Scriptplayground Network

Apple unveiled iPhone 2 at WWDC earlier today. Despite many mockups, it does not have video conferencing or all the other wacky features people guessed about.

However, it does sport 3G (of course), GPS and a lower price tag, with the 8GB model for $199. The phone will be available on July 11th.

Will I buy one on July 11th? Not sure, will you?

Resolved: As it turns out, Charles does indeed change those settings, but for some reason didn’t revert them when it closed. Leaving the Network dialog box open will show an alert message that the settings are changed and then will show those 2 boxes checked/un-checked depending on whether Charles is running or not.

Update: Mark (in the comments of this post) has informed me this could in fact be caused by Charles “Web Debugging Proxy” tool, so I will be investigating this further.

Has anyone else noticed that WebKit installed using a nightly build tends could be to add adding a 127.0.0.1 web proxy? This essentially means the computer is linked to itself. This was a common “attack” in the IRC days that script kiddies played on each other, but is it possible a legitimate piece of software is doing this?

See the attached screenshot to understand the problem.

Simply un-checking that box stops the error, but it will make you scratch your head if your not aware of it.

After recently upgrading to Aperture version 2.0 I was informed that the Canon 30D was one of the various cameras not supported by Apple at this time. At first I got mad, cursed at the computer and then started of possible alternatives. I could run out and buy a new camera but I figured I may want to look at much less drastic options.

Bibble 4
The first 3rd party alternative I tried was Bibble 4. This application was rated very high in the photography industry and overall works well. However, I did notice the interface was clunky and the price tag was about 3/4 the cost of Aperture.. not really something I wanted to spend.

That being said, Bibble does have tethering options, but not in the sense I was after. Bibble is setup to monitor a folder, and import those images, but you have to mess with the camera controls directly on the camera.

DSLR Remote Pro
This was the second application I looked into, but was unable to give it a test-drive due to the Windows-only support. I am sure it is a good application, but I am not able to comment personally. Maybe in the future I will install it, but back to the issue at hand.

EOS Capture
Canon ships a CD of cool applications with a new camera, but just like everyone else, I lost the disk. I figured, no problem, I will just head over to canon.com and download the software. Well, that would be the ideal solution, but Canon only offers updates on their site. Rather than spend more money to get a CD I called up a friend and temporarily borrowed his CD, long enough to install the capture application.

With it all installed I hooked up my camera to the MacBook Pro and was certainly naive to think it would all just work. After some searching I found Canon had posted a new firmware for the 30D so I downloaded and installed that.

Once again I attached the camera to the computer and finally I was able to control the cameras settings and shutter remotely from my computer.

This was at least a good start to solving my ultimate problem, which was of course the ability to “tether” my 30D for Aperture 2. Once the capture software was working properly I assigned a specific directory in my Pictures/ folder where all captured photos would be stored.

Getting the photos into Aperture
The trick here is forgetting that Aperture can even tether on its own because it doesn’t work for my camera. That being said, I created a new project in Aperture and assumed I could add a watcher on my directory I created within the capture software. Well once again, Aperture amazes me with its lack of support for the simplest things.

Automating the import process
With the help of an Automator script I was able to assign a watcher to the directory that I picked in the capture application. This script monitors that folder and sends new files to be imported into Aperture which ultimately end up in my project.

Working as one
As you can see, following these simple steps I have achieved the tether-like ability in Aperture 2. Now I would prefer an official solution from Apple, but for now this works quite well.

You can find some still life samples on flickr which were shot using this setup.

Of course you can adapt this guide to any other DSLR camera as long as it has a capture utility that works.

The title kind of says it all, but basically my overall view on Apple is starting to shift. First, the locked down nature of the iPhone really annoyed me as a developer, but I understood the security dilemma so I let it go. Now Steve is back in the spotlight saying Flash isn’t right for the iPhone because it is processor heavy. When he really should be saying, it won’t work because the iPhone can’t handle it, and the battery would drop off even faster. I guess Adobe should really work better on the mobile stuff.

Its funny though, because my old Nokia 6682 had Flash Player, worked great, I even developed a mobile CMS for my web sites to keep them maintained when not in front of my computer.

But back to the argument at hand here, being about Apple. The latest news is the development kit is now available, but not for free?? Are you kidding me, do they actually want to make me pay and check it in through them? Great, none of the cool apps on my jailbroken phone will exist because they are from independent developers. What does that mean? Strike 2…

Update: This quote from the Flash comment made me actually laugh out loud.

“They’ve been drifting apart for years; Apple can make do, but the question is really what about Adobe?” said Rick Chapman, editor of software-industry newsletter Softletter.

Adobe does not need Apple, remember Windows?? The OS that is used by the majority, and yes I see the irony of a Mac fan (me) saying this, but the title of the post should explain that. haha

…To be continued.

MacHeist has been all the rage this past few weeks and I finally got a moment to write about it. Basically this site is the ultimate OS X software bundle valued at over $360.00 which is being sold for the low price of $49. When you purchase a bundle you get to determine which charities receive the donation and you can even split across all 10 of them.

Overall the concept has gained a lot of publicity and for good reason, some do think the concept is bad since they are making so much money from it and basing it on indie software, but I for one think it is a cool concept and have already bought my bundle of cool software.