Apple Unveils New Pro Products 590
porcupine8 writes "As many had speculated, today Apple unveiled upgrades to their PowerBook and Power Mac lines (although no PowerBook G5). They also introduced a new professional photography application known as Aperture, rounding out their software lineup for creative professionals. Can't wait to find out what they announce next week!"
No PowerBook G5 (Score:5, Interesting)
Were you asleep during the Intel announcement?
Everyone who actually thinks there will be G5 PowerBooks at this point, please stand up.
Crickets?
Aperture prerequisites (Score:5, Interesting)
Recommended System
* Dual 2GHz Power Mac G5 or faster
* 2GB of RAM
* One of the following graphics cards:
o ATI Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition
o ATI Radeon 9800 XT or 9800 Pro
o NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL or 6800 GT DDL
o NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT
o NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500
* 5GB of disk space for application, templates, and tutorial
* DVD drive for installation
Probably they'll eventually offer a "light" version of Aperture, like they did with Final Cut and Logic Audio, other "Pro" software.
Hmmm, (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Aperture info (Score:5, Interesting)
More accurately:
Aperture : Google's Picasa
Loving the Dual Core Hype (Score:2, Interesting)
Only the 2 x dual core top of the line model is an improvement over the mac it's replacing, the dual 2.7GHz.
Not Bad, Not Spectacular (Score:3, Interesting)
The thing that caught my eye was the addition of a second gigabit ethernet port. Dual gigabit ethernet ports means instant network rendering for Logic Node, XGrid, or any app that supports it. No expensive (given, these Macs are costly enough as is) gigabit router needed.
Aperture looks interesting, although it requires a more powerful machine than mine, just like Motion. Working with RAW data from start to finish sounds wicked. Not sure about US$499 wicked, but cool nonetheless.
For some reason, Apple offers an upgrade price on the product page, that links to the Motion 2 upgrade. Not really sure what's going on with that.
Re:Apple and Adobe (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Powerbook Resolution (Score:3, Interesting)
And it's hard enough to read at that resolution. Trust me, I have one, and I use an external monitor to take some of the burden of of my eyes. Remember, a Mac has traditionally rendered 1point=1pixel.
Re:my take on the new PowerMacs (Score:2, Interesting)
Please Apple, save us from Finale (Score:3, Interesting)
Finale is actually really powerful (and expensive). It can do pretty much anything most people need for their notation. Unfortunately, it is the worst UI trainwreck I have ever encountered. It is lacking in a clear, simple, unified interface or an intuitive organization. Seemingly simple and basic options are buried deep in the mess. And the help files are almost worthless.
For example, instead of clicking notes in, you can use your keyboard to enter notes.
But I don't know what key does what.
So I go into the key map options, but I still can't find the default key map. It just allows me to create a custom key map.
I'm like 'okay the help files will learn me where the default or current key map is--or maybe even tell me WHAT it is!'
Nope. No search results for "key map" in the really outdated help software that comes with it (it looks like it is a port from OS 9).
This kind of stuff happens to me all the time. Apple, please release "Notes" or something! You could make a killing!
Re:Aperture info (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:my take on the new PowerMacs (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Aperture info (Score:5, Interesting)
RAW workflow. Apple is calling this "the first of its kind" in that it can work directly on RAW images, but that's not true. I'm not sure if the parent poster really knew what he was talking about or not, but from looking through the features this has on Apple's web site, it does seem that Picasa 2.1 does pretty much the exact same things, and Picasa is free.
(There are probably things that Apple doesn't mention that people like me would consider pretty important, but I can only go by what's on their web site right now. I'm interested to learn more, as a real Photoshop-level app that can work straight on RAW files might be enough to get me to finally switch to Mac.)
It is highly desirable to work directly on RAW files, which as Apple says is "non-destructive", i.e. all of your original sensor data is still there. This is not the case when working with RAW files in Photoshop, which have to be rasterized even before they're actually opened. You can make basic adjustments in Adobe Camera RAW before the file is opened but to do real retouching, you have to rasterize and open in Photoshop itself.
