Use Shift to Compare Edits in iPhoto '08
In iPhoto '08, while you're editing a photo, press the Shift key to see a "before" view; let it up to see the "after" view. It's much faster and easier than using Undo and Redo.
Written by
Adam C. Engst
Recent TidBITS Talk Discussions
- Alternatives to MobileMe for syncing calendars between iPad/Mac (1 message)
- Free anti-virus for the Mac (20 messages)
- iTunes 10 syncing iPod Touch 4.1 (2 messages)
- Thoughts about Ping (16 messages)
Published in TidBITS 1017.
Subscribe to our weekly email edition.
- iPad to Arrive in U.S. on April 3rd
- Apple Offers Cheaper Mac Developer Program
- What Is that $1 MobileMe Charge from Apple?
- WeatherBug Elite 1.0
- Zombie Authors Threaten Fiction Ebook Market, from the Grave!
- TidBITS Watchlist: Notable Software Updates for 8 March 2010
- ExtraBITS for 8 March 2010
Cartoons Reveal DRM Frustrations
I was struck by two recent cartoons that echo a common frustration with digital rights managed media: it's so hard to use the clumsy, purposely frustrating interfaces that it's easier to download and play a pirated version of media for which you have legitimate access.
First, Geekologie outlined in PowerPoint-like form the way in which the marketing and copyright geniuses at movie studios have ruined the experience of getting to a movie once you've inserted a DVD into a player.
There have been discs I've accessed lately that I wanted to put into the microwave oven after spending multiple minutes just getting to the point where I could actually watch the main feature. There's no reason for all this: the FBI, Interpol, and other warnings obviously don't ever stop anyone from any activity, but they are de rigueur irritations. Increasingly, unskippable trailers market to us just like we're bombarded at movie theaters.
The alternative? Stick a ripped-and-burned disc into a drive - or open a ripped file - and watch the film sans preludes.
The second cartoon, from the super-geeky Web designer duo The Brads (Brad Colbow and Brad Dielman), hits close to our heart: it shows Brad D. attempting to check out and listen to an audio book in digital form from his local library. (This cartoon is too big to display here; click the link to view it.)
Matt Neuburg painted a word story of the same horrible process in "A Silly Saga: How I Downloaded an Audio Book from My Library" (5 March 2009). Brad Dielman's saga ends with downloading the audio from a BitTorrent site.
In both cases, the examples aren't, "Hey, go steal stuff and rip off the copyright holder!" Rather, the humor lies in how hard companies make it to access content we have already paid for and can access entirely legitimately. Media firms seem to delight in making it hard, all of which contributes to "piracy" as a form of civil disobedience.
![](/file/11593/db.tidbits.com.tar/db.tidbits.com/images/badges/SmileLogo2010-50x50.gif)
editing PDFs; TextExpander for saving time and keystrokes while you
type; DiscLabel for designing CD/DVD labels and inserts. Free demos,
fast and friendly customer support. <http://www.smilesoftware.com/>
Umm, delight?
So we have to explicitly tell the system that an article has a significant enough update to warrant changing the feed and resetting the article to "unread" in many thousands of newsreaders.
My antennae also prick up when I read the date (late 70s), which given that home VCRs weren't widely available until about five years later seems awfully far-sighted.
The cartoon, though, really does sum up the industry's approach to a T!
"Fair use" provisions only apply in French speaking countries?
However a several thousand dollar Mac is still limited to 5 region changes then you're stuck for the rest of its life. Apple really needs to fix this.