[angelmb]

*ShapeShifter

Can't wait to check Tiger dressed by Good Grey !

Is going an updated of that cute theme to be needed?

[esXXI]

Quoting Jason from MacThemes Forum:

It's unlikely that you'll see more than a Tiger compatibility release, although it's possible. The way that I work is to choose several large, different, but interconnected areas and focus on them. They tend to converge to completion at the same time, since they're all interconnected. I'm currently working on four theme-related things. Three huge ones that will make people very happy, I hope, and Tiger compatibility. Tiger compatibility is loosely related to one of the other items, but is not dependent on it.

The upshot is that if I happen to finish one of the others concurrent with the release of Tiger, you'll see new features. But the only goal I have is Tiger compatibility within a reasonable timespan of the release of Tiger - anything else would be pure serendipity.

I think from another post he said minor changes will be need to be made by the Themer, to adjust to Tiger.

[kwyjiboy]

I am....... not sure? The answer is purple?

[cruciarius]

so...will we be able to use themes when tiger is released or will we suffer with the ugly default theme?

[mac15]

When the update arrives yes you'll be able to use themes, until then no.

[cruciarius]

ok so i'll wait on getting tiger, until SS is updated.

edit: mac15, you know your signature has a missing picture image?

[MaxPower]

Originally posted by cruciarius:
ok so i'll wait on getting tiger, until SS is updated.

Sir, does this new and vastly improved software support an unsupported 3rd party hack used purely for eye candy?

No, but as soon as the 3rd party updates the hack, it will work just like before.

Hmm. Ok. I'll wait then on the new and vastly improved software.

LOL

All I'm sayin here is get the update. There will be plenty to fiddle aroud with that'll keep you occupied until SS gets updated. (think dashboard widget orgy)

[esXXI]

Originally posted by MaxPower:
Sir, does this new and vastly improved software support an unsupported 3rd party hack used purely for eye candy?

No, but as soon as the 3rd party updates the hack, it will work just like before.

Hmm. Ok. I'll wait then on the new and vastly improved software.

LOL

All I'm sayin here is get the update. There will be plenty to fiddle aroud with that'll keep you occupied until SS gets updated. (think dashboard widget orgy)

This man speakth the truth! You'd be amazed how much time will be wasted doing the following routine:

� Open dashboard
� Hold shift, drag a widget
� Say "Oooh.."
� Hold shift, close a widget
� Say "Aaah.."
� Select a widget, hold shift, press Cmd+R
� Say "Oooh.."
� Hold shift, press the + button
� Say "Aaah.."

[G0Ducks]

Im surprised that Unsanity / smeger haven't talked at all about using the new core image stuff for SS. Im sure there could be some kinds of spiffy use...

- R

Originally posted by esXXI:
This man speakth the truth! You'd be amazed how much time will be wasted doing the following routine:

� Open dashboard
� Hold shift, drag a widget
� Say "Oooh.."
� Hold shift, close a widget
� Say "Aaah.."
� Select a widget, hold shift, press Cmd+R
� Say "Oooh.."
� Hold shift, press the + button
� Say "Aaah.."

[cruciarius]

Originally posted by MaxPower:
All I'm sayin here is get the update. There will be plenty to fiddle aroud with that'll keep you occupied until SS gets updated. (think dashboard widget orgy)

i will get tiger, but not install it right away. nothing i have seen in tiger, makes me want to install it asap. dashboard? i'm not going to use. if possible, i won't install it.

[RevEvs]

Originally posted by cruciarius:
i will get tiger, but not install it right away. nothing i have seen in tiger, makes me want to install it asap. dashboard? i'm not going to use. if possible, i won't install it.

not even spotlight?? Ill put up with the ugly stripes for spotlight... spotlight is worth every penny of the upgrade cost

[cruciarius]

i probably won't use spotlight either. its for finding files, right? i know where all my files are. if it also searches the net, well...thats what google is for.

[pyn]

lol i bet you can search through millions of files and find one and open it in less than a second

[Anubis IV]

Well, Spotlight is not so much used for locating files that you can't find on your own. Rather, it's a different paradigm for navigating to and opening those same files. Saying that I know how to get from here to Tokyo via airplane is great and all. Being able to walk to a teleporter that's 10 feet away, throw a few switches, and be there in an instant is something else entirely. Though I don't think Spotlight's end result will be quite that drastic, I do think that it will be an entirely new way of both navigating and organizing, and I honestly think that it will help out my productivity in the end, even though I may not like it at first.

