Tag: Macworld »

For those of you who doubt the capabilities of the iPhone 4 for photo taking and editing, the cover of the September issue of Macworld is made entirely on an iPhone 4.

Macworld's contributing photographer, Peter Selanger, who has "shot almost every photograph in the pages of the magazine over the past few years", had apparently been "tinkering with the idea of shooting a Macworld cover with an iPhone for some time". When he saw that the iPhone 4 was going to have a high-quality 5 megapixel camera, the time became now.

Using only the regular camera (no soldered on lens of any kind) and two apps, Perer was able to make a high quality shot, pretty enough for a cover, of none other than the iPhone 4 itself.

“For the most part, my strategy for photographing the cover didn’t change from how I normally would shoot,” Peter says in a blog post about the process. “I still had my normal set with lots of lights, flags and stands. I did have to change my light source from strobes to tungsten lights because the iPhone can’t sync with studio strobes."

“The iPhone’s Retina display was truly awesome,” he says. “I was really able to see the detail in the photo as I was shooting. It made me wish Apple produced all its monitors this way. The final photo was dust-free and looked great. I was extremely impressed with the detail that the iPhone was able to capture.”

In case anyone wants to know, Peter used PhotoForge for some minor color correcting and Resize-Photo to make the shot large enough for the magazine cover.

[Source: Macworld]

Had a great time at Macworld this year. Got to put a lot of names with faces - it was great meeting you all. And saw some really cool things.

Read on for some of my favorites from the Expo like Slingbox Player, Griffin Air Curve, BeeJive 2.0, TubeToGo, TileStack, and more.

Well, the keynote is over and no significant iPhone news. No significant news at all, really. Quick roundup: new 17" MacBook Pro, new iWork, new iLife, DRM free iTunes music.

The only iPhone related news had to do with other products mainly. First, there are some new slideshow formats you can sync to the iPhone from the updated iPhoto. Whoop-tee-do! Second, all songs in the iTunes Music Store will be DRM free by the end of this quarter (that's March 31st to you and me). And there will be variable pricing (you know -- all the songs you want will cost more while the ones you don't want will cost less). And finally there will be a Keynote Remote app available for the iPhone. While these are great and wonderful things to some, to me it's just meh...

Where's the iPhone Nano? Were the case manufacturers just playing with us?

Where's the notification service? You know, the one that we were told would launch in September 2008? The one that was in the iPhone SDK, then pulled? Where's iChat for the iPhone?

But most importantly, where is MMS? Every $9 phone has that now. Why doesn't the most advanced phone in the world have it? I bet that new Palm to be announced tomorrow will have it.

I guess we'll have to just keep waiting for these things. Apple always does things on their own time schedule. But, come on! Please, Steve? Or Phil? Or anyone? Pretty please? Or maybe, I will look at that new palm? I wonder how many apps you can load on that device?

If you are coming to Macworld, you will be in the heart of San Francisco. Whether you have been here before or not, there are some essential apps you should load on your iPhone for worry-free navigation of the Expo and the city.

Without question, the #1 app you should have is iMacworld. The latest update adds Session info and detailed maps of the Halls, plus an easy to search directory of vendors and products. My only wish is that this app had been around for previous Expos.

For you elbow-rubbing and social networking types, download a copy of Handshake. Handshake will allow you to easily exchange your contact info with other iPhone users without worrying about loosing those pesky business cards that fall to the bottom of your goodie bags.

There are a TON of Starbucks in San Francisco. To log on to get your free iPhone wifi connection from AT&T, download Easy Wi-Fi for AT&T. It costs $0.99, but it is totally worth it for speeding up your connection to hotspots to check your voluminous email, or to download one of the apps you just read about in this article.

If you are combining your Expo trip with your vacation plans, or hope to explore the city a bit, Routesy can provide you with all the local MUNI transit information and schedules. If you don't want to spend the $2.99 for Routesy, there are also two Web 2.0 apps available that you can use with Safari for free.

NextBus (www.nextmuni.com)

MUNI Time (sf.munitime.com)

If you are flying into the San Francisco or Oakland airports, and don't plan on renting a car, you will need to take BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit). To get BART schedules and maps of stops, download iBART. There is a BART train that goes directly from SFO to downtown, just blocks from Moscone. Trips from the Oakland airport require a short $3 shuttlebus trip to the BART station before continuing to San Francisco.

The mobile version of Yelp is great at helping to find eateries and night spots in the city during your Macworld stay. The only problem might be that there are too many great spots to visit making it hard to choose. Yelp is especially handy since there aren't a lot of places right around Moscone, and the ones that are will probably be packed with Expo-goers. Wear some comfortable shoes and hike to some of the more out of the way spots.

Finally, if you are looking for something to do outside of the Expo venue, try twiddlerSF which is a great app that can randomly choose a place to go in the city or an event, based on your "mood" and how far you want to travel. It also had a cool spinner interface.

The 2009 Macworld Expo is just a week away and Tom and I will both be canvasing the place for interesting iPhone news. If any app developers or hardware folks would like to meet up with us while we are there and give us a preview of what you're working on, give us a shout.

This will be my first Macworld Expo -- I've been stuck at CES for the past 5 years. Tom is a veteran and will be showing me around.

We'll also be very proud to announce the winners of the 2009 Best App Ever Awards on Wednesday at the MacWorld Expo. We'll be announcing the nominees tomorrow with voting open until 1/6/2009 for the winners.

Will we see the iPhone Nano, a new Apple consumer product of some sort, or, as usual, walk away all disappointed with nothing but meager product updates? We'll find out next week as the keynote kicks off the Expo on Tuesday morning.