OS X Daily: “Enable the iPhone Camera Grid to Take Better Pictures” plus 2 more

Enable the iPhone Camera Grid to Take Better Pictures
Try Windows 8 Consumer Preview on a Mac with VirtualBox
Mac Setups: iOS Developers Home Office

Enable the iPhone Camera Grid to Take Better Pictures

Posted: 04 Mar 2012 09:23 AM PST

iPhone camera grid

Turning on the iPhone camera grid makes it easier to take better pictures, here’s how to enable it:

Launch the Camera app from home screen or lock screen
Tap on “Options” at the top
Swipe Grid to “ON”
Tap “Done” to hide the Options again and return back to Camera

The grid will not appear on finalized images in the photo stream.

What’s the point? If you’re new to photography or don’t know why the grid is potentially useful, the grid makes composing images using the “rule of thirds” easier. Essentially that means by dividing a picture into horizontal and vertical thirds and placing compositional elements along those lines and intersections, you’ll end up with better pictures. It’s an old artistic technique that has been around for hundreds of years.

Rule of Thirds

The animated gif shown above from Wikimedia demonstrates this well, and there is more information on Wikipedia if you want an in depth explanation of the technique and its usage in art and photography throughout history.

The grid option is available only to iOS devices with a camera using iOS 5 and later.

Try Windows 8 Consumer Preview on a Mac with VirtualBox

Posted: 03 Mar 2012 12:03 PM PST

Windows 8 in VirtualBox

You probably know by now that Windows 8 Consumer Preview was released recently. This is what Microsoft is betting their future on, combining their traditional desktop experience with the all new tiled Metro interface, aimed at tablets and portable computers.

Thanks to virtualization, anyone can try Windows 8 easily right on top of their current operating system. This makes it easy to both install and also remove later when you’re done with it. While this article is intended for Mac users, VirtualBox will run in Linux, Solaris, and Windows as well, so you can take this to just about any platform.

Everything is free and there is little risk to trying this out. If you’ve been curious about Windows 8 this is the easiest way to get direct experience with it. Here’s what you’ll need to get started:

Download Windows 8 Consumer Preview ISO – free – put the ISO on the desktop or somewhere easy to find since you will be referencing this later
Download VirtualBox – free – go ahead and install this after you’ve finished downloading, it’s a standard application installer

Be sure to match the version of VirtualBox to the version of Windows 8 Consumer Preview that you download, if you get one in 64-bit, get both in 64-bit, same goes with 32-bit versions.

For the best performance, you’ll want to use a reasonably new computer with at least 4GB of RAM. As usual, VM’s are much faster running off of an SSD, but it isn’t a requirement.

Installing Windows 8 Consumer Preview in VirtualBox

Launch VirtualBox and create a new virtual machine. Name it and select Windows and Windows 8 as the operating system and version
Set RAM as 2GB and create a new virtual hard disk, set it to be 20GB, choose VDI as type, and set to dynamic allocation
Save the virtual machine and click “Create”
Back at the VirtualBox screen, select the Windows 8 VM and click “Start” to boot

Start the VirtualBox VM with Windows 8

At the “Select Installation Media” screen, click the folder icon on the right and locate the previously downloaded Windows 8 ISO as the media source
Boot Windows 8 and select your language preferences, click on “Install” and then use the following product key from Microsoft: DNJXJ-7XBW8-2378T-X22TX-BKG7J
At the installation type menu, choose “Custom: Install Windows only”, select the virtual hard disk, and click “Next”
Windows 8 will install and automatically reboot when finished, set up a login and you are on your way

Really the best part about Windows 8 is the Metro interface. The redesigned user interface is obviously suited for tablets and touch surfaces, but it works with a mouse and trackpad too to get a feel for things. Put VirtualBox into full-screen mode for the best experience here, and remember this is a Consumer Preview (public beta) and it’s currently lacking multitouch support so not everything will be identical to the final version.

Windows 8 Metro

If you want access to the Windows 8 App Store, you’ll need a Microsoft login through hotmail, MSN, or just create one when necessary. You’ll find a handful of free apps available to play around with, including some popular games.

You’ll notice that even in the traditional desktop mode there are some major changes, most notably there is no Start menu, making this the first major UX change for Windows since Windows 95 really.

Windows 8 Desktop

All in all it’s an interesting operating system to check out, but I’ll be staying with a Mac.

If you saw us cover this before, you’ll find the latest version of VirtualBox makes installing Windows 8 Consumer Preview much easier than the original Developer Preview, and there is practically no configuration required to get everything working. Nice!

Mac Setups: iOS Developers Home Office

Posted: 03 Mar 2012 11:43 AM PST

iOS Developers Home Office

Ever wonder what an iOS developers home office looks like? This great Mac setup should give you an idea. Coming to us from Henry in Florida, this setup is used primarily for iOS development and photography. There’s a lot of great Apple hardware here, including:

2011 MacBook Air i7 with 256GB SSD
2008 Mac Pro with 2 Xeon Quad-Core CPU’s, 16GB RAM, and 2 3TB hard drives
2011 Mac Mini Server
27″ Thunderbolt Display attached to the MacBook Air
30″ Apple Cinema Display connected to Mac Pro
iPad 2
iPad 1 3G
Original iPhone, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4S, and two iPhone 4′s
Logitech Mac Keyboard

There’s a Magic Trackpad and Magic Mouse in there too, and the MacBook Air looks to be on an mStand from Rain Design.

If you’re wondering why so many iPhones and iPads are necessary, keep in mind developers need a handful of devices around to test for compatibility and to find obscure bugs that only pop up in certain versions of iOS.

Great Mac setup Henry!

Send us pictures of your Apple & Mac hardware setups! Email them to osxdailycom@gmail.com and include some brief details on the hardware and what you use it for.