Apple released some nice speed bumps on both the MacBook and MacBook Pro lines. Can't remember the last time both versions of the laptops got updates on the same day.
MacBook Pro: (all have SuperDrive with the spiffy new multi-touch pad)
2.4Ghz, 2GB RAM, 200GB HD $1999
2.5Ghz 15", 2GB RAM, 250GB HD $2499
2.5Ghz 17", 2GB RAM, 250GB HD $2799
Nice update all around, but if you have a one year old or less MacBook Pro, don't really see any reason to run out and purchase a new one. But if you're still on a PowerBook G4 or older laptop, certainly some nice new machines out there.
These updates really separate the MacBook Air from the rest of the machines even more and really seem to position that machine as a very very "niche market overpriced, underpowered machine." All 6 of the other laptops are much much better values than the Air and much better suited to any and all tasks.
MacBook Air
1.6Ghz, 2GB RAM, 80GB HD, No CD/DVD Drive $1799
1.8Ghz, 2GB RAM, 64GB SS HD, No CD/DVD Drive: $3098
The top of the line MacBook Air has less power, smaller hard drive, no CD/DVD drive than the bottom of the line MacBook, yet costs $2,000 more. Only Apple fanatics could look at that math and say "yeah, I can see that, it makes sense."
If you want a light laptop, get a MacBook. If you want more power to run something like the Final Cut Studio suite, get the MacBook Pro. Both are money much better spent than the Air.
If you really need a "super light" laptop, pick up the iPhone, now available in a 16GB flavor. I will actually be picking up the phone as I want to have a much lighter "laptop" for some extensive travel coming up. I like the idea of the iPhone much more than getting yet another 13" laptop.
Ok, late news flash as this information is actually from MacWorld (what two months ago now?!?) but the folks at ATTO were able to crank up two MaxxDigital EVO HD SAS/SATA units to 1200MB/s. 1200!!! Good Golly Miss Molly that's some serious horsepower.
Ok, ok, ok, how did they pull this off since you can't connect two systems to the same card? Easy, two ATTO R-380 SAS/SATA cards in a Mac pro. Then connect a MaxxDigital EVO HD unit to each card. Stripe both EVO HD units as one large storage array and presto, 1200MB/s.
Hmmmmm, how many streams of video would THAT be? You could do the Brady Bunch Open times 5 at least I suppose. Would be fun to test that out with Uncompressed HD and see if there's any way to do multiple streams of HD in realtime with filters.
Here's a photo only a mama could love. A bunch of tech geeks standing next to the unit with the speed tests displayed on the screen.
Yet another reason I love these guys. They're products are really fast, they work and you get this incredibly fine looking support staff to help you out. Ok, maybe not fine looking.... sorta geeky looking support staff...... maybe in a creepy sort of way......... but they know their stuff......so just pretend you don't know what they look like.........maybe I should just shut up now.
Hello Apple Engineers! Word is Toshiba is dropping HD-DVD. BluRay is the winner by a knockout!
So how about including BluRay authoring support in DVD Studio Pro now? I mean hasn't Apple been on the BluRay side of things since the format was announced? Doesn't Compressor already create files for both HD-DVD and BluRay? Don't BluRay burners for the Mac already exist?
Why am I asking so many questions?
For some reason, despite Compressor supporting BluRay and HD-DVD, despite BluRay burners being available for the Mac, despite Apple supporting the BluRay format (how I'm not sure), we can't author BluRay using Apple products.
So we own Adobe Encore CS3, which of course required us to purchase Adobe Premeire in the process. We own the FastMac internal BluRay burner (excellent) and even own a Panasonic Dual Burner Blu-Ray Replicator (excellent). We've authored 4 BluRay titles to date and will probably author 8 to 20 more before the end of 2008. At some point, I would much rather prefer to work across the Apple Studio Suite rather than having to go from FCP to Compressor to Encore to Toast to the FastMac burner.
So hello Apple Engineers! BluRay Authoring! Please!
So after dropping NAB once then reappearing, Apple has decided to join Avid and skip the NAB show floor altogether. This is an incredibly disappointing decision for a company that supposedly supports over 800,000+ Final Cut Pro users and countless other pro-apps users.
NAB and IBC are the two shows each year where professionals, such as myself, can get the opportunity to see and try out the equipment and software we're all going to purchase for the coming year. People like myself spend thousands of dollars on these purchases and I have always found NAB to be particularly useful in making those purchasing decisions. No matter how much I read up on all the new releases from companies, there's nothing like actually seeing the product in action, even if it's a prototype.
Now apparently Apple feels they don't need to make the effort to present their products to the very professionals who are supposed to line up and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe millions, on their products over the next year. This is very disappointing and makes me wonder about Apple's commitment to the professional application market.
The consumer market is doing quite well with the iPod, iPhone and the incredible lineup of iMac and notebook computers (MacBook Air excluded). All of Apple's latest updates and efforts seem targeted more towards this market than the professional market.
Witness the recent 7.4 update to Quicktime that caused incredible havoc to many users of Final Cut Pro and Motion, two flagship pro-app products from Apple. Then Apple rushes out some sort of ProKit update yesterday but doesn't explain what it is supposed to fix, just that all users of Final Cut Pro should install this.
Maybe it's just me, but it seems more and more that software, OS and Quicktime updates are geared more towards iTunes, AppleTV and consumer apps than the Pro Apps.More often than not, these updates cause harm to the pro-apps. Considering I have my entire financial future tied to the un-failing performance of these pro-apps, this is a bit of a concern.
