In this financial crisis, Apple stock (AAPL: 91.14 +1.50%) is trying hard to resist and eventho its value has lost 41% since October 2007, I believe Apple will outperform in Q4.

I’m not the only one. Gene Munster also thinks that Apple’s gross margin for the upcoming quarter will be higher than the 31.5% figure that Steve offered as guidance in July.

“Apple cited new, lower-margin products, but the only new products announced in the September quarter were new iPod nanos with higher capacities at the same prices and a 23 percent price cut on the iPod touch,” he wrote. “Considering the decline in NAND Flash pricing has been at least in-line with typical seasonality, it is unlikely that these changes will result in a greater than average sequential GM (Gross Margin) decline.”

Munster speculates that even with an introduction of a sub-$1,000 MacBook before the end of the year, Apple’s margins will remain healthy.

He reiterated his “buy” rating with a 12-month price target for (AAPL: 91.14 +1.50%) at $250 per share. Let’s be honest, he is one of the very few who share the same optimism as I do.

Other reasons why I believe Apple will shoot back up are the increase in market share for notebook in USA which reached 10.8 % for the 2008 Q2.

Apple captured the fourth position behind Dell, HP and Acer, but in front of Toshiba. This is a quite impressive increase for Apple as its market share a year ago was 6.6 %. That’s for number one.

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It’s fresh and it’s here!! Nikon Capture NX 1.2

Fixes and improvements (Mac OS)

• Speed improvements when opening images.
• When any of the operations listed below are performed, “Updating image” is now displayed in the image window title bar. Enhancements and other operations can still be performed while “Updating image” is displayed. (Mac OS X version 10.4 or later)
  • An image is opened
  • A different version is selected from the “Version” menu.
  • “Revert” is selected from the “File” menu.
• When “Open With…” is selected from the “File” menu for an image saved to a CD-R or non-recordable medium, the image is first copied to a separate location and then opened in the other application.
• When “Show Lost Shadows” was selected from the “View” menu, and the display ratio of the image was changed, the range of the “Lost Shadows” was changed as well. This issue has been resolved.When the size or resolution for an image was specified with selection of “Size / Resolution…” from the “Edit” menu and then the setting file saved with “Save Settings…” in the “Batch” menu, the aspect ratio of processed images was incorrect when the saved settings file was used with batch processing of images captured in different orientations. This issue has been resolved.
• An issue that caused RAW NEF images captured with the D1X at an ISO sensitivity setting of ISO 570 to appear completely black has been resolved.
• An issue that caused images to be affected when saved with a high “Radius” value in the “Gaussian Blur” palette (”Adjust ” menu > “Focus” > “Gaussian Blur”…) has been resolved.
• When the “Site Map” panel was opened from “Help > Contents…” images were sometimes not displayed, or incorrect dialogs were displayed. These issues has been resolved.
• An issue that prevented the display of the “Color Lightness, Chroma, and Hue” width sliders in the “LCH” palette has been resolved.
• When “Hue” and other settings in the “LCH” palette were saved with “Batch > Save Settings…” and these settings then applied to a different image, settings values were sometimes incorrect and points would not move. These issues have been resolved.
• An issue that sometimes prevented proper “Set Gray Point” operation from “Base Adjustments > Camera Adjustments > White Balance” has been resolved.
• When the name of a printer profile contained 2-byte characters, text displayed in the “Printer profile” pulldown menu, in the “Color Management” panel of the “Preferences” was garbled. This issue has been resolved.
• An issue that prevented accurate reflection of the monitor profile for the secondary display, when multiple displays were used, has been resolved.
• Text copied using the command + C keyboard shortcut could not be pasted into the file name field when “File > Save As…” was selected, using the Command + V keyboard shortcut. This issue has been resolved.

More info and download here…

“Welcome to the Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom 2.1 release candidate on Adobe Labs. The ‘release candidate’ label indicates that this update is well tested but would benefit from additional community testing before it is distributed automatically to all of our customers.

The Lightroom team would like the community to help verify the quality of this update through normal usage as this will ensure that the application is tested on a diversity of hardware and software configurations not available internally at Adobe.”

I just installed the LR 2.1 update and tho it’s not a full release yet, it’s stable and a bit faster than 2.0

This update replaces the 2.0 application file so you might wanna copy it somewhere else just in case of another fuck-up but knowing Adobe, I’m sure they were very careful this time ah!

You can get the update and read the release notes here.

After breaking the news of the new Adobe Creative Suite 4 being announced at Photokina, I rushed to one of my favorite blog, John Nack’s blog.

John is sweating the details of CS4 and I have to say, there are a few new features like the support for multi-touch gestures on MacBook Air/MacBook Pro that I really like!

“You’re going to see tons of flashier features in other write-ups, and of course I’ll cover them here, but for this cycle I want to lead with the little stuff–things you might not read about otherwise, but which can make a big difference while working.”

I don’t like that it’s gonna cost $2,499 (on pre-order) for the CS4 Master Collection but the Photoshop CS4 upgrade is fairly priced at $199.

Adobe is playing a weird game. The 64-bit version is PC-only but 16-bit printing is Mac-only?!?!

Doesn’t really offset lack of a 64-bit version for Mac but that’s always better than nothing at all…

Here is a comprehensive set of videos showing off what’s new in Photoshop and here is a nice, concise list just for us the photographers!

Njection is becoming quite famous for its Speedtrap mashup. They are working on an iPhone version of it to help you avoid getting a very expensive speeding ticket!

“Red light cameras and speed traps are good ideas in theory, but not quite when put into practice. They have become a convenient and socially accepted way to fine drivers and increase local revenue while not actually enhancing road safety, as studies have shown. Article after article nationwide cites how red light cameras are used to increase the amount of money certain cities receive from fines, how well over half of certain towns’ operating budgets come from speeding tickets, and yet how particular kinds of accidents, such as rear-end crashes, actually increase regardless of speed traps.

Stricter DMV licensing standards should be implemented to educate drivers and reduce accidents. Implementations such as these add to drivers frustrations and do nothing to resolve major issues on the road to increase safety. Njection, however, fills this obvious gap.”

They are working on exporting 50,000 speed traps to GPS enabled mobile phones and devices.

Here is a list of some of its features:

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