Category Archives: Apple

Setting up FaceTime for Mac-to-Mac chats

Posted on by

I interrupt this blog for a brief tutorial on how to use FaceTime for a Mac-to-Mac video chat.

Apple has made lots of noise about how iPhone 4 users can use FaceTime to have video chats with one another (provided both parties are using WiFi networks).

But Apple has since launched a beta version of FaceTime for the Mac, which is what I’m going to document.

To use FaceTime you need a Mac with a camera. All the current Mac laptops have a camera embedded in the top part of the screen. The iMacs also have a camera embedded. If you have the necessary hardware, it’s time to get the free software.

Follow this link and download FaceTime Beta for Mac.

www.apple.com/mac/facetime

Click the “Download the Beta” button and the software download to your Downloads folder. The file is called “FaceTime.dmg” and when you find it, double click it, and the following window should appear:

You click the box and it will install FaceTime into your Applications folder (after you click all those “yes, I won’t sue you” buttons).

So now that it’s installed, you have to open your Applications folder and find the Facetime icon. When I found it I carefully dragged it to my menu bar (shown below). This creates an alias so I don’t have to go back to my Apps Folder again.

Okay, so now you’re ready to get started. First you click on the FaceTime icon and you should see this window appear (minus my face):

You’ll see on the right that you need to sign in or create a new account. If you have an Apple ID, use that. If not, you’ll need to create an account. Such joy.

Once you log in successfully you’ll be asked to confirm the email address that you want people to be able to call you at. It’s rather odd to associate an email address with a video call, but that’s the way it works. I simply confirmed that I wanted to use my Apple ID email address.

Once you confirm your email you will see a list of contact on the right side of the screen (or not, if you don’t have any contacts yet).

Here’s where things get a bit tricky. In order to contact a person who has FaceTime, you need to have that person’s email address in your contacts — and phone number as well if you want to use FaceTime over his/her iPhone. But let’s just stuck with email for now.

If your contact isn’t here, open your Address Book app and create a new contact.

Here’s the Address Book icon:

Click that and you’ll see a window open that looks something like this:

To create a new contact, click that little “+” symbol at the bottom of the screen (in the middle). Enter a first and last name and an email address.

Once you’ve added the contact you should immediately see it appear on FaceTime — see below.

Then you just click the name and go.

Oops. I guess my contact isn’t online at the moment.

Keep in mind that your contact must also have FaceTime installed, must have set up his/her user account, and must be online.

Ironically, you’ll probably need to call your contact in order to schedule a video chat. But it’s never easy living on the cutting edge.

Apple iPhone 4 improves international support

Posted on by

The iPhone is a global success story. And one of the reasons for this success can be attributed to the device’s support for more than 30 languages.

But with the iPhone 4 update, Apple continues to push ahead on the global front. Multilingual Mac has documented these improvements, which include fonts that now display some Indic languages finally (though input methods are missing).

Two other features worth notice are:

  • Voice control in 24 languages
  • The emoji keyboard is now readily accessible. It had been hidden to non-JP users (and it’s quite entertaining to play with)

But one improvement that I just picked up on — and it could have been added prior to iOS 4 — is the localization of “shortcut” top-level domain feature.

I’ll demonstrate below.

First note my keyboard list (if only I were fluent in all of these languages!):

Now I open the Mail app.

Note  below how when I press and hold the “.com” key that I get a nice range of ccTLDs and other top-level domains to select from.

These domains vary based on my activated keyboards.

The more keyboards you activate, the more domains you have to select from.

This is a very nice touch — and I imagine that the Apple devs are right now working on adding IDNs to the mix…

What other international improvements have you noticed with the new iPhone?

Have you localized your error messages?

Posted on by

While trying (and failing) to buy an iPhone this morning, I’ve encountered three different error screens.

Here’s my favorite:

I seriously doubt that “Oops!” has been localized for different markets.

In fact, many companies overlook the localization of error messages.

For starters, doing so is no trivial task — as many of these error messages are generated by underlying pieces of software that in some cases cannot be easily localized.

And it’s no fun to focus on failure. We like to focus our energies on positive user experiences, not negative ones. Besides, these are edge cases, right?

But as I bounce from one Apple error message to another, it’s comforting to know that even Apple — a company that prides itself on user experience — still has some serious work left to do.

iPhone app globalization: Ready for take-off

Posted on by

The WSJ has an article about iPhone developers taking their apps global.

It’s very early days, but it’s safe to say that localization vendors are drooling over the possibilities. Although many apps aren’t going to present much in the way of translation revenue, the localization engineering work can be quite substantial.

I’m currently aware of two vendors that have been doing a good job of specializing in this area:

Some app developers I’ve spoken with still question the degree to which they must localize their apps. After all, many report significant sales in markets around the word WITHOUT any localization investment on their part. So they naturally want to know what additional sales they’re going to get for their investment. There are many factors to consider. The ROI of a 99 cent app could be tough to achieve if you’ve got to completely internationalize your app. If your app is already internationalized, the ROI is much easier to achieve.

But China and Japan, as noted in the WSJ article, could be what pushes more and more developers into finally opening their checkbooks.

Here’s what one iPhone developer says:

“We definitely have plans to get all our games localized,” said Andrew Stein, PopCap’s director of mobile business development. “We may see more than half of our sales come from outside of the U.S.” PopCap’s $2.99 “Plants vs. Zombies” tower defense game is currently No. 1 in China, according to App Store rankings.

The article stresses that few apps are currently localized — and I will second that. In fact, the only apps that I’m aware of that support more than 20 languages are Apple’s own default apps. Outside of Apple, PayPal and Google apps appear to be the most global overall.

Here’s a rough tally of what I’ve seen so far:

  • PayPal Mobile: 15 languages
  • Google Mobile: 15 languages
  • Facebook Mobile: 7 languages
  • Monopoly: 6 languages

What am I missing here?