Major Upgrade for Aperture

Apple has just released Aperture 2, "the next major release of its groundbreaking photo editing and management software with over 100 new features that make it faster, easier to use and more powerful. With a streamlined user interface and entirely new image processing engine, Aperture 2 also introduces new imaging tools for highlight recovery, colour vibrancy, local contrast definition, soft-edged retouching, vignetting and RAW fine-tuning, and lets users directly post their portfolios on the .Mac Web Gallery* for viewing on the web, iPhone™, iPod® touch and Apple TV®. At a new low price of £129 (inc VAT), anyone can easily organise, edit and publish photos like a pro."

A Closed Apple Store Hints At New Products

The US Apple Store is closed for the moment. So what could this mean? New touchy-trackpad MacBook Pros?

More new Apple products by the end of February?

AppleInsider seem to think so. MIRA Mobile, the company that streams and records Apples keynotes and events are 'soliciting staffers' for a date on or after the 21st. It could be 'Penryn' powered MacBooks. Who knows?

Vintage Nerd Porn on Flickr.

Look at this beauty. Someone found a 20 year-old, unopened Apple //c on eBay and here are the photos of it being unboxed for the first time. He's gonna give that computer a lot of lovin', I can tell. Thanks to Wired's Cult of Mac for digging this up.

Don't be a Victim of Bullying (on iTunes). You do have a choice.

Don't you just hate it? When you go to the iTunes Store for a track to discover that it's an 'album-only' purchase? This happens to me quite a lot. The other day I wanted to buy the Soulwax remix of Ready For The Floor by Hot Chip. But iTunes wanted me to buy the whole E.P. for £1.99. After a quick look on my favourite subscription music shop, eMusic ended in disappointment as they only have their first album (probably from when Hot Chip were on an indie label). But then I remembered receiving an email from EMI. I dug it out of Mail and found out that EMI sell all of their music through the 7digital store, as top-quality 320Kbps MP3s for 99p a track (much better than iTunes 256k AAC 79p files). Jurassic Park!
It seems that more and more music download sites are switching from restricted WMAs to universally acceptable MP3s every day. I despise the fact that Apple still sells AAC files that don't play on anything other than an iPod. I recently bought my six year-old daughter a cheap Creative Zen Stone and spent hours in Audio Hijack re-recording her iTunes purchases and then re-encoding them as MP3s just so she could listen to them. In fact it annoyed me so much that I changed my iTunes preferences to encode my CDs as MP3 insted of Apple's AAC Format. Apple still have the best music store. You really have to spend hours trawling through eMusic and 7digital to find what you're after. But as an increasing ammount of record companies wake up to the fact that restricting music is a wate of time, I just wish that Apple would take note and give up on the whole freeplay AAC file format altogether as customers choose unrestricted quality over ease of use.

Duffy Live at Regent Street on the 15th Feb.

Gorgeous newcomer, Duffy - who's about to steal Amy Winehouse's crown (the singing crown, not the booze and drugs one)- will be the next artiste to play live at the flagship Store. Best get to the Apple Store before eight to join the queue as she's on at nine pm.

iPhone and iPod touch storage increase.

Today Apple have added a 16GB iPhone and 32GB iPod touch to their line-up. These join the models already available so you're gonna have to pay for the extra disk space I'm afraid. The new 16GB iPhone costs £329, and joins the 8GB model at £269. The 32GB iPod touch is £329, joining the 16GB model for £269 and the 8GB model for £199. Whatever happened to Moore's Law?

Before I forget - The MacBook Airs have finally made it over the pond and are in at the Regent Street Apple Store! They look quite small compared to the others. The MacBooks look as brick-like as the 4th Gen iPod did when the video iPods came out.

Jon Doty makes his own iMac.

Here's the poor man's way to get an all-in-one: strap a Mac mini to the back of a cheap monitor. Jon Doty explains how he did it for $50 on his site.
Why he feels the need to hide a beautifully designed product behind a cheap black plastic monitor beats me.

MacBook Air is shipping but AppleTV users will have to wait.

Straight from the Apple PR Horse's mouth:

Apple® today announced that MacBook Air™, the world’s thinnest notebook, is now shipping. MacBook Air measures an unprecedented 0.16-inches at its thinnest point, while its maximum height of 0.76-inches is less than the thinnest point on competing notebooks. Apple also announced that the new Apple TV® software update is not quite finished. Apple now plans to make the free software download available to existing Apple TV customers in another week or two.

MacBook Air has a stunning 13.3-inch LED-backlit widescreen display, a full-size and backlit keyboard, a built-in iSight® video camera for video conferencing, and a spacious trackpad with multi-touch gesture support so users can pinch, rotate and swipe. MacBook Air is powered by a 1.6 GHz or 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 4MB L2 cache, and includes as standard features 2GB of memory, an 80GB 1.8-inch hard drive, and the latest 802.11n Wi-Fi technology and Bluetooth 2.1.

Pricing & Availability
The new MacBook Air is now shipping and will be available through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com/ukstore), Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorised Resellers for a suggested retail price of £1,199 (inc VAT), and includes:
• 13.3-inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen display with 1280x800 resolution;
• 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 4MB L2 cache;
• 800 MHz front-side bus;
• 2GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM;
• 80GB hard disk drive with Sudden Motion Sensor;
• Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100;
• Micro-DVI port (includes Micro-DVI to VGA and Micro-DVI to DVI Adapters);
• built-in iSight video camera;
• built-in AirPort Extreme® 802.11n wireless networking and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR;
• one USB 2.0 port;
• one headphone port;
• multi-touch TrackPad with support for advanced multi-touch gestures including tap, scroll, pinch, rotate and swipe; and
• 45 Watt MagSafe® Power Adapter.

Build-to-order options and accessories for MacBook Air include the ability to upgrade to a 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor; 64GB solid state drive, MacBook Air SuperDrive®, Apple USB Ethernet Adapter, Apple USB Modem, Apple MagSafe Airline Adapter, Apple Remote and the AppleCare Protection Plan. Additional build-to-order options also include pre-installed copies of iWork™ ‘08, Logic® Express 8, Final Cut® Express 4 and Aperture™ 1.5.

The new Apple TV software will be available as a free automatic download to all Apple TV customers within two weeks. Apple TV, which includes the Apple Remote, is available from the Apple Store (www.apple.com/ukstore), Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorised Resellers for a suggested retail price of £199 (inc VAT) for the 40GB model and £269 (inc VAT) for the 160GB model. Apple TV requires an 802.11g/n wireless network or 10/100 Base-T Ethernet networking, a broadband Internet connection and a high definition widescreen TV. iPod® games will not play on Apple TV. iTunes Movie Rentals are available in the US only.

*Movie rentals work on iPod classic, iPod nano with video and iPod touch.

Skateboard comes to iPhone and iPod touch.

This looks like quite an interesting use of the touchscreen. It's a game called Finger Fracture from trainer maker Vans. You choose a pair of Vans and each pair give you different 'rad' moves on a skateboard. It's what those advertising people call an 'advergame'. Rumour has it that Burger King are also developing gameverts(that sounds better) for the iPhone and touch. Could this be the begining of the end for the PSP? Read all about it on Brand Republic