In case you haven’t noticed, CnetNews ran a story this week asking which is better, Aperture or Lightroom? Photoshopnews.com pubished a link to this article and subsequently run a further story questioning whether this was a legitimate poll or not. See: CNET Aperture/Lightroom Poll Skewed? However, further doubts about the reliability of this poll have been raised by reader Walterny, who has made some interesting observations about the apparent static nature of the published poll percentages. Editor’s note: on Sunday afternoon this was showing Aperture 64.2%, Lightroom 35.8%, with 8002 votes cast. Here is what Walterny had to say:

I found myself a bit bored yesterday so was reading various web pages. My home page is Apples start page. One of the links is to a CNET “review” of an Apple photographic software product vs an Adobe equivalent product.

http://www.news.com/8301-13580_3-9875221-39.html?part=dht&tag=nl.e703

Titled “Which is better: Aperture or Lightroom?” it states:

“That’s what Stephen Shankland (c|net news) wants to know, and he’d like your help. “With the new Aperture 2 now available and Lightroom just celebrating its first birthday, I thought it opportune to survey readers. What would you buy? What would you advise somebody else?” The polls are open.”

So I clicked it and read the review. And noticed the poll. I’m not a user of either software. I noticed that Apple was ahead 64.3% to Adobe’s 35.7% with some 2000 plus votes cast. I was feeling mischievous and voted for Adobe, then looked at the results. I also realized that I could vote over and over. So I did. Some 350 times. And all for Adobe. But the strange thing was that while I saw the vote count rise slowly, the percentages of Apple and Adobe remained the same. And I kept refreshing the poll results to see a trend in how the number of votes increased. It was always in a defined time frame. I checked later on that night and noticed that with over 4000 votes there was only 1/10th of a percent difference in the results than earlier in the day. Now it was 64.4% to 35.6%.

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Ian writes:
If you’re having problems with Leopard not being able to render a thumbnail, previews in CoverFlow, etc etc etc or worse (i.e worse = Finder is crashing not relaunching!) then try the following:

1. Select the image in Bridge or open it into Photoshop

2. Select “File Info” command from the File menu

3. Select the Advanced panel

4. Check for the presence of the metadata nameset http://ns.adobe.com/camera-raw-saved-settings/1.0/ (this is NOT a hypelink, so so don’t click it -see attached screenshot)

5. If above is present it’s likely the cause of the problem.

What do you do next?

You can hope that Apple changes Finder/CoverFlow so that it can handle this particular metadata nameset in JPEG, TIFF and PSD files.

Alternatively, you can delete the nameset using the Delete button in File Info (see screenshot below). The nameset is used to store the Lightroom “Snapshot” data, so deleting it from non Raw files shouldn’t lose you anything.

‘Jao’ writes:
“I think that part probably does not get written if you check minimize metadata in the export dialog.”

To which Ian replies:
It’s not written at all during file export. The metadata gets written to file when you Save it to file (Cmd+S) or if you have “Automatically write changes into XMP” active, but ONLY if “Include Develop settings in metadata inside JPEG, TIFF, and PSD files” prefernce is also active. You can switch this preference OFF from within the “Catlog Setting” dialog – “Metadata” tab.

Source: PC World
Written by Eric Dahl

With Microsoft’s Windows Vista finally released to manufacturers and on the verge of making its way to retail, we can at last get down to the business of examining precisely how well the new OS performs. In our first tests, we discovered that while Vista’s hardware requirements may be steep, it should run just fine–even with the Aero bells and whistles active–on machines that meet Microsoft’s Premium Ready specifications (1GB of RAM, and a DirectX 9-capable graphics board with at least 128MB of dedicated memory).
We installed the RTM (release to manufacturing) Vista Ultimate code on desktop and notebook systems of varying specs and ages, and then we ran a series of benchmarks to answer several key questions about Vista’s impact on performance. Our main findings:

• Vista is generally slower than XP, but it’s better at multitasking on dual-core PCs.
• Your PC should have 1GB of RAM at the bare minimum.
• Aero won’t slow you down if you use a discrete graphics processor and enough memory.
• Apps run slower on the 64-bit version of Vista, but adding RAM closes the gap.

Our conclusions here aren’t the last word on Vista performance, however: When we conducted our tests in November, graphics companies were still fine-tuning their drivers (for example, we decided to drop our Doom 3 gaming tests because ATI’s drivers didn’t yet support that game’s OpenGL graphics API).

Another note: Since we used updated, Vista-compatible versions of our Photoshop and multitasking tests from the beta of WorldBench 6, the results are not comparable with those for XP systems tested under WorldBench 5.
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Source: PC World
Written by Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service

After five years and numerous delays, customers can now get their hands on the final version of the Windows Vista operating system.

