|
. |
. |
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
. |
 Copyright © 1998 Shiro Wilde |
. |
Apple made a series of spectacular announcements this month, pushing its financial status to a year-long high. Steve Jobs previewed the stunning iMac, due in August, introduced the awesome new PowerBook G3 Series (out now) with the great "Steamroller" TV ad, and launched the Apple Store UK. A new software strategy was also unveiled, which will merge the forthcoming (Q3 98) Rhapsody with MacOS "Carbon" into a single "modernised" system, Mac OS X (ten) in Q3 99. Meanwhile, Mac OS 8.5 (codenamed Allegro) is in alpha stage, and due to ship by September. Features will include much improved Internet/network connectivity, PPC-native AppleScript, and new appearance "themes". In March Apple finally shipped the much-anticipated QuickTime 3.0. Supporting a wider number of formats, and better quality video codecs, this is a must-have upgrade. However, whilst QT3 is free for playback, more powerful features and encoding options are offered in an online purchase upgrade to QuickTime 3.0 Pro. Apple also shipped the QT3-savvy HyperCard 2.4 Upgrade. |
Adobe has just shipped Photoshop 5. It benefits from a new History palette, enhanced Action support and vastly improved text editing. Fully-editable text layers and effects offer a substantial boost in ease-of-use. The long-awaited overhaul to Premiere 5 also shipped this month, offering a powerful feature set and completely redesigned interface. As if all this weren't enough, Adobe looks set to capture a large portion of the web graphics market, following the preview release of ImageReady Beta. This superb application allows web designers to animate and optimise graphics in an environment almost identical to Photoshop. It allows full interactive control over GIF, JPEG or PNG compression settings through a dynamic preview. It even offers editable text layers and a history palette, as in Photoshop 5. ImageReady is due to ship later in May. Direct competition will come from the forthcoming Macromedia Fireworks (also in Beta), but ImageReady looks like the clear winner. |
Macromedia pushed its vector-based web animation technology further with the release of Flash 3 and the corresponding Shockwave Plug-ins. Several enhancements include support for transparency, alpha channels and statistics on download rates. The bad news is that designers hoping for an overhaul of the appalling interface will be disappointed - it is almost the same as version 2. The good news is that Macromedia is now pushing Flash as an open format, which means third-parties can now create Flash media. Thank goodness. Also this month, the update to Dreamweaver 1.2 includes more behaviours, link-checking, and tighter integration with external editors. Just released Director 6.5 adds native support for QT3, and QTVR, and integrates several previously separate add-on products, enabling you to Save as Java, use Flash media, and custom cursors. In a rather mysterious move, Apple has apparently bought the technology (and engineers) behind QT3-savvy Final Cut from Macromedia. It's future is unclear. |
MetaCreations has announced Infini-D 4.5, on hybrid CD. As well as a faster rendering engine, it offers batch and network rendering, new particle effects and supports After Effects plug-ins. Also out on hybrid CD is the new presentation package Kai's Power Show. It's aimed at people who want to put together simple presentations combining text, graphics and video with "TV-like transitions", using the familiar "Kai-style" room interface metaphor. |
Intel and MetaCreations have launched MetaStream, a technology for streaming scalable 3D content over the net, which currently only runs on the PC, but will eventually work on the Mac. |
Bare Bones Software are famous for their market-leading text editor BBEdit. They have now introduced Mailsmith, a fully-featured commercial e-mail application. To set it apart from the rest of the crowd, it offers powerful filtering, searching, and scripting. Definitely worth a look, especially for power-users (a 30-day demo is available). |
The final word is that the much sought-after UFO noodle is out there. And you thought there were no ads on this site... |
|
|||||||||||||
|
. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
. |
Download Links |
. |
QuickTime
3.0 |
. |
. |
Dreamweaver
1.2 Trial PPC |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
. |
||||||||
|
. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
