David Winograd
Articles by David Winograd
iPhoto 101: How to delete photos
Whether your Mac contains a mechanical hard drive or an SSD, everyone needs more space. We're all used to dumping Finder's trash frequently to reclaim drive space, but what some of you might not know is that when you delete pictures from iPhoto, they remain on your computer since iPhoto has its own trash. If you've never done this, you may have hundreds (or for that matter, thousands) of pictures or videos in iPhoto that are just clogging up your drive. There are two ways to delete the iPhoto trash. One way is to just right click on the word Trash in iPhoto's menu bar, and select Empty Trash. The other, and possibly more telling way, is to single click on the word Trash in the menu bar. You'll be presented with all the unnecessary photos and videos along with the total number held in trash. On the top right is an Empty Trash button that will delete them completely. In both cases, you'll be presented with a warning message asking you if you really want to do this. Click OK, and you'll get back some space. If you've never done this, the amount reclaimed can be dramatic, but if you are in the habit of doing this, you won't get back all that much. I deleted 82 pictures, and my hard drive space increased from 97.23 GB to 97.26 GB. See how much you can get back. [via Lifehacker]
Two things iOS 4.2.1 is missing
I love my iPhone and iPad, but two slight revisions to iOS would make my holiday wishes come true. These may not be earth-shattering to you, but they would make my life much simpler. Mail It's lovely that iOS pushes mail to my devices, but Apple just didn't go far enough with it. When mail is pushed, or fetched for that matter, the only things pushed are what belong in your inbox. I have around 20 IMAP mailboxes that mail gets filtered into using Rules in Mac Mail, and nothing gets pushed to them. I verified this with Apple. Since I spend a good deal of time with no Wi-Fi, and in many cases no cellular connection either, what I would love is to have an option where all mail gets pushed to me, regardless of what IMAP mailbox it's in. That way I can take my iDevice on a train or a plane and catch up on all my email while offline. I understand that this would be a drain on the battery, but if you were able to do it using a toggle, and not a persistent setting, I don't think it would matter. You would use it when you want and not be bothered with the power drain when you're not. I have a feeling this would help out a lot of people. See the other wish I've got right after the break.
A call for more storage in iOS devices
Back in the olden days, when I bought my first Disk ][ to hang onto my Apple ][ Plus, I was amazed at how much the 140KB floppy drive could store. After using it for a while, I was sure that it was big enough to hold every program I'd ever buy, and most of the programs my kids would need as well. Nowadays, of course, I have a 32GB iPhone 3GS and a 64GB iPad, and I'm out of room. The release of Riven brought into focus just how crazy this all is. Riven weighs in at 1.01GB and requires you to have 2GB of free storage just to install it. I don't blame the game itself -- in fact, I played it when it was the first DVD-based game ever for the Mac, replacing five CD-ROMs. The graphics were superb, and I understand that they require lots of memory to hold them, but really! I took a look at some of the larger iOS apps I currently have installed, and Treasure Island, the Experience is the largest, weighing in at 468MB, or nearly half a GB. The next seven biggest range between 393.7MB and 286.3MB, adding up to over 2GB. And I'm not even a game player -- if you installed the HD version of Rage recently, you had to clear up 744MB of space for that one alone. These apps are mostly recent releases, and I don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
iTunes 10.1.1 is available in Software Update
iTunes 10.1.1 is ready for your approval via Software Update. This looks like a minor bug fix update with no new features. Here are the fixes: Addresses an issue where some music videos might not play on Macs with NVIDIA GeForce 9400 or 9600 graphics Fixes an issue where iTunes may unexpectedly quit when deleting a playlist that has the iTunes Sidebar showing Fixes an issue where iTunes may unexpectedly quit when connecting an iPod to a PowerPC equipped Mac Addresses an issue where some music videos might not sync to an iPod, iPhone or iPad Note: A number of commenters have reported that this update doesn't work. I tried it myself and after applying the update, see what I got after the break.
