Fraser Speirs just posted a great summary of ScreenFlow, a new Leopard-only screencast recording application:

“Tweak it afterwards” makes it sound lightweight. It’s not. In other screen recording software, such as Snapz Pro X, you define a region of the screen to be recorded and if a dialog pops up somewhere you didn’t expect, you start all over again. ScreenFlow does away with all that: you record the entire screen, and zoom in or crop the video later. That alone justifies the application for me. You can also add highlights such as cursor circles, click targets and sounds and keystroke overlays - all automatically and all after the fact.

I totally agree. I've been thinking about adding some screencasts to the Dejal site for a while, but it looked like a lot of work with the previous tools. When I saw ScreenFlow, I saw a product that would make it much easier.

It'll take me a while to get around to adding screencasts — I'll probably add them after major upgrades of the various apps. But I've just added my first one, a very simple recording of listening to the Welcome document that comes with Dejal Narrator. This movie doesn't show off much of ScreenFlow's features, though the icon zoom at the end was a trivial example of what can be done very easily in ScreenFlow:

Here are a couple interesting links I came across today:

The Oscars in 60 seconds, via Mahalo Daily.

The Ebb and Flow of Movies: Box Office Receipts 1986 - 2007, via Jason Kottke and Daring Fireball.

And a couple of third-party products I've recently bought and highly recommend:

A while ago I bought Flying Meat's Acorn, which has just seen a 1.1 update. It isn't perfect, but for many image editing tasks it is a better solution than the heavyweight Photoshop (which I also own). The 1.1 update has some welcome improvements, like percentage scaling.

Yesterday I bought a new screencasting tool, ScreenFlow. It's a Leopard-only app, and very impressive. I plan to use it to add screencasts for some of my products, over time.

Well, that was an interesting Stevenote. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to be there this year. I enjoyed Macworld last year, but couldn't make it again. So I had to settle for reading the live-blogging coverage via MacRumors.com. They did a good job, though.

As expected, it didn't top last year's... it'd be hard to top the iPhone introduction! The rumor sites pretty much nailed the announcements, too.

The biggie of course was the new MacBook Air, Apple's re-entry into the sub-notebook market. I say "re-entry" as I would count their previous PowerMac Duo models as their first attempt at this market. Those were popular machines in the day, but the new Air is certainly a vast improvement. I personally am happy with my 17" MacBook Pro, and need the Pro power and large screen, since I use it as my primary development machine. But I'm sure the Air will be a popular model with people who want a compact lightweight laptop.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of it for me is the multi-touch trackpad. Readers of my blog will know that multi-touch is an interest of mine, so I'm pleased to see it come to the MacBook line. I only hope that they make the new pinch, rotate, etc gestures available for other MacBooks in the next OS update.

Another new product is Time Capsule, an AirPort Extreme base station with a built-in hard drive for seamless network-attached storage. This promises to be a boon for people with laptops, to avoid the hassle of having to plug in and dismount an external drive to do Time Machine backups. Of course, a concern is what happens if the built-in drive dies, as hard drives are wont to do, but presumably it wouldn't be too hard to swap it out, and it does include a USB port that supports an external drive.

The Apple TV enhancements, including movie rentals, seem worthwhile improvements. I have a Mac mini hooked to my TV, so don't really have a need for an Apple TV, but it seems a good device for many others. I can see lots of potential with this little gadget. The rentals make a lot of sense. Most movies are only worth watching once, so it's silly to buy them. We subscribe to NetFlix, a convenient DVD-by-mail service, but instant download of HD movies would be much more convenient.

Lastly, the new iPhone update seems to include many welcome improvements. The new location feature goes a long way towards GPS functionality, while the ability to save web clips to the home screen, and rearrange the home screen, both seem excellent additions. Shockingly, I don't have an iPhone yet, as I'm stuck into an existing contract till June, but you can be sure that my wife and I will be getting them once we're free of that... hopefully once the 3G rev is out, too. :)

All in all, nothing too surprising this time, but not a disappointment, either.

Two of the eBay auctions for Seth Dillingham's Pan-Mass Challenge fundraising have concluded, with fairly healthy final prices - still major discounts on the retail values, too.

A Household license for Dejal Caboodle is also available as part of the latest auction, a "kitchen sink" of 37 great utilities. Check it out!

Seth Dillingham has put in a lot of work collecting Mac apps to bundle together, and they're now available. Unlike typical software bundles, where hundreds of people might get a collection of apps at a discount, this one is a bit different: the bundles are being auctioned on eBay, and distributed (fully licensed) on CDs.

