thomas fitzgerald.net

There has been this rumor floating around for the past couple of months that Apple is planning to sell off its Pro Apps devision, namely Final Cut studio and Aperture. The rumor was dying down but then Robert Cringly over at PBS posted a fanciful story that Apple was planning to sell its pro apps so it could buy Adobe. Of course the idea that they need to ditch their own Applications to make way for Adobe’s is completely ridiculous. It’s doubtful if Apple could afford to buy Adobe even if it wanted to, and Apple’s competing Apps are, for the most part better than the Adobe Counterparts. Having said that I do think here could be benefits for both consumers and Apple if they did buy Adobe (putting an end to Adobe’s insane overseas pricing would be one benefit). I consider it unlikely but not totally beyond the realms of possibility. What is completely beyond the realms of possibility though is the idea that Apple plans to sell off its pro apps.

This all started when Apple announced that they weren’t going to be exhibiting at NAB this year. This sparked immediate and rampant speculation as to their motives. As I work in the Television post production Industry I have first hand experience of it. After the announcement I was having discussions with some of the people I know who work in the industry and the first chicken little reaction was that they must be planning to ditch Final Cut Pro so they can focus on the iPhone. (The iPhone pretty much gets the blame for everything these days) Of course it’s complete nonsense as they are two completely separate and independent devisions within Apple. Anyway, I’m sure discussions like this were being held by post production professionals across the globe. That in itself would have been enough to start the ball rolling, but then take those same professionals, and have them all congregate in Las Vegas under the one roof for a week and rampant speculation quickly becomes a rumor. All it takes is one person in that situation to make the jump from “I wonder are Apple selling off their pro apps” to “I heard that Apple are selling off their Pro Apps” in a hot convention center with several thousand video nerds and you have an instant scandal.

Such was the furor over this that Apple came out and firmly denied that this was to be the case. Mind you that didn’t stop Robert Cringly publishing his piece and multiple sites picking up his speculation and translating it to potential fact. This isn’t the first time this kind of water cooler chatter got out of hand about Apple either. Thanks to a wonderfully bad piece of attempted journalism by the now dead Think Secret, people had pronounced Aperture end of life and there were “rumors” that Apple was going to kill the project. Anyway, you can rest assured that with Final Cut pro’s 44% market share it’s not going to happen.

So why weren’t they at NAB this year and why has there been no major Final Cut updates considering they usually release a relatively big upgrade at NAB every year? I have a pretty good idea as to what’s going on, and the inspiration came, ironically enough from Adobe. When they made their stark warning at Photoshop World recently that they would need to migrate Photoshop’s code from carbon to cocoa in order to take the application to 64bit I realized that Apple was faced with the same dilemma. Final Cut Pro started out as an OS9 Application and has been building on that legacy code ever since. It’s actually pretty inefficient by todays standards too (for example it barely uses multiple processors), and it was only a matter of time before they would have to do a major re-write. Why now though you ask? Well, there is a growing trend in the high end of the industry towards 2K and 4K post production. This is basically even higher resolution than high definition and is used for cinema post production. Cameras like the Red One are pushing this way of working forward into the mainstream and because of the huge file sizes involved I suspect than in order to work efficiently Apple needs to go 64bit with Final Cut Pro.

The reason the weren’t at NAB was simply that they didn’t have anything to show this year. Their main competitor, Avid, was not there and it costs a lot of money to have a space as large as Apple’s usual booth so why waste the money when you’ve got nothing to show. From what I’ve heard from people at the show they might as well have been there anyway considering the amount of other booths showing Final Cut or using Apple technology.

So the upshot of all this is that there is no great conspiracy in action here. Apple is not selling their Pro Applications. Final Cut is not going away. the sky is not falling and the iPhone is not the root of all evil. Rest assured that if they are re-writing Final Cut the end result will be even better than ever. And still way better than Premiere.

[update: Added link to Apple’s denial of the rumors]

[UPDATE: Fixed Broken Links]

In a break from its usual routine of announcing products on a Tuesday, Apple today announced an incremental upgrade to its iMac line. The all in one machine now tops out at 3.06ghz and comes with 2gb of memory on all but the entry level 20″ (which still has only 1gig).