The first Apple retail store has become a cult destination
A rather plain Apple retail store tucked away on the second floor of the over thirty-year-old Glendale Galleria mall in Calfornia has attained cult status by ostensibly being the first Apple store in existence. It opened on May 19, 2001 and was given the store designation number of 001. This is not news to a good number of Apple cognoscenti who regularly hang out at the store to soak in some of the historical Apple goodness, and others who make a pilgrimage to Glendale just for bragging rights. Some people have been known to come to the store just to take a picture as a memento. Apple employees have been known to transfer to the Glendale store because of its hallowed status, and some customers say that the level of expertise of the staff surpasses other Apple stores. Some think that the Glendale Galleria is a horribly run-down mall. This doesn't seem to bother those in the know who frequently stop by. It also doesn't bother Apple for that matter, since it's located close to several major Los Angeles freeways and brings in a good number of shoppers. As with most things Apple, this is not without controversy. Another Apple store in the much higher-end Tysons Corner Mall in McLean, VA, opened the same day (and several hours earlier), but sadly did not attain the designation of retail store 001, so it can't claim the number one spot. [Via Reuters]
TUAW's Holiday Gift Guide: Interactive books for children
Welcome to the TUAW Holiday Gift Guide! We've sorted the treasure from the junk and are serving up suggestions to make your holiday gift-giving a little easier. Looking for an inexpensive gift for that special child in a home with an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch? You really can't do better than an interactive children's book or two (or three or four -- maybe a series of them!). Over the past year or so, the market for these new and exciting books has blown wide open. A quick check of the iTunes store shows hundreds of such books, and last April it was reported that a full 81 percent of top selling book apps on the iPad store were for kids. In this quickly emerging market, you'll find many of your old favorites, as well as a huge number of new books especially made for iOS devices. Interactive books allow children to jump into the story by interacting with the pages. Not only do they give you the option of having the book read by a professional narrator, but objects seem to come alive when touched, providing animations, sounds and many other surprises, including the ability to touch a word and have it spoken, highlighted or both. In a real sense, these books seem to come alive. This guide is far from comprehensive, since there are new books hitting the App Store every day, and I have only seen a small fraction of them. I will only recommend ones that I've read. With series like Dr. Seuss, I haven't read them all, but since they mostly work the same way, I feel comfortable recommending them as a series. Read on to find some great books for kids this holiday season.
Just in time for Thanksgiving, The Berenstain Bears Give Thanks
Although the print book has been out for more than a year, The Berenstain Bears Give Thanks by Jan and Mike Berenstain (US$2.99) has just hit the App store in time for Thanksgiving. This is the tenth in the series of Bear books released by Oceanhouse Media, and it employs the same excellent engine used by all their books. Instead of having one picture per page, the engine allows for lots of panning and zooming, so one picture can be used for multiple pages. I consider this a good idea since kids like to swipe pages, and although there are only 35 pictures in the book, it will take 108 page swipes to get to the end. This cinematic approach is very appropriate for this type of book since it allows the virtual camera to uncover parts of larger graphics when they are appropriate, keeping the story and the reader's interest flowing. The story is appropriately simple. Papa Bear bartered some furniture for a few cases of Farmer Ben's best Apple Blossom honey along with Squanto the Turkey, who will stay at the farm until fattened and ready for Thanksgiving dinner. Sister Bear becomes attached to Squanto and wants to keep him as a pet. Her wish is eventually granted via a bit of Thanksgiving magic. %Gallery-108016%
KitchenPad Timer helps with your Thanksgiving meal
This coming Thursday is Thanksgiving, one of my favorite American holidays. Although it's representative of the Pilgrims' first harvest festival with the Native American Indians, it's really about one of my favorite things -- eating. But before we can eat, many of us have to cook, and we have to face the usual issue of too many dishes needing to be prepared at the same time. This sort of cooking can be akin to the guy who used to spin plates on the Ed Sullivan Show. KitchenPad Timer (US$1.99 until Thanksgiving) from Prativo can help. It's an app that gives you eight graphically represented timers -- four for burners and four for ovens. Each timer lets you enter the name of a dish and how long it should be cooked. The burner timers allow for heat settings, and the oven timers let you enter internal temperature. Conceivably, you can keep eight "plates in the air" at the same time. A nice feature is that once set, if you leave the app, a pop-up alert is sent to your device alerting you that something is done. This is a universal app, and the iPad version shows you all eight timers on one screen. On the iPhone or iPod touch, you can see burners on one page and ovens on a second screen. If you're doing some heavy duty cooking this week, consider picking it up. It's only a couple of bucks and can be really useful. Take a look at KitchenPad Timer in action after the break. TUAW is commonly provided with not-for-resale licenses or promo codes to permit product evaluations and reviews. For more details, see our policy page.
