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Cook Critics Want Apple to Unveil a Time Machine
Apple's 2013 Product Roadmap Predictions: Multiple iPhones, Retina iPad Mini, All-Retina MacBook Pros
Next 9.7" iPad To Be 'Significantly Lighter And Slimmer'
Home Button Fingerprint Sensor In iPhone 5S Would Give Apple A New Leg Up On Competition
Why Apple Should Not Censor The NRA's "Practice Range" App
Apple vs. PC: Which Is Better?
Ontario Court Rejects U.S. Government Demand for Full Access to Megaupload Servers Seized in Canada
darktable Powerful Open Source Virtual Lighttable And Darkroom For Photographers

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Cook Critics Want Apple to Unveil a Time Machine

Harvard Business Review blogger Dan Pallotta says for a brilliant lesson in focus and discipline, watch Tim Cook right now dealing with the swoon in Apple's stock price and investor confidence.

Pallots contends that those who think they're dissatisfied with Apple represent more a case of being dissatisfied with their own lives and expecting that Apple's next product will fix everything.

The meme that Apple has not introduced a "disruptive" product since Steve Jobs passed away makes it seem as if they want Apple to unveil a happiness device and they won't be happy until it does.

Pallota also points out that the negativity critique being expressed about Mr. Cook's management guidance of Apple could just have pertinently been applied to periods under Mr. Jobs's watch. He says the critics screaming right now are intellectually lazy. They're throwing temper tantrums instead of looking at the big picture. Like two-year-olds, they don't really know what they want. And they're not happy when they get it, anyway, and he bets that if Apple unveiled a time machine, they'd claim it wasn't fast enough.

For the full commentary visit here:
http://goo.gl/wEAgV






Apple's 2013 Product Roadmap Predictions: Multiple iPhones, Retina iPad Mini, All-Retina MacBook Pros

MacRumors' Eric Slivka reports that KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who has a very good track record in predicting Apple's product plans, has issued a new research report outlining his expectations for Apple's 2013 product launches. Kuo believes that Apple will focus its launches on the third quarter of this year, with a number of updates throughout the company's various product families.

Highlights:
Both an iPhone 5S with A7 SoC and a revamped iPhone 5 around June or July

iPad and iPad mini updates during the Q313 - iPad mini getting a Retina display, full-size iPad will considerably slimmer and lighter

Goodbye non-Retina MacBook Pro line; all-Retina MBP lineup at cheaper price points than current Retina models

No Retina displays for MacBook Air in 2013; Haswell silicon main Air upgrade

No Retina displays for iMac in 2013. He simply predicts a shift to

Haswell for iMac and Mac mini in Q4

Silent on MaC Pro

Fifth-generation, cheaper, less capable iPod touch

For the full report visit here:
http://goo.gl/pndd5

Appleinsider also has a report on Mr. Kuo's forecast:
http://goo.gl/SqbO1






Next 9.7" iPad To Be 'Significantly Lighter And Slimmer'

Appleinsider's Neil Hughes says the full-size iPad is set to shed some excess avoirdupois, with a thinner and lighter fifth-generation redesign expected to arrive this year according to KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

For the full report visit here:
http://goo.gl/1OF5A






Home Button Fingerprint Sensor In iPhone 5S Would Give Apple A New Leg Up On Competition

Appleinsider's Neil Hughes cites KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo saying he expects Apple's acquisition of AuthenTec to pay off this year in the form of technology to integrate a fingerprint sensor into the iPhone 5S Home button.

For the full report visit here:
http://goo.gl/KMw4u






Why Apple Should Not Censor The NRA's "Practice Range" App

ReadWriteWeb's Dan Rowinski notes that when the National Rifle Association released its Practice Range app earlier this week, the media had a field day with the lobbying group. Insensitive, pandering, shameful and other like adjectives were used to skewer the NRAs decision to release the app so soon after the awful shooting in Newtown, Conn. in December, with the activist group
The Courage Campaign to urging Apples CEO Tim Cook to purge the NRA's app from the App Store.