The same thing happened in Panther with the Sidebar and Expos�. I couldn't stand either (ok, so I liked the Expos� eye candy...), but I gritted my teeth and got used to them, and now I can't live without them. Whenever I end up on a Windows machine, I find myself trying to use the hot corners to activate Expos�. Rather funny.

Anyway, saying that Spotlight is basically a fancy schmancy Command+F would be seriously understating what Spotlight is. It's not used to find files that you misplaced. It's used to get to them. And others like them. Faster.

[cruciarius]

well i don't have millions of files to look thru and i sort them anyways. if i want a certain file of mine, then i just need to open 1 or 2 folders.

i don't like exspose. i don't see a use for it, unless for quickly getting to a file on the desktop or if you have a small monitor.

[Gerrit Vanoppen]

If I'm to change a +20 year old Apple-inspired approach of my HD with desktop, closets, folders etc., Spotlight 'll better be rock solid good. Oh well, I'll probably give it a fair chance and consider the learning curve plus change of habits against a possible productivity boost. But expos� and Finder Sidebar didn't make it over here�

One thing though I'm already sure of, I won't put up with the ugly stripes.

[Kate]

I hope Jason is quick as always. Sure, I don't want stripes back or brushed metal, so yes, Sir! I'm buying Tiger ASAP, but not using it without the needed SS - cosmetics.

For me, I doubt that Spotlight* will have any effect on my working habits, probably as much as Expos�, which I do use once a month or so. Dashboard won't cut it as well I think.
I am very interested in the Core-XXX stuff, that is producing all the sexyness alone as far as I am concerned.



*Spotlight: I'm not sure for what you can use this. Apples advertising is vague. A search engine? A possible future Finder replacement? How so? Hm, sounds like marketing.

[siMac]

When it comes to Spotlight, people seem to fall into one of two categories; those that are excited by it, and those that don't understand it.

Clearly, I am of the former.

[esXXI]

Originally posted by cruciarius:
well i don't have millions of files to look thru and i sort them anyways. if i want a certain file of mine, then i just need to open 1 or 2 folders.

i don't like exspose. i don't see a use for it, unless for quickly getting to a file on the desktop or if you have a small monitor.

Well that says it all. You probably think the task-bar is a good means of working.

Personally, it's a life-saver when I've got three folders, two dozen images to edit, a web-browser, a few chats, iTunes, etc open at once.

[cruciarius]

Originally posted by esXXI:
Well that says it all. You probably think the task-bar is a good means of working.

Personally, it's a life-saver when I've got three folders, two dozen images to edit, a web-browser, a few chats, iTunes, etc open at once.

i run adium, itunes, safari, dreamweaver and photoshop all at the same time and never use exspose. itunes is hidden and controlled via M-Beat (menubar controller). photoshop and dreamweaver, i switch to by either clicking on them in my dock or command+tab. safari, i use to preview what i'm doing in dreamweaver, but mostly to just go to forums that i visit.

plus, i do all that with a mere 256MB of RAM and 800MHz, which isn't that fast, but i don't mind it.

[Mike S.]

Originally posted by Kate:
Spotlight: I'm not sure for what you can use this. Apples advertising is vague. A search engine? A possible future Finder replacement? How so? Hm, sounds like marketing.

Spotlight is not simply the search interface demoed, it's a new core technology that will eventually be used throughout the OS.

It's essentially a very fast, always on auto indexing system that catalogs metadata as well as contents.

What does this mean to you? It means you can instantly find anything on your computer without having to know where it is or require exact info about it.

If you're a highly organized person than it may not matter much to you but to people who just have a tendency to throw everything into a mess on their desktop or what have you it'll be a good thing.

You can bring up all information on the system pertinent to a contact, documents with their name, their emails, IM info, address. Anything you need to go to individual apps to find right now can be gotten from a spotlight search and if developers do creative things they can integrate that kind of instant access into their applications.

The way it's integrated into the Finder will let you set up smart folders similar to smart playlists. In fact such things can be integrated system wide so you can set-up custom info stores in all of your apps. (Mail will use it, as will Address Book and apparently even System Preferences)

You can create a folder that will provide you with only documents that have been modified within the last three days or a folder that contains all data relevant to a particular person, this folder would be auto updated as you create and delete data.

