Appletell

Attention everyone who is excited about the new Finder in Snow Leopard; it isn’t new, it will look pretty much the same, and you really won’t notice a difference. John Gruber put it best on Daring Fireball:

Cocoa is just an API. It is not some sort of magic technology where you just sprinkle a ton of square brackets in your source code and you instantly get a better UI.

What should you be expecting from Apple’s Cocoa-wrapped Finder and their push for developers to go Cocoa? No new looks, but, first and foremost, greater consistency. Currently, Mac OS X’s use of Carbon and Cocoa APIs mean that though apps may look like they are using the same interface elements, Carbon apps and Cocoa apps may not be sharing the same resources for scrollbars, indicators, buttons, and other system-standard elements. Try this: Open up a Finder window and a Safari windows side by side and make sure they both have scrollbars. Now click on the desktop to make both windows inactive. Check out the scrollbar arrows! You’ll see that in Safari, a Cocoa app, the scrollbars have dimmed, and in Finder, a Carbon app, they have not.

While this is just a small overlooked issue in Leopard, it illustrates that these two APIs have separate rules that must require separate upkeep to make them look identical. With Apple wrapping all its user apps in Cocoa and pushing all developers to do the same, it will be a lot easier for applications to incorporate system standard UI elements and features and have them tie in with all other apps on the platform. Part of what is great about the Mac is that most applications work the same. “Command +“ always opens Preferences, there is always a help menu, and the program menu, by and large, conrtains the same stuff. With Cocoa all across the board, this consistecy can make the Mac even easier than it is now.

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Product: Photoshop Elements 6.0
Link: Photoshop Elements 6.0
Price: $89 USD
Rating: 8/10

In February, I reviewed a beta version of Photoshop Elements 6.0. I focused on interface, speed and features. As a whole, my review hasn’t changed too much.

In February, I wrote that “launching Photoshop Elements is a painful process. Startup took about 17 seconds: six bounces of the icon on the dock, then about 11 seconds on the splash screen. This is about the same as Photoshop Elements 4.0, which was running through emulation.“ The final version of Photoshop has most definitely improved in this area, beating CS3 for start time, taking about 10 seconds on a cold start, which is very acceptable.

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Adobe Systems Incorporated announced yesterday that Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 6 for Macintosh® is available immediately. “Since its January launch at the 2008 Macworld Expo, Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac was named “Best of Show,” and given the 2008 Editors’ Choice Awards by The Mac Observer and the 2008 Macworld Award by Macsimum News,“ the Adobe Press Release reads.

The biggest new features to Photoshop Elements 6.0 are the fact that it is now a Universal Binary, the new Photomerge technology, and a new interface and different levels of the program depending on the user’s expertise.

According to Adobe, “Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 for Macintosh runs on Leopard, (Mac OS X v 10.5.2), as well as previous versions of Mac OS X starting with 10.4.8. [...] Photoshop Elements 6 is immediately available in the United States and Canada for an estimated street price of US$89.99. Owners of previous versions of Photoshop Elements can upgrade to Photoshop Elements 6 for US$69.99 with an in-box, mail-in rebate or through http://www.adobe.com.“
Photoshop Elements 6.0 can be purchased at Apple Stores, Apple.com, Amazon.com, Best Buy Stores, BestBuy.com, Costco.com, J&R, Microcenter, NewEgg.com, Staples Stores and Staples.com.

You can read my first look reviews, on speed and features and the interface, and also keep an eye out for a final review of the final copy, coming in a few days.

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Adobe Photoshop Elements 6, due out mid-March, is touted as a large advancement over the previous version, Photoshop Elements 4. There are many new features, and the program as a whole has been further targeted at consumers, but overall, it doesn’t seem like enough has changed to call it an important release. This section of the Photoshop Elements 6 review will focus on the redesigned interface.

Looking at the demo videos on Adobe’s Photoshop Elements site, I was rather dismayed by what I saw. The color scheme seemed to be all grey, and it overall looked very oppressive. At the time, I was looking forward to Photoshop Elements 6 and hoped for the best, based upon rumors that the actual interface was different.

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Today, Google took it’s iPhone/Apple compatibility a bit further with a new iPhone-specific version of their image sharing site, Picasa. According to the company’s blog, one Google developer decided to revamp the site for the popular device when found that it had “some very cool AJAXy features,” which were designed with a “desktop web-browsing experience in mind.”

Right after Google’s homepage redesign for the iPhone, and the release of Google Gadgets for the Mac, the new Picasa interface offers easy access to albums, displays pictures with comments, and includes an easy search feature. The iPhone-friendly interface offers slideshow options as well as both landscape and portrait support (like all webpages).

“Today, I’m happy to tell you that we’ve just released this new iPhone interface for Picasa. After you go to Picasa on your iPhone and log in, you can quickly see all your albums that you’ve uploaded to Picasa Web,” the software engineer wrote in the Google Mobile Blog. “If you click on any of the albums, you can get a full view of your picture with comments from your friends. Or you can click on Slideshow, sit back and watch the pictures scroll.”

The interface is currently only available in English, thus users will have to change their language preference if they are located in an non-English-speaking country.

Via [MacNN]

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Rumors of where Apple is going to implement MultiTouch Technology have been going from the iPod all the way up to the iMac. An Apple patent (filed by Fingerworks [a company Apple bought] back in January) published today shows that MultiTouch is definitely a technology they want to implement in their product line other than the iPhone.

Many attempts have been made over the years to improve the way users interact with computers. In the beginning, cards or tapes with punched holes were used for user input. Punch cards gave way to terminals with alphanumeric keyboards and text displays, which evolved into the modern keyboard, mouse and graphical-display based graphical user interfaces. Many expect that the use of multi-finger, touch-sensitive user interfaces (“multi-touch interfaces“), such as those described in the references incorporated above, will become widely adopted for interacting with computers and other electronic devices, allowing computer input to become even more straightforward and intuitive.

The patent talks about MultiTouch gestures which could be used to invoke a number of different actions. If Apple creates a Tablet Mac, or implements MultiTouch in it’s displays or iPods, these different gestures will most likely make an appearance. The patent states there are approx. 300 different combinations per hand, so the possibilities for what Apple could do with this technology is almost endless.

Via [MacRumors]

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