Apple introduces Aperture - Page 4

You're right. I didn't. But, it was after a very trying day, and while we may disagree, I'm just trying to give information that I've had a great deal of experience with. Too many people on the web say they do, but don't. You know that, I'm sure. If someone disagrees, that's fine. I don't like having my integrity called into question however. Their response to being told "no" is the one I received. Sometimes it's hard not to respond in kind.

I don't hold grudges though.

I don't see Apple ever making a direct competitor to photoshop - far too risky.

I asked. They told me the demo machines driving the 2x30" displays were Quad G5s and the machines in the classroom area were duals (they weren't sure what speed, but I'm sure dual 2.7s). They didn't tell me what video card they were running. The person I spoke with thought performance would be driven buy a combination of all three of processor, RAM and video card (I'd assume the system will be limited by the weakest link).

No way, no how are you going to want to run Aperture on a G4 laptop. While you might get it to launch, using it would probably be so painful as to defeat the purpose. Even on the Dual G5s that they were using in the classroom at the show, the interface lagged at times (not often, but at times). Given that those machines are easily 3 or more times the speed of any laptop Apple now ships, I'm sure that on a G4 laptop the program will be practically unusable.

Intel laptops are more interesting, and I'd think if Apple can produce something decent next year there'd be real possibilities there.

I was going to ask, but I wasn't sure if I really wanted to know.

Yeah, this is a very hardware driven system. It's why, despite what Apple might say, it's not for everyone.

Adobe demo's PS with a combination (on the Mac side) of PM's, PB's, iMacs, etc.

Another interesting article:

http://www.it-enquirer.com/main/ite/...pple_aperture/

The guys at the show were clearly uncomfortable when I asked about performance with older machines and PB's. That was when I asked about the 128MB RAM for the card.

What strikes me as strange is that the group who would benefit most from this program are going to have the machines least capabile of using it (wedding and event people), while those needing it the least (commercial and fashion studiios) will have the machines able to use it best.

The only thing I can think of is that we will have to grow into it over the next couple of years as machines speed up.

I'm sure Apple knows most photographer's will be using Power Book's.

It would lessen the effectiveness and efficiency of Aperture if they have no choice but to use it on a PowerMac.

I'm sure Apple realizes this and has a solution on the way.

I don't know. Why wouldn't they have accounted for that when they first proposed the program. That's when the user base is considered. The performance goals should have been determined then.

It really seems to be an afterthought. I'm also not so sure that most photog's do use PB's. I don't doubt many have them as a secondary machine.

I hope Apple has a solution on the way... but we probably won't see it until next year with Intel Powerbooks. That will finally give the notebooks the power they need to run software like Aperture and many others. The minimum system requirements for Aperture when those new systems come out better look miniscule compared to the hardware the PBs have in them!

I understand that Aperture is state-of-the-art and should be run on a Power Mac G5 Quad. I have no problems with that. But just as you said, Mel, the product would be better used by people with lesser systems than the ones it runs on best. What individual wedding photographer has a Power Mac G5 Quad with dual 30" Cinema Displays sitting in his basement? What photo-geek traveling to Africa on a Safari has that setup sitting in his/her hotel room? It's going to be hard for people using their older systems to enjoy this software. BUT people can upgrade their hardware if they really want to use the software. Get an iMac that meets the requirements and enjoy.

What makes no sense to me whatsoever is the fact that someone could buy a 12" Powerbook TODAY (supposedly a pro system) and not run Aperture. I understand that Aperture will not or should not run on a 1024x768 screen. There's a lot of software that just plain sucks at that resolution anyhow. But the 12" Powerbook (not the iBook) can connect to a 23" Cinema Display, can have 1 GB of RAM or a little bit more and meets the 1.25 GHz minimum requirement. The only thing that holds it back is the video card with 64 MB. If I had bought this system even 4 months ago and could not run Aperture because it was too "old" for it, I'd understand. That's the way hardware goes sometimes - it's obsolete for what you want to use before you know it.

But I don't own this system yet but need to soon for portability, presentations, etc. while working on my PhD and would like to use Aperture for my photography as well. Sorry - out of luck. I can literally buy a system TODAY ... or for that matter TWO MONTHS FROM NOW assuming no more 12" updates ... and have the system be obsolete BEFORE I even buy it! That's crazy.

