Part 2 of 3 [part 1] [part 3]
A joint first-hand, hands-on review of the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display
by photographers and ApertureExperts Thomas Boyd & Joseph Linaschke

UPDATED 11/17/2012 12:35pm PST: USB 3 vs FW800 speed correction

Other advantages

[JL] I want to talk about some non-photo, non-Aperture related things on this beauty, too. Obviously, it’s thinner and lighter than it’s predecessor, which is always a Good Thing™. When it comes to the laptop that you carry in addition to the camera bodies and lenses however, I’ve always taken the thinner/lighter thing with a grain of salt, because shaving a pound or two off of 50 lbs of other gear really isn’t going to do much for me. But regardless of any weight savings, this MacBook Pro does feel amazing in your hands. It’s as solid as can be, and looks sexy as hell. And of course if that’s all you’re carrying, then that weight loss does make a difference. The SSD drive makes everything snappy and bootup is very fast; wake from sleep is virtually instantaneous (same experience as with my MacBook Air). The iSight camera for video chat is excellent, and made video chats back home even from a low-light hotel room better than what I’m used to on the Air. The Power Nap feature (where the computer pseudo-wakes up to get email, download software updates, etc. even when the lid is closed) is ridiculously cool. The first time I opened the lid after a night of sleeping and my mail was already waiting for me was a very pleasant surprise indeed. The built-in HDMI port is perfect for presentations. I was able to plug into an LCD TV screen for an Aperture demo with no adapters (so that’s one less adapter to carry, probably offset by others though; discussed later in this article) which was fantastic. Working the Photokina trade show where I was presenting at four different theaters, being able to just plug HDMI in and get a perfect 1080p mirror on the projector or flatscreen was a true joy. I’ve been plugging laptops into projectors since the mid 90s (nearly 20 years, goodness) and it’s never been this simple and clean. Plus, on a side-side note, when you plug into a projector, the Mountain Lion Notifications automatically get disabled — talk about attention to detail! [more]

There have been reports of Aperture quitting after an update via the Mac App Store, and it turns out that Apple posted a KB (Knowledge Base) article about it a few days ago.

In a nutshell, if you are quitting on launch, then just throw away the Aperture app itself (not your Library!), and re-download from the App Store.

You know it’s slow in Aperture-land when the last two posts were software updates!

Aperture 3.4.3 appears to only address an issue I’d warrant most of us haven’t seen, since I haven’t seen any discussion of this in the forums. The only listed fix is “Addresses an issue that could cause a licensed copy of Aperture to prompt for a serial number with each launch”.

If you notice any undocumented changes, let us know in the comments. I can’t imagine this release not including other fixes, too!

Hit the software update (or if it’s not showing up yet, like it isn’t for me, you can download from apple.com directly) for an update to Aperture, weighing in at 3.4.2. Here’s the change list, and of course let us know how it works out for you in the comments!

It appears we have the correct solution now for these library inconsistencies errors. Check out the update to the original post on the topic, Fix For Repeated “Inconsistencies… Please Repair” Aperture Dialog.

A small change to the interface for extremely wide (or tall) cropped images showed up in a recent update. I think this was in 3.4, but I could be wrong — I didn’t spot it right away.

If you crop an image extremely wide, like this:

At around 11 seconds into the new MacBook Pro ad “Colors”, you see an image being dragged into what is clearly (now that I can see it in HD) a website. (In yesterday’s post I said it might be iBooks Author or Pages). Last I checked most websites don’t work that way!

Maybe it’s just artistic license, but of course it’s got a few of us curious just what is going on.

There’s a new Camera RAW update out, and hopefully this will include that hot new camera you’ve been enjoying only in JPEG up until now!

On October 23, 2012 Apple held a media event in San Jose, CA where they launched the iPad Mini, the new iPad (4), a new MacBook Pro 13ʺ with Retina Display, a new iMac, a new Mac Mini, and updates to iBooks and iBooks Author.

This is one of those “everyone know’s it’s there” tips… until you don’t!

For a while I had noticed that the ability to filter by star ratings, or anything else, as well as the ability to toggle between Filmstrip, Grid and List view, were missing from Aperture whenever I was in Split View view. Since I know most of the keyboard shortcuts for this, I never put too much thought into it. On the rare occasions when I needed something I couldn’t use a shortcut for, I’d switch to Browser view to get to the commands.

Notice anything missing? There are no “Sort & Filter Controls” here!

Finally today I decided this was silly, and to figure out where the controls went. I’d seen them on another installation so I knew they hadn’t been removed from the app. So where the heck were they?

It’s not under Window menu

The Window menu offers the option to hide or show the Control Bar and the Keyword Controls and the Inspector, as well as ways to toggle between various views of those UI elements. But nowhere in there was the view I was missing.[more]

IMPORTANT UPDATE — SCROLL DOWN

ApertureExpert community, I could use your help on this one.

I finally recorded again! This Live Training was another not-so-live-training, I’m sorry to say. My schedule has been a bit manic lately and finding the time to actually schedule these in advance has gotten tricky. Plus, I’m still not in love with Google Hangouts, and just may have to go back to the GoToWebinar system (assuming it’s even working OK these days).

Aperture Inspector was just updated to 1.2 today, which is a free update to all current users.

Don’t know what Aperture Inspector is? Read all about it here!