Picasa will let you do editing and retouching on the RAW file, then export it after you've edited. But Picasa's tools are pretty basic. Apple might offer more, but under their "all the tools you need" sidebar on the web site, they just list the same stuff Picasa does and that even Adobe Camera RAW will mostly do. The real questions for me are:
a) does Aperture support layers?
b) does Aperture have a clone tool/healing brush/patch tool? These are the tools I use most often for actual retouching.
c) does Aperture support 16 bit images? (My guess is it would pretty much have to in order to truly support RAW, but I don't think they specifically say it does anywhere.)
If the answers to all of these questions are "yes", I'm tempted. If the answers to any one out of the three are "no", then it's really a worthless app if you've got Picasa, and especially if you've already got a combination of Picasa and Photoshop. (So you can use Picasa for images that need only light retouching, and Photoshop for the heavy stuff that Aperture wouldn't be suited for either.)
Of course, both Apple and Adobe will probably improve their products to compete with each other as time goes on. I would love to see true RAW support in Photoshop itself and I would love to see more features in Aperture. Adobe has had no real serious competition in pro image editing for a good while up to now.
Re:aperture.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Didn't they have enough hassles with Apple Records?
Aperture... (Score:5, Interesting)
Most affordable digital cameras a great for taking a picture of something that is rock solid and in no danger of moving and is under optimal lighting conditions. After two weddings as a guest just trying to shoot candids, I realize that there's very little art in using a current digital camera, that it mostly involves holding this small brick between you and something and trusting it to make a series of decisions you might not agree with all while making sure you just heard the right beep, saw the right LED and heard the right little ticky thingy. And I'm a geek.
I've decided to retire my series of cameras (3, 4, 5 MP - they were all supposed to be so much better than the last one...) or donate them or something, and hunker down until something on the order of the EOS and this level of image handling gets reasonable. By hunker down I mean shoot with real film and a flash that goes more than 10 feet and something like decent response time. All of which I have in a 20 year old Pentax outfit. yes, I know it's ten times the volume and weight when outfitted with a TTL flash and zoom and winder. Yes, I know that if I pay thru the nose now for the EOS and a G5 and Aperture I'll save all that money on film - but film is a dribbling expense. And yes I know the COLA on a $600 camera from the 1980s is probably on the order of an EOS today, but I can still get a comparable new 35mm setup for the same $600 today.
And honest to god - as with cell phones - it's not like I was wasting away and spent every hour before digital cameras wanting to take a picture and every five minutes wishing I could be making a phone call back in the era "BC" (before cellphones). (Ooooh! Then there's taking pictures with my phone! Or should I be calling people on my camera?! Wait, wait - if I could only email from my toaster...!)
For many instances, digital cameras are quick, cheap, and OK. Honestly, 99% of them should be compared to compact point and click cameras for actual performance - but the hype of their early days has failed to solidify
Re:Apple displays (Score:3, Interesting)
All options pricing (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:RAW (Score:2, Interesting)
Native (whatever that means) RAW handling is also why the system requirements are high(ish).
Based on my experience, Apple should win far more creative users with this application. Many photographers working in digital use(d) Windows and Adobe certainly hasn't made anything like this.(yet)
Where's my 4-way XServe? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Apple displays (Score:2, Interesting)
YMMV and I'm no expert at configuring the necessary config files, but as of yet it doesn't appear that this particular combination (6600 + SuSe 9.3 + 23" Cinema Display) works to its full potential "out of the box".
Still, for development work at home 1600x1200 is pretty nice and, under windows, it's beautiful IMHO.
Re:Aperture... off topic. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:30" display price drop (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:photoshop is dead (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps you mean Adobe Bridge is dead. That's more like it. Aperture is for importing and sorting files, and doing basic adjustments to RAW files. There are already pro products doing well in that niche, like Capture One Pro. But these are just front-ends to Photoshop, which will always be the tool of choice for serious photo editing.
I can't wait for this Aperture, as the Canon File Viewer software is a real piece of crap, and so is their "Pro" version Canon Photo Pro. They are clumsy Windows ports that perform incredibly poorly and have the worst GUI I've ever seen. Most astonishingly, Canon Photo Pro doesn't support my Canon S50 camera! Aperture does.
