Three generations of Apple laptops. MacBook Air. Macbook Pro. Titanium Powerbook.

I’m really amazed at the MacBook Air. It’s tiny. It’s light. It’s fast.

In the span of three days, five undersea communication cables have been severed — cutting off the internet and phones to Iran, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Bahrain.

Seriously— no one has come to the conclusion that U.S. submarines are down there tapping the lines? Hello?

From Slashdot:

The idea is, you cut the cable at point ‘A’, and make it look like it was an accident (ship anchor, etc). Then, before they fix the cable, you trot on down the cable a few (tens of) miles to point ‘B’ and cut the cable there, too. But now you splice in a repeater that copies everything sent over that cable and sends it …to you! When the cable is fixed at the original spot, comm traffic starts up, and no one is the wiser.

Map of the cuts.

Best Mac OS install. Ever.

In less than 2 hours I had a clean Leopard installed with Mysql, a fist full of Perl modules and —gasp— DB::MySQL without issue through CPAN. Building Perl mods was wicked fast— and not a single one choked with makefile problems. I’m amazed.

The secret to the DB::MySQL install… DB::MySQL can’t find the default location for MySQL’s dynamic libraries. A simple symbolic link and it compiles without issue:

$ cd /usr/local/mysql/lib

$ ln -s . mysql

Chicken baby easy.

Not sure I dig the Aurora Borealis theme...

Getting ready for tomorrow's install of 10.5. I think I'm going to do a complete wipe and clean install of the OS; however I don't seem to be able to find any informaiton on if it's going to be easy to get ImageMagick, MySQL and DBI::MySQL complied. The Fink and DarwinPorts package managers don't seem to be ready for Leopard, and it's unclear to me if these packages will compile from source. This might be a problem... or at least a very difficult weekend.

Amazon's MP3 store full of lower-priced, higher quality, DRM-free MP3s that seamlessly download and add themselves to iTunes is going to give Apple a run for their money. I'd expect a ACC/MP3 price war before the holiday season.

I just installed iLife '08 and tested out the iPhone picture posting to my .Mac gallery. It took about 3+ minutes for my keyboard image to show up online. The gallery is some slick javascript-- but far too large of a load. You could never view it easily on the iPhone over EDGE.

Sharing the posting email address has some interesting community opportunities. I can see at a party everyone posting their pics in real-time to someone's gallery. Unfortunately, you can't comment on the images in the .Mac gallery.

I REALLY wish I could post to MovableType instead... or at least an .Mac API that would allow me to pull the images for display on my server.

The new Apple keyboard has dropped the Command key Apple logo. Daringfireball notes:

Scutt McNulty, among many others, observes that the Apple logo is no longer on the Command key on the new keyboards. There was no Apple logo on the original Macintosh keyboard, either - just the cloverleaf.

There's a long tradition in that button. The ][s had Open Apple/Closed Apple keys. Here's the //c keyboard in 1984 (my first Apple).

The Closed Apple button died with the Macintosh. Mac IIs (Mac II, IIx, IIcx, IIci, IIsi, IIfx, IIvi, IIvx, Performa 600) had just the Open Apple key, as well as the earlier Compact SE line and Plus (with extended keyboard). The only Macs to not have Apple keys were the 128 and 512 and Lisa- which had an non-functioning Apple logo embossed in place of the left command key.

I've owned many of these machines and I remember lamenting the loss of the Closed Apple key- a completely different functioning command key (that could act as a right joystick button).

I'm so old I still tell people to "Open-Apple-Q" to quit an application. I've never in my life said "Command-Q". Someone should make tiny  stickers for the new keyboard's ⌘ key.

Thanks to the devs at #iphone, we have just successfully unlocked Duncan's iPhone for use with his existing business SIM card. The chicken baby easy hack required a little terminal work. Instructions here.

Added bonus. As the jail script ends, the iPhone owner is presented with the following alert:

p.p.s I have no idea how "My Humps" could possibly have gotten set as your ring-tone. ;)

Funny stuff.

