-APRIL 2000-

Did You Miss the NAB Show?
This was probably the most Mac-centric convention ever of the National Association of Broadcasters. Read all the stuff at and for the show and check out QuickTime coverage as well.

Apple Offers Free iMovie Download for PowerBook, G4 Owners
APRIL 28—Apple today announced it will offer its consumer video editing application, iMovie, as a free download to G4 and PowerBook owners. IMovie comes preinstalled on iMac DV and iMac DV Special Edition models. The software allows users to capture video through a DV camcorder via the FireWire ports on the Macintosh. Movies are then stored as QuickTime files and can be placed back onto a DV camcorder for viewing on a television.

Ricoh Enhances Digital Imaging Systems
APRIL 27—Ricoh has updated its line of Aficio digital imaging systems with the introduction of the Aficio 350e and 450e—both enhanced versions of existing 350 and 450 models. The new versions sport base configurations of 20 MB RAM, 4 GB hard disk space and 600 DPI scanning resolution. The new systems also add network scanning capabilities and faxing from the desktop over a network.

TrueSAN Unveils 7 Terabyte Network Storage System
APRIL 27—TrueSAN Networks unveiled its new 7000FC storage-area network device. The fibre channel 7000FC is based on an Open SAN Framework and TrueFibre technology and offers support for Macintosh, Unix (various flavors) and a number of other clients. Storage capacity starts at 200 GB and can be expanded to 7 terabytes. SAN connectivity begins at eight nodes, expandable to hundreds of nodes per storage network.

BitHeadz Adds Velocity Support in Voodoo 1.2
APRIL 26—Bitheadz is offering an upgrade to its Voodoo sampling MIDI drum machine software. Version 1.2 will offer optimization for the G4 (Altivec), as well as several enhancements and new features. Voodoo is software that plays samples and MIDI files. Samples and drum patterns can be triggered from the computer keyboard, a MIDI controller or a MIDI application running on the same CPU, with no additional hardware required.

Toshiba Introduces New Portable Digital Projector
APRIL 26—Toshiba has introduced a model to its line of digital projectors. The TDP-S1 is a portable model offering 1,000 ANSI lumens and weighing in at 6.8 lbs and measuring 3.9" in height. The projector uses Digital Light processing from Texas Instruments and offers SVGA resolution, with compression capabilities up to 1024 x 768.

FWB Announces Hard Disk ToolKit 4
APRIL 25—FWB today announced version 4.0 of its Hard Disk ToolKit, a diagnostic and media formatting utility. The new version adds support for FireWire and compatibility with Mac OS 9 and the current line of G4s. It also adds an additional 1,000 devices to its list of supported devices, including the Iomega ATAPI ZIP.

Quark Ships Avenue.quark XTension for XML Output
APRIL 24—Quark Inc. today announced the availability of avenue.quark, a new XTension to QuarkXPress that allows users to repurpose content for use on the Web. The software provides the ability to describe and export XPress documents in XML. Avenue.quark ships with the StreetPost QuarkXTensions module, which allows users to post XML documents directly to Vignette StoryServer 4 and other Web application servers.

IBM Offers New TFT Monitors, Drops Prices on Existing CRTs and Flat Panels
APRIL 24—IBM is tripling its lineup of thin-film transfer monitors with the launch of a host of consumer and professional models. The company also says it's restructuring its pricing scheme on CRT monitors. The new IBM T54A 15-inch TFT flat-panel monitor, designed for general business applications like word processing, business graphics and basic spreadsheets, offers a 15" viewable image with low reflectivity and a resolution up to 1,024 x 768 pixels.

Agfa To Ship $169 SnapScan e40
APRIL 24—Agfa Corp. will start shipping its new USB SnapScan e40 in May. The scanner, a less expensive version of the SnapScan e50, which will also start shipping in May, offers 1,200 x 2,400 DPI resolution with a color depth of 42 bits. Unlike the e50, the e40 does not come equipped with a transparency unit. The maximum scanning area is 8.5" x 11.7"—the same as the e50.

