{MAC NEWS}

FontLab has released Fontographer 5, a new version of its font editing application. This version of the software—which lets you create, customize, fine-tune, fix, and convert fonts to different formats—is specifically designed for desktop publishers who need quick solutions to font problems.

4.0 out of 5 Mice Jul 13, 2006

“We’ve created Fontographer 5 with the designer in mind,” said Ted Harrison, president of FontLab. “FOG 5 provides the designer with easy, intuitive, and very efficient Bézier drawing tools. It is powered by FontLab Ltd.’s mature, state-of-the-art font creation technology, packaged in a simple, efficient interface.”

In addition to previously supported font formats, such as Type 1, Type 3, Multiple Master, and TrueType, Fontographer 5 can now read and generate OpenType fonts in both PostScript (.otf) and TrueType (.ttf) variations. It also features greatly improved Unicode compatibility, the company says.

Fonts generated with Fontographer 5 are automatically optimized for the screen using autohinting algorithms developed jointly by Adobe and Fontlab. Users can define OpenType layout features using the Adobe FDK for OpenType syntax, version 2.5.

According to Adam Twardoch, FontLab’s product and marketing manager, “The beauty of Fontographer is that it allows you to concentrate on the creative process of designing a typeface, without being distracted by the technical aspects of font making. FOG users always appreciated the speed, ease, and precision in which they could draw Bézier outlines in the product—so we’ve kept the drawing tools and implemented some longstanding feature requests, such as a larger zoom level or outline antialiasing. On the other hand, setting technical font parameters such as font naming or linespacing in Fontographer used to be cumbersome and did not consider recent developments such as OpenType—so we’ve redesigned those aspects from scratch with the goal of making them as easy to use as the rest of the product.”

Harrison explained the relationship between the company’s two major font editing products, Fontographer and FontLab Studio: “Any designer who can draw Bézier outlines can make a high-quality font using Fontographer. The software will optimize it for you. But if you’re a professional type designer, FontLab Studio gives you the ultimate control over all aspects of the font. With FOG 5’s ability to read and export FontLab VFB files, you can easily move your projects back and forth between both applications.”

The new version of Fontographer is available from FontLab for $399. Upgrades for version 4.7 users cost $149 and upgrades from versions 3.x and 4.1 are $199. Free demo versions are available. The software is compatible with Mac OS X 10.4 and above, and runs on both PowerPC and Intel Macs.

Camera quality is a competitive area for the current crop of smartphones. With each new device, the gap between phones that happen to have cameras, and actual point-and-shoot cameras, shrinks.

32GB iPhone 3GS »

32GB iPhone 4 »

Cyber-shot DSC-WX1 »

Droid X »

EVO 4G »

Flip MinoHD »

Galaxy S »

HZ35W »

To accurately see how good the iPhone 4's 5-megapixel new camera really performs, we put it through the same battery of tests we use for point-and-shoot digital cameras, and rated it against other cutting-edge smartphones, including the new Droid X.

The iPhone's camera stats

The iPhone camera is 5-megapixels, but as Steve Jobs pointed out in his WWDC keynote, megapixel count alone doesn’t equal good images. Two of the smartphones we tested against the iPhone had higher megapixel counts, but they still scored lower on image quality tests.

The reason for the discrepancy? The iPhone packs its 5 million pixels onto a 1/3.2-inch backside-illuminated CMOS sensor. Sensors with backside illumination technology move the wiring from the front side of the sensor to the back, so that it’s behind the light sensors. This allows more light to reach the sensors without being diffused by the circuitry, which means the camera can capture better low-light images.

Another factor contributing to the camera’s good low-light performance is the size of its pixels. Bigger pixels capture more light, which makes for better images. Apple retained the same pixel size that it had on previous iPhones instead of shrinking them down to fit more megapixels into a smaller area, which is something many cameras do to inflate their megapixel count.

As on many smartphones (including previous iPhones), the iPhone 4’s 3.85mm camera lens has a fixed aperture of f/2.8, and automatically adjusts the shutter speed and ISO to get the best exposure. In our tests, we managed to make the ISO go as low as 80, and as high as 1000. The longest exposure time was 1/15 of a second, and the shortest was 1/10000 of a second.

