The Day After.....

Now I could probably spend the next two hours crafting a long and detailed blog post all about the announcements from Apple yesterday on the iPhone OS 3.0, but to be honest, I've got a pressing deadline for some high profile commissioned work and just don't have that luxury. Sorry to be a tease but you'll hear more about the commissioned work very soon!

All I will say is that Apple have delivered on pretty much everything (except for video capture).

iPhone OS 3.0 is a hugely significant release delivering on many different levels.

From the user viewpoint, delivering cut and paste (OK really we should call it Cut, Copy, Paste and Undo), MMS messaging, Search, yadda yadda.... All features that make the iphone eminently more useable.

From the developers standpoint, delivering over 1,000 new APIs opening up the iPhone like a sardine can, exposing tonnes more functionality to enable developers to create much richer applications and also exploding the monetisation aspects of the apps with multiple systems for commerce.

They've also introduce huge opportunities for brand new markets by opening up the iPhone to more closely integrate with hardware and accessories via wired or bluetooth connections, transforming the iPhone to a control surface for yet to be designed bits of kit.

And let's not forget the huge potential of the Turn by Turn GPS announcement welcoming Tom Tom, Garmin and anyone else who wants to create a stellar GPS application.

Oh yeah, and push notifications and new media browser and......

Well you get my drift!

But this is still only half of the picture.

When the new iPhone is launched in June, yes when, not if, there will be a host of new hardware developments included in there to take advantage of this additional functionality, along with some new features. Extra Memory and Video Recording to name but two (perhaps even a backward facing camera for video conferencing).

So all in all, a solid release for Apple and something to look forward to for the release of the new iPhone platform in June.

Hmm, June is six months after December isn't it?

I'm just sayin'

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Todays the day!

Yup, it's the day of the Apple 3.0 preview and as usual here in the UK, we have a full days work to put in until the event at 5pm GMT (Someone please correct me if I'm wrong!)

I have to admit, until the advent of the iPhone, the whole mobile space space left me completely cold. I've always loved gadgets and technology but mobile phones, nah!

Never even considered getting a smart phone before the iPhone and the last phone I used for business was one of the old Nokias, very efficient, great battery life, did what it said on the tin. When I became self employed, I thought I needed a phone (before the iPhone was a glimmer on the horizon) so I went out and bought a Motorola RAZR phone....

.... errrm yeah, let's just move on at that point.

I've never really had a phone that I fully understood, or was able to confidently say that I knew how to operate all its functions.

I always thought that a phone with a data connection would be a great idea but to be honest, the data plans always seemed so confusing, expensive and well, just plain confusing. I just knew that I'd end up leaving it on and running up a huge bill or such like.

The iPhone changed both these perceptions in one fell swoop by making the UI a delight to use, removing all the complications with the data plan and ensuring that you paid a fixed price each month no matter how much data you consumed (unless you went abroad!).

So the iPhone changed completely my take on the mobile phone and I saw the light on just how powerful mobile technology could be and how important it's likely to be over the next few years.

This afternoons iPhone 3.0 preview should be very interesting in illustrating what Apple intend to do in the light of competition from the Android phone and the Palm Pre. They already have a two year lead on these devices so know they have the opportunity to turn the screw that much more. I'd really hate to be an executive at Palm waiting to see what Apple announce as I think it's pretty well acknowledged that Palm are betting the company on the Pre being successful. Regardless on what features are announced today, it's still only half the story as Apple are most likely lining up to release the 3rd generation iPhone in the summer with new and upgraded hardware features!

Perhaps I should clarify one point though.

To me the iPhone isn't a mobile phone, it's my pocket Mac that just happens to be able to make phone calls. So perhaps I'm still not a mobile phone fan after all.

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A tale of two Macs (part 2)...

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm settling in to what on the face of it, could be a quite complex monitor setup. With the left hand monitor permanently connected to Mac Pro 1, a right hand monitor permanently connected to Mac Pro 2, finished off with a monitor connected to both via a KVM.

The issue arises that the monitors at each end are displaying the main monitor for each Mac but if I want to work on a app, it's easier to have the app displayed on the central monitor.

Now it's easy enough to drag apps from one monitor to another, but I much prefer keyboard shortcuts, so I make use of MercuryMover from Helium Foot Software to move application windows.

So if I'm working on an app on Mac Pro 1 and the app window in focus is on the left hand monitor, I just hit CTRL CMD C and the window is shunted onto the central monitor, resized to an predetermined size and positioned right ban in the centre. If I want to return the app window to the left hand monitor, CTRL CMD L and it's sent back across to the left.

