GigaOM » Apple

Looks like iCloud will get some big upgrades at WWDC

Erica Ogg — Mon, 14 May 2012 17:40:41 +0000

On Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple will announce it is adding new photo and video syncing services to iCloud at its June developers’ conference, something it’s heard from unnamed sources that are “familiar with the matter.”

These improvements are said to include the ability to not just sync photos across devices, but also to share photos and albums outside of Photostream, and allow others to comment on the photos.

Videos will apparently get some iCloud love too: Right now Photostream only syncs photos between Macs, iPads, iPhones and iPod touch devices. According to the Journal’s report, videos will also have the ability to be synced through Photostream or something similar.

These iCloud improvements are said to be part of the next version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 6, which will be previewed for developers at the show – just as 9to5Mac said last week in its report on Apple’s plans for its own mobile mapping service.

It’s remarkable how quickly Apple has moved to build up its iCloud services, particularly for a company that previously hasn’t had much success with networked services. Apple CEO Tim Cook has embraced iCloud, calling it “a strategy for the next decade,” and users have responded by signing up in droves: iCloud was introduced at the same developer conference last year and as of April, Apple said more than 125 million customers had signed up for it.

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iOS 5: Photo Stream, warts and all

Mark Crump — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 15:10:40 +0000

Updated. The overall theme of iOS 5 is disconnecting your device from your computer. Photo Stream eliminates one big pain point I had with my iPhone: getting photos off of it. I’d take a funny picture with my iPhone and completely forget about it. I might show or send it to one or two people, but half the time, syncing photos was too much of a pain for me to bother.

Now, with iCloud and Photo Stream, that hassle has been eliminated. Once I take a photo with my iPhone, as long as all my devices are connected to a Wi-Fi network, my photo will appear on all of them. My photos also appear on my Mac (in either Aperture or iPhoto, so long as they’re installed), or in the My Pictures folder on Windows. It’s one part of iCloud I can say worked exactly as advertised, but even so, it has both strengths and flaws.

Setting up Photo Stream

On a Mac: Go to the iCloud System Preferences pane and make sure Photo Stream is checked.

iPhoto: To enable Photo Stream in iPhoto, just go into the Preferences and make sure Photo Stream is checked.

Once you’ve done that, click on Photo Stream in the sidebar and you’ll see your photos.

Aperture: To enable Photo Stream in Aperture, just go into Preferences and make sure Photo Stream is checked. In this case, I’ve intentionally left Upload unchecked since I don’t want photos imported from my DSLR to go into the Photo Stream; just those I sync.

Once that’s done, click on Photo Stream in the sidebar to see your synced photos.

On a PC: First, download and install the iCloud Control Panel. Once you launch it — you guessed it — make sure Photo Stream is checked. You will also need to click on Options next to it to specify the Upload and Downloads directory.

The gotcha: You can’t delete from Photo Stream

Photo Stream’s directive is simple: keep either the last 1,000 photos you’ve taken or the last 30 days worth, whichever comes first. Update: It’s only the last 1,000 photos you’ve taken on an iOS device, not on iCloud.com. But right now, it seems to require a chicken, two goats, and a shaman to get a photo deleted. None of my devices can delete directly from Photo Stream, and deleting the source image on the device where it originally appeared doesn’t delete it from Photo Stream.

I’m perfectly fine with Photo Stream uploading my Camera Roll on a moment’s notice. What I’m not thrilled with is not being able to delete from Photo Stream. Part of my job description is taking iOS screenshots and during a heavy review week (like this week), I’ll take a ton of screenshots. I don’t need them or want them after they’ve been put in the article. Now, I’m kinda stuck with them. There’s been a lot of attention paid to this Photo Stream failing, so I expect Apple to issue a fix soon.

Update: Apple points out that you can delete photos, but only by completely resetting your Photo Stream data, and removing all images stored there:

You can reset your Photo Stream at icloud.com. This removes your photos from iCloud but keeps photos already on the device. For more information, see Photo Stream Help.

