News for Wednesday, 7 January 2009

So, what's new with iMovie 09?
Well, at first sight, not much: the interface is quite similar and you could be lulled into thinking it is a minor update.
But fear not, Apple has seriously revamped iMovie, after down-vamping it between iMovie HD and iMovie 08.
The first thing is that now you can activate "advanced features", and get many more fine tuning options.
Amongst the new features, let's mention a few.
Green screen: OK, this might be a bit "gadget" and we sort of saw it coming with iChat's "blue screen" feature, but it does work fine (although it seems it's not really easy to find how to use it, as the Apple staffer I was talking with could not find how to do it). I had a look at a greenscreened video and if it's not pro-quality, it certainly does the trick.
Precision editing: this allows you to do fine editing, going down all to way to the frame level.

And this is people have been asking for since they simplified iMovieHD into 08.
Maps: seems like Apple loves geo-features, since after adding geotagging to iPhoto, they offer a tool in iMovie that allows you to mark a number of locations on a map, then iMovie will generate an animated "itinerary", just like one of the map sequences in the Indiana Jones movies. Maps can have various styles, and there even is a pseudo-3D globe. I'm not sure this is essential stuff, but it goes along with the iLife apps and is mostly done with taste.

Image stabilization: this is quite an impressive feature, especially if you shoot in HD. iMovie can detect and highlight clips that are too "shaky" and you can ask it to "stabilize them". What it does is zoom, rotate and crop the video frame by frame so that the final result is stable. The demo clip from a Safari in a Jeep was quite impressive, although the cropping means that if you shoot in SD, you could face significant pixellation. Oh, yes, the feature is real fast, like, live.
There is now the possibility to crop and rotate (by 90° steps) clips, which is really nice, and you can add chapter and comment markers for export to iDVD and H264 video.

Unfortunately, the tool that allowed you to fine-tune the volume of the soundtrack using anchor points is still missing.
Overall, this, like iPhoto, looks like a solid upgrade to the previous version, and I must say it is damn fast.

So, this year, Apple at the Expo was all about the mac. And they meant it: although you still find tons of third party iPod/iPhone accessories, the Apple booth had only a bunch of new nanos, artfully arranged, and a couple tables with maybe a dozen iPhones.

Ironic that for its last MacWorld, Apple is focusing back on the Mac.

You can now check on your iTunes library if you have the opportunity to move to DRM-free versions. It could cost you up to 0.30 USD/Euro per song, +30% of the cost for an album and 0.6 USD/euro per video clip.
As shown below, such migration to the DRM-free version of your library can be quite expensive, moving rapidly from dozen to hundreds of USD/Euro:

For those who could not attend our keynote live coverage yesterday, Apple jsut released the video. Just follow the link: MacWorld SF 2009 Keynote.
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Surfing on the success of True Power batteries for MacBook and MacBook Pro, FastMac announced the availability of a recharging pack dedicated to the iPhone 3G.

Its capacity is rather impressive, 3100 mAh, and should provide juice to the iPhone for 750 hours in standby or up to 21 hours of video playback. It also includes a flash light for emergency use as well as for low light photos. It can in addition be used to charge all USB port devices. Nevertheless, such a good looking product has a drawback, its price: 99.95 USD (and 99 Euro in EU, 35% more expensive…).
For additional information: http://store.fastmac.com

Seagate has just officially announced its new range of hard drives, series 7200.12 equipped for the first time with platters containing 500 GB of data and spinning at 7200 rpm.
Puissance PC succeeded in getting its hands on the two models, the 1 and 1,5 TB, and subjected them to many tests.

In short, in spite of the increase in density, these disks do not have a significantly better data flow and lost a little with the access time. The same applies to their power consumption and their noise level.
On the other hand, the fall of the number of platters should bring the price lower, the disk of 1 TB only requiring two platters and 1,5 TB has 3, which is already a good news for the consumers and bad for the competitors of Seagate.
But if you seek a disk of 1 TB having best the possible performances, the choice will be to direct you towards the Western Digital Black that is better for almost all points. However Seagate, being the only one with the 1,5 TB, remains the only choice.

An Apple spokesman told Gizmodo that the change of the battery for the new MacBook Pro 17" would cost $179 with the After-Sales service. This price is reasonable, since the price of the battery must must be a large part of the cost, given its capacity.
Apple may be slightly optimistic nevertheless (or maybe not) by indicating it should last 5 years at a rate of 200 cycles per annum, which may be a tad on the low side. For comparison, for the machine on which Lionel has written these lines (15" unibody) , has already 80 cycles in less than 3 months and will have some certainly more than 350 in one year. However since this new battery has a significant larger capacity this 350 should be reduced and maybe the 200 per year is not so unreasonable.
Thus even with this intensive use, it could last 5 years, which is altogether interesting.