So if I'm working on an app on Mac Pro 2 and the app window in focus is on the right hand monitor, I just hit CTRL CMD C and the window is shunted onto the central monitor, resized to an predetermined size and positioned right bang in the centre. If I want to return the app window to the right hand monitor, CTRL CMD R and it's sent back across to the right.

You can easily create loads of keybaord shortcuts for size and/or position using MercuryMover

The other utility I'm using a lot now that the menu bars are right over on the left or right hand side is DejaMenu. A simple little utility that pops up the application menu right under your mouse cursor, no matter where you are on the screen. It reduces considerably the amount of travelling you need to do via the mouse. Initiated by a keyboard combo, I've set this up on a spare button on each mouse so the menu bar is but one click away!

I've covered both these applications in a ScreenCastsOnline show - SCO0175 - Working with Large Monitors (and Small!)

Oh, and not forgetting Launchbar of course!

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A tale of two Macs....

If you're a regular ScreenCastsOnline viewer, you might have seen this weeks episode "SCO0191 - Project: Mac Pro Update" in which I relate the tale of acquiring a second Mac Pro to add to my production rig. It was quite an intense process to put this show togther as it's probably only 40% screencast, the rest is narrative which I try to illustrate with graphics etc,. Takes a long time to put those type of shows together but based on the comments on the ScreenCastsOnline forum and via email, it seems to have been worth the effort!

One of the downsides of it taking so long to put together is that I had to skip one section on some of the utilities that make using the multiple monitor setup more effective. Since putting the show together, I've also had to make a slight change to the configuration.

I describe in the show using three monitors, one for each MP and one that is shared between both using a KVM switch. I originally wanted to use a single mouse and keyboard with the setup, and again, this was facilitated by the KVM. The problem was that the mouse (a Logitech MX revolution with Steermouse drivers) seemed to be misbehaving when shared via the KVM.

The problem was the the top mouse button along with the tilt wheel didn't work via the KVM. I also noticed that the mouse when switched to the left hand MP, occasionally froze. Not good.

Despite experimenting using the mouse USB dongle in several different ports in the KVM, I couldn't fix it.

The only option was to plug the USB dongle directly into the MP bypassing the KVM. This of course meant that I needed a second mouse for the 2nd Mac Pro, and brought into service my spare laptop mouse. The keyboard worked perfectly, so switching via the KVM allowed me to switch the central monitor and the keyboard.

After a days usage, it became apparent that the dual mouse configuration actually produced some benefits.

Each directly connected monitor is the main monitor for the connected machine and is intended to be on permanently so I can see the menu bar and the dock of each machine. If I want to use one machine and monitor something on the other, I can just make sure the app is viewable on the main screen on the "unswitched" machine and all is well. If previously I wanted to activate something on the "unswitched" machine, I had to manually switch across, click something, and switch back. Now I can just move to the second mouse and click.

Much simpler!

So I'm now glad the mouse didn't work properly via the KVM.

I'll blog about the utilities I use to enhance my usage of the multiple monitor setup tomorrow.

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iPhone 3.0 OS Event

Well that was a shocker! Mind you, it shouldn't have been. The last big iPhone OS event was in March of 2008. And what a doozy that was. My recollection was that we weren't expecting that much but Apple absolutely nailed it with a whole slew of features to allow developers to take advantage of previously unaccessible bits of the hardware.

You have to wonder if they can come up with a similar range of enhancements to v3.0 of the iPhone OS and SDK, on the understanding that they probably won't be announcing any new versions of the iPhone (yet!), or any release date for the fabled Apple touchscreen 'Netbook"

So what could they include based on the current hardware platform?

Quite a bit probably!

Push notifications seem to have disappeared from view despite being talked about since the middle of last year.

Turn by turn navigation on GPS?

Bluetooth enhancements - Wouldn't it be great to hook up an Apple wireless keyboard ore even wireless syncing with your Mac.

My personal bugbear (?) at the minute and that's the ability to manage your applications from your Mac and by that I mean the arrangement of the apps on the iPhone screens.

I'd also like them to implement some form of text search to find applications. I'm up to several pages now and it's really difficult sometimes to even find an application I don't use that often.

And that's not even looking at any of the enhancements they might have up their collective sleeves for supporting the enterprise, something that figured very heavily in the iPhone 2.0 OS.

So lot's for them to cover but more than likely, most things announced on Tuesday we won't even have considered.

But there could be one tiny thing that would start the bells ringing throughout the land....

Cut & Paste

We shall see!

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