Photo Stream photos can be removed from your device by turning Photo Stream off in iOS settings or in OS X Lion System Preferences. You can also delete any photos imported into your iPhoto or Aperture library on a Mac, or in the folder they’re imported to on a PC.

Until then, be careful what you take pictures of if you plan to make Photo Stream a part of your digital life.

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How to use iPhoto as a recipe manager and meal planner

Dave Greenbaum — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 16:43:56 +0000

One of the most dreaded questions in any household is “what’s for dinner?” The question is fraught with complex issues of family responsibilities, finances, and personal preferences. While it won’t do the dishes, iPhoto has become an indispensable recipe management and meal planning tool in my family.

Many people have a collection of recipe clippings culled from magazines, newspapers, and the supermarket. But where do you put the clippings? Ideally, you type it out and put it in a recipe manager (my favorite is SousChef). If I only had the time. What I do instead is either scan the recipe directly into iPhoto from my Mac, or if I can’t easily clip the recipe, I’ll take a picture of it with my iPhone. When I see a recipe I like on the web, I take a screen shot to easily get it into iPhoto, too.

Once in the iPhoto, I rename the photo to match the actual recipe title, and then in the keywords I put the important ingredients that I’d need to know when shopping such as “chicken breast” or “celery.” This is also a handy way to search for recipes when something is on sale or in season. Then I just drop it in an album I call “Cookbook.”

I also have an album called “Current Recipes.” I, and other members of the family, will put especially interesting recipes into this album. I’ll sort them in the album to create both variety and efficiency in shopping. I have the recipes synced to a password-protected MobileMe site as well for ease of browsing. With iCloud’s Photo Stream feature, which arrives in September, this should be even easier.

You can also sync those albums to your iPhone and iPad so that you always have all your recipes close at hand, which can be useful if you stop in at the grocery store on the way home from work. Not only is this a great reference, but recipes can be easily emailed from the iPhone to whoever’s doing the shopping.

With the recipes in digital form, cooking with iOS in the kitchen is also breeze. I’ll use either my iPad or my iPhone to check out the recipe(s) I need. After cooking, I’ll return to iPhoto and modify the ratings and notes for the recipe so we know whether to make it again. If it was lousy, we delete it from the album.

Keeping my recipes in iPhoto has reduced our reliance on eating take-out, as well as being a great way for everyone to contribute to dinner. Considering every Mac comes with iPhoto, it’s also cost-effective and easy, too. Anything you think might add even more to my system?

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How to Keep iPhoto Events in Order With Time Adjustments

Geoffrey Goetz — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 20:00:36 +0000

We have all seen it happen: the bride kissing the groom before the father has a chance to give his daughter away. I’m speaking, of course, about the sorting of photos in an iPhoto Event. Taking the time to sync the internal clocks on each camera you own is always good, but there is a way to adjust the time of all of your photos in your library itself, too.

Take Photos of the Current Time in Safari

First, you’ll need a photo of the current time taken from each camera whose internal clock is out of sync. Be sure to disable the flash to avoid screen glare before you complete these steps:

Launch Safari on your Mac and open the URL of an established “time authority” that will display the current time (http://www.time.gov/ for example).
Using each camera, take a photo of Safari as it displays the correct time.
Import the photo of the correct time from each camera into your iPhoto Library.

Create Smart Albums for Each Camera Model

Now that you have photos of the correct time imported into your iPhoto Library from each camera you own, you will need to isolate the photos for each camera:

From the File menu on iPhoto, create a new Smart Album (one for each camera).
Use the drop down list to set the “Camera Model” condition of the Smart Album to match the relevant camera model for each album you create.
Keep creating Smart Albums until you have a unique Smart Album for each camera.

