Okay, having gotten my rant about Apple’s extreme level of secrecy out of the way (I’m standing by that), we can at least talk about what Apple is saying about QuickTime X, cutting through the marketing as best as possible.

We’ve known for some time that QuickTime X would be a ground-up rewrite – one badly needed. That could have some implications for compatibility, though, which is something to watch. The details are sketchy at this point, but here’s what’s possible to say:

• X is more integrated with Core technologies. Apple promises that QuickTime X will build on Core Audio, Core Video, and Core Animation. Some of that is to say that the long-in-the-tooth player application itself will work with those technologies more than the underlying QuickTime framework.
• There’s a new player. It’s about time: QuickTime Player gets an update. The nicest feature here is the slick trimming interface Apple has added. A lot of us use QT Player for quick edits and other tasks, so this is definitely welcome.
• There’s no more “Pro.” Finally, you don’t have to spend thirty bucks just to make QuickTime Player a useful tool. In fact, you’ll get all of Snow Leopard for that price (if you already have Leopard).
• Playback is more efficient. Here’s the part that could be most useful to live visual apps. Playback is now more “optimized” and makes use of the GPU for scaling, display, and hardware-accelerated H.264 decoding. Decoding, interestingly, uses the NVIDIA 9400M integrated chip. Most live visual apps already use the GPU for scaling and display, but under-the-hood performance tweaks and decoding features should be good news.
• HTTP video streaming. You can now stream video live over HTTP, which means you can use a standard Web server like Apache instead of a specialized video server, and you don’t have to open special ports on your firewall.
• ColorSync for maintaining color profiles on the computer and on mobile devices (well, provided those devices are also made by Apple).
• Built-in screen recording: You can now create quick screencasts using QuickTime player – groovy. (The Mac is, unquestionably, the easiest platform out there when it comes to making screencasts. Ask any tech journalist or educator.)
• Quick capture: Capture is improved in QT Player for quick recording – always a handy thing to have.
• Performance improvements. QuickTime X promises to take advantage of Grand Central Dispatch, the new Apple threading technology, and 64-bit computing for better performance.

Apple giveth and Apple taketh – again.

FireWire, back on the whole line. First, off, the good news coming out of Apple’s hardware refresh today: FireWire is again on the 13” MacBook, which is now confusingly called the MacBook Pro. It’s a FW800 port, too, which can be nice for fast storage. That means you can get a US$1199 machine with FireWire, a new SD card slot, and a decent if not dazzling NVIDIA 9400M. It seems that Apple heard the loud chorus of people frustrated with the lack of FireWire. My Canon HV20 HDV camera thanks you, Apple.

Good GPUs, still premium. Here’s the bad news: while there’s now a US$1699 MacBook Pro 15”, you still don’t get a really good GPU – the NVIDIA 9600M GT – until you jump up to the US$1999 price point. Given that you can get a pretty nice PC for half that, that means there’s a significant additional investment to go Mac for GPU-dependent visualists.

ExpressCard – 17” only. Adding an SD card slot is nice, though not such a big deal given you can add one via a USB device for about ten bucks. The bad news is that ExpressCard is now available only on the 17” MacBook Pro. Its price is down to US$2499, but that’s little comfort to people who like smaller machines – and could be a good reason to hunt down a used or refurbished 15” model. ExpressCard offers some very nice video capture opportunities. Again, this is standard equipment on cheap PC laptops.

Few ports. You also still need to get a 17” MacBook Pro to get three USB ports; everything else has just two (except for the Air, which has one).

About that battery… Those unibody Macs are gorgeous, but what’s the price? Apple now has a terrific battery that recharges “1000 times” and lasts for 7 hours. The catch here: it’s not user-replceable. I’m not sure where the 1000 number comes from, but that sounds like trouble to me. On the other hand, if it does die, I expect you’ll just cough up the service fee to have someone replace it for you.

Bottom line: pretty as these machines are, the previous models with user-replaceable batteries and ExpressCard slots remain solid workhorses, even back a couple of generations. If you love working with Mac OS, you still get an amazing experience out of your computer. And yes, these machines are damned pretty. You just don’t get a big leap forward with this generation versus the last-generation Macs, and functionality-wise, not that much more than the generation before that.

