Dear iPhone 4 Users,

The iPhone 4 has been the most successful product launch in Apple’s history. It has been judged by reviewers around the world to be the best smartphone ever, and users have told us that they love it. So we were surprised when we read reports of reception problems, and we immediately began investigating them. Here is what we have learned……READ MORE

CUPERTINO, California—June 28, 2010—Apple® today announced that it has sold over 1.7 million of its iPhone® 4 through Saturday, June 26, just three days after its launch on June 24. The new iPhone 4 features FaceTime®, which makes video calling as easy as one tap, and Apple’s new Retina display, the highest resolution display ever built into a phone, resulting in stunning text, images and video.

“This is the most successful product launch in Apple’s history,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Even so, we apologize to those customers who were turned away because we did not have enough supply.”……READ MORE

CUPERTINO, California—May 31, 2010—Apple® today announced that iPad™ sales have topped two million in less than 60 days since its launch on April 3. Apple began shipping iPad in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK this past weekend. iPad will be available in nine more countries in July and additional countries later this year.

“Customers around the world are experiencing the magic of iPad, and seem to be loving it as much as we do,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We appreciate their patience, and are working hard to build enough iPads for everyone.”

iPad allows users to connect with their apps, content and the Internet in a more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before. Users can browse the web, read and send email, enjoy and share photos, watch HD videos, listen to music, play games, read ebooks and much more, all using iPad’s revolutionary Multi-Touch™ user interface. iPad is 0.5 inches thin and weighs just 1.5 pounds—thinner and lighter than any laptop or netbook—and delivers up to 10 hours of battery life.*

Developers have created over 5,000 exciting new apps for iPad that take advantage of its Multi-Touch user interface, large screen and high-quality graphics. iPad will run almost all of the more than 200,000 apps on the App Store, including apps already purchased for your iPhone® or iPod touch®.

*Battery life depends on device settings, usage and other factors. Actual results vary.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution with the Apple II, then reinvented the personal computer with the Macintosh. Apple continues to lead the industry with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system, and iLife, iWork and professional applications. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store, has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced its magical iPad which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices. Read More

In April, Apple launched its “magical and revolutionary” new device, the iPad. Just 28 days later, it seemed the real magic was how Apple sold more than a million devices in that time period. As I write this at the end of May, iPads are in short supply in most Apple stores. Here in the New York City area, I couldn’t find a single iPad 3G, and there were only a few lower-end Wi-Fi models to be found.

Apple’s sales record here is even more impressive if you factor in that iPad is a new class of device, somewhere between the phones and computers that most consumers understand. It’s also a category of device that’s vexed every vendor who’s tried to enter this space over the last decade.

So how did Apple do it? Why did Apple succeed where no one else has and how did they do it so quickly?

The answer is, it took a decade of education and teaching. The key to Apple’s success is that the company often takes the time to explain things to the consumer that no other vendor bothers to do. By keeping a laser focus on key features and introducing them one at a time over a period of years, Apple taught and evangelized everything the consumer needed to know to understand the iPad from day one. Without that foundation, it’s not likely the product would have been nearly the success it has been. READ MORE

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• Opinion: Apple’s secret weapon is consumer education (macworld.com)

Remember how, back on Windows, you used to use the Win key and the Control key quite often? Well, on OS X, the Command key is your best friend.

There are two Command keys, one each side of the spacebar. You should find them easy to reach with your thumbs while typing.

Mac OS X is stuffed full of keyboard shortcuts – quick ways to get things done without taking your hands off the keyboard. The vast majority of them are done by holding down Command with your thumb while tapping another key with a finger.

Some of these shortcuts are universal: Command+S always saves what you’re working on. Command+Q always quits the app you’re working with. Command+N usually opens a new document; Command+O usually allows you to browse to a particular document so that you can open it in the current application.

Other commands vary according to the application you’re using. For example, in iTunes, Command+T shows the visualizer; but in Safari, Command+T opens a new tab…..READ MORE

Here are some more cool downloads to increase the usability of Iphoto. Best thing is they are free! Now I know that these are mainly for the “geeks” in us who want our Iphoto to do the most it can do. The rest of us aren’t concerned with these type of things. Just in case you get the urge to be experimental here they are:

Iphoto to SQL

• Creates an SQL dump file of all the metadata files
• Creates scale of images and vignette
• Retrieve pictures and associated metadata in database

Iphoto to SQL creates: title, comments, keywords, stars, date, album file name and picture name.

Compatibility

• Mac OS X 10.4 or later, iPhoto 7.0 (iLife ‘08) or later. Click here to free download iPhoto To SQL

Ultimate Productivity Automator Action Pack 3.11

This allows you find Iphoto item paths. However this does a lot more with programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Quark Express, etc.  The pack comes with many automated workflows  to increase productivity.