Still haven't had a full day to play with my new iPhone. Friday when I was at the beach, Duncan and family waited in line to get them. Duncan struggled all weekend to overcome activation hurdle after hurdle. In house full of server driven linux thin clients, he had no iTunes. With a used Mac, iTunes worked but the business account restriction began. Dunc wasted hours on the phone trying to get at least one of the iPhones to work. By Sunday afternoon my number was successfully activated on one of the iPhones. Duncan is still out of luck for his iPhone. More than a tad frustrating to have blown the whole weekend for nothing... and then to hand off the only working iPhone to me. We're still working hard to find a away to activate his iPhone on it's business account

I got my first hands on my iPhone yesterday, but had to put aside to deal with a crazy Monday work load. I'm still exploring. Initial observations:

• As Duncan noted, you can see why there are no business accounts. What IT department is going to roll-out iTunes on every corporate desktop so the employee can activate an iPhone themselves? Corporate accounts are going to have a different activation scheme that will allow provisioning of iPhones long before they're handed out to employees.
• I REALLY miss chattermail's color coded Summary view. It's far too many clicks to check the new email messages in each of my four email accounts.
• Mail does not appear to use IDLE with non-Yahoo IMAP accounts. Huge bummer.
• I do not believe web-apps are a replacement for real apps. Form-heavy webpages are a bit of a bear in the little Safari.
• However, Safari on a phone blows me away. Not only is it amazing to have full sites at your fingertips, but the user interaction that allows you to enlarge block level elements to full screen is genius. It appears that not only does Safari recognize <div>s as a "double-tap-zoom-to-screen" container-- but also cells in HTML 4.0 table based designs. The thumbnail/multiple tab site management is flawless. A killer GUI implementation for a tiny screen.
• I have far too many bookmarks to deal with on the iPhone. Why can't I pick and choose my bookmarks folders like the rest of the iTunes managed sync items?
• Looking for a bookmark to load is so consuming when you too many, that I find I'm leaving multiple frequently used websites open at all times on the iPhone.
• I'm surprise the camera isn't half bad in decent light (sample). Or a least it's twice as good as the Treo's. Also a surprise was the Aperture integration-- both for loading your Aperture albums onto the iPhone with iTunes and removing your iPhone camera shots with Aperture.
• The UI is like butter. It's amazing. You can do everything with one hand-- or just a thumb.
• I do miss physical buttons. Walking to work today, I had to keep pulling it out of my pocket to advance to the next song. On my Nano I can do this in the pocket with just touch and feel.
• For some reason I feel nervous pulling it out in public. I have a crazy feeling I'm going to get mugged in Philadelphia because of it.
• If you are in another app (safari, mail, etc), how do you pause the iPod music? Or advance? There are a lot of clicks needed to do either if you're not in the iPod on the iPhone.
• I like to be able to Copy and Paste.
• I'd like to see the iPhone printing to Bonjour printers on our WiFi network.
• 1 out of every 3 iPhone Safari loads of this site look like this. I haven't figure out what the deal is. Maybe this will push me to finally redo studio2f.
• Finally, how is everyone getting such crisp interface shots? I'm having a hell of a time taking photos of the UI.

Despite any grips above, and some Treo habits I have to get over-- this maybe be the greatest phone I have ever owned. I cannot wait until the hacking begins and native apps can be added to it.

This was a happy surprise. I assumed iPhoto would mount the iPhone to retrieve the camera photos, but I was shocked when I booted up Aperture and my connected iPhone showed up as import volume. There's not much to the EXIF for the camera (EXIF after the jump)

More ...

Even our mayor is camped out for an iPhone.

Odd that this got overlooked in editing. At 6:20 into the iPhone activation video, the iPhone's storage size is displayed as 74.40 GB. That's a big phone.

