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 Copyright © 1998-99 Shiro Wilde |
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Apple finally launched its much-anticipated iBook consumer portable (codenamed P1) at Macworld New York in July. The iBook features a stunning industrial design, and will debut in September for $1599 with optional new AirPort wireless networking technology. Up to 10 iBooks with AirPort cards installed can connect to a network via an Airport Base Station at up to 11 Mbps, within a 150 ft range. Introduced at Seybold San Francisco two weeks ago was the extremely fast Power Mac G4 series (also AirPort ready) - classified as a supercomputer as it can calculate more than a billion floating point operations per second. Check out the new G4 TV Ad. Launched with the G4s was the Apple Cinema Display, an unprecedented 22-inch letterbox-format digital LCD screen. Incredible. Following these major product launches Apple stock soared to an all-time high, surpassing its previous record set in 1991. Mac OS 9.0 (codenamed Sonata) is due to ship in October for $99. New features include a major upgrade to Sherlock, multi-user support (complete with voiceprint login), file encryption, automatic software updates, and file sharing and AppleScript over IP. QT4 shipped in June, but only as a Net-based active install. After much pressure from users and developers, QuickTime 4.0.3 is now available as a stand-alone installer as well. Meanwhile, Apple is suing iMac look-alike makers eMachines, Sotec, and Future Power/Daewoo for copying the iMac design. |
MetaCreations continues the saga of its ever-restless product line. Seybold saw the launch of yet another new 3D package, Carrara. A modelling, animation, and rendering package aimed at graphic artists moving into 3D, it uses MetaCreations' elegant signature user interface as in Bryce, Poser and Canoma. In July, MetaCreations sold some of its consumer titles to ScanSoft - Kai's Photo Soap 2, Kai's Power Show, and Kai's SuperGoo. Then, trying a new way to sell its software, it launched KPT X, a series of small graphics tools to be sold individually over the Web - currently there are three. Poser 4, the latest upgrade of the unique human figure modelling and animation software has shipped, offering artistic sketch appearances, clothes, hair, facial expressions, animated deformations, and animals. Ray Dream Studio 5.5 has also been released. It's actually 5.0.2 with additional "content" and plug-ins that improve modelling, lighting, effects and rendering capabilities. Painter 6 has been announced, and is expected to ship later this year. It will offer more sophisticated brushes, better integration of bitmap and vector artwork, and improved layers and overall user interface. More than a year after the Windows version, MetaStream for the Mac finally arrived last month. The free MetaStream 2.2 Plug-in enables quick scalable streaming of animated 3D objects over the Web. MetaStream objects can be created in all of MetaCreations' latest 3D applications. |
Adobe shipped InDesign 1.0 at Seybold. Users of Photoshop, PageMaker, Illustrator and Quark Xpress can upgrade for $299. Let the DTP war recommence. In a bizarre move, Photoshop 5.5 and ImageReady 2.0 became one product. Neither is available separately, and the two interfaces have been partially integrated. Since PS5.5 gained some of the same Web-oriented features of IR2, it all appears rather mutated. Hopefully Photoshop 6 will clear everything up. Adobe has just announced an upgrade to After Effects 4.1 which has quite a number of new features. Amongst them are support for higher image resolution, more import and export formats, a Flowchart View to see the overall hierarchy of compositions, and a Collect Files feature to gather assets into one location. You can also save effects settings for use on other projects. The upgrade is $49 for users of 4.0. On the update front, GoLive 4.0.1 Update, ATM Deluxe 4.5.1 Update and ATR Deluxe 2.5.1 Update are now available for download. Also, Adobe released and then later recalled Premiere 5.1b Update. At present, Adobe says to reinstall Premiere 5.1a Update - the additional fixes and support for FireWire device control will return in a forthcoming 5.1c Update. Much-delayed and now in public beta, Acrobat 4.0 Beta Plug-ins have finally made an appearance. The included Web Capture plug-in is actually quite impressive though currently not without its bugs. |
Macromedia enraged many people with the release of its Shockwave 7.0.2 Player. The latest version installs numerous items of software including a constantly-running background application and a control strip module. Macromedia responded to a flood of complaints saying it will work on scaling back the software. Flash 4 shipped in July, and a free Flash 4 Player browser plug-in and Flash 4 Trial are available for download. Both authoring and playback are PowerPC and Win32 only (no 68K support). Generator 2, which requires Flash 4, has just been released. It offers improved performance, chart generation, and can now export QT4 movies. The server software is for UNIX and Win32 only. A 60-day Generator 2 Trial is available. Macromedia has just announced Flash Writer which allows Illustrator 8 users to export directly to Shockwave Flash files. It will be available for download in September. |
IBM is joining the race to bring continuous speech recognition to the Mac. It announced at Macworld Expo New York that its award-winning ViaVoice software is coming to the Mac by the end of this year. |
The final word is that air is the next big thing. It may have been around in extreme sports for a long time, but it's just about to hit computing in a big way. Apple's iBook with AirPort wireless networking and products like Farallon SkyLINE will offer a new level of freedom to portable users, allowing them to stay connected to their home/office/school network as they move about locally. Incorporating AirPort into new desktop Macs as well as portables may seem odd, but when they're communicating with laptops, PDAs and phones, we'll be wondering how we managed without it. |
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