It's not a "sexy technology" like Core Image but I think it's going to be a fundamental thing that people will come to appreciate as it's used more and more pervasively.

[goMac]

Originally posted by Kate:
*Spotlight: I'm not sure for what you can use this. Apples advertising is vague. A search engine? A possible future Finder replacement? How so? Hm, sounds like marketing.

I use Spotlight for searching my iTunes library/changing the playing song without actually having to browse iTunes.

[h4ck]

...its just a front end for grep. not that special. insanely functional, sure.
but all the mumbo jumbo about "core technology" etc... sure, its something built in to the core that linux/unix $lusers have been taking advantage of for years.

[slava]

Originally posted by h4ck:
...its just a front end for grep. not that special. insanely functional, sure.
but all the mumbo jumbo about "core technology" etc... sure, its something built in to the core that linux/unix $lusers have been taking advantage of for years.

No, it's not. Spotlight uses sqlite to store stuff it indexes in its own database, and then it uses the db to search...

[Kate]

Originally posted by slava:
No, it's not. Spotlight uses sqlite to store stuff it indexes in its own database, and then it uses the db to search...

Which brings me to the point of a search function I really do need: image file search, based on image content. I guess Spotlight has no such ability?

Usually I am browsing through my collection of images in the hope my memory serves me well to find what I want, but after the collection grew up to some 30.000 pictures I'm sometimes lost. This is organized in subfolders based on subjects but even those subfolders may contain some hundred image files. Oh, and btw, iPhoto doesn't do a good job with this...it is too slow for my needs and barks at some files and the sheer amount too often.

I know that the Canto Cumulus db has suchlike filters, it really can find duplicates based on content rather than on metadata, but I cannot justify buying the expensive Cumulus software more or less just for that function alone.

BTW. slava, I guess SS is tested and ready for release as soon as Tiger is let out of its cage, yes?

[slava]

Originally posted by Kate:
BTW. slava, I guess SS is tested and ready for release as soon as Tiger is let out of its cage, yes?

=) Unfortunately due to company's policy towards announcements of products, I can not comment on this one.

[Randman]

Originally posted by cruciarius:
ok so i'll wait on getting tiger, until SS is updated.

I can understand lots of reasons to hold off but for not having SS is a ... unique one.

[smeger]

Originally posted by Kate:
Which brings me to the point of a search function I really do need: image file search, based on image content. I guess Spotlight has no such ability?

Technically, it would be possible to do something like this with spotlight. Someone could, for example, write a spotlight metadata parser that parses image files and associates with them the colorspace, image size, variance of the histogram, and number of edges found by running the image through an edge-detection algorithm.

Then you could do a spotlight search for "color jpeg images larger than 200 by 200 pixels with lots of color complexity and lots of edges".

I think.

Of course, the odds of someone actually writing a metadata importer that would do such a crazy thing are virtually nil.

[Kate]

Originally posted by smeger:
Technically, it would be possible to do something like this with spotlight. Someone could, for example, write a spotlight metadata parser that parses image files and associates with them the colorspace, image size, variance of the histogram, and number of edges found by running the image through an edge-detection algorithm.

Then you could do a spotlight search for "color jpeg images larger than 200 by 200 pixels with lots of color complexity and lots of edges".

I think.

Of course, the odds of someone actually writing a metadata importer that would do such a crazy thing are virtually nil.

That is highly unlikely I guess . But I would rather need something quite different: "Search the photo with the lady in front of the blue house", or "search any picture were I was less than 20 years old"

Anyway, I just this minute ordered Tiger through the Apple Store and I will see soon myself what I can use Spotlight for.

I hope slava can lift the silence 29th of April when Apple delivers.

[slava]

Originally posted by Kate:
I hope slava can lift the silence 29th of April when Apple delivers.

Probably the silence regarding ShapeShifter and Mighty Mouse will be lifted by Jason, not me.

From my end, I can say that Application Enhancer, WindowShade X and FruitMenu work pretty fine under Tiger, we are ironing out the remaining quirks in the latter two. Xounds, might require some more work for it to pick up all the sound events it lost in the transition to 10.4, but it's getting worked on now.

Unfortunately, no comments on other haxies that I don't lead.