No iPhone for business users confirmed. I just got off the phone with AT&T business customer service. To ensure I didn't do something stupid-- like waiting in line for hours Friday night, only to find out I can't upgrade-- I decided to call customer service in advance. Despite having a business account that well out of it's 2 year contract, this is what AT&T told me:

The iPhone will not be available to business accounts. We'll be happy to open a new consumer account for you and transfer your business account's phone number to the new account, but you will be unable to add or upgrade to an iPhone on your AT&T business plan.

The answer was roboticly read from a script by the customer service rep. She's been repeating this to corporate users for days. With the iPhone providing Exchange Server push, Word, Excel and VPN support, I'm shocked they're holding it back from corporate customers.

Very disappointing to say the least. I guess my Friday night is now free.

We got back at 1am this morning to find out that while in Hong Kong and Winnipeg the ISP for this server managed to assign my static IPs to another customer. Packet hi-jinx ensued. We'll now resume our regular broadcast.

I just added a 500GB external to our HDTiVo with the new kickstart hack. We went from 40 hours of high definition video recording to 98 hours. 927 hours of standard def television. Now there should always be something on... and I won't lose the Planet Earth episodes I've been meaning to watch. Giddy-up!

For years I've backup my photos, user directories and client projects to tape using Retrospect. Running on a simple OSX box and safely archiving all of our desktops and laptops to an Exabyte 1U 10 tape Autoloader. The number of times I've been saved by going back to the tapes after a drive failure or accidental deletion has been priceless. Retrospect has been a reliable work horse... Unfortunately Dantz/EMC have abandoned the product-- an Intel/OSX server or client don't exist. EMC announced a compatibility patch that will be released after Leopard ships. The last life support before it's DOA. I've begun searching for a replacement.

For the past 3 months I have struggled to get the only other popular Macintosh "enterprise" backup solution to work: Tolis Group's BRU Server. It's been difficult to say the least. Their support takes days to respond, usually with little help. The console application (a RealBasic skin to a heap of Python scripts) is buggy and unresponsive at times.

I have yet to get more than 5 tapes written without the BRU crapping out with cryptic errors or loosing track of the barcoded tapes. Tolis support always seems to pass the blame onto a tape-drive hardware problem... despite the fact that the VXA drive works fine with other vendor's backup solutions. I'm not the only one with these issues (note: thread will probably be deleted). Of course the 30 day trial expired while I was struggling to get it running... which pushed me to purchase the app. Bad move.

Other BRU shortcomings:

• Out of the box it can't backup DHCP clients that have renewed their lease and have a new IP. That's crazy. We have laptops coming and going all the time at home and in the office.
• It can't do priority backups-- ie. when a laptop appears on the network and hasn't been backup for X days, begin a backup immediately.
• It can't stage backups to multiple locations.
• The bruxpat file that defines what files to exclude in the backup lives inside the BRU Server Agent Config Tool.app package. In the Applications directory. There's no way to have unique bruxpat in each user directory. This should be .bruxpat and should live in the root of each user's home directory. At the user level you should be able to define that's getting backed-up and what is not.
• I'm not sure how permissions are handled, because I couldn't restore a complete user directory to a new machine without a mess of ownership issues. And that's with me setting the new user with the same UID in NetInfo in advance. User and Group permissions were identical.
• The tape overhead is crazy. a 200GB staged archive takes up 5 60GB tapes. 300GB of tape is required to backup 200GB of data? This is with compression: both BRU and the Exabyte hardware.
• I can't seem to find out how to restore a single file to a location of my choosing-- without BRU writing the file with the complete path from it's original location. I don't need 10 directories with a single file in the last one-- I just need the file.
• I'm also missing something big... how do you do a complete restore containing all of the latest files (all the incremental and the original full job)? I appears you have to restore the first full job, and then restore each incremental backup job one by one to get a complete "last snapshot."

Surprisingly, our Linux 30 day trial of BRU runs much better (with the same functionality limitations). It's just the Mac OS X version that I can't get working. I'm back to square one. There are a heap of simple backup/cloning apps, but not many that archive to tape and can backup network client computers. I'm going to investigate Arkeia, BakBone, Atempo. Maybe one of them will allow me to implement my Tower of Hanoi strategy. Just kidding.

