30th Suprise Birthday Party: a PreBlog

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Adobe announces immediate availability of PhotoShop CS4 as well as the whole Creative Suite line

Adobe is now shipping Photoshop CS4 as well as the rest of the Creative Suite 4 line of products. PC users will be happy to know that Photoshop CS4 is now 64 Bit. Mac users will have to wait for the next release when Adobe completely ports Photoshop from Mac's Carbon to Cocoa environment. It should be noted that the Lightroom 2.0 is 64 bit for both Mac and PC users since Adobe wrote it in Cocoa for the Mac.

The biggest enhancement in Photoshop is the Content Aware Scaling feature. It essentially has an algorithm that compresses the areas of least complexity. Photoshop's camera raw now features some of the camera raw layer masking that was first introduced in Lightroom 2.0. I suggest that you visit both Russel Brown's site resource site as well as the National Association of Photoshop Professional's Learning Center site on PS CS4.

If you have not purchased Lightroom 2.0 and Photoshop CS4 yet, Adobe is offering a 30% discount on Lightroom 2.0 when you order it directly through Adobe at the same time you order any product with Photoshop in it such as Photoshop CS4, Creative Suite Design Premium CS4, etc.

Until I Blog again, remember not to take life too seriously and make sure you tell someone that is close to you how much you care for them.

Thanks for reading,

John :)

Apple unveils new 24" LED Display and new MacBook Pro & MacBooks

The 24" LED Display that Apple unveiled today has a built in iSight Camera, mic, and speakers. It was built to work with the MacBook and MacBook Pro right out of the box. It connects to computers with the new "ultracompact Mini DisplayPort connector." There is now one cable that splits off from the monitor into three attachments-- one for the display (Mini DisplayPort), one for USB 2.0, and one for power for the MacBook Pro & MacBook. Apple has made it easy for its portable notebook computer users to go from an on the road portable environment to a desktop configuration in little to no time. You just attach one cable with three connectors to your MacBook Pro or MacBook computer. This is the long awaited new Cinema Display. Apple states that "The LED Cinema Display is the most environmentally friendly display Apple has ever created." The LED Cinema display will be available for purchase in November for the same price as the Apple 23" Display with many more features packed in.


Apple also announced the new MacBook and 15" MacBook Pro computers that are available now

for shipping. The 17" MacBook Pro is expected to be updated within then next couple of months.

Some of the biggest differences are the new buttonless multitouch trackpad (see photo above) and the new ultra MiniDisplayPort (that can be seamlessly integrated with the LED Cinema Display).

The new 15 inch MacBook Pro's connectors and ports are:

• MagSafe power port
• Gigabit Ethernet port
• One FireWire 800 port (up to 800 Mbps)
• Two USB 2.0 ports (up to 480 Mbps)
• Mini DisplayPort
• Audio line in
• Audio line out
• ExpressCard/34 slot
• Kensington lock slot

Unfortunately it no longer comes with a FireWire (FW) 400 port. Two Firewire ports can come in handy if you have a device such as a portable 2.5" hard drive that does not have two FW ports on it. You will now need to buy a FW hub.

The new MacBooks are made of aluminum like the MacBook Pros but they no longer have a FireWire port on them. An unfortunate fact, since it was Apple the originally developed FireWire IEEE 1394 in the first place. You currently can still purchase the old white plastic MacBook 2.1 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo machine with a FireWire 400 port.


Until I Blog again, remember not to take life too seriously and make sure you tell someone that is close to you how much you care for them.

Thanks for reading,

John :)