The current state of Mac use in higher education
Apple used to own the Higher Education market throughout the 80s and early 90s. Apple eventually took a back seat to the lower-priced Dell product line, but all of that is changing. According to a Group Logic Inc. survey of IT professionals at 125 North American colleges and universities, use of Macs on campuses has risen and will continue to rise. Between 2009 and 2010, Mac usage increased by 18 percent and is expected to rise by another 20 percent over the next five years. The reason most often given for the recent sharp increase was as a reaction to Microsoft's Vista operating system, which was considered problematic (to use the nicest word I could think of) by students and IT alike. The survey was collected from fairly large institutions, averaging about 16,500 students. On average, 31 percent of students and 24 percent of faculty are currently using Macs on campus. An August report by Student Monitor stated that 27 percent of laptops found on campus were Macs, 24 percent were made by Dell, and 15 percent were Hewlett Packards, easily giving Apple the lion's share of the Higher Education laptop market. The study also found that nearly half of students in the market for a laptop said that they would buy a Mac. Compare that with a survey done in 2005, where only 14 percent of students queried were interested in a Mac laptop, and about half said they were buying a Dell. Windows is still the most prevalent operating system, but the gap is closing. Student Monitor reported that in 2003, over 2500 institutions were using Windows, while only 200 used Macs. By 2008, the gap closed dramatically, with about 2000 institutions using Windows and 1100 using Macs; only a year later, 1700 schools were using Windows compared to 1400 using Macs. What wasn't mentioned in any survey (and seemed a rather obvious thing to leave out): the "halo effect." A major motivating factor in students buying Macs is that so many of them have iPods, iPhones, or iPads and have been impressed by them, making Macs a much easier sell. %Gallery-107378%
Manage complex medical conditions with iBiomed
iBiomed is not for everyone. It's a niche app designed for detailed tracking of care management for patients with complex medical conditions, such as autism. Once set up (and that can be a bit daunting), a care-giver can take control of everything related to the care of a patient. iBiomed is totally flexible, allowing a user to input all pertinent information and keep historical track of everything involving the patient. It can send push alarms, too, when it's time to administer the next dosage of any supplement, medicine, or test. That just scratches the surface of what this amazingly-flexible, multifaceted, and free app can do. Walking you through its functions will give you a good idea of just how detailed and important this app can be for care-givers. You start by creating a patient profile, including name, birth date, and sex. From there, you fill in information about the treatment history of the patient. Beginning with diagnoses, you can enter information for each one, be it autism, allergies, or any other problem. Descriptions can be added for each condition. Next, using a summary treatment screen, you can enter information which details required supplements, medicines, tests, diets, and alternative treatments. Once you get the hang of entering one topic, which is detailed and can take some time, it gets easier since most of the input modules are quite similar. For example, when entering supplements, the required information includes the name of the supplement, the start date, what quantity comprises a dose, and the dosing frequency. A stop date is optional, and any notes you would like to enter are also optional. The same is true for medicines and a number of other items. Each item needs to be input and saved individually, which can take some time. %Gallery-107002%
food fight! A pre-release view of the most beautiful iOS children's book yet