Olympus Unveils C-3000 Zoom Digital Camera
APRIL 24—Olympus has unveiled a new model in its line of Zoom digital cameras. The C-3000 Zoom offers a resolution of 3.34 megapixels (2,048 x 1,536 pixels) and will launch at a price point of $799.

Digidesign Announces Slate of New Pro Tools Products
APRIL 21—Take a deep breath. Digidesign has announced a shockingly huge number of new products for Pro Tools and Avid systems, some of which have begun shipping. Several of these products were released for NAB and Musikmesse, but information about them has only now become available. An upgrade to Drawmer Dynamics plugin for Digidesign's Pro Tools|24 MIX systems has begun shipping. Dynamics is a gating, compression and limiting plugin.

Quark Releases 4.11 Updater, Revises Stance on Third-Party Contributions to Slowness
APRIL 20 (Revised 3:50 p.m. PDT)—Earlier this week, Quark Inc. quietly released an updater to version 4.1 of QuarkXPress. Yesterday the company sent out its newsletter proclaiming that the new update fixed "the QuarkXPress contribution to the slowness problem when switching tools running under Mac OS 9 (and when running under Mac OS 8.6 with the Font Manager Update 1.0 installed)," as well as two other significant bugs.

In its technical newsletter released yesterday, the company had accused Adobe's ATM 4.5.2 of contributing to the lag. After this was published here today, the company sent out a request that we change this information to reflect that Quark in no way blames Adobe or ATM for contributing to this problem. Quark did not revise its stance on Mac OS 9, however, which it says is a contributing factor to the problem, as is OS 8.6 with Font Manager installed.

Andromeda Offers Rebate on Shadow/Techtures Bundle
APRIL 20—Andromeda Software is offering a $59 rebate on the Shadow/Techtures filter bundle for Photoshop, Premiere and other paint and effects programs. The deal is available only this week and only by calling 800-547-0055. The Shadow filter offers perspective shadows with a virtual camera, stereo 3D viewing, multiple shadowing with four movable lights, natural soft edges and blurring, drop and cast shadows an a movable plane and 3D shadowing.

LaCie To Ship FireWire RAID
April 20—LaCie today announced a new FireWire RAID solution that requires no special cabinet or chassis—just a series of daisy-chained external FireWire hard disk drives. That package, which ships standard with two 75 GB drives, includes a six-pin IEEE-1394 cable, an internal international power supply and LaCie's Silverlining Pro 6.3 drive utility software, which allows for RAID 0 striping.

Does the QuarkXPress 4.11 Updater Fix the Lag Under OS 9?
April 20—[Editor's note: This story is maintained here for archival purposes only. It has been revised. See above or click here for the revised version. Click "more" for the original story.]

Apple Profits $233 Million on $1.94 Billion in Revenue; Offers Two for One Stock Split
April 19, 2000—(Press Release)—Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2000 second quarter ending April 1, 2000. For the quarter, the Company posted a net profit of $233 million, or $1.28 per diluted share. These results compare to a net profit of $135 million, or $.84 per diluted share, achieved in the year-ago quarter. Revenues for the quarter were $1.94 billion, up 27 percent from the year-ago quarter, and gross margins were 28.2 percent, up from 26.3 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 51 percent of the quarter's revenues.

Macromedia Launches Dreamweaver Exchange
APRIL 19—Macromedia today announced it has launched Macromedia Exchange for Dreamweaver, a site dedicated to expanding the capabilities of its HTML authoring software, Dreamweaver. The site now contains more than 100 free, downloadable extensions for Dreamweaver, as well as a downloadable Extension Manager (required for the new extensions). It also offers information and discussions about extending the functionality of Dreamweaver.

Sonic Beefs Up DVD Creator
APRIL 19—Sonic Solutions has released an update to its Mac flagship DVD authoring program, DVD Creator. The new version, 2.1, features a third-generation SD-2000 MPEG-2 video encoder, Web-linked DVD authoring functionality and title production automation. The news version offers RISC-based processing and new MPEG chip technology with programmable logic and video processing hardware.

