This Just In: Microsoft Fails to Get the Macintosh – or just good installation practices…

Just got notified that there’s a Silverlight update for the Mac. OK, I’ll update, what’s the…

Wow. The instructions are so dense with unnecessary text, and eventually tell you to first uninstall any previous version, which necessitates removing half-a-dozen files from the Macintosh library manually. Confused? Of course you are! You’re not supposed to have to go mucking around in the Macintosh Library unless you’re a developer or you’re trying to recover from a poorly written application that has screwed up your settings at a very base level.

Let's be clear. You should NEVER have to go to the Library for an uninstall.

Of course you can watch a video on how to do this. By the way, the video is a WMV, Windows Movie file – guess it would be too awful for MSFT to provide a system native Quicktime for the Macintosh-specific instructions. This is starting to feel like it was written by someone who wanted the user to break their Macintosh. And the video conflicts with the written instructions on the web page which show many more files to delete than the video does.

Huh.

Did I mention that telling people to go into the Macintosh library and manipulate files is like telling Grandma to wet solder a circuit board – just not supposed to happen.

Really? Really? Are you trying to be a self-parody of a clueless conglomerate with lazy developers?

I’m no longer defending Microsoft when people accuse them of not “getting the Macintosh.” I’ve done so for many years, saying how many people in the Mac business units really do know and enjoy the Mac. But this has made me so embarrassed to have been involved with developing multiple applications, both on the Microsoft Office team and at eBay, that were dependent on this tech*.

Embarrassing.

By the way. I stand by my prior statements that there are hundreds of Microsoft employees who appreciate, understand, and like the Mac. They live and die by the quality of work they do in making applications like PowerPoint really useful for those trying to co-exist with a predominately Windows business world. I have nothing but respect for those individuals.

Not so much for the Silverlight team.

– Notes –
* While developing the Web Companion for PowerPoint at Microsoft, I was the PM for the team that used Silverlight to render the slide show in a window that would scale the slide interactively when the window was resized.  Without Silverlight installed the image would be a static fixed size.  When I joined eBay I took over the Simple Lister project, a stand-alone Silverlight application that experimented with creating user product listings in under a minute.

My iOS 5 Update on iPad

Just finished the iOS 5 update on my iPad 2. Man, what a marathon. It basically needs to back up your data, reset the device, update the OS, then restore your data. So plan for a few hours to completion. I have no idea how people without a computer (wasn’t that the promise?) would do this.

There’s some nice stuff here, you can read about that on the Apple site easy enough, but I’m not rushing to update Debbie’s iPad any time soon.  Not until I’ve made sure I’m aware of all the sharp corners here.  To that effect…

Two Hiccups:

• When update was “finished” I noticed I only had sound in apps that specifically were made to play sound (like Garage Band for example.) Very strange. Took about 30 minutes to realize that Apple had reset the option of how the physical switch near the volume control buttons work. I’d set that against the default, so it managed locking screen rotation (the original function, and absolutely necessary for those of us who read in bed.) They set it to control sound muting, and apparently the setting for free rotation is the same as mute. Wow, I imagine this is going to burn a few users.
• Second is that apparently some downloadable content may be corrupted or just not migrated properly. Comics on Graphic.ly all came up as black pages. Had to uninstall the Graphic.ly app, then reinstall and redownload the issues I’d put in my library. Luckily that was only about a dozen, but that could be really painful for someone who bought a lot of comics.

Biggest disappointment: Siri is not on the iPad. There’s really no good reason for this, other than to drive people to iPhone. And we’ll have to see how well that works. Android voice commands work very well, and is integrated in all the right places, but I rarely use them. Siri is not a game changer, it’s just a game.

Useless features:

• Reminders task List – Frankly anyone who isn’t using WunderList will be pleased with the Apple task list app.  However, it’s not near as cool as Wunderlist, is not cross-platform, does not sync to your Windows or Android devices… well, let’s just say I’ve buried this app inside a “Utility” folder to keep it out-of-the-way.  Why Apple made this lame addition an “essential” app, one you can’t delete, is just mind-numbing hubris. Go find Wunderlist and thank me later.
• Grid in Camera.  Don’t get me wrong, the rule of threes is essential for good composition.  However just adding a grid to the camera is so Apple – no documentation or help in figuring out why you would turn it on.  Come on Spartan design sense, surely even you can give a hint now and then.
• Newstand.  Just another Apple money grab.  My non-newstand publications sit on a page around a Newstand app with two demo pubs in them.  It just looks lame and yes!  You can’t delete this Essential app either.

May update as I learn more.

The PowerPoint Team Blog…

Well, everything old is new again.

Today the Microsoft PowerPoint Team Blog did me the honor of pointing out one of my posts from earlier this year, The Blur Trick, with an invitation to write more later.

I had the fun of writing a re-introduction for myself, for the blog I got started and which still contains entries I hope continue to help customers.

Hi, I’m Ric Bretschneider.  You might remember me from…well, the very first entry in the PowerPoint team blog back in 2006 and a lot of tips and tricks articles after that. I left the PowerPoint team and Microsoft about a year ago, but I’m still very involved with helping people become better presenters, and make better presentations.

