Apple reinventing file access, wireless sharing for iPad - Page 6

Originally Posted by melgross

Don't be so sure about that. With the iPad it's obvious that the OS is at the beginning of major power upgrades. We're going to see many OS X developers jump on this. As the computer becomes more powerful over the next few years, it will be able to handle more powerful apps. Apple has shown in a patent a movie editing program as one of the uses it will be put to.

There is a question right now as to whether this is a two or four core cpu. No doubt when they move to 32nm, as this is expected to be run on 45 nm, we'll see less power and more speed.

This is already faster than the first Mac I ever used for Photoshop and movie editing.

I can see this, at 22 nm having dual cpu's each with four cores, and a much better GPU, 64 to 256 GB Flash, and a number of expanded technical specs.

Lightweight pro use will be possible, just as we used the now considered to be very slow G4 laptops to do pro work several years ago.

I fully expect this line to be Apple's new consumer OS, creeping up to the low pro level in just a few years. Maybe faster than we expect.

Apple may win the "desktop" war after all.

Some people are seeing that in this, but most aren't so far.

Originally Posted by addabox

Didn't really want to start a new thread about this so I guess here's as good as any: what do folks think about a version of iMovie for the iPad?

I ask because a while back I was commenting that the last revision to iMovie seemed suspiciously touch friendly (even to the point of kind of screwing it up, although they've improved things subsequently).

I suspect that the UI would work, but that the transcoding necessary for cutting popular consumer HD formats would be too much for the hardware. Or maybe not? Any guesses?

Originally Posted by addabox

Didn't really want to start a new thread about this so I guess here's as good as any: what do folks think about a version of iMovie for the iPad?

I ask because a while back I was commenting that the last revision to iMovie seemed suspiciously touch friendly (even to the point of kind of screwing it up, although they've improved things subsequently).

I suspect that the UI would work, but that the transcoding necessary for cutting popular consumer HD formats would be too much for the hardware. Or maybe not? Any guesses?

Originally Posted by nkhm

Well, that's the characterisation that the owner of this company used to describe his own product.

Of course it will have professional uses, but given the screen real estate it will never be used for high end video or graphics design work - an A4/US Letter spread plus interface? A HD content window for video plus interface? A 1 Ghz Processor and no 'real' multitasking make this clear.

This thing is intended to go into every home, be on every couch, in every man bag. It's a kindle meets the iPod touch, it's a new category of device. Apple already make phones, laptops, desktops, this is intended to replace NONE of those, Apple will not damage sales of their own higher end devices.

So yes, there will be apps for this thing which assist professionals day to day, but it will NEVER be a high end content creation tool in the form in which it is currently being sold. And don't say there is no 'current form' - go look at apple.com/ipad - it's very clearly expressed right there.

What is with people wanting this to be something it is not designed to be?

There's no phone functionality. Fail. Well, it's not a phone...
There's no camera. Fail. Well, it's not a camera...
There's no USB/SD Card on board. Fail. There are accessories to do that, making clear that this isn't primary function territory.

It's wi-fi, it's 3g, it reads books, plays music and browses the web. Home users can use iWork to write newsletters and doing domestic level accounting. That is a great set of functions.

The ONLY criticism to be levelled is the lack of flash, and it's for Adobe to sort that mess, not Apple - unless Adobe make flash Opensource and let others fix it for them.

Originally Posted by addabox

Didn't really want to start a new thread about this so I guess here's as good as any: what do folks think about a version of iMovie for the iPad?

I ask because a while back I was commenting that the last revision to iMovie seemed suspiciously touch friendly (even to the point of kind of screwing it up, although they've improved things subsequently).

I suspect that the UI would work, but that the transcoding necessary for cutting popular consumer HD formats would be too much for the hardware. Or maybe not? Any guesses?

Originally Posted by nkhm

A 1gHZ processor and undisclosed RAM is not going to be powerful enough - I don't think iLife is heading to the pad in it's first iteration.

Originally Posted by nkhm

Well, that's the characterisation that the owner of this company used to describe his own product.

Of course it will have professional uses, but given the screen real estate it will never be used for high end video or graphics design work - an A4/US Letter spread plus interface? A HD content window for video plus interface? A 1 Ghz Processor and no 'real' multitasking make this clear.

This thing is intended to go into every home, be on every couch, in every man bag. It's a kindle meets the iPod touch, it's a new category of device. Apple already make phones, laptops, desktops, this is intended to replace NONE of those, Apple will not damage sales of their own higher end devices.

