PIXAR-ing The Weekend Away

Wall-E on Blu-Ray

*Sighs happily* Pixar makes the greatest animated flicks.  I picked up a copy of Wall-E yesterday after hitting Machines in 1U to swap my defective copy of Snow Leopard for a new one.

What prompted this purchase? Well, I caught some of this brilliant movie last weekend on ASTRO whilst celebrating Nineoverten‘s birthday and it looked terrible in low-res which got me to thinking about picking this one up a.s.a.p. I caught this movie when it first came out and I thought it was genius how they communicated so much with so little dialogue from both EVE and Wall-E.

Love is about thinking about others more than ourselves and at the heart of its environmental message Wall-E also has a touching love story between a boy & a girl. It  really warmed my heart to watch the lovable Wall-E melt EVE’s heart.

Boy…  it was great watching Wall-E in 1080p. The colours were vibrant  and it was great watching the animated short BURN-E (you’ve just gotta YouTube it up). I have yet to go through the bonus disc but I’m glad I picked Wall-E up cos’ it’s a great movie made even better in high-resolution. At RM120 I think it’s a worthwhile purchase for a movie-phile like me.

I had Toy Story 1 & 2 playing in the background today whilst ploughing through my email and it was nice revisiting old characters from some of Pixar’s early films. In fact Cars is playing in the background even as I write this post. I love Pixar. Stories always come first and the awesome CG is just the icing on the cake.

I give this revisit of Wall-E & Pixar a 5 out of 5.

Am So Missin’ Aero Snap in Windows 7

Aero Snapped.

After a long day at a shoot I’m kickin’ back a little and decided it’s time for me to fire up Snow Leopard for a bit. Why? Well I’ve been on Windows 7 all weekend till today cos’ of work. It’s easier to work off my Vostro 1400 cos’ all my files are there so I’ve been missing Snow Leopard and my Macbook a fair bit. Anyways, back to my tale for today.

Funnily enough the first thing I tried to do when Safari launched was to do an Aero Snap maneuver which didn’t turn out too well. Ha ha! Obviously the window I was trying to Aero Snap didn’t maximise as it does on Windows 7 and I must say that I’m beginning to love Windows 7 a lot and Aero Snap ranks as one of my favourite features on the OS that Microsoft built.

I am so missing Aero Snap right about now on my Mac and I’m looking forward to getting back on Windows 7 tomorrow at work. Snow Leopard, I still love you but right now I’m enjoying my everyday experience with Windows 7. I’m thinking that Mac fanboys would so want to kill me right now for saying that. LOL!

I still like Snow Leopard but Windows 7 really does have some uber cool features.

What is Aero Snap? It’s a simple but great feature that allows me to maximise a window by just dragging the window to the top of the desktop. A glow/touch effect occurs and voila the window in question maximises! Cool eh? The handiest thing about Aero Snap happens when I need to compare 2 documents when I’m not dual-screened (which happened today on location). All I need to do is just “snap” each window that I wanna compare. One to the left. The other to the right. And just like magic both windows are instantly resized into equal sized windows that sit side by side for me to compare.

I know, I know. I’m supposed to do an indepth look at Grabber on Snow Leopard but I couldn’t help but write about Aero Snap today. It is such a cool feature.

I [heart] Aero Snap. I really do.

Windows 7 & Snow Leopard: Snipping Tool vs. Grab

Here’s part 2 of my indepth look into both Windows 7 and Snow Leopard in my day to day use for work and for play.

I take lots of screen captures at work on a daily basis to give feedback on designs, layouts or just to point out errors in copy and screen caps are an important part of what I do. Which is why part 2 is gonna be focused on the bundled screen capture utilities that came in both Windows 7 & Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

Before Vista, Windows never came with proper screen capture tools and I remember having to resort to 3rd party software to grab screens more efficiently which was kinda annoying. If you’re writing a document that requires lots of screen captures, Windows XP or below would really annoy you. Apple on the other hand did quite  a lot of thinking and came with out of the box snapshot tools which came in handy for work. Snow Leopard comes with a more “canggih” tool called Grab which I assume takes a page out of Vista cos’ I never noticed any such tool in Leopard before my Snow Leopard upgrade.

Snow Leopard's Grabber.

