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Aperture updated to 3.2.3, enables Photo Stream deleting
Apple's pro-level photo editing application for the Mac, Aperture, has been updated to version 3.2.3. Aside from the usual fixes addressing "performance and stability," this update brings Aperture up to parity with iPhoto in allowing users to delete photos from Photo Stream, the iCloud service that allows wireless syncing of photos across all enabled devices. Oddly, this update has come out nearly a week after similar updates to Aperture's "little brother" iPhoto were issued, but Apple's support site claims the update actually went live March 6, the day before Apple's big iPad event and the launch of the iPhoto update. I know for a fact that Aperture 3.2.3 didn't show up in my Mac's Software Update until a few hours ago as of this writing, and MacUpdate's information on the Aperture update confirms it didn't go live until March 14 despite what Apple's support site says. The fact that this update came out almost a week after a similar iPhoto update, plus the incorrect date on Apple's support site, makes me wonder if someone forgot to throw the switch on the Aperture update on March 7. Whatever the case may be, Aperture 3.2.3 is available now as a 636 MB update. Now if you'll excuse me, I have about 200 iPhone screenshots to clear out of my Photo Stream...
Sonnetar 25mm f/1.1 lens coming with Micro Four Thirds mount
Just what the optician ordered: a prototype Micro Four Thirds 25mm lens that will put just 1.1 f-stops between you and a beautiful photograph. It's the work of specialist fast-glass maker Sadoyasu Miyazaki, who manufactures under the Sonnetar brand and is well know for his hand-assembled primes. There's no word on price or release date yet but the same lens with a Pentax Q mount can be had on eBay right now for $650 including shipping, so this MFT lens should be in the same range. Don some shades and then click the KTF Turbo link below for sample images (and look for "MS Optical R&D" in the top-right.)
Lensbaby Edge 80 Optic brings a slice of tilt-shift to your life (sample photos)
C'mon, admit it -- if you won one of many lotteries, you'd be purchasing a legitimate tilt-shift lens right after picking up a new Ferrari and buying a chocolate factory. Given that said scenario is highly unlikely to pan out, Lensbaby is stepping in to make the letdown a bit easier to stomach. The Edge 80 Optic is the latest in the outfit's growing Optic Swap system, which is compatible with the Composer Pro, Composer, Muse, Scout and Control Freak, and it's capable of transforming those bodies into "a tilt lens that delivers a slice of sharp focus through an image that falls off to a soft blur." There's a 12-blade adjustable aperture (f/2.8 through f/22), and when not shifted, it's fully capable of taking flat (read: standard) photographs. As the name implies, there's an 80mm focal length, but macro lovers should be aware that you'll need at least 17-inches to focus on your subject(s).We've been toying with one on our D3S over the past few days, and it certainly does what it says; moreover, it's far easier to justify at just $300. (For those unaware, dedicated T-S lenses can easily top $1,500.) And if you're already invested in the Optic Swap system, it makes even more sense. Granted, it takes some work to compose a shot. You'll need to rely on manual mode, and you'll need to tweak your ISO to match your desired aperture and available light. Leaving the ISO too high while using f/2.8 in broad daylight will result in white captures, while not boosting the ISO enough after dark will leave your shot murdered out. Once you've got your settings right, though, the lens couldn't be easier to operate, and the shift + lock mechanism is as smooth as butter. We threw together a gallery of our favorites taken recently in Hawaii and French Polynesia, so dive in below to see if this piece of kit is deserving of your attention.