Rowinski says he doesn't like guns, but the Courage Campaign's censorship petition is a misguided in its direct assault on the NRA’s app just because the NRA is the app's sponsor, and it's not Apple's job to censor the NRA and its relatively innocuous app. Many other companies, lobbying groups and organizations use Apples App Store for marketing and branding purposes and to deny one because some people may not like its message would set a bad precedent for how Apple approves apps going forward.

When the blind lead the blind, everyone eventually ends up in the ditch. Rowinski observes that Courage Campaign is blind for calling for censorship of the NRA Practice Range app; the NRA is blind for commissioning the app in the first place, and Apple is blind for its histoprically arbitrary and consistently inconsistent App Store censorship practices.

For the full commentary visit here:
http://goo.gl/1GCgi

If you want to make up your own mind, you can (at least at this writing) find NRA: Practice Range app here:
http://goo.gl/XuD8l






Apple vs. PC: Which Is Better?

Money Talks News blogger Dori Zinn says she started using PCs when she was 10 years old, and she was two years into college when she sat in front of her first Mac. She initially panicked. The mouse only had one button, not two. There was no Start icon in the bottom corner. But after a few months, she says she was hooked. The iMac had simply made her more productive, so she cut back on eating out and everywhere else she could, saved up some cash, and eventually bought her own MacBook Pro notebook.

Ms. Zinn analyses the Mac vs. PC rivalry in a current context:

Price winner: PC

Hardware design winner: Apple

Operating system winner: Apple

Although Microsoft's SkyDrive is better at managing files stored in the cloud, Apples iCloud services are better at providing everyday functionality

Software winner: PC

Options winner: PCs

If you like variety, look into a PC.

Compatibility winner: Apple

Ms Zinn's personal choice: still Apple, reasoning rhat its better to do one thing well than do lots of things sort of well.

For full elucidaton:
http://goo.gl/OgPHz






Ontario Court Rejects U.S. Government Demand for Full Access to Megaupload Servers Seized in Canada

University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist, who teaches technology law, blogs that nearly one year ago, the U.S. government launched a global takedown of Megaupload.com, with arrests of the leading executives in New Zealand and the execution of search warrants in nine countries. Canada was among the list of participating countries as the action included seizure of Megaupload.com servers located here. While the failed attempt (thus far) to extradite Megaupload mogul Kim Dotcom to the U.S. has attracted the lion share of attention, the U.S. government has quietly been working to obtain access to all the data stored on seized computers in other jurisdictions.

Prof. Geist reports that last week, an Ontario court rejected a request to send mirror-imaged copies of 32 computer servers to authorities in the U.S., indicating that a more refined order is needed. Megaupload did not contest the seizure of the computers. It did argue, however, "that there is an enormous volume of information on the servers and that sending mirror image copies of all of this data would be overly broad, particularly in light of the scantiness of the evidence connecting these servers to the crimes alleged by the American prosecutors." The company added that the volume of data on the 32 servers was equivalent to 100 laptop computers and that a review of the content by the court was appropriate.

For the full report visit here:
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6755/125/

The court judgment can be found here:
http://canlii.ca/en/on/onsc/doc/2013/2013onsc193/2013onsc193.html






darktable Powerful Open Source Virtual Lighttable And Darkroom For Photographers

darktable is an open source photography workflow application and RAW developer. A virtual lighttable and darkroom for photographers. It manages your digital negatives in a database, lets you view them through a zoomable lighttable and enables you to develop raw images and enhance them.

Some of darktable's current features:

General

• darktable runs on GNU/Linux / GNOME, Mac OS X / macports and Solaris 11 / GNOME.


• Fully non-destructive editing.


• All darktable core functions operate on 4x32-bit floating point pixel buffers, enabling SSE instructions for speedups. It offers GPU acceleration via OpenCL (runtime detection and enabling) and has built-in ICC profile support: sRGB, Adobe RGB, XYZ and linear RGB.


