It will be the third anniversary of the iPhone since the 1st Gen (America Only) was released in 2007, and two years since the worldwide release of the 3G iPhone. To me this means one thing! All of the customers – worldwide – who purchased the 3G and in doing so signed up for a 24 month contract, are coming up to the expiry of their contract. What this means is that Apple will need to have something on offer to all of these customers with expiring contracts otherwise they will see people jumping ship to other recently released iPhone competitors.

Hardware wants…

I would love to see a front facing camera in the iPhone. I think that this is something that has been lacking since the introduction of the device. Just look at that awesome large screen, this is a perfect device for video calling either over a cellular network call or via a VOIP service like Skype.

A revised design. While the style of the iPhone is now almost iconic. The look of the phone itself has almost (in my opinion) started to date a little in comparison to some of the other smart-phones that have been released lately. I know that they have already done the phone with the metal back on it. But wouldn’t it be really nice to see an iPhone that utilised the unibody aluminium design like in the Macbook Pro’s – even though I know they ditched the old aluminium design for signal quality issues, but I can still want it right??

I would expect to see a newer, higher resolution screen on the device also. Technology has come a long way since the phone was originally released, and I can only imagine it would be inevitable for a new version of the phone to possess a better screen.

It would also be nice to see a refinement in the quality of the few buttons that they use on the device. To me the side buttons feel a little cheap, and not only that, I know of cases where both the flip switch between normal and silent modes has gone bung as well as where the ‘home’ key gets used so much that it also goes into a state of non-responsivness.

Software wants…

As far as software goes, the first thing on my list here is a big cry out to Apple. Please, please, please fix the damn Mail app. This program is so clunky and painful to use if you have any more than one email account. The way it expects you to have a separate inbox for each and every mail account is certainly not elegant, nor is the four of five finger taps it takes to get between two accounts. They need to simplify this and give you the ability to have one main inbox like they do in the Mail app for the Mac.

Ringtones are no problem on the iPhone, its simply a matter of either forking over a dollar or two and buying the ability to make one through the iTunes store. Or if you have a few more moments spare you can make you own either through Garageband for Macs, or through iTunes for PC. However I really think that it is time they opened up the ability to either buy additional SMS & Alarm alerts, or to give the ability to make them like it is done with ringtones.

One of the last things that I would love to see added to the software capabilities of the iPhone is the ability to have badges for apps like Mail, Messages, Phone appear on the ‘unlock’ screen after you have just woken your phone up so you don’t have to physically unlock you’re phone just to see whether you have new mail or have missed a call.

These are just a few of the things that I would love to see in the next revision of the phone and its software. Its a matter of a few months yet before we will even know. I’m just wishing and hoping *fingers crossed*

iPhoto does a great job at keeping all your pics in one place and organising them for you, however there are a few things that kind of bug me when it comes to iPhoto. Due to the fact that iPhoto automatically bundles your photos into a giant blob of data under a folder called iPhoto Library. When you navigate to this folder in your Finder and click on it it doesn’t display files like you would expect it to if the photos were stored in a normal folder. Instead what happens is you click the folder and iPhoto opens up, this is no help when you’re trying to select photos to upload to Facebook for example!

Picasa 3 – the latest version – turns out to be a great program! If you want you can switch all of your photos over to this program and let it handle everything. This solves the above mentioned problem because Picasa will save the files in the sensible and ‘logical’ way of doing it. However if you still prefer to continue using iPhoto thats ok too. Picasa will reference the files in your iPhoto library for you to use within the Picasa program, using the program this way doesnt solve the annoying folder problem. However it does allow you to take advantage of a few really neat features.

The Features

File Management

If you choose to use both programs simultaneously that is fine! In fact great because Picasa simply reads your iPhoto library, if you end up making changes to the photo in Picasa the program will prompt you to create a copy. This saves the original in iPhoto and copies it so you don’t loose the precious original copy.

Like the latest verson of iPhoto does with Faces & Places, Picasa does this as well. I have found the face recognition in iPhoto to be easier to use and more effective at how it recognises the faces. Picasa makes you go through and actually type in the name for everyone in every photo even if you have already tagged them. Never the less if you don’t use iPhoto 09 then you get the faces and places capability for free.

Creative Tools

My favourite feature in Picasa is the Collage tool. Basically to use this you select the desired photos and press the collage button, the program will randomly ’scatter’ these onto a virtual table for you. You can then alter each individual photo by resizing, rotating and moving it. Once you create the collage it is saved under the projects tab for you.