His bundles are fundraising for the Pan-Mass Challenge, which supports cancer research and treatment. A very worthy cause.

I am happy to participate in this effort. A Standard license for Dejal Simon is available in what he describes as the ultimate bundle for creative types, and a Household license for Dejal Caboodle is included in his bundle of games and useful utilities. Each of the bundles include lots of great apps, and in support of an excellent cause. Check out the auctions quickly; they end in a couple of days time.

When I moved to a new computer not long ago, I did it the hard way: rather than using the handy Migration Assistant, I copied over my files manually. I did that not to cause myself undue pain and suffering (though there certainly was some of that), but to help clean out several years worth of detritus that had accumulated in my preferences folder and elsewhere.

A result of that, though, was that I needed to reset all of my preferences. For the most complex ones I just copied the pref files over, but others I reset manually, again to clear out old prefs lingering in the files. That was fine, not too difficult.

One of the many preferences I reset was a tip I read on the Mac OS X Hints site. It controls the number of recent documents listed in the Open Recent sub-menu in many applications. I like this feature in document-based apps that use it, but I like to have more than the default 10 documents listed. I prefer 30, which fits on my screen nicely.

So, I fired up my trusty Terminal and entered:

And that was that! This command changes the default number of recent documents for all applications to 30 - you can change the number to whatever you prefer. It will take effect when apps are next launched.

I hope this is helpful for others, too.

Craig Hockenberry wrote thought-provokingly about multi-touch interfaces on the desktop (via Gus Mueller).

This is a favorite topic of mine; as I've written before, I look forward to the day when multi-touch comes to desktop (or portable) computers.

One of his objections was the vertical orientation of traditional displays:

If you’re one of the people who think that a multi-touch monitor is a good idea, try this little experiment: touch the top and bottom of your display repeatedly for five minutes. Unless you’re able to beat the governor of California in an arm wrestling match, you’ll give up well before that time limit. Now can you imagine using an interface like this for an eight hour work day?

But he quickly counters that objection with what I feel is the obvious answer: a touch-based interface needs to be at a comfortable angle. I envision a desktop multi-touch surface at a 30-degree angle, or less, from the desktop: as he says, like a classic drafting table. Perhaps there won't be a distinction between desktop and notebook computers anymore, or perhaps the computer will be in two parts: a tablet-like mobile portion, which docks into and rests on a wedge-like stand on your desk, which adds additional functionality (kinda like the old PowerBook Duo and DuoDock).

The multi-touch screen would be the entire interface (other than perhaps some auxiliary buttons like brightness, volume, etc). It would obviously replace the mouse/trackpad, but would also replace the keyboard, using an onscreen keyboard instead. Yes, tactile feedback is an issue, but as many people have reported with their iPhones, it's possible to get used to typing without it; and there are ways to provide feedback, like the iPhone's magnified view of pressed keys, sounds, vibrations, and other ideas being worked on.

Hockenberry also raises a valid point regarding the precision of a mouse pointer vs a finger:

But even if there was a solution to the ergonomic issues, there would be problems mixing mouse-based applications (with small hit areas) with touch-based inputs (and large hit areas). Touch-based UI is not something you just bolt onto existing applications—it’s something that has to be designed in from the start.

Certainly an important consideration. However I would argue that most applications could be modified to support larger hit areas in sensible ways without too much difficulty - though in some cases major redesigns would be needed. Just have a look around the controls in your favorite apps, and think about how easy it would be to "click" on one with a finger, without activating a nearby control. In most cases, controls are spaced out enough for it to not be a problem, but some, like Photoshop, would require either optional support for a stylus (which Apple probably wouldn't be in favor of), or a finer on-screen control (perhaps like the iPhone's magnifying glass). I'm sure apps designed from the ground up with multi-touch in mind would be better... but migration is certainly possible. And yes, resolution independence should help. If you've got big fingers, you just scale everything up to a comfortable level.

I really believe that multi-touch is the way of the future, and will be coming for Macs in due course. But Apple being Apple, they will do it right, with as smooth a migration path for developers and users as possible.

I'm back from WWDC now, and am in the process of moving into a shiny new 17" MacBook Pro with the high-res screen. A rather nice machine. I ordered it the day it was released, the Tuesday before WWDC, but unfortunately it didn't arrive till I was already at WWDC. Oh well... I'll have it for next time! :)

Anyway, it was a good week. I met many developers, including well-known people like Steven & Cabel of Panic (who I had met before, and who most deservedly won an Apple Design Award for Coda for Best Mac OS X User Experience); plus Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software, Ken Case of The Omni Group, plus many other developers.