Considering Aperture for iOS
Gabe Glick over at Macstories has a proposal: Aperture for iOS. On the surface, it sounds like a pretty silly idea -- Apple's high end camera app is really made for a desktop environment, and with the hassle required to get high quality photos onto iOS devices, there really isn't a point bringing Aperture over to a platform like the iPad. But Glick, though he agrees with the naysayers to a certain extent, is willing to take the opposite position. He says that he thinks Aperture is coming to the iPad with the announcement (expected sometime this year) of the iPad 3. So we'll let him make his case. He says the Retina Display is a big benefit, for photographers who really want to see their pictures close up and in full color. Of course, the iPad 2 doesn't have a Retina Display, but if the iPad 3 gets the same kind of high definition screen that the iPhone 4 already has, Aperture would be more likely. iCloud's photo stream would make it easy to get pictures on the mobile device, a better A6 processor would make editing RAW photos and other high end resolutions easier as well, and finally, Glick says that a "professional workhorse" app like Aperture shouldn't be automatically dismissed from the iPad. Most people would have said the same thing about iMovie and GarageBand on the iPad, and both of those have done quite well. When you put it like that, well, sure. Obviously this is all just speculation -- we won't know that Apple is releasing an app like this until it's actually announced on stage. But I will say as well that I've been trying to make noise lately for a sort of "iCamera" -- a more professional DSLR camera made and produced by Apple -- and I've been answered most of the time with the suggestion that Apple is betting on the cameras in its mobile devices rather than a separate dedicated device. If that is true, then sure, why wouldn't we want to see better official tools to deal with photos than the current Camera app offers?
Corel introduces AfterShot Pro for $99 on Linux, Mac and Windows
The crew in Ottawa is now taking square aim at Aperture, Lightroom and other similarly situated products with its new product called AfterShot Pro. Available for Linux, Macintosh and Windows, the software retails for $99 and promises to deliver a complete workflow for RAW files, including file management, batch processing and non-destructive editing capabilities. AfterShot Pro is said to be fully multithreaded and optimized for multiple cores and CPUs. A trial is available for download from the company's website, while physical copies will begin shipping by month's end. It'll certainly be an uphill battle for the scrappy competitor up north, but with a product portfolio heavily leveraged in the graphics industry, it certainly seems time that Corel jumped into the fray.
Engadget Primed: What is aperture, and how does it affect my photos?
Primed goes in-depth on the technobabble you hear on Engadget every day -- we dig deep into each topic's history and how it benefits our lives. You can follow the series here. Looking to suggest a piece of technology for us to break down? Drop us a line at primed *at* engadget *dawt* com. Last week I wrote a piece for Engadget Primed on image sensors -- arguably the most critical component of any digital camera, having a direct influence on the quality of each and every photo. In a completely different way, another component that controls and changes the look of your photographs is the aperture. To create amazing photos with impact takes much more than the will to capture them -- sadly we can't all be like Ashton Kutcher, snapping away at well-lit parties overrun with models. It's a multifaceted process; to have the desire to work for a shot, to make the effort to put yourself into position, and to know how to utilize the equipment you have in the best way possible. None of these skills are easy to master, yet just like a painter who knows how to use their brush, mastering the photographic tool that is your camera yields more opportunities to plaster that Google+ page with shots you're proud of. In this Primed installment, we'll define the mechanism, explain the concepts and share ways to better convey messages in our two-dimensional stills -- just by adjusting the aperture. Ready to dive in? It's all after the break.
Best of 2011 Nominations: Mac photo / video apps
During December and January, The Unofficial Apple Weblog is soliciting your nominations and votes for the best products for Mac, iPhone/iPod touch, and iPad. We'll start with nominations in a category, and then tally your votes for the top-nominated products a few days later. The winner in each category receives the highly-coveted title of TUAW Best of 2011. Today's category for Best of 2011 nominations is Mac photo and video apps. Your Mac can manage thousands of photos and help you to create video masterpieces, so this is a crowded category. You might be a fan of Apple's iPhoto (US$14.99) or Aperture ($79.99) apps. Maybe you love to create HDR images with HDR Darkroom (on sale for $7.99) or apply stunning effects with FX Photo Studio ($9.99). The ease of use of Flare ($19.99) might be more your cup of coffee. Video fans might be excited about Apple's iMovie '11 ($14.99) or Final Cut Pro X ($299.99). Perhaps you're developing screencasts and use either ScreenFlow ($99.99) or Camtasia 2 ($99.99) in your work. Whatever your favorite Mac photo or video app is, we want to hear about it. Leave your nomination in the comments below. This is the last Mac-specific category for the 2011 awards -- tomorrow we'll begin gathering nominations for iPhone apps and accessories. Nominations close at 11:59 PM ET on December 15, 2011.