H.P. Ships New Mobile Printer
APRIL 18—Hewlett-Packard Co. has beefed up its line of mobile inkjet printers with the launch of the DeskJet 350 today. The company says the printer has been tested extensively for shock, drops and climactic extremes. The DeskJet 350 is the only mobile printer in the industry to feature ink cartridges that can withstand extreme temperature and altitude changes without leaking, according to H.P. The printer's high-volume ink cartridges can generate up to 485 pages of black text and 155 pages in color.

Kodak To Ship New Portable Projector
APRIL 18—Kodak today announced that it will start shipping its new DP 2900 projector in may. The portable unit offers XGA resolution and 1,000 ANSI lumens. It weighs in at 4.2 lbs. The new M1-DA DVI (Digital Video Interface) offers users digital, analog and USB connectivity through one connector. The DP2900 is also HDTV-compatible, which can further enhance the resolution.

Maxon Ships Cinema 4D XL 6.0 for Macintosh
APRIL 17—Maxon has started shipping version 6.0 of Cinema 4D XL. The new version, which was available for preorder last week, includes several enhancements, including a whole new lighting system with more than 50 new light and illumination modes with new features like radiosity-like area lights and shadows; raytraced soft shadows; volumetric noise (noise, soft, wavy, hard); new shadow maps; new shadow bias controls; colored shadows; inner and outer cone control; and near and far clipping.

Agfa Introduces SnapScan e50
APRIL 17—Agfa Corp. will start shipping its new USB SnapScan e50 in May. The scanner offers 1,200 x 2,400 DPI resolution with a color depth of 42 bits and comes equipped with built-in transparency capabilities. (A lightplate built into the scanner cover uses a "light-diffusion" process for scanning 35 mm transparencies. Agfa includes slideholders for 35mm strip and framed holders.) The maximum scanning area is 8.5" x 11.7".

Deneba Releases Canvas 7 SE for Mac
April 14—Deneba Software is expanding its Canvas graphics software line to include Canvas 7 SE for Macintosh and Windows. The standard edition is a scaled-down version of Canvas 7 targeted toward small businesses. It includes 500 fonts and 10,000 clip-art images. High-end features of Canvas 7 have been removed in the SE version, such as color separations, spot color and matching system support, color calibration, technical file formats (DXF, DWG, CGM, etc.), technical illustration tools and advanced typographic controls. However, illustration features, SpriteLayer transparency tools, SpriteEffect filter capabilities, Web design features, image editing tools and page layout features are retained.

3dfx To Bring New Voodoo, Good Juju to the Mac Platform
APRIL 12—3dfx says it will release its first Mac 2D/3D graphics accelerators. The Voodoo4 4500 and the Voodoo5 5500 offer support for Glide and OpenGL and, for the first time, QuickDraw 3D Rave. 3dfx also says the cards will be ready for Mac OS X when it ships this summer. The Voodoo5 5500 features 64 MB RAM for $329. The Voodoo4 4500 offers 32 MB RAM and is expected to cost $200.

SGI Bundles Flat Panel with ProFormance 3 for Mac
APRIL 12—Silicon Graphics has started shipping its 1600SW flat-panel display for the Mac bundled with the ProFormance 3 graphics accelerator card. The card offers acceleration for QuarkXPress, Adobe Photoshop and OpenGL, among other applications. The 1600SW display is the only LCD monitor available with adjustable backlight color temperature capability, which enables users to optimize their displays to output the truer image quality for Web graphics, print and video production. The display offers a 17.3", wide-format screen at a resolution of 1,600 x 1,024.

DVDit! Comes to the Mac in the Fourth Quarter
APRIL 12—Sonic Solutions has announced the impending Mac release of DVDit!, a DVD authoring package. The software is compatible with QuickTime video and audio files, supporting everything from DV to D-1 formats. QuickTime files can be dragged and dropped for conversion. DVDit! automatically builds buttons and interactivity, transcodes video to MPEG-2, multiplexes and formats content and writes it to CD-R or DVD-RAM for playback.