I've already talked about the Stevenote, and of course can't talk about the conference sessions, other than to say that I'm excited about Leopard, and am looking forward to leveraging its features in future versions of my apps.

WWDC has a number of interesting official and unofficial evening events. I enjoyed the sfMacIndie event on Sunday night, the official reception Monday night, the Apple Design Awards and Stump the Experts Tuesday night, the CocoaHeads gathering at the Apple store Wednesday night, and the WWDC Bash Thursday night.

Check out the photos of my trip to San Francisco and (non-NDA'ed) parts of WWDC.

So, I'm at WWDC currently. I've enjoyed meeting fellow developers (and several Dejal product users) around the conference center, at the sfMacIndie event, and the WWDC reception tonight.

I managed to get an okay seat for the Stevenote, a little back from the center of the room... but in a good position to see the repeater screens. I thought it was an interesting keynote, but with few surprises. I know some people are disappointed, but perhaps they had too high expectations?

So, how'd I do with my predictions? Let's see:

• No hardware announcements: I was right with this one.
• Possibly updated displays: nope... but not too surprising.
• We might see a demo of iLife 07 and/or iWork 07: nope.
• Steve will no doubt mention the iPhone, but there won't be a SDK: yep, called that one. I know this is disappointing for many people, but as I said, that may come later.
• Steve will spend most of his time talking about Leopard: sure did.
• The Finder might be rewritten: yes, though it seems more of a cosmetic overhaul than a full rewrite.
• I've love to see more multi-touch features in the OS, but I don't think we're ready for that yet: yeah, no mention of that... oh well, it was a faint hope!
• Maybe improved syncing features, to fit in with the iPhone: I seem to recall some mention of this?
• The ZFS thing has been a popular rumor of late, but I have no idea whether that will eventuate: no mention of this, so perhaps it didn't... or perhaps Steve was annoyed by the "leak".
• Probably some cosmetic changes in Leopard - using the newly fashionable dark metal styling for all windows, and other UI improvements: yes indeedy. I do like the dark metal, so a unified OS-provided look is a very good thing.
• Probably no major new programmer APIs: so it would seem.

I seem to have done alright. Of course, my predictions were based on an aggregation of rumors, so hardly a reflection of my own prognostication abilities.

Anyway, on with the WWDC week... though of course I can't write about anything else discussed in the sessions.

Just another few days before WWDC07 kicks off!

I will be attending WWDC again this year, and am looking forward to the Stevenote, the various gatherings of Mac developers, and the conference sessions themselves.

There have been lots of rumors of what Steve Jobs will announce on Monday. For what it's worth, here are my guesses - not based on any inside information (I haven't run a Leopard seed since last year's WWDC), but based on rumors I've read, etc:

• No hardware announcements: I don't see an updated iMac at WWDC, being a consumer machine. It is overdue, but will probably be updated at a later date.
• Though updated displays could be possible, with iSight integration, since the standalone iSight is no longer available. I kinda hope not, since I just bought a 23" display!
• We might see a demo of iLife 07 and/or iWork 07 (or will they call it 08, or something else?), but they won't be available till Leopard is out.
• Steve will no doubt mention the iPhone, but there won't be a SDK. I wouldn't want them to release one yet; better to lock down the features and let people become familiar with the phone before allowing third-party development for it.
• Steve will spend most of his time talking about Leopard.
• The Finder might be rewritten. I personally use Path Finder, a great third-party replacement Finder, but Apple's Finder is definitely in need of improvement.
• I've love to see more multi-touch features in the OS, but I don't think we're ready for that yet. I'd really like to see something like Microsoft Surface, done the Apple way.
• Maybe improved syncing features, to fit in with the iPhone.
• The ZFS thing has been a popular rumor of late, but I have no idea whether that will eventuate. Even if it is the default disk format, that won't necessarily affect existing disks, though, so it doesn't seem like too big a deal to me.
• Probably some cosmetic changes in Leopard - using the newly fashionable dark metal styling for all windows, and other UI improvements.
• Probably no major new programmer APIs; Apple would have had to tell us about them before now, to give developers time to get up to speed. But you never know.

Anyway, I could be totally wrong... but those are my guesses. We'll see in just a few days!

I will be wearing one of the several Dejal shirt designs, like the pictured one, so if you're there and see me, come up and say hi! Here's what I look like, too.

I will be at the sfMacIndie event on Sunday night, and hope to meet many fellow indie developers there. I might go to Buzz's party Monday night, or just hang out at the official WWDC reception. And I'll be around for the rest of the week, too.

Should be a great week!