My opinions and emotions about the news that Aperture won’t be updated ever again by Apple. Steve Sheridan gives us a hot tip on how to maybe make your Contacts more manageable by using Custom Categories. Diane, Steve and I do some experiments with zoom lenses that question my knowledge about how crop factors in cameras work. In Chit Chat Across the Pond Bart gives us part 2 of his 40,000 foot level explanation of programming languages, this time explaining the difference between Loosely and Strongly Typed Languages.
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Hi this is Allison Sheridan of the NosillaCast Mac Podcast, hosted at Podfeet.com, a technology geek podcast with an EVER so slight Macintosh bias. Today is Sunday June 29, 2014 and this is show number 477. I talk about the live show audience pretty much every week. One of their responsibilities is to point out when I say something dumb. I don’t think they’re taking their responsibilities very seriously though, because not one of them noticed that last week I said it was show #475. You might THINK it was #475 because the week before I said it was #474, but in fact, that was a mistake. I’m a bit lost here but I’m pretty darn sure that it’s show #477 this week. I wanted to call this to your attention, especially if you come to the live show that I expect you to pay better attention in the future.
Blog Posts
Aperture Dead or Alive
Use Custom Fields to Tell Your Contacts Apart
When a 200mm Lens Isn’t Really 200mm
Clarify
I’ve been telling you about the free beta trial of Clarify 2 for a very long time, and the guys over at BlueMango Learning swear to me that they’re getting close to finally releasing it. I thought it might be fun to get you excited about the new features that are coming in this awesome software designed to help you clarify things on the computer.
- You’ll now be able to auto-number your steps. I think I remember the guys saying this was pretty much the number one requested feature.
- You’ll be able to create sub-steps. This will help make it look more like an outline especially if you turn on auto numbering. If you have a step 2 and then make the step after that a sub-step, it will be numbered 2.1. I’ve found a bunch of cases where it really helps to separate the concepts in a longer tutorial
- You’ll be able to add multiple images to a single step. I tested out multiple images just this week when I did the tutorial on how to use custom categories on Contacts. I wanted to illustrate the mess you get when you have three cards for a single couple, so I used the multiple image feature to put all three cards in one step.
- A small but cool new feature I found last night is that you can toggle the text location on a per step basis. The default is to have the text appear above the image, but sometimes it might make more sense to have it below, you can just toggle it up and down with a single command.
There’s more to Clarify 2 than this but I’ll leave you with that tease for now. If you’d like to test it out yourself, head on over to the link in the shownotes to clarify-it.com and give it a spin.
Chit Chat Across the Pond – Start Time 17:50
Security Light
Important Security News:
- A flaw in PayPal’s 2-Factor-Auth is discovered, but don’t panic, mitigations are in place – http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2014/06/27/bypassing-paypals-two-factor-authentication/
- The popular TimThumb WordPress plugin contains a remote code execution vulnerability – if you use it, patch ASAP! – http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2014/06/26/timthumb-plugin-for-wordpress-zero-day-remote-code-execution-hole-disclosed-quickly-fixed/
- Supreme Court of the United States rules that law enforcement need a warrant to search smartphones etc. (i.e. confirms the obvious, the 4th amendment still applies in the 21st century) – http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/supreme-court-says-cell-phone-searches-require-search-warrants
- The Australian Privacy Commissioner find that Cupid Media broke the law by storing passwords in plain text – nice to see being lax with security has legal ramifications, as well as just negative publicity implications – http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2014/06/25/cupid-media-breached-privacy-act-after-storing-users-passwords-in-plain-text/
Notable Breaches:
- The arguably dumb and vapid app Yo leaks users phone numbers (but do respond positively by hiring the hacker to help them fix their app) – remember, every app you install puts you at some risk, so balance the functionality the app provides against the risk before installing – http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/nest-will-open-up-devices-to-google-after-all
- Pencil trolls: pencil-top-trolls1.jpg
Suggested Reading:
- Brian Krebs explains a new cyber-crime trend – extortion notices – http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/06/2014-the-year-extortion-went-mainstream/
- Researchers show how devices like Glass give humans super-vision when it comes to watching you type your password from a distance – http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2014/06/26/is-that-google-glass-wearer-stealing-your-ipad-passcode/
- Nest’s promise not to share data with Google doesn’t last long! – http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/nest-will-open-up-devices-to-google-after-all
- Canada passes a law to make Spam strictly opt-in within the next three years – http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2014/06/24/spam-in-canada-goes-strictly-opt-in-in-one-week-with-only-three-years-to-comply/
- US House of Representatives votes overwhelmingly to cut funding for NSA surveillance – remember, this is toothless unless the Senate follows suit, and the President signs the bill – http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2014/06/23/us-house-votes-overwhelmingly-to-cut-funding-of-nsa-surveillance/
Main Topic – A 40K Foot Look at Programming – Part 2
http://www.bartbusschots.ie/blog/?p=4696 Start at “Loosely Typed -v- Strongly Typed Languages”
That’s going to wind this up for this week, many thanks to our sponsor for helping to pay the bills, Blue Mango Learning at bluemangolearning.com makers of Clarify. Don’t forget to send in your Dumb Questions, comments and suggestions by emailing me at [email protected], follow me on twitter and app.net @podfeet. Check out the NosillaCast Google Plus Community too – lots of fun over there! If you want to join in the fun of the live show, head on over to podfeet.com/live on Sunday nights at 5pm Pacific Time and join the friendly and enthusiastic NosillaCastaways. Thanks for listening, and stay subscribed.
Bart:
Being a software developer for over 15 years and writing code in general for 33 years, I am clearly not in your “target audience” for the programming discussion. Even still, however, I really did enjoy your approach to the discussion. You have a real knack for “teaching” and getting the point across.
Well done.
– Mike P.
I too was freaked out when I heard the news. But then I thought about it a bit and am now less freaked out, and in fact cautiously optimistic, about this change.
Leo actually said something intelligent for once recently. He made the point that Aperture won’t suddenly quit working the minute Yosemite comes out. In fact I believe Apple later came back and said that they would make sure it is compatible with Yosemite when it comes out. So don’t panic. You won’t suddenly lose access to your photo library.
Clearly Apple is poising its new Photos app to be a replacement for both iPhoto and Aperture, so you better believe that they’ll have some sort of library migration tool (to convert from Aperture/iPhoto libraries to Photos libraries), and I’d wager they’d be careful to preserve all your Aperture edits in the process.
I think you’re right on the money when you say that the Photos app will be Aperture’s equivalent of Final Cut Pro X, in that they will fold in some of the pro features into it. Sure, some features may be missing at first, but just like in Final Cut Pro X, they will come back, and perhaps even better than the original. (e.g. Final Cut Pro X’s Multicam editing is far superior to how multi cam worked in classic Final Cut Pro.)
But here’s the good news. Because of the new Extensibility in both Yosemite and iOS 8, developers will be able to add features to the core apps, including Photos! So if Photos doesn’t have High-End Feature X from the get-go, you can bet that some enterprising developer out there will release an Extension that does have that feature.
Finally, in a recent MacBreak Weekly, I believe Alex Lindsay said that he has heard from some people “in the know” and that the new Photos app is indeed going to be very, very cool.