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Adobe Systems announced the Adobe Creative Suite 4 product family, a milestone release of the industry-leading design and development software for virtually every creative workflow. Delivering radical workflow breakthroughs that bring down the walls between designers and developers and packed with hundreds of feature innovations the new Creative Suite 4 product line advances the creative process across print, Web, mobile, interactive, film and video production.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 combines virtually all of Adobe’s new design and development applications, technologies and services in a single box the most comprehensive creative environment ever delivered.

Customers can choose from six suites or full version upgrades of 13 stand-alone applications, including Photoshop CS4, Photoshop CS4 Extended, InDesign CS4, Illustrator CS4, Flash CS4 Professional, Dreamweaver CS4, After Effects CS4, and Adobe Premiere Pro CS4.

A simplified workflow in Adobe Creative Suite 4 enables users to design across media more efficiently by making it easier to complete common tasks and switch between mediums without leaving a project. InDesign CS4 includes a new Live Preflight tool that allows designers to catch production errors and a newly customizable Links panel to place files more efficiently. The revolutionary new Content-Aware Scaling tool in Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop CS4 Extended automatically recomposes an image as it is resized, preserving vital areas as it adapts to new dimensions. An expanded version of Dynamic Link in CS4 Production Premium enables users to move content between After Effects CS4, Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, Soundbooth CS4, and Encore CS4, so updates can be seen instantly without rendering.

Designers using the Adobe Creative Suite 4 product family will be able to gain unprecedented creative control using the new expressive features and visual performance improvements in Adobe Flash Player 10 to deliver breakthrough Web experiences across multiple browsers and operating systems.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 brings 3D center-stage providing the ability to paint, composite, and animate 3D models using familiar tools. Flash CS4 Professional now offers the ability to apply tweens to objects instead of keyframes, providing greater control over animation attributes. Also in Flash, the new Bones tool helps create more realistic animations between linked objects. With a searchable library of more than 450 dynamically updated device profiles from leading manufacturers, Adobe Device Central CS4 (see separate release) enables users to easily test mobile content designed using many of the Creative Suite 4 products.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 significantly expands access to services available to creative professionals and developers who want to collaborate online.
Adobe ConnectNow, a service of Acrobat.com, can be accessed from InDesign CS4, Illustrator CS4, Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop Extended CS4, Flash CS4 Professional, Dreamweaver CS4, Fireworks CS4, and Acrobat 9 Pro, allowing real-time collaboration with two colleagues or clients. Designers can also share color harmonies with Adobe Kuler™, which is now accessible from within InDesign CS4, Illustrator CS4, Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop Extended CS4, Flash CS4 and Fireworks CS4.
Other online resources include: Adobe Community Help for technical questions%3B Resource Central for accessing video and audio product-related news and tutorials, as well as Soundbooth scores, sound effects, and other stock media%3B and Adobe Bridge Home, a customizable resource for tips, tutorials, news and inspirational content.

Adobe Creative Suite 4 and its associated point products are scheduled to ship in October 2008.

For a limited time, validly licensed customers of eligible versions of Adobe Creative Suite, Adobe Production Studio and Macromedia Studio will be able to upgrade to Creative Suite 4 for the CS3 upgrade price.

Playing with Guitar Hero is pretty good enough but there’s a time for kid and a time for rock’n'roll men (or rock kids as well…).

Get yourself a Behringer iAXE629 USB Guitar and starting playing guitar for real on your PC or Mac!

Plug this amazing USB-guitar straight into your computer and turn your PC or Mac computer into a guitar amp and recording system without the need for any other hardware.

You have a great song in mind and want to record it straight to your computer? You want all your amps and stomp boxes in your computer so you can rock like you’re in the studio or on stage? With the Behringer iAXE629 USB Guitar, you’re just a cable away. The iAXE629 USB Guitar comes with loads of great sounding virtual amps and stomp boxes from Native Instruments. Rock with your MP3, WAV and AIFF songs or backing tracks on your PC or Mac computer and enjoy nifty features such as time-stretching and a metronome. Behringer even included multi-track recording and editing software so you can record your music on the spot. This double-cutaway electric guitar delivers powerful humbucking tones and comes fitted with a vintage tremolo, making it an indispensable piece of gear for modern guitarists. A built-in output allows you to connect your headphones straight to your guitar so you can rock with your favorite bands. Cool, isn’t it? Plug in your new Behringer iAXE629 USB Guitar and rock the world today.

Don’t take our word for granted and see for yourself what other users do with their Behringer USB Guitars on Youtube.

Partner site MacSwitching.com attended Apple’s presentation of new products like the MacBook Air and Time Capsule.

There’s a dedicated photo gallery about all new January 2008 Apple products available here.

First impressions?
MacBook Air is perfectly usable; keyboard layout is just like MacBook’s and the new LED display is much brighter and sports a wider viewing angle.

