Think Secret has Pictures of iWork ’07s new Spreadsheet App

Apple is expected to show off new versions of their iLife and iWork suites next Tuesday at MacWorld. iWork is rumored to gain a third app for spreadsheets, and Think Secret claims to have a screenshot and the icon to be used.

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Adobe Production Studio To Be Available for Both Mac and Windows

In a very surprising and rather unlikely move, Adobe announced that it’s next version of it’s Production Studio with be available for the Mac. What is interesting about this is that Adobe stopped Macintosh support after intense competition from Final Cut Pro. More more info read the following press release from Adobe.

Adobe’s Complete Video Post-Production Suite Goes Cross-Platform

(SAN JOSE, Calif. — Jan. 4, 2007) Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced that the next version of Adobe® Production Studio, the integrated video and audio post-production tool set that is part of the Creative Suite family, will be available for both the Macintosh and Windows® platforms. Film, video and web professionals currently using Adobe After Effects®, Adobe Photoshop® and Adobe Illustrator® on the Mac will soon be able to harness the power of completely new Macintosh releases of Adobe Premiere® Pro, Adobe Encore® DVD and Adobe Soundbooth™ — all key components of an upcoming milestone revision to Adobe Production Studio. The software will have its first public demonstration during the Macworld 2007 Conference and Exhibition at The Moscone Center in San Francisco, January 9 – 12 (Booth 901). The next release of Adobe Production Studio is expected to ship in mid-2007.

AJA Announces Changes In Executive Leadership to Support Increased Market Share

(CREATIVE COW – Grass Valley, CA — January 3, 2007) AJA Video Systems, a leading manufacturer of professional video interface and conversion solutions, has appointed Nick Rashby to President announced AJA founder and CEO John Abt. This appointment comes as AJA is experiencing unprecedented growth with near ubiquity of its KONA video cards among professional Mac editors, the debut of its growing XENA line for Windows, and its well established strength and innovation in the video converters market place. Nick Rashby, former AJA Director of Sales and Marketing, will oversee day to day operations of worldwide activities from the company’s headquarters in Grass Valley, CA.

“AJA is really hitting its stride, and in the years that he’s been with AJA, Nick has shown that he possesses the experience, skills and professional savvy to help take this company to the next level,” says Abt. “I will continue to remain actively involved, but with Nick as President, my time will be freed up to focus energies around engineering and product development.”

“AJA has truly become a force to be reckoned with within the industry, thanks to our great team of expert staff,” says Rashby. “The people here have always been the key to the success of this company along with, of course, a stellar line of products. I’m really excited to be in this new position, working with the people who have made AJA what it is today.”

Nick Rashby came to AJA just over three years ago, bringing with him a solid background in motion picture and video production, as well as channel sales servicing film and video professionals. After working with top film and video suppliers and integrators in both northern and southern California, Rashby served as Vice President of Sales at Runway Edit in Santa Monica, CA. Rashby joined AJA initially as the Sales Manager for Desktop products, and quickly was promoted to Director of Sales and Marketing. In his tenure, the company has successfully forged strategic relationships with companies such as Apple, Adobe, Avid, and Autodesk, and continues to pioneer the most innovative products servicing the professional video marketplace.

About AJA Video Systems, Inc.
Since 1993, AJA Video has been a leading manufacturer of high-quality and cost-effective digital video interface, conversion and Desktop solutions supporting the professional broadcast and post- production markets. With headquarters in Grass Valley, California, AJA maintains an extensive sales channel of dealers and systems integrators around the world. For further information, please see our website http://www.aja.com

Miami’s Dolphin Stadium, home of this year’s Super Bowl, installs the largest number of Panasonic 103″ Plasmas

(CREATIVE COW – Miami, FL — January 3, 2006) Miami’s Dolphin Stadium recently added eight 103″ full high definition professional plasma displays to its exclusive Club Level accommodations as part of a large-scale renovation and expansion. Offering fans a thrilling game viewing experience, Panasonic’s TH-103PF9UK provides a close-up view of the game on the field as well as other live sports broadcasts, so fans miss none of the fast-paced NFL action.

Mac Chick in Playboy

NSFW – (no nudity, but provocative) January’s Mac Chick.. a New York based model who has posed in many special edition issues of Playboy, in addition to being a total Mac Geek.

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The Blizzard of 2006!

Well it snowed and snowed and snowed over the last two days here in Denver. And needless to say we got a lot, and I mean a lot of snow. I have not found the exact total for my area yet, but it is well over two feet. Standing in the street the snow came to well above my knees.

Anyway wanted to share some pictures. I posted them on my .Mac account so you can use the cool Ajax slide show feature. They are nothing special, but there was so much snow I just wanted to share.

Here is the link and a quick preview (it’s my car by the way): http://web.mac.com/jpicune/iWeb/Site/2006%20Blizard.html

Photoshop CS3 on Intel Macs, Faster than a Cheetah on Speed!