The iPhone 4 is still very light on camera controls, especially compared to a smartphone like the EVO 4G which allows you to manually adjust settings such as white balance, ISO, and exposure compensation.

The camera's flash control (top left), toggle switch for the front-facing camera (top-right), tap-to-zoom square (middle) and digital zoom slider (bottom).

What the iPhone 4 has is the same tap-to-focus feature that debuted on the 3GS—tap anywhere on the screen and the camera will focus on that point and adjust the exposure for that spot. There’s a 5x digital zoom slider, which essentially crops your image in-camera. There is a new LED flash which can be set to Auto, Off, or On. You can toggle between the main camera and the new 1.4-megapixel front-facing camera. Tap-to-focus works on the front camera, but digital zoom does not.

If you switch over to Video mode, you’ll be able to use the same controls. While a video is recording, you can turn the light on and off, and tap the screen to change your focus from one subject to another. Double tapping on the screen zooms in so that your video fills the entire screen, though it is still recording at the same 1280 by 720 size. The iPhone records 720p HD video at 30 frames per second (fps) and the front facing camera records 360p video. You cannot toggle between the two cameras while it is recording.

About the lab tests

We compared the iPhone 4’s camera with an iPhone 3GS, three other smartphone cameras, and two pocket point-and-shoot cameras. For the video portion of the test, we threw in a Flip Video M2120 for good measure. The other smartphones we tested were the EVO 4G, the Droid X, and the Samsung Galaxy. The point-and-shoot cameras tested were the Sony DSC-WX1 and Samsung HZ35W.

For the still image tests, our lab took the same four photos with each camera. Without knowing which camera each photo was from, a panel of judges rated the images for exposure quality, color quality, sharpness, and distortion amount. The ratings were compiled and averaged for each category, and then used to calculate a final image quality score.

For the video tests, the lab recorded two clips with each device—one in low-light and one in regular light. Our panel then rated each clip’s video and audio quality.

Image quality rankings

Click to see a larger image comparing a sample photograph from each camera.

Unsurprisingly, the two point-and-shoot cameras came in first in our image quality tests. The next best camera, and the highest scoring of all the smartphone cameras that we tested, was none other than the iPhone 4. Next in the rankings was the Droid X, followed by the EVO 4G, the Samsung Galaxy, and way at the bottom, the iPhone 3GS.

The iPhone 4 had, by a healthy margin, the best exposure and color scores of the entire bunch, beating out even the point-and-shoot cameras. It did run into trouble in the sharpness and distortion categories, performing much lower than the pocket cameras and similarly to the Droid.

These scores show that megapixel count isn’t the most imporant factor when it comes to quality, as camera manufactures sometimes claim it is. The Droid X and EVO 4G both have 8-megapixel cameras, and the Samsung Galaxy has a 5-megapixel camera. As for the point-and-shoot competition, the Samsung HZ35W is a 12-megapixel camera and the Sony SDC-WX1 is a 10.2-megapixel camera.

Video quality rankings

While its image quality was impressive, it was the iPhone 4’s video capabilities that really stole the show in our lab tests. Of the eight devices we rated for video, only the Flip Video M2120 scored higher. The Flip, which also records 720p, 30fps video, had just slightly better video quality than the iPhone 4, even in low-light. The Flip did have far superior audio quality when compared with the iPhone 4, which had the same audio score as the Droid X. The Samsung Galaxy had the best audio quality among the smartphones.

What it means

Apple said the quality of the camera parts is more important to capturing good photos than a high megapixel count. Our lab's test results support that theory, showing that a 5-megapixel camera can shoot higher quality images than an 8-megapixel camera.

For casual photographers who mostly post their images online, the iPhone 4’s bump in image quality might be enough to make them think twice before packing an additional gadget. Quality wise, it still isn’t quite on par with entry-level point-and-shoot cameras, but the iPhone's convenience (it’s already in your pocket), low-light capabilities, and access to a large amount of editing and sharing apps, could mean trouble for the inexpensive digital camera market.

For compact camcorder fans who own an iPhone, the iPhone 4’s great video quality makes it a no-brainer alternative to packing another single-use gadget like a Flip. On the other hand, buying a Flip doesn’t require a two-year contract and a data plan.

For anyone serious about image or video quality, or who knows a bit about photography and wants manual camera controls, the iPhone 4 still has a ways to go as a camera. As a camera built into a smartphone, however, it’s as good as they get.

