Final Cut Pro X Released

in , , ,

Well. The day is finally here. Final Cut Pro X has been released. Already announced back in the spring, but just to reiterate the price has been cut from $999 to $299, a move that is sure to make Avid and Adobe nervous. You can buy it on the Mac App Store, right now. While no full featured reviews are out yet, Macworld has had an early release version for the past week or so and their excellent video guy Gary Adcock has written a first-look about the new application:

Apple has revamped Final Cut Pro's hands-on user experience in three major areas: Editing, media organization, and post-production workflow. New tools such as the Magnetic Timeline, Clip Connections, Compound Clips, and Auditions provide a smooth, intuitive editing experience. With the rise of data-centric workflows and tapeless video recording, organizational tools such as Content Auto-Analysis, Range-based keywords, and Smart Collections work in the background to automate formerly tedious and time-consuming manual processes. Post production workflows now offer customizable effects, integrated audio editing, color grading, and a host of streamlined delivery options.

New Futurama Icon Set Released From the Iconfactory

in ,

If you're a long time Mac & Twitter user, then you're probably familiar with The Iconfactory, makers of the original native Mac Twitter client, Twitterrific. Gedeon Maheux, Principal/Designer, at The Iconfactory just released Volume 7 of their long running freeware Futurama icon cet. This latest set is called 'Extras' and is comprised with many of the supporting characters of the show. This icon set has been long in the making, with Volume 1 having been released back in August of 2005. Each icon set is available for Mac or Windows. Also, if you own a license to The Iconfactory's Candybar App, you can download the icon set in a Candybar compatible container file. If you want to download all 7 volumes of this set, you can do so on their Web site.

Horrible, Almost Unforgivable Dropbox Authentication Bug Yesterday

in , ,

Christopher Soghoian emailed Dropbox, posted over on Pastebin telling them how he had discovered a massive security vulnerability on Dropbox in the wee hours of yesterday morning. If you want to read the entire email thread of how he discovered it, do so, but the short of it is, for a period of 4 hours yesterday, anyone could log into any dropbox account without having to know their password. Any password worked for any account. Dropbox says they've fixed the issue, patching the bug just 5 minutes after they found out about it, however that doesn't change the fact that this happened. If you, like me, are worried about if anyone logged into your account during that period, check your Dropbox account event log.

The Price Of "Free"

in , , , , ,

Richard Muscat, writing at Serious Simplicity:

My contention is that “Free” as described and used in many contemporary web-based businesses is a non-business model that is not only broken, but actively harmful to entrepreneurship. Free rarely works, and all the times that it doesn’t, it undermines entrepreneurial creativity, destroys market value, delivers an inferior user experience and pumps hot air into financial bubbles. I think this piece hits it out of the park. Why should you price your product as a pay-for-service or good? This article lays out all of the reasons and why free should never be your decision.

Good Luck With That

in , , ,

John Gruber posted this over at Daring Fireball:

Stuart Sumner for Computing:

Apple cannot continue to lock down its iOS platform and restrict the types of software developed for it, says security firm Kaspersky’s CTO Nikolay Grebennikov. Speaking to Computing, he said: “Apple simply can’t continue with its current closed approach, and in my opinion, to remain competitive it should be looking to open up its platform within a year.” “The Android platform, which is growing its market share, is much more open than the Apple iOS and it’s easier to create new applications for Android, including security software,” said Grebennikov. MacDailyNews’s translation: “We wish Apple would make its platform insecure like Google, so that we can sell ‘security’ to hundreds of millions of iOS users.” The consumer software "security" industry have largely been leeches on the backs of consumers for the past 10 years. In the early 90's when they started out, they were mostly doing good - writing good software that solved a problem. When they stagnated in the mid-90s they began to peddle bloatware and drum up fear around every major virus/trojan that came out in order to scare customers into buying their software. They're new way of competing was to further bloat their products with crap that people didn't near or to 'out-scare' their competitors. Now that Apple is taking hold in the desktop and mobile markets, they're scared shitless because Apple customers simply do not need their crapware any longer. The emperor has no clothes. There are no words to describe how much I cannot wait to see them all go away. Although they'll probably go kicking and screaming on the way down with their cries growing increasingly frantic about how you're all going to die unless you are buy their Norton MacAfee Virus Checker 3000 Deluxe Edition Pro™. Fuck those guys.

Five New Things Your Mac Can Do With Lion

in , , ,

Serenity Caldwell, writing for Macworld:

… Lion is coming. To prepare us for the changes ahead, Apple has posted a big summary on its website listing all of the more than 250 new features present in this version of OS X—but let’s be reasonable: As excited as you might be, you don’t have time to read up on every single one. Instead, let us do the work for you, and highlight some of the coolest new tricks your Mac will be able to turn in Lion. Go read over the 5 obscure features Serenity has written about. I think she did a good job at picking 5 crucial features not covered in the presentation from WWDC. I've seen and used all 5 of these in the developer preview I'm running and can attest to how well they work.