Image credit: Christmas w/a K on Flickr

Ahh, the creative side of me seems to blossom with the new MacBook Pro. I find Mac’s pre-installed software very useful, and has made me life easier in some aspects; managing photos taken on my digital camera is a breeze with iPhoto, and managing my music collection through iTunes is very simple (which can be a problem). That’s not to say there aren’t some improvements that could be made, but in six days I am frustration free with my Mac life.

It’s also taken my 6 days to determine a name for the new Mac, I shall call it “Avalon”. The name holds a lot of sentimental value for me, it was one of my first online handles (yep, old school Internet talk) and has stuck with me ever since. My first Mac (a Macintosh LC) was also named Avalon, so I consider this MacBook Pro a part of its lineage. Changing the computer’s name was very easy, a task that’s never hard on any operating system.

Deeper Exploration into iPhoto

It was time to further explore iPhoto’s integration with Flickr. iPhoto is one of the best photo management tools I’ve come across, and impressed me during my initial experience. This time I was testing the broader features of iPhoto and how they transfered to Flickr. The question I wanted to answer is if it served as a replacement to Flickr Updatr.

Within iPhoto you can add names, descriptions, ratings and geocoding placing to each picture, much of this information can also be added to Flickr photos. When gathered from your camera images are automatically sorted as event, which you can name, and when uploaded are placed into sets based on the event name. When uploading to Flickr not all of the information was retrained. Names and descriptions appear on the Flickr version of the photos but not the geocoded location. Set descriptions are oddly missing, even if assigned in iPhoto. The process isn’t perfect, and does not replace the Flickr Updatr completely. For images I create, edit, or develop I’m more likely to use the Updatr, but for my camera, iPhoto will be my main tool.

Music Management

I have a fairly large collection, and I’ve never liked iTunes as a music manager. Windows had several music management programs that allowed me to move files based my own structure by the files ID tags. A popular Windows music management program is MediaMonkey, although I prefer Helium Music Manager. In the Mac world there’s a lack of music management software, which is a huge disappointment. Most people swear by iTunes, but it doesn’t cut the cake for me. For simple music management and location, iTunes works wonders. They are simple and get the job done but are limited. I would have loved the ability to change it’s file organization scheme, for instance organizing my music by Genre folders rather than the artists name. I require an extensive set of tools, and features that are missing from iTunes (such as scanning my music folder for new music) which are available in popular Windows programs like Winamp.

Songbird, a Mozilla based alternative to iTunes, is a promising music organizer, but still a young program and missing many music management abilities. I’m inclined to use it as a Tag Editor, but until then it currently does not feed all of my interests.

After a few days of searching, I found Media Rage, a small program that provides a collection of tools for music management. It’s a far cry from what I’m used to, but provides all of the features I need in a simple and efficient interface. Media Rage updates music tags, album artwork, and can move files based on your specifications. While small, Media Rage is a full powered music organizer for $10. I’m very impressed.

Next on my to-do list, blogging software and Windows.

Credit: PC. Easy as 1 - 23 taken by bfishadow on Flickr

After an active first day with my new MacBook Pro, I was expecting day two to be a fury of activity. Actually it wasn’t (I spent much of the day playing catchup). I’m still in “OMG! THIS IS SO AWESOME!” mode, much to the annoyance of some followers (talking to you Sean!). Deep down, I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop and become inundated with thousands of updates and programs I install as experienced on Windows. This touches on a subject touted as a fault in Apple recent advertisement, “PC. Easy as 1 – 23″. Windows and Mac update applications are very similar, each has their own update application which updates operating system, drivers, and programs specifically made by their respective company. The difference between Apple’s and Windows update is Windows updates are heftier. If you purchased a new computer without a service pack, you more than likely going to have to repeat the Windows update process more than once; Apple doesn’t have service packs though, they release new operating systems. That’s not to say that I didn’t have to run the Apple Software Update more than once, or restart my computer after an update, but on Windows this process is more annoying.

I found a quirk with iWork ’09 I didn’t like. On my first day I installed the application with the intent of accessing old Microsoft Word documents. Usually when installing Word on PC, the application automatically assigns a file-type to the new application. I was hoping that iWork would do the same for Microsoft Word documents, but it did not, TextEdit remained as the default associated program. In order to change this, I had to manually assign .doc’s and .docx’s to Pages (not a difficult process, read how to do this here) but I wish there was an easier way to do this within Pages or during it’s installation.

I like to abuse Flickr as much as possible. I’m a hobbyist photographer and hated the process of uploading photo’s on the PC. The best way I found was using Adobe Bridge, then viewing the photo’s in Google’s Picasa, then upload with Flickr Updatr. iPhoto simplifies this process significantly, it detects the camera, manages the photos, lets you view and delete them, and you can upload them to Flickr. It doesn’t replace the Flickr Updatr, it does have some REALLY nice features, such as integrated geotagging. I really like iPhoto’s event system, when downloading photo’s from your camera, iPhoto groups them into events. You can upload the event to flickr, and iPhoto creates a set with the event’s name on Flickr, a helpful and time-saving feature! I will note, you can upload pictures through Windows Live Photo Gallery, it is not a part of Vista, you would have to download it from the Windows Live website.

Two days of using the MacBook Pro and its shaping my life outside of it’s uniboby frame. An example is my desk, which I’ve had for several years. It has survived three moves, cats, bumps, 3 computers and plenty of spills. It is a very pretty desk but also very uneven! When I first placed the laptop on the desktop, the screen looked uneven. I first thought I had broken my laptop right out of the box, but the desk has either warped, is uneven, or the floor is uneven. This may mean a trip to Ikea in the very near future! The MacBook screen has also helped my eyesight (strangely enough.) On my PC I kept the monitor in one setting, low contrast and low brightness. I never paid attention to the lighting in my room to realize I should adjust the settings when I turn the lights on or off. Increasing or decreasing the intensity helps deal with eyestrain. The MacBook Pro adjusts the brightness of the screen automatically based on the amount of light in the room. It does the same thing for keyboard illumination, a feature which I first thought was a silly, but has turned out to become very helpful!

I several questions left unanswered about the new Mac, with more creeping up every moment. A new one concerns mountain a shared folder on my NAS to my desktop. This seems like another Google search that I must perform.