Apple announces new PowerBooks, PowerMacs; Aperture

NEW YORK -- I'm at the Jacob Javits center in Manhattan live blogging the Apple media event here today.

On stage is  David Moody, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Mac Product Marketing. "We have a number of announcements today, both hardware and software."

David begins by talking about the Mac OS platform for photographers:
- Mac OS 10.4 Tiger
- Core image
- Color Sync
- Automater

1. Two new PowerBooks are announced:

PowerBook 15": 1440 x 960 (26% more resolution), 512MB DDR2 SDRAM
PowerBook 17": 1680 x 1050 (36% more resolution), 512MB DDR2 SDRAM
The new PowerBook 17" now has the same resolution as Apple 20" Cinema Display.

The new 15 and 17-inch PowerBooks feature:
- 8x SuperDrives with double-layer support, standard
- 22% greater battery life (an extra hour of run time)
- Native support for the Apple 30" Cinema Display

The new 15 and 17-inch PowerBooks feature:
- 8x SuperDrives with double-layer support, standard
- 22% greater battery life (an extra hour of run time)
- Native support for the Apple 30" Cinema Display

The new 15 and 17-inch PowerBooks are available with 100 and 120GB (5400RPM) hard drives and up to 2GB of SDRAM as built-to-order options.

The PowerBook 12" (1.5GHz) remains the same but is available with a 100GB/5400RPM hard drive and up to 1.25GB of RAM as built-to-order options.

PowerBook prices were also lowered:
12" - $1,499
15" - $1,999
17" - $2,499
All three models are available now.

2. The PowerMac G5 Dual is announced:
- Single dual-core PowerPC G5 processor
- 512MB of 533MHz DDR2 SRAM, expandable to 16GB
- Up to 1TB of hard drive space
- PCI Express architecture
- Mighty mouse and Apple keyboard included
- 2.0GHz (US$1,999)
- 2.3GHz (US$2,499)
- Shipping now

New graphics options are available:
- NVIDIA GeForce 6600 with 256MB RAM, standard
- NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT with 256MB RAM (optional)
- NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 with 512MB RAM (optional)

Other notes:
- NVIDIA's Quadro FX 4500 is the fastest workstation graphics card
- Drives the Apple 30" Cinema Display
- PCI Express Architecture can drive up to four Quadro FX 4500s at once (16 million pixels)

3. The PowerMac G5 Quad is announced:
- Two dual-core 2.5GHz PowerPC G5 processors
- Four processor cores
- Eight floating point units
- Four Velocity engines
- Four 1MB L2 Caches
- 76.6 Gigaflops
- US$3,299
- Shipping in November

4. New pricing on the 23" (US$1299) and 30" (US$2499) Apple Cinema displays.

"But that's just the warm up act..."

5. Apple announces the first all-in-one post production application for photographers, called Aperture.

 
Rob Schoeben, Apple's Vice President of Applications Marketing is on stage to talk about Aperture.

"Embrace digital while honoring the past"
"Raw as easy as JPEG"
"The image is the hero"

Powerful Compare and Select Tools
- Stacks, groups photos based on the time interval between exposures
- Full-screen workspace
- Filmstrip view
- Multi-image viewer
- Digital loupe magnifying tool built-in
- Light table built-in (free form space for mockups)

Non-Destructive Image Processing
- Essential adjustment
- Non-destructive workflow
- Powerful versioning

Versatile Printing and Publishing
- Consistent Predictable Color
- Print options
- Custom Web and Book Publishing
- One-click publishing to dot Mac and FTP

 
First live demo of Aperture
- Stacking
- Loupe
- Light table
- All images in the demo were shot with a Nikon D2X (12 MB, RAW)

Image Retouching
- Isolation
- Non-destructive image editing "it's not undo, it's never did" (laughs)
- Demoing the light table
- Batch re-touching
- Web authoring in the application
- Decide which meta data appears
- US$499
- Available November 2005
- Demos in the Apple booth and theatre at PhotoPlus Expo

Videos of the pros using Aperture:
- Joe Buissink, professional photographer
- Richard Burbridge, fashion photographer
- Heinz Kluetmeier, Sports photographer with over 100 Sports Illustrated covers to his credit: "Aperture blew me away"