[Senior associate editor Heather Kelly covers digital photography for Macworld.]

Google disclosed in a blog post on Thursday that it remotely removed two applications from Android phones that ran contrary to the terms of the Android Market.

A security researcher built and offered the free applications “for research purposes,” wrote Rich Cannings, Android security lead, in the blog post. The application descriptions misrepresented their purpose in order to encourage downloads, he said.

The apps weren’t used maliciously and didn’t have permission to access private data, and because they were essentially useless, most users uninstalled them quickly, he said.

The author of the applications has removed them from the Android Market and Google has remotely removed the apps from phones that had downloaded them. Google notifies users when it removes an application from their phones.

It’s unclear why Google chose to publicly discuss the removal of this particular application on its blog. Last year, in a filing with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, Google said that it had taken down about 1 percent of applications that had been uploaded to the Android Market because they failed to comply with Google’s terms. It does not describe such takedowns on its blog each time they happen.

A Google spokesman did not explain why the company is disclosing this particular takedown. “We were simply highlighting a security feature of the Android security model,” the spokesman said.

The blog post comes a day after a security vendor published a report inferring that a large number of Android apps are malicious. The SMobile report concluded that nearly half of the applications in the Android Market are suspicious, but based that conclusion solely on the fact that the applications request permission to access two or more kinds of personal data on the phones.

In response, Google said that users have control over which applications access their data because they must permit the application to access such data before downloading the application. Google also reiterated that it can and will disable malicious applications.

In the Thursday blog post, Google promoted its ability to remotely remove applications. “In case of an emergency, a dangerous application could be removed from active circulation in a rapid and scalable manner to prevent further exposure to users,” Cannings wrote. “While we hope to not have to use it, we know that we have the capability to take swift action on behalf of users’ safety when needed.”

Android users became aware of Google’s remote wipe capability the day the first Android phone launched because Google described the ability in the Market terms of service. That disclosure may have been what prevented an uproar like the one that followed the discovery that Apple too has a remote wipe capability for iPhones. Users were alarmed to learn about that since Apple did not disclose the feature and waited several days after a developer discovered it to acknowledge it.

It is an unspoken acknowledgement that Back to the Future, Part II brought to life the vision of the future that many of us have in our heads. While we may still be lacking hoverboards, however, it appears that Apple may finally have dragged video-calling into the mainstream with the iPhone 4’s FaceTime feature.

16GB iPhone 4 Complete Coverage »

Pricing

Best current price: $199.00

32GB iPhone 4 Complete Coverage »

Pricing

Best current price: $299.00

In and of itself, video-calling is hardly new—companies have been trying to sell consumers on it for decades. But if there’s one company that can bring the technology from exception to everyday, it’s probably Apple, and the folks from Cupertino have certainly given it their all, as evidenced by FaceTime’s elegant simplicity. All you need is a Wi-Fi network, an iPhone 4, and a friend with an iPhone 4 and a Wi-Fi network—chances are you’ve already got the first two, no problem.

Making the call

To initiate a FaceTime call, you have a few options. As Steve Jobs demoed during his WWDC presentation earlier this month, you can make a voice call as usual and then switch over to a video chat by hitting the FaceTime button, which lives where the Hold button used to (and still does if you have FaceTime disabled).

You can always decline a FaceTime invitation if you find yourself feeling less than photogenic.

At this point, the recipient will be presented with a screen allowing them to decide whether or not to accept the FaceTime request. If you deny it, you’ll stay on the phone sans video. If you accept it, you’ll be launched into FaceTime. It’s also good to remember that once initiated, FaceTime calls don’t use up either your minutes or your cellular data plan.

In addition, you can directly initiate a FaceTime call, with no need to rely on AT&T (or your cell phone provider) at all. There are two ways to do so: first, if somebody has made a FaceTime call to you recently, you can just tap on their entry in the Recents section of the Phone app—it’ll be marked as a FaceTime call. Otherwise, you can bring up their contact info in the Phone or Contacts apps, scroll down to the bottom, and tap the FaceTime button. (It will show a video camera icon if that person is confirmed to have FaceTime capabilities, i.e., someone you’ve already had a FaceTime call with).

