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Macintosh
by By John Willner, willner@earthlink.net - April 17, 2001 at 17:48:15:
A CD-Rom disc with highlights of the Tokyo show was received from Apple, along with some new Macintosh advertising material, which was distributed. We watched the movie using an LCD projector and classroom screen. At the Tokyo conference the new iMacs were first announced. As usual, the per-formance by Steve Jobs was dynamic. The new Titanium power book was a hit in Japan as well.A report was given on a recent ProMax presentation in Irvine co-spon-sored by Apple. ProMax is a value- added retailer who puts together movie-making systems using Macintosh computers and their own software. This program is in the same price range as Premier, with similar, if not better, functionality. While the presentation was quite good, the biggest negative remains the typical TV set used for output of the finished product. With all of the expensive camera equipment, the high level software and a new Mac-intosh with DVD burner, one is still limited by the resolution of a typical TV set. In other words, the capabilities of the movie-making equipment far exceed what a television screen can display. This was brought home by a handout DVD-Rom disc with a movie showing Premier on a computer screen. The words were virtually unreadable. Of course, if everyone’s computer had a DVD player it would be better to use a computer monitor. However, the long awaited HDTV should really fill the gap one of these days. Meanwhile, this movie-making setup is fine for sports, entertainment and action packed commercials of the type to which most people are accustomed.
One member present is writing a children’s book. He wanted help with Quark Xpress. A number of generic questions were answered. Version 4.0 was opened and tools for manipulating text and illustrations were identified, along with which screen contained the kerning command. Differences between Quark Xpress and Pagemaker were pointed out using the projection system. Our recommendation was that it would be best to take a course on the use of this professional program in order to take maximum advantage of its features.
OS X had been installed on the G3 laptop computer. Some difficulties were encountered trying to select it while operating in OS 9.1. Also, resetting the “spring forward” time was not evident at first. This was mostly due to lack of familiarity, since the CD had just been received two days ago. However, the bouncing icons on the tool bar and new ways to select menus could be demonstrated. OS X will doubtless show much better when new software packages written for it are installed. Several programs observed to date were very impressive – especially those with broad, multi-application capabilities.
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