Apple: pull the 12" PB entirely and allow the 12" iBooks to hook up to your Cinema Displays or upgrade the blasted 12" Powerbook to the point where you can at least install and run, however slowly, all the "professional" applications you release for your "professional" machines.

I don't mind so much that the hardware line-up needs to grow to meet Aperture's requirements. That's a price of bleeding edge technology. The hardware (including the laptops) will catch up. In the meantime, why limit those who can afford the speedy hardware?

The existence of Aperture does not obsolete the 12" PowerBooks. It just makes them less desirable. If IBM had delivered a G5 PB, we wouldn't be having this discussion at all. We know Apple is taking drastic measures to fix the laptop situation. What more do you want? Should a problem in the portable line-up stall all progress?

No, absolutely not. It will give those with machinesthat don't run this well an excuse to upgrade.

Is it really the case that wedding and event photographers shooting digital shouldn't be expected to have at least a dual G5 at this point? $4000 (for computer plus monitor) doesn't strike me as a lot for the technology at the core of a studio's image production operations. I don't think the intent is to capture to the computer in the field. If I were a wedding photographer, I'd think I'd be shooting on multiple cards and backing up to an Epson P-4000 or other HDD based file vault while on location and would then transfer to the computer back in the studio.

But think about it. By its very design, it should scale well.

On the one hand everyone is complaining that they don't have quad G5s with dual 30" monitors. Well, dual 30" monitors is a *lot* of pixels to push around. You need a quad G5 for that.

If you have a more modest monitor setup, then the hardware requirements would scale down proportionally, so you can get by with less.

That's possible. However, I bet that a pretty decent chunk of the power that's needed for Aperture involves processing the RAW originals and caching the resulting full-resolution files. I don't see how you can move the loupe around on the screen without a cached copy of the file in full resolution. That means each time you loupe over an additional file, the computer needs to read and process another RAW file. With a 4-5 megapixel file, this may not be a big deal. With an 8-12 megapixel file, the time involved is non-trivial. This is all before a single bit gets pushed to the screen. A key component of Aperture is the ability to flip between files to compare and select. I don't think the size of the monitor is going to change the time that takes.

That's essentially what I'm saying, I'm sure Apple recognized this and may have a solution for it soon. Perhaps their major PB up date isn't quite ready yet.


I can't account for most photographer's. But several that I know own PowerBook's. I didn't think that particualar profession would go against the trend of laptops out selling desktops.

Aperture will in many ways be more useful out in the field away from the comfort of an expensive PowerMac. .

More interesting info on Aperture and maybe some insight into its heavy hardware requirments.

Aperture does not have a save command. All changes are saved in an SQL database. All changes are saved and can be accessed if one wants to undo or recreate what was done.

SQL is also what MS was supposed to use in WinFS but cut the function from Vista. Apple has basically put the idea of WinFS in an application.

Well...the SQL part is CoreData.

What's going on is that there's a master image. If you start working on the image, each layer of CI transformation is logged into into the database. The database, obviously, remembers the changes and applies the transformations to the master image.

I'm not sure how iPhoto does it right now but I know it doesn't use CoreData. Judging by the time it takes to 'save' the changes (not to mention the word 'save') I suspect if you make a change to a photo in iPhoto, it makes a copy of the photo with the changes. This is a terrible waste of space on the HHD.

Hopefully iLife 06 will become 10.4-only (sorry 10.3 and 10.2 users ) so that Apple can make it user CoreData for versioning.

I bet CoreData is the beginning of a 'versioning' system. I bet that 10.5 will bring some radical new way to use the computer.

Programs that use CoreData will allow a single file to contain all it's versioning info. No amount of changes will be permanent and people will be able to flip flop between versions very easily and track all the changes they've made.

CoreData to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.

PS...Another program that supposedly will use CoreData is Sandvox.

Dammit Kim Kap Sol...........


Walking away to go watch LotR. Now I have to go watch Gandalf again.

grumble.


Great point though. I want versioning for Core Video in Final Cut Pro 6. Freakin' sweet all I have to same is the mathmatical stacked "blueprint" for my effects. Apple's onto something big here. Adobe and others will follow......emphasis on follow.

Hehe.