Note 11/6/10: food fight! has now been released and is available as Food Fight! - An Interactive Book by Glenn Melenhorst. It is on sale for US$1.99 during its introductory first week. food fight! is the most beautiful interactive children's book I've seen to date. It's currently going through the App Store review process and isn't yet available, but when it hits the iTunes store, it will sell for US$3.99 and be released as a universal app playable on any iOS device. There are a number of things that make this book special, but the most obvious is the amazing 3D graphics found on every page. The book was written and rendered by Glenn Melenhorst, a visual effects artist at the Iloura studio in Melbourne, Australia. Glenn has been instrumental in such projects as The Pacific, Where the Wild Things Are, and Charlotte's Web. food fight! started as a print book called Little Boys which I couldn't find anywhere, and perhaps never made it out of Australia. The book tells the story of Tim, who would eat nothing but sausages no matter how much his parents tried to fool and cajole him into eating something else. It's also the story of Sammy, from somewhere else altogether, who happens to be a sausage who eats nothing but little boys. Sammy reads about Tim and takes a rocket to earth where they confront each other and come to a workable compromise. It's a very cute story, whimsically told and I'm sure will entertain children four and above. The app is beautifully designed and has more play value than most of what I've seen in the burgeoning market of interactive children's fiction. There is no musical soundtrack, but it's not necessary, since over 80 interactive elements found in its pages all come with their own sounds, voices, and effects. Tapping on most anything kicks off nicely done animations, some of them, in keeping with the 3D look, spill right off the page. The pages can be turned by a quick swipe as is usually the case, or in a manner similar to iBooks, by slowly swiping which displays a nicely dimensional page-turning effect at the speed of your fingers. %Gallery-106847%
AppleCare now transferable to new purchases within 30 days
According to an Apple Internal memo not yet release to the public, Apple will now allow transferring an AppleCare agreement on a product bought within the last 30 days to a another product of the same type. Previously, the policy stated that AppleCare must be canceled and then repurchased if you wanted it to cover another product you own. If you gift or sell your covered product to someone else, AppleCare could always be transferred with a simple phone call. AppleCare at present increases your warranty to two years on iOS devices and three years on Macs. I agree with TJ Luoma in believing that AppleCare is a necessity, since we have both used it to cover repairs that out-priced the plan. I don't understand the point of this policy though. It seems unlikely that a customer would buy an Apple product, have it covered with AppleCare and then within 30 days by another one and transfer coverage. Can anyone help me out on this? [via BGR]
eBooks for kids take a step backward in 3-Little Pigs
The field of interactive children's eBooks has become quite sophisticated over the last number of months. Products from Oceanhouse Media and My Black Dog Books are quite impressive and offer children four years and up a satisfying interactive experience as they traverse their way through well-designed stories with lots of animation and variations to keep things interesting. It's become the norm that when a child taps on something in one of these books, he or she gets immediate feedback on the item of interest. 3-Little Pigs (US$3.99) for the iPad is a major step backward in a field that has been constantly improving. When I first downloaded it a few days ago, the price was $6.99 and quickly dropped. Even at $3.99 I consider it too expensive by half. What you get looks like a very rough first draft of what could be a good eBook. A good example of the rawness of the app is that when you launch it, you have no idea what to do next. I contacted the publishers and was told that you need to tap on the bottom right corner of the screen and that this problem will be fixed in the next revision. That's fine, but I'm reviewing the current version and kids would be left frustrated and unhappy with not knowing what to do. How hard would it have been to add a graphic telling the kids where to tap? The instructions are given on the second page, using the standard tap right to progress, tap left to go back and tap on objects to interact. Double tapping on the bottom brings up a ribbon allowing you to go to any particular page. Options are given to turn the music on or off, and to have the words appear in either English or Slovak. The English needed a decent proofread, since if you're teaching a child to read, text like "I want to build a house my- self." is not helpful. It's also not very helpful that the app only runs in portrait mode.