This program is also good at extending photo editing beyond the standard red-eye removal too. Select a photo you want and you can actually put in text overlay using different fonts and colours, retouch the photo, straighten and crop, automatically and manually adjust exposure and color. Very very cool!

This program also allows you to create a movie slideshow of you photos as well, simply select the photos you want  to appear in the slideshow and press the slideshow button. Once you have made the appropriate changes its all ready to rock and role.

If you are a blogger using Blogger, there’s also a quick button here as well which allows you to quickly and easily send a photo to your blog.

This is just a brief overview of some of the cool things that this program can do for you, I think I will be using it mainly in conjunction with iPhoto. But it really is a great piece of software to have and why not – its a free download for Macs and you can also get the Windows version for free as well.

Grab the download from the Picasa website: picasa.google.com

AppleInsider mentions in this post on their website a few very notable points which certainly lead to a new release of an iMac, there’s news of supply lines for the current model being restricted. Now in the past when this has been the case with other products such as the iPhone, iPods & Laptops it has almost certainly meant that there’s a new model on the way. To complement this it has been just over two years now since Apple first released the aluminium iMac in it’s current shape, all of these things say to me that it may just be time for an update.

What really catches my eye though is the thought that there may also be new peripherals such as an updated Mighty Mouse and Keyboard to go along with it. Personally I love the aluminum keyboard that was released with the original aluminium iMac. I find it easy and quick to type on, while also being nice and quiet, however I am considerably more excited about the possibility of a new mighty mouse.

Endgadget posted an article the other day about how Apple applied for new patents on the Keyboard and Mighty Mouse, these details were released on the American FCC’s website just long enough for keen eyes to grab some screen shots with pictures and all. I really do find the current Mighty Mouse a great mouse to use, and I think that it complements OS X very well. The ability to use and customise so many different buttons on the mouse in such a user friendly way is something that I seen on many other mice out there to-date. My one and only complaint about the current mouse however is that of the scroll ball. When it works it is genius, but give it some time and some frequent use and this thing gets so gunked up it renders it almost unusable.

The patents that were released seem to hint towards the new mouse containing some sort of multi-touch technology, if this is something that can replace the scroll ball while still maintaining the great user experience then I say bring it on! Given that one of our mighty mouse has a scroll ball that needs cleaning every second day I say that it is definitely time for a new model to come out.

The update is set to give a number of new features unique to the 3.0 software update, the most notable is the capability for 3GS users to shoot and upload videos directly to your facebook account. There’s added functionality giving you the ability to create photo albums, it will save text that you are typing incase you’re interrupted by a text or phone call. The update also refreshes the design of the app to better reflect the recent changes in facebook’s overall design. It would also seem that there have been upgrades to the overall stability of the app, the developer was quoted to say “Everything that used to scroll slowly now scrolls like butter.”

Overall even though it’s just an update I’m looking forward to the update as it is one of my most frequently used apps on my iPhone.

I was reading the news story from the link above and it got me thinking. The article basically refers back to a case where a teenager had his girlfriends iPhone, it apprantly started hissing and then shattered, flying shards of glass around with one getting into his eye. The Child is said to be taking action against apple for this ‘faulty’ product.

In Apple’s usual manner when there is a story on exploding or overheating iPods, they have refused to comment or take any action on the issue. In my opinion I know that if there was a problem with the product Apple would probably be quick to replace all affected models, they have done his in the past with other products like laptops and iPods. Although from a public relations and reputation management point of view I believe that by Apple refusing to make any statements they are treading a very thin line which could impact on customers trust in the company and it’s products.

Rather than taking the path that Apple’s lawyers dictate each and every time I feel it would benefit the company in the long run to actually come out and say something in situations like these, something to reassure every iPod, iPhone and Mac owner out there that the products they are using on a day to day basis have been tested thoroughly, and that the situations where something is happening, are an anomaly and a small percentage of all items out there on the market. By taking this path rather than the path determined by the lawyers it would put them in a better position to recover if there ever was a situation where a batch of iPhones were faulty.

Apple you need to understand that while you may be sitting pretty now – if you continue down a path where you fail to recognize and rectify issues, these issues will one day snowball into a crisis and one that could impact how you proceed in the marketplace.

