Last week, Apple debuted the ability to rent movies through iTunes. Over the weekend I gave the new service a try.
I have purchased several movies on iTunes and the experience is pretty much the same as buying music. Initially you have to jump through a few more hoops to rent movies. When I proceeded to rent the movie, I was presented with an update to the license agreement which makes provisions for movie rentals. Next, I had to enter in the security code on my card which apparently I hadn’t needed to do before. After a few hiccups, the download was underway. I attribute these hiccups to traffic although that’s just a guess. Being the first weekend after the movie rentals went in to effect, it’s to be expected I suppose.
It took approximately 20 minutes to download over a wireless connection which in my experience is typical of movies weighing in at around 1.25-1.3GB. Twice the download stopped, again probably because of traffic, but a click of the “resume” button picked up where it left off. Keep in mind this was on a laptop so I can’t offer any info on the experience of renting using an AppleTV.
You have 30 days to watch the movie and once you begin viewing, you have 24 hours to watch it as many times as you want. Movies rented on your computer can be transferred to another computer, iPod, or AppleTV. Movies rented on the AppleTV cannot be moved. The movie can only be viewed on one device at a time. Where you are used to seeing your music, tv, and movie purchases, a new section called “Movie Rentals” is added temporarily. In this window you will see the movie you rented with a synopsis and the amount of time that you have left to watch. At the end of the period, the movie is automagically deleted from your hard drive. Thanks Apple!
Let me back up a bit to say that when I went to start the movie, I fired up Front Row (Apple’s interface available on most Macs released since at least the beginning of 2006 for viewing movies, hearing music and looking at photos.) and navigated to the movies section to watch my just downloaded film. Nada. Only my purchased movies were available. Yep, you click play from within iTunes which then gives you the option of going full-screen. I found it curious that rentals were not available in Front Row, but I’m sure there is a good reason.
All in all, I was pleased with the experience which I’m sure is far more seamless with the AppleTV. As I have found out, the terms for watching movie rentals are typical in the industry when downloaded, so a change in that is somewhat unlikely for now. As time goes by, I’m sure the service and selection will improve and become the way we get our entertainment content. Us iTunes loving folks anyway.
First up on the Pixelmator tour is the tools palette. To me, one of Pixelmator’s strengths is its beautiful user interface. The first place that is evidenced is in the tools palette. The tools are colorful and set on a dark gray background which helps them really pop.
One of the first things you will notice when a tool is selected is a size increase in that tool. This is a great indicator for which tool you are working with and is an example of the nice touches in this program. Another palette that is used in conjunction with the tool palette is contextual palette that changes options depending on the tool. This is something that users of Apple’s pro products will be familiar with. In fact, my only criticism of the tools palette is that the Move tool, Crop tool, and Type tool are a little hard to see on the dark background and could use some contrast.
There are no big surprises about the collection of tools. For the most part, you see the usual suspects here that you see in Photoshop or Fireworks. One noticeable difference is the separation of the rectangular and elliptical marquee. Also, there is a lack of a true airbrush tool though the same effect can be achieved by adjusting the opacity of the Brush tool along with the softness of the brush edge.
All in all, this is a great implementation of a tools palette and the developers have done a good job of adding some thoughtful design touches that are actually useful.
Pixelmator is available now for $59 and there is also a 30-day demo so you can try before you buy.
JM
Recently, an amazing new image editor was released for the Mac OS. It’s called Pixelmator and I love it. Pixelmator’s tagline is “Image editing for the rest of us” and I believe that to be true. Even though I’m an experienced Photoshop user, I can see myself more often that not using this for many things that would be overkill in Photoshop.
Pixelmator is built on and utilizes many technologies that are part of OS X such as Core Image, Open GL and Spotlight. With Core Image for instance, Pixelmator uses the graphics card processor of the computer to do all the heavy lifting freeing up the computer’s processor for other things. As a result, things like applying a filter can happen in real time. This is also a feature used in Apple’s Motion software.
I believe that Pixelmator is the answer to people’s need for a capable “light-weight” image editing application that can take care of the vast majority of the tasks that they require.
This is a beautiful application and in the coming days, I will be reviewing and sharing what I find here.
JM
