The Apple Store is back online with the release of Aperture 3 (and not Aperture X has rumored couple of weeks ago). Among the new important features:
- It includes including Faces, Places and Brushes (Brushes for painting image adjustments onto parts of your)
- Aperture also handles your HD video straight from your camera, such as the recent Nikon D90 and D300s, etc...
- Existing Aperture users can upgrade for a suggested retail price of 99 USD or 199 USD for a brand new license
- Adjustment Presets Choose from dozens of professional imaging effects. Or create your own
- If you’re using a separate GPS tracking device, the path of your photo journey appears on the map when you import a track log
- Brushes New nondestructive, edge-aware brushes let you selectively apply powerful adjustments to photos.
- Full-Screen Browser Take advantage of your Apple display to get a big, uncluttered, full-screen view of your library.
- Advanced Slideshows Create spectacular multimedia shows with photos, HD video clips, titles, layered soundtracks
- RAW+JPEG Import Choose to have Aperture import RAW and JPEG images as joined pairs or separate images
- Double-click any image in the Import window to view it at a larger size. You can play video and audio clips before importing
- Merge and Sync Libraries To merge two or more Aperture libraries, simply drag one Aperture library into another. (handy option)
- Camera “LCD” Panel The easy-to-read display emulates the LCD screen on many digital cameras.
- Write IPTC Metadata to Master
- Chromatic Aberration Filter Remove the color fringing that can occur along edges due to optical issues
- 64-Bit Support (requires Snow Leopard and Intel Core 2 Duo processor)
- 3 is Intel-only
Here we go for a new round of speculations, new MacBook, MacBook Pro or Mac Pro? Some minor updates or rather new models?
It is now a month since Intel officially launched its new mobile platform and its new processors Core i3, i5 and i7 mobile. Since then, all PC manufacturers updated their ranges and have these products in their catalogues.
However from Apple, nothing yet. The company has exclusively made its news around the iPad and nothing moved on the side of Mac. The MacBook Pro and MacBook Air are still equipped with processors Core 2 duo.
Even the entry line machine has to have an acceptable video chip, that integrated in the 9400M, but we are very impatient to know if Apple will be satisfied with the integrated solution of Arrendale or if they will give us what we hope for, and make a great jump by offering all Mac portable with dedicated video chips.
Perhaps after all, we will have the answer to our question as of today. It is Tuesday, a day when all is possible at Apple :)
In the past, Intel initiated or entered new markets to launch them and turn them into established ones, then left them when they were matured. We could have thought that Intel would do the same think for SSD, promoting efficient products, establishing new references for such devices, in order to push other manufacturers to bring levels up. The founder could then left the market and concentrate again on its main topic, CPU. However, this time the strategy might be different.
Intel wants to become a leader on the flash memory market, and compete with Samsung, toshiba and Hynix, to become the number 1 with its partner on this market, Micron. To reach such goal, both partners are betting a lot on their future 25 nm engraving process, and expect to release SSDs based on such chips to turn their current high-end SSD models into consumer electronic products for the mass.
So, we might see the first price battle on SSDs before the end of the year, as it will be the only way for Intel and Micron to quickly capture market share and reach their goal. So, 2010 might well be the year for democratization of the SSD, at reasonable prices, as storage unit.
Currently 3.5" HDs offer up to 2 TB of storage space. They are composed of 4 discs of 500 GB each. If in theory 5 discs could fit in the enclosure, to reach 2.5 TB, no manufacturer made this choice so far. Indeed, with the heat released by mechanical operations, it would impact reliability and life time.
However, we should see 2.5 TB HD models soon according to a roadmap from TDK, one of the main manufacturers of HD heads. They have in development a head able to push capacity of each disc to 640 GB. Once ,assembled by four of such disc, it would storage space of 2.5 TB. For 2.5" HD, their storage capacity could reach 750 to 800 GB splitted on 2 discs.
