At OSCON, I was asking James Duncan Davidson about photo processing software. He told me that he had tried most of the programs available for the Mac and that they were all inadequate. That was yesterday. Today Apple announced Aperture, which they describe as "the first all-in-one post-production tool for photographers". After watching the videos on the Aperture pages, all I can say is Wow.

I never really looked at Final Cut Pro (not even the web pages), because I'm not a video guy. But I am a budding photo guy, and I am really impressed with what I saw. I have tried to do many of the workflows that were demonstrated in the Aperture videos - they are painful or impossible in iPhoto. The user interface appears to be well thought out, and there are definitely features that will really be useful - stacks, picks, rejects, the light table, the management stuff, versions against a master RAW "negative". And it supports the Digital Rebel XT (finally). I haven't spent any time adjusting my photos, so I don't know if I really need Photoshop grade manipulation facilities. But I'm already drowning in lots of photos, trying to do selects, trying to do decent library management. I have all the problems that Aperture is trying to solve. I'm sure there will be bugs, and quirks. But on the whole, it looks like it will be very fun to use.

After I get the hardware, that is. My PowerBook just makes the cut for systems that can run Aperture. The hardware requirements are why it made (some) sense that Apple also announced their hardware speed bumps and price cuts today. When you are working with lots of RAWs, then it's easy to see the need for dual or even quad G5's. Doing image manipulations? Then you need fast GPU's for CoreImage. If you're using your computer to replace/simulate a light table, your thoughts start to stray to 30" Cinema Displays. And so it goes.

This is when it's painful to know that there's a product transition to Intel. I was already in pain waiting for the Intel gear. I have a feeling that Aperture is going to make that wait excruciating. At least Apple should be able to do the quad core thing on Intel as well. Only 10 more months of pain...

If you're the kind of person that leaves things to the last minute, and you are interested in attending the first (we hope of many) Seattle Mind Camp, then don't wait any longer. We had a planning meeting tonight (I attended via Skype), and we are over half full.

People are starting to put ideas for sessions up on the wiki, and Andru has posted a few pictures of the awesome space. The wireless for the event is going to be done by Seattle Wireless, and I heard that they are really stoked to be doing this. They hope to surpass the record for the largest olsr mesh network.

Events like this are only as good as the people who come, so please register if you are interested in attending. If you are already registered, please pass the word to your friends.

[via Ubuntu ]:

Last week the Ubuntu folks released their latest version, which had the code name "Breezy Badger". A few weeks before I switched my Hoary box over to Breezy, just by changing the sources in my apt sources list, and letting apt-get do its thing. I expected the upgrade to be painless since that's been my experience on the various Debian boxes that I am running. One thing that I didn't expect was the the sound on my Shuttle box started working after I did the upgrade. I didn't even have to re-run the installer.