Well, business customers can at least. Though Microsoft celebrated the launch of Vista–as well as Office 2007 and Exchange 2007–at events across the globe today, both Vista and Office 2007 won’t be generally available through retail in the U.S. until January 30, 2007. Today marked the day business customers could purchase those products through Microsoft’s volume licensing program.

And though business customers can begin ordering Exchange 2007 today, the new version of Microsoft’s messaging server software won’t be released to manufacturing until the end of December.

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Apple Computer on Tuesday released a security update for Mac OS X to repair 31 vulnerabilities, including a zero-day Wi-Fi hijack flaw.

Apple’s Security Update 2006-007 includes fixes for flaws in Apple’s own code as well as third-party components that ship with the Mac OS X operating system, such as Perl, PHP and OpenSSL. Several of the vulnerabilities could allow full system compromises, according to Apple’s security alert.

John went on to say: “This is pretty great news.  I mean, when’s the last time you got a free update that made your machine 35% faster at something?  Our engineering and QE folks worked closely with Apple as the new code was developed, testing frequent drops for compatibility and performance.  (See, it’s knowing/doing this kind of thing that makes me flip out when people start making up nonsense.)”

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Other issues addressed:

-Handling of large Canon RAW files (.CRW)
-DNG compatibility on Intel-based Macs
-Lines sometimes appearing in images exported from Aperture

Digital Camera RAW Update 1.01 (PPC)
Digital Camera RAW Update 1.01 (Universal)

Source: CNET
Written by Tom Krazit

Originally scheduled to launch next year, the new Xeon 5300 and Core 2 Extreme QX6700 should make an immediate dent in servers and in high-end workstation/enthusiast PCs. In those markets, users can take advantage of software that’s already been written to exploit four separate processing threads.

The usual suspects plan to use Intel’s chips in their latest products. Dell jumped the gun last week with the announcement of new quad-core systems, including new servers and workstations. Word broke of IBM’s proposed quad-core offerings last Thursday. And Hewlett-Packard is expected to follow suit on Tuesday with its own servers and workstations featuring the new Xeon chips.

PCs from Dell, Gateway, Velocity Micro and others with the new Core 2 Extreme QX6700 processor should also start to appear in time for the holiday shopping season. That chip is beyond the needs of most PC users, and it generally falls outside their budgets as well, at a price of $999. But certain PC enthusiasts are always excited about the prospect of having the fastest PC processor on earth for a short time, which Intel’s QX6700 will be until AMD releases a competing chip.

Mainstream PC users won’t see the benefits of the quad-core processors for some time–well into next year, at the earliest–but Intel can a least claim a “first,” after several years of trailing AMD at seemingly every turn.

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Editor’s Note: At this time there are no hard indications that Apple will be releasing workstations with these chips, but industry expections are that Apple will adopt them for high-end workstations in their MacIntel lineup soon.

Source: BetaNews
Written by Ed Oswald and Nate Mook

“It’s time!” And with that simple blog post, Windows head Jim Allchin has heralded the arrival of Windows Vista. Microsoft said Wednesday that it has released the next-generation operating system to manufacturing, capping a more than five-year development effort.

Volume license customers will get their hands on the final release -build number 6000- this month, while the public launch of Vista is scheduled for January 30, 2007. The release to manufacturing of Vista will allow PC and device makers as well as developers finalize work on hardware and software in preparation for its formal debut.

The release of Vista will initially come in five languages including French, Spanish and Japanese that have already received final approval. The English version was signed off Wednesday morning, Jim Allchin said in an afternoon conference call.

“Windows Vista is built to be our most reliable operating system yet,” release manager and director of program management Sven Hallauer said. “We used new development methodologies that helped us build more secure and reliable software.”

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The release of Adobe’s Creative Suite 3.0 professional software package next year will be a catalyst for new sales of Apple Computer’s Intel-based Macintosh computers, according to one Wall Street analyst.

PiperJaffray senior research analyst Gene Munster recently spoke with 50 Adobe customers and found that 24 percent expect to buy a new Mac within two quarters of the release of Adobe’s CS3. Due by April of 2007, CS3 will represent the first version of the creative software bundle that is fully optimized for Apple’s Intel-based Macs.

“The bottom line is that there is significant pent-up demand for Intel-based Macs among the Adobe creative pro community,” Munster wrote in a research note. “Adobe creative pro customers cannot run their Adobe apps at full effiency on an Intel-based Mac until CS3 is released, so many are waiting until that time to upgrade their machines.”

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