• A collect module allows you to execute flexible database queries, search your images by tags, image rating (stars), color labels and many more. Filtering and sorting your collections within the base query or simple tagging by related tags are useful tools in your every-day photo workflow.


• Import a variety of standard, raw and high dynamic range image formats (e.g. jpg, cr2, hdr, pfm, .. ).


• darktable has a zero-latency fullscreen, zoomable user interface through multi-level software caches.


• Tethered shooting.


• darktable currently comes with 17 translations: Albanian, Catalan, simplified Chinese, Czech, Dutch, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Thai.


• The powerful export system supports Picasa webalbum, flickr upload, disk storage, 1:1 copy, email attachments and can generate a simple html-based web gallery. darktable allows you to export to low dynamic range (JPEG, PNG, TIFF), 16-bit (PPM, TIFF), or linear high dynamic range (PFM, EXR) images.


• darktable uses both XMP sidecar files as well as its fast database for saving metadata and processing settings. All Exif data is read and written using libexiv2.

Modules

Currently darktable serves 47 image operation modules in L*a*b* and profiled rgb. Some of them can be used as blending operators offering blend functionality that works on the incoming image information and the output of the current module.

Basic image operations:

• crop and rotate: This module is used to crop, rotate and correct perspective of your image. It also includes many helpful guidelines that assist you using the tools (e.g. rule of thirds or golden ratio).


• base curve: darktable comes with general enhanced basecurve presets for several models that is per automatically applied to raw images for better colors and contrast.


• exposure controls: Tweak the image exposure either by using the sliders in the module or dragging the histogram around.


• highlight reconstruction: This module tries to reconstruct color information that is usually clipped due to information not being complete in all channels.


• demosaic


• white balance: A module offering three ways to set the white balance. You can set tint, temperature in and temperature out or you define the value of each channel. The module offers predefined white balance settings as well.


• invert: A module working on JPEGs inverting colors based on the color of film material.



• Tone image operations:



• fill light: This module allows the local modification of the exposure based on pixel lightness.


• levels: This module offers the well-know levels adjustment tools to set black, grey and white points.


• tone curve: This module is a classical tool in digital photography. You can change the lightness by dragging the line up or down. darktable let you separately control the L, a and b channel. Read in Ulrich's blog post how to make use of this feature.


• zone system: This module changes the lightness of your image. It is based on the Ansel Adams system. It allows to modify the lightness of a zone taking into account the effect on the adjacent zones. It divides the lightness in a user-defined number of zones.


• tone mapping: This module allows to recreate some contrast for HDR images.

Color image operations:

• overexposed: This module is a useful feature that displays pixels outside dynamic range.


• velvia: The velvia module enhances the saturation in the image; it increases saturation on lower saturated pixels more than on high saturated pixels.


• channel mixer: This module is a powerful tool to manage channels. As entry, it manipulates red, green and blue channels. As output, it uses red, green, blue or grey or hue, saturation, lightness.


• color contrast


• color correction: This module can be used to modify the global saturation or to give a tint. Read Johannes' blog post.


• color zones: This module allows to selectively modify the colors in your image. It is highly versatile and allows every transformation possible in the LCh colorspace.


• color transfer: Transfer colors from one image to another.


• vibrance: For a detailed description read Henrik's blog post.


• input/output/display color profile management

Correction modules:

• sharpen: This is a standard UnSharp Mask tool for sharpen the details of an image.


• equalizer: This versatile module can be used to achieve a variety of effects, such as bloom, denoising, and local contrast enhancement. It works in the wavelet domain, and parameters can be tuned for each frequency band separately.


• denoise (non-local means): Denoising with separated color / brightness smoothing.


• denoise (bilateral filter)


• lens correction: lens defect correction using lensfun.


• spot removal: Spot removal allows you to correct a zone in your image by using another zone as model.


