Leopard Officially Delayed until October

Apple Statement- April 12, 2007

www.apple.com—hotnews

iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is. However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard's features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait. Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we're sure we've made the right ones.

What about iLife/iWork?

Will we see new Macs?

Final Cut Studio 2 Released at NAB

www.apple.com—15fcstudio.html

Apple unveiled on Final Cut Studio 2 at NAB this past Sunday, its production suite for film editors. The Suite includes Final Cut Pro 6, Soundtrack 2, Compressor 3, Motion 3 and a new application called Color.

Final Cut Pro 6 introduces a new format, Apple's ProRes 422. ProRes 422 is a new full raster video post production format that produces HD quality at Standard Definition file sizes, making it ideal for working efficiently across a network or on a MacBook Pro in the field, according to Apple.

The new application, Color, brings advanced color correction tools.

Motion 3 takes all the familiar Motion tools and extends them to a 3D environment including new camera behaviors, vector based paint tools, new retiming behaviors, and new audio behaviors allow users to easily create animations that respond to soundtrack volume and frequency. Motion 3 also includes over 1500 new design elements including professional stock imagery, animated line drawings and vector artwork.

Soundtrack Pro 2 features new multitrack editing and recording tools with a heads up spotting display that lets editors precisely align effects and dialog with picture. New management tools enable editors to quickly combine pieces of the best takes and stereo and surround mixing tools enable users to create 5.1 and stereo mixes. Also included is royalty-free library of over 5,000 professionally produced foley and sound effects. A new Conform tool enables users to synchronize and track changes between picture and sound editorial.

Compressor 3 the encoding tool features new streamlined interface and simplified workflows. Compressor 3 extends support for industry-standard codecs such as MPEG-2 and H.264 and includes presets for delivery to broadcast television, web, iPod, Apple TV™, DVD and mobile phones.

Final Cut Studio 2 will be available in May for $1,299. Registered users of the current version of Final Cut Studio can upgrade for $499 and registered users from any previous version of Final Cut Pro can upgrade for $699

Final Cut Server Released at NAB

www.apple.com—15fcserver.html

New server application that works seamlessly with Final Cut Studio 2 to provide media asset management and workflow automation for post production and broadcast professionals. Final Cut Server is a scaleable server application that supports workgroups of any size, includes a cross-platform client that enables content browsing, automatically catalogs large collections of assets and enables searching across multiple volumes . Final Cut Server is designed to manage the flow of work, as assets and projects move from producer to editor to artist through the entire production process.

Final Cut Server will be available this summer for $999 for one server and 10 concurrent client licenses, and $1,999 for one server and unlimited client licenses.

MGM Movies now in iTunes

www.apple.com—11itunes.html

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. and Apple have announced that MGM is now offering titles from its catalog of feature films for purchase on the iTunes Store. It appears that the offerings are mainly library titles such as “Dances With Wolves,” “Mad Max,” “The Great Train Robbery” and “Rocky,” although Apple claims that other titles will be added in the coming weeks.

According to Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes, more than two million movies have been downloaded from the iTunes Store and the iTunes film catalog now has over 500 movies.

Adobe Ships Creative Suite 3

Adobe announced this week that it has begun shipping Creative Suite 3. As of now, Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium and Standard editions and Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium and Standard editions are available along with new standalone versions of Adobe Photoshop CS3, Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended, Adobe InDesign CS3, Adobe Illustrator CS3, Adobe Flash CS3 Professional, Adobe Dreamweaver CS3, Adobe Fireworks CS3, and Adobe Contribute CS3.

Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production Premium, and Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collection are expected to ship in the third quarter of 2007.

www.macworld.com—index.php

Adobe Offers Previews of After Effects CS3 Professional and Premiere Pro

After Effects CS3 Professional

Adobe has also released public betas of Premiere Pro and After Effects for Windows and Mac users. Adobe announced earlier this year that it would bring Premiere, their professional grade video editing software, back to the Mac.

After Effects CS3 is also available as a public beta from Adobe. After Effects includes several new features including Shape Layers and the Puppet tool. After Effects will be available as a standalone product, or as a component of Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production Premium and Master Collection software in mid-2007.

The betas are now available from Adobe Labs.

labs.adobe.com

Adobe demos new Media Player

www.macworld.com—index.php

Adobe has developed its first cross-platform application based on the Apollo codebase. Adobe Media Player will be available at an unspecified time this year as a free download in its beta version, while general availability is expected before the end of the year. Among its features are a high-quality Flash playback, full screen playback, viewer ratings and a “favorites” feature that automatically downloads content of users’ liking.

