Video

32-bit or 64-bit – that is the question.

 
By popular demand, here’s the easiest way to tell if your Mac has a 32-bit or a 64-bit processor:

Step 1: Click on the Apple icon in the upper-left menu bar of your screen

Apple Mac OX 10.7 processors

Step 2:Click on “More Info”

Step 3:Under the “Hardware” section, locate the “Processor Name”

Step 4: Find your Processor on this chart to determine whether your Mac has a 32-bit or 64-bit processor.

Yay! We got a winner! Easy, right?

Video

Adobe Creative Suite 6: is your current system supported?

 
As part of Adobe’s Photoshop CS6 Public Beta announcement, the company said that it will continue to provide official support for Windows XP, and Windows 7, but will be dropping official support for Windows Vista. As you might know, Lightroom 4 is no longer officially supported on Windows XP. For Mac OX OS, Adobe is officially ending support for Macintosh systems that are not 64-bit capable. Premiere Pro CS6  requires Mac OS X v10.6.8 or v10.7, and Windows 7 with Service Pack 1, but it is not clear if Windows Vista and/or XP will be supported. We have been beta testing Premiere Pro CS6 for several months and I can tell you this: it is sweeeeet!!! Actually, most of our “Conversations with Friends” have been edited on CS6.

Premiere Pro CS6

If you are just getting started with video and want to explore a video editing application, you could also consider Premiere Elements 10.  Elements is a slightly less powerful, but still very capable version of Premiere Pro with an easier-to-use interface. It is important to know that Premiere Pro is a 64-bit only software and requires a computer with a 64-bit processor and 64-bit operating system. Premiere Elements 10 includes both 32-bit and 64-bit versions to run on both systems, but the 32-bit version won’t be able to access more than 4 GB of RAM. The same is true for the old Final Cut Pro 7 and older.

If you are curious about which NVIDIA graphics cards are better for Adobe’s CS6 Suite, go here.

Tomorrow we will show the quick and easy way to tell if your Mac has a 32-bit or a 64-bit processor.
Questions? Comments? Please post them below.

 

Photography

The Lion in the cloud.

 
The release of the new Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion is approaching. Apple recently unveiled a “developers preview” to get programmers up to speed with the new platform. The shipping version will be available in less than 6 months. So far, some of the highlighted features are a deeper integration with Apple’s iCloud, new sharing capabilities, and improved security. It is believed that Rosetta will stay with us a little longer, while iChat will be replaced with “iMessages.”

As expected, iCloud will be the center of Apple’s universe, and all other devices (iPhones, iPads, desktops, and laptops) will simply interact with iCloud to handle media, messaging, calendars, reminders, settings, and even purchases. Everything lives in the cloud—the device is simply a way to retrieve and add information. Oddly enough, one of the biggest changes is direct integration with Twitter. iCloud’s Documents will be competing directly with Google Documents.

Apple's new OS

Applications like Safari, Mail, iPhoto, Reminders, and Photo Booth will be able to tweet directly without having to launch or manage a separate Twitter client. Tweets will be context-aware: meaning a tweet from iPhoto will enable sharing via Flickr, while a video tweet will display Vimeo or YouTube as an option. What will come out first, the new OS or the updated line of Mac Book Pros?

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Adobe’s generous upgrade policy ends in 30 days.

For several years, Adobe has offered a generous “three-versions” upgrade policy. This means that users with a prior CS product up to three previous major versions (CS2, CS3, and CS4) would be eligible for discounted upgrade pricing when moving up to the latest release.
This policy will end when the CS6 Suite starts shipping early next year.

According to Adobe, “in order to qualify for upgrade pricing when CS6 releases, customers will need to be on the latest version of our software (either CS5 or CS5.5 editions). If our customers are not yet on those versions, we are offering a 20% discount through December 31, 2011, which will qualify them for upgrade pricing when we release CS6.”

Adobe’s new upgrade policy is worldwide. Click on the links to purchase the Photoshop CS5 Upgrade (Windows Vista/7/XP or Mac OS), and Photoshop Extended CS5 Upgrade (Windows Vista/7/XP or Mac OS) from Amazon, or click here to go directly to the Adobe Store. Hurry up, only 30 days left to take advantage of the 20% discount.

Adobe CS5 20% discount code