More Than One Camera of the Same Model

If you happen to have multiple cameras of the same model, then you must add a second field, “Any Text” to the conditions of the Smart Album and set the value for this field will be set to the serial number of the camera as follows:

Select one of the photos for each camera of the same model.
From iPhoto’s File menu, select “Reveal in Finder” to show where the original photo is located in the Finder and open the photo using the Preview application.
From Preview’s Tools menu, select the “Show Inspector” menu item and navigate to the EXIF tab to find the value of the serial number.
Enter the serial number as the value for the “Any Text” condition of the Smart Album.
Again, keep creating Smart Albums until you have one unique Smart Album for each camera.

Determine the Time Adjustment for Each Camera

By comparing the time represented in the photo to the time stamp on the picture itself, you can determine the amount of the adjustment that must be made. To determine the adjustment for each camera:

Select only the photo of the correct time as it was displayed in Safari within each Smart Album.
From the Photo menu in iPhoto, select the “Adjust Date and Time…” menu item and copy down the time difference between the time shown in the photo and the time stamp of the image file.
Click cancel, and repeat for each camera’s Smart Album.

Adjust the Time for Each Camera

Now that you have a unique Smart Album defined for each camera, and you know the exact time adjustment required for each camera, all that’s left to do is adjusting the time for all photos in the iPhoto Library for each camera.

Select one of the Smart Albums you created and select all of the photos in the same Smart Album.
‘From the Photo menu in iPhoto, select the “Adjust Date and Time…” menu item and modify the date/time of all of the photos in these Smart Library, using the interval you discovered when comparing the time displayed in the image to the time stamp of the photo from that camera.
Be sure to check “Modify original files.”
Click Adjust, and repeat for each camera’s Smart Album.

It may seem like a lot of work, but once you’ve done it once, it should hopefully help keep your iPhoto Events in chronological working order for a long time to come, without requiring you to make manual changes each to the metadata of each photo you add.

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How-To: Import iPhone Images When iPhoto Fails

Geoffrey Goetz — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 17:30:40 +0000

From SMS messages to saved images in Safari, there are dozens of iOS apps that both create and edit photos, not even including the stock camera app. When things go well, iPhoto can transfer these images to your Mac’s library quickly and easily. But what if things don’t go so well? What if certain photos refuse to leave your iPhone? What are your options?

Snow Leopard’s Image Capture Application

Most of the time you can isolate the culprit by individually selecting other images with Apple’s Image Capture application. Upon launching it, select the iPhone from the list of devices on the left. The contents of the iPhone’s camera roll should then appear on the right. From here you can select files individually, or choose to import all images. There’s even a drop down selector where you can choose where to download the images to.

This is also a great utility to use if you just want to delete a large number of images from your iPhone. Unfortunately, this application utilizes the same technology as iPhoto, and will therefore choke on the same erroneous images.

iPhone Filesystem as a Flash Drive

There are several third-party applications for the Mac that will allow you to mount your iPhone as an external flash drive and retrieve files. I like to use Macroplant’s iPhone Explorer. Since this application is looking at the images on the iPhone as files, it uses a subtly different technique than either iPhoto’s or Image Capture’s import functionality.

Once launched, navigate to the folder titled DCIM on the iPhone. This folder will contain all of the images stored in the iPhone’s camera roll. Simply drag and drop the folder onto the desktop or any other location. If all you want to do is get rid of all of your iPhone’s images, then select all of the contents of the DCIM folder and delete. There have been times when my iPhone’s camera app would start behaving badly and it appeared as if the camera was not working at all. Clearing out the DCIM folder fixed the issues I was having.

iTunes iOS Backup Files

Now we’re entering extreme desperation territory. Image Capture has failed to import the images, and all attempts to copy the files directly have failed. The only course of action remaining is to see if the latest backup of the iPhone in iTunes still has the photos. For this reason, I always backup before I import photos.

Besides being useful for a restore operation, you can directly access the = files included in any device backup. The backed-up files are located in the user’s /Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup folder. The problem is that the names of the content don’t make any sense. There are however third-party applications that can translate this layer of misdirection.

