Inquisitor Acquired By Yahoo
Posted by Stretch | Filed under Apple, Software
Inquisitor has been bought by Yahoo!.
Inquisitor is the Spotlight for Safari. You can set it to search which ever search engine you want, and it comes back with pretty good results most of the time. Created by David Watanabe, it has been the recent target of some controversy because of Affiliate redirecting.
Not sure why Yahoo! would want this plugin, since it only works with Safari, but Wanatabe has stated that he is not joining the Yahoo! payroll, and will continue to develop his other applications, and also continue work on Inquisitor.
Via TUAW
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Review
Posted by Stretch | Filed under Apple, Reviews, Software
Reviews of Leopard have been popping up all over the internet. Some are better of others, and some are looking at specific features. Here is one review that compares it to Tiger, and tries it out on two different architectures. Testing on both a G4 Powerbook, and a C2D Macbook Pro.
What this article is is a frank evaluation of a brand new OS performed over the 5-days since it’s release using a fairly current computer, a October 2006 MacBook Pro with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, both at home and at work, which is a Windows dominated environment. 5-Days is not a long time but I have tried to “kick the tires” thoroughly (certainly more than I did for the Tiger review) and I’ve quite a lot of material to work my way through. While I consider myself an Apple fan since I switched about 4-years ago I am not an Apple apologist and I’m not going to be pulling many punches in this article. I’m also writing this review without having read other reviews or opinions of the OS so that what you read here is my own review without influence from others.
It is an excellent review. Well worth the read, although he recommends not installing Leopard quite yet. Wait til 10.5.1 is released, and a few of the bugs are fixed.
Via 9rules
The New Image Editors
Posted by Stretch | Filed under Apple, Software
In the past few months, 3 major Photoshop contenders have all been released, Pixelmator, Acorn and DrawIt . All are fighting for the same thing. To be the best Photoshop replacement. But with three different ones, plus other older pieces of software, which one do you
I want to be clear up front: I won’t be comparing the applications’ feature lists exhaustively in the article. I am also going to concentrate on some major items that are always requirements for me. That means I’ll miss some that are critical for you. And I’ll be concentrating on the UI and the behaviour of these apps, because that’s where we spend the most time. Little things that get short shrift in other reviews like application and document icons will be covered.
Testing
My test platform is my aging, but much loved, PowerBook 17 G4 1.5 with 2 GB RAM and an ATI Mobility Radeon 9700. I am not using benchmarks at all, and any time I mention how fast something is it’s a subjective measure. I should mention I am a professional Graphic Designer, and I spend a lot of time in Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium, but I am not an extreme Photoshop professional. I don’t use a tablet. I am always on the lookout for new interesting software with an eye to improving my efficiency and capabilities.
The test image is one that I have taken with my Samsung NV3. The image is a relatively slow exposure taken on a city bus on my way to work one morning. I will be handling the picture in its original format: JPEG, 3072 × 2304, 3.2 MB. This camera doesn’t output RAW files. The photo is stashed in iPhoto ‘08 (v. 7.1). There are a lot of undefined edges and reflected colours and halos.
It is a very good review of all three of the applications. If you are trying to choose between all three, I’d highly recommend reading it.
Via Daring Fireball
Aperture VS Lightroom: The Pros
Posted by Stretch | Filed under Photography, Reviews, Software
For digital photographers there are two major options for managing and editing their photos. Apple’s Aperture, and Adobe’s Lightroom. So what do the pros use, Lightroom or Aperture?
InfoTrends recently surveyed 1,026 professional photographers in North America to determine which software they used for raw file processing. Here’s what folks reported:
- 66.5% using the Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in
- 23.6% using Lightroom
- 5.5% using Aperture
To be fair to Aperture, it might be helpful to remove Windows users from the equation for a moment. Even after doing so, Lightroom’s usage among Mac-based pros is still nearly double that of Aperture (26.6% vs. 14.3%).
I’ve tried both, and like Lightroom much better over Aperture, and it seems that the Pros mostly side with my thinking.
Via Daring Fireball
Windows VS Mac OS X: The Hype
Posted by Stretch | Filed under Apple, Reviews, Software
Windows Vista and Mac OS X Leopard both have something similar. They were both delayed, although Vista was delayed almost 3 times longer. Roughly Drafted has a comparison between the two of what you expected, and what you got.
What you expected:
What you got:
Need I say more? 
