Apple has refreshed it’s entire iMac Line, with a 4K 21.5 inch and all 27 inch models now 5K

Apple has refreshed it’s entire iMac line. They all sport Thunderbolt 2 ports, and there is now a 21.5 inch 4K display (Starting at $1499), and they have made all 27 Inch Models 5K (at $1799-2299)! AWESOME!

And they have upgraded their wireless keyboards, mice and touchpads with rechargeable batteries with a month life that charge and pair using lightning cables.

The iMacs are pretty exciting as editing machines, especially with Thunderbolt. I would still prefer NVIDIA graphics over the AMD that Apple now uses across it’s line, but they are still good cards.

Light L16 Camera


Not a video camera (though it will shoot 4K video), but a new type of camera, that offers features like the Lytro (being able to refocus an image after you take it) using new technology has been announced, the L16 from Light. I first red about it at RedShark News.

This is basically a flat camera body with 16 tiny lenses with different focal lengths and light sensitivity mounted sidways with 45 degree mirrors, and in any one photo 10 of the lenses fire and advanced computational power combines them to create an over 50 mega pixel image. And if you zoom with the touch screen, it fires more long lenses to create a zoomed image, and while everything will be in focus to begin with you can then refocus using their software.

Sounds like some very cool tech, thought a bit pricy at $1699 ($1299 if you pre-order with a $200 downpayment), and it does seem pretty large in all the videos. Not like a smart phone, but certainly smaller than a DSLR.

I will be very interested in seeing how this actually performs when it comes out!

Apple iOS 9 Content blockers leaves iPhone 5 and 5 C out in the cold

The ability to add content blockers to your browser in iOS 9 was one of my most looked forward to features, but though Apple doesn’t mention it, all the apps for content blocking leave out the iPhone 5C as well as the iPad 3 which can both take iOS 9. It makes me wonder what else is left off of the earlier devices. I am betting that the ability to keep playing a video on the iPad doesn’t work on the iPad 3, but will have to test and 3 as soon as I can get my wife to upgrade my old iPad 3.

Finally someone else si also getting my “system_profiler quit unexpectedly” crashes in OS X

For a while now I have been getting “system_profiler quit unexpectedly” crashes in OS X, and I get them a lot, but have not always been able to figure out why. I have a thread at Apple discussions on it, and finally someone else has run into the error.

And the thing we both have in common is that we both have PC NVIDIA cards as our Graphics cards, so it is quite possible that this is the issue. The other user has reported this as a bug to apple, but since we are not using approved video cards it will likely be ignored.

He also has a temporary solution, to disable the system profiler app, but this seems excessive in case you need the system profiler, but if it keeps bothering me I might try it.

sudo chmod -x /usr/sbin/system_profile (To revert this, use “+x” instead)

This is really an annoyance, and sometimes happens a lot in rapid succession, so I really do wish I could figure out a permanent solution to this problem.

Gave the Vivaldi Browser a try and so far I really like it

After Mozilla’s wrongheaded announcement that they are giving up their whole plug in architecture for Chrome Style plug ins, I had been up in the air about what browser I want to use in the future. Sure Chrome is fast, but I hate that it is Google and everything you do is basically going through Google, which is the second reason I prefer Firefox, and though it was time to try some other options. Now I don’t like Safari much even with it’s newer features, and I never was a big Opera fan, especially of late, but on that count there is something newer, Vivaldi.

Vivaldi is a new browser from one of the founders of Opera that focuses on Power User features and customization and it has built in Tree Style Plug ins.

As you can see, Tree Style Tabs are on the left or right so they don’t take up precious vertical browsing space. I used to always use Tab Mix Plus to have multiple tab rows, but that takes up a lot of your vertical browsing space, and Tree Style seems a much more elegant solution on todays computers with wide screen displays.

So far it is a pretty impressive browser. It will import your Firefox Bookmarks, though it’s drag and drop bookmarks feature seems a little funky as it seems to reverse order of dragged folders. It has Sync across computings (or will soon), an adaptive interface that changes color based on the site you are on, it will have an e-mail client built in, and it is very fast.

It uses Opera and Chrome style plug ins, but only a handful are implemented as of yet, but this is a technology preview after all.

So far I am pretty impressed, and plan on continuing to use it, and when Firefox loses all the plug ins that I love, I just might have a replacement that is pretty darn good.

Mozilla Firfox is dumping it’s plug ins, moving to chrome style extensions

Ars Technica reports that Mozilla is dumping it’s plug ins in favor of Chrome Style Extensions. This will mean a more modern browser which is less likely to crash, but it means no more extensions that can deeply change the browser.

And it is it’s powerful plugin style that is why I have stuck with Mozilla even when Chrome was faster, so this might mean the end of me sticking with Mozilla. I use quite a few Moxilla extensions ever day, like Tab Mix Plus and download them all, and if they are gone, there goes my support and use of Mozilla. I personally have always been willing to have a little less stability to keep Mozillas awesome plug in support, so I think this is an awful idea!

Honestly I am going to give Vivaldi a try, it is a new browser for power users from one of the founders of the Opera browser. With Mozilla removing it’s most powerful features, a customizable alternative based on the same webkit engine as Chrome sounds like a great idea! ArsTechnica has a good look at it.

Oliver Peters on Lumetri Color in Premiere Pro CC 2015

Oliver Peters at digitalfilms has a nice look into Lumetri Color in Premiere Pro CC 2015.

It is worth checking out, and actually pointed out some things I didn’t realize.

I didn’t realize that the grade in Premiere Pro is separate from a SpeedGrade grade, and none of the grading passes over. This is really too bad. I really like SpeedGrade is an awesome Grading program, and it could be amazing with just a little work from Adobe, but instead they are porting some of it’s functionality into Premiere, but dumbing it down to a much more Lightroom like interface, instead of a Pro Grading Suite as SpeedGrade is.

I would be much happier if the grade was in fact the same and passed from one to other so you could use the high end grading controls if you want or the lightroom like controls in Premiere.

It actually kind of scares me that they might just dump speedgrade (no upgrades this time around), when really all it needs are a few little tweaks like multi monitor support to make it really powerful.

OneRIver Media Blog on upgrading a 2009 MacPro to it’s fullest potential

One River Media Blog has an awesome article on fully upgrading a 2009, 4,1 MacPro to it’s fullest potential to make it rival the new trashcan MacPro.

This involves replacing the processors with Dual 6 CPU’s which you can now get for around $650 (or less for a slightly slower model) installing dual SSD’s for a startup drive, an NVIDIA Titan X with 12 GB of Video RAM, 64 GB of 1333MHz RAM, 2 6TB internals and a 4TB internal. This is all doable for around $4000, much cheaper than a new Trashcan Macpro with the added bonus of an NVIDIA graphics card VS the unupgradeable ATI graphics cards in the new MacPro.

Honestly if I had the money this is what I would love to do with my Mac! It would give me years more life with my Mac and really make it fast!

A problem with Paste Atributes in Adobe Premiere Pro 2015

I don’t know if this was issue before 2015, but I really noticed it on an edit today.

When you are copying and pasting attributes of a file, it doesn’t paste size correctly if you have unselected uniform scale. I have clips that are a strange aspect ratio so I have to scale the height and width separately, and the only way to paste the attributes correctly is to first unselect uniform scale, and the paste works as you would think. this is frustrating with many clips, and uniform scale should be one of the attributes that Adobe copies when you copy and paste them, but it is not.