Whoa mamma!
I attended an Apple seminar/demo/evangelism session at Canal Walk, Cape Town last night. I pitch, say my name, get a free popcorn and water. Good start. Bring on the Salt&Vinegar seasoning!
Anyway. After watching the guys from Project 3 demo some stuff on a 30″ Apple Cinema (More drool here…) display, and some other people arbing around some other Mac hardware, we were ushered into the cinema for a demonstration.
Welcomed by some Apple guy, then over to Kevin Miller, a Scotsman living in Paris, head of Product Marketing or something. “Part of the product evangelism team” he was introduce as. Heh.
He started off by mentioning the Apple hardware that everybody should have. “Hands up who owns a Mac?” “OK, hands up who doesn’t own a Mac?” “Right, don’t worry you guys, this is not a cult, you are not here to be converted. But you’ll see why you want to.” it all started with. He showed some slideshows showing the hardware, the white and black Macbooks, the oh-so-much-better Intel Core Duo Macbook Pro, and some pics of the iMac too. Then onto the juicy bits.
iLife ’06
Kevin started with the different productivity apps that form part of the iLife ’06 suite. I’ve never seen these apps in action, and he took each of them (except for GarageBand) for a test drive on a Macbook Pro plugged into a projector, projecting the images onto the whole movie screen. It was awesome. 
Anyway, iPhoto was great. It felt very much like Google’s Picasa, but with a whole bunch extra. iMovie also looked very good. iWeb not *that* great, but good for a quick create a webpage/photoblog type thing.
I couldn’t help but feel that most of what iLife ’06 had, has already been done by other applications elsewhere. I don’t know if there was any version of iLife before ’06, but there were things like theming and auto-create-a-movie type features that I’ve seen in Pinnacle’s Movie Studio, etc. I wouldn’t know who came up with these things first, and I’d actually guess that it would be Apple, seeing that Apple’s been in the publishing and video editing market for quite some time. But that’s besides the point.
In a nutshell? iLife ’06 is a brilliant addition to the default install of MacOSX, and made me want to buy a Mac right there and then. Anybody have R23k for me?
iLife ’06 was not the highlight of the evening though.
Kevin went on to demonstrate the sheer awesomeness of what is Aperture.
Aperture is the post-production application for professional and serious amateur photographers. It costs $299, but if you’re any kind of serious about photography, and you own a Mac (PowerPC or Intel version, as of version 1.1 it’s a universal binary), you want Aperture. And besides, those of you that can afford a R23000 (nee $2799) for a Macbook Pro, you can afford the extra $299 for Aperture. 
Anybody that takes any kind of photos with a Digital SLR camera (hell, even point-and-shoot digicams) would do well getting this software to manage their photos.
Aperture is not a replacement for something like Photoshop. It’s a pre-Photoshop(maybe) app. It links in seamlessly with iLife ’06, and makes touch ups and investigations into each photo (RAW format preferred, but not required). I wasn’t taking notes during the session, I was too busy gaping at the features of this app. Import management, stacking pictures based on time between shots, a loupe to zoom in and check out detailed portions of a photo, the speeeeeed of it all, the fact that you can apply a filter or touch up (white balance correction or whatever), and “stamp” that change to several other photos,to name but a few of the features that stuck in my mind.
Managing large amounts of photos is *so* much easier with Aperture.
OK, enough of the harping on about the awesomeness of Apple and their software. I’ve said enough. Go check out the Aperture website for yourself to see for yourself what it can do.
One day, I’ll have all I need to use this app. Two 30″ displays, a MacBook pro, a nice Nikon or Canon DSLR camera, lots of memory cards for the camera, and a room to put it all in. Oh, and an iPod. Just because.
Tags: Apple, Macbook, Macbook Pro, iLife ’06, Aperture
Google just opened up a large number of access points for free wifi access to testers. Not sure where digg.com got these details from, but holy intarnets batman! That’s a whole lotta access points! The link takes you through to a Google Maps interface showing the access points and coverage holes in the Mountain View, CA. area.