Scientists: Molly Wood a ‘cunt’

Mac-fan Tironius sets reporter straight, gives this tutorial on pre-viewing pictures

ROCKVILLE, MD. — After exhaustive analyses and data collection, scientists at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) revealed at a press conference here today that successful CNET blogger, podcaster and editor Molly Wood is a complete and total cunt.

“We checked and double checked,” said Dr. Mark Steinburg in a prepared statement, “but it’s conclusive. She is, indeed, a douchie, wretched, soulless cunt.”

As an official card-carrying Mac-loving Apple fanatic, I have a responsibility to knee-jerkedly respond with truthiness when I hear so-called objective journalists speaking inaccurate nonsense about my preferred computing platform, yo.

On Sunday, July 29, in episode 107 of This Week in Tech(1), a technology podcast in a round-table format, CNET “Section Editor” Molly Wood, a self-proclaimed “unashamed Mac-basher,” scorned her Macintosh computer for two rediculous reasons: because of iPhoto’s inability to “cherry pick” photos off a camera’s memory card (instead of its normal all-or-nothing photo importing), and Finder’s lack of a Windows-style “Film strip” mode for easily viewing photos. Unknown to technology writer Wood, Mac OS X does both of these things.

I’m the last unashamed Mac-basher.

I’ll show you how.

False: iPhoto can’t selectively import photos off of a camera

This wonderful tip comes from Derrick Story (website) on episode fourteen of iLifeZone (iTunes).

Using iPhoto 6, and you do need version six, with your camera connected hit Return twice to be taken into iPhoto’s special photo selecting mode where you can select one, two or all of the photos located on the camera.

So, holy shit you can indeed “cherry pick” photos in iPhoto. Hot damn. But, if you wish to skip iPhoto, there is yet another way to select photos from your camera, and that way is by using an application called Image Capture.

Clicking Download Some… takes you here:

Simply select your photos and click Download.

False: You must open pictures in Preview in order to see them

Jesus Christ knows that a technology writer at a major technology magazine should know—or simply right click to discover—that Mac OS X has many ways to preview pictures from within the Finder.

Previewing pictures #1, icon previews: Mac OS X’s Finder has the ability to display pictures on your hard drive as icons of those files by simply altering a few settings. In any Finder window, click View in the menu above, and select Show View Options. Pressing Command-J does the same thing: up pops the view options inspector.

Simply check Show icon preview and there you go. Picture previews without having to open them. Furthermore, if you have a certain folder that contains pictures, check This window only at the top of that inspector, slide the Icon size slider all the way to the right, and watch as those icon previews become nice and big easy to view.

Previewing pictures #2, slideshow: As it turns out, Apple built into its operating system a method of beautifully previewing pictures in a full screen extravaganza. In any Finder window, select one or more pictures, and right-click or Control-click what you’ve selected and simply select Slideshow.

Clicking the middle button while in the slideshow gives you an index of all photos:

This beats Windows “Film strip” any fucking day. You can directly import a photo from here into iPhoto by clicking the button second from the right. In iPhoto, of course, you can edit, crop, color-correct and rotate.

Note, similar slideshows exist in both iPhoto and Preview.

Previewing pictures #3, column view: Mac OS X’s Finder has a “view” that has been in the operating system since it was first created and released, called “column view.” Select the view button (as shown below) in the Finder and—holy shit—yet another method to preview photos and yet another way to chip away at the credibility of a certain CNET cunt-reporter.

Labels: Best of, Mac OS X, Molly Wood, Photography, Tutorial