What really impresses is how fine the MacBook Air, as well all other Macs integrate with Time Capsule and get easier the usually tedious task of backing up data on a regular base using Leopard’s Time Machine feature.

MacNN reports that Apple’s MacBook took one of the top three sales spots during Amazon.com’s holiday season: Amazon.com announced the results of its 2007 holiday season, revealing Apple’s MacBook as one of the top sellers in the online retailer’s PC category, more exactly in the list of products most frequently purchased as gifts by Amazon.com customers in 2007.

Since its update, as we reported in May, the Apple MacBook surged as one of the best selling notebook Macs and you can see it almost everywhere (Starbucks, college, business room etc.).

Apple iLife ‘08 and iWork ‘08 available!

Following the recent August announcements from Apple, iLife ‘08 and iWork ‘08 are now avalaible.

The new iLife ‘08 features the same component softwares as before, same name but some are really brand new.

Concerning iWork ‘08, the package includes:

No Mac user should miss these packages.
No Mac business user should miss taking a closer look to iWork ‘08: a great way to get for US$ 75 a complete Business Software Suite.

Better late than never (see Sourcecrowd’s previous report here) Apple Apple’s new OS X iteration is coming: a definite sign that the Leopard will not suffer further delays is that it is now available for pre-order from a few outlets. So if you want to be one of the first to get your hands on the latest and greatest features when the 10.5 version of the operating system ships in October, click on the Apple links in this post to reserve your copy.

To see some of the nifty new feautures of Leopard and for more information, go to Apple’s website. Apple Mac OS X Version 10.5 Leopard has a retail price of $129.

Apple has announced an update to its MacBook Pro line of notebooks with the latest Intel Core 2 Duo processors, memory up to 4GB thanks to the new “Santa Rosa” chipset architecture, and high-speed graphics with the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT. The 15-inch model sports a new mercury-free, power-efficient LED-backlit display, while the 17-inch model has an optional high-resolution 1920-by-1200 display. Rounding up the high end specs, all models include a built-in iSight video camera, MagSafe Power Adapter, and built-in 802.11n wireless networking.

Every MacBook Pro includes an Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 4MB of shared L2 cache, an 800 MHz frontside bus and 2GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM memory, with 2.2 GHz and 2.4 GHz processor options for the 15-inch models, and a 2.4 GHz processor powering the 17-inch.

For full specs and availability visit the Apple website. Basic configurations and pricing are as follows:

$1999. 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo. 2GB RAM, 120GB HD, 15″ LED. GeForce 8600M GT 128MB
$2499. 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo. 2GB RAM, 160GB HD, 15″ LED. GeForce 8600M GT 256MB
$2799. 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo. 2GB RAM, 160GB HD, 17″. GeForce 8600M GT 256MB

Square Group Ltd in association with Adobe, Apple and a slew of other partners organized an Adobe Creative Suite CS3 seminar at BFI Southbank in London last Tuesday, May 15, 2007. The seminar featured presentations from both Adobe and Apple about the new features of the many applications that make up Adobe’s new crown jewel, CS3, alongside demonstrations of related products from the likes of Eizo, Wacom, Extensis, HP and G-Tech. SourceCrowd was in attendance and can bring you an exclusive report from the event.
Before the seminar, attendees were able to peruse stands with a few interesting products on show. Eizo wowed the crowd with its stunning professional quality displays like the ColorEdge CE240W sporting hardware colour calibration, 14-bit color processing and easy profiling. Extensis was showcasing two of its software products for asset management: Suitcase Fusion, a font manager to organize, categorize and activate/deactivate fonts on the fly, and Portfolio, a complete multimedia files management tool. HP was showcasing the HP B9180 Photosmart Pro Printer, an eight-tanks pigment ink powerhouse which demonstrated stunning results on some of HP’s custom papers (especially impressive were the results on canvas-textured paper). Wacom had both the A4 Intuos3 graphic tablet and the Cintiq 21UX display available for hands-on demonstrations, making precise editing of pictures a breeze. Last but not least, G-Tech had the whole range of its external high speed hard drives solution on display. The elegant silver enclosures sport the latest in eSata and Firewire connections on the G-Raid2, G-Drive 250GB External FW400/USB2, G-Mini and G-Safe, with high-end fibre-channel RAID solutions also available in the G-Speed models.

Then it was finally time to immerse into the presentation!

