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OS X Genuine Advantage
Photoshop Elements
Help System in Leopard Panned
Picasa For The Mac

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OS X Genuine Advantage

From Jim

Charles,

I already wrote about how much I agree with you about the DRM thing. But after hearing about the article at Forbes.com relating to ordering at restaurants, etc. with an iPhone, or maybe an iPod, and movie rentals coming from Fox on iTunes store, I am hoping that Apple will only use this DRM stuff for those purposes.

As I strongly agreed - IF Apple uses DRM for OS X as M$ does with 'Doze, I too am outta here - probably to Linux... Sure don't want to go that route. Am hopeful anyway...

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Hi Jim,

I do hope you're right, and I'm trying not to go off half-cocked about this, but it does end 2007 on an ominous sour note. I refuse to buy anything with DRM - CDs and DVDs, songs, and so forth unless there is absolutely no alternative. The same goes for operating systems and particularly snoopy active DRM systems like Microsoft's WGA.

It would go against type, but if Apple *isn't* planning to implement WGA-style DRM in MAc OS X, they would be wise to clear the air.

Charles

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Re: OS X Genuine Advantage

From Jim

Charles,

I agree again; hate to see Apple end this year on that note. So much so, that I wrote to Apple via their web site where one can leave comments on products, etc. Don't know if that will do much good, but at least I let them know how I feel about this. And they should clarify this issue.

Jim

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Hi Jim;

It can't hurt. I hope a lot of people will write expressing their dismay.

Charles






Photoshop Elements

From Gilberto

I read your review of Photoshop Elements 4 for the Mac. My situation is:

I just bought an iMac with OS 10X (I believe) and Leopard. I also own a PC where I have Elements 5. I need to buy a version for the Mac which I am going to use for the photo processing.

Am I going backwards by getting Elements 4 Mac? Would my tags and collections transfer?

Or is there a newer version of Elements for Macs coming out soon and I should wait for it to come out.

I am a novice at Photoshop but would like to make the most out of it. I have a Nikon D-80 and usually shoot RAW

Thanks,
Gilberto

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Hi Gilberto;

I've not used PSE cross-platorm personally, but I would be very surprised if your files created in PSE 5 for Windows would not work with PSE 4 for Mac.

I expect we will see a PSE 5 for Mac eventually. The Apple release has lagged the Windows version by a year or so in recent times. I have no word on when a release date might be.

PSE 4 for Mac is quite capable of handling RAW files. I'm not familiar with PSE 5 for Windows, so I'm not sure what it has eatures-wise that PSE 4 doesn't, but PSE 4 is a very capable program that should serve your needs well.

Charles






Help System in Leopard Panned

From: Bruce Williamson

Hi Charles,

One of the most baffling and frustrating puzzles in Leopard - definitely in the "if it wasn't broke why in the world did they fix it?" category - is the new implementation of the Help feature in each application. In Tiger clicking on Help would open up the separate Help Viewer and you could easily toggle back and forth between the app that you were trying to figure out and the Help screen that was assisting you in doing that. Now, at least in my experience, there is no way to do that! The Help system is built right into each app so that you can't toggle back and forth. You get the info you want, then you have to click the red button to close the Help window and get back to the main app screen. To go back to Help again you have to open it up again and find that specific Help feature all over again. An INCREDIBLE time waster - in fact, IMHO, the worst feature of Leopard! I would really, really, really like to see Apple "fix" Help back the way it was, along the lines of what the rumors say the 10.5.2 update is going to do with Stacks finally allowing a Folder List view. (As an added bonus, I would also like an explanation from an Apple software engineer about why they choose to change the Help feature in the first place.)

Merry Christmas to you, and I hope Santa brings that province-wide wireless broadband service to your house sooner rather than later!

Bruce

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Hi Bruce;

I think the short explanation of this and several other angularities in Leopard (eg: Stacks) is that Apple made the OS less efficient as a side-effect of dumbing the interface down for migrating Windoze folks.

Merry Christmas to you as well, and I am hopeful that we wil finally have broadband here by this time next year. The ISP that has the contract to supply wireless broadband to this area tells me that there are still regulatory hoops to jump through at the municipal level. It's never simple with governments.

Charles






Picasa For The Mac

From bscardin

I've had a MacBook Pro for a year now (and now a mini with iPhoto '08). I still dislike iPhoto and deeply miss Picasa. I keep a windows machine around just to manage photos. To me the appeal isn't photo touch up features (though Picasa is decent here) it is a robust and fast browser that I would like.

I have 15,000+ photos in hundreds of folders and Picasa makes it effortless to browse, find, slideshow, export, batch convert, make web pages, tag, move, name, etc. without importing photos deep into the bowels of some database.

I recently put a clean install of Windows on my PC and when I pointed the fresh install of Picasa back to my photos (on a different data drive) it immediately had all the folders, albums, starred images, image edits, etc. It was amazing.

With iPhoto I am always looking for photos I've imported and having to manually create albums for everything just to be able to find stuff. A big pile of pictures might work for some, but I like that Picasa keeps things organized with the folder structure and doesn't rely on a fragile database.

As for price, I would gladly pay 2x the cost of iLife for a native OS X version of Picasa. It is that good to me. (Google are you reading this??).

For anyone else reading this wishing that Picasa would come to OS X, go here:
http://tinyurl.com/367nqr and let Google know!

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Hi;

Thanks for the great report on Picasa. I'm a big fan of a lot of Google's stuff, especially their search engine and Gmail. Not so much of Google Desktop, though. Sounds like Picasa is in the positive column.

Charles




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Charles W. Moore


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