So yes, there will be apps for this thing which assist professionals day to day, but it will NEVER be a high end content creation tool in the form in which it is currently being sold. And don't say there is no 'current form' - go look at apple.com/ipad - it's very clearly expressed right there.

What is with people wanting this to be something it is not designed to be?

There's no phone functionality. Fail. Well, it's not a phone...
There's no camera. Fail. Well, it's not a camera...
There's no USB/SD Card on board. Fail. There are accessories to do that, making clear that this isn't primary function territory.

It's wi-fi, it's 3g, it reads books, plays music and browses the web. Home users can use iWork to write newsletters and doing domestic level accounting. That is a great set of functions.

The ONLY criticism to be levelled is the lack of flash, and it's for Adobe to sort that mess, not Apple - unless Adobe make flash Opensource and let others fix it for them.

Originally Posted by addabox

But "high end" video and graphics design work is actually very vague. For instance, a number of New Yorker covers (surely a fairly high end product) were created on the iPhone with the paint program. It's not difficult to imagine real work of this sort being routinely done on the iPad.

No, I wouldn't expect HD features to get edited on it, but that's not the beginning and end of "real" content production. Real content producers use the best tools for the job, be it a cut and paste collage job, spray paint, Super 8, state of the art workstation, nicely tricked out laptop, etc. Most of the artists I know (and I am one) are always very interested in new tools and media; we use limitations and quirks to our advantage to try new things.

The iPad may be used on a lot of couches, but it's just too interesting a from factor, and the interface is just too immediate, to not also end up in the hands of lots of "real" creative people.

Originally Posted by spliff monkey

The consumer HD cameras that would work best would capture straight to h264, edit and export all in h264 so there wouldn't really be any transcoding. Further I ran the first version of FCP on a 333MHZ g3 quite well with DV and HDV happens to have about the same data rate and it's much lower on cheaper cameras, so things should "really fly" on the bad boy Ipad. Tape would be considered a thing of the past for sure. Otherwise a touch Imovie? I can see it. You're right about the appearance of the last update looking kind of "touchy" lol

I'd hope we could attach a drive for this sort of data though. I'm sure that's not long away.

I'd also like to see an Iphoto importer so when we shoot, we can download to a tablet instead of a laptop as they can be cumbersome on set to say the least. Again an external HD would probably work best though.

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Apple's new iPad jettisons the conventional shared file system and introduces a new, streamlined convention for working with document files that ordinary users should find much more understandable.

Originally Posted by addabox

The iPad may be used on a lot of couches, but it's just too interesting a from factor, and the interface is just too immediate, to not also end up in the hands of lots of "real" creative people.

Originally Posted by spliff monkey

I'd also like to see an Iphoto importer so when we shoot, we can download to a tablet instead of a laptop as they can be cumbersome on set to say the least. Again an external HD would probably work best though.

Originally Posted by nkhm

You're missing my point. Let me try again.

My point is that Apple do not intend for this to replace high-end workstations and existing professional tools. It is a new platform, a device with many uses, but most of them aimed at occasional, lightweight work and the consumer layman.

Yes, touch interface computers are the future, but this is not meant to be that fullt functioning touch screen computer, it's meant to be an easy to use, inexpensive device for content consumption, something to bridge the gap between smart phone and laptop.

That apps will be developed for niche markets is inevitable, but that is not the primary function of this device, so when people complain about the lack of ports, multitasking, processing power and file management, they are criticising the device for not doing things that it's not meant to do!

My netbook doesn't encode HD video as well as my mac pro - that doesn't make the netbook a 'failure', or 'faulty', it simply means that I'm asking too much of a device never intended to do that "high end" (by which i mean processor intensive, interface intensive work that requires a multi button mouse) work.

Originally Posted by nkhm

You're missing my point. Let me try again.

My point is that Apple do not intend for this to replace high-end workstations and existing professional tools. It is a new platform, a device with many uses, but most of them aimed at occasional, lightweight work and the consumer layman.

Yes, touch interface computers are the future, but this is not meant to be that fullt functioning touch screen computer, it's meant to be an easy to use, inexpensive device for content consumption, something to bridge the gap between smart phone and laptop.

That apps will be developed for niche markets is inevitable, but that is not the primary function of this device, so when people complain about the lack of ports, multitasking, processing power and file management, they are criticising the device for not doing things that it's not meant to do!

My netbook doesn't encode HD video as well as my mac pro - that doesn't make the netbook a 'failure', or 'faulty', it simply means that I'm asking too much of a device never intended to do that "high end" (by which i mean processor intensive, interface intensive work that requires a multi button mouse) work.

