Apple debuts PowerBooks, G5s, Aperture software

Wow... The G5 is going out with a bang...

PCIe and 4 G5 cores...

Drool... If I had the $$$ one would already be on order.

I only need 1 kidney.. hmmmm

Aperture...a solution in search of a problem. Certainly not a replacement for Photoshop and too expensive to be used as an adjunct. I think "Orifice" might be a better name or perhaps PhotoShaker the bastard child of iPhoto with slick Shake still UI embellishments! It's funny how dark neutral backgrounds conjure up ideas of high-end "pro" software, although it's more reminiscent of Flame or Combustion but of course Apple don't own those!!! I'm sure by version 3.5, it might actually be worth buying!

I think you are fully missing the point of Aperture...

With all due respect to Feathers, I think Aperture looks fantastic. Though iPhoto is a ready stand-in for the average user, I've been dying for a better photo management tool and Aperture looks to do everything I need. Other options like Shoebox and the like just didn't do the trick. Granted, I wish it was more like $300, but it promises to make my job much easier and my finished work that much more compelling. So Apple, thanks for filling a hole that I've been lamenting for some time.

And oh... the Aperture webpage is stunning.

Aperture is perhaps the best new product Apple has announced lately. As someone who has 100,000 digital photos I can tell you this is long over due. $500 is cheap. From what I see it trumps shoebox iphoto and iview. All which crash over the 50K image mark.

The news dual core G5s are a great update. I like the clever marketing and liberal use of the word "quad." However other than the greater resolution, larger HD and better graphics, on the powerbooks it looks like apple just consolidated optional features into standard offerings. We won't see another round of powerbooks until the intel books.

If this concept of browsing is implementable to other files other than images. If so, why not Apple implement the same navigational tools to Apple's products like iWork Pages. Then it would really make it competitive desktop publishing. Better yet, make it a built-in option in Leopard's finder view for scanning documents, spreadsheets,pdf and html files. It would be an excellent and fun way to manage everyday documents.

...should be interesting...

All about 'RAW' ?

Aperture is indeed the pro version of iPhoto. Great. Its necessary (I hate iPhoto now that I have a D-SLR). But, Apple priced it for a market that is very small--pro and semi-pro photographers who either use a digital camera or digital storage solutions who also use a Mac. The bummer about the price is not simply that I cannot justify buying it, but also is the fact that it will not entice many users to switch to Mac. A great program like this, for say $149, might sway some users to stay with Mac as they go digital with their photography, or even bring a few over here who are on PCs now. I have to believe Apple figures it will recoup its R&D costs from those who must have a solution like this, and then will either lower the price, or improve the software in v.2 and then re-release a v.1 as Aperture Express for $99 to $199. Time will tell.

I think Aperture will find itself adored by the Pro Photo market using Digital SLR's. It brings the same level of utility and coolness that FCP and Motion did to motion pictures and motion graphics.

People processing x-thousands of images are finding that there's not quite enough ooomph in iPhoto to meet their needs but have had to deal with database programs if they needed to go farther.

It's not a creative tool like photoshop, but it gives the user trying to wrangle a digital photo layout some real power to manage all of those images.

$500.00 is a bargain for what will do for you, but like Motion, it comes with a $2000.00 dongle. To get the most out of it with a liveable user experience, it will require a fast G5 with lots of memory and a good graphics card.

Digital cameras are going to get cheaper, with better resolution (bigger RAW files) and as memory comes down, it just means more and more photos/images.

I don't see a Aperture Express as much as i see iPhoto& iLife benefitting from the technology used in the Pro Applications