PC Makers bring the Shizzle. Apple yawns.

While the netbook category continues to broaden and now develop new spin-offs, Apple continues to twiddle its thumbs. In an age where Apple is all about consumer electronics more so than professional production solutions (i.e. just one) this type of decision just doesn’t make sense.

However they confirmed their stance during their July 21st 3rd quarter fiscal conference call pretty much laid rumors to rest with some pretty strong language.

Apple’s new Final Cut Studio – DVD Studio Pro gone?

One copious absence from Apple’s latest Final Cut Studio upgrade (touting over 100 new features) is any mention of DVD Studio Pro… or ANY disk authoring program at all.

TV from the Moon

While NASA is recreating the entire Apollo 11 mission to the moon via a web portal, there is other information surfacing that, not only has NASA recovered the original downlink videotapes from the mission (instead of the blurry kinescopes of the actual first step on the moon) there’s also information on the web that describes, in laborious and scientific minutiae the details that enabled the live television broadcast from the moon itself.

What format did the camera use, how was it converted for broadcast, what antennas were used and a whole lot more. Great reading for those gearheads out there. 

Apple, Video Pros & the future.

It’s pretty clear that Apple dropping “computer” from their name was not just to use less ink. They’ve been behind the curve with the hardware for many years. Case in point: after PCs have had a SD card slot for many years, Apple finally decides to integrate this functionality into their laptops (but not desktops.)

But, in so doing, they ditch the ExpressCard slot from the 15″ MacBook “Pro” and specifically make the SD card slot not compatible with I/O devices so it can’t be used to expand the computer. wtf?

So now, the 17″ MacBook Pro is the only expandable laptop from Apple- for a starting price of $2500.
If I’m going to spend that much, I’ll buy a Lenovo 17″ (starting at $1,900) that offers me the capability of a quad-core chip, dual internal LCD displays, integrated Wacom tablet, Pantone color calibration of the displays, fingerprint reader for mobile security, internal Blu-ray, integrated cellular broadband, and more.

There were times, back when Apple didn’t have today’s market share, that they produced computers that were affordable, and wildly expandable. They strong to be what the other guys weren’t. They thought differently. That gave us the G3, the G4 towers. It gave us the G3 series PowerBooks with dual media bays, in addition to the PC card slot. That emphasis on providing users with innovative solutions ahead of the pack is gone.

Flash photos & CMOS video.

There’s a recent event in Texas where one lucky soul won a new Mazda Miata.

However, the video is marred by hundreds of weird partial frames of brightness, from flashes. Why?

A CMOS shutter in the video camera.

Do you want your video to look like this?

(video after the break)