunity—in photo management, Photos does provide a solid plug-in approach to photo editing. First, its built-in editing tools match and for the most part exceed what Aperture offered. Yet like Aperture, where Photos will improve and continue to excel with 3rd party developer involvement a solid suite of tools for editing photos.
In order to focus on photo management, categorization, and cross-device and iCloud synchronization, Apple has opted for this plug-in or extension approach. This is good news because as Photos.app continues to mature, Apple won't be saddled with the overhead of adding, improving and developing new editing tools. Even so, the basic tools included, as noted are decent. Yet, as with its photo management fails, some tools that seem absent do existing, it's just finding them can be problematic. Beginning the editing process is easy enough, first choose the sliders icon at the right top of the app. This reveals the editing tools panel and changes the background from white to black. There are 8 options, including the Extensions selection which provides a pop-up of installed third-party tools.
To use Apple's core editing tools simply select Adjust which will reveal a typical photo editing panel including adjustment options through +/- sliders for Light (Brilliance, Exposure, Highlights, Shadows, Brightness, Contrast and Black Point), Color (Saturation, Contrast, and Cast), and Black & White. But where is the Histogram and editing sliders for Sharpening, Noise Reduction, Vignette, White Balance, Levels, and Definition? They are all accessible by clicking the tiny and in blue option 'Add'—not easily noticed.
Apple has included the usual editing tool suspects including a healing and retouching brush (Bandaid icon), Rotate, Crop & Align, Filters, and Red Eye removal. To add and activate third-party extensions, choose the tools you wish by buying through the Mac App store or direct from third-party developers, running the installer, and then choosing the 'Extensions' option in the editing panel and then clicking 'More' from the pop-up. Megarob mac os. Here you will find and then activate the available extensions compatible with Apple Photos.app.
I've found a number of useful extensions for Apple Photos including Snapheal, Intensify, Affinity, External Editors and others.
Managing Photos In iCloud
I'm happy to admit that Photos, iCloud and my iCloud Photo Library get along great. Syncing between my iPhone, MacBook Pro, and iPad works great, albeit there are sometimes issues. My iCloud storage is upgraded to 1TB. When I load RAW images from my Canon 6D DSLR into Photos on my MacBook Pro, in short order they appear on my iPhone and iPad. Too preserve space, given my 50,000+ Photos library, I've selected to Optimize Mac Storage in Photos settings. This means that I'm not eating up space on my 1TB SSD storage on my MacBook Pro. It also means that in order to edit, send, or otherwise do anything to a photo other than view it on my MacBook Pro, it must be downloaded from my iCloud Photo Library to my MacBook Pro.
The download of images from my iCloud Photo Library sometimes works blazingly fast, almost seamlessly. However, when I'm in a heavy workflow of writing and photo editing it appears that my iCloud Photo Library crawls, or even stops—as if it times out. This wastes time and soon the advantages of saving space on my drive give way to lack of productivity, frustration and taking too many trips to the kitchen for yet another cup of coffee, and another; thinking that when I come back the photo will be downloaded. Yet all I get is another dose of caffeine jitters and lashing out profanely at my computer. it's at this point my peacefully sleeping Bengal Cat, Dar, exits the room.
To be sure, at home I've got more than sufficient bandwidth, clocking at some 22-23Mbps most of the time.
In short, my iCloud Photo Library sucks when it comes to accessing my full resolution images for editing or inclusion into a blog, social media post, or any other use where I need the physical file on my computer or device. I am a subscriber to iTunes Match, the model I would guess Apple used for the iCloud Photo Library. I own some 35,000+ songs that reside in iTunes on my Mac. With iTunes Match, Apple allows me to access all of this music from the cloud, matching those songs that exist in the iTunes Music Store, and uploading any esoteric music I have into the cloud. This frees up space, once again, on my Mac Book Pro. I can listen on demand to any of this music—as long as I have a decent internet connection. If I wish to download any of the songs for whatever reason, I simply click the iCloud icon and the song will appear on my Mac, iPhone or iMac—wherever I initiated this download. This works flawlessly, I assume in part because music/songs are much smaller than even JPEGs from my iPhone or DSLR.
Tavern Masters Dockside
Apple needs to fix this downloading problem, perhaps it's at its data center or in Photos itself. Plus, the UI/UX of Photos could command the attention of some of Apple's better UI designers—a team that will take a holistic look at the App, rather than its individual modules or isolated use cases.
Until then I will still trudge through Photos yielding to my stubbornness and refusal to invest anything into Adobe products or services.
Donut simulation mac os. In closing, here are a few other features, in no particular order, that Apple needs to address or include in Photos and/or iCloud Photo Library Catch-all mac os.
- Exporting images to SmugMug — this was integrated into Aperture, but absent in the latest Photos release
- Right click contextual menu option to export an image or images from anywhere in Photos
- Option to choose a default set of editing tools to appear in the editing panel
- Think about bringing back Aperture
Are you using Photos? Still using Aperture? Comment here and help me and others understand how to get more out of these tools.
