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 Copyright © 1998 Shiro Wilde |
Apple is finally receiving positive press regarding its strategic and financial position. This follows a busy month which saw the Newton discontinued, and the launch of Apple's latest ad in the ongoing Think Different campaign, entitled "Bunnies." Those horrendous purple-suited Intel guys have finally got what they deserve! The post-beta arrival of QuickTime 3.0 Final Candidate 7 last month means that the final release version cannot be too far off now. Apple posted the British Mac OS 8.1 Update on its servers, along with several other international versions including Japanese. Meanwhile, there is much speculation over rumours of Apple working on a top-secret consumer-level Web-TV/CD/DVD player, codenamed Columbus. Amongst the announcements and intros at Seybold NY came the launch of ColorSync 2.5 and word that AppleScript will finally go PowerPC-native in the forthcoming "Allegro" Mac OS upgrade due this summer. |
Macromedia is now shipping FreeHand 8 - definitely a worthy upgrade. They also released the first public beta of Fireworks last week. This new application is aimed at web graphics professionals, offering animation, flexible control over effects and type, and showing multiple previews for various compression settings. It has palettes sprouting everywhere and a somewhat cluttered interface, but try it out anyway. Meanwhile, the long-awaited debut of their desktop video application Final Cut, is due for release this year, but with strong contenders at Adobe, will it be good enough ? Apparently it features technology from Macromedia's Deck II audio package, and will support After Effects plug-ins. Macromedia also launched its Shockrave site showcasing various interactive Shockwave and Flash games and entertainment. Check it out. |
mFactory released mTropolis 2.0 Test Drive in expectation of shipping the final product very soon. This major upgrade features improved Internet connectivity and authoring tools. Messaging between objects should work between applications over the Internet. mTropolis applications can be delivered via the mPire browser plug-in, and can now control RealAudio media. |
Quark has announced that it will shut down subsidiary company mFactory, and that mTropolis is dead. Apparently just after completing mTropolis 2.0, Quark plans to kill off the product in its current form. What a loss! Users of version 1 will be able to get a free upgrade to 2.0. Perhaps some other company will do the right thing - buy mTropolis, and give it the development it deserves. |
Adobe is readying a slew of major upgrades of its flagship products. The long-awaited overhaul of Premiere 5 will ship in May, and will feature a much-improved interface and a barrage of features for the professional market. PageMill 3 now integrates web site management. It has just shipped for Windows - the Mac version is expected this summer. |
Claris is gone, and the final piece of software they released just before being absorbed into Apple was the long-awaited Claris Emailer 2.0v3 Update. Bringing numerous enhancements, including contextual menu support, and group addresses that are finally linked to individual addresses. |
Netscape has set up mozilla.org as the public distribution point for the forthcoming Communicator 5 source code. |
The final word is that you can not only eat frozen yogurt and frozen tea, but frozen custard too! Apparently available with root beer. |
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