Apple started the WWDC17 event yesterday which is used to introduce the new features to the developer community, for them to use and create new apps with. So here we take a look at what Apple has introduced and what we can expect from our devices in the following months once they launch it.
iOS 11
It's the camera you always have with you. Apple has updated the camera features for the iPhone. Portrait mode has some new capabilities, and there is some great Live Photos features that it adds to the pleasure of taking and reviewing your shots. In the past there were the live photos feature where you had a video play through of the shot you took. Now, you can scrub through and choose the frame you think works best and use it as the photo. They've also taken a liking to the Boomerang effect found on Instagram, which you can now do with your photos and videos, directly within the Photos app. They call it Bounce.
You can also create long exposures of your Live Photos, which it seems to do a good job at and you can create loops, which is the Live Photos selection looping.
Similar to the Fujifilm's mirrorless cameras, the have what they call Professional-Quality filters, which you can use during capture, not only after you've taken the shot.
On the Mac
They have a new compression technology which reduces the size of the image and video on the phone or on your mac up to 50%. This is huge for the guys with massive Photos libraries that hogs up space. It looks like that space it uses can be cut in half when using the new Apple File System. Duplicating, copying, or moving files also look like it'll be done a lot faster with Mac OS High Sierra.
With video, they are using a new industry standard they call HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding, also known as H.265). They claim "it can compress video up to 40 percent more than H.264, the current standard for video compression. Using HEVC, videos stream better and take up less space on your Mac, while preserving the same visual quality."
The Photos app also looks a lot more focused on professional workflows, similar to what once was found in Aperture. We'll only know what it's capabilities are, but I doubt it can replace any of the software we currently use.
Conclusion
There are many refinements on the apps and operating systems we work on on a daily basis. New file structures that allow better compression which uses less space and time to work with. The Photo apps on iOS 11 and OS High Sierra have some new, fun capabilities which will most likely cause me to use the camera more than I currently do. I think this is a big update for them. They seem more focused on appealing to the professional, which is what I think they should be doing.
H.265 is of course not an Apple codec in itself. The main problem is that if you can't upload videos in this codec to Youtube. Youtube doesn't support this codec. In order to to do that, you have to convert to another codec before you can upload. This may or may not be a problem for you of course.
I think these are all pretty cool updates. I like the updates to the iMacs as well. The iMac pro looks amazing, pretty hefty price tag though. I do think it's interesting that they are boasting up to 32GB of ram in the 21" iMac, when I was able to do that with my 2011 21" iMac. They took away that option in the last 21" iMac model, in favor of soldering the RAM into the computer. So when it was time for me to upgrade, as a working professional, I had no choice but to go with the 27." I love it, but it still would have been nice to have an option that was once available in a 21" in 2011.
As far as I know (but I can be mistaken) are the harddrive and memory both soldered on the Imacs of the newest coming versions. I hope for you Mac lovers that this isn't true and somebody told a lie. On the present day Imacs you can change the HDD. However, being a windows user, this all seems extremely complex. On my pc, it would take maybe 5 minutes and it is a really easy job.
On the Imacs, it is pretty complicated and not something I would like to do myself.
https://nl.ifixit.com/Guide/iMac+Intel+27-Inch+Retina+5K+Display+SSD+Rep...
Pieter, I'm honestly not sure about the hard drive and memory both being soldered into the iMacs in the newest versions. I do know, that the previous generation 21" iMac had the Ram soldered in, so you couldn't replace it. So I was kind of forced into going with the 27" 5K retna display in order to easily upgrade the RAM myself. I love the 27" but I would have been fine with a 21" it I had the options I needed at the time.
As I said, I am not entirely sure.
The answer is somewhat complicated. https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/6/8/15762138/apple-imac-rem...
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/06/08/4k-imac-teardown-reveals-removable-...
It still kills me that Apple killed Aperture yet still refuses to improve Photos.
(Yes, I know that after 4 years Photos is FINALLY getting an update but its pretty minor. If you brag about a trillion iPhone photos being taken then you should care just a little about the software used to view and edit them).
If I hadn't moved to C1P when I got the 5DmkII because Aperture couldn't handle the camera's sRAW files, I would've been pretty angry when they dropped the program. Almost as mad as I was when I spent my final two years of college learning Shake only for Apple to announce they were ending support for it less than a month before I graduated.
Apple is about as innovative as the same phone/ipad/IOS they have been using for 20 years....Nothing new.
the iPhone is only 10 years old, the iPad 7 years old. did you travel to the future?
I have to say my iPhone has replaced my P&S camera. Doing photography for a living, I like a break from carrying any gear around when on vacation, etc. Unless I'm visiting exotic places that I deem "must have" high quality images, the iPhone handles everything fine.
Good, but not good enough. I understand the technical details why they can't offer 32GB for the MacBook pro this year, so I'll wait for next year.