A month and a half until the iPhone and my Treo has crapped out again. Much like my last trip to Europe-- I can no longer charge the phone. The last charging problems mysteriously vanished a two days after arriving back in the U.S. This time I haven't been so lucky. As of Friday, I can individually charge batteries inside the cradle, but I cannot charge the phone itself using usb, it's cradle or with it's dedicated power cord.

I'm not sure what to do. I guess I'll get a cheap GSM phone to told me over until June. It seems crazy to get a Treo 680 for a month only to be replaced with the iPhone.

We spent a good portion of this weekend playing with a new Apple TV. I loaded it with 6GB of music and 18GB of previews from my entire Aperture library. I also downloaded my first iTunes Video— the complete first season of Showtime’s Weeds. We “burned” through the Weeds episodes in no time. The rest of the weekend we found ourselves mesmerized watching slideshows of long forgotten parties and lost friends.

Overall the Apple TV is excellent. Classic Apple. It works flawlessly and is easy to use. The initial wireless sync took forever even with a new N Airport. I’m actually thinking I might get another Apple TV. One I can pre-load with music and photos, then take down to our beach house where we don’t have a music library. The second one I’ll plug right into my network with ethernet for the first sync.

Some initial observations of the Apple TV:

• Apple TV requires a HDTV set— yet the video is only 720p. I have a 42” 1080p TV, and on it the quality of iTune’s Weeds was pretty poor. Far from DVD quality.
• The remote needs some basic Tivo-esque functionally— like a 10 second rewind for movies and TV episodes.
• Photo slideshows using iTunes playlists as the soundtrack, rock. Literally. One of my biggest complaints about TiVo Desktop was that you couldn’t have music with a slideshow.
• My other TiVo Desktop complaint was the low-res quality of the images. I’m blown away by how great my photos look on my television. It’s using the full Aperture preview and scaling it to the screen with amazing quality. Every digital picture I’ve taken from 1998 until now in one easy to view library— displayed on a 42” screen in my livingroom with music and the Ken Burns Effect. Amazing.
• The only two slideshow/playlist features that I think are missing: the ability to advance to the next song mid-slideshow; and the ability to view an index page of all the images of the slideshow a la the Finder’s slideshow index.
• There’s some catches with pushing the Aperture library on to it. I haven’t quite figured it out, but it appears top level blue/yellow folders with projects inside them are not transfered. Having never really explored the Aperture/iLife integration— I assume only top level projects, albums, books or websites in Aperture get transfered to iLife (and thus, iTunes and the TV).
• Finally, I really wish it had a DVD player… then I could get rid of one more component in my home theater… and one less interface/input switch for my wife to have to manipulate…

The photo viewing experience was so great that we’re thinking of inviting all our friends to come over and watch. A photo party where we laugh really hard looking back at the last 10 years of road-trips, boat charters, weddings and beer fueled hi-jinx. Not unlike the carousels of 35mm vacation slides your relatives would torture you with— but with cocktails.

And yes, Marty— you need one of these for your new home theater and your massive iPhoto library.

A why didn’t I think of that moment. Grommets that are USB hubs. Genius.

I stumbled upon get-itunes-2007.com in a adwords ad on Runometer. If you want to get iTunes— I suggest you get it from their source. From the FAQ:

Do I need Windows Media Player to play the tracks? Yes. We strongly recommend the use of Windows Media Player (Version 7 or higher) to playback the tracks that have been downloaded. There are other players available on the net that support the wma format but the version upgrades might not be as up to date as the Windows Media Player. However, you don’t need any software player on your computer to play/sample the tracks onsite. The site offers a embedded player which pops up as you click “play this track”.

I’d suspect the Apple legal hammer is going to come down hard on this site.

The Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field is weaking and I'm starting to realize the iPhone may not be the world rocking phone I'm hoping for. Of course, I'm going to get one... and I'm counting on that at the moment the iPhone is vaporware-- and when it finally ships it could be radically different feature wise than what Steve demoed on Tuesday. However, as it stands now, there's some important applications missing. The word is out that unlike RIM and Palm (whom have never worried about 3rd party apps "taking down the cell network"), Apple is not going to let outside developers make the iPhone a better device.