I’ve always hated the basic print screen functions that came with Windows so it was a joy to discover Snipping Tool (which incidentally comes in Windows Vista too) that  takes a page out of Apple’s default Command 3 or 4 snapshot feature.

Windows 7's Snipping Tool.

Snipping Tool is great and has a number of options that allow you to take snapshots of your desktop and windows. The best part about it is that it saves all these snapshots in a variety of formats; the default being PNG. That’s pretty cool cos’ Snow Leopard’s Grab saves snapshots in *.TIFF format by default which is a bit cumbersome especially when I have to convert it back into PNG to be published online. I haven’t mucked around with it too much but I assume it can be changed to save the image in another format.

Snipping Tool options.

If you work on dual screens then Mac OS X Snow Leopard does a nifty thing when you hit Cmd 3 – it actually creates 2 TIFF files  of each desktop which is super handy if you need to take lots of screen shots quickly without having to crop the images. Windows’ default Prnt Scrn button doesn’t do the same unfortunately and the Prnt Scrn button just takes one big image that combines both desktops. Perhaps a future update could alter this behaviour within Windows but then again I don’t think that many people are addicted to dual screens like me for work.

Both OSes come with great screen capture tools and I’m glad to have equivalents in both OSes to use for work. All in all I think Windows has finally caught up with Apple in this respect which is a good thing for the large install base of PC users all around the world.

One thing to note about Windows 7’s Snipping Tool is that it’s able to save screen snapshots in HTML form too. I can’t figure out why I’d save a snapshot as a HTML page though but nevertheless I’m sure someone out there would have a use for such a feature.

If you’re curious as to where Snipping Tool is; just go to All Programs -> Accessories in the Windows Ribbon to access this useful function. It’s snapped on to my taskbar cos’ I take screen caps every day! Same as Grab which I’ve locked within my dock on my Macbook.

Check back later over the weekend cos’ I’ll be dropping a quick post from my Mac that’ll show more screens off my Macbook give everyone a better idea of what Snow Leopard’s Grab does. I’m too sleepy & a tad bit lazy now to go back & forth between my Dell Vostro 1400 and my Macbook. Besides I need my Saturday afternoon nap now after last night’s 4am karaoke with some friends.

Ta!

For more on Windows 7 in Malaysia visit the Windows 7 independent community site here.

Windows 7 & Snow Leopard: Aero Peek vs. Expose

Windows 7

Operating systems. No one thinks twice about what’s under the hood but everyone certainly cares about how easy it is to use and I am loving both Windows 7 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard so far. My only gripe is with Apple at the moment cos’ I had problems with the install disc that came bundled with my copy of the Mac Box Set that I purchased from Machines in 1U. I had no issues with Windows 7 but then again my IT department set my office laptop with a burned copy that we obtained off MSDN so I can’t really judge Microsoft in this respect as I have yet to get a hold of a retail copy of the disc.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard

As I experience both OSes at work and at home I’ve decided to write up a fair play by play of the features that I use on a daily basis on both OSes. I’m not a power user so I’m guessing that my experiences with both Windows 7 and Snow Leopard would reflect what most of you do out there on a daily basis with your PCs.

Pardon the low-res screen captures but I don’t wanna kill anyone who loads up this post with sharp PNGs that will take ages to load up. The screen caps are meant to illustrate a point not look pretty.

Windows 7
First up! Let’s have a look at the number one feature of Windows 7 that I use every day… AERO PEEK! Yep … I use Aero Peek on a daily basis to go through all my open windows as I work in the office.

With Aero Peek I get live previews of any open window when I mouseover app icons in the taskbar.

For everyone’s info, I compare and reference a lot of materials in the office and this is a huge time saver which also helps to keep my screen clean of clutter. When I scroll over open windows within the taskbar, the coolest thing about Windows 7 is that I get to view the contents of windows that I mouse over directly on the desktop with other windows going translucent; exposing the window that I wanna look at. It’s a big help when I have a multitude of windows open.

Check out the cool translucent window effect when I mouseover a window I wanna preview.

The coolest thing about Aero Peek is that I am able to close windows from within the live preview boxes that appear in the taskbar whenever my mouse pointer hovers over open applications and windows. It’s a simple yet nifty feature that allows me to be more productive at work.

