Steve Jobs: 1955 - 2011

Forever Steve, Forever Apple. Thank You.



Apple Store Ala Moana Center, Honolulu, HI. The light is off. Photo by Ryan Ozawa.

http://www.apple.com

More on Mel's Macintosh Universe Blog

Apple iPhone Bars Inaccurate

I find it rather funny that Apple iPhone users have been duped since 2007 that their hi-tech phones have been giving them strong signal strength when for many, it just was not true.

The company released a statement saying that it discovered (to its surprise) that its algorithm for calculating signal strength for display as one to five bars has been incorrect since 2007. - Tidbits, July 2, 2010

 Users of the new iPhone 4 have reported significant loss of signal strength when the devices were held in a certain way. Too funny. You spend all of that money for an expensive, fancy phone and suddenly it does not perform as expected.

I am happy I never bought into the iPhone or any other cellular devices in all the years that cellular have been available to consumers. (Generally I don't like the monthly pricing of all cellular phone plans nor do I like to be bothered by ringing phones when I am away from home or the office.)

This latest technological setback for Apple comes on the heals of recent data bandwidth rollbacks imposed on the iPhone and Apple's iPad by their only cellular vendor, AT & T.

• Apple admits iPhone bars Inaccurate

Hot Hawaiian Surf

I made this video short over the weekend. It's a bodyboarding surf video taken from the top of the Kapahulu Groin in Waikiki.

This project began innocently enough over the weekend after I attended a car show (photos coming soon) at nearby Kapiolani Park. After taking numerous photos at the show I walked over to the beach, shot a few pictures and shot a dozen or so video clips of the kids body surfing.

Next thing I know I was at home, on my Apple MacBook Pro looking at the clips on iMovie and starting the assembly process. I was expecting to make like a clip of about 40 seconds to a minute long. After cutting the clips and assembling them, I decided I need music. So I hunted on the internet for some good instrumental tracks which I found on GarageBand.com.

Got this song called "Action Theme" by Matthew Shell. Great guitar piece of about 2:50 in length. After merging the music with the clips, I decided I needed more clips. So back to the beach I went on the next day to take more video.

Last night I was at home, and assembled the rest of the pieces together with iMovie. Cleaned up the video, tweaked the audio, trimmed a little more here and there, added titles and finally had iMovie export the clip as an m4v file and played it in Quicktime. It looked great at full screen mode on my Mac.

Shortly after the clip was uploaded to YouTube.

This whole process was a learning experience for me as I got myself more familiarized with iMovie 09. I still consider myself a novice to iMovie even though I've been using it since Augustr 2009. So far this clip has turned out to be my most polished of edited works since I started using the app. I've mostly made one shot, political oriented clips for Senator Sam Slom, the Hawaii Tea Party and a couple of campaigns. I've dabbled with other clip subjects such as recording airplane landings and the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds.

This time I learned how to mix music with the native audio source, manipulate the transitional elements and even how to do a voice-over, which I abandoned during the final cut.

iMovie is a great little program that Apple bundles for free with all of their currently shipping Macintosh computers. It's a great little program if your video production needs are not too ambitious. It's great for cutting clips that will go to YouTube or possibly over to your local cable access channel. Depending on the camera you use, your video can either be output as a standard definition or high definition show.

Overall the process took me some time: About 4 hours for the two days at the beach actually filming the clips (I also took a lot of still pictures). Another 2 or 3 hours searching Garageband.com looking for music, downloading and auditioning a number of instrumental tracks for the clip. Finally assembly of the clip in iMove took another 4 hours or more at least. There were 26 separate clips to go through, many segments with only churning water and hardly any action (all cut), a tiny fragments of good stuff that had to be clipped and edited together.



Hardware used: Canon S5 iS Digital still camera. This is one of two low end video cameras that I own. The Canon is primarily a still camera but has a decent, standard definition video capability. Most of the videos I posted to YouTube in the last few years were made with this camera.



Apple MacBook Pro 15 inch laptop computer running Snow Leopard 10.6.3. Bought this last year and have been enjoying it since.

Software: Apple iMovie, Apple iTunes, Apple iPhoto, and Mozilla Firefox.

First Impressions of Apple's iPad

The following is based on a very few minutes of hands on tryout of an iPad at the Honolulu Apple Store.



Got my first look and try on the Apple iPad at the Ala Moana Apple Store. It's a nice device that can do a lot of things like web browsing, book reading and purchasing, music playing, some movie viewing, youtube, word processing and office tasks with iWorks, photos and a more. It's bigger than an iPod Touch and Nintendo DSi, but smaller than most Netbook computers. It is not a full on computer as it cannot do things like flash or be connected to a wired network. It is a nice device that I may reconsider purchasing in the not so distant future.



The big problem I have with books and other content that is available for sale through the iTunes books, app and movie store is DRM. I was not given a very clear explanation as to whether or not the purchased, proprietory content can be easily transferred at no extra cost to another iPad or iPod Touch or iPhone that the end user may own. I was clearly told that book content from the iTunes store cannot be viewed on your regular Macintosh computer.

The nice thing that I found about book reading on this device is that you can turn the book in either the horizontal or vertical mode and that the fonts and type size can be adjusted to whatever you like. Pages turn seamlessly with a move of a finger.

There is a kindle app available for the iPad as well as other Apple hardware such as the Macintosh. Books bought from Amazon.com to play on the Kindle are not compatible with the book viewer that comes standard with the iPad. Again, DRM getting in the way.