Here's a list glaring applications I think are missing and could be easily built by Apple or third party developers-- most of them I can't live without on my Treo650, and many have OSX counterparts that surely could be thinned down to run on the iPhone.

More ...

Apple has never let outside developers inside the iPod party (the Nike+ kit was developed by Apple). I hope the iPhone isn’t a closed platform. By the look of the iTunes syncing interface for the iPhone, I can’t see a way to upload new apps. The Treo developer community is what makes the Treo such a powerful smartphone. There’s an app out there that does just about anything- including Excel and Word. The ability to have iPhone apps would allow this phone to truly be revolutionary. Worst case, it needs Java, but I’m not seeing a Virtual Machine button on any of the iPhone menus. And as Marty pointed out (and Palm has known until recently) without Exchange Server support it’s not a business phone.

The fallout:

Comments from Treo users:

“Palm cannot continue to exclude wifi and use touch as thickness excuse”
“5 hours talk, 16 hours just listening to audio. Palm’s done.”
“Dinosaurs treo - tks apple, now that is a phone!!!”

“Apple will be the next Sony, not Sony, but like Sony”. Jobs said that years ago. They’re now much bigger than a computer company. they’re a lifestyle company. I need time to digest the iPhone information. It’s too much to process. It’s going to be a long wait until June.

There seems to be panic in the cult of mac that the iPhone is a Cingular exclusive.

I wouldn’t be so worried about the Cingular deal. The copyright office has ruled that cellphones can be unlocked without violating copyrights (Section 5). You can also rest assured, if the iPhone is on Cingular, it’s a standard GSM phone that will work on any GSM network around the globe.

I’d bet Apple is going to sell the phone the same way Palm sells Treos: Dirt cheap with a 2 year Cingular contract or full price unlocked at the Apple store to be used on the carrier of your choice. The exclusive will be that Cingular will be the first to offer it bundled with service. That’s all. you’ll still be able to buy it unlocked without service at full price and use it where you like: tmobile, vodafone, orange, just not sprint or verizon— they’re not GSM.

Not much longer to wait…

Deja vu. The cycle repeats yet again. Last year the rumors were an Apple TiVo and a Cellphone. This year it’s iTV and the iPhone.

iTV

I’m hoping that the iTV is a NAS from Apple and not a just a wireless content streaming device. I think it’s a must if Steve expects everyone to start buying HD content from the iTunes Store. Where are all those 3GB movies going to live? In your user account? A 802.11n wireless box with jumbo packet support and hardware RAID. Connect the RAID right to your TV. Stream from your Mac to it’s array of disks. It’s definitely not going to be a TiVo time-shifting live-television recording magic box… it needs CableCards to pull that off.

iPhone

I have a gut feeling this might be the big show letdown. If it does happen, I hope it’s a lot more than just a MP3 player/phone hybrid. I’m in need of a replacement for my Treo650 and aside from Mac syncing, email and a web browser on my phone is must. All the mock ups have been way off the mark— if you’re going to fake it, understand we’d be lucky to see a LCD in the thing in with more than 96dpi. You’re not going to have a functioning user interface with 8pt menu type on a tiny phone.

Airport Extreme +

All current Mac are shipping with 200MB/s 802.11n wireless cards. I think it’s a no brainer that the base stations are going to be upgraded to the faster speed.

iPod Accessories

I still don’t know why the iSpeaker wasn’t a Sonos type of device. Airport Express already does iTunes streaming over WIFI. The iPod HiFi should have had an Airport Express built in to allow multi-room wireless listening. All the speakers getting audio streamed to them from the iTV/NAS… Probably not going to happen.

That’s it.

We’re also guaranteed iLife ‘07 and speed bumps. Maybe new iPods. For sure a Universal Photoshop bake-off. And then there’s always the hope for one more thing… At EST tomorrow we’ll be blinded by the coming Apple eclipse.