I’ve been using Padraig’s iPhone Backup Extractor for a while now. After launching the application, I simply choose which iOS device’s backup files I want to extract. After making the selection, I scroll down until I see a line item labeled “iOS Files”. Select it and click on the extract button, and you’ll be prompted for a location to extract the files too. In the extracted folder ,there will be a DCIM folder containing all of the photos from your camera roll.

Even if the iPhone is a closed platform, that doesn’t mean you have to access its content only via official means. Hopefully these three different methods for getting at your device’s photos will help you out of any jam you may find yourself in with the camera roll.

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Flickr Photos Get Interesting on the Apple TV

Bryan Schuetz — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 16:30:20 +0000

I picked up the tiny new Apple TV over the weekend and have really been enjoying it so far. Aside from all its other awesome features, it’s just nice to have some music streaming on the home theater system while nice big photos cycle through on the HDTV. Choose some ambient music, and it’s the ideal audio/video white noise for getting some work done.

The only real problem is a dearth of quality photos for the screensaver. My own photos aren’t up to scratch, and the limited ones Apple includes get old pretty quickly. What I really wanted was a screensaver with a large and constantly renewing set of high-quality photos.

Flickr Integration

The first thing I did was to have a look at the included Flickr integration to see if that provided a solution. You can use saved searches, and pull photos from Flickr contacts, but neither of those options really solved the problem. A saved search limits the scope and reduces the overall quality of the set, while contacts, no matter how good or prolific, just can’t provide enough material to keep things interesting. Eventually, I realized that the photos showing up on Flickr’s Explore page were the ones that I wanted.

Things Get Interesting

If you’re not familiar with how photos get picked to be featured on the explore page, it all has to do with a mysterious algorithm cooked up in the Flickr labs that calculates a photo’s interestingness. No one’s really sure exactly how a photo’s interestingness score is calculated, but it’s thought to involve some alchemical mixture of a photo’s tags, groups, comments, views, traffic, favorites, and other sundry properties. Whatever the exact ingredients may be, the top 500 interesting photos that end up on the explore page every day seem to be exactly what I’m looking for.

The problem is that there’s no real way to tell the Apple TV to use just those “interesting” photos for the screensaver. So, inspired by a couple of old and now defunct attempts to overcome this very same roadblock, I decided to write a quick PHP script and take advantage of the nice Flickr API to make it all work. I created a dummy flickr account named TABScreensaver which, thanks to my script, now marks each of the day’s most interesting photos as a favorite.

A Solution

Now, anyone who wants a large and constantly renewing collection of interesting photos for their Apple TV screensaver can simply add TABScreensaver as a Flickr contact and choose it’s favorite photos for the screensaver. Every evening, the set will be automatically updated with those photos picked to be featured on the Flickr explore page.

In the long run, I’d really like to see Apple improve the photo sharing features on the Apple TV so this kind of workaround isn’t necessary. It would be great if we could subscribe to RSS feeds with image enclosures, or add Flickr groups, or pull images from a Twitter stream, or combine sources, or lots of other cool stuff I’m too dim to think up. Who knows? Maybe if we get an App Store for it, our biggest problem will be sifting through a glut of Apple TV photo sharing apps trying to find the right one. It’ll be a nice problem to have.

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MobileMe Gallery App Finally Goes Universal

Darrell Etherington — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 21:41:28 +0000

Apple just released version 1.2 of the MobileMe Gallery iOS app, and it brings support for the iPad, along with Retina Display-enhanced graphics and fast app switching on iOS 4+. iPhone and iPad users can now also view friends’ MobileMe galleries even if they themselves aren’t MobileMe subscribers.

It’s great to see Apple finally getting on the update wagon with its own apps. Remote recently got the universal treatment, bringing much-needed improvements beyond just multi-device support. Now it’s time to get cracking on those universal versions of the iWork suite, Cupertino.