But then again, Apple never have been the conventional thinking computer company, have they?

I will start by saying that if you are a gamer and a serious one – you will undoubtedly be better off with a Windows machine. If you are the person that your family and friends come to when they have an issue with their computer then chances are that you have a pretty good knowledge of computers while also having the patience to troubleshoot when things go wrong. If you are this person then switching to a Mac may not suit you but wouldn’t be out of the question

I believe that the typical home user should be able to use their computer without having to worry about having to worry about knowing what a system registry / .dll file / driver is: they should have the ability to use their computer with ease and without frustration and know that when they open a program it is going to do what they want – the first time. It is for these people especially that I would suggest a Mac.

The thought of buying a computer can be daunting enough without even thinking about going to a system that you haven’t had any experience with – this I know – while I consider myself pretty technically savvy we had just had enough of our PC’s, they were giving us all kinds of trouble. Being the impulsive type of people we are, drove all the way to Brisabane (Toowoomba didn’t have anywhere selling Mac’s at the time) and purchases an iMac our first Apple product other than an iPod. We were walking back to the car with our new computer in hand and all I could think amongst the excitement was ‘Oh my God what have we done!! We don’t know the first thing about Mac’s and this could’ve been a very expensive mistake that we have just made’. It turns out that within the two years of our initial iMac purchase we were so thrilled with our new system that we had purchased another two laptops, our little Apple famliy.

So hopefully over the next couple of days as I post my 5 reasons for choosing a Mac over Windows, this may lessen your hesitance to buy a Mac and help you understand why I truly believe they are a better choice for the General home user.

You may enjoy these ‘Get a Mac’ ads from the Apple Website > click here

You can find the update as usual under the software update section of system preferences.

I explained all about this in one of my earlier posts, you can read about it here Java Vulnerabilities – is this putting our Mac at risk?

The Dock

Apple really have excelled at making an incredibly user friendly operating system and it may take a couple of weeks to a month to get the hang of it but hang in there it’s worth it. The biggest thing that hits you when you start up your new mac is the ‘dock’.

Essentially this is one of the main places where you’re applications or programs live, each symbol in the dock represents a program. Now working the dock really is simple. To load a program simply click on its image, only one click is needed. You may notice this icon bounce once or twice while the program loads, after loading is complete your program will open and you will notice a little round white glow appear under the program in the dock. This glow means that a program is running.

By right clicking on one of these icons you will get a list of other options, for example on your mail icon you might get options like get mail or compose new message. You can change what is displayed in your dock, for example I like to have only my most regularly used programs in the dock, if there is something there you don’t like simply click and drag it off the dock. This will take the icon off the dock but don’t worry you haven’t deleted it, if you need to get it back simply find the program in your finder (more about this later) and drag the appropriate application back onto the dock.

There are a number of cool features you may like as well such as being able to magnify the icons when you roll your mouse over them, as well as increasing or decreasing the size of the dock by cliking the little dotted line (located in the picture above five icons in from the right), you can hide it as well when not being used and it will pop back up when you put your cursor at the bottom of the screen. The dock allows for a very user friendly workspace.

The other quick thing that I would mention about the dock is the trash can and it has a couple of functions. This performs the funtion of the recycle bin in windows. The main use for the trash can is to delete files – you do this by clicking and dragging files into the trash. However the trash can has another main use, and this is to eject items, for example CD’s from the CD drive or USB Keys. There will be an image of either a white folder (representing storage) or a CD on the desktop and to eject them properly click and drag the appropriate one onto the trash, this then ejects it from the system.

Title Bar

The title bar runs accross the very top of the screen, this is one of the things that really got me when first using a mac. Where in a windows environment all of your menus are located at the top of the active window on a mac your menu’s are all located within this bar running accross the top of the screen. There usually are not any options available in the active windows.

The apple logo in the left hand side is always there, never moves, this gives you access to info about your system, software updates as well as all of your commands such as restart, log off, shut down etc. Next to that is usually the name of the program that is currently active on the screen with the other applicable menus running next to it. These menus change depending on which program is currently active on your screen. In this picture you can see I had Safari active at the time but if I clicked on an iTunes window the name and menu’s would change to iTunes applicable menu’s.

Over the left hand side are other icons and information such as time and date, the volume, the airport (wifi) status and here the stronger the signal the more little rounded bars you get, there’s also information about what time machine is doing as well as other logos that may get on there from programs you install on your system. You can click on all of these as well and they give you links to settings and options for each application.

