Windows 2 Apples Episode 11

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Before commenting on a few of the new iLife applications, I want to take a few moments to express a frustration I'm sure I share with many other Windows users who are shifting to Mac.

As I look at the options available to me in the Mac world I’m constantly confronted with the reality that many of the applications and programs I have become dependent upon are simply not available or are in very early stages of development. Hopefully, the new-found popularity of the Apple brand in computers will help reduce this divide.

Case in point ... Over the years I have experimented with voice recognition software and until the last year or so have always been frustrated by the very poor performance of speech to text products. Finally, when version 8 of Dragon Dictate was released for the Windows platform I felt I had finally found a product that was reliable enough to use on a daily basis. Version 9 is has proven to be in exceptional improvement over the previous versions and I have become dependent upon it it. Dragon not only saves me and others from my poor typing but also allows me to proof read using the built-in text to speech synthesizer.

When I purchased the iMac one of the first programs I looked for was an equivalent to Dragon Dictate. The only application that seemed to offer similar functionality was iListen marketed by MacSpeech. I have been spoiled by Dragon and find using iListen reminiscent of the early days struggling with Dragon Dictate as it evolved into a useful and reliable product. iListen is so inaccurate and poorly implemented it is almost useless. On top of that the headset is poorly constructed with the microphone constantly falling off the headset. For those of you considering iListen, I would recommend postponing your purchase until a product at least as good as Dragon Dictate becomes available for the Mac platform.

Webcams Revisited :

Some of you may remember my early rants about the lack of external webcams available for Macintosh. My concern was in locating one that would enable me to record scenes not directly in front of the built-in iSight Webcam. While listening to a recent Leo Laporte tech podcast, a caller complained that his niece had broken his only external iSight webcam and he could not find a replacement webcam that was guaranteed to work with the iMac. Laporte suggested a creative labs model that was known to work with some Macs and in the same breath suggesting there could be issues in using it with Macs already equipped with built-in webcams.

I still don’t understand why Apple removed the iSight from the market given the limitations of the built-in webcam and the need to support users who’s external iSight cameras die. This continues to be the major issue for me and I live in hope that Apple will offer a replacement for the now prematurely extinct external iSight cam.

Too much of furry and rattling of chains for me not to make a few comments on last weeks unveiling of new iPods and the infamous iPhone devaluation!

When the iPhone was released I was more impressed by the iPod than cell phone features. I rarely need or use my cell phone. I have never sent or received text messages , never used it to bore my friends the latest photos of my beloved cat nor used it to play games. Perhaps you can understand why I found it hard to imagine paying $600 for a phone and many hundreds more over a two year contract with AT&T. However, I suspect I am not your typical cell phone customer.

The decision to drop the price makes excellent business sense but $200 did seem a bit much given it had only been in folks pockets two months and the unique historically rock solid price stability of other Apple products. iPods have traditionally maintained their introductory price much longer than products from competitors. I have never seen significant vendor to vendor discounts on iPods. In deed, the almost total lack of price differences between retailers has the look, smell and feel of good old fashion price fixing but I assume there is simply no incentive to discount iPods while they dominate and to a large extent define that market.

The day the new iPod Touch was introduced, I immediately placed an order assuming I could use it to test our video podcasts and get a feel for how they would play on iPhones as well as the new iPod. However, after the impressive and precipitous price drop in the iPhone I pulled my order ... preferring to wait and see. In the mean time I will survey friends with iPhones and Touch iPods to get feedback on our video netcasts.

Now to iLife 08 ... I continue to be an enthusiastic fan of GarageBand. The Magic GarageBand feature is to me more educational than truly useful. I have created several projects just to examine the final mix and to experiment with a few tweaks. Perhaps, one day I will plug in my Yamaha Electric cello and have a go at creating music with a more personal touch. The ability to easily save files in MP3 as well as the Apple ACC formats is worth the price of admission. GarageBand continues to set the standard for an easy to use, yet “well endowed” audio recorder and mixer. Excellent for producing netcasts ... both audio and video.