When Aperture first launched it was touted as being the solution to the workflow problems of modern digital photographers, solving the issues of working with hundreds or thousands of Raw files. Adobe’s Lightroom followed shortly thereafter making a similar claim. Both applications combined a database for organization with raw processing tools for developing digital images. They both seemed like an ideal solution for the problems of dealing with the masses of files that the digital era of photography presented. Yet, a recent survey showed that a large percentage of photographers (over 60%) were still sticking to their existing workflows and applications. So is it just inertia on the part of seasoned Photographers or is there a little more to it? I have been doing a lot of processing of digital photographs recently and I think I have figured out what might be one of the main issues that may be holding back more widespread adoption of both of these programs.

Both Aperture and Lightroom were built with the idea of being able to catalogue and handle large quantities of Raw files. In other words it is like being able to have all your negatives constantly at hand. The irony is that it is the combination of database and raw processing that are these applications strengths that may be putting people off. I’m willing to bet that the majority of photographers like to process their images then put the originals away. With Aperture and Lightroom your Raw files are constantly online. In a way it is like your post processing is never finished. It’s like always viewing your “negatives” instead of dealing with your finished prints. Raw files can take a lot of space, and even with the relatively low cost of hard drives these days you can still run out of space quickly. Yet the space is not really the main issue here, it’s more of an habitual mind set. People want to process their shoot, put the originals away and then just have the finished processed files to keep in their database. Thats the way people workd with film, and how many worked with digital before either of these applications came along. Although there are ways to do this with both Lightroom and Aperture, existing workflows of using bridge and camera raw or some other raw processing application seem to suit this way of working better.

Like I said though, there are ways to make this kind of workflow work with both Aperture and Lightroom. Both can generate high resolution previews which remain in the database if you move the originals. In Aperture you can choose the “relocate masters” command to move the raw files to another location and archive them off. An even better alternative is to export the whole project and save it to another location, thereby keeping your raw edits intact. In Lightroom you can just move the folder where the originals are stored and the previews remain in the library. Both of these options have their problems though. Aperture does not let you work with the previews to the same extent Lightroom does. You can’t export the files out of Aperture (except through the systems media library) or create books, web pages etc without first re-connecting to the masters. Lightroom does let you do more with the previews, but there is nothing equivalent to Apertures project structure so it’s harder to archive individual projects in the first place.

What I’ve ended up doing with older projects is to export the masters as jpegs, archive out the project, delete it then re-import the jpegs into a new project. I’m sure this process can be automated too thanks to Aperture’s scripting and Automator capabilities. What would be ideal though is an “Archive Project” function, which would do something similar. Archive off the Raw files with adjustments intact and replace them with full resolution jpegs, perhaps with the option to keep any edited files (such as PSD files) online. I think this would go a long way to addressing what I personally find to be a shortcoming of the software.

Both of these programs are great tools, both relatively young in their respective life spans, and will take some time to become the mainstream way of working. I don’t want anyone to think I’m railing against either application because I think that they are definitely the way forward, but I also think they should address the mindset of people who like to work this way rather than try and get the photographer to adapt to something that may seem alien to them. A few extra functions should make it easier for those with the edit-process-archive mindset to work with the programs better. Perhaps for version 3? In the mean time I’m off to do some Applescript coding.

This. is. brillant!

read more | digg story

From Business Week:

“…with the stock’s recent run-up, in the face of that hurricane-force headwind called tanking consumer spending, it seemed Wall Street’s crystal ball was cloudier than usual.

Today’s earnings should have provided some financial Windex. The company handily beat revenue estimates, posting sales of $7.51 billion (versus consensus of $6.95 billion). As everyone expected, the Mac is the biggest story.”

[Read Byte of the Apple Apple’s Q2 Earnings: What Economic Downturn? - BusinessWeek]

From Macworld:

Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer revealed that the company has signed up 200,000 developers for its iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) release thus far. Oppenheimer also said that Apple is signing up more developers each week. In mid-March, Apple announced that the iPhone SDK had been downloaded 100,000 times.

[Read Macworld | Apple: 200,000 iPhone developers so far]

Classic Mercedes, originally uploaded by fxgeek.

Another Classic Car discovery on the way home from work. Taken with my trusty little Panasonic LX2

Apple has posted links to downloadable demos of some new image processing plug-ins for Aperture. I will try them out and let you know what I thin but in the mean time if you’re and Aperture user head over to the site and give them a try.