Apple’s excellent Remote Access VNC manager is now Universal Binary. Added plus— custom lock screen images finally work as advertised! I’ve been waiting for that bug fix for ages. Makes managing a remote kiosk a lot easier.

Nike+iPod goes on sale today. I’m really amazed that no one seems shocked that the device is considered disposable. The receiver is powered by your iPod but the sensor contains a non-replaceable battery. For $30 I expect more than 40 days of use out of it. I understand that 40 days is huge— you’d have to be Terry Foxing it across the country for it to run out in 6 months. Still, you can’t purchase the sensor separately. When your sensor dies the whole kit is kaput.

I try to run a few miles every morning— and I wear a pedometer all day (averaging 12,000 steps/day). I’d purchase a Nike+iPod in a second if there was an attachment for other shoes. I have terrible overpronation and need far more ankle stabilization than Nikes have ever provided. I understand the Nike need for cross product tie-ins with shoes that have sensor holes in them— but Apple would have benefited by having a sensor pouch that could be woven into into the shoe laces of any running shoe.

I’m doing some spring cleaning, including consolidating bandwidth and network connections. This server does round robin load balancing. I changed the ISP on one of the internet connections, and the TTL delay getting the new IP into circulation has causes some hickups. The studio2f domain kicked over to it’s failover site. Everything should be smooth sailing now. Knock on wood.

ThinkSecret reports that the Aperture development team has been fired and the future of the application is in doubt. I find statements such as Aperture is “Apple’s most heavily criticized and bug-ridden software release in recent years” greatly exaggerated. I’d argue at launch, Shake by far the most belly-aching Apple app.

Version 1.1 is rock solid and fast on my original 2003 Dual G5. I have the middle of the road ATI 9800 Pro. 10Meg D200 RAW images render instantly without issue. I still believe Aperture is breakthrough application. Nothing exists within the photo management space that solves large image workflow huddles. In my experience, Aperture is feature complete and miles ahead of Lightroom.

I agree that Aperture has some fundamental structure issues— such as RAW updates and new camera support being provided by operating system updates and not application updates. That means new photo hardware that hits the market every month can only get supported by Aperture four to five times a year. That’s a terrible lead time to be a cutting edge application. Aperture will always be playing catchup to new hardware.

I’m still concerned that the soft proofing rendering intent seems to be either Relative Colorimetric or Absolute Colorimetric. Both of these rendering intents clip colors to pull the image into the destination profile. If Apple had provided Perceptual Colorimetric then the image’s out-of-gamut color would be compressed (instead of clipped) when displaying the proofed image. This is the “Posterization” effect many have complained about. I understand that Aperture is an example of a “Late Binding Workflow” where the largest gamut possible is maintained until the image is printed or exported. Aperture should allow the user to select their rendering intent (just like Photoshop and every other graphic design application).

These are easy fixes. Version 1.2 doable. Not worth throwing the .app out with the bath water. I truly believe Aperture is a revolutionary application. I’m using it for real work a couple of times a week. Don’t forget how far iPhoto, iMovie and iTunes have come from version 1.0. Aperture is only going to get better and better.

UPDATES

Some unverifiable “inside” info: I was on the team…, Bullshit, It Started At The Top

Threads: Slashdot, ArsTechnica, dpreview, Apple Discussions (12:00PM: threads regarding Aperture’s demise have been deleted by Apple moderators)

Aperture 1.1 is here with a heap of bug fixes and new features.

Apple has dropped the price on the retail package to $299— and amazingly is offering current owners that purchased it at $499 a $200 rebate.

I’m happy we didn’t get screwed for beta testing this software.

“Big” announcement from TiVo coming tomorrow. Lets hope this is better than Apple’s “Fun” announcement yesterday. And please please please be the Series 3 — available for order and shipping tomorrow afternoon. Woo-hoo!

This is the big announcement? An ugly speaker with a poorly integrated iPod dock? Apple has all of the components available to build a multi-room expandable Sonos type system.