Aperture updated to 3.2.2, addresses Photo Stream issue
Apple has released a software update for its professional photography program, Aperture. According to Apple, Aperture 3.2.2 "resolves an issue that could prevent auto-imported Photo Stream images from being displayed in the library after your Photo Stream hits 1,000 images." If you have missing items in your Photo Stream, here are Apple's recommended steps for recovering them: To recover missing images: Update to Aperture 3.2.2. After the update is complete, open Aperture and hold down the Command and Option keys until the Library First-Aid window appears. Choose the Repair Database option and click the Repair button. When Aperture reopens after the repair has completed, the missing images will be visible again. Aperture 3.2.2 is 551 MB in size -- an oddly outsized update for such a seemingly minor fix. It's available through Software Update, via the Mac App Store if you purchased Aperture there, or as a standalone download from Apple's support site (not yet live as of this writing).
Lomography LomoKino Super 35 Movie Maker hands-on (video)
"Unique and precious pieces of movie art." That's what Lomography is promising to deliver with the LomoKino Super 35 Movie Maker -- the company's very first movie camera. Announced earlier this month, the LomoKino is hardly a technological game changer. In fact, it's anything but. Much like every other camera to come off of Lomography's assembly line, the Movie Maker is entirely analog. Users must spool their own 35mm film and manually operate the device's crank to capture images at a frame rate of three to five frames per second, with a shutter speed of 1/100 second. From there, you can either send the film off to get developed and digitally formatted, or cut it yourself and scan it into your movie editing software of choice. You won't find any sound, many frills, or, for that matter, a ton of convenience, but that's also the idea -- to return filmmakers to the roots of early silent cinema, with a pared down device that reignites some of the photographic mystery lost with the dawn of the digital age. For those too young to remember the analog era, just think of it as a physical manifestation of Instagram, minus the "insta" part. And the results can be pretty stunning, as many in the Lomography community have already demonstrated with collections of hauntingly silent, washed out shorts. With our curiosity piqued, we decided to stop by Lomography's boutique in Paris to learn more about the LomoKino. Check out our hands-on gallery below, and click past the break for our initial impressions. %Gallery-139288%
Deep dive: Aperture and Photo Stream, how do they work?
I'm a bit of a shutterbug, so Photo Stream is something I was really interested in when it was announced as part of iOS 5's feature set way back in June. Frictionless, automated sending of photos from my phone to my computer? Sign me up! Of course, as is too often the case with Apple, the nitty gritty of how this would work wasn't explained in any detail -- particularly for Aperture, which often takes a back seat to iPhoto when Apple is showing off its apps. Hopefully, this article will answer all your questions about how these two products interact. If not, please leave a comment pointing out what I've overlooked. Before we start, some basic housekeeping. Photo Stream isn't going to appear in your Aperture at all if you don't first upgrade to v3.2. You'll also need OS X 10.7.2 or later, and iOS 5 on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. You'll also need to go to the iCloud pane in your System Preferences and make sure that "Photo Stream" is ticked (thanks to commenter 'kootenayredneck' for the reminder). If you've done all that, you're all set. Accessing Photo Stream within Aperture This is Photo Stream's marquee feature: snap a photo with your iOS device and have it show up on your Mac. It's easy to do, though it comes with one small wrinkle. In Aperture, go into Preferences | Photo Stream and tick the appropriate boxes. The caveat is that you can only have Photo Stream active for iPhoto or Aperture, not both at once. Turning it on in one app turns it off in the other. With that setting in place, a Photo Stream entry should appear in your Aperture Library list. Clicking on this will show you all the photos in your Photo Stream, which you can look through. You can't make any edits, however, until you import them into your library: Clicking "import photo" brings the photo into your library and allows you to do all the usual range of Aperture adjustments to it. Note that the Photo Stream implementation on your iOS devices will only be active when they are connected to a Wi-Fi network. If you only have cellular 3G access, no photos will be transferred in either direction. However, don't forget that tethering creates a Wifi network. In a pinch, you could use an iPhone to create a tethered network and connect a second iOS device to it. That would give the second device full Photo Stream access. Note also that "Automatic Import" means Aperture is constantly copying Photo Stream pictures to your Aperture library. It creates a series of Projects, one per month. As long as you start Aperture at least once per month and once per 1000 photos, this guarantees you can never lose a photo placed in Photo Stream. Non-destructive editing Here's a neat trick that isn't immediately obvious. If you take a photo on the iPhone and use the