I’m very pleased that the PowerPoint Blog team invited me back to share an article, written earlier this year on my personal blog, calledThe PowerPoint Blur Trick. You can add texture or blur the background of a picture using the Artistic Effects feature in PowerPoint 2010, leaving the foreground crisp and clear.

If you missed it before, hope you enjoy it today.  And we’ll see what I can come up with later.

-Ric

The value of writing reuse…

Every now and then I start off a blog entry with “I really don’t write often enough…”

But that’s not really true.  I write a ton of stuff, it just doesn’t always end up here.  The articles I write very rarely have to do with things I’ve written elsewhere.  (Irony, on reflection I see that the post just prior to this touts a review I wrote elsewhere.  I’m simply not paying attention. But I’ll write on as if I hadn’t noticed that.)

What I need to do is rechannel efforts, make blog entries about or completely repeating writing I’ve done for other sources – that is when it’s not against some standing prior agreement.  This does seem to be a factor in blogging success – let’s see if I can remember it.

Boring yet?  Let’s move on. 

So with that in mind, I invite you to view a series of articles composed of my pictures from Comic Con 2011.  Some of you may know of my association with the website Fanboy Planet.  I produce a weekly podcast and occasionally have prose pieces that appear there.  And every now and then, there’s a fun set of photos. 

So without further ado, some links for you to peruse. 

Comic-Con 2011: Celebrities, Creators and More!

• Comic-Con 2011: Nothing But Costumes, Gallery 1
• Comic-Con 2011: Nothing But Costumes, Gallery 2
• Comic-Con 2011: Nothing But Costumes, Gallery 3
• Comic-Con 2011: Nothing But Costumes, Gallery 4

There are likely a few more to come.

If you’re interested, you can follow me or Fanboy Planet on Facebook, or check back here to see when I update.

Now some of you may note that there are far more women in far less clothing in these pictures than there are men. 

There are two reasons for that:

1. There simply are more women in costume at comic con, and they do it so much better.  It’s a sewing thing I expect.

2. I’m a guy.

Enjoy.

Ric Bretschneider
August 12, 2011

And about that moon…

Sometimes you just do things for fun.

For the last four years I’ve produced a weekly podcast and occasionally written articles for a web site called Fanboy Planet. There’s no money in this, but usually it gets you into conventions, occasionally it gets you into great parties, and quite often it delivers great swag.  The cost of most swag is that you must review it, and this week my review of the first season of the 70′s science fiction show Space:1999 is up for your reading pleasure.  I’d repeat it here, but I’d much rather send you off to Fanboy Planet where you might read and listen to a great many other fun things.

-Ric

The PowerPoint Blur Trick

It’s been a while between posts, so I wanted to give you something special.  It’s a little longer than most, but I think you may find it worth your while. -Ric

Sometimes the right collection of commands and techniques in a software package is like a good magic trick.  You don’t see the result coming until it’s right there in front of you, and it surprises you how easy it was and how good it looks.

Today I’d like to share a magical photo technique I stumbled upon in PowerPoint.  It’s a version of something that pro photographers have been doing in Photoshop for years, but I think you’ll agree that this is simpler, and hey – you don’t need Photoshop!

You need to have Office 2010 (or 2011 for the Mac) to do this, because it requires a couple of features that don’t appear in earlier versions.  Sorry about that, but you really should upgrade – 2010 is the best.

To start with, you need a photograph.  I’m going to show this off using two different photos, both of which have “compelling” subjects, but have backgrounds that might distract or otherwise detract from the photo.

     

There are three features we’re going to concentrate on:

• Background Removal - Allows you to eliminate portions of a photo easily, typically leaving an object in the foreground
• Artistic Effects - Which apply various visual distortions to photographs
• Selection Pane - Makes it easy to identify and select shapes and images on a slide

Start by inserting a photo into PowerPoint.  Resize as necessary and if you want it’s a great time to crop the photograph before you start enhancing it.

The key to this technique is that while it looks like one image, we’re actually dealing with two, a foreground and a background.  So start by using the Duplicate command (CTRL-D) to create a second copy.  Then open the selection pane (it’s in the Home tab’s Arrange menu).  Things should look something like this.

 

With the selection pane open it’s easy to see that Picture 1 is on top of Picture 2.  Your results may vary, don’t worry about the numbers – they’re going away soon.  Click on that name and rename it to Foreground, then rename Picture 2 to Background.  That will make it easy to keep track of things later.

Now we need to align the two shapes.  Press Ctrl-A to select everything, then use the Arrange menu’s Align Center and Align Middle to put them exactly on top of each other.

We’ll start using the Background removal command now, but before that we need to hide the photo labeled Background (if that doesn’t make sense yet, hang on, it will in just a little bit.)  In the Selection pane, click the Eyeball icon to the right of the label “Background”.  Don’t worry, you shouldn’t see any difference because the hidden Background photo is behind the Foreground photo.