I don’t understand why this thing doesn’t at least have an AirPort Express built into it to stream music wirelessly. Wouldn’t be simple to also allow iTunes streaming— and open the market up to include those without an iPod?!? What about multiple Hi-Fis in different rooms all playing the same thing from your iPod?

Home stereo. Reinvented. Not. This type of item is better left to the hundreds of companies already making this product.

This looks like a great weekend project. String a couple of Minis together with 400MB IP over Firewire and you’ve got yourself a tiny home NOC. Small on space and small on price. I’d be interested to see how many requests it can handle.

Even more fun when the Intel Minis arrive and you can cluster a heap of them with RedHat.

I’m amazed at this one… Buy Motion for $99 and upgrade to the $1300 Final Cut Studio Universal for only $199. A $1001 savings on the top of the line high definition studio software:

• Final Cut Pro 5
• Soundtrack Pro
• Motion 2
• DVD Studio Pro2

The upgrade provides you with the full suite in Universal format (Intel & PCC). I’m sure this loop hole (or remaining stock of Motion and Soundtrack) won’t last long.

Neil notes: the $99 motion is for the upgrade, and the full version is sold out everwhere, and thats 299.00. My local apple store had one left. FCP Studio for $500? Still an 800 dollar savings.

Stock of Soundtrack Pro and Motion 2 can still be found if you look hard enough.

MacOS X 10.4.4 arrived after Tuesday’s Keynote with no Nikon D200 support. Apple has also been deleting threads regarding RAW support from their support discussion boards (including a thread by yours truly).

It’s my feeling that tying RAW converters to the OS is a mistake. The D200 has been out for a month. Somehow it missed the 10.4.4 update and now will not be included until 10.4.5 in 3 months. That’s 4 months to support Nikon’s most anticipated new hardware.

With Adobe LightRoom (which supports the D200 now) RAW conversions are part of the application. With simple application updates new camera can be added. New cameras can only be added to Aperture every 10.4.x update rollout. During the 3 months of waiting for the D200 to be supported, new cameras from other manufacturers will be released— and they in turn will miss the 10.4.5 update.

Apple is always going to be playing catchup with new photo gear.

Also missing from 10.4.4 was Linear DNG file support. DNG seems like a no brainer as would allow users with cameras that are not supported by Aperture to convert their unsupported RAW to DNG and then import them into Aperture.

Update: Apple is also censoring posts that mention Aperture’s competitor, LightRoom (1, 2).

Not willing to lose market-share, Adobe released a free (as in beer) beta of their photo workflow management application Lightroom. It’s not quite as slick as Aperture— and much slower. The big hit for me is that it does open D200 RAWs natively.

I have directories full of D200 photos I’m waiting to import into Aperture as soon as it’s supported (heres to hoping for 10.4.4 tomorrow at MacWorld). Since adopting the Aperture workflow, it kills me to go back to the iview/nikon capture/photoshop dance. Lightroom and Aperture each have their own major weaknesses and strong points. It’s going to be a good showdown as both develop out of beta status.

A recent thread i’ve brought up on the Aperture Support Board:

• RAW conversion algorithms are part of the OS - and will change when needed by OSX system updates (not Aperture updates)
• RAW files are never touched or physically converted in Aperture. (The non-destructive editing bit)
• Image editing, color correction, sharpening are never applied to the original RAW. They’re essentially “hints” to be applied when the RAW gets rendered next time you view it.

That being the case, if I process hundreds of RAWs in Aperture— tweaking exposure, color balance, sharpness- what happens if the base RAW conversion is changed at a later date?

If Apple pushes down a 10.4.x update one day that renders Nikon D100 RAWs brighter, sharper and more color correct than it did when I began using Aperture— then won’t all of the work and image corrections I’ve done so far be totally out of wack? If the base RAW rendering is altered then the versions will be applying the wrong corrections.

Is non-destructive image editing is going to come back to bite me if the RAW conversions change dramatically to respond to all of the complaints about the current conversion quality?