Originally Posted by nkhm

That's exactly what I'm going to use this for on the road. There's a camera connection kit, so I think this is a given (I doubt you'll be able to view Raw, as with the iPod camera connection kit but jpeg should display just fine.)

Originally Posted by GregAlexander

Wow. Rather than have things in hierarchical folders, the new system is to basically have a "data drive" (the phone as it appears when shared), with subfolders for each app - and every pages document is in the pages folder, every numbers document is in the numbers folder, etc etc. With the difference that if you delete Pages the documents folder deletes itself too.

I really don't see this as a huge step forward.

I do agree the file system needs a rethink. iTunes virtually has it's own filing system, as does iPhoto. Email and attachments have their own mailbox structure with separate attachments.

No need to have 2 separate systems on the Mac, and I'm just unconvinced this is much of an improvement.

Originally Posted by spliff monkey

Word!!!!!!


and I think addabox is talking about geeks up at 5am eastern and you're talking about normals.

Originally Posted by ThePixelDoc

Well I'm seein' it and with ya on this one!

I have an old Mac 8100/80 still sitting in the corner. Amazing... PS 3.0, FH 7.0... and more than 7-figure income from that baby in my design biz. The whole set-up with 21"-24bit CRT and card cost me just shy of 10k. This iPad "kills" it in speed and specs (as does the iPhone).

Gotta wonder about the whiners and creative-blind, non-thinking posters around here...

Originally Posted by nkhm

it's 10:03am here in the UK.

Originally Posted by spliff monkey

Not correct at all read above. We already have editing apps on the iphone/ IPT

Originally Posted by addabox

Right, and I agree with all that as far as it goes, but what I'm saying is that when you're talking about creative people (real, employed, professional creative people), they have a tendency to find surprising uses from even low end tech, particularly if that tech has some enticingly new capacities. You may recall photographer's ongoing infatuation with cheap plastic film cameras and the like, because of the interesting artifacts.

So Apple's intentions notwithstanding, I fully expect the iPad to start showing up in the damnedest places, and developers to squeeze surprising amounts of performance out of its lowly silicon, yielding inexplicably "professional" results.

Originally Posted by addabox

Yeah, spec inflation causes amnesia. It really wasn't that long ago that perfectly respectable laptops were running 1 GHz processors with 80 GB drives and 512 gigs of ram, and I seem to recall that people were doing "real work" (or at least they thought they were-- perhaps they were mistaken on account of being primitive and old timey).

Originally Posted by nkhm

Absolutely, we're in agreement. But those professionals (I am one BTW, although my staff would argue that point..!) should do that - it will be fun pushing the boundaries - with the proviso that this device has limitations which are not flaws, they are simply part of the device not being intended to function as a high-end computer work station. And to be making some of the complaints I'm already reading before people have even handled the 'pad are ridiculous. That was sort of my point.

Originally Posted by addabox

Yeah, spec inflation causes amnesia. It really wasn't that long ago that perfectly respectable laptops were running 1 GHz processors with 80 GB drives and 512 gigs of ram, and I seem to recall that people were doing "real work" (or at least they thought they were-- perhaps they were mistaken on account of being primitive and old timey).

Originally Posted by nkhm

Absolutely, we're in agreement. But those professionals (I am one BTW, although my staff would argue that point..!) should do that - it will be fun pushing the boundaries - with the proviso that this device has limitations which are not flaws, they are simply part of the device not being intended to function as a high-end computer work station. And to be making some of the complaints I'm already reading before people have even handled the 'pad are ridiculous. That was sort of my point.

Originally Posted by addabox

Yeah, spec inflation causes amnesia. It really wasn't that long ago that perfectly respectable laptops were running 1 GHz processors with 80 GB drives and 512 gigs of ram, and I seem to recall that people were doing "real work" (or at least they thought they were-- perhaps they were mistaken on account of being primitive and old timey).

Originally Posted by nkhm

Yeah, but the problem is that software developers have become lazy, and given massive storage and processing power, coupled with large amounts of RAM, they no longer bother to optimise their code. The OS now takes more RAM than my machine of ten years even had. The amount of RAM and processor taken by CS4 for instance is pretty incredible - apps sat idling are still trying to use 10 - 15% of the CPU. I think a lot of software companies, Adobe top of my personal list, need to take note, clean their apps, refine their code and get back to the days of slick, smooth work flow. Too much bloatware around. First thing to be stripped back to barebones and rebuilt is the flash plug-in, then the REAL problem facing apple with this "web browsing device" can be addressed and corrected.