I’ve played around with iWeb several times since it first came out, but I never really gave it much thought, as it always seemed pretty limited for what I wanted it to do. Recently however I was having a conversation with a friend who showed me some of the things they were doing with it and I was pretty impressed. So I decided to give it a second chance and have a good, deep exploration of the software’s capabilities. I have to say, I was really impressed with what I found. But this is not a review, because there are plenty of those around the internet already, instead I’d like to discuss what I think iWeb could be, because iWeb has, in my opinion huge potential. There is nothing really like it on any platform from what I can see, yet it is limited, partly for the audience it is aimed at. But with maybe 10 percent more functionality, iWeb could be 100 percent more useful. With that in mind, rather than cannibalize the iLife suite, I think Apple could really shake the web design market up if they came out with a professional version of iWeb.

There are plenty of visual web editors out there, and many offer significantly more functionality than iWeb, but none offer the same kind of features iWeb has. Take adding pictures to a page for example. You can quickly add picture frames, position them anywhere, scale and rotate, have drag and drop replacements all with relative ease. Programs like Softpress Freeway allow you to visually lay out your page, but to do what you can do in iWeb you’d need to prep everything in Photoshop first, and then changes would be a pain. [UPDATE: Certainly Applications like Freeway allow you to import images and graphics of any kind into the software, but what I am referring to is the way iWeb comes with templates and drop zones for various items, such as the cool picture frames, where you can just drag and drop into the drop zone to replace an image, or the way it generates gallery links for photo pages automatically. This is a great timesaver and really flexible. You could certainly do this in other software but it would require more work. The way iWeb does this (and Dvd studio pro too) is just brilliant]

With iWeb it’s so simple to create visually powerful layouts in minutes an yet some simple things are equally frustrating, such as changing the width of your site. To do this you have to edit every new page, and then things don’t flow properly so you have to go change that, and there is no way to do this on a master basis.

If you look at some of Apple’s other Applications though, you can see some ideas that would work really well with iWeb. Take keynote for example. It’s ability to create and edit master pages would make iWeb considerably more useful. If you could edit the master pages of themes, it would be so much easier to create customized sites. Another similar paradigm is DVD Studio Pro. It’s menu layout system has some neat features that would greatly enhance a professional version of iWeb, such as the ability to store libraries of custom styles for buttons, text etc.As I said, I don’t think it would actually require that much as Apple has most of the technology in its other software, it’s just a matter of rolling it into a new package. (And yes, I know that’s not as easy as It sounds)

So here is a list of 10 things I think iWeb Pro, for want of a better name could have to make it a powerful entry into the web design field:

1. Ability to edit master pages and templates like Keynote. SO for example you can select a theme and then edit the master pages that make up that theme so that any new pages you create will be based on your modified masters. Also, you should have the ability to save your changes as a new theme.

2. Ability to make site wide styles and changes that affect your entire site. Much like working with CSS in traditional web design

3. Come with a library of objects and images, much like DVD studio Pro, SoundTrack pro, Motion etc.

4. Ability to create custom libraries of Button Styles, Layouts, Text Styles etc, in the same way you can with DVD Studio Pro.

5. Built in FTP Client.

6. More pre-defined web widgets

7. Plug in Architecture for web widgets, much like the way wordpress widgets work

8. On Screen rulers and grids and (non dynamic) guides for precision layouts

9. Some kind of support for server based blogging, in other words, you’re not limited to updating your blog through iWeb

10. Support for dynamic and animated elements, even if it’s just basic custom roll overs, or menu effects.

So there you have it. I don’t think any of this is too ambitious or too much to ask for, but you could end up with a pretty powerful web design system that fills a badly needed hole in the current line up of web design tools. I for one would buy it in a heart beat. In the mean time I’m going back to seeing how far i can push iWeb.

[UPDATE 2: In response to the comment below, I don’t mean to take away from other Web Development packages such as Freeway, Dreamweaver or Golive. All are great packages. I think iWeb’s way of doing things is uniquely Apple, that it would be great if it just past some of it’s limitations to attract a wider audience.]

I love Aperture. I really do. I much prefer it to the competition, mainly Lightroom. I think its interface is much better, especially for organizing images. I find lightroom’s UI just gets in your way, takes up to much of the screen and is big and clunky, especially on a smaller screen. (yes I know you can hide parts of it). So it is with great pain I write this post, because you see, as much as I like Aperture it has one fatal weakness. It’s as buggy as hell.

Aperture has always been a little flakey. When version 1 came out it was given the nomenclature “crapeture”. However things settled down with 1.5.1 and it was more than useable. Bugs were relegated mostly to speed issues. However with 2.0 they were back with a vengeance. First, thumbnails would turn red with a warning message that Aperture couldn’t read the format, even though it was fine only moments ago. Then there’s the dreaded image loading bug, where Aperture would just sit there with the “Loading” badge over the image. And of course the random quits which are annoying if you’ve changed your keywording button layouts because it looses them.

