thomas fitzgerald.net

I just had a tense few minutes a short while ago when I thought I’d lost the firewire 800 port on my iMac. I had pulled the computer towards me to plug back in the second monitor. When I did so it pulled the Firewire 800 cable out. There was a brief moment of worry as I the three drives I have connected to it disappeared off my desktop. That worry turned to panic when I couldn’t get them to reappear. I tried rebooting. I tried changing cables. You name it I tried it. I was beginning to think I might have done damage to the drives, but then it occurred to me to try a 400 to 800 cable. That worked so at least I knew my drives were ok. The problem was though, nothing would work with my Firewire 800 port.

Well, this is quite a surprise for a monday morning. It seems I’ve been nominated for an Irish Blog Award. I wasn’t expecting that at all! A big thanks to whoever nominated me, and thanks to all my readers for your continued viewership. Wow, I’m chuffed !

After a two year wait Apple has finally released a new version of Aperture. The release has over 200 new features and I’m still absorbing all the information, but it looks like a great upgrade. It addresses the two biggest concerns people had about the previous version, which were the lack of a curves editor and the lack of adjustment presets. Both of which it now has, but goes one step further by having an “extended range” curves tool which lets you work with the full range of raw data.

Chris Breen over at Macworld talks about Macworld Expo which starts this week without the participation of Cupertino:

“…it’s a particularly significant episode of Expo because Apple will not be counted among the participants. You know what this means: No Apple announcements or booth, no Steve-led keynote, fewer vendors, and little front-page coverage.

Yet when I put my selfish desires aside, I care very little about Apple’s absence. Because, for me, what Apple does and doesn’t do at Expo makes up a small portion of the value I derive from it.”

Charlie Rose discusses the iPad with Walt Mossberg from the Wall Street Journal, David Carr from the New York Times, and Michael Arrington from Tech Crunch. It’s an interesting discussion and devoid of any outlandish expectations or bashing you usually get from a post apple launch discussion. Worth a watch. (Via TechCrunch)

A new year and a new decade is upon us. Well, ok, it’s well upon us now at this stage, but anyway, it still feels new. With many pundits and fans eagerly waiting the much speculated and almost certain release of the Apple Tablet I’ve been wondering what else this year might hold for Apple fans. Here then is a list of ten things I suspect Apple might do / release in 2010.

Apple has finally added Aperture and iPhoto support for the Nikon D300s and a few other cameras including the Canon 7D. Considering the length of time the D300s in particular has been available it seems to have taken the company a long time to get Aperture support for the Camera, leading once again to frustration amongst users with Apple over the pace at which it adds new camera support. Other Cameras now supported in the update include the Eos 1D Mk IV, The Nikon D3s, The Nikon D3000, Canon G11 and the afore mentioned Canon 7D. Even if you’re not an Aperture user and you have one of these cameras (and a mac) you should download the update anyway, as it will add support to Preview and quicklook for their raw files.

Following up my earlier review of the magic mouse, and thanks to Don in the comments for pointing it out, BetterTouchTool is a small application for OS X that gives you a third mouse click with the Magic Mouse. It does more than that though. It allows you to do all sorts of custom gestures. For example, now If I put my whole hand on the mouse for a second it brings up the application switcher, and swiping down with two fingers is the equivalent of hitting the end key. It’s pretty cool and worth checking out if you have a magic mouse.