Download it here

Iphoto Override 4.02

This is a drag and drop utility to create libraries .

Download it here

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Password protect your photos

Sometimes, sharing your Sharing your photos with others is great, but what if you have some personal pictures mixed in with pictures of your client that you don’t want others to have access to? Setting a password is not only convenient but wise.

Iphoto makes it very easy to set up a password.

• On your top menu, Select Iphoto>Preferences

From here you can choose to share your entire library or select from a few albums.

Simply type your password and you’re done!

Tagging has become a staple for all of us writing for the web. Some people still get confused with tagging and equate that to categories. While there are similarities, and I’m sure some people use them as categories, tags are usually used to specifically identify something. You can have one or more tags, they don’t have to match your title or even your article but be something related. For example, you could have a category called “dogs”, but if you are writing about golden retrievers you could have tags: golden retrievers, sporting dogs, furry dogs, red dogs, retrievers…..get it?

Iphoto ‘09

You already have an example of tagging with the features available in Iphoto ‘09. Yes—you’ve guessed it. Faces and Places! Those are the examples of tagging. You can tag all of your favorite pics of your favorite person and all the places with that person in it!

Iphoto ‘08

While Iphoto ‘08 doesn’t have the faces and places features, it does have basic tagging features you can use to essentially do the same thing, except manually.

Individually

Open up your events or album of choice and select a picture. On your keyboard press the COMMAND KEY (apple) +SHIFT + K. This will allow you to see the keywords underneath each photo.

Next enter the keyword that you want for that photo, by clicking in the box where it says “add keywords”. Do that for each of the photos you want to tag. On the bottom of your Iphoto window, type in the keyword to search for your pictures and press ENTER. All of the pictures you “tagged” will show up.

Group Tag

Now let’s say you have a batch of pictures you took and you want to tag them. Obviously, tagging them individually would be rather time-consuming and laborious –and what if you wanted to add more than one tag to each picture? Would you have to sit there and type all day? Therefore, you’d want to tag by group.

Press COMMAND+ K to view keywords

All the keywords you have created will be displayed here. If you click on EDIT KEYWORDS you’ll be able to create new ones or edit existing ones. Simply select the pictures you want  (You can press the SHIFT key and drag a box around a group of pictures to select more than one) and click on the keyword. You can even add a keyboard shortcut to add that keyword.

Though Iphoto is pretty intuitive, there are some things that you probably aren’t aware of and that Apple doesn’t easily release.  Thankfully, there are plenty of techno geeks out there who are always willing to share their discoveries. Here are a couple that you can play around with.

Export iPhoto events into appropriate directory structure (Mac OS X hints)

Iphoto cannot create directory structures when you export events and albums.However, by exporting photos with easy-to-remember file names, you can create the structure of the directory.

Perform a Batch Change to set the Title to Event Name. Export the photos using the Title as the File Name. Use the code below and make it executable  (chmod a+x filename in Terminal).

# First, in iPhoto select all events and do Photos > Batch Change
# Set Title to Event Name
# With all events highlighted, export events a folder somewhere, for filename use title
# Photos will be exported with filename of "event - number.jpg" (ex: Animals - 0004.jpg)
# This script will create the appropriate directory structure based on those filenames
# Set the photo_dir variable below to the full path of the directory

photo_dir=/Users/Thom/Desktop/iPhotoExport

cd $photo_dir

for filename in *
do

#takes the string preceding the dash, trims leading and trailing whitespace, then removes all non web-friendly characters
dir=`echo $filename | cut -d- -f1 | sed ’s/^[ ]//’ | sed ’s/[ ]$//’ | sed ’s/[^A-Za-z0-9 _]//g’`

#takes the string following the dash, trims leading and trailing whitespace
file=`echo $filename | cut -d- -f2 | sed ’s/^[ ]//’ | sed ’s/[ ]$//’`

#if directory doesn’t yet exist, create it
if ! test -d “${dir}”
then
mkdir “${dir}”
fi

#move file to the appropriate directory and rename it to numeric filename
mv “${filename}” “${dir}/${file}”

done

Set the photo_dir variable to the path of your Iphoto Export .  The executed script will create the directories and move the photos into them

For Iphoto ‘08* (You may want to test this out on the latest Iphoto as well)

Create a Keyboard Shortcut – Mac OS X Hints

Use the script below and attach to the  Butler Productivity Tool

tell application "iPhoto"
  activate
  select album "photos"
  tell application "System Events" to tell process "iPhoto"
    delay 0.25
    key code 48 --tab
    key code 126 --up arrow
    key code 5 --G scroll selected event into view
  end tell
end tell