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journal: mac
New Apple Hardware
New PowerMacs:
Refreshed to DDR2 systems.
The PowerMacs now feature Dual-Core G5 processors, with the top end sporting Dual-DualCore CPUs (Quad Processor Cores), with 3 PCIe expansion slots, DDR2, and Double-Layer SuperDrives.
The low end has a GeForce 6600 LE w/128MB GDDR SDRAM and 160 GB SATA Drive, while the mid and top end PowerMacs have NVidia 6600 graphics cards with 256 MB GDDR SDRAM and 250 GB SATA drives.
Starting at $1,999 for the 2Ghz Dual-Core low end, $2,499 for the 2.3 Ghz Dual-Core and $3,299 for the Quad 2.5 Ghz.
New PowerBooks (not 12"):
Better quality and brighter displays on 15” and 17” monitors with 1680 x 1050 on the 17” and 1440 x 960 on the 15”.
Both sporting backlit keyboards, 1.67 Ghz G4 Processors, Dual-Layer Super Drives, 512 MBs of DDR2 RAM, ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 w/128 MB DDR Memory,
$1,999 for the 15” and $2,499 for the 17”
Apple Cinema Display Price Drops
Displays also got a price drop, 23” for $1299 - down from $1,499, and the 30” for $2499 - down from $2,999
Thanks to SogniX for the news story
More Info
New Powermacs
New Powerbooks
Reduced-price Displays
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| Arden | comments | views |
thinkback
Not “printing application” but “Professional Print application”. Do you see any CMYK or vectors in Apeture? Or any print design tools at all? No and No.
Thanx
| Oct. 20, 2005 | ||
| 4:10 pm |
Well, Mac Fan, it depends. Don’t wait for recording functions to come to Front Row; they won’t. On the other hand, we might very well see an updated Airport Express with AirRow. (Yeah, I know the name doesn’t work.) And you can already do Front Row things on your TV if you use the iPod Universal Dock.
This makes me think. For years, people have proposed that Apple will release a stripped-down Mac as a set-top box, with proposed names like iHome. It is now utterly clear that iPod is Apple’s set-top box.
| Oct. 20, 2005 | |
| 4:31 pm |
Oh, so Aperture isn’t a professional-level printing application? I think it’s definitely professional. I think it prints (photos).
I wouldn’t expect CMYK in Aperture. It was a flawed argument you made then and it’s still a flawed argument.
I also wouldn’t expect vectors in Aperture. But Motion 2 has vectors and uses Core Image.
Not “printing application� but “Professional Print application�.
Why are you misquoting me?
Kuaidang, are you aware of the feature in Aperture that shows you your photos as they look in your printer’s colour profile?
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| Oct. 20, 2005 | |
| 8:04 pm |
Actually, it seems like the iMac is becoming Apple’s set-top box. Which seems odd.
Kuaidang, have you looked at the feature set of Aperture? It’s not Photoshop, it’s a print and organizational tool. Consumers don’t shoot in RAW, and they don’t buy $500 image management programs.
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| Oct. 21, 2005 | |
| Arden | 1:04 am |
Actually, from the demo movie, it seems like Aperture is more like iPhoto for professionals, much like iMovie/Final Cut, iDVD/DVD Studio, or GarageBand/Logic. And it seems like Apple is using their “professional” application skin, akin to that of Final Cut or Soundtrack.
I wonder if there will be a professional version of the 5th iLife application? Song Studio Pro, anyone?
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| Oct. 21, 2005 | |
| Arden | 1:12 am |
Review of it:
http://www.letsgodigital.org/en/news/articl es/story_4868.html
Using Aperture, you can produce high-quality prints and contact sheets, design customized books, and create impressive websites as beautiful as the photographs you take. Best of all: you can do it all with drag-and-drop ease. The Mac prints to a wide variety of professional printers. You’ll find profiles for each of them listed in the Print dialog’s ColorSync Profile menu. (And don’t worry if you don’t see the profile for your printer. You can always download one from the printer manufacturer’s website and add it to your system.) In fact, once you select the profile for your printer, you’re ready to take advantage of an Aperture feature you’re going to use over and over again: Softproofing onscreen in the live Preview area of the application’s robust and resizable Print dialog. If the image you see isn’t perfect, fine-tune your output by making Gamma adjustments or by turning on black-point compensation. Aperture even lets you save output profiles as presets. If, for example, you find yourself printing a lot of 5x7-inch prints on semi-gloss stock on your Epson 9600 with Black Point Compensation activated and a 1.00 Gamma adjustment dialed in, you can create a profile with just those specifications and save yourself some time and mouse strokes the next time you print.
Oh yeah, Aperture uses an SQL database, according to Apple. I guess you don’t have to have WinFS for that. 
Here’s a quote from the lead guy at Luxology, the makers of a kick-ass 3D modeling application:
However, the only real-world Power Mac G5 Quad benchmark comes from Luxology, developers of the Modo surface modeling environment. According to a recent posting by the company’s Allen Hastings, the Power Mac G5 Quad renders over twice as fast as Apple’s previous Power Mac G5 Dual 2.5GHz systems.
“We had the opportunity to try one of the new quad G5s with modo 201 and I must say I was impressed with its speed,” Hastings wrote in a message to the Luxology online forum. “As an example, it rendered the global illumination test image shown above in 17 seconds flat. The scene includes 244,000 polygons with 8 sample antialiasing and 200 indirect rays.”
By comparison, Hastings said the Power Mac G5 Dual 2.5GHz took 38 seconds to render the same scene.
1.
Yep, Funktron should be happy with the PCI Express.
And Aperture uses Core Image even though Kuaidang said Core Image would never be used in a pro printing application. I guess Microsoft can now use their own GPU-accelerated filters in their own paint application?
This hasn’t been a good few weeks for the gloomy predictions of Kuaidang. Let’s see, how long before Front Row shows up on my TV?