Apple gathering press at Photokina

In their first Photokina showing, well, ever, Apple is for whatever reason gathering press to make some kind of presentation on September 25th -- the day before the show begins. Before your fanciful self starts dreaming up gorgeous new video iPods or revamped Apple QuickTakes, do keep in mind that something having to do with the floundering Aperture and their software push into professional image production is a little more likely than, say, an iPhone announcement. Don't worry, you'll get your fall / winter Apple lineup soon enough, says we.

[Thanks, Jay]

[Rick @ Aug 21st 2006 9:56PM]

G5 Powerbooks!

[Detroit Photographer @ Aug 21st 2006 10:01PM]

Aperture v2.0! Yeah!

John

[Joe Smith @ Aug 21st 2006 10:02PM]

The first Apple Digital Camera!

[Stephen P. @ Aug 21st 2006 10:05PM]

G5 Powerbooks, better late than never

[Austin @ Aug 21st 2006 10:16PM]

I think you might be forgetting about the QuickTake, Joe.

[Anthony @ Aug 21st 2006 10:22PM]

they need to come out with a new marketing product to take everyone's mind off of the current scandal.

[Paul Smith @ Aug 21st 2006 10:22PM]

Apple had digital cameras years ago - if I recall they were like 640 * 480 resolution.

[Hammo @ Aug 21st 2006 10:56PM]

Apple will demonstrate a new concept they've been working on called a 'picture'. There's rumour that Redmond are incorporating it into Vista soon, and that Apple will accuse them of stealing the new idea.

[Choi Gee Sung @ Aug 21st 2006 11:20PM]

First, Apple has already had two digital cameras - one for Mac and one for, believe it or not, Windows. And they actually worked well. Lot's of real estate agents used them with great success.

Apple will introduce a new app called Reflecture. It is something between Photoshop and Illustrator and initially targeted for amateur and pro-user photographers. It will be a bit lame at first - as not to piss off Adobe too much.

It's main feature is that it is very easy to learn - unlike Photoshop. And it will have unlimited undos - even for saved files.

Actually almost all photoshop functions are built into OS X's core so the program is light, fast, and was easy to program. Most effort was put into the interface.

Apple has been in talks with a digital camera maker about OEMing an Apple design. Again, the target is sophisticated amateurs and pro-users.

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[keith waddington @ Aug 21st 2006 11:48PM]

Hammo your post was so funny. What a sharp and creative sense of humour you have. Keep up the good work!

The first digital cameras for the consumer-level market that worked with a home computer via a serial cable were the Apple QuickTake 100 camera (February 17 , 1994).

I know lot's of people love to hate Apple, but I have a serious question: when did Microsoft ever do anything first? End of OS wars statement. (And please consider this a rhetorical question.)

And engadgets: "the floundering Aperture" comes from what source? You see I actually DO photography so I actually KNOW something about it and I have never seen evidence that it is "floundering." In fact Adobe released beta software "Lightroom" as a defensive measure which shows that they, at least, know that Aperture is a very strong contender.

This short thread is already typical of Engadgets: the initial report throws in a good dose of sarcasm (and inaccurate statements) to show how cool and blasé the writer is. A thread ensues mostly containing comments by people who have no clue about the actual subject.

Still, on a slow day, I guess it passes for some kind of entertainment.

peace

waddo
http://www.waddo.net/

[Wenger @ Aug 22nd 2006 1:19AM]

Waddington read this article for a little bit of info about the aperature comments: http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0604aperture.html

[J S @ Aug 22nd 2006 2:53AM]

Joe, an Apple camera? I've been waiting for camcorder makers to actually make the HDD part removable/docked or external (wireless/wired) so it can be swapped out or used with an ipod. Or does the JVC one already allow this?

Hmm .. maybe their camera will be in an iPod like form factor. Hard drive based .. instead of the click wheel, it'll have a lens! Maybe it'll be High Dynamic Range and the camera software have Expose tiles type thing on the LCD that lets you visually select the shots' lighting levels / balance of your choice.

Judging from Timewarp and Expose, Apple seems to like their products to show multiple previews of making a choice within them .. make choosing more intuitive. I suppose the problem is granularity but choices can be manually fine tuned.

[Special_K @ Aug 22nd 2006 3:04AM]

I would hardly describe Aperture as 'floundering'. As our good friends over at O'Reily have an interesting article about the paradigm shift that Apple's attempting here- moving from being a Photoshop Guru first and a photographer second, to a photographer first and a photographer second as well. I use Aperture, and having never used Camera RAW or any other Adobe program for photo editing and management, I must say that it is so intuitive and powerful, and so photography-specific, that I can't ever picture using Photoshop for photoediting (I use it for graphic design.) I hope Apple keeps at 'er, and really tries to push Aperture forward. If it becomes accepted, I can see it really freeing photogs from the 'one-size-fits-all' approach that Photoshop pushes. In the end, it's more cost-effective, time-efficient, and (noun)-(adjective) to use Aperture, and photogs will see the light if Apple pushes it hard enough. (Fingers crossed for Aperture 2.0,

[conrad @ Aug 22nd 2006 3:54AM]

Don't think there will be Aperture 2, rather a 1.2 update.