Gallery and Video: Scenes from iPad Lines

Josh Pigford — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 15:07:29 +0000

Here’s a slideshow and video from iPad lines in San Francisco, CA, Durham, NC and Southlake, TX. Fun was clearly had by everyone involved. Maybe.

NextPrevious

Picture 1 of 25

iPhone Quick Tip: Extract Photos From Captured Video

Nick Santilli — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:00:41 +0000

I love having the luxury of video capture on my iPhone 3GS, because it’s available to me anytime I need it. The only problem is, it’s either video or photo capture, so I’m potentially out of luck if I captured one and decidedly would have rather had the other. Yeah, I kind of like having my cake and eating it all in a single sitting too.

The good news — in this particular case at least — is that if you capture the event in video, you have a pretty good chance of getting decent still photos out of it when you’re through.

While this tip is aimed at iPhone 3GS users who can shoot their own video, it’s possible to use on any model when viewing video. The beauty of editing 3GS video that you’ve shot, is the frame scrubber that is made available for editing purposes. That feature just makes it a lot easier to pinpoint the image that you want to pull from the video content. (This becomes important when one frame is blurry, and the next is not.)

Once you’ve found the frame that you want to make into a photo in your iPhone album, we just need to capture it. For the best results, make sure the control bezels are hidden from the screen. Usually tapping the screen once will cause them to slide out of view. Then, to perform the screen capture, press and hold the Home button. While holding the Home button, click the Sleep button on top of the phone. You’ve now saved that movie frame to your photo library as a stand-alone picture file.

The quality of your resulting photo depends completely on the video that was captured first. If there are slow movements that limit or eliminate blur, that will give the best outcome to this process. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s better than no photos from an event at all!

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Snapture Goes Legit and Gets Cheaper

Darrell Etherington — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 23:00:27 +0000

The iPhone’s camera app is OK, but it really leaves much to be desired. That was why Snapture came to exist in the first place. Snapture is a jailbreak app that many users on that side of the fence have sworn by for quite a while now.

Now owners of legitimate, non-jailbroken devices can take advantage of the nice little suite of usability enhancements and feature additions that Snapture brings to your iPhone’s static media capture capabilities. The app has been approved by Apple and is available via the App Store.

This isn’t a pale, feature-reduced version of its former self. According to Just Another iPhone Blog, who received word directly from Snapture’s developers about the release, the app is making the switch from renegade to law-abiding citizen feature-intact.

For those of you unfamiliar with Snapture, those features include:

Patent-pending Picture-in-Picture Technology (allows users to view and delete recent photos directly on the viewfinder)
Multi-Touch Pinch and Pan Zoom (5X max)
High Speed Multishot: 3 rapid-fire snaps to capture every moment of action.
Easy Snap: Tap anywhere on screen to take a photo.

Those who’ve already been shopping around for a solid camera app alternative may rightly point out that these features aren’t really anything new (aside from that PIP thing) and can be found in other apps, but can they be found altogether in one program? Snapture is meant to be a true replacement, so that you never have to open another camera app again.

By default, your view is unobstructed in Snapture, thanks to the tap-anywhere shutter controls. Tapping an unobtrusive arrow icon at the bottom of the stream brings up your detailed controls, which allow you to turn on or off the auto level aid, and change your image resolution, along with accessing the zoom and burst fire modes. You can also email photos directly from the app, so you shouldn’t even have much cause to open up Photos.

If you’ve purchased Snapture via Cydia, you’ll be disappointed to learn that legitimate App Store customers get a special launch pricing deal on the app. For a limited time, Snapture will sell for $1.99, making it 75 percent cheaper than its jailbreak predecessor.

Kudos to Apple for being open to the advances of developers who are willing to come in from the cold. It’s one of the few reasons I still have some hope for the future of the App Store as a fair and well-run software distribution platform.

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