walls.corpus

iPhone + Aperture 3 = GPS-tagged photos

Tuesday, 9 February, 2010 — photography iphone

I’m checking out the newly announced dAperture 3 info. There’s a lot to like about being able to split libraries, merge libraries and use brushes as to make adjustments. But, my hands down “Holy crap, oh my God that’s awesome” moment is seeing that Aperture 3 can use an iPhone photo to hint at GPS coordinates for digital photos from a different camera. Alternatively, you can use an iPhone app like RunKeeper to record a GPS track. Then, from the RunKeeper website, download a GPX track, which Aperture can then read.

That seems far more flexible for cameras without internal GPS than a GPS attachment. By itself, that sells the $99 upgrade for me.

iPhone OS 3.0 and iPhone 3GS observations, continued

Sunday, 28 June, 2009 — apple iphone

Last week, I posted some few initial observations of the iPhone 3.0 OS and my new iPhone 3GS. I kept additional notes during the week of my subsequent impressions. Here they are:

• MobileSafari gets tripped-up when there are eight pages open and another application tries to open a new page. The oldest page gets replaced.
• I upgraded from a first generation iPhone and the volume level on the phone is much louder during calls.
• The landscape keyboard makes two thumb typing far more realistic, but my thumbs need to build some muscle memory in doing so.
• Marker Felt in Notes is still suboptimal. It feels like writing a nice resume in Comic Sans.
• I’m still not looking at the phone as a serious writing environment. Anything more than a paragraph or so and I’m going to use my laptop.
• I know the Palm Pre supports multitasking. Apart from Pandora, I’m OK with the iPhone being a single-tasking environment. I will deliberately use my iPhone to not have multiple apps competing for partial attention.¹
• More than with my initial iPhone, I see the iPhone as a context shifting device. Using my laptop may mean work or at least numerous different tasks while the iPhone means a solid block of reading.
• Instapaper is an excellent way to read articles offline. My own habit is to open links galore from Twitter during the day, send them to Instapaper and read later. The newly-updated Instapaper Pro iPhone app (App Store link) is faster and updates continuously when there’s a network, which makes keeping in sync much easier.
• I’m very pleased with the camera. It’s not an SLR, but I’m far more likely to it with me than my D300. It’s good enough where I don’t care to carry a separate point-and-shoot.
• While the camera has the touch to focus and set exposure, the iPhone still tends to over-expose highlights. However, bringing the photos into Aperture, I can recover some of the highlights for a useful image.
• I have a small, but growing set of photos from the iPhone on Flickr.
• Flickr can accept video emailed directly from the iPhone, but there is a known bug with video shot in portrait orientation.
• iPhone gaming is very good. I purchased iFighter (App Store link) Saturday and spent a couple of hours playing. It reminds me strongly of 1943, and can be used strictly via accelerometer. An easy way to alleviate a sense of not wanting to read, code or edit photos. I certainly got more entertainment value out of that $1 than might have trying 1943 at an arcade.

1. This is strictly personal preference. I’m sure there are quite a few Pre users thrilled with the ability to run multiple apps simultaneously.

iPhone OS 3.0 and iPhone 3G S observations

Saturday, 20 June, 2009 — apple iphone

• It’s rather nice to open pages in MobileSafari and not have a page rebuild when closing another page.
• The Compass will occasionally get confused. I’ve noticed it with both the compass and Maps in Compass mode. Obvious things like waving the compass near a speaker will cause confusion, but it came up other times without an obvious interference source. Next time I’m out, I’ll need to keep an eye for power lines when the Compass complains.
• While tethering is an iPhone 3.0 OS feature, it is not available on the first generation iPhone, which is EDGE only. I tried. My understanding is it’s something to do with with available chipsets in the original iPhone, not bandwidth.
• Tethering is pretty easy to set-up with the iPhone 3G S. I got it working with Bluetooth and a USB connection. I’m unsure which method I’d prefer. USB offers the advantage of charging the phone while using the connection, but Bluetooth would allow me to keep the phone in my pocket.
• While I like the concept of tethering, it’s probably not something I’ll typically use. I’ll probably use it when I’m at a venue with tollboothed or inconsistent Wi-Fi. Alternate use: if I need to do something more than simple commands via a shell client to perform emergency server maintenance.
• Until such time as I need it, I’ve shut tethering back off.
• The iPhone 3G S video uploads nicely to Flickr via email. Unfortunately, Flickr’s smart phone site doesn’t support video viewing. However, Fraser Speir’s Darkslide app does allow video viewing. The ability to upload video to Flickr via Darkslide is on the way.
• Force quitting apps in iPhone 3.0 requires a new shortcut.
• Using NetNewsWire is much nicer. Switching between sources is far more fluid, the app crashes less with lots of unread feeds and selecting a feed item brings up the entry text almost instantaneously.
• Overall, everything about interacting with apps feel crisper.
• The oil-resistant screen is nice, and sure enough, a few swipes against a shirt is enough to make it new. The back of the phone still grabs smudges and holds them tightly.