The future is looking good. The days of saving files are coming to an end (for the most part). Just like 'Undo' and 'Redo' uses a temporary history of changes to a file, CoreData will keep a permanent history of the changes (provided developers use it that way). The only time you'll ever need to 'Save' is when you want to bookmark a certain place within the history of changes so you can easily go back and check it.

Then there are a number of ways to view this history...I dunno which would be best but the one that pops into my mind is a little history 'slider' that lets you go back and forth on the changes with the 'bookmarks' as guides to where you should put the slider to see the state of the file at that very time.

edit: oh and since things are logged right away in CoreData...a power failure won't destroy your work...you should be able to get right back to work with absolutely nothing lost.

Oh, good point. Certain things might be faster on a smaller monitor with fewer pixels, but probably not as much a difference as I hoped.

Good thing I have a dual processor G5. Just need a better video card than the crappy GeForce FX 5200 I have now. Any suggestions for the $250-$300 range? I haven't really kept up with video card technology since I'm not a gamer.

I like the way you think! That would be awesome.

True, whilst I am not a photographer, I have been in events where they are and they usually carry many, many lenses, and even a couple differant bodies as well as extra cards and batteries...a laptop on site would almost requier a second man, do most photographers (outside of those doing major spreads for huge publications) have on site assistance?

I can only speak from my experience in the business with my customers. These guys may have several lenses, but not many many.They buy 20D's or even Rebels, or Nikon equiv. I've had to pull them kicking and screaming into the digital world in the first place. Most of them have small iMacs or an iBook. Many have the cameras but not the computers. They bring their memory cards to us to do the work. These guys don't make much money. There are more successful ones as well but most are just doing this for a living. No different than most people. They don't want to know much about the computer. For a lot of them, it's an unwelcome, but necessary evil.

You can't imagine how many had told me that they would be retired before digital becomes mainstream, only to come and ask for advice about it a year or two later.

It's not a put down, it's just a reality of the business. Younger guys are more willing to invest than the older ones who look upon the whole thing with suspicion.

They also don't understand why they have to upgrade their equipment. They never had to before. A new lens maybe, or a new body or flash when they get too old, but that's it. This idea of spending money on a regular basis has them shook up.

I've had several guys buy an all in one camera for $1,000 and complain that the pics weren't as good as from film. They think they should be because it costs more than their film camera with a lens or two. The pricing model has gotten them confused.

What I've found is that the photogs who were interested in the computer anyway are the one's who change the most, but the ones who aren't find it difficult. Remember that most people have older PC's. So while a photog might HAVE a computer, (s)he might not enjoy using it the way we do, and so isn't thrilled when told that this is the way to go.

I don't mean to be depressing, but we are not representative of most people. We get joy out of it. Most people slog through with virus's, trojan horses, spyware, etc. so when they do get started they are not always "with it".

I'm sure that this will change as time goes on and these guys retire. But many of these guys are in their 40's. They start out tentatively, with inexpensive equipment. I suggest they get a Mac, but they want to stick with their PC It's a struggle.

Now, don't flame me! This is what I see in the business. We've had many hundreds of customers. Thousands over 28 years. Most photog's don't like something new. I've actually had guys sweat when we told them that their favorite film had just been discontinued.

So, what I'm saying is that few of these guys are going out and buying PM's with high end boards and 23" monitors. Some will.

melgross and TenoBell - please do something about your egregious apostrophes. The plural of photographer is simply "photographers" and camera is simply "cameras".

Why does everyone on planet Earth suddenly put apostrophes into every other word? You might as well insert an asterisk or question mark. One cow, two cows. Got it?

Back on topic: Aperture rocks.

It is not a PS competitor. Anyone complaining about the price or system requirements is not in the target market. Pros will eat this program up.

Motion on my PowerBook G4 is fine - I'm expecting this to be too. I'm going to take a series of RAW photos over the next few days and burn onto a CD for testing a PowerBook system at the Apple store. That's the only way of really knowing.

Not sure I totally agree with you - lots of pros have PowerBooks. Butr I do agree this program looks immense.

But isn't this exactly who Apple is targeting? Professionals who don't want to bother with PC incompatibilities and drivers and the complexity of a Photoshop-based raw workflow?

Tell 'em to buy the low-end dual core Mac for $1999 and a Dell 24-inch monitor for under a grand on sale. Easy, and not too expensive for a professional.

