Hands on with OmniGraphSketcher
Filed under: iPad
Retailing for a relatively hefty US$14.99, OmniGraphSketcher may initially leave you scratching your head and wondering exactly who the app's target audience is. OmniGraphSketcher offers a free-form drawing application for creating graphs and charts. With it, you can illustrate many kinds of numeric information, just as you would by using the chart features in a normal spreadsheet. However, OmniGraphSketcher isn't powered by spreadsheets. It's powered by human drawing, and that's a rather odd combination; it's also the application's main feature.
There's not a lot you can customize creatively when working with a standard spreadsheet graph. OmniGraphSketcher helps build persuasive illustrations that break the cookie-cutter sameness of pie-charts and bar graphs and hopefully brings design excellence to the table. This app isn't about mathematical precision, it's about beauty.
You choose the axes, the labels, the drawing style, and so forth. Like OmniGraffle, most of the functionality is placed into a pair of modes (line drawing and filled drawing, which I used to create the graph at the top of this post). An inspector popover lets you customize how each feature is colored.
The software is, clearly, first generation. I ran into a fair number of bugs both before and after Omni issued a bug-fix 1.1 release. Even now, you cannot easily move labels within a shape. I worked around this by creating separate labels and dragging them to where I wanted them to be rather than where the app wanted to put them. I could not order my objects back to front, but I realized that deleting a shape and undoing that action moved each shape to the front. (I initially drew the shapes purple, then red, then green, but wanted them ordered in the sequence you see above.)
I admit readily that I'm an engineer, not an artist. (The picture shows this quite clearly.) While the idea of creating artistically enhanced illustrations appeals to me, I have no talent whatsoever to really make the most of this application. I'll stick with spreadsheets, I'm afraid. For anyone who does have that artistic spark, you may find that this application will help you build those persuasive graphics, even when you're on the go.
Gallery: OmniGraphSketcher
Hands on with OmniGraphSketcher originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 22 Apr 2010 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Hands on with OmniGraphSketcher originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 22 Apr 2010 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Benchmarking results: Is Snow Leopard really any faster than Leopard?
Filed under: OS, TUAW Labs, Snow Leopard
Be sure to check all of our ongoing Snow Leopard coverage right here.
One of the biggest features of Snow Leopard isn't something apparent to the naked eye: software tweaks and refinements intended to make OS X a leaner, meaner OS for your fighting Apple machine. But is Snow Leopard really any faster? Now that I've successfully upgraded two Macs to Snow Leopard I've got some benchmarking results to share.
My Early 2008 MacBook Pro shipped with OS X Leopard 10.5.2 installed. I ran Geekbench on the stock OS X installation after upgrading the RAM to 4 GB to get a baseline for comparison of future performance. 18 months later I ran the same test immediately after updating to 10.6. Both tests were performed with Geekbench testing in 32-bit mode immediately after a restart, with no other programs open except the Finder, nothing loaded in Dashboard, and no Time Machine backup running.
Machine specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.60 GHz w/ 4GB RAM
Average Overall Geekbench score for this model of MacBook Pro: 3304
Read on for the scores.
Continue reading Benchmarking results: Is Snow Leopard really any faster than Leopard?
Benchmarking results: Is Snow Leopard really any faster than Leopard? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 02 Sep 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Benchmarking results: Is Snow Leopard really any faster than Leopard? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 02 Sep 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Screaming fast Mozilla browser Minefield gives a glimpse of Firefox’s future
Filed under: Software, Internet Tools, Open Source, TUAW Labs
I was really disappointed when Google released their Chrome web browser for Windows only. When it comes to browsers, I've tried them all. Right now I regularly switch between Firefox and the latest nightly build from Webkit (essentially Safari). Firefox has the extensibility I rely on, while Webkit has the performance I crave. I had hoped that Chrome would magically combine those two crucial traits and become my new go-to browser. Unfortunately, Chrome is not yet nearly as extensible as Firefox, and isn't available for Mac (yet).
So imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon the latest experimental Firefox build from Mozilla, called Minefield. This Minefield should not be confused with the unofficial optimized builds of Firefox that Brett wrote about, which are also referred to as Minefield. Minefield is Mozilla's code-name for this generation of Firefox, and the code name is used for unofficial builds to avoid infringing upon the Firefox name.
So, what's so special about the Mozilla Minefield build? It's fast... smokin' fast. This is essentially a version of Firefox with the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine under the hood, and as Ars Technica reports, it tests even faster than Google's V8 JavaScript engine.
As most Mac users have noted, Firefox is kind of pokey on the Mac platform, particularly compared with WebKit or even Safari, and even when compared with Firefox on a similarly spec'd Windows machine. Version 3 of Firefox was supposed to fix the performance problem, and while it's somewhat better, it's still not great.
Well, Minefield is great. Using Gmail or even a complex content management system is a breath of fresh air. I feel like my web apps are finally keeping up with me.
There's one caveat, and it's a big one: though the current version number is 3.1b2pre (the "b" denoting beta status), this is really alpha software. That means there will be bugs, and you will experience problems. Surprisingly, though, Minefield has been very stable in my testing -- not yet crashing in a full day of testing. I have restarted it a couple of times due to suspicion that something strange was going on, but I can't say for sure if it was.
If you use it with your regular Firefox profile rather than creating a new one, Minefield will complain that most of your extensions are not compatible. Using Nightly Tester Tools, I re-enabled all of the extensions that it disabled, and every single one of them appears to be working normally, even the complicated ones like Better Gmail 2 and TabMixPlus.
I've only had a problem with one site so far, but unfortunately it's a big one: Google Docs. The page simply won't load. But for now, I'm willing to open WebKit or Camino to edit my Google Docs, because I'm just too smitten with the raw speed that Minefield offers.
One last note: being a nightly build, you will likely find that new versions are available, well, nightly. Mozilla makes the process of upgrading to the latest version virtually painless by using the built-in version monitoring process that Firefox uses.
[via Ubuntu Unleashed]
Screaming fast Mozilla browser Minefield gives a glimpse of Firefox's future originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 26 Oct 2008 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Screaming fast Mozilla browser Minefield gives a glimpse of Firefox's future originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 26 Oct 2008 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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360iDev: Hands-on with Freeverse’s Warpgate HD and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Filed under: iPad
We got to play two of Freeverse's current and future offerings this past week at 360iDev. Warpgate HD was the first -- it's out now on the App Store, and is due out for the iPhone and iPod touch. It was originally designed for the iPhone, but it ended up being a good fit for the larger device, so they readied it for a launch release. It's a fun title, although it doesn't quite take full advantage of the bigger hardware yet; as you play the space trading simulation, you get the feeling that there could probably be a little more to it on the iPad. It's still a fun title, though.
We also got to play their upcoming Pride and Prejudice and Zombies iPhone game adaptation, and being that we've been buddies with Freeverse ever since they were developing games for the Mac, we talked a little bit with them about their heritage and how their recent merger with Ngmoco has affected their outlook. Read on for more.
Continue reading 360iDev: Hands-on with Freeverse's Warpgate HD and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
360iDev: Hands-on with Freeverse's Warpgate HD and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 16 Apr 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
360iDev: Hands-on with Freeverse's Warpgate HD and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 16 Apr 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Totally blind person reviews Apple iPad: 100% accessible straight out of the box; thanks, Apple!
The Apple iPad is one of the hottest pieces of technology on the market right now...
