Apple's WWDC announcements--the 60,000-foot view

At Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote today, the company completely refreshed its notebook computers and introduced an important new model, got OS X Mountain Lion ready for release next month, and previewed iOS 6. Rather that dig deep into all the new products' features and functions, I'm going to focus on a high-level view:

• The future of Apple's notebooks: Apple announced its MacBook Pro with Retina Display, which represents the future direction for all of Apple's notebooks. It's slightly thicker than a MacBook Air, yet it has as much or more processing and graphics power than the top-of-the-line "classic" MacBook Pro, which remains in the product line. It also has a 15.4" Retina Display with 2880 x 1800 resolution, four times as much as the "classic" 15" MacBook Pro.
• Hard drives are dead: Every MacBook model now comes with flash memory rather than a hard disk, with a minimum of 256GB on most models to a maximum of 768GB on the new Retina Display model.
• USB 3 is in, Thunderbolt is still around, and FireWire is on the way out: All MacBooks now have USB 3 interfaces, which are backward-compatible with USB 2. There are far more USB 3-compatible peripherals on the market than Thunderbolt-compatible models, and they're less expensive. On the other hand, the handwriting is definitely on the wall for FireWire: The MacBook Pro with Retina Display drops both FireWire 800 and Gigabit Ethernet interfaces. Instead, Apple is offering Thunderbolt to FireWire 800 and Gigabit Ethernet adapters. 
• OS X is looking more and more like iOS: Mountain Lion includes integration with iCloud, a notifications center, and Messages, Reminders and Notes apps, all of which were first implemented in iOS. Dictation is built into Mountain Lion and works in all apps, much like dictation in the new iPad. Links, images and video can be shared with a new share button in every window, much like Android. The updated Safari browser has a unified "smart search" field, like Chrome, and a Tabview feature, taken from Mobile Safari.
• "Fix Siri, integrate Facebook, replace Google Maps, and clean up everything else": From today's presentations, those seem to be the central goals that Apple has for iOS 6. Siri is going to be more tightly integrated into iOS 6 and will become a key component of integration with automobile telematics systems, so it has to work much better than it currently does. Facebook is going to be integrated as completely into iOS 6 as Twitter is. Google Maps will be replaced with Apple's own Maps application, including real-time traffic, turn-by-turn navigation, Siri integration and Flyover mode, with 3D renderings of cities around the world. Other features, such as FaceTime and phone calling, will be improved.
• With today's announcements, Apple is sanding off the remaining rough edges of its operating systems, and keeping its hardware at the leading edge. The true innovations, if they arrive, will come later this year, not at WWDC.

Adobe plans to release Audition for Mac. Why?

According to DV Magazine, Adobe plans to start beta testing a version of Audition for Mac OSX in Winter 2010. Audition is a multichannel audio editing application that has only been available for Microsoft Windows since Adobe acquired Syntrillium and Cool Edit Pro (the previous name of Audition) in 2003. The last major version of Audition, 3.0, was released in 2007.

I've used Cool Edit Pro and Audition since the late 1990s, primarily for radio production, and it's a very good package, but most Audition users have long since given up on Adobe and have moved to other software, such as Avid's Pro Tools. Audition was never part of Creative Suite (Soundbooth, sound editing software optimized for video post-production, was derived from Audition and is part of Creative Suite) and has been seen as an "orphan" product for years. At one time, Audition was priced at around $250 when the cheapest version of Pro Tools was close to $1,000 and required Digidesign hardware. Now, you can buy the M-Powered version of Pro Tools that works with any audio hardware for $250, while Audition 3 sells for $329 at Amazon.

So, why is Adobe bothering to port Audition to the Mac? It makes no sense. Perhaps they want to remain a thorn in Apple's side--Apple sells Logic Studio, a far more powerful audio editing application, for $499. Perhaps they've got some developers sitting around with time on their hands. But, the smartest thing they could do is kill Audition once and for all.

Blackmagic Design brings DaVinci color correction to the masses

Talk to any professional colorist, and nine times out of ten they'll tell you that they love DaVinci's color correction systems. Yes, they can use the color correction systems that Avid, Adobe or Apple build into their software, but they don't have the power and flexibility of DaVinci.

About a year ago, Blackmagic Design acquired DaVinci. A lot of eyebrows were raised, since DaVinci systems were very expensive ($150,000 to $200,000 USD to start) and the most expensive Blackmagic Design product to that point was a fraction of the cost of even the cheapest DaVinci system.

At NAB this week, Blackmagic Design announced a $995 software version of DaVinci Resolve for the Mac. Mac buyers need a compatible control surface, such as the Tangent Wave, which costs approximately $1,600 (USD), a supported nVidia graphics card, and a Decklink HD Extreme 3D card for video input. Or, they can opt for DaVinci's own control surface, which adds $29,000 to the price. But for most videographers, they can get into Resolve for under $10,000, even if they don't already own a Mac Pro.

If buyers want to fully replicate the functionality of previous versions of Resolve, they can purchase the Linux version for $19,995 which supports up to 16 GPUs, plus the Resolve control surface for $29,000. By the time you purchase a multi-core Linux workstation (or workstations) with lots of RAM, hard disk and 16 graphics cards, you can hit $150,000, but you've got a system that performs as well or better than DaVinci's previous $800,000 solution.

I'm not a colorist, but I've spent days in a color correction suite with a professional colorist working on an earlier version of Resolve. It's an amazingly powerful tool, and to think that the same basic capability that took an entire room full of equipment five years ago is now available to anyone with a powerful enough Mac is mind-boggling.