The first speaker was Richard West, Apple Business Development Manager for the UK and Ireland. He started by stressing how important it is, in a multimedia communicational landscape, to put to good use the plethora of different ways that businesses have to reach clients, by customizing communications to target and focus on different markets. Adobe Creative Suite CS3, he argued, is the tool of choice to do so, allowing the use of a single creative process for multiple disciplines through its multiplicity of applications. Since output is so important to the designers and developers who use CS3, he then went on to demonstrate how colour calibration devices (in this case, the Pantone Huey Pro MEU113) can work in tandem with OS X ColorSync Utility (found in the Applications>Utilities folder) to prevent disparity between screen output versus print/web output. In particular he showed how it is possible to compare colour spaces graphically, and onscreen proofing of different colour spaces just by dragging and dropping images on the application. Microsoft’s Windows has “borrowed” the same functionality for its latest OS, implemented in Vista under the name Windows Colour System (located in the Control Panel).

Stay tuned for the second part of our report - coming soon!

Apple has updated its consumer line of MacBook laptops adding faster processors (Intel’s Core 2 Duo), bumping up the RAM to 1GB and offering larger hard drives. The popular 13.3″ laptops still come in the familiar three configurations, with two white models and a high end black one, built-in iSight, 802.11n wireless networking and OS X Tiger and iLife suite preloaded. The lineup with the new processors is as follows:

• 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 13.3″ White MacBook, 80GB hard drive, 1GB RAM, Intel Graphics 950, RRP $1099
• 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 13.3″ White MacBook, 120GB hard drive, 1GB RAM. Intel Graphics 950, RRP$1299
• 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 13.3″ Black MacBook, 160GB hard drive, 1GB RAM, Intel Graphics 950, RRP $1499

The new MacBooks are available for purchase now from the Apple Store
and other selected retailers.

Best price for Apple MacBook MA700LL/A 13.3″ Notebook PC (2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, SuperDrive) - White

This week’s National Association of Broadcasters conference (NAB) in Las Vegas has seen Apple unveil Apple Final Cut Studio 2, an upgrade to its pro video editing and production suite. During last Sunday’s presentation, Apple showcased the programs that make up the high-end HDV powerhouse editing tool suite: Final Cut Pro 6 for cutting together video sources, Motion 3 to add animated 2D and 3D titles, Soundtrack Pro 2 to manipulate the score, Compressor 3 to handle different output formats (from HD movie to iPod), DVD Studio Pro 4.2 to output to DVD media, and a new application, Color, that gives editors control over the look and feel of the footage through pro color grading capabilities.

The most interesting features that wowed the public were the Open Timeline, affording maximum flexibility to mix video sources (Final Cut handles “DV and SD up to HDV, XDCAM HD, DVCPRO HD, and fully uncompressed HD”) in one final product, and the introduction of a new post production format, ProRes 422. ProRes promises “uncompressed HD quality at SD file sizes” with real time drag and drop editing capabilities for HD video.

To this end, Apple has teamed up with AJA Video Systems to develop IoHD, a new hardware-based audio and video IO box that connects to the Mac using a single FireWire 800 connection, and promises real-time 10-bit HD conversion. The impressive IoHD sports a huge number of ports on the back and monitoring LEDs at the front, in an enclosure design reminiscent of Apple’s Mac Pro line.

Final Cut Studio 2 will cost $1,299 or $499 for an upgrade. Upgrading from any version of Final Cut Pro to the Studio will cost $699. Final Cut Studio 2 will be available next month, while AJA’s IoHD will debut in July for $3,495. Of course these are not consumer-priced products, but they are a breakthrough in high end HD video editing, offering solutions at a fraction of the price of the competition, making Hollywood style editing affordable for smaller studios and independent filmmakers.

Borrowing a page from Microsoft’s history of development woes for the recently released new OS, Vista, Apple has today announced that its eagerly anticipated new version of Mac OS X, Leopard, will be delayed until October 2007. The Cupertino, California based company had announced that Leopard would be released sometime in the spring at last June’s WWDC (its annual developers convention).

Now, according to a press release appearing on Apple’s official website, the release date has been pushed back because some key resources have been redirected from the OS development team in order to meet the late June deadline for the iPhone. Although this probably means no delays for THE hottest gadget of the year, many will see this as a missed opportunity for Apple to steal some of Microsoft’s thunder, seen the tepid reactions to the Vista release from both critics and the public.

Today Apple has refreshed its high-end Mac Pro line of desktop computers adding an ultra powerful 8-Core model. The top of the range now sports two “Clovertown” 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5300 series processors, with 8MB of L2 cache per processor (16MB total), while maintaining all the other specifications (which can be found here) of the Quad-Core models. The 8-Core Mac Pro comes as a build-to-order option from the Apple Store and is available now.

Apple also chose today to cut the prices of its Cinema Display line. All 3 current models see significant reductions, probably to tempt new Mac Pro purchasers to include the gorgeous displays in their orders. The 20-inch model is now $599 (from $699), the 23-inch HD model is $899 (from $999) and the high-end 30-inch model is $1,799 (from $1,999). Although there had been been speculation lately of a complete relaunch and redesign of the Cinema Displays, the only news to report are the lower prices.