I’m sorry Nikon didn’t release your dream camera but there’s more to a camera system than resolution, and just because it has a similar resolution to the 5D2 does not mean it should be the same price. In terms of the actual camera, the D3x is light years ahead of the 5D2, so calm down people.

From Nikon Press Release (via Nikon Rumors):

The foundation of the enhanced performance of the D3X is its FX-format, 24.5-megapixel (6048 x 4032) CMOS sensor providing commercial, high fashion, fine art and landscape photographers with the extreme resolution, dynamic range, color depth, detail and sharpness that clients demand. Whether creating catalogs, magazine covers, billboards or gallery prints, the large 5.49-micron pixel size and high signal to noise ratio produces vibrant images with breathtaking image fidelity while reducing lost highlights and shadows, and ensuring smoother tone reproduction with minimized noise. With full resolution shooting speeds of up to five frames-per-second (fps), and 14-bit files, that when processed are approximately 138 MB, the D3X offers today’s photographic artists an extreme level of performance and versatility ready for demanding assignments in the studio or on location.

This seems like an animal of a camera, and pitches directly against the Canon Eos 1DS although Nikon are marketing it as a medium format competitor. It will be interesting to see the results when it gets into the hands of some real users, but so far it looks pretty impressive.
It is expensive mind you, at around $8000. Still, this is a professional tool and not designed for Amateurs. Unfortunately that fact seems to be lost on many of the people complaining about the price and the fact that it lacks video.

[Read Nikon D3x announcement | Nikon Rumors]
Nikon’s Site

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As a regular After Effects user I can say that the Mac version definitely suffers from a sense of being put together as something of an after thought. I don’t mean to belittle the engineers who worked on it, but I think Adobe needs to wise up and realize that a substantial number of people do video work on the mac too. It’s also a star reminder of why competition is good. Now if only Apple would get it together and release a stable version of motion.

1. Make it bigger. Consider using a traditional DVD Player type form factor, or even the size of a mac mini. For a start giving it more room inside could allow it not to generate so much heat and would leave room for some of my other suggestions below…

2. Stick a bigger and faster hard drive in it. Either go 2.5” S.A.T.A. or a 3.5” drive which would be cheaper and offer higher capacity.

3. Make it faster so that it can playback content without struggling. While it handles most stuff well, it can bottle up on high definition TV shows.

4. Support 1080p

5. Support some third party codecs. At the very least support DIVX. All the game consoles now support DIVX and many current DVD players have DIVX support too.

6. Give it a proper remote. The little white one is a beautiful example of apple design and minimalism but it’s too easy to loose.

7. Put a power button on the front of it. Seriously Apple, in the age of environmental awareness, do you really want a product out there that’s a pain to turn off?

8. Put either a DVD Drive or a Blu-Ray drive in it. Forget about playback of DVD’s or Blu-Ray Movies for a minute, although that would be nice, and consider this. If you download a lot of movies or TV shows from the iTunes store, they can quickly fill up your hard drive. You can archive them off onto disk, but then to play them on the AppleTV again you have to import them back into itunes and re-sync. What if iTunes let you burn your TV shows to a data disk and then you could play that back in your AppleTV’s disk drive. You wouldn’t be making a regular DVD so the DRM would still apply, and your AppleTV would still need to be authorized to your iTunes account so you wouldn’t be frightening the studios off. And of course, being able to play back DVD’s at least would be a bonus too.

9. Put a web browser on it.

10. Consider an App-Store like system and development kit to allow developers to write plug ins. There is already a thriving community out there on hacked AppleTV’s much like the jailbreak community on the iPhone. You’ve seen how successful the App Store model can be, why not allow it on the AppleTV too? There are plenty of other services out there that the AppleTV could tie in to and there’s no way Apple can write them all themselves, so why not let other developers do it and let Apple make some money off it too.

* * *

Of course all this is purely fantasy, and I suspect if there is an update to the AppleTV it’s probably already nearing production. Still, while I’m sure many of you have your own suggestions, I don’t think anything on here is that unreasonable or would be that hard to implement. The AppleTV has great potential, and if Apple relaxed their need to control every aspect of what you do on it, even just a little bit, then I think they could make a truly killer set top box.

Also, to use the volume control you have to enable it in the settings menu. It’s under “Audio & Video”

When playing music holding don the play pause button brings up a little menu (as per the older version - for selecting genius etc) and one of the options is to change speakers letting you select your desired airport express speakers.

[Update] I spoke too soon - there’s still some stuttering but it’s not nearly as bad

New options include a volume control when listening to music (finally) and the ability to use third party remotes (interesting) as well as the ability to have movies in play lists (again, finally) and the big one, the ability to stream music to Airport Express base stations and other AppleTVs.

Of course, no word yet on whether the update includes any fixes for some of the persistent bugs users have been suffering such as connection problems when connecting to a TV through a HDMI switcher, or the occasional choppy playback with High Definition TV shows. I will try it myself later tonight and give a full report.

In the mean time though consider this: the update represents an interesting change in the basic functionality of the device. Where previously it was to all intents and purposes a “receiver” only, it will now work quite nicely as a streaming music server. A taste of things to come?