new built-in photo editing features of iOS 5, when you bring the photo over to Aperture the edits are preserved as edits, in the usual Aperture master-and-version-file manner. So you can choose to change them as you please, perhaps replacing iOS's rather crude "enhance" wizard with Aperture's fine-grained adjustments. I would very much like to see this functionality available to third-party devs. It'd be great if the likes of Instagram and Camera+ were able to save clean copies of their filtered output without cluttering up your camera roll with duplicate versions. Of course, as those filters aren't directly comparable to Aperture's, that would only be possible via a single image file that is basically just two JPGs stuck together -- whereas I imagine the native Photos app is doing something more sophisticated. Putting photos into Photo Stream from within Aperture By default, when the third checkbox in my first screen grab above is ticked, all new photos imported into Aperture are automatically added to the Photo Stream by default. More on this "feature" in a second. If you untick that box, you can still manually choose to add specific versions by dragging and dropping them within Aperture to the Photo Stream entry in the navigation tree. However, before you go adding files en masse, remember that by default everything in the Photo Stream is going to be downloaded to all your iOS devices; that there's no way to delete images from Photo Stream except for a full purge; and that Photo Stream only deletes images when it's holding more than 1000 pictures or after 30 days. This can add to create quite a headache. It means that if you pull 400 1.5 MB JPG shots into Aperture, it's going to immediately upload 6 GB 600 MB of data to iCloud. If you're not on fast, unmetered Internet, that could be at best inconvenient (as it'll choke your Internet connection up for a prolonged period) and at worst expensive (if you go over your ISP's bandwidth cap). It's then going to download all of those photos, albeit at an "optimised resolution" to each of your iOS devices, exacerbating the problem. Testing on my iPhone 4 and iPad showed that Photo Stream optimised images are around 500 KB each. Continuing our example, then, if you have an iPhone and an iPad that's a further 4 GB 200 MB download for 10 GB 800MB of bandwidth used overall. (Thanks to commenter 'IhatePundits' for catching the mistakes in my mathematics.) This can also lead to problems with your iOS devices running out of disk space, which then has knock on effects that can start deleting app data you wanted. Overall, it's probably a good idea to leave "automatically upload imports to Photo Stream" to the iPhoto-using casual shooters. I'd go so far as to question Apple's decision to enable this feature by default in Aperture. RAW files and Photo Stream The problems with Photo Stream and bandwidth start to look much worse when you examine how it handles RAW files. According to the Aperture documentation, how RAW interacts with Photo Stream isn't immediately obvious -- but it is very important that you understand it. If you send a RAW file from Aperture to Photo Stream -- either automatically via the "import all" checkbox, or manually -- and if that RAW file has no edits applied, then it's the full-sized original RAW that ends up in Photo Stream. On the other hand, if it has had edits applied then Photo Stream ends up holding a JPG copy instead. This surprising handling also applies to RAW files imported to the iPad via the Camera Connection Kit. This is a common workflow for me when I am travelling, as I typically do not bring a laptop. Several times a day, I import all the images from my cameras into my iPad, partly for proofing but also partly for backup purposes. It's not unusual for me to shoot 15-20 GB of photos on a week long vacation (I'm very much a statistical photographer). With Photo Stream enabled, this means I'll be choking up the hotel's Internet connection for hours on end as well as making my iPad run slowly as it manages the upload process in a background task I cannot control or suspend. In my experience, hotel Wi-Fi isn't either the fastest or most reliable, so this could become quite hard to manage. Even at home, if you're on metered Internet, you could easily (and accidentally) chew through multiple gigabytes of your bandwidth allocation. Note, however, that as Apple states here, RAW files (like full resolution JPGs) are never delivered to iOS devices. If you put a RAW file onto the iPad or if you tell Aperture to add one to Photo Stream, it's an around-500-KB optimised JPG that ends up synced onto the other iOS devices. Most irritating of all is it is that unlike in Aperture, the Photo Stream option for iOS doesn't have a "download all photos but do not automatically upload new ones" option. It's on/off only. So I have to micro-manage the setting depending on whether I'm using my iPad to import photos from my camera en masse (in which case I want it disabled) or work with iPhone snapshots (when it has to be enabled). There's also a subtle interaction with the "automatic import" setting in Aperture. Files brought in like this are managed copies, i.e. with the master file living inside the Aperture library. If (like me) you maintain your Aperture library file on a small laptop drive and use external reference masters held on a network share or a larger external drive, then allowing Aperture to import a lot of RAWs through Photo