Special Apple NAB event

The well publicised Apple special event at NAB is still scheduled for April 17th. Dubbed by Apple as "The Production Value of HD" pundits are speculating that the announcement will herald a new version of Final Cut Studio plus some new hardware, most likely the new Octo Mac Pro with 4 processors. I've been watching the Leopard sessions from last year now that they are available via iTunes. There's a ton of stuff being added to Leopard across the board but also including the imaging and media handling components. Now the general concensus was that the new versions of iLife and iWork were pulled from MacWorld due to the heavy reliance on Leopard technology. So why would Final Cut Studio be ant different? What's the odds on Apple not releasing a new version of Final Cut Studio before Leopard is out of the gate? I would think quite high? Could it be we may see some Leopard goodness at NAB? Perhaps it will just be a hardware launch. Very interesting times! If they do pull Final Cut Studio until after Leopard, this baby will be creating a massive head of steam. How the heck will they manage to launch so much new stuff in one go?

Technorati Tags: Apple, Leopard, NAB2007

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Apple TV Hacks

Wow! This little device seems more open than I ever thought it would be! Checkout this site - Apple TV Hacks - for info on some of the things people are finding out! Remote Desktop on Apple TV
Upgrading the Hard Drive
Apache running on Apple TV
Enabling SSH & AFP on your Apple TV
Backrow
VLC on Apple TV
And that's just after a few days! Something fishy here though - why would Apple leave it so hackable? Also, If a few hackers can come up with this in a few days, what will be built into Leopard to take advantage of the obvious intelligence in the box? And as for that USB being for "servicing" only - well check out Ricky Tomlinsons catch phrase. PS No RSS feed on Apple TV Hacks - poor show

Technorati Tags: Apple TV, Leopard

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Just what is Leopard?

Paul Thurrott makes an interesting observation on a recent post on the flurry of timing related questions surrounding Leopard and when it's going to make an appearance. His take is that we're asking the wrong question! Gotta say, that I fully agree with him. We're now nearly at the end of March and we still don't have a clue about the final contents of Leopard. All that super secret stuff is still super secret! Speculation about touch screen support, a new GUI, the use of the USB port on the Apple TV, the unknown components within iLife 07 and iWork 07 relying on Leopard, how time machine will work.... the list goes on and on. Yet we are still no wiser since the last WWDC preview as to exactly what the finished Leopard will either look like or what final features it will contain. The excuse used by Steve at the last WWDC was to keep things secret so M$ didn't copy them. Probably tongue in check but Vista has been out the door for a few months and realistically, M$ would have not been able to incorporate any new features for the last 6 months. So what's the deal? How are the developers coping? Sure, they have access to some of the new core components within Leopard that have been mad public but what about the secret stuff- is this going to be reserved for Apple software only? I for one, certainly expected the secret stuff to be announced at MacWorld but Leopard was not even mentioned by name - not once! So we're still on for a Spring release and none the wiser. Now I thought the iPhone secrecy was pretty damm impressive but I get the feeling that Leopard will be of the same magnitude. When you see a three hour special event announced, you'll know that's the Leopard release event and I can't wait!

Technorati Tags: MacWorld 2007, Leopard

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The Twitter Effect

Twitter is rapidly turning into a micro blogging tool and as such is having a detrimental effect on my blog and probably countless others. Whilst it's great to tweet(!) it's very much of the moment and shouldn't replace traditional blogging. So I'm going to make an effort to spend a bit more time on my blog and post a bit more frequently.

Technorati Tags: twitter

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Mac Podcasters Meetup Video

Well here's a surprise! You may remember I got asked onto the Mac Podcasters panel at MacWorld in San Fransisco back in January. This was a special event at the Apple store put together by Adam Christianson of the Maccast. The panel consisted of many Mac podcast luminaries including Leo Laporte, Alex Lindsey, Merlin Mann, StuFF mc, and many others. It was a bit weird to be in such esteemed company. Now it transpires that there is a video of the proceedings and StuFF mc of the Pomcast has hosted the video on his website. So if you want to check out the video, nip across to Pomcast.com: Thanks StuFF mc

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