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 Copyright © 1998 Shiro Wilde |
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Apple used Macworld Expo NY this month to preview the iMac, announcing its US ship date as August 15 (around September 1 elsewhere). It will include a 56K modem instead of 33.6K as initially proposed. Apple has a great QT movie showing off the simplicity of the iMac. There is simply no doubt that this machine will be an incredible success. Also at the Expo, Apple released the DVD-Video Kit & PC Card for playing DVD movies on PowerBook G3s. Apple has also updated its disk utilities Disk Copy 6.3, Disk First Aid 8.2, and Drive Setup 1.5, which are all now HFS Plus savvy. Disk Copy 6.3 is also one of the first Mac applications to use Navigation Services. Although not yet widely released to end-users, Apple's Navigation Services is available as a modern alternative to the ancient open/save Standard File dialogue, but is only used where developers have implemented it in their software. It makes choosing and viewing files and folders much easier, through a drag-and-drop-aware, resizable, non-modal window. Fantastic! It will be a component of the forthcoming Mac OS 8.5, which has just gone beta, and is due to ship in September. |
Macromedia beat Adobe to market with its new web graphics application, Fireworks, and offers a fully-functional Fireworks 1.0 Trial version online. As first is not necessarily best, Macworld has a comparative review of Fireworks vs. ImageReady. One major difference is in the preview modes for optimised images - Fireworks previews up to 4 simultaneous compression settings in a window when you save, whereas ImageReady offers a single constantly updated view whilst you work. Macromedia has previewed Flash Generator Beta 1, an extension to Flash 3. It allows you to create Flash "templates" that are used to generate Flash graphics on-the-fly, on the server-side over the web. As such, it's possible to have dynamically generated and updated data with a degree of user interaction not possible with standard Flash movies. Definitely worth a look for presenting dynamic data on web sites. Macromedia has made a deal with Netscape to include Flash plug-ins with future releases of Navigator starting with 4.5, which should provide a significant boost to the installed base of Flash-ready web browsers. |
Adobe has just shipped ImageReady, its new web graphics application, and is offering it at a discounted price to Photoshop users. Highly recommended - download the ImageReady 1.0 Trial version to be convinced. Meanwhile, work continues on Illustrator 8.0, bringing interface features even closer to that of Photoshop, including the addition of Actions and Navigator palettes. No sign of true transparency, however. |
Netscape has just released Communicator 4.5 Beta 1. It includes significantly enhanced interfaces for mail, news, and the address book. The Navigator web browser now offers Explorer-style URL auto-completion, and "Smart Browsing" which is supposed to suggest related sites to the ones you visit. In practice, however, the suggestions are often dubious. The Flash plug-in is now included as standard. Overall speed has been improved, so that alone should make it a worthwhile upgrade. |
NetObjects has released Fusion 3.0, another major upgrade of its web site authoring package. Amongst the new features include better integration with other applications and support for database integration with FileMaker Pro. An enormous 25-meg Fusion 3.0 Trial is available. |
Qualcomm is preparing a major scheduling/contact management package for release fairly soon, having recently posted Eudora Planner 4.0 Beta 5 for Power Mac, and shipped the Win version. My advice: avoid this bloated ugly thing. It's actually based on Now Contact & Now Up-To-Date, which Qualcomm acquired when they bought up Now Software back in November 97. As for the long-lost Now Utilities, Qualcomm was supposed to announce Now Utilities 8.0 this month. |
Ziff-Davis is ending MacWEEK in its current printed form. From next month, the Macintosh-specific weekly paper will become cross-platform and shift focus to electronic media, emerging as eMediaWeekly. Meanwhile, the MacWEEK name lives on as an online-only web site, rebadged MacWEEK.com. |
The final word is that trademarks continue to permeate the English language. With the increased coverage of extreme sports, such as in the recent Summer X Games 98, one would have thought the generic term "in-line skating" would be widely understood. However, Palo Alto has laws in effect that ban Rollerblades by name. If you prefer dodging trees and rocks to police and traffic, watch out: all-terrain Rollerblades are about to take off, big time. |
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