There's no worry about converting raw images before use. And Aperture will let them use a loupe and a light table, and group photos into stacks...

It's just like the old days with film.

I've never used film (well a little at college) and love the look of this integrated solution - I usually catalogue in iPhoto and edit in photoshop but the integrated tools like pretty good - I just hope changes made in photshop can be added to the stacks etc. automatically - I know Aperture does support PSD. I can't wait to buy this program - now to find the money!

So I think I see why you are so defensive about any threat to Photoshop. A true revolution might cost you customers.

Core Data is a persistent-data layer. It allows developers to use the same code to write data out to an xml file, binary file, or SQLite database. And while Core Data does provide undo management, Core Data offers no functionality for persisting undo stacks across user sessions. The versioning engine in Aperture is in addition to its use of Core Data not because of it.

I do like this train of thought though. It will be interesting to see how Apple will refactor Aperture's versioning functionality for re-use across the line-up.

If you can actually find something useful in the post to comment upon, that would be good.

If I complained about all of the grammatical errors, spelling errors, and punctuation errors in posts, I would have no space left to say anything else.

Perhaps then, you should filter everyone's posts through your spell checker before you read them.

As a long as a post is coherent there's no need to criticise grammar.

Getting back to Aperture it looks sooooo cool! I think this is basically iPhoto on steroids as originally rumoured. I love the zoom feature, stacks, different versions etc. I can't wait to buy it!

Motion won't install if your cpu is less than an 867MHz G4. Above that it will work. 1.25GHz is ok, but not great. If you read the reviews of Motion, such as the one in DV magazine, which is one often read by pros, you will see that:

"CPU requirements are very steep." I can second that.

It seems from Apple's demo's that the requirements for Aperture are at least as high, as they are recommending at least a 1.25GHz cpu in a PB, and that it won't run (as Apple's reps told me) if your graphics board doesn't have 128MB RAM.

Lesson #2, lose vs. loose?

128 MB VRAM is steep but I think considering three of Apple's lines can run this program it's not that bad. Yeah it would be great if they would let iBook users have a go but the performance would probably be so that they don't want users having a bad user experience. Of course it could just be to drive new hardware sales! This program, unlike Motion, is designed for photo editing and therefore should be less processor intensive than video?

One thing I want to know is does this program have dual binaries.

It is. But that's why I can't understand why they are showing it ONLY on the new Quad Macs with dual 30" monitors, with most likely Nvidia Quadro boards that are a $1,650 upgrade. Someone else here who also went to the show and sat in the class as I did said that it seemed a bit slow on the dual cpu units with single 23" monitors we used there.

Apple could have also demoe'd it on a 20" iMac, and a 1.67GHz PM.

Don't you agree?

They seemed to be far more interested in pulling the high end photogs in than the little guy.

Each machine used for the demo was a $3,300 unit with, no doubt, several Gigs of RAM, a top of the line board, and two $2,500 monitors. What would be the cost? I get $11,150, not including tax or shipping. This includes 2GB RAM and the cost of the program itself.

Do you think that this was intended to appeal to guys who likely don't earn more than three or four times that, because most don't.

I'm not defensive, I'm realistic. How long have you been in the business?

If you read all the posts you would understand my position.

If you read my profile, you would know that I'm retired, I gain nothing from my posts in any financial sense.

Last year, my partner and I sold off most of the lab, and then closed the rest. I had had enough. I'll be 56 in Nov. and wanted to get out of the daily grind that was becoming increasingly more of a hassle. I now advise, consult, lecture, teach, and can do it on my own schedule instead of worrying about deadlines.

If anything, Aperture will give me another area to investigate. I already said that I would purchase it.

I could imagine that sort of file history mechanism integrated with something like Onlife's application history.

Highly doubtful Apple will ship any software products as universal binaries to non-developers before the first non-DTK Intel-based systems are available.

Don't put it past them.

You would think that it would need less oomph. But if you saw the way they were demoing and using it in the class room you might not think that. Everything was being done in real time, though the demo's were faster than the class, which had small, but noticeable delays. You would drag a photo, and it would take a fraction of a second before it followed your cursor. Something like when you resize a window in OS X on a slower machine. The quads didn't have this effect.

I don't think that there is any question that Apple has a universal binary for this. Whether the x86 part is ready yet is anyones guess.