Seems Apple can produce boos as loud and frenetic as the wows. The new iMovie has heated up more than a few blogs, product reviews and podcasts. I had waited to edit videos on my Mac until the release of the 08 version assuming it would be an enhanced iMovie 06. Of course it is no such thing but rather an effort to create a simple, user friendly tool for quickly assembling compilations of home video clips.

My first attempt at using it were frustrating and I was almost ready to delete it. After listening to a few podcast reviews and watching the on-line tutorials, I gave it another shot and was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to splice together a video. I exported it to GarageBand to gain greater control over audio. Within 40 minutes I had uploaded to Viddler a few quickies spliced together using clips from tapes of my last trip to New Zealand.

True, it is not a full featured video editor and has all the failings, such as no time line, documented by countless others but in my opinion meets its goal of making home movies a reality for the great unwashed movie producers among us. I rather like it and know of no competitive product in the Windows world. However, I have taken the wrappers off of iMovie 06 and I am evaluating it as a tool for producing video podcasts. Will update on that when I have had enough time to experiment.

I truly don’t understand or appreciate iPhoto. I would rate it as a un-remarkable photo viewer with some impressive photo editing capabilities. It still does not seem to support the very simple and often used overlay of text. I really don’t understand this ... seems so obvious and so simple to implement an option to label photos or add graphic overlays. I will give it another chance to impress me ... perhaps I will be pleasantly surprised given more time with it but I am not the kind of photographer it seems to be targeting. I rarely touch up my photos but do add overlays of text and graphics. So far it simply takes up hard drive real-estate.

I am getting used to the quirky and lame project management limitations of iWEB and have been experimenting with using it to develop web sites on hosts other than my .mac account. The ability to splice in my own html is a welcomed enhancement. I have also experimented with RapidWeaver, often touted as a better way to get a WEB on line without hand coding your site, and find I prefer iWEB. Both RapidWeaver and iWEB suffer from the same major limitation of requiring all development and changes to be made on your Apple computer. Unlike FrontPage, there is no synching between changes made on the external web host and the domain on your Mac.

I also must admit I find most of the canned RapidWeaver web templates ugly. This is of course strictly personal opinion, but, the RapidWeaver site is a example of one I find difficult to spend much time at because it is so esthetically unappealing. I tried to create a RapidWeaver site I could feel good about but gave up. The iWeb templates are far more appealing to me and the program more intuitive. A product like RapidWeaver would make much more sense than iWEB for commercial sites but I am afraid they would look a bit dated and less finished than iWEB sites. I do like the almost seamless integration of the other iLife applications with iWEB ... an excellent and unique way to get your personal web on line replete with slick photo and video presentations. And, you have the added comfort of expecting the site to look good as well. Apple does have a knack of helping folks make things look good.

A few passing comments on iWork ... I am writing this using Pages 08 and I am beginning to make the psychological shift away from Microsoft Word on my Mac. The interface is intuitive, the templates nice and I don’t feel as if I need to spend the next year learning to use features I may never need.

I have also experimented with Keynote 08 and am very impressed. It to is intuitive and the special effects exceptional. I was able to quickly put together a short, professional looking presentation, convert it to a Quick Time movie and up load to Viddler and a audio/video blog. Definitely a winner and as expected integrates well with other Apple applications. In one of my 1st podcasts I mentioned the lack of a word processor and spreadsheet shipped with new iMacs. True there was a trial version of iWork o6 on my machine but no equivalent of Microsoft’s Work suite. Now most can, for a paltry $79, purchase iWork 08 and forget the $400 Microsoft Office. Bravo Apple!

Although the Mac and Mac applications are not crash or bug proof as Apple’s adverts might want you to believe, they are generally easy to use and do allow you to become productive with less hair pulling than similar Windows based products. I am convinced that Windows apps could be just as intuitive and as easy to use if it were not for the long tradition of adding features for the sake of sounding as if your product will meet every possible need ... especially those you never knew you had nor will ever see the light of day.