Medea To Ship New Disk Arrays in Fibre, SCSI
APRIL 11—Medea has announed new arrays in its VideoRAID line and a new AudioRaid disk aray optimized for 24-bit audio. The VideoRaid fc and VideoRack fc are SAN-Ready Fibre Channel RAID 0 solutions for digital content creation and Internet streaming media applications. The six-drive VideoRaid fc (a compact desktop model) and VideoRack fc (a 19" rack-mount configuration with removable drive modules) offer sustained data transfer rates of 60 MB per second and capacities up to 450 GB per module. Prices go as low as $19 per GB.

Epson Ships $89 Color Stylus Printer
APRIL 11—Epson America has introduced a new printer in its line of Stylus Color models. The Stylus Color 670, a four-color, 1,400 x 720 DPI inkjet, replaces the Stylus Color 660. Printer drivers are both Mac- and Windows-compatible and include auto-sensing for USB and parallel ports, which allows the printer to be accessed by more than one computer at once. The ink dot size is 7 picoliters. Print speeds vary by application, but it can output black text at 5 PPM, color text 3.5 PPM. An 8" x 11" photo will print in four minutes, 13 seconds in 360 DPI fine print mode.

Corel Sweeps MetaCreations 2D Tools
APRIL 11—Orphaned users of MetaCreations graphics products have found a new home in Corel Corp., which has acquired a number of MetaCreations tools. In a massive sweep of MetaCreations' product base, Corel has acquired MetaCreations Painter, MetaCreations Painter Classic, MetaCreations Painter 3D, Art Dabbler, KPT, KPT-X, Vector Effects and Bryce. All of the products are compatible with Mac and Windows.

Media 100 Invests in beatnik, Adds SDI to MediaPress
APRIL 11—Media 100 has started including the serial digital interface in MediaPress Pro, a real-time MPEG encoder for Macintosh from Media 100 subsidiary Wired. The MediaPress encoder captures and compresses video and audio signals into fully compatible MPEG 1 and MPEG 2 bitstreams for media network transmissions and DVD authoring. The company has also invested in Beatnik to give customers access to the Beatnik Production Music destination.

Avid To Release XPress 4.0 This Summer with Special Upgrade Pricing
APRIL 11—Avid says it will ship Windows and Mac versions of Avid XPress 4.0 simultaneously this summer. The new version will add enhanced support for Web and DVD content creation. The company is also offering a limited-duration upgrade pricing promotion for current owners of Avid Meridien hardware-based Avid XPress Plus and Deluxe software.

Pinnacle Powers Uncompressed HD on the Mac
APRIL 10—When we speculated about the announcement Apple, Matrox and Pinnacle would make, we had no clue we'd see uncompressed HD on the desktop. But that's just what Pinnacle promised to deliver by the end of summer for the Mac and Final Cut Pro. The new PCI card, the Targa Ciné, will deliver a fully configured SD system for less than $10,000 and an HD system for less than $30,000.

Matrox Brings Real-Time, Dual-Stream Uncompressed to the Mac for Less Than $1,000
APRIL 10—We guessed it. We called it on the nose. It's real-time DVEs and uncompressed dual-stream video capture on the Mac, courtesy of Matrox. What we didn't guess is that the solution would come in at less than $1,000 and reside on a single PCI card. We saw a pre-release version in action today, and it's impressive.

Apple Offers Free Final Cut Pro Upgrade
APRIL 10—Apple today announced a free upgrade to Final Cut Pro. The new version, 1.2.5, supports the 16:9 widescreen format, YUV processing and reference movies (to conserve disk space). FCP's 16:9 support extends to capture, editing and output.

Puffin Adds Compositing to Commotion 3.0
APRIL 10—Puffin Designs, which was acquired by Pinnacle Systems last month, today announced a major revision to its Commotion product, bringing it into the realm of compositing. The new version, 3.0, will ship in both DV and pro configurations. The company says the paint component has been rewritten from the ground up, with support for unlimited layers with more than 75 effects filters built in, including plug-in sets from Primatte Keyer, Composite Wizard and Image Lounge.