Stream may cause you to suddenly run out of room on your laptop's drive. Now, it's only fair of me to note that if you are in the luxurious position of not caring about upstream Internet bandwidth, then there is an significant upside to this -- cloud-based backup of your photos. Even if you managed to lose your camera, your memory cards, and your iPad, up to 1000 RAW files are still safely in Photo Stream ready to be pulled into Aperture when you get home. There's definitely perks to this system, I just wish Apple had given the end users a little more control because we don't all live in Infinite Bandwidth Land. Remember also that Photo Stream storage does not come out of your main iCloud disk space allocation (the 5 GB you get free or any extra you pay for). That's admirably generous of Apple -- a full stream of RAW files could easily be 10-20 GB depending on your camera. Photo Stream and Apple IDs One final note. I've seen a few professional photographers around the web getting excited about using Photo Stream as a sort of low-rent proofing service -- for example, to consolidate work from multiple cameras tethered to laptops onto a single workstation back at the office where another member of staff is compiling picks in real time, or for a supervisor to keep an eye on pictures taken on a shoot in real time. Remember that for this to work well, you're going to need a lot of bandwidth at the shooting site -- particularly upstream bandwidth, which is often not that fast on low-end and medium range Internet connections. It also requires all the different devices and Aperture installs to be connected to the same Apple ID. Depending on the setup you are contemplating, that might not matter at all, or it could be a significant limitation.
LomoKino Super 35 Movie Maker lets you channel your inner Charlie Chaplin for $80
Ever wish you could return to a simpler cinematic era -- one characterized not by 3D graphics and Spielberg, but by silent images and Eisenstein? Well, you can now spearhead the movement yourself, with Lomography's new LomoKino Super 35 Movie Maker. With this device (pictured above), amateur filmmakers can manually produce their own frill-free movies on any roll of 35mm film. All you have to do is load your film into the so-called "magic box," turn the crank and let the LomoKino work its magic. The camera, which boasts a 25mm lens and max aperture of f/5.6, will capture 144 shots on a single roll of film, good for about 50 to 60 seconds of footage. It also supports a wide array of effects, including slide film, color negative, redscale and black and white. Once that's developed, you can run it through Lomography's LomoKinoScope, direct it toward a light source, and watch your homemade Baby's Lunch or Nanook of the North unfold before your eyes. You won't find any sound, special effects, or fancy post-production tools here -- just moving images, plain and cinematically pure. Lumiere enthusiasts can grab one now for $80, or opt for both the LomoKino and the LomoKinoScope, bundled together for $100. For more details, roll past the break for a sample video and the full PR, or get a closer look at the LomoKino in the gallery, below. %Gallery-138276%
Nokia announces the Lumia 800, the 'first real Windows Phone' (video)
Finally, here it is. The flagship device Nokia is counting on to bring a smile to our phone-loving faces, a sigh of relief to its shareholders, and a twinkle to the eyes of Finnish tax collectors everywhere. And, guess what? This heavily leaked handset might just live up to our high expectations. From the outside, the Lumia 800 is very similar to our beloved N9. Dubbed the "first real Windows Phone," this device is powered by a 1.4GHz Qualcomm MSM8255 CPU and is sculpted from the same 12.1mm (0.48-inch) thick piece of durable polycarbonate plastic, with tapered edges on the top and bottom to give it that industrial look and make it feel thinner than it really is. Sitting at the top of the device is Nokia's logo, just above the company's curved ClearBlack AMOLED (800 x 480) display, with a Carl Zeiss optics-enhanced lens around back. The Lumia 800 also packs 16GB of internal storage, 512MB of RAM and 25GB of free SkyDrive space, and features Nokia Drive, Nokia Music and ESPN Sports Hub baked into its OS. As for that OS, it's all about a fresh beginning: those bold squares you see on the screen are, of course, the sleek live tiles of Windows Phone Mango. The eight megapixel camera, meanwhile, packs an f/2.2 aperture, and is designed specifically for low-light environments. It seems pretty similar to what you'll find in the N9, and according to Nokia, it's simply a shooter that works for "ordinary people, under ordinary circumstances." You'll also find quad-band GSM support, with HSDPA download speeds of up to 14.4Mbps. Now, for the basics: the Lumia 800 is priced at €420, or about $585. It's already up for pre-order now, and is scheduled to roll out across France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK, beginning in November. It'll make its way to Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan before the end of the year, and will hit "further markets" sometime next year. Check out a few more pics in the galleries below, or head past the break for a design video, and the official PR. For even more details, check out the Lumia 800 product page, linked below. %Gallery-137537%%Gallery-137532% Dante Cesa and Sharif Sakr contributed to this report.