Mac OS X Snow Leopard
Mac OS X Snow Leopard on the other hand still uses Expose that allows me to view any open windows and apps that I have running at any point in time by just hitting the F3 key or by holding left click mouse button on an open app in the dock. Expose was revolutionary when it first came out and while useful it is a bit of a pain to always have to hit F3 just to view all the windows that I’ve got open.

Expose shows all open windows by hitting F3.

By clicking on an app's icon you can see all open windows it has.

I’m not really a power user on my Macbook but I don’t think I can close any open apps I have from within Expose. So Windows 7 does a one up on Snow Leopard in this respect. Apple’s introduction of enhanced stacks and Expose re-arranging windows in a grid format does help but I definitely like how Windows 7 treats the viewing & previewing of open windows on my desktop.

To be fair to Apple I really do like how I don’t need to go into Finder anymore when previewing folders and apps within stacks on my dock, which is a feature that should have been introduced earlier in OS X in my opinion. It’s a bit hard for me to illustrate this in writing so take a look at the screen shots below that I’ve taken to illustrate this.

Just click on a folder within the dock to pop a stack open.

Click on a folder within a stack to view it without having to open Mac OS' Finder. Neat!

Stacks in Mac OS X are cool but Windows Explorer does the same thing pretty much and stacks in my opinion function just like mini Finder windows in Snow Leopard. It is handy though when it comes to looking through folder shortcuts in the Mac OS Dock.

Explorer does the same thing as a stack doesn't it?

I think I’ve covered enough for Part 1. Suffice to say both OSes treat windows niftily but I definitely prefer Windows 7 in this respect. And it really helps that Aero makes the desktop sleek & sexy which was a selling point of Mac OS X to me. Hey … what can I say? I’m attracted to sexy.

Tune in next week as I continue to experience both OSes on a day to day basis. Windows 7 launches October 23rd here in Malaysia so I’m gonna try to cover as much as possible to help everyone get a sense of what to expect with the new OS and to see how it stacks up against Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

Cheers!

Note:
This post was written by tediously swapping between my Macbook and Dell Vostro 1400. Oh the sacrifice … heh.

My Bad Snow Leopard Experience

I am annoyed with Apple! Very annoyed. *Takes a deep breath* And the object of my annoyance sits in the very pretty box below.

Pretty box. Too bad it's not that pretty on the inside.

Yes! You heard that right! I’m annoyed with Apple for their crummy Mac OS X Snow Leopard install disc which is dual-layered and apparently cannot be read by the Superdrive that comes standard on my 1-year old Macbook. The disc worked and installed fine on the demo iMac at Machines 1U which made me feel even more crap. Gargh!

In order to deal with my annoyance I am gonna do just what anyone with access to the Internet will do. I’m gonna … wait for it … RANT! I decided to write directly to Apple.com on Sunday and unfortunately I’ve not gotten any response yet from them so in an effort to elicit a response out of Apple I’ve decided to plonk the contents of my next complaint to them that I am just about to post on Apple.com through their feedback form.

Enjoy the following and let’s hope I can get someone to do something about my defective disc (Apple … I’m talking to you).

Hi again,

I am really annoyed that no one at Apple has bothered to get back to me about the issue that I have been having. I emailed my problems with Snow Leopard over the weekend and it’s Tuesday now. I would really appreciate a response on this and action on replacing my Snow Leopard disc as the Superdrive on my Macbook cannot read the disc properly and the install does not occur at all.

I have managed to borrow a USB DVD-RW drive and created a disk image on a thumb drive which works but I still cannot get over the fact that I paid RM619 for a Mac Box set for a copy of Snow Leopard which I am finding out has problems being read by Macbook Superdrives because it’s dual-layered?!

I know I live half-way across the world in a region that probably is not important to your company but that does not mean I am any less as important as a customer. I must say that I am sorely disappointed in the response time that I’m getting here. In fact I think I’m gonna be posting this up somewhere for the world to know. It’s a shame really cos’ I’ve always had a high regard for Apple and I’ve been increasingly pursing genuine software as a means to support the fight against piracy. Apple products are premium-priced items here in Malaysia and it’s really disappointing that I can’t get a simple install to work.

I hope to hear from someone as the reason why I am writing in here is because I believe that my complaints can be better dealt with by the mother brand rather than the people who distribute Apple products here in Malaysia.

Thank you.

Regards,

Chris.

If someone from Apple is reading this. I hope you can do something for a very unhappy customer who has always thought that Apple had better QC on their products.