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Tag-Archive for » iMovie «

Apple Announces iPad 2, iOS 4.3 and some new Apps.

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011 | Author: OWC Chris S.

Well, Apple’s big iPad event was today, and tech blogs across the Internet are abuzz with the new unveilings. Knowing how much our readership is involved in anything Apple, we’re no different. Apple events usually have a large amount of surprise to them, even if the basic framework has been in the public consciousness for a while now. This time around, though the biggest surprise of the day came right at the beginning of the presentation, when Steve Jobs himself walked out onto stage despite his being on medical leave.

As expected, the first half of the presentation was a run down of the different aspects how great and successful the iPad has been since its launch, sales numbers from iBooks, of iPhones, and of iPads, then a short movie. There really wasn’t anything new, mostly iPads used in all sorts of places and all sorts of ways. In short, it was an iPad love-fest akin to pretty much anything OWC Mike H. says during your average episode of OWC Radio. (Sorry, Mike, had to say it…)

iPad 2

Finally, though, they got past the hype and delved into the new hardware we were all expecting. As someone who’s been somewhat cynical of the whole “OMG! It’s an Apple tablet!” mindset that seems to surround the iPad, even I find the specs on the iPad 2 to be pretty nice. Article Continues…

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Category: Fresh from Apple
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Apple’s “Back to Mac Event” Overview

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010 | Author: OWC Michael

Well, the Back to Mac Apple Event has finally come and gone, the Apple store is back up and running and there are a few new items available immediately.

The event started with a nice “State of the Mac” address where Steve Jobs informed that Mac makes up 33% of Apple’s total income to the tune of $22 billion. Meaning that the Mac division itself, if it was its own separate company, would qualify itself for the Fortune 500. Pretty impressive. Mac also makes up a whopping 20.7% US Consumer market share – meaning that one in every five computers in use is a Mac. In the past 10 years, they’ve built 318 Apple stores in 11 countries. They’ve also been #1 in customer satisfaction for the industry for the last seven years in a row.

Basically, Apple has been gaining momentum like a juggernaut and is showing no signs of slowing.

Article Continues…

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Category: Fresh from Apple
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WWDC 2010: Pretty Much What We Thought It Would Be.

Monday, June 7th, 2010 | Author: OWC Chris S.

Ever since the leak of the iPhone 4 prototype a few months ago, we all sort of knew what Steve’s keynote presentation at this year’s World Wide Developer’s Conference would center around. After all, the WWDC has traditionally been where the latest model iPhones have been introduced.

First, though, Steve started talking about Apple’s newest line, the iPad. Apparently, Apple has moved over two million units already, making it about one iPad sold every three seconds or so.

He then went on to talk about iBooks, a key component of the iPad. There’s been over five million books sold (approx. 2.5 per iPad) and the iBooks Store has about a 22% market share.

They’ve made some enhancements to iBooks. Now, not only can you highlight text, but you can add what looks like sticky notes to a page, and add bookmarks with just a tap now. The biggest change, though is now iBooks can read PDFs.

Then Steve went on to talk about the App Store, where there’s over 15,000 apps submitted a week; 95% are approved within seven days. He also talked about why some apps may be rejected. Not working as advertised and apps that crash are obvious. The other main reason is the use of “private APIs.” I think we all know that was a dig at Adobe Flash.

Article Continues…

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Category: Fresh from Apple
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Putting It All Together: Tips for better SSD Usage.

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 | Author: OWC Michael

puzzle-piecesIf you upgrade a Mac to an SSD drive – having good management of your files is important where you use an additional drive or drives to have capacity for your photo, music, video libraries, etc.  With the relatively small sizes of SSD drives, they can fill up with data fast; but the performance benefits of SSD are undeniable.

If you’ve been following our blog since the beginning, we’ve given several tips on relocating these types of files off your internal storage on onto external storage solutions. Today’s modern operating systems make this pretty easy.

For those audiophiles out there, an iTunes library can quickly become an overwhelming size.  Back in March, we showed you how to move your iTunes library to an external hard drive such as the Mercury On-the-Go Pro.

Photography enthusiasts will also find their pictures taking up more and more hard drive space.  You can also move your iPhoto library to an external drive to keep your primary drive lean and operating at top speeds.

My basic rule of thumb to follow is to keep the Operating System and your applications themselves on the main, internal hard drive while storing the files, documents, pictures, movies, music, etc. on the separate drive.  By doing so, you can even use a 64GB SSD for boot and application performance benefits WHILE maintaining access to extensive file libraries that can’t all fit onto an SSD.

Check out OWC’s full selection of SSD Drives and External Hard Drive Solutions to find the fit that’s right for you.

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Category: OWC Difference, Random Thoughts & Topics, Tech Tips
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High-quality, low-cost video animation.

Thursday, February 19th, 2009 | Author: OWC Chris S.

For those of you who need some quick-n-easy animations for a movie, but don’t want to lay out the cash for high-end post-processing software, there is another, less expensive option.

You can use Keynote – part of iWork – to set up your text and photo animations. If you make a 1920 x 1080 slideshow in Keynote, you will have a file that’s the same size as an HD video.

Once you’re done with your animation, save it as a Quicktime movie using the “Export” option in the “Share” menu. By exporting it using Apple Intermediate Codec and using the same frame rate your video camera normally uses, you will have a high-quality animation that can drop right into iMovie.

It isn’t an After Effects killer by any stretch of the imagination, but for dropping a simple animation into your home movies, its definitely one to try.

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