Adobe just released the beta of Photoshop CS3 and already tons of preliminary benchmarks are starting to funnel in. CS3 is a very significant version of Photoshop for Mac users, because it is a universal binary that will run on Intel Macs. Before this beta, Photoshop users had to run previous versions in Rosetta, Apple’s PowerPC emulation software. This caused significant slow downs with Photoshop making it unpractical for professional work on an Intel Mac. But as the benchmarks are clearly showing, Photoshop CS3 is smoking on the new Intel Macs.

Several sites are reporting impressive numbers with CS3, especially on the Mac Pro. Some tests show up to a 70% improvement over a quad-core G5 running CS2.

Here is a summary of the preliminary Photoshop CS3 benchmarks:

MacRumors

Informal MacRumors.com benchmark testing was performed by various forum members with access to both Intel-based and PowerPC based systems and the beta Photoshop software using the RetouchArtists benchmarking test. These tests have shown significant improvement in Photoshop CS3 speeds vs. Photoshop CS2 speeds on Intel hardware.

The 2.66 GHz Mac Pro showed a nearly 60% speedup by upgrading to the CS3 beta. However, PowerPC systems appear to have not felt any boost in speed, and at least one PowerPC user had speeds actually decrease when upgrading to the CS3 beta.

Model	CS2 Time (s)	CS3 Beta Time (s)
Mac Pro 2.66 GHz, 2GB RAM	62	36
Quad G5 2.5 GHz, 5GB RAM	36	36
Quad G5 2.5 GHz, 2GB RAM	unavailable	4

Smaller time is better.

Bear Feats

1. CS3 is much improved in overall speed now that it runs in native mode on the Mac Pro. The MP6 test ran 41% faster and the Retouch Artists test ran 70% faster than CS2. The launch times improved as well.

2. The Mac Pro running CS3 is 86% faster than the Quad-Core G5 running our MP6 test (20 History States). However, it is only 10% faster running the Retouch Artists’ test (20 History States). That second stat is especially interesting when you take into account the Mac Pro’s 20% faster clock speed.

3. On the Quad-Core G5, Photoshop CS2 actually ran our benchmarks 2% to 5% faster than CS3.

CONCLUSION: We’ve waited many moons for the UB version of Photoshop. Mac Pro owners will appreciate the dramatically improved performance that CS3 offers. Now all we need is OS X “Leopard” so we can define a memory cache larger than 3GB.

ZFS Likely in Leopard

Although originally rumored several months ago, it appears as though Leopard will sport a new file system ZFS. Current development builds of Apples new OS reveal the ZFS formating options.

ZFS originally stood for “Zettabyte File System”, but now is just an acronym. It was devolved by Sun Microsystems for the Solaris Operating System. For more information on ZFS check out the Open Solaris site or the Wikipedia.

Proof of ZFS in Leopard was first reported by Mac 4 Ever, with the inclusion of a screen capture of the ZFS options.

Apparently there is a know bug in the current build of Leopard, and ZFS formating cannot be competed.

Timeline of Apple “iPhone” Rumors (1999-Present)

“Dec 14,1999: Apple acquires the domain name www.iphone.org, which to this day directs visitors to the main corporate page. April 16, 2001: Infosync posts the first photo of what many believe to be the iPhone. July 20, 2002: Apple CEO Steve Jobs downplays the prospect of an Apple PDA by explaining that Apple decided about 3 years ago…”

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iPhone on monday (december, 18)!!! [gizmodo knows it]

Brian Lam: I guarantee it. It isn’t what I expected at all. And I’ve already said too much.

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Play Almost Anything in QuickTime

We’ve all been there. We get a email from a friend with a funny video, that we just have to see. The problem is we can’t open it in QuickTime. Okay, no problem lets try VLC. Wait, it doesn’t work in VLC either, what now?

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MacHeist Bundle Now Available For Purchase!

For a full price of $49, or $39 if you’ve got all the discounts from the weekly heists, you can now but the bundle on MacHeist.com. The final list of apps is Delicious Library, FotoMagico, Shapeshifter, DEVONthink Personal, Disco, RapidWeaver, iClip 4, One Pangea Game, NewsFire, and TextMate, bringing the package’s value to $288.75.

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Apple Acquires Proximity

The following message was posted on Proximity’s web site;

We are pleased to announce that all Proximity technology and intellectual property, including artbox workgroup and artbox enterprise, was recently acquired by Apple.

Existing Proximity customers with current support contracts will be contacted by Apple with details regarding their specific agreements and support requirements.

We remain a dedicated leading provider of creative media asset management and production workflow software. Our cutting edge production workflow solutions are widely considered the defacto standard for the ingestion, retrieval, browsing, editing, management, cataloging and storage of broadcast rich-media assets. Proximity solutions empower the customer to Protect, leverage and extend media with the best-of-breed equipment available in broadcasting today.

Kevin Rose talks about the iPhone on diggnation

Kevin Rose talks about the iPhone on diggnation.

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The iPhone in January? Rumored Inside Information!

If you read the latest Geeky Mac blog post, you have probably checked out some really great a geeky Mac podcasts. One podcast that was not mentioned is called Diggnation. This mostly because it is not necessarily Mac based, but it does do cover a plethora of geeky tech stuff. According to MacRumors, Kevin Rose, one of the hosts, discussed some inside information that he had regarding the Apple iPhone.