So, with so little hardware news (if a 17" laptop can be considered "little"), the Apple booth was all about iLife and iWork.

I spent some quality time with iPhoto 09, alone and talking with an Apple staffer (who was a photo geek too), and here are my impressions.
For me, the main new feature is the integrated geotagging of pictures. Simply clicking on places in the source list shows a map displaying the world with pins indicating where you shot your pictures (in a very iPhone-ish style).

The feature uses Google Maps, and is really fast. There is a new "terrain" display mode that replaces the usual "map": it shows a topographic map including elevation, which looks absolutely gorgeous.
Clicking on a pin's arrow display images shot in this location.

Images can be geotagged directly if your images contain EXIF location data, or manually by using Google Maps, like you can do on flickr.com. To location data to a bunch of images, simply look for a "place" by typing in the search field, then simply drop a pin on the map.

A cool feature is that you can define a "size" for the place you select, which is basically a circle around the pin, for which you can change the radius, meaning that you can have an "area" instead of just a point (like "my district" rather than a couple of GPS coordinates).

Once you have selected a place, you can associate it to selected pictures, or bookmark it for future use (this is neat).
When a picture has been geotagged, you can view location details by simply clicking on it.

I asked an Apple staffer about the geo features of iPhoto, and after a long discussion slipped the $1,000,000 question: will these features make it under some form in Aperture. The answer was: "I can't say anything, except that the iPhoto software manager is also the Aperture manager, so... I'm really looking forward to it." Thats would be awesome (and please throw in GPS track log import).

The other "big" (although a tad unnecessary) new feature is the face detection tool. Basically, you select an image, ask iPhoto to detect the face, which it then displays within a frame (quite accurately), and you are asked to name the person.

Once this is done, you can search your library by people, and iPhoto will try and find all the pictures that contain a face similar to the one you defined for that person. It sort of works, pretty well for frontal shots of adults, quite randomly for action shots of kids.

Overall, this feels like an interesting feature, especially for family shots, but we'lll have to see how it handles real photos, and not selected demo shots.
Another new feature is the publishing of pictures directly form iPhoto to your flickr or facebook account, which works as it should, although you can only use one account at a time (too bad for people posting to flickr using multiple accounts, like a personal and a pro one).
Overall, this feels like a solid update to iPhoto, especially the geotagging features.

Although they were quite scarce, I had some hands-on time with the new 17” MacBook Pro.
On first contact, it does not look that big, at least when you compare it to the way the old 17-incher compared to the old MacBook Pros... maybe it's the tapered edges, I don't know. Surprisingly, it feels heavier than it looks (those damn edges again!), and you really feel the extra pound compared to the 15" model. It also feels very rigid, thanks to the Unibody and non-removable battery.

The trackpad is the same as on the new MacBooks and Pros, although larger, and feels really natural. I hadn't tried the new monobloc trackpad before, but I actually didn't notice it at first, it just felt like the standard trackpad with button.
The overall finish is extremely smooth, and even the speaker grilles have received manic attention, as they are now level and silky smooth, a bit like the iSight ON light, which holes are laser etched: if you run your fingers on the speaker grille, you actually cannot feel it, it feels weird.

Apple is claiming that the new non removable battery (cue scandal, uproar and outcry) is worth "up to 8 hours", which, if true, would be outstanding. My main concern with non-removable batteries is not the impossibility to carry around a spare battery (at worst, there exist solutions like external juice packs), but rather the fact that batteries don't age well, especially if you use your laptop on AC most of the time (my 2 years-old MBPro battery doesn't hold more than 1 hr of charge now, which is why I had to buy a new battery for when I'm on the go): what will happen after 2 years when your 17" incher needs some Viagra to last longer? How much will Apple charge for a replacement battery?

One of the great things regarding the new 17" is the new screen, given for a 60% wider gamut than it's ancestor, which will be great for photographers. Also, Apple is finally adding an "antiglare" coating option, basically you can order a matte screen if you hate glossy displays. The models on display were all using glossy screens, so I can't say if the antiglare versions look like the old matte MacBook Pro screen or not.
The models on display at the Expo are running a custom build of Mac OSX 10.5.6, namely 9G2104.

The new 17" inches MacBook Pro starts at $2,799 for the Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66GHz with 4GB Memory, 320GB hard drive, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M + 9600M GT with 512MB.
Options include a 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Duo [Add $300.00], 8GB of RAM [add Apple RAM tax of $1,200!!!], faster 7200 RPM HD, 128 or 256 SSD [Add respectively $50, $500 or $900] and the much-asked-for matte screen finish for and extra $50