I'm not a consumer who can let a computer crash if an update messes up my quicktime player. I'm not a consumer who can let a computer get unstable if the latest OS update does something to my iTunes player. I'm not a consumer who cares a whit about the thinnest and most overpriced laptop on the planet.
I'm a video and film professional who requires stability and support at all times in order to earn a living. A computer crash can cost me thousands of dollars and lost clients. An unstable system can shut down my facilities for days at a time.
I fully expect companies like Avid and Apple to have a presence at the largest gathering of video and film professionals in the world. Apparently both feel it's not necessary for them any longer. Oh Avid says they will be at the show, but I guess you'll have to know the secret handshake or the code word to locate someone. I'm not sure Apple will have any presence outside of the SuperMeet.
So where does that leave us? Adobe, Autodesk, and Media 100/Boris FX are the three names that I recognize on the exhibit floor list and I am definitely going to check out all of them. They are taking the time and money to show up and I feel it's only right to see what they have to offer. I've always spent so much time at the Apple booth each year, I guess this will give me the opportunity to see what I've been missing.
Media 100 was my tool of choice until 2001 when I switched to FCP and I know they have lost a lot of market share, but it's time to re-visit them. Adobe has come back strong with Premiere on the Mac and from what I gather, it's essentially like FCP only with an incredibly tight integration between the entire Adobe pro line-up. Adobe has a long history with professional apps and support so I will definitely spend some quality time with those folks to really see Premiere again. Autodesk is one company I've never worked with, but they usually have a pretty cool booth, so it'll be fun to see what they have to offer.
As someone who was only weeks away from upgrading two of our workstations to brand new Octo Core Macs, this announcement gives me reason to pause on that decision. I want to make sure I still have solid commitment from Apple to support the Pro-Users out there as much as they want to support the consumers.
I guess NAB just isn't that important to the companies anymore. That's a shame because it's pretty important to this professional earning a living using their equipment.
I've found out that our very own Aharon Rabinowitz is now doing occassional Technology reports for NPR! How exciting is that?! He's done one report and hopefully this will lead to many more. As someone who has gained a LOT of knowledge from this guy with all his After Effects tutorials and training, I want to congratulate him on this latest achievement. Hopefully this is just the first of many reports we can expect to hear from Aharon.
Going out on a limb here, but figured I'd take a stab at predicting today's game. I'm a Big Blue fan all my life so it's hard to go against my beloved Giants. They played a very tough game that last week of the seaon and while the Patriots are going to score a lot of points, I think it's the Giants by a field goal.
Amazon has put together a nice links page to update your HD-DVD and BluRay players. If you don't already know, many machines require firmware updates to be able to play the latest discs, particularly the recordable discs, such as BluRay BD-R discs.
If your machine won't play that latest HD disc, check to see if there's an update for your machine.
Peter Wiggins has released his newest creation for Final Cut Pro called SupaWipe! Ok, we've all had to create sliding graphics in order to create custom wipes. You know, you do an edge wipe underneath a graphic that you slide over the transition to make it appear as if the graphic is actually doing the wipe.
Well, this is what SupaWipe does all as one transition! Peter supplies you with a bunch of preset graphics like an airplane and construction tape, but the really really cool thing is, you can use your own graphics. Anything you've created and it will create the transition using that graphic.
This is incredibly cool and what a timesaver! Especially when you want to tweak the transition time, no more sliding the graphic around to make sure the wipe stays underneath. Now the graphic and the wipe are married together and the transition is always timed perfectly.
Thank you Peter! If you haven't downloaded the FREE 15 day trial, what in the world are you waiting for?!
http://www.supawipe.com/
Note this ONLY works in FCP 6.0.2!! So be sure to check your version before downloading.
So you want to work more efficiently in Final Cut Pro? Well I have just the answer for you, Tabs! Yeah, those things you see in the corner of every window. They can make your life so much easier if you would only use them. Here, let me show you how in my newest tutorial!
For those of you who followed my blog about the issues with the Primera Bravo II DVD Replicator printer, you know that I purchased a DiscMakers Medley unit to replace it.
http://blogs.creativecow.net/node/330
Well, while DiscMakers claimed the print quality of this unit would be equal to the Bravo II, in reality it isn't. This is disappointing because they both feature the same printing unit from Lexmark. The difference appears to be in the Bravo II drivers as there are many more options available to the user to achieve incredibly sharp text and good solid colors. What was printed as a solid color on the Bravo II is a mottled mess on the Medley as it is just not capable of printing a very tight dot pattern, even at the 4800dpi print setting. And this is using the exact same 300dpi TIF image and exact same DVD stock that was originally printed on the Bravo II so we're comparing apples to apples here.
On the upside, the Medley does reproduce the correct colors on the disc from the original file with minimal tweaking. That was a major issue with the Bravo II as we would have to throw the colors and shading out of whack in order to get acceptable color results on the Bravo II.
As a straight replicator, the Medley performs as expected, absolutely no issues there. But if you are looking for a very high print quality, this definitely would not be your unit. Print quality is decent, but not something you would want to present to demanding clients.
Professional Video Editor, Producer, Director since 1990.
Credits include multiple Emmys, Tellys, Aurora and CableAce Awards.
Owner / Operator of Biscardi Creative Media, a full service video and film production company with about 65% of our work in HDTV. The show you know us best for is "Good Eats" on the Food Network. I developed the HD Post workflow and we also create all the animations for the series.
Favorite pastime is cooking with pizza on the grill one of my specialties. Each Christmas Eve we serve the Feast of the Seven Fishes, a traditional Italian seafood meal with approx. 30 items on the menu.
If I wasn't in video production I would either own a restaurant or a movie theater.