Accepting a FaceTime call is pretty similar to accepting a phone call: if your phone is currently in use, your current app will disappear and you’ll be shown a message saying a contact has requested FaceTime with you. The front-facing camera will activate and show an image of you, and you’re presented with a green Accept button and a red Decline button. If your phone is locked, you’ll see a green slider prompting you to answer the FaceTime call; you can decline by pushing the Sleep/Wake button.

On the call

The basic video chat interface, with controls for muting, hanging up, and swapping cameras.

If you’ve ever had a video chat session in iChat, FaceTime will look pretty familiar. The majority of the display is taken up by the video of your conversation partner, along with a small thumbnail image of what your own camera is showing. There’s also a small translucent menu bar at the bottom with three options: Mute, End, and swap cameras.

Mute will kill your microphone—which, incidentally, is the top microphone on the iPhone 4, the one next to the headphone jack—but it won’t turn off video. If you want to turn off the video, but keep the sound going, just press the Home button. The iPhone will take you back to the Home screen, but the call will keep going. Just as with a normal phone call, you’ll see a pulsing green band at the top that you can tap to return to the FaceTime call and reactivate video. While you’re gone, your conversation partner will see a “Paused” icon over the last frame of video that was sent. In my brief tests, video resumed instantly when the other person returned to the call.

One downside, however, is that even if the video feed isn’t active, the FaceTime call will remain on speakerphone; there’s no way to switch over to the iPhone’s earpiece.

The third button in the menu lets you switch between the iPhone 4’s front-facing camera and the rear-facing camera, allowing your conversation partner to feast their eyes on something besides your smiling face. That’s handy when you want to show them something without having to turn the screen away from you—broadcasting a video of your kids to a traveling spouse, for example.

You can always turn the phone into landscape mode, and you can switch between the iPhone's front and back cameras.

Of course, you can also turn the phone into landscape orientation for a wider video picture, though keep in mind that if your conversation partner is still in portrait, you’ll usually end up with unsightly black bars filling the empty space.

Also, in case that little picture-in-picture of your own mug gets in the way of your friend’s, you can drag the thumbnail to any corner of the screen; you cannot, however, hide it completely—if you try to drag it off the screen, it’ll snap back to the nearest corner.

Calling it like I see it

Overall, the quality of FaceTime chats were impressive. Video, while hardly flawless, was perfectly watchable, and the audio is better than on a normal phone call, thanks to the heftier Wi-Fi connection. However, video-chatting appears to be moderately intensive, as both my iPhone and one of my conversation partner’s phone got on the warm side after about a ten-minute call. It will also probably drain your battery life, though we didn’t specifically test by how much.

Though in most of my experience FaceTime worked automatically, with no configuration, I did run into one problem when I tried to connect with a friend at her workplace. Due to what we concluded was some sort of firewall or agressive filtering software, we were unable to establish a call—a later test with her at home worked perfectly, however.

If you’re loathe to have anybody ever initiate a video chat with you, then don’t worry: take a trip into Settings -> Phone and flip the FaceTime slider to off. You won’t be bothered with FaceTime requests at all. Conversely, if you’ve been having trouble receiving FaceTime calls, as I did at first, you’ll want to flip this on.

Will FaceTime really get video-calling to catch on? It’s hard to say, but with the smooth, slick it-just-works way that Apple’s implemented FaceTime, it will certainly be tough to point a finger at the technology as the culprit. And, as the marquee feature of a device with more than 600,000 pre-orders, combined with Apple’s plan to open the FaceTime standard to others, I’d say video-calling has a better chance than ever.

[Senior Associate Editor Dan Moren thinks that now that video chat’s taken care of, it’s time to bring the double necktie into fashion.]

We’ve stood in line at the Apple Store waiting to pick one up. We’ve taken it out of its box. We’ve talked about it. And now it’s time for us to really put the iPhone 4 through its paces to find out what Apple’s latest iPhone is all about.

16GB iPhone 4 Complete Coverage »

Pricing

Best current price: $199.00

32GB iPhone 4 Complete Coverage »

Pricing

Best current price: $299.00

Maybe you’ve picked up your iPhone 4 as well. Or maybe you’re still waiting for yours to arrive—whether that’s later this week or sometime next month or beyond. Whatever your situation, we’re sure that you have questions. The iPhone 4 has gotten extensive coverage, both here and elsewhere on the Web, but there’s no way that every detail has been addressed. So if there’s some burning question you want answered, we want to help you get to the bottom of things.

