JustLooking Image Viewer for the Mac

JustLooking is a nice little application for OS X that previews images and lets you scroll through all the images in a given folder. It acts like Picture and Fax Viewer in Windows XP.

It is a nice free little application I use all the time on my MacBook.

Picasa for the Mac!

Yes, finally, one of my favorite free photo viewers/editors/organizers is now available on the Mac! I've just installed Picasa 3 Beta for the Mac and it looks great, pretty much the same way it looks on the PC. There area couple of trivial features not available yet on this Mac version, but nothing of consequence.

I will eventually get around to doing a write up of Picasa, but for now, I will just quickly tell you how I use it. It is a really fast viewer and it can view RAW files from many different cameras. Though lacking in detail, here is a list of supported RAW formats. You can make simple adjustments and export to JPG while controlling the size and compression of the conversion. This makes it very easy to quickly share your RAW images.

BUT, Picasa is not the best RAW converter. Any third party application that opens a RAW file has to 'guess' at what the image should look like. Picasa is not particularly good at guessing, so do not use the automated RAW conversion as the final word on the quality the image.

Picasa really shines because of it's speed, it whips through images faster then any other viewer I've seen. For this reason, Picasa is the first step in my work flow. I dump my images into a desktop folder then review them in Picasa. I delete the garbage and move images into either folders for more editing (with Lightroom), or permanent archive folders. All this is done from within Picasa.

One reason I've been so interested in Picasa for the Mac is that, unlike iPhoto, it does not mess with where your photos are stored. Once iPhoto gets a hold of your photos, god alone knows where they end up! I'm old enough to sort my own files, thank you!

Mac Vacation

I have had a MacBook since they came in 2006. I have always run XP on them (I'm on my second one now*) as the primary OS, booting into OS X
only to test web sites or edit video.

When I bought the latest one, I gave a good try to use OS X as my primary OS, but Adobe GoLive was just unusable with OS X's window management. XP gives each program a main 'background' window to segregate it from any other application. OS X does not have this, so I would have several HTML files open in GoLive, plus a browser window, Photoshop, an FTP client, and usually a word processor as well. It was all too hectic and impossible to keep track of the HTML documents in GoLive. So, I went back to using XP as the primary OS for work.

That is too bad because OS X (10.5) is really a joy to use. And if it were not for how I use GoLive, I probably would have switched full time to OS X.

But, now anytime I am not working, I'm in OS X.

I've been on vacation for the past week, so I've been running in OS X for the past week. It is really nice, it boots up fast, always goes to sleep when I close the lid, and lasts for hours on the battery.

So, basically, now I only run XP when I am working and plugged into the external monitor, keyboard, and power cord. Of course, when I go home and back to work, that will be most of the time.

OS X is, at the very least, a nice break from XP.

This post should be in no way seen as a dig at OS X, if I did not use GoLive, I would be in OS X a lot more. If I were a full time photographer, OS X would be my primary OS.

* I got a crazy good deal on a last gen model, no way you will see me with one of the shinny, firewire lacking, new ones!

Best Apple Deal Ever?

Amazingly, Amazon.com still has the last generation Apple MacBook Pro availble at a crazy low price of $1,643.99 after rebate. Just a couple of weaks ago, this was a $2500 laptop. Considering my view on the new models, this is flat out an awesome deal. Though, to be fair, the new MacBook Pro is quite a nice machine, not artificially crippled like the new MacBooks.

bad apple

My MacBook died while we were in San Antonio.

It was the logic board again. At least that is the closest I could guess, Apple Care was not overly forthcoming about it.

It was no longer under warranty as I thought $250 for and extended warranty was way too much for a $1300 computer (my last computer, a $1500 Sony, had an extended warranty of only $140).

I was annoyed.

Second major hardware defect in two years.

I called to make an appointment at a (somewhat) local Apple store to have a tech, sorry, I mean 'genius' have a look at it.

On Monday I brought it in and after 15 minutes or so of history and poking around, it was decided that the problem could not be fully diagnosed or repaired at the store.

So now I ask the dreaded, 'how much will this cost' question.

This is where things start getting a little brighter, the tech (sorry, I mean genius) says there is a flat $280 repair fee.

That is still a lot, but that covers any problem they might find. And it's a firm figure, I know what I'm looking at cost wise. And, really, the chances of getting any electronic equipment fixed for less then $250 is pretty slim. I got the impression this flat rate only applied to repairs where there was a manufacturer's defect, but I'm not certain.

Ebay tells me this Mac is worth about $600, so it's a no brainer, I tell the genius to pull the trigger and get'er gone. He boxes it up and ships it to the repair center.

That was Monday, mid day.

On Wednesday, FedEx tries to deliver a package at 9:32 am, but we are not in to sign for it.

On Thursday, I take deliver of above package.

It is the repaired MacBook.

I am $300 poorer and behind in my work having been without my tool for more then a week while I was traveling, then having it repaired. The repair was to a part Apple should have done a better job of engineering. I am annoyed and angry.

But, because Apple really does seem to go the extra mile with their customer care, I am not seething with rage.

When I bought this MacBook, it was a couple of hundred dollars less then a comparable Dell, though this is no longer the case. There are both Dell and Lenovo (IBM) ThinkPads that are similar but cheaper. Except the MacBook is still one of the very few notebooks in it's class that has a DVI port (a requirement for a desktop replacement).

So the question is, would I buy a Mac again... maybe. The size and power are good, but it lacks some basic features like a graphics card and a PCI slot. But that DVI port is a must, and not many notebooks have it. And of course, there is the advantage of being able to run both OSX and Windows on one machine.

P.S. I have a white MacBook, the picture is gray for effect only. Apple still charges a premium for the black ones, so as far as I am concerned, they can keep them.

MAC on a PC???

Oh, this was cool. Download Squad has a link to FlyakiteOSX who have assembled a bunch of hacks to that lets a PC clone the look and feel of a MAC. I tried it out for a few days and was very pleased, but in the end I had to return to Windows Classic theme. It just did not seem right. And I was getting a little confused with the keyboard shortcuts. My real MAC has a Windows keyboard where the Windows button acts as the Apple button. I love Download Squad.