Apple is constantly making “under-the-hood” improvements to its consumer-oriented MobileMe service. These tweaks include faster and more reliable calendar synchronization, webpage display, and iPhone integration.

For those who haven’t checked out MobileMe in a while, it is Apple’s comprehensive remote services offering for the home user. MobileMe’s core components include:

On June 7th, 2010, at the sold out World Wide Developers Conference, Steve Jobs announced a slew of improvements to the operating system that runs on iPod Touch devices, iPads, and iPhones. Many of those updates were specifically designed for the highlight of his keynote address: the new iPhone 4.

While a few specifications of the new iPhone were previewed during the infamous Gizmodo episode, many of the new features weren’t obvious out of context. Here are a few of the important iPhone 4 and iOS 4 (the new name for the iPhone operating system which runs Apple’s family of mobile devices) improvements…

Today I was confronted with a situation not unlike many I deal with on a regular basis: How can one of my clients use a media file of a particular format, in a specific application that does not inherently support working with files of that format? Working through the solution to the problem reiterated to me the fact that many people are confused about what media files really are, what a codec is, and what a wrapper or container-format is.

Folks use these terms incorrectly, interchangeably, and vaguely, but it’s really not all-too-difficult to understand. I’ll go about trying to explain it to the best of my ability and then I’ll describe how I had to attack the issues of both codec (essence) and wrapper, to address my client’s specific workflow requirement.

- Nick Gold

If you followed the rumors that circulated around Apple’s mythical post-Newton tablet computing device for almost a decade, there was something surreal and sublime about the moment when Steve Jobs finally unveiled it on stage. But now that everything’s out in the open, what is most interesting is how few people understand just how profound, indeed radical, the iPad is.

I’d like to talk a bit about why the tablet—err, iPad—impresses me so much, and why you need to give Apple the benefit of the doubt on this one. This is something much bigger than it might seem on the surface, and is in fact a hint at the future of computing in general. To see where we may be headed, however, it would serve us well to take a look at where we’ve been.

Chesapeake Systems has seen an exciting 2008. On top of this being our most successful year ever, we have also made major investments in our infrastructure and staffing.

If you visit our office, you will notice that our greeting area has been enhanced by complimentary hot and cold beverages for guests, including glasses and mugs that are free for the taking. Slightly less obvious is the addition of our “tech lounge,” a slick area where our technicians meet, brainstorm, prep systems, conduct R&D on new technologies, do paperwork, and yes, sometimes relax.

We’ve also finalized the location of our check-in and check-out areas for hardware repairs, so that is finally streamlined (and out of my office! -Nick)

The end of 2008 is upon us, and we thought it would be a good time to take a look at what did and did not happen in the world of professional Apple products during the course of the year. We’ll also review interesting decisions and announcements Apple has made during the year, and explore what we have to look forward to in 2009.

Apple’s professional desktop computer system, the Mac Pro, was updated in January of 2008, and has remained available at the same specification since then. Not much to report on! As an 8-core 64-bit system clocking in at 2.8GHz through 3.2GHz, it still represents a powerful system. However, many users would like to see more powerful graphics card hardware become available. We will see what Apple reveals in 2009.

Apple has released the Pro Applications Update 2008-4. As always, we recommend you act very conservatively when applying this update. Refrain from doing it during an ongoing project or busy period. If possible, roll it out onto one workstation for “testing” to see if anything unexpected occurs.

However, Apple is advertising a lot of bug fixes and optimizations across most of the applications in Final Cut Studio, as well as Shake, etc. Apple usually doesn’t offer too many specifics, but one would hope that these fixes tighten things up a bit across the board.

One potentially BIG new feature is now present in Color, which is the ability for Color to natively handle REDCODE footage shot with the RED ONE digital cinema camera! Previously, REDCODE would have to be transcoded to a codec Color could deal with natively, such as ProRes. Now that REDCODE works natively, quality should be enhanced due to the reduction of a transcode operation, and a workflow bottleneck has been eliminated. David Butler of Butler Film tells me that his early testing reveals the functionality to be working as expected, and very exciting for those working with RED ONE footage inside of Apple’s Color.

- Nick Gold

Chesapeake Systems, Butler Film, AJA Video and Apple Computer would like to thank all attendees who were able to make it to the Red Camera event we held at the AFI Silver Theater in October. Turnout was great, and attendees were able to glean many facts pertaining to the Red One’s production and post-production workflow. David Butler was able to show off on the big screen a good amount of Red footage (downconverted by the AJA Kona 3 to HD for playout purposes), including particularly compelling comparison shots of 35mm film scans and Red One “Redcode” footage of nearly identical shots.

In the days following the event, AJA released a more official whitepaper regarding the workflow options for Red One footage when being used in conjunction with the Kona 3 hardware. That document is available here:

AJA Kona 3/Red Camera Workflow Whitepaper

A special thanks to Julie Hill and Josh Boehr of AFI, and also Tina Kalakay for putting so much effort into making the evening a great success.