While I did not try it, I was told by the salesperson at Apple that the iPad can also read PDF. There are a lot of public domain books as well as millions of other types of documents available online as PDF files, usually for free. But then again most every other computing device can read a PDF which means you don't need an iPad to view them.



The onscreen keyboard is nice and easier to type with than the ones on the iPod Touch or iPhone. A better choice would be an external keyboard which is available for the device.

One thing about the all touch interface... it leaves the glass surface of the iPad full of fingerprints and grease streaks from hands. A daily cleaning of the touch surfaces will be the order of the day.



There is a YouTube app that specifically plays any and all YouTube videos. Shown above is my video of a Hawaiian Airlines Being 717 landing in Honolulu Hawaii.

While the iPad does not do flash, it seems this app and a few others have managed to get around this limitation. There was an ABC app on the iPad I tried out that also lets you view video content from the ABC TV network.



iPad does iTunes, which means that it can play music, podcasts and other audio content as well as purchased video content from the iTunes music store. Funny how all the main features of the iPad is connected to you purchasing something from the iTunes store. I hope the music I already own and have on my Mac is transferable to the iPad.

Shown above is iTunes playing a track from a Rolling Stones album

Will I buy it? Probably will at some point. The iPad comes in two basic models of varying storage/memory sizes. All models are equipped with built in WiFi access. So if you have a home wifi network you're online. There are wifi hotspots in many places around major cities in the U.S.

The more expensive models have 3G wireles networking that you have to subscribe to from AT&T. The subscriptions are month to month and there is no long term contract. That is good. However the 3G prices are fairly high.

More Information About the iPad

• Apple iPad pages
• Meet the new Apple iPad
• iBooks for iPad
• YouTube on iPad
  
• Extended Video Review
• Steve Jobs Introduces iPad
• iPad Launch in Hawaii
• Dumb Ass Destroys an iPad
• 
  

Photos taken with Sony Cybershot U30 at the Apple Store Ala Moana, 4-12-10.

Honolulu Tea Party Express

A couple dozen citizen patriots showed up near the State Capitol this past Saturday, September 12 for the Honolulu version of "Tea Party Express." People came to sign wave against the Obama administration's health care plan, tax increases, cap n trade, bailouts, legislative pay reductions and other issues.

This post features the short video clip that I made using iMove 09 with a brand new Apple MacBook Pro laptop computer that I have in my possession at this time. The clip is rather rough, but passable for a short view. I still have a lot to learn about using iMovie and creating better clips.

Below is a slideshow from photos I shot that are posted to my Flickr photo site.

Test Drive Apple iMac

Apple iMac 07, originally uploaded by macprohawaii.

I could fall in love with this new iMac. I spent about an hour tonight playing with this at the Ala Moana Apple Store in Honolulu. I know someday soon I need to think about upgrading from my Power Mac G4 tower.
This particular Mac had a plethora of apps to fool around with including the new iWork and iLife software suites. What I ended up fooling around with for a long time was Adobe's Creative Suite Vol. 3 which consists of Photoshop, Illustrator and In-Design. Spent most of the time on InDesign creating a hypothetical document just using stuff that was on this Mac and text captured from the web. Nice.

Perhaps at the end of this year or sometime next year, I may spring for one of these. Will wait for the next version of OSX to come out before I think about buying one of these.

• Apple iMac Page
• Low End Mac: Apple iMac Value Equation
• Apple iMac Press Release

iPhone in Hawaii

Hawaii will probably be one of the last places where people in the United States will be able to get the highly anticipated Apple iPhone. While I am a big Apple fan and user of Macs and iPods, an iPhone is not a device that I am getting anytime soon. Sure there is a coolness factor associated with it and that it is laden with all kinds of neat features including audio & video playback, web surfing, text messaging and well... talking on the phone too.

Frankly I don't own a cell phone and may be one of the few people in the world that choose not to own one. The iPhone as cool as it may be, will not push me into the ranks of the millions of cell phone users.

For those waiting in line at various locations around Hawaii... "good luck". I hope you get an iPhone today. For those who will wait for later or wait forever, but want to see what the fuss is all about, check the following video feed from Hawaii:

HawaiiGeek.TV

Ryan, a self professed geek and early adopter will hopefully be lucky enough to snag one of the coveted iPhones and share his experience with all those who have or want one. Enjoy!

It was 40 Years Ago Today

It was 40 Years Ago Today
Originally uploaded by macprohawaii

"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" by The Beatles was released to the world on this date, June 1, 1967 on Capitol Records. I've owned this album and variations of it on LP vinyl, cassette, Playtape cartridge, CD and now on MP3 (ripped from my CD). 40 years ago, I never imagined I'd be listening to this classic album on a CD, much less on a Macintosh computer or an iPod!

It's coincidental that Apple Computer and EMI Records started selling DRM-free music at the iTunes Store this week after making a big announcement about this in April. I was pleasantly surprised to see iTunes feature the back catalog of Paul McCartney to the iTunes store in conjunction with the EMI tracks. Could The Beatles classic recordings such as Sgt. Pepper be making it to digital soon?

Additional Links

• Sgt. Peppers' Lonely Hearts Club Band
• The Beatles official website
• iTunes User Reports at Macintouch
• Apple Launches iTunes Plus
• iTunes Plus Personal Info Raises Hackles
• Beatles coming to iTunes in 2008

Photo: Taken from my Power Mac G4 running iTunes while playing the Sgt. Pepper album.