Originally Posted by spliff monkey

Yeh we were all busy watching spinning balls and progress indicators managing to define it "rendering" as work.
.

Originally Posted by melgross

Wow! I wish I had 512 GB RAM for my Mac Pro. I've only got 16 so far.\

It's late. Typo tyme.

Originally Posted by spliff monkey

I have to say that is one of my biggest problems with CS4 as well. Bloat. Perhaps "tabletizing" software will have "exterior" benefits .

Originally Posted by spliff monkey

You're still being vague. While I agree that most will use it for what Apple says, but the neat trick Apple pulled off here is that there's nothing inherently part of the hardware that would prevent some "pro" work from being done on the device. Like I said. I have pro friends who use Iphones and IPT's for commercial music. I'll never edit a feature on an Ipad but I might edit my vacation video on one and while I don't expect to do any real photoshop work on an ipad I would like to download photos to an it instead of a clunky laptop the next shoot we work on.

Originally Posted by addabox

Heh. Speaking of spec inflation, it's like I don't even know how to type "MB" anymore. What's that?

Originally Posted by addabox

Yeah, I guess I was thinking of the struggles to deal with AVCHD stuff, H.264 would be much easier on the processor. I'm almost sure that the last iMovie had at least some thought to a touch version-- I can imagine doing that frame scrub thing with my finger, dragging on and off the "timeline" (or whatever they call that clip area now), tapping to split a clip, pinch zooming to change the scale, touching and holding at an edit point to bring up a pop over list of transition effects. Hmmm... I really like the sound of it. Way back when I start in film editing 16mm, with that kind of visceral relationship to the stuff of it, chopping and splicing. A touch based NLE might bring back some of that feel.

Originally Posted by nkhm

NO, I'm not being vague.

By high end work, i mean running professional applications for large scale content creation - web development, large format graphics work, high definition video editing. You might use this in the studio, but you're not gonna run logic on it.

Of course it'll be great as a tool, as part of the work flow. To download photos while on a shoot is my main use for getting this new toy. I'm not about to launch Photoshop CS4 and edit them on it though.

It's not vague, i think you're being deliberately obtuse.

this. is. not. designed. to. be. a. high. end. multitasking. powerful. workhorse. computer.

Apple would never threaten sales of it's pro line-up.

Originally Posted by nkhm

NO, I'm not being vague.

By high end work, i mean running professional applications for large scale content creation - web development, large format graphics work, high definition video editing. You might use this in the studio, but you're not gonna run logic on it.

Of course it'll be great as a tool, as part of the work flow. To download photos while on a shoot is my main use for getting this new toy. I'm not about to launch Photoshop CS4 and edit them on it though.

It's not vague, i think you're being deliberately obtuse.

this. is. not. designed. to. be. a. high. end. multitasking. powerful. workhorse. computer.

Apple would never threaten sales of it's pro line-up.

Originally Posted by melgross

Give this a few years. We'll see larger form factors, and all that comes with it.

I wish people remembered Jobs' quote. When he was with NEXT, and Apple was having problems in the mid 90's, he was asked what he would do if he was back running Apple.

He said:

"I'd milk the Mac for everything it was worth, and then move on to the next big thing."

Hey guys, what are we seeing here?

Originally Posted by spliff monkey

So I help settle the "argument" between you and Addabox and this is how you repay me??? Obtuse indeed. Teasing of course it's nearly 5:30 my time. I'd say we are in agreement. No we won't run desktop aps on it, but yes it has certain applications in a pro environment.

Originally Posted by melgross

It's a matter of the industry demanding more features, and Adobe being only too happy to accommodate. I've been beta testing PS since version 1.0. Adobe listens to feature requests, though it could take an upgrade or two before they can do them.

A friend had written a plug-in to do hi-light and shadow processing. We asked Adobe for that, and two years later Hi-light/shadow came out.

I suppose it's our fault. We don't want to leave the program to do more work.

Originally Posted by nkhm

Yeah, but the problem is that software developers have become lazy, and given massive storage and processing power, coupled with large amounts of RAM, they no longer bother to optimise their code. The OS now takes more RAM than my machine of ten years even had. The amount of RAM and processor taken by CS4 for instance is pretty incredible - apps sat idling are still trying to use 10 - 15% of the CPU. I think a lot of software companies, Adobe top of my personal list, need to take note, clean their apps, refine their code and get back to the days of slick, smooth work flow. Too much bloatware around. First thing to be stripped back to barebones and rebuilt is the flash plug-in, then the REAL problem facing apple with this "web browsing device" can be addressed and corrected.