• chromatic aberrations: This module automatically detects and corrects chromatic aberrations.


• raw denoise: Raw denoise allows you to perfom denoising on pre-demosaic data. It is ported from dcraw.


• hot pixels: This module allows you to visualize and correct stuck and hot pixels.

Effects/artistic image postprocessing:

• watermark: The watermark module provides a way to render a vector-based overlay onto your image. Watermarks are standard SVG documents and can be designed using Inkscape. The SVG processor of darktable also substitutes strings within the SVG document which gives the opportunity to include image-dependent information in the watermark such as aperture, exposure time and other metadata.


• framing: This module allows you to add an artistic frame around an image.


• split toning: Original split toning method creates a two color linear toning effect where the shadows and highlights are represented by two different colors. darktable split toning module is more complex and offers more parameters to tweak the result.


• vignetting: This module is an artistic feature which creates vignetting (modification of the brightness/saturation at the borders).


• soften: This module is an artistic feature that creates the Orton effect also commonly known as softening the image. Michael Orton achieved such result on slide film by using 2 exposures of the same scene: one well exposed and one overexposed; then he used a technique to blend those into a final image where the overexposed image was blurred.


• grain: This module is an artistic feature which simulates the grain of a film.


• highpass: This module acts as highpass filter.


• lowpass: This module acts as lowpass filter. One use case is described in Ulrich's blog post.


• monochrome: This module is a quick way to convert an image to black and white. You can simulate a color filter in order to modify your conversion. The filter can be changed in size and color center.


• lowlight vision: Low light module allows to simulate human lowlight vision, thus providing the ability to make lowlight pictures look closer to reality. It can also be used to perform a day to night conversion.


• shadows and highlights: Improve images by lightening shadows and darkening highlights. Read Ulrich's blog post on this.


• bloom: This module boost highlights and softly blooms them over the image.


• colorize


• graduated density: This module aims at simulating a neutral density filter, in order to correct exposure and color in a progressive manner.

New in darktable 1.1.2

A point release (so nothing too fancy) with a couple of bugfixes and better camera support. Additionally it comes with an updated user manual which is available here:
http://goo.gl/SnWFB

The tarball can be found here:
http://goo.gl/CNNtJ

A new disk image for Mac users is provided as well:
http://goo.gl/D98zp

Changelog:

• Fix export resolution rounding issue (as in previous version it could be off-by-one)


• Correctly set output dimension in exif instead of passing the raw resolution verbatim


• Local average green eq. was fixed (it now works on high ISO images as well, and should no longer produce hot pixels)


• Use ordered arrays in XMP files


• Disable export parallelism for flickr/picasa export


• Don't enter tethering mode when there is no camera attached (this made darktable look as if it was hung, even though that wasn't the case)


• Bring back the pin for map thumbnails


• Improved TIFF support


• Vignetting now has a dithering option (to mitigate occasional banding)


• Read Nikon subject distance properly


• Assorted FreeBSD fixes


• Various OpenCL fixes


• Usermanual updates

Support for the following cameras with either preliminarily added or updated:

• Canon EOS 6D


• Canon PowerShot s110


• Canon PowerShot g15


• Canon PowerShot sx50 hs


• Nikon 1 v2


• Nikon D600


• Nikon Coolpix P7700


• Olympus E Pl5


• Olympus E PM2


• Olympus XZ 2


• Panasonic DMC GH3


• Panasonic DMC LX7


• Pentax K5ii


• Samsung EX2f


• Sony RX1


• Sony NEX 6


• Sony SLT A99


• Sony NEX c3 blackpoint/greenshift fix

White balance preset updates:

• Canon EOS 550D


• Canon EOS 5D Mark III


• Olympus XZ 1


• Sony NEX C3


• Sony SLT A57


• Sony nex 5N


• Panasonic DMC GH3

Open Source (freeware)

For more information, visit:
http://www.darktable.org

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