Field of Dreams, Iowa. Pano by AutoStitch 3.0
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Greetings from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where we are for a few more days on a working vacation. If your perceptions of Brew City are based solely on old reruns of “Laverne & Shirley” and “That 70’s Show”, you are missing out on a truly great (and photogenic) city.
It’s going to be a big week in iPhoneLand. The new iPhone OS, iOS 4, hits today. The iPhone 4 streets later this week. In lieu of a full-blown post this morning, here are a few random musings….
- iOS 4, the new iPhone OS, streets today at 11:00 Pacific Daylight Time. If you’re using an iPhone 2G, you’re out of luck on this OS upgrade. If you have an iPhone 3G, you get the upgrade, but won’t be able to take advantage of all of the OS’ new features. I’ll be kicking the tires of iOS4 this Thursday when the new iPhone 4 streets. I spoke with fellow blogger and Mac Guru Devin Pike from entertainment website Red Carpet Crash who installed the update on his 3GS this morning. His first reports are glowing. My first question to him was if it breaks any apps. Devin says that older apps run surprisingly stable in the new OS. One of my concerns was that iOS4 would break a lot of apps that hadn’t been updated. Devin says they run just fine. We’ll see how many of the old camera apps break with the new OS APIs. Many apps in the App Store have already been updated for iOS4 compatibility, so be sure you’re running the latest versions of your apps. I also asked about real-world battery life. Devin said that he didn’t experience the increased battery usage that was common when the iPhone OS 3 update first came out. All in all, he’s really happy with the new OS.
- I got to really work with the updated AutoStitch Panorama this weekend and I have to say that in real world shots, I found the new algorithms are significantly better than previous versions. See my pano above. While not perfect, the new update does a much better job of stitching together images and the new color compensation options really help match color levels across the pano.
- We spent a day at the Milwaukee Zoo on Friday and I spent the day shooting with Camera+ by tap tap tap [App Store link]. It’s a really nice camera replacement app. I like “the skin” of the app. While it’s a little clicky to get through, the interface is easy to maneuver through and I thought it was fun. Reload times were a little long, though. I couldn’t shoot while the image was saving. I missed some great shots of the lions. That’s really my biggest complaint about the app and probably the one issue that really limits its usability for me. Otherwise, it’s a good app.
- Thursday can’t come soon enough. I can’t wait to get my hands on the new iPhone 4. I hope that AT&T has their network’s collective s**t together for Activation Day. After all the nightmare stories still surfacing about Pre-Order day, I’m concerned that my transfer of service may not go as smoothly as advertised. Life sucks without a phone.
=M=
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