Discreet Launches Combustion* for Mac
APRIL 10—Discreet today boosted its support for the Mac platform significantly with the launch of combustion*, a paint, animation and 3D compositing application for the Macintosh and Windows NT platforms. The software includes technology from the company's inferno* product. It features keying, motion tracking, color correction, non-destructive (vector-based) paint animation, 3D compositing and network rendering, as well as support for Adobe After Effects and Photoshop plugins.

Echo Fire 1.1 To Ship in May
APRIL 7—Synthetic Aperture will give a sneak preview of its forthcoming Echo Fire 1.1 at the NAB convention in Las Vegas next week. Echo Fire provides video previews for Photoshop and After Effects. The new version, expected to ship in May, offers real-time previews in After Effects with support for NTSC/PAL video monitor previews and previewing from disk.

Life Forms Studio 3.9 To Ship in June
APRIL 7—Credo Interactive says it will ship version 3.9 of Life Forms Studio, a character animation application for Windows and Macintosh. The company will preview the software next week at the NAB show in Las Vegas. The full release is expected to ship in June.

Digital Voodoo Ships Three D1 Video Cards for Mac
APRIL 6—Digital Voodoo Inc. has started shipping three new D1 video cards for the Mac, each with 4:4:4:4 video output, six channels of AES/EBU digital audio and a 64-bit PCI interface. The new line includes the D1 Desktop 64, D1 Desktop 64 Lite and D1 Desktop 64AV uncompressed 10 bit SMPTE 259M SDI QuickTime video cards. The D1 Desktop 64 series become the only QuickTime cards on the Mac platform to include full 10-bit capture to disk.

Avid Offers Dual-Stream Uncompressed Capture on the Mac
APRIL 6 (Correction)—Contrary to a statement in yesterday's column, "Is Dual-Stream, Real-Time DV Coming to the Mac?" there are, in fact, dual-stream options for Mac already on the market from Avid—Media Composer 8.1 and Avid XPress 3.1, both of which support the Meridien video option when running on a G4. This option on Media Composer has been available since December, but the company's literature had not been updated to reflect this option. Previously dual-stream capture was available only on Windows NT. We apologize for the error.

JVC Introduces new D-9 Camcorder
APRIL 6—JVC is introducing a new D-9 camcorder at the NAB show in Las Vegas next week. The camera, the DY-70, combines JVC's 14-bit DSP camera technology with with all-digital 4:2:2 camcorder technology. The camera comes in at $12,000, not including the lens.

Sonic DVD Authoring Coming to Avid
APRIL 6—Avid Technology Inc. will include DVD authoring software from Sonic Solutions in future releases of it editing and finishing systems. The technology, AuthorScript, outputs video and audio content directly to the DVD video format. It also has a transparent print to DVD function that automatically formats Avid content for DVD. The two companies say the first implementation will come in Symphony, Media Composer and Avid Xpress systems, with the technology to be added to other systems in the future.

Canon Launches Three New Projectors
APRIL 6—Canon USA Inc. has introduced three new XGA-resolution LCD projectors. The new projectors offer a switching feature to allow users to select the level of brightness for the situation and come with the ability to project images 25 percent brighter than previous Canon projectors. They also include a digitizer pointer, which includes a mouse click function and provides for onscreen annotation.

Is Real-Time, Dual-Stream DV Coming to the Mac?
APRIL 5—Is dual stream coming to the Mac? Real-time DVEs? More graphics card options? You put three companies together like Apple, Pinnacle Systems and Matrox, and something good's going to come of it for the Macintosh platform—and that's just what's happening at NAB next week. We thought a little speculation going into the show might be healthy.

Cult Effects Gets 8 New Filters in 1.5, Free Upgrade for Current Users
APRIL 5—Cycore, based in Uppsala, Sweden, will soon ship version 1.5 of Cult Effects, a suite of plugins for Adobe After Effects. Current users will receive the upgrade free. Others who preorder the product at the NAB show in Las Vegas next week will receive a "substantial discount," according to the company.