No, I think first it will be new (long overdue) Cinema Displays. Second, I hope so, a welcome Photoshop/illustrator kinda killer app.

[Morty Salt @ Aug 22nd 2006 4:13AM]

I'm hoping this is the often speculated consumer HD Quicktake Digital Camcorder with HiDef and HD to compete with Canon and Sony. Otherwise I'm looking at an acquisition of Either Eastman Kodak or Leica.

[Jeff @ Aug 22nd 2006 7:51AM]

"a welcome Photoshop/illustrator kinda killer app."

I'm not sure anyone who says this really understands the differences between these two apps. It's really no different than saying "a Word/Excel kinda killer app." They are two totally different types of applications. You could probably combine a few of their functions, in the same way you can put a table in Word or type text into Excel, but their core purposes are just completely different. Photoshop is a raster application, Illustrator is a vector application. They work with completely different types of data and they do completely different things with that data. Just because both data sets can be represented visually doesn't mean they are at all similar.

[dunx @ Aug 22nd 2006 9:23AM]

@Jeff.
Photoshop/Illustrator division into Raster and Vector smells like 90-s.
I, for one, hope for a simplistic yet powerful node based vector/raster graphics app with PDF output.

[Rok @ Aug 22nd 2006 9:36AM]

"I'm not sure anyone who says this really understands the differences between these two apps."

sorry, jeff, but anyone who says THIS hasn't been paying attention the past three revisions to the two apps. as you implied, AT THEIR CORE, yes, they are different, but ever since the OS X transition (and adobe's hardcore bundling of apps together), both apps have been yanking features from the other so that i could almost do anything in EITHER app (and the only reason i stop at "almost" is that they haven't totally merged the two feature wise yet, so for, say, a bezier tool that doesn't act like it's on crack, i have to switch to illustrator). it's fun to throw is the "it's much more complicated than that"-style comment, and sound like you know what you're talking about, but in the end, from a user's standpoint, the adobe apps have been sliding together into a mishmash of palettes and cross-purposes for a while now.

[Mike Evangelist @ Aug 22nd 2006 10:03AM]

waddo -

Aperture was half-baked when it was released and is still a long ways from delivering on what Apple promised. There is abundant evidence all over the web of its ongoing struggle, but even a quick read of Apple's own support forums tells the story.

[spil @ Aug 22nd 2006 10:21AM]

Conrad, I doubt there will be new displays as they just came out with slightly different displays at WWDC. I think the only differences between them were slightly better brightness and contrast ratios and a cheaper price all around.

Although it would be cool to have an Apple display with an iSight built in, and an IR reciever (for front Row), I doubt it will happen for the reasons stated above, and they would probably stop selling the iSight as a standalone webcam, which would be bad for people without Apple diplays (believe it or not, they exist); but it would seem redundant to sell iSights if they were built into every one of Apple's displays.

I think it would be cool if Apple came out with a digital camera line with matching branding to the rest of Apple's products (for the obsessive compulsive in all of us): Cam (small, white/black plastic "designer" camera, similar to the sony cyber shots) and Cam Pro (brushed aluminum, uses attachable zoom and flash, any standards fit, but Apple boosts there stylish [read: more expensive] flash and zoom attatchments and maybe a video functionality). Of course these would have to be windows compadible, so they would bundle a windows version of iPhoto.

[keith waddington @ Aug 22nd 2006 10:25AM]

Mike Evangelist

I know that. My point was with the pointless negativity of the original article which tossed in the "floundering" comment. This is still a version one app. Everyone who compares it with Lightroom says there is no comparison. So this app is far from floundering and will, of course, like all version 1 apps, improve with time. People are even buying new towers just to run this software.

If you read this site from time to time you will notice the tiresome supercilious style all the writers adopt to demonstrate how cool and smart they are. So again my post was more about that than the actual Aperture app.

Cheers

http://www.waddo.net/

[galactus @ Aug 22nd 2006 10:46AM]

Aperture is a fine application, particularly for a version 1. I use it every day. The thinksecret article was exaggerated - don't forget it is a rumor site.

[ben @ Aug 22nd 2006 12:04PM]

I like that Ryan didn't jump the gun and say something to the tune of "maybe we will get the super ipod video." More realistic, thank you for that.

[PreGHz @ Aug 22nd 2006 12:17PM]

How about a high end camcorder (like Canon's XL2 or newer equivallant) that uses your iPod as storage? I have a 60GBvideo That's small enough to slip into an enclosure of some type on a HD camcorder.

It could be marketed toward the prosumer.

I know that would be great bang for my buck, as I'll have a large storage medium that I can turn around and use as an mp3 player.

Using the iPod as a storage device for a high end camcorder? Discuss.

[Knit Piquor @ Sep 3rd 2006 12:57PM]

From ~/Applications/Dictionary ... and the notes accompanying the definition of the word "founder" ...

"It is easy to confuse the words founder and flounder, not only because they sound similar but also because the contexts in which they are used overlap. Founder means, in its general and extended use, ‘fail or come to nothing, sink out of sight’ (the scheme foundered because of lack of organizational backing). Flounder, on the other hand, means ‘struggle, move clumsily, be in a state of confusion’ (new recruits floundering about in their first week)."

So ... did you mean to say "founder," or are you sticking with "flounder?"