» Posts Tagged ‘apple’
Yesterday Apple launched a half-dozen new products, including a new Apple TV. Apple is no longer a computer company; they even changed their name from Apple Computer to Apple, Inc. in recognition of this. But while they’re very clearly a mobile devices company, the question that’s been lingering about Apple since they launched their lackluster first-gen Apple TV is whether they are a living room company too. With the new device, we have an answer to that question: “no.” More »
The Mac operating system is elegant and simple, and the same goes for its process for installing and uninstalling applications — right? After all, to install an application, you just drag an app to your “Applications” folder, and to uninstall it, you just drag it to the trash. Simple. But the dirty secret with OS X is this simplicity comes at a cost: when you drag an application to the trash, you’re leaving a bunch of associated files scattered behind on your hard drive, and they’ll never go away. As I’ve recently been migrating my old laptop files to my new hackintosh, I’ve discovered a ton of old, orphaned files. Luckily, there are a number of simple ways to get rid of them. More »
After 512 days without updates, the new Mac Pros are finally on their way to creative professionals. While I’m hacking my way DIY-style to a better editing machine, those of you with a need to edit in front of clients will be requiring a legit machine from Apple. Of course, that doesn’t mean you’re not also interested in saving some money, so here are some deals and savings to be had — and some benchmarks to ponder. More »
It’s official: there are no nVidia options in the new Mac Pros. At the time of their announcement, some had speculated that Apple might slip in nVidia cards as a build-to-order option at launch, but nope: you can get one 1GB ATI card, or two 1GB ATI cards. That’s it. If you edit using Premiere Pro CS5, this is a problem, but if you’re a Final Cut editor, these new machines should be fine. Plus, if you run an editing house or work in front of clients, you can’t exactly run a hackintosh, in which case the Mac Pro is still your best option. So — where are the best deals on these new beasts? More »
When I priced out the components of the new Mac Pro, I realized Apple’s pro line is not a good value proposition. When the same new Mac Pros left off an nVidia graphics card as an option, I took it as a slight to Adobe. When I asked you guys if you’d like me to build a hackintosh in an attempt to have the best of both worlds, you said yes. So I’ve done the research, priced out the components, and drawn my conclusions. Here’s what I think is possible for a video editing-optimized hackintosh: compared to the $2,500 Mac Pro base model that will ship this month, I believe the Hac Pro can have a faster processor, four times as much RAM, a Blu-Ray burner, USB 3.0 connectivity1, more storage space, and an nVidia graphics card that accelerates Adobe CS5. The kicker? This Hac Pro will cost $1,000 less. More »
- Mac OS X does not presently support USB 3.0, but presumably a motherboard with USB 3.0 will be ready once the OS is. [↩]
Mac vs. PC is a never-ending debate, but when it comes to video editing, what we need are hard and fast numbers. It would be impossible to generate a comparison of apples to apples (zing?) by using Final Cut Pro, since that NLE is only available on one platform. Instead, Adobe’s CS5 suite is the ideal candidate — and considering CS5 is 64-bit native on both OSes, it should be a fair fight. The best way to settle this would be to open the exact same CS5 project file on a Mac and a PC, play it back, render it out, and measure it in other ways — on various machines, at different price points — and compare the results. If only someone would create such a benchmarking tool and upload the results to a database… As it turns out, someone has done just this. More »
Not to keep harping on the new Mac Pro, but I’m not the only one scratching my head about the future of Macs for professional content creators. The above quote about Apple comes from Digital Imaging Technician Brook Williard, in a post on his blog titled The state of Apple’s professional line. Brook’s post jumps off with the following: “512 days after the last update, Apple introduced the new lineup of speed-bumped Mac Pros and further established their abandonment of the professional community… With the 2010 Mac Pro update, Apple has literally created a machine for nobody.” More »
With the announcement of new Mac Pros, I thought back to the last time I used such a machine, during my years at MTV. At one point I found myself picking up the machine to move it; surprised at the heft, I remember wondering to myself, “what do they build these cases out of?!?” Platinum, apparently: that’d be the only way to justify the price. Why do I say this? Because, after yesterday’s announcement, I turned to Apple’s tech specs page and priced out the exact components used in the base-level Mac Pro. The results might surprise you. More »
Apple today announced new Mac Pros, marking the first updates to the fruit company’s pro line since March of 2009. Pricing starts at $2,500 for the base 4-core model, $3,500 for the 8-core model, and a wallet-annihilating $5,000 for the 12-core model. The new machines use the latest Intel Xeon processors, there are new SSD options for storage, and higher-powered ATI graphics cards are now standard. No USB 3.0 or Lightpeak as rumored, and still no Blu-ray option. None of this is particularly surprising, but there’s an interesting angle to this announcement concerning the ongoing feud between Apple and Adobe. More »
As transmedia pioneer Lance Weiler recently wrote in the pages of Filmmaker, mobile devices “offer opportunities for filmmakers to reach audiences directly, with little to no intervention from middlemen. While the selling of a film on iTunes requires a filmmaker to go through one or maybe two aggregators, it is possible to go direct to the App Store as long as the mobile app receives approval from Apple.” But while Apple’s iOS requires approval, Google’s Android does not. Not only is Google’s app marketplace more open than Apple’s ecosystem, but Android has rapidly rising market share, and now Google is releasing App Inventor for Android, a new tool for creating applications with drag-and-drop simplicity — no coding (or approval) required. More »