Finder

The finder is you Mac alternative to Explorer in Windows. This is where you will navigate to locate and manage files and folders on your computer. Down the right hand side you will see different locations at the top are the hard drive folders, under that you will see network shared drives or computers, under places you will see all of your local files and folders, Documents; Movies; Music; Pictures are quick links to the respective data in your login.

There is a number of ways to display your files and folders in the finder, the method displayed in the pictures shows a list of files and folders and as you open a folder it opens it’s contents in the list to the right and so on, once you arrive at your designated file the box to the right of the file will display info about it, press space bar and you get a ‘quick view’ of what you are looking for.

You can also navigate in the traditional sense of seeing a big folder you click on it and it opens the containing files. Another way I like to look at folder and files is buy using cover flow, this provides you with a graphic view of what files are in a folder so you can see what is in the picture or word document and flick through them as you would with a book or filing cabinet. The finder has many more features but it would take forever to cover them all.

Spotlight

Do you hate digging through all of your files and folders trying to find what you’re looking for? Well spotlight is the answer for you. Spotlight is a very powerful way of searching the contents of your computer, you start typing the name of what you are looking for and spotlight will find files, applications, music, basically anything on your computer that matches what you are searching for. Simply click on the desired result in the list and hey presto it opens it up.

I find spotlight a great way to search for and open applications that I don’t use frequently enough to have on the dock, simply type the first few letters and bang there it is. Spotlight is also duplicated throughout a lot of apples programs so anywhere you see a little magnifying glass or long oval shaped field you can do a search.

I find this really powerful, it is really quick to load your results and does so while you are typing, it constantly indexes what is on your computer so it will be ready when you need to search. This has been executed in a much better way than what Windows offers. No more lost files ever again!

Expose

This is one of my most favourite things in Apples operating system OS X, Expose! All too often I find my desktop getting incredibly cluttered with open windows. Now in Windows your solution to this is by clicking the appropriate window in the taskbar, but not on a Mac. Now activating Expose can differ between computers, some older macs you would click the F9 Key, new mac keyboards have it on the F3 key represented by a little icon above it, or you can also program your mouse to use a certain click to activate it (my favourite way of using expose). Essentially what it does is graphically move each and every window onto the screen at once, shrinking the window size a little but giving you a view of what is going on in that window at that point in time, and yes video continues to play while you are in expose.

Once you have activated expose, you move your cursor to the window you would like to get into, it changes to a light blue color all over and you can then select that windows by clicking. The window you have clicked will be brought to the very front of all windows. Neat hey!

The Apple Keyboard

The keyboard is the final thing I will talk about in this post, now you may think a keyboard is a keyboard. But not on a mac! Now of course they still perform all the same function as any other keyboard but theres a few differences.

The first that you may notice is the Command Key, this acts like your control key on a windows computer. For functions like Cntrl + S for save on windows you would use command + s on a mac. There are tons of other uses for the command key but this is the main one. You may notice in the menu’s on a Mac that next to certain commands there are funny little expressions these are basically keyboard shortcuts, there are heaps of them but if there are functions that you repeatedly perform then you may like to remember the keyboard shortcuts.

One of the other big differences here is that there is a return key in place of the Enter key. Return was basically used in the early days of the mac as a way to ‘return’ to the beginning on the next line as in a word processor. Now it performs much the same function as the enter key.

Another thing that may puzzle you is that there are two delete keys on the mac keyboard. The delete key where a backspace key would usually be is just that, a backward delete. So in a word processor or when entering other text it deletes characters in a backwards manner. The other delete key, where a ‘delete’ key is normally on a windows keyboard. Is a forwards delete, so deletes from the right side of your cursor. Now this key doesn’t perform the function of deleting a file like it does on windows. To delete a file you will need to click and drag it to the trash can in the dock.

Another quirky thing about macs is the eject key. Now all modern macs execpt for the high end MacPro have slot loading disk drives, so there isn’t a tray that comes out. So in order to get the disk out simply press and hold the eject key for a second or two and the computer will eject the disk for you. Alternatively you can click and drag the disk’s image on your desktop to the trash to achieve the same result.

I hope this little guide is of use to you and gets you on your way to becoming a fluent Mac user, and most importantly of all enjoy your new purchase!!!

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