I’ve always been a huge fan of Apple Computers. The first time I touched a computer was in the early 80’s when my folks brought home a state-of-the-art Apple IIE. Man, that thing was cool. BASIC programming language and hours of Castle Wolfenstein. Does it get any better?
Well of course it does. I’ve owned Macs my entire professional life and can’t imaging using anything else. I currently work on a number of different Mac laptops and hook my MacBook Pro up to a 30″ cinema display when I’m in my office
Over the past few years I’ve done some speaking for Apple both here in NYC and on national tours.
A few months ago I was fortunate enough to be invited along with 10 other photographers to the mother ship — Apple headquarters in Cupertino, CA. This photo was taken right out by the big “1″ in front of 1 Infinite Loop.
In the group were top photographers from the wedding, sports, photojournalism, and portraiture fields. They asked us about the state of the industry and what we need our software to do.
We were dubbed the Aperture Advisory Board.
Fast forward a few months. This week Apple announced the release of the newest version of it’s pro level photo software – Aperture 2.0. Many of the new features in there are a direct result of our feedback.
Not only am I happy to be a part of this elite group, but I’m thrilled that Apple actually listened to the needs of professional photographers. I sat down with the people who actually write the code and discussed the give-and-take that happens with every feature addition. I certainly have a new respect for the work that the software engineers do.
Aperture 2.0 is now a daily part of my workflow. The program boasts over 100 new features, but the biggest improvements are in image quality and speed. It can handle anything that I throw at it.
I used to believe that the camera manufacturer’s software would always do the best job decoding RAW files. I’m a changed man. The Apple team has worked incredibly hard to decode and decipher every bit and byte in the RAW files to make our images look their absolute best.
You can read all about Aperture and the new features here. They’ve also dropped the price to $199 (it was $499 when the program was first introduced!) and there’s even a free 30-day trial available.