I was at a rental house checking out $500k of video equipment (not for my own project — I wish) when Apple announced the iPhone 4 yesterday, so I forgot it was the day I was supposed to figure out whether my next editing machine was going to be a Mac or a Hac. When I got back home, however, I saw 30 billion posts on the internet about the iPhone — a platform for interacting and consuming — and nothing about the Mac — a platform for creating. More »
In Zacuto’s most recent DSLR/film comparison, one of the commenters noted that upconverting to ProRes gave much better results (than editing native h.264 footage) in post. While ProRes is definitely a better codec (in terms of color space and compression), the clip showed as a reference seemed to exhibit a perpetually-annoying gamma shift bug that applies to a lot of DSLR shooters — more specifically, anyone editing h.264 video on a Mac. When I shot some stuff on my 5D for Focus Features, I noticed that the clips looked desaturated and flat in Quicktime 7, and supersaturated and contrasty in Quicktime X (Quicktime X ships with Snow Leopard, and Quicktime 7 is an optional install). Jerome Stern at MotionLife corroborates this experience, decrying the lack of consistency when it comes to viewing and editing h.264 footage on a Mac: More »
Most of us use both Adobe and Apple products — most commonly Adobe Photoshop and Apple Final Cut, I’m guessing. With the ongoing feud between the two companies reaching a joke T-shirt-spawning level, however, it’s nice to know that their respective NLE programs still talk to each other (thanks to standards-based XML files). Since CS4, Premiere Pro has been able to open and export Final Cut XML files (which is handy for getting FCP sequences into After Effects, an action that used to require a $500 plugin). CS5 tutorial after the jump: More »
Rumors are circulating that Apple will soon release a 1080p Apple TV running iPhone OS 4 for just $99. Though Apple was long at work on this upgrade before the announcement of Google TV, the two devices are similar in that they both run on mobile operating systems (Google TV will run on Android). More important than the pricing or OS of the rumored Apple TV refresh, however, is what this could mean for Apple’s strategy of selling and distributing content. More »
According to AppleInsider, Apple is giving Final Cut Studio a “significant makeover” to target the suite at prosumers rather than the current “high-end creative niche.” Combined with recent reports that Apple laid off 40 Final Cut employees, this news is potentially disturbing for anyone interested in the “Pro” part of “Final Cut Pro.” So: unsubstantiated rumor or legitimate source of worry? More »
First off, the expected news from NAB: Adobe has announced the latest version of their creative suite, CS5. It’s 15 applications in all, so I won’t go into all the different new features. But if you’re planning on buying or upgrading your CS5 applications or suite, Adobe’s running a promotion right now where you can preorder CS5 before April 29 to get free shipping
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Some unexpected Adobe-related news came from Apple, just days prior to Adobe’s CS5 launch. I’ve written multiple times about Adobe Flash’s ability to export one application to several platforms, and how it could potentially allow indie productions to be able to produce cross-platform apps on the cheap. But then Apple gave Adobe the finger, inserting new language into its latest iPhone SDK potentially banning non-native applications from the iEcosystem; Adobe fired back by demonizing Apple, going so far as to say, “Go screw yourself Apple.” Short of both sides sending their programmers into an all-out, Braveheart-style battle to the death, no one knows how this is going to shake out — but the corporate battle does have potential consequences for independent creatives. More »
For creatives who get their hands on an iPad, the first thought is often, “what kind of app can I develop for this?” I toyed with an iPad at Apple’s 5th Avenue store yesterday and, watching people eagerly touching the screen one after the other, had a different idea.1 However, for those of you who have a concept for a mobile app, the easiest way to mock-up an application is to grab the free iPad PSD; all of the buttons, text, and other elements are separated out into Photoshop layers for you. There’s also a freely available iPhone PSD, which I used for a quick design job for Diversion Media last week. One note of caution: if you’re designing for clients or publicly presenting your app concept, change the time. As you can see, the designer who put together these helpful photoshop files had a little fun with the clock by setting it to the universal stoner time of 4:20. It’s much more subtle in the iPhone version, and I didn’t notice it until the client brought it up on the conference call; oops.
Finally, if you want to create an icon for your theoretical app, here’s the icon PSD; Apple’s design elements are also available as a vector kit.
- Obviously, I didn’t actually do it or I’d be in jail. My first thought was actually to make a joke about anthrax, but wasn’t entirely sure of the current status of habeas corpus. [↩]
I’m doing some basic design/planning for a new section of the Filmmaker Magazine web site, and I needed a screenshot of the current home page. If you’re on a Mac, you can hit just command-shift-4 — if all you want is the a shot of the top of the page. But what if you want an image of the whole site, top to bottom? Paparazzi to the rescue. Enter the URL of the site, hit Capture, and you’re done. Perfect for redesigns and mockups, and it’s free.
Link: Paparazzi
Enjoy this extra white space due to the long image. Think deep thoughts.
Ty: Like you stated though, all you need is a PC that runs iTunes (for now) With the new Apple TV, Apple Decides the Living Room Can Wait
Ty: Ah. Good point. Ever since switching over to Apple I've kind of taken fo… With the new Apple TV, Apple Decides the Living Room Can Wait
William: What I want to see is a device that will bury the cable companies. Time Wa… With the new Apple TV, Apple Decides the Living Room Can Wait
Koo: That's a good point -- all you need is another piece of Apple hardware tha… With the new Apple TV, Apple Decides the Living Room Can Wait