Put your Mac on a diet with CleanMyMac
CleanMyMac by Macpaw software is an amazing bit of Mac utility software that has one purpose in life: to streamline your hard drive by getting rid of all the extraneous stuff that you probably don't know is there and almost certainly don't need. It cleans out all of the useless cache files, logs, languages you don't know or don't want, universal binary code that your specific computer can't use, and other assorted junk, trash, and leftover bits and pieces. It does the job easily, elegantly, and completely. There are a ton of other programs out there that do pieces of the job, but there's no other program that is so complete. Let's take a look at some of the other programs for comparison. To get rid of unused languages that can balloon a program's size up to 70% larger than it needs to be, there's always been Monolingual. It gives you a listing of all the languages on your computer and then lets you pick and choose which ones to keep. Monolingual then deletes all vestiges of the unwanted languages in all your software. It's free, but it hasn't been updated in a couple of years. Although the current version does work with Snow Leopard, nobody knows when it's going to stop working nor does anyone know if it will work with Mac OSX 10.7 next summer. %Gallery-106006%
Found Footage: TWEET IT a video parody of Beat it
We're a few days late on this one, but I thought that it was quite well done and rather clever in a Weird Al Yankovich sort of way. In this spoof of Michael Jackson's Beat It, Pantless Knights, a group that has made some pretty good musical spoofs, presents TWEET IT. In this video the hipsters, sporting iPhones, and the suits, all with iPads, take it to the streets in a battle of the tweets. At the quarterly Apple earnings call this past Monday, it was mentioned that Apple hasn't marketed the iPad to the enterprise market though iPads have gotten on the approved acquisition list of many Fortune 500 companies. However, it was also noted that 85% of Fortune 500 firms are currently deploying iPhones. So wouldn't it make sense for the hipsters to brandish iPads while the suits threatened them with iPhones? Click on the Read More link to take a gander.
Two new interactive eBooks for Halloween
Just in time for Halloween, Oceanhouse Media introduces two more of their excellent interactive children's storybooks. Both of them are spooky, but certainly not scary, being targeted to the four year old and up crowd. Both are about acceptance and teach a gentle lesson about not judging a book, an empty pair of pants or a pumpkin by its cover. The first is a short book by Dr. Suess titled What was I Scared of? (US$1.99). It only runs 22 pages so it's priced a dollar less than most of the Oceanhouse Media titles. In it, a very brave furry little guy meets up with a pair of empty pale green pants in the woods that keep popping up wherever he goes. He winds up being not as brave as he thought he was as he becomes more and more frightened of the disembodied pants. It turns out the pants were as scared of him as he is of them, and this is the beginning of their friendship. This book originally came out in 1961, and I have fond memories of reading it to my children. The soundtrack is terrific and as usual, tapping on objects highlight and speak words. The difference I noted between this and the other Oceanhouse Media books is that if you choose the Read To Me option, the young reader must turn the pages by themselves. In the other titles I've seen, this was done for you. The same is true with Spookley and I think was a great design choice. Authors note: I'm wrong on this last point. All the Oceanhouse Media books work the same way. I mistakenly confused the Read To Me with the Auto Play function. The Auto Play function does turn the pages automatically.
The Berenstain Bears and the Golden Rule comes to iOS for kids
Oceanhouse Media has done it again with The Berenstain Bears and the Golden Rule by Stan and Jan Berenstain with Mike Berenstain (US$2.99). It's another in their line of popular storybooks for children, and it tells the tale of Sister Bear being given a locket containing the Golden Rule. The story goes on to explain the Golden Rule through Sister Bear's meeting with a new kid at school, Lizzie McGrizzie. I used to read the Berenstain Bears books to my (now-grown) children countless times, so I look at them quite nostalgically now. As in all the Berenstain books, The Golden Rule teaches a moral and explains it through the narrative in a way that even the smallest of children can understand and take to heart. Oceanhouse Media has done something brilliant and can capitalize on it forever. In April, they released The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss, which I reviewed quite highly. It introduced an e-book engine that any picture-oriented book can be plugged into. Currently they sell 12 Dr. Seuss books, with two soon to be released, and three Berenstain Bear books, with three more upcoming.