Pixelan To Demo New SpiceMaster for Final Cut Pro at NAB
APRIL 5—Pixelan Software has launched a new 2D effects package, SpiceMaster. The software is currently only available for Windows, but the company says it will demonstrate a version for Apple Final Cut Pro next week at the NAB show in Las Vegas at the Adobe Partners Pavilion.

Videonics Ships ComandPost Multimedia Controller for Mac
APRIL 4—Videonics Inc., Cambell, Calif., has started shipping CommandPost, a multimedia application controller. CommandPost is a USB-based controller that adds controls like pushbuttons, jog/shuttle, joystick and a T-Bar to multimedia applications. The device includes interface software, customizable to any application, and a hardware control panel that is connected to a computer via a Universal Serial Bus.

GoLive Gets More Than 100 New Features in 5.0
APRIL 4—Adobe Systems Inc. today announced GoLive 5.0, an upgrade to its Web authoring software. The new version includes more than 100 new features, including several hooks into other Adobe products (like drag and drop object editing between GoLive and Photoshop 5.5).

Illustrator Offers Enhanced Web Support in Version 9
APRIL 4—Adobe Systems Inc. has brought its Illustrator design software to version 9. The upgrade, which is expected to ship this quarter, is geared more toward the Web than previous versions, with support for vector output in Flash and Scalable Vector Graphics formats. Graphics can be exported in their entirety to a single Flash file, with each layer included as a separate frame, or they can be exported so that each layer is saved as a separate Flash file.

Sonnet Adds New G4 Upgrade Card, Drops Prices on Crescendo, Encore Line
APRIL 3—Sonnet Technologies, Irvine, Calif., has come out with a new G4 upgrade card for PCI Power Macs. The new card runs at 450 MHz and comes with a 1 MB backside cache. The Crescendo G4 ships with Altivec enabling software, which gives applications access to the G4's Velocity Engine. Sonnet says the enabler "fully supports" the Apple Velocity Engine libraries included with OS 9. The card runs on Apple Power Macintosh 7300 through 9600 models, Power Computing Power Tower Pro and Power Wave, Umax j700 and S900, Daystar Genesis 360 through 932 and Mactell XB-Pro. The Crescendo G4 450 is available now for $799.

H.P. Introduces Multi-Function Printers
APRIL 3—Hewlett-Packard Co., Palo Alto, Calif., today launched three multi-function options for some of its 8000-series laser printers, including the LaserJet 8000 and 8100 and the newly announced 8550. The multi-function capabilities offer printing, copying and digital sending.

Epson Reduces Price of PhotoPC 750z
APRIL 3—Epson America Inc., Long Beach, Calif., has lowered the price on its PhotoPC 750z camera to $499. The camera offers a 1.25 megapixel CCD, 6x zoom (3x optical, 2x digital), 12 MB memory and image enhancement technology that allows it to capture images at 1,600 x 1,200 pixels (1.92 million pixels).

Media Lab To Release Photoshop Web Converter
APRIL 3—Media Lab Inc., Longmont., Colo., will release a new program called PhotoWebber, which is designed to automate and speed up the process of bringing Photoshop files to the Internet by converting multi-layered files into individual graphics and generating HTML code for them. The software automatically saves Photoshop files in a separate folder in JPEG, GIF and PNG format, while the original file goes untouched.

Iomega To Support FireWire in Jaz Drives, Ships USB Adapter
APRIL 3—I omega Corp., Roy, Utah, says it will begin supporting FireWire on its Jaz drives by mid-2000. The move is specifically geared toward Mac users. Mark Lucas, executive vice president, global marketing and product management, for Iomega said in a released statement: "Mac users voiced a need for USB-enabled storage solutions and we have provided them with various drives and accessories to meet that need; now there is a call for FireWire-enabled storage solutions and we plan to meet this request as well."

HEADLINES FROM MARCH 2000

HEADLINES FROM FEBRUARY 2000

Tuesday, February 06, 2001 13:06:33

Tuesday, February 06, 2001 13:06:33