Re:Where's my 4-way XServe? (Score:1, Interesting)
I can't think of anything else major that Apple hasn't refreshed lately. They're on a roll
well I am glad they got rid of (Score:1, Interesting)
-former apple employee
Re:Aperture info (Score:3, Interesting)
The huge bonus there would be in this for me is... a 10 MB RAW file ends up being a 150-500 MB
The answers to your other two questions are a definite yes.
Re:Aperture... (Score:1, Interesting)
I disagree. Digital camera, especially the dSLR's, provide instant feedback. So instead of taking one shot, waiting a few hours/days to get it developed, and learning from the results, i can now take a shot, examine it, adjust aperture, shutter, iso and a number of other settings, and take another shot.
The feedback loop in the digital world is orders of magnitude faster than in the analog world. Learning is proportional to the amount and velocity of feedback.
Digital cameras speed up the learning curve trememdously, IMHO.
Re:You can't get difference in Aperture v PS unles (Score:2, Interesting)
If you shoot 500+ pictures at one event because you can you're a monkey with a finger reflex, not a photographer. A photographer would only shoot as many pictures as needed.
If you do not have a camera body that costs over $1200
I can up your troll just fine - if your hasselblad doesn't have a digital back you are not doing pro digital photography (after all, that's what you're droning about with 'then you can't understand the difference between Aperture and Photoshop' 'cause Aperture is 'for photographers') Do you still qualify? Craftmanship is not a matter of the tool and conversely throwing money at pro photo gear does not a photographer make (they used to say philosophum non facit barba)
If you have absolutely no problem deleting pictures you've taken
So you keep all those 500+ pictures per event? That says something about your discerning ability
If you never take your memory card out of your camera
yep, 2x 20D (with USB2 connectors, so transfer time is not a big issue) loaded with 8GB cards (to fit about 900 RAW pics each) cannot possibly help you understand
If you use AOL's webmail to send people pictures of your dog
ah, indeed. I seem to have been wasting my time after all. You are absolutely right - pictures of your dog won't do at all. Now, pictures of your cat, on the other hand
How you got +5 Insightful is perhaps a testimony of how much apple section mods know about photography - because it certainly has no relevance for the 'insight' of your post.
Re:my take on the new PowerMacs (Score:5, Interesting)
No self-respecting workstation went without it
As an experiment, for the last couple of months, I've left a process running at home, and one at work, that simply has a 128 MB buffer, filled with a simple data pattern. Every 60 seconds, it checks the buffer, to see if any of the data has changed. Because it is accessing it like this, it stays resident.
Result: no errors.
Based on the expected RAM error rates I was able to find by Googling, I expected to see several errors by now. However, all the published data I could find was a few years old, and presumably RAM has been made more resistant to error. Whatever the reason, experiment seems to say that ECC is not as necessary as some think.
Re:Apple displays (Score:3, Interesting)
Also: the perks on the Dell displays, particularly the USB ports and the like are notoriously faulty. At one ~500-machine Dell installation with which I'm intimately familiar, far less than half of the Dell flat-panel monitors (don't know model #s offhand, unfortunately) have USB ports and media readers which work as advertised. Far less. They're just trash.
That said, I bought a Samsung display rather than an Apple. Lower cost, but far better quality than the Dells.
Re:my take on the new PowerMacs (Score:4, Interesting)
Jeff
Re:Still overpriced (Score:2, Interesting)
Considering the longevity of apple hardware, it's more like putting down a down payment on a car or something equivalent. I had the "bic lighter" laptops from Dell and HP. They broke after a year of use.
Re:my take on the new PowerMacs (Score:3, Interesting)
Firewire carries all the bandwidth you need, and lets you put your audio interface in a rack or console where it belongs.
Re:Is DDR2 worth it? (Score:3, Interesting)
What Apple should have done is put in the 7448 core from Freescale. It is pin compatabile with the current 7447a and has a faster FSB (200MHz) as well as more cache and better power management. Along with other general core improvements.