The iBookstore six months after launch: One big failure
It's been over six months since the release of the iPad on April 3rd, and the simultaneous launch of iBooks and the iBookstore, which promised to give Amazon's Kindle and Kindle Store a run for its money. I figured that this would be a good time to see just how the iBookstore has progressed. The answer, in a word: poorly ... very poorly. The Kindle store currently advertises that they have over 700,000 books, magazines, and blogs available for download. Apple hasn't released statistics on the number of currently available books, so an accurate comparison isn't easy to make, but it's a safe bet to say that once you eliminate the ability to load .pdf files, the availability of e-books from the iBookstore pales. At launch, it was reported that the iBookstore contained somewhere between 46,000 and 60,000 titles, 30,000 of which came from the Project Gutenberg library of free out-of-copyright books. However, since these are also available on the Kindle, we can reduce both sides of the equation by 30,000. This brings the number of titles at launch for the iBook to a generous 30,000. That's a big difference, but outside of raw numbers, there are many factors constraining a massive increase in iBookstore sales.
Violet returns to the iPad in a wonderful interactive storybook
Violet is back in the second installment of the Violet series of children's interactive storybooks for the iPad, Violet and the Mysterious Black Dog (US$2.99) from My Black Dog Books. I liked the first one quite a lot, and I found this one to be even better. Once again, Allison Keeme does a phenomenal job of rendering the world of Violet and her family. Violet's world is attractive, colorful, whimsical, and consistent. Any child familiar with the first Violet book will immediately feel comfortable and get right into the narrative. Finding the mysterious black dog that was teased in the first book is the basis of this second volume. The story is simple and quite appropriate for ages four and up. Violet dons her mask and assumes her alter ego as Phantom Girl, going off in search of clues and hoping to find the black dog. When she inevitably does find the dog, a lesson is taught on how children should approach and deal with stray dogs, including a citation from the Humane Society. The 19-page book is a great technical improvement over the previous offering. In the first book, there was scant interactivity and the potential of children getting frustrated by having to tap on everything to get infrequent payoffs. In this book, the important tappable objects are defined by dotted yellow lines, kind of like a treasure map. When an object is tapped, it produces a detailed enlargement of the object. For slightly older or more inquisitive kids, there are unmarked tappable items on the majority of pages that kick off actions or sounds, like a lamp lighting or the buzzing of bees. There are also nice little animations that often appear, such as the bouncing of Violet's little sister's ball, or the mysterious dog popping his head into the page. I especially enjoyed one page where you are told to help Violet find clues, but the child can find a clue that Violet doesn't find, bringing the reader deeper into the story and adding a level of interactivity and involvement that was missing in the first book. Another welcome addition is that there is a speaker icon in the upper left corner of each page. When tapped, it plays a recording of Allison Keeme reading the page, and her reading is excellent.
No Comment: Denmark's Parliament members get free iPhones
It's true that the iPhone was previously banned from the floor of the Danish Folketing (Parliament) by its President Thor Pedersen. This was at least partially due to Member of Parliament Sophie Haestorp Andersen updating her Facebook page 59 times during a prolonged debate -- certainly more than is polite. Nevertheless, it was reported by Politiken.DK that last week all 179 Members of Parliament and an undisclosed number of the staff of 1,000 adminstrators have each been given a 16GB iPhone3GS. Folketing press secretary Peter Krab announced that after testing a number of mobile phones, it was decided that the iPhone best met the requirements of the Folketing, so they went with it. No one is willing to say how much it cost the Danish people who are currently taxed at a progressive rate that maxes out at 51.9% (one of the highest rates in the world). At a retail cost of 5500 Kroner (approx US $1022.21) without a contract, the potential cost was not lost on the Danes, who according to comments on a similar story posted on mobilsiden.dk were less than amused at not only the public squandering of money, but that the Folketing went for an older model instead of the current iPhone 4. To all of this, we say no comment.