Now click on the label Foreground in the selection pane, and click on the Picture Tools Format tab.  All the way to the left is the Remove Background command.  This is a pretty cool tool that might take a little getting used to at first, but is a whole lot of fun once you do.  Basically use the tools to get your background removed so just the foreground image is visible.  If you’re having difficulty with the command, you might want to check out a blog Chris Maloney wrote on using Remove Background. 

How precise you want to make this is up to you, for the purpose of this technique you can actually be a little sloppy.  Eventually you want things to look like this.

Click Keep Changes and note that you should have a nice cut-out of the foreground.  Now click the Eyeball icon next to the Background label in the selection pane again.  No surprise there, the background is back.  But we’ve isolated it from the foreground because it’s actually behind the foreground image, and that’s where the magic can happen!

Click the Background label to select the Background image again.  Now click the Picture Tools Format tab again, but this time we’re going to play with the commands in the Artistic Effects menu.  There are a lot of these, but let’s use the Blur effect first.

As you can see, the ability to apply the effects exclusively to the background makes the foreground image “pop” more without making it look totally unnatural the way a simple cut-out would.  Professional photographers commonly apply a similar blur effect to magazine and portrait work – so you can now get out there and start making the big bucks too. 

By now you may have noticed that the Artistic Effects update as your pointer moves over them, and you may have stopped reading already just to play with the different effects.  That’s cool, if you have then my mission is already accomplished.  But there’s one more step you should know about, getting the picture out to use elsewhere!

Because this effect uses two pictures, you’ll have to combine them in PowerPoint before you can export the picture.  Simply press Ctrl-A again to select everything, then CTRL-G to Group the images. Now you can right-click the group and use Save as Picture to export them as a single image you can use anywhere.  Again, a before and after example.

      

But getting back to the other effects you noticed before, there’s a lot of fun to be had here. Again, with the Background image selected, try out the other effects just to see how things look.  Here’s a small gallery of examples to enjoy.

      

   

Hope you have as much fun with this as I do, and let me know how well this works for you!

-Ric   January 9th, 2011

Photos by Chuck Farnham (Bob) and Ric Bretschneider (ComicCon Slave Girls) not to be reused without permission.

Imported My “Space”

For a short period of time I had a small blog on Microsoft Spaces. Unfortunately Spaces will be going away. But Microsoft and WordPress worked out a deal where the archive of the old Spaces posts can be moved to WordPress accounts.

So the history of this blog just got inflated, an influx of stuff written mostly for family and friends.

Enjoy, or ignore. But I figured I should explain how all those old entries got here…

The Garr Box…

To be honest, I’m having a little trouble getting to the point where I write every day. But I’m lucky, I have inspiring friends who help me get past this without even trying.  Today is Garr Reynold’s turn.

It’s Wednesday night, and I return home to another package from Amazon on the doorstep.  Monday night it was Nancy Duarte’s Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences. I’ve been savoring the early two page chapters and really expect this is another book I’ll enjoy recommending to people who care about their communication.

In Monday’s post, I joked about resisting the urge to do an “unboxing video.”  Unboxing videos are common in electronics reviews. The reviewer simply records with video as he opens the package and examines the pieces as they come out. It’s just about anticipating use rather than talking about their experiences, because really there haven’t been any experiences yet. They’re kind of silly, and yet compelling, but you just don’t do them for books and DVDs. And certainly not for a…

Oh well, the urge tonight was too strong.  The package was Garr Reynolds’s The Presentation Zen Way: Video Lessons on Simple Presentation Design and Delivery. I’m a soft touch for cool packaging and knew what to expect here, so I broke out the camera and took pictures along the way.

This is classic Presentation Zen. Just enough but not too much. A beautiful and sparse slip card over a textured cloth box.

Again, very clean with the slip removed. Embossed lettering on the cover. The spine has a silver foil text treatment. This is a hinged box that will look equally good on the shelf or desk.

And now open, we see pencils, a coupon for free photographs, some sticky notes for later storyboarding, and the DVD - video of Garr teaching the Presentation Zen lessons.

Removing the bento style tray exposes a high quality spiral bound notebook...

...full of potential. All lined up with storyboarding guides, ready to help turn your next presentation into an epic experience.

Events like this make it easy to get back into writing about design goodness and presentation technique. Thanks Garr!

The Walking Dead…

Just in time for Halloween...

AMC just released a new bit of advertising for the October 31st release of their “The Walking Dead” series.  That’s it over there on the left. The series is based on a comic by the brilliant Robert Kirkman.  The stark black and white art style and Kirkman’s brilliant character development over 75 issues has made it an acclaimed comic epic for some time now.  The quality and consistency of this book is amazing, so AMC has their work cut out for them to provide a similar television experience.

And it’s about zombies, did I mention that?

The trailer released this summer is quite graphic, not for the faint of heart.  Still, if you like such things… awesome.

Resonate!

UPS just rang the doorbell.

Package from Amazon on the doorstep.

Resist the urge to grab a video camera and do an “unboxing” video.  (Yes, I can sometimes control the truly dorky impulses).

And is it?  YES!  Nancy’s new book has arrived!

Resonate is in the house.

Nancy Duarte's new book is ready for consumption...

Congratulations Nancy!  Can’t wait to get started.  And now, I don’t have to!