thomas fitzgerald.net

Something occurred to me today as I was reading a piece about Bing, Microsoft’s search engine. Sometimes it seems like Microsoft acts like the bitter older brother or sister who can’t stand its siblings having anything that it doesn’t have. When someone makes something successful, Microsoft has to have it. Then I began thinking about how this contrasts with the way Apple does things. If you look at the way both companies develop new products, or bring new technologies to the market you see a stark difference in approach.

I really believe that there is a growing interest for blu-ray on the Mac. One of the things that leads me to suspect this is that the number one search term and link that is bringing people to this site at the moment is blu-ray. In particular Final Cut’s Blu Ray support. More and more people keep asking me: “when do you think the Mac will get blu-ray?” which is usually followed by “should I wait?” To be honest I doubt it will come this year. I suspect that when Apple does their widely rumoured Autumn Mac refresh, blu-ray won’t be on the cards (and John Gruber says so, so it must be true). I suspect that Apple’s primary focus will be keeping costs down for the holiday season, and although blu-ray burners are much cheaper than they used to be, they’re still more expensive than a normal superdrive. Unless they add it as a build to order option, I can’t see it coming before January.

In my previous articles on this subject, I did my best to give you a reasonably objective opinion on the relative merits of each programme, however, I will admit that as I am an Aperture user, and I have preferred Aperture for a long time, I think that I was a little biased in that direction. However, recently I have started to give Lightroom another look for my full workflow, and I have to say, I’m beginning to see that maybe it might be the better choice for me after all.

Ever since Adobe Lightroom shipped there has been a long running debate as to which was the better piece of software for managing your photos, Adobe’s Lightroom or Apple’s Aperture. Apple actually started the “Photography Workflow Tool” race with Aperture. While many billed it as a professional version of iPhoto, it was a whole new class of application. Just as Aperture introduced the world to this concept, Adobe jumped into the fray with their own tool, Photoshop Lightroom. Since then the two have been battling it out as the workflow tool of choice for the professional and advanced amateur. Deciding between the two however has not been easy. Both offer distinct advantages and both approach the concept differently. Adobe has the largest market share (more on that later), but Apple has the more mature application. Choosing between these two applications is a struggle that I have raged over back and forth for much time, and I still have difficulty reaching a firm conclusion. What follows then, is not a direct feature for feature comparison of both programs but rather a discussion of the relative strengths and weaknesses of each application.

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.