I happen to like really ugly computers, so I’m going to move on. And yes, choice is good. If you buy a Mac because you think you have to, you’re doing it for the wrong reason. Have a look at the competition, and you’ll be happier with any decision.

MacBook Pro [Apple]

In other Apple news, the iPhone 3GS does look really lovely as a photo and video camera – something devices from makers like Nokia have tried before, but at astronomical prices. So, to my beloved Google Android platform, I have to say – uh, can you get on the ball in the handset department? Please?

If anyone gets a 3GS, I’m sure readers would love to see what kind of photo/video output you get.

Apple unveiled QuickTime X at the WWDC keynote. Here are their bullet point slides:

• Modern foundation
• Hardware Acceleration
• ColorSync
• HTTP Streaming

I’m actually quite keen to know how the new QuickTime X works. What will it mean for live visualists? What does it mean for developers, not only on Mac but Windows? What does it mean for open source projects built on QuickTime, projects vital to music and visual applications and innovation?

Here’s the problem: we’re not allowed to talk about that. Apple didn’t talk much about what’s in QuickTime at their public WWDC keynote. Now, they’ll start explaining all the details at sessions at WWDC. Some of our readers are at those sessions, but because the entire conference is under a non-disclosure agreement, they can’t talk about them. In fact, in the past, I’ve contacted PR to try to get information based on a report and was told by upset Apple PR representatives that I should not even be asking the question, and that it was a real problem that someone had told me what they had heard in a session. Even more surreal, Apple has told me that I’m not allowed to know about things that are printed in descriptions of sessions from WWDC posted on their website. Apple will happily charge you a couple grand to go to California to their session, but they won’t share information with the press.

What’s the message to the press?

Repeat our hype and our PR. Ignore the technical details. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

C4D CamGripTools from Cinema 4D Tutorials on Vimeo.

Deride the mouse as you will. When it comes to two-dimensional control, the device is pretty amazing. It’s a reasonable way of amplifying small hand gestures into bigger gestures on a 2D plane. But what about 3D interfaces? Suddenly, the mouse becomes like playing charades, telling someone else what to do in a universe with an extra dimension.

What you need is interfaces that make sense in 3D. Some of these interfaces are out there; the missing link has been intelligent connections to software. To see how powerful this can be, look no further than Camera GripTools, a motion capture system for Maxon’s Cinema 4D modeling tool.

It works with a variety of devices:

• Behringer BCF2000 MIDI fader panel (already a popular controller among VJs/visualists)
• Nintendo’s Wiimote
• Joysticks
• Track IR 4 Pro is a head-mounted tracker for head movements. Pricing starts at just US$120, so this is absolutely a solution for mortals, and it appears to work really well – with 120 FPS tracking.
• Polhemus Patriot VR Tracker – I’d never seen this before, and it looks utterly brilliant. It’s a six degrees of freedom tracker / 3D digitizer, made up of a small sensor. And it’s only £ 1,985 … oh. Okay, never mind.

Camera GripTools [via Derrick Belcham of visuuals.com – check out his site for some gorgeous work]

For Cinema 4D users, this looks absolutely invaluable. It supports XPresso, CInema 4D’s fantastic modular, visual programming environment, with drag-and-drop support for objects. The free demo version is already pretty usable, with more powerful versions running EUR99-499 (though sadly you need the EUR499 version for full hardware support).

But I think the bigger message is how controllable this makes the 3D environment. This could be fantastic in an open source environment like Blender, or for live control in Blender, visual tools like VDMX, and custom creations in vvvv, Jitter, Processing, and the like. And while it may not be possible to make a system as accurate as the Patriot, looking at what they’re doing I suspect it should be possible to do a “ghetto” version on the cheap. (You know I’m all about that.)

Discuss.

Fritzcrate Project / RGB Color Mixer from Michael Schieben on Vimeo.

As you can see, people have already begun playing with ideas for tangible interfaces. Oddly enough, two German gentlemen each named Michael (not aware of one another) have gotten a headstart, including the first experiment above in progress. We’ll be experimenting with new interfaces in New York and around the globe. (If that isn’t enough experimentation with new interfaces, the NIME conference – New Interfaces in Musical Expression – is happening now in Pittsburgh, and we expect reports back from that, too!) The event has also been featured on Boing Boing and MAKE.

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