We’ve got a roomful of editors, each with their very own iPhone 4, ready to field any question you have about the new smartphone. Drop us a line at iphone@macworld.com if there’s an iPhone 4 question you’ve just got to have answered. If you’re more inclined to limit your questions to 140 characters or less, you can also send your questions to us via Twitter.

We’ll try and track down the information you’ve asked for, posting our findings here in iPhone Central. We can’t promise to find an answer to every question, but we’ll certainly do our best to try and separate iPhone 4 fact from fiction.

The iPhone 4 is officially out and with it, Apple’s $5 iMovie for iPhone—a pocket-sized movie-editing application that allows you to create polished movies directly on your iPhone 4. (Earlier iPhones, the iPod touch, and the iPad are not supported.) I’ve had a couple of hours to play with iMovie for iPhone and these are my impressions.

16GB iPhone 4 Complete Coverage »

Pricing

Best current price: $199.00

32GB iPhone 4 Complete Coverage »

Pricing

Best current price: $299.00

iMovie Complete Coverage »

Starting out

iMovie can use videos you've shot with your iPhone.

When you first tap the iMovie icon, you’re presented with a Projects window that reads “Tap + to start a new project.” Tap the Plus button in the upper-right corner of the screen and the screen slides to the left to reveal an empty viewing area that takes up the top half of the screen and a Select Themes sheet where you choose one of five themes—Modern, Bright, Travel, Playful, and News. You don’t have an option to create a project without choosing a theme. (However, if you want to go "theme-less" don't add any titles or stray from the default cross-dissolve transition. Themes are reflected only in titles and optional transitions and background music.) At the bottom of the screen is a Theme Music entry with an On/Off toggle switch. Switch it on and a music bed associated with the theme you choose is automatically added to the project.

Tap Done and the viewing area displays a “Tap [Down arrow] to insert media. Tap [Camera Icon] to record from camera.” When I tapped the Down arrow, iMovie displayed, by default, the video contents of the phone’s Camera Roll. From this view you can also choose photos and audio—using the Photos and Audio buttons at the bottom of the screen that sit beside the Video button.

iMovie doesn’t seem to provide a way to import movie clips that weren’t captured on the iPhone. For example, you can’t import video that appears in the iPod app’s Videos area. And while you can add video clips to iPhoto and sync them to the phone, they aren’t available from within iMovie (though they do appear in the Photos app).

Inserting and trimming clips

To insert a video clip, tap the Video button if it’s not already selected and then tap the clip you want. You don’t have the option to trim the clip before you import it. Rather, it drops into a timeline at the bottom of the screen. Once in the timeline you can use the stretch gesture to zoom in on the clip, thus making it easier to make finer selections.

To make those selections, just tap the clip in the timeline and orange handles appear at the beginning and end of the clip. Drag one of these handles to trim the clip. As you drag, you see a preview of the video in the preview area along with a small time readout, showing you the length of the clip—13.0s, for example. You can trim only the beginning and end of a clip, there’s no way to split clips, though you can fake a split by trimming the back end of the clip, importing another copy of the clip into the timeline, and then trimming the front of the clip. Trimming is non-destructive. If you’ve trimmed a clip, quit the app, and return a couple of days later, you can restore the footage you trimmed.

Use handles to trim the beginning and end of a clip.

Importing photos works similarly. Tap the Photos button, choose an album of photos you’ve synced to the phone (or the iPhone’s Camera Roll), and tap the image you want to import into the project. The Ken Burns effect is applied to photos and there’s no option to turn it off. To adjust the start position of the effect, tap the image to bring up the editing controls. Drag the image to the position where you’d like it to start and then pinch or stretch it to zoom in or out. Tap a Start button that appears in the upper-left corner of the screen and then reposition the image and, again, pinch or stretch it if you like. Tap Done and the effect is complete. When you play back the clip, it pans and zooms from the start to end position. If you don’t care for this effect, just set the same position and zoom for both the start and end points.

The Ken Burns effect seen through iMovie.