Adobe wasn't the only one with a new Media Player. Microsoft also demoed it's new player Silverlight which is compatible with Macs and PCs. According to Microsoft, it provides interactive web capabilities similar to Flash and works with streaming video in a manner superior to QuickTime. Microsoft said it will provide beta copies of Silverlight later this month.

www.macworld.com—index.php

Office 2004 Users to get XML Converters in May

apcmag.com—office_2004_users_to_get_beta_office_2007_xml_converters_next_month

According to APC Magazine, Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit is on track for next month's release of a beta set of converters which will translate Office 2007's native ‘Open XML' file format to the traditional Office for Mac binary equivalents. MacBU marketing manager Amanda Lefebvre confirmed the current timetable to ship "beta converters later this spring". With the US spring ending in May, this will deliver Mac users a solution sometime next month.

WWDC Keynote Scheduled for June 11th

developer.apple.com—monday_am.html

Apple's WWDC pages have been updated to include information about the keynote presentation. The 2007 Worldwide Developers Conference Keynote will take place on Monday morning, June 11th 2007 and start at 9am Pacific. According to the published schedule, the keynote is scheduled to run 90 minutes.

iPhone Rumors

www.businessweek.com—tc20070413_247721.htm

Businessweek is reporting that the iPhone may be delayed until the end of June rather than the June 11th date we've heard that falls at the beginning of WWDC. According to the magazine, various iPhone suppliers have been told that the iPhone may not be available until the end of June, apparently the iPhone is proving to be somewhat more difficult to build than initially expected.

AppleInsider is reporting that Apple is seriously considering a $50- $150 rebate for customers who purchase the iPhone.

www.appleinsider.com—apple_seriously_considering_iphone_rebate_subsidy_report.html

Rumors resurface of iTunes Subscription service

According to AppleInsider, executives for the big four music companies reportedly believe a subscription service could prove more lucrative for them than Apple's current 99 cent a-la-carte and $9.99 album download model and plan to ask Apple to launch a subscription based service.

Reports that Apple would adopt a subscription model on its iTunes Store have been making the rounds over the last two years but have never proved substantial. The most recent of those reports surfaced last week, when CNN's Media Biz website cited an industry executive as saying he believed the iPod maker would oblige the music industry within the next six months.

New Get A Mac Ads

www.apple.com—getamac

Stuffed- PC comes stuffed with "bloatware"

Flashback - "Let me calculate how much time you've wasted..."

Computer Cart- PC gets taken in for repair.

Adobe After Effects CS3 Preview

Requirements:

labs.adobe.com—aftereffectscs3

• PowerPC G4 or G5 or multicore Intel processor
• Mac OS X v.10.4.9
• 1GB of RAM for DV; 2GB of RAM for HDV and HD
• 3GB of available hard-disk space plus 2GB of space for optional content (additional free space required during installation)
• 1024x768 monitor resolution with 32-bit video card; Adobe recommended graphics card for GPU-accelerated playback
• For OpenGL support: Adobe After Effects supported OpenGL 2.0 card (NVIDIA recommended)
• DVD-ROM drive
• QuickTime 7.1.5 software required to use QuickTime features
• Internet or phone connection required for product activation
• Broadband Internet connection required for Adobe Stock Photos and other services

Adobe Premier Pro

Requires:

labs.adobe.com—premierecs3

• Multicore Intel processor
• Mac OS X v.10.4.8 or 10.4.9 (note, only English-language operating systems have been tested for this public preview)
• 1GB of RAM; 2GB of RAM for HDV and HD
• 10GB of available hard-disk space (additional free space required during installation)
• Dedicated 7,200 RPM hard drive for DV and HDV editing; striped disk array storage (RAID 0) for HD; SCSI disk subsystem preferred
• 1,280x960 monitor resolution with 32-bit video card
• Core Audio compatible sound card
• DVD-ROM drive
• Blu-ray burner required for Blu-ray Disc creation
• SuperDrive for DVD burning
• QuickTime 7 required to use QuickTime features
• Internet or phone connection required for product activation
• Broadband Internet connection required for Adobe Stock Photos* and other services

Airfoil 2.0.7

www.rogueamoeba.com—airfoil

With Airfoil, you can send any audio right through your AirPort Express from any other audio application on your mac. This new version features improved connectivity with AirPort Express units, and the SoundFlower component powering System Audio capture has been updated to version 1.2.1.