With 2.01 they addressed the red thumbnail bug, and stability improved a little, but with 2.1 it’s back to the good old days of random flakiness. I discovered a new one last night that drove me to quit the program and give up for the night. While making adjustments to a raw file the whole image would turn black. Seemingly at random. And the only way to get it back was to either remove all adjustments or quit and re-launch the program, which rapidly became a pain. I discovered afterwards that this seems to be limited to occurring while Aperture is processing previews in the background, but its still a major pain in the behind.

Like I said, I love Aperture, and I really don’t want to have to switch to using something else, but if they don’t get their act together soon I may get frustrated to the point of giving lightroom another serious look. And no that’s not one of those “I’ll never use an Apple product again unless Apple pays attention to me” idle threat that you read on Apple forums. It’s simply a statement of fact based on the usability of the software.

Interestingly enough, the only other piece of Apple software that was notoriously bug ridden to the point of being unusable was Motion. This is interesting because both make heavy use of the GPU to achieve their “speed” I have to wonder that, considering alternatives that use the CPU for processing (ie Lightroom) seem much faster, especially with modern processors, if the whole GPU thing is running out of steam. The whole problem is exacerbated by the differences in GPU’s among different manufacturers, so maybe Apple would be better off going back to using the CPU for their heavy lifting. Then again, i’ve yet to see anything that can do what motion can do in realtime.

I don’t for a second doubt Apple’s commitment to Aperture. I just doubt mine at this point.

From Macworld.com:

Adobe’s flagship product, Photoshop, will become a 64-bit application in the next major revision to the company’s bundle of creative pro applications, Creative Suite 4. However, the 64-bit version will only be available to Windows users because of a change Apple made at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in 2007.

The good news is that Adobe will make a 64-bit version for the Mac in the future.

“We can reassure people that literally from the day we found out Carbon 64-bit was cancelled, we have been figuring out what we need to do to get there,” John Nack, senior product manager for Adobe Photoshop, told Macworld

Another year, another transition. It probably won’t make that much difference for the majority of users, but it’s still a pain. It’s all too easy to blame Adobe in this matter but certainly Apple deserves a good kick up the preverbal for changing it’s mind over carbon 64 as well, although I’m sure it was with good reason. Then again, you could argue that when Adobe were transitioning to intel they would have migrated to cocoa as well.
I suppose the upside is that the final version will have a more modern code base than the legacy that is inherent in Photoshop now.
[Read Macworld | Photoshop CS4 to be 64-bit for Windows, but not Mac]

From Macworld:

Less than two months after releasing version 2.0, Apple unveiled on Friday Aperture 2.1, the newest version of the company’s professional photography workflow application. The new version includes an open plug-in architecture that will allow photographers to use third-party imaging software in Aperture.

[Read Macworld | Apple releases Aperture 2.1]

From the Apple Press Release:

Apple® today updated its AirPort Express® mobile base station with 802.11n to deliver up to five times the performance and twice the range of the previous model*. Priced at just $99, AirPort Express is the world’s smallest 802.11n-based mobile base station. It can be plugged directly into the wall for wireless Internet connectivity and USB printing at home or easily brought on the road for wireless freedom wherever there is an Internet connection. AirPort Express features AirTunes™, which works seamlessly with iTunes® to give users a simple and inexpensive way to wirelessly stream iTunes music from a PC or Mac® to any room in the house.

“Apple is leading the way with a broad range of innovative 802.11n base stations for almost any wireless networking need,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “From the small and portable AirPort Express, to AirPort Extreme for workgroups of up to 50 users and the new Time Capsule for automated backups, Apple customers now have more great ways to extend their wireless networks with 802.11n.”

[Read Apple Introduces New AirPort Express with 802.11n]

According to a user on Apple’s discussion forums there is no upgrade pricing from Xsan 1.4 to Xsan 2.0. I have to say I’m a little surprised by that, considering Apple offers upgrades for much less expensive software such as Final Cut Express and Aperture. For large enterprises this may be okay but for small business such as smaller video post production facilities, this is a bit of a slap in the face. They do offer a maintenance program though, but If you’re not already on it, I’m not sure you will qualify for upgrades. Not the best of moves Apple.