[badidea]

What about Omega????

[smeger]

Originally posted by Kate:
That is highly unlikely I guess . But I would rather need something quite different: "Search the photo with the lady in front of the blue house", or "search any picture were I was less than 20 years old"

Are you wanting an automated way of doing this? That would pretty much require an Artificial Intelligence that could ascribe meaning to the symbols in your images.

Now, having a system where you add keywords to your images, like "blue house" and "me" would be pretty trivial. In fact, I'd be sort of surprised if Tiger's iPhoto doesn't do this now.

[cruciarius]

couldn't you put that info in the comments section (get info on the file) of the file? i'm sure you could search your HD for comments on files. that way, you could find specific images, if you put the info in that comments section.

[Kate]

Interesting proposals. But, I must say, that is hardly feasible. Comments are not pictures.
An image can fall into a lot of possible categories, some of which may not yet be obvious at the time those comments are fed into the meta data fork attached to the file.

Let's say I have the picture that is featured on the front of the Tiger box. Black background, a gradient of light, the letter X as a flat but shadowed figure. I could sort it into " Apple", "MacOSX", "Operating System", " Graphical Illustration", " Alphabet", "Black 'n Whites" and so on.....

But, after some time I would like to search for it. My memory sorted it under "Tiger".... but the comments do not contain that key word. Nor do the comments contain things like " Stripes", "Cats", " Predators" etc....

Or, more from a daily perspective: A simple Word file, an invoice. I sort it according to the system needed by the accounts dept. That means it bears a nonsensical number, is stuck together with dozens alike in a folder, it is stuck in a folder with an even less descriptive number which resides somewhere on the server in a directory that "hoooray!" is named according to the name of the customer.

After some time I need to find info for a certain project. I know there has been a customer who had something similar outside the project described in an invoice. To make life easy it would be a simple copy paste needed from an unknown file to the current project. But if I only could find this. I do certainly not remember the customers name. I remember that there was a similar thing on that invoice. I roughly remember a time span, I roughly remember a Word document.

I need to search for content then. So far, I cannot solve this with the current search built into Finder. I think Spotlight might be my friend after all if it can sort this out.

It would be my best boy if it could find the single photo where someone used a flash to fix a picture of me with a fresh run in new tights. Or something. But that's out of question right now. In the meantime I need a good memory and spacial organization to find my image files.

So far smart folders might offer some good use for me too, especially when it comes to recent scans and worked on images in all the various stages of Photoshop processing....

[smeger]

I agree with your comments about applying keywords to pictures. And the industry generally agrees, too - it's why there's no built-in way of applying arbitrary metadata keywords to your files. People never use the keywords they later search for, or else they can't remember what keywords they actually used.

Spotlight will help with your invoice example, that's exactly what it's intended to do.

But as far as the image thing, you're out of luck, for exactly the reason you said before. To search for pictures using the meaning of the picture, either you need to tell the computer the meaning of the picture (keywords) or the computer needs to be able to figure it out itself (artificial intelligence).

Searching for text is much easier. A word is always that word, regardless of its context. But one picture of a shoe can look wildly different from another picture of the exact same shoe.

[OwlBoy]

Originally posted by badidea:
What about Omega????

Amen!

-Owl

[Randman]

Originally posted by badidea:
What about Omega????

[Bit Density]

I love MacOSX, I HATE aqua VISUALLY as it ships. I have no idea what Apple was thinking mixing plastic buttons and brushed metal. And why are thier own apps not using default widgets? It practically makes me ill to use it.

SS, as it turns out, is the most important piece of software on my system. It keeps me from hating my machine as I look at every window. I wish that more apps were either skinned or use the default widgets (Thunderbird comes to mind, but I have hopes that Apple will bring me back to Mail).

If only Itunes was skin-able...

So, I for one am waiting for SS for Tiger before I upgrade. I am also expecting that this is a wait of mere moments and that on the 30th I shall have both SS and Tiger .

Skinning is not just about eye candy, it is about removing the stress and ugliness from my computing experience.

Thanks Unsanity. I am a commited fan. And thank you to the talented designers that make my day better.

[Kate]

Originally Posted by Bit Density

Skinning is not just about eye candy, it is about removing the stress and ugliness from my computing experience.

Thanks Unsanity. I am a commited fan. And thank you to the talented designers that make my day better.

I second that notion.