Mac 101: Disable automatic uploads to Photo Stream
It seems as though Apple is designing a lot of new Mac and iOS features from the perspective of people whose internet access is the equivalent of an all-you-can-eat buffet. Photo Stream is a perfect example. The feature, built into Apple's new iCloud service, automatically uploads photos taken on any of your devices to iCloud, which gives you near-instant access to them on all of your devices. It's a great feature, and it's already streamlined the process of getting photos from my iPhone onto my iPad and Mac. But it was only this morning that I realized with grim horror what might happen if I imported 8 GB of RAW files from my DSLR into Aperture. With Photo Stream's default settings, those multiple gigabytes of data would be uploaded to iCloud automatically -- and since I live in an area with strictly metered data and very expensive internet access, a single import session in Aperture could cost me dearly. Fortunately, both Aperture and iPhoto allow you to disable automatic uploading very easily. Go into the preferences for whichever application you're using and select the Photo Stream pane. Once there, uncheck the box next to "Automatic Upload." As easily as that, your photo manager of choice will no longer send hundreds of photos into the cloud the next time you connect your digital camera. The followup question you must be asking now is, "That's great, but what if I want some of my imported photos to go to Photo Stream?" Fortunately, Apple made it easy to manually upload photos to Photo Stream. Just select the photos you want, then drag them to the Photo Stream item in the sidebar. You should see a green plus sign when you hover over Photo Stream. Release the photos, and they'll be uploaded into the cloud. Whether you're trying to avoid massive data charges or simply don't want hundreds of photos clogging up your Photo Stream all at once, it's quite fortunate that Apple has made it so simple to disable automatic uploading and manage your Photo Stream uploads manually instead.
Aperture 3.2 adds iCloud integration, photo stream
Apple's pro photography app, Aperture, has been updated to version 3.2. The latest version changes all Aperture's references to MobileMe into iCloud integration instead. It also introduces support for Photo Stream, which allows photos taken on iOS devices to automatically sync to all of your registered devices via iCloud. Aperture 3.2 also comes with a load of bug fixes, detailed below: Resolves an issue that could cause the "Loading" indicator to reappear in the Viewer when cropping a photo Aperture now automatically relaunches into Full Screen mode if the application was in Full Screen mode when last quit Pinch-to-zoom gesture now automatically activates Zoom mode in the Viewer Left and right swipe gestures can now be used to navigate between photos in the Viewer Microsoft Outlook can now be chosen in Preferences as the application used by Aperture for emailing photos Fixes a problem that could cause Aperture, running on OS X Lion, to quit unexpectedly when using brushes to apply adjustments Loupe now correctly displays magnification levels between 50-100%. Fixes an issue that could cause Aperture, running on OS X Lion, to display the incorrect color profile on externally edited images Import window now includes an option to delete photos from iPhone and iPad after they have been imported into Aperture The Lift & Stamp tool now displays the correct cursor icons when being used in Split View and Viewer only mode The Aperture update is available via the Mac App Store if you bought it there. If you bought Aperture on disc, you can update via Software Update or direct download at Apple's support site. Note that due to the massive amount of software updates Apple has released today, Apple's support site's downloads page seems to be a bit unreliable at the moment.
Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update adds support for 8 new cameras
Apple has released Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update 3.8, a 6.91 MB update that adds support for the following cameras to Aperture 3 and iPhoto '11: Konica Minolta DiMAGE A200 Olympus PEN E-P3 Panasonic LUMIX DMC-G3 Panasonic LUMIX DMC-GF3 Samsung NX11 Samsung NX100 Sony Alpha NEX-C3 Sony Alpha SLT-A35 Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.5 or later is required to install the update.
T-Mobile myTouch 4G Slide glides into pre-sale for $200
Blessed be the patient ones, for thy reward will be a myTouch 4G Slide. After what seems like an eternity of Mr. Blurrycam shots, press renderings, and an official announcement, it's time to get one ordered. Both black and khaki varieties are available on T-Mobile's website for $200, in advance of the handset reaching store shelves on July 27th. If you're eager to check out "the most advanced camera of any smartphone," with its f2.2 wide-aperture lens, now's your chance -- throw Gingerbread and HTC Sense 3.0 into the mix, and you certainly have a tantalizing phone to consider. You've waited long enough for this time to come, so head to the source link to get your just deserts.
Apple discontinues most boxed software
Considering that the Lion release today (which has gone swimmingly) was a vote of confidence, Apple has moved to get most of its boxed software out of the Apple Store completely, sending a notice out to retailers to discontinue titles like iWork '09, iLife '11, Aperture 3, and most of GarageBand's Jam Pack addons. All of that software will of course be available on the App Store with a download, but Apple won't be keeping them in the actual retail store any longer. This follows Apple's actions earlier this year to remove a number of peripherals and retail games included inside Apple Stores. Much of the hardware is still available, and of course the games can be purchased with a digital download, but Apple seems to want to have its stores as clean and simple as possible. And who can blame them? Apple's latest strategy has been to narrow down product lines and streamline software purchases with an App Store model, and that's worked out just great so far. With Lion already a solid indicator that customers are ready to take to the Mac App Store when needed, there's little if any reason left to bother with actual boxes and discs any more.
Aperture 3.1.3 released with gesture toggle, bug fixes
Aperture 3.1.3 just popped up in Software Update and on this download page. The update addresses the usual "overall stability and performance" fixes along with other changes, outlined below. Improves reliability and performance when syncing web-published albums Slideshow exports are now handled as a background operation Crop tool now correctly supports use of gestures to define crop size Gesture support can now be enabled or disabled in Preferences Fixes an issue that could cause a blank sheet to display when placing a book or print order Published MobileMe, Facebook and Flickr albums now appear in a Web section in the Projects Inspector Shift-clicking snapshots on the Faces corkboard now allows you to make contiguous selections Metadata presets are now correctly applied to imported audio files Fixes an issue that could cause Aperture to quit unexpectedly when trimming audio in full screen mode Resolves various issues when adding names to Faces using accented, Japanese, Korean or Simplified Chinese characters Improves stability when browsing video clips Addresses reliability of library repair and rebuild The update is almost 190 MB and is available through Software Update. At press time, the update has not hit the Mac App Store.
Patent shows Aperture on iPad
An Apple patent filed back in 2009 shows the Aperture app running on a larger touchscreen -- something akin to the iPad, though, of course, it didn't officially exist back then. The image is actually part of a larger patent that goes through the whole process of how user interface elements work on touchscreen displays, but as you can see above, Aperture is clearly the app being shown. Apple hasn't released that app for iPad yet, though it has released a few iWork apps and even a pretty comprehensive version of iMovie on the iOS platform. The iPad didn't even have a camera at launch, but now that there is a camera in the iPad 2, it's possible Apple could be putting together a high-end photo editor for the iPad's touchscreen. Since this is a patent that's already a few years old, this only means Apple at least considered such an app at some time in the past. But it's not a huge stretch to think we'll see more complicated iOS photo software from Apple in the future.
Super Mario gets a Portal gun, you monster (video)
Before Portal 2 there was Portal, and before Portal there was Super Mario Bros. Bring these together and you get a mushroom-chomping Italian plumber ruling the 2D world -- outside the cold confines of Aperture Science -- with the infamous Portal gun. The next logical step? Turn this into a first-person game. Go on, Reggie, make it happen.
