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Apple MacBook Air Updated with Faster Processors and $100 Price Drop

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Apple MacBook Air Spring 2014

Apple quietly rolled out an update on the MacBook Air yesterday. Both 11-inch and 13-inch models received updates with new Intel Haswell processors and slightly better battery specs. The models also received a $100 price drop for the standard configurations.

The 11-inch 128GB base model is now $899, while the 256GB model is $1099. Likewise, the 13-inch 128GB model is $999 and the 256GB model is $1199.

Mac Pro Features User-Upgradeable CPU and RAM

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mac-pro-inside-ram

Macs aren’t always the easiest to deal with for upgrading internal components. The new iMacs are locked down to only RAM upgrades and the Macbook Pro Retina models have zero internal upgradeable parts. So, when Apple announced its trashcan-looking Mac Pro, most of us figured that would be the end of upgrading components inside the Mac Pro as well. As it turns out, it’s not as bad as we feared. [Read more…]

iPhone 6 Might Have 10+MP Camera and f/1.8 Lens

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iPhone 5 iSight Camera

Among all the other things Apple has figured out is the camera on the iPhone. I recently switched from an iPhone 5 to the Galaxy Note 3. While it has numerous advantages over the iPhone (for my use), its 13MP camera still lags well behind the iPhone 5 and 5s. It’s not all about the hardware either. Apple does a great job with the image processing and I just get better images out of it than I do any other smartphone I’ve used.

Apple has been stuck on the 8MP camera for three generations now, dating back to the iPhone 4S from 2011. However, the aperture has dropped from f/2.4 in the iPhone 4S/5 to f/2.2 in the iPhone 5S. Apple has clearly demonstrated that 8MP is enough for a smartphone as it has continued to focus on the overall photography experience. [Read more…]

SmartSound Releases FCP X Plugin for Customizing Songs to Fit Your Sequence

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Sonicfire Pro Plugin for FCP X

SmartSound.com is a royalty-free audio library featuring tracks that can be customized with length, instruments and intensity using its proprietary Sonicfire Pro software. It’s pretty powerful stuff that offers timing control, mood mapping, custom length, variations on the tracks and the ability to search all of the tracks directly and make purchases without leaving the software application.

I’m a big fan and frequent user of Smartsound. All of the music from my recent short Nerfed and my intro segments from my CES videos were built inside Sonicfire Pro 5.8.3 and, ultimately, ended up in my final sequences in FCP X. Now, the company has extended the power of Sonicfire Pro with a plugin for Final Cut Pro X, which allows you to use a generator to create a custom length audio track and then select a track from Sonicfire Pro to send to a library within FCP X.

[Read more…]