When you add video clips or photos to the timeline, transitions are automatically inserted between each item. By default, this is a cross dissolve transition. Tap twice on one of these transitions, and you bring up a Transitions Settings sheet. On this sheet, you can choose no transition, cross dissolve, or theme. The theme effect is a special effect designed specifically for the theme you’ve chosen. Within this sheet, you can also choose the length of the transition—0.5, 1, 1.5, and 2 seconds are your options. Tap a Done button and the sheet disappears.

You can just as easily add a music bed to your movie. When you tap Audio, you see the option to choose tracks from Theme Music (five tracks are included) and tracks from your iPod library—Playlists, Albums, Artists, or Songs. When you choose a track it appears as a green bar below the timeline. There’s no option for repositioning the audio clip, so it appears after the video has started nor can you trim it. When you add a music track to your project, iMovie automatically ducks the music’s volume so that it doesn’t drown out a clip’s audio track.

Importing live video into an iMovie project.

You can also add live video to your project. To do so, tap the camera icon on the display; the iPhone’s Camera interface appears. Just as with the Camera app, you can choose to shoot video or stills, choose the front or rear camera, and adjust the flash. Tap the red Record button to start recording. Tap it again to stop recording. You can then preview the clip, retake it, or tap a blue Use button to insert the video or still into your project.

Navigating the interface

To play a clip, just tap a Play button in the upper-right corner of the display. The video will play from the current position of the playhead. If you’d like to delete a clip, just drag it from the timeline to the preview area, and it will vanish. (iMovie also provides a Delete Clip button if you double-tap a clip.) And you can rearrange the order of clips by dragging a clip to a new location in the timeline.

In the Mac’s version of iMovie, you move the playhead to specific places within a clip. In iMovie for the iPhone, you drag the timeline (or within the preview area) so that the point you wish to see appears directly beneath an unmoving playhead that sits in the middle of the timeline. As you drag your finger, the preview area scrubs through the video.

At any time, you’re welcome to change the project’s theme. You do this by moving to the beginning of the project and tapping a Settings button. Do this, and the Select Theme sheet appears where you can choose one of the five themes as well as switch theme music on or off.

Choosing an iMovie theme.

iMovie lets you assign titles and locations to a clip. To do this, double-tap on a clip in the timeline and a Clip Settings sheet appears. This sheet contains a title field and three options—Title Style, Location, and Audio. They work this way.

When you tap Title Style, you have the option to assign an opening, middle or ending title to a clip. So, for example, you can assign an opening title style to the first clip in your project (“Aunt Betty’s Birthday,” for example), a middle title style to the seventh clip in a 15-clip project (“The Cake,” for instance), and an ending title style to the very last clip in the project (“Betty Waves Goodbye”). To enter text for the title, just tap in the Title field and type in your text. You don’t have an option to choose a specific font—fonts are associated with their themes.

The Location option lets you add a location for the clip in a title. If the clip wasn’t geotagged, you can add a location by tapping the Location entry and then, in the resulting Location sheet, tapping an Other button.You can then enter the location of a reasonably-sized city near the location. Alternatively, you can tap on a title field (which looks very much like a button) and enter any text you like. This is helpful when your location isn't in iMovie's city database.

iMovie's titling effect.

And the Audio On/Off toggle lets you switch off a clip’s audio. You might choose to do this if you’ve recorded a street scene but don’t wish to include the traffic noise.

Sharing your work

When you’re happy with your project you save it by tapping the Projects button in the upper-left corner of the display. Your project appears in the resulting Projects screen. Tap the Export button in the lower-left corner of the screen and you see the three export options—Medium - 360p, Large - 540p, and HD - 720p. When you tap an option, iMovie exports the project and saves it to the iPhone’s Camera Roll. Once the movie’s in the Camera Roll, launch the Photos app and you can then choose to email your movie, send it via MMS, send it to your MobileMe gallery, or send a copy to YouTube. And, as with other movies you shoot with the iPhone, you can import your movies to your computer when you next sync the phone.

More to come

These are just the ins and outs of iMovie. I’ll now turn my attention to how it feels to work with iMovie and whether it makes sense to edit video on a phone or simply wait until you’re near a computer. Look for those observations in our upcoming review.

6/24/10 7:30 PM Updated to correct information about manually entering location names.

[Christopher Breen is a senior editor for Macworld.]