Prodigal Mac: Are We There Yet? Are We There Yet? Are We There Yet? By Kevin Schmitt 'Scuse me, but do you have the time? My watch reads about 11:55, and I'm not sure it's right. I could've sworn it's earlier than that. You see, Uncle Steve said that when the clock hits twelve the transition to Mac OS X would be complete, and my trusty Justice League of America wristwatch purchased back in the days when the '040 chip was about to give way to the PowerPC 601 is telling me that it's damn near twelve. Maybe my watch needs another battery, but, on the other hand, maybe it's actually correct. Maybe it is as close to twelve as it claims to be. Man, how time flies. ...Read More »

Talkin' Smack: ColdFusion on the Mac Desktop By Dave Nagel The Mac gods are not as forgiving as some of the other gods currently on the market. For a Mac journalist like me, one little slip can mean the difference between canonization among the great saints and martyrs of Macdom and expulsion from Machalla. And so it is not with a little trepidation that I offer you the following confession, one that, though slight, reveals the dark patch on my AltiVec core that I've been trying to hide lo these many years. ...Read More »

Bonus Smack: It's the Big One, Elizabeth By Dave Nagel Good gooblety goop! It's finally here--Photoshop 7.0 for Mac OS X ... and, uh, all those other operating systems as well. But who cares about those? With the release of the most ubiquitous creative application on any platform, Adobe has finally made Mac OS X a viable operating system for creative professionals. And that means everything else can kiss my shiny, graphite Mac! ...Read More »

Prodigal Mac: Let The Macromedia Obsession Continueth By Kevin Schmitt I've only got 10 days left, and by the time you read this, it will probably be even less. I've been slowly, and with increasing sadness, watching the "days left" counter on my Flash MX trial version tick down from thirty. I'm at ten days and counting before I have to break out the old credit card and plunk down my hard-earned $199 for the upgrade from Flash 5. I'm not all that pleased about that, since the version 5 upgrade was fifty clams less back in the summer of 2000, but I feel I have no choice. That's because in the span of less than three weeks, I have come to completely love and depend on Flash MX. ...Read More »

Maya Enters 3D Volume Market By Paulo de Andrade Alias/Wavefront has reduced the price of Maya. Not just by a little bit, but significantly. Maya Complete, formerly priced at $7,500 will now sell for $1,999 and Maya Unlimited, which formerly sold for $16,000 will be priced at $6,999. The software remains the same and no features were removed in order to lower the prices. This means that Maya is now priced in the same category as traditional volume market 3D software such as Lightwave and MAX, which may very well be considered a landmark in the history of 3D graphics. ...Read More »

Talkin' Smack: Broadband Madness By Dave Nagel By this point you all know me as a reasonable man, one not prone to outbursts of emotion or spurious logic. Perhaps you see me as a peacemaker, one whose aim is always to promote harmony and spread joy among users of technology in all of its forms. Or perhaps you see me as a cool stoic--a philosopher king who's unfazed by the world's troubles. But deep within my cool, slender, handsome exterior I am, fundamentally, just a man, one prone to the same perturbations of the mind as any of you. ...Read More »

Talkin' Smack: You So Crazy By Dave Nagel You know I love each and every one of you. However, as wonderful and physically attractive as you all are, you're also nuts. I reached this conclusion a very short time after publishing last week's Talkin' Smack column, in which I--or rather one of my many assistants who wrote that opinion for me--made a few negative comments about Apple's upgrade policy with regard to Mac OS X. ...Read More »

Talkin' Smack: Think Exploitive By Dave Nagel Let's recap. First Apple releases OS X as a public beta, charging a "nominal" $30 shipping and handling fee. Then they release the full version, jacking up the normal price of their OS to $130 and offering those who purchased the beta a $30 "discount" on the cost of the full release version of OS X. Then they came out with a 10.1 upgrade and charged another "nominal" $30 shipping and handling fee for those who needed the update, which included literally everybody because OS X 10.0 was missing so many features. And now there's something new that's so infuriating I couldn't even believe it when I heard it. ...Read More »

Prodigal Mac: Finally! By Kevin Schmitt It seems that only a mere couple of weeks after my somewhat controlled rant at Macromedia, something got done. The powers-that-be over there finally said, "You know, that Kevin is absolutely correct. Start the port of Flash over to OS X right now!" And here we are, less than one month later, and they're already done. All is forgiven! Praise be! ...Read More »

Talkin' Smack: Where Was I? By Dave Nagel So here's what happened. On the day of the announcement of Photoshop 7 for Mac OS X, I boldly proclaimed that I would be spending the next week covering every important, new aspect of the forthcoming release and analyzing what the announcement meant for us creative pros. It was, after all, the news every Mac designer had been waiting for, so why not give it the coverage it warranted? But little did I know that on the very day of the announcement I would be unceremoniously dragged to the hospital, have my gall bladder ripped out and spend the next seven to 10 days strung out on high dosages of FDA-approved opiates. So much for timely coverage of the most important news for OS X since OS X itself. ...Read More »

Talkin' Smack: License To Stream By Dave Nagel We've heard a lot in the last months about the glories of MPEG-4, the technology that may or may not emerge as the all-encompassing format for streaming video. Real has announced its general willingness to adopt the technology. Apple, of course, wants to make it synonymous with QuickTime. Microsoft ... well, who knows what Microsoft will do about it? Regardless, it looks like MPEG-4 could conceivably bridge the proprietary media formats out there to make life easy on end users and provide developers with a high-quality, low-bandwidth format for delivering their content. ...Read More »

Prodigal Mac: What Have You Done for Me Lately? By Kevin Schmitt Here I was, thinking I was all clever with the original title of this week's column, which was "Let's Put The Mac Back In Macromedia." While I was sitting around, patting myself on the back, some other columnist at some other site put my title out of play by naming his piece something oddly similar. While I had to come up with a new title, the content of my thoughts remain the same, and it boils down to the following: I've been more than a little peeved at Macromedia for a while now. ...Read More »

The Power of the Proposal By John DiMarco How the hell can I make money doing this stuff? Asked my perplexed student. He rambled on telling me how his portfolio was strong. He went on to say he’s making great new contacts, he feels he’s got a pretty handle on graphic design, he’s promoting himself actively, but he’s not getting any work. He asked me why. I figured out the reason with one question–are you writing proposals? His reply was no. ...Read More »

Analysis: There's No More Running By Dave Nagel I've questioned the value of some of Apple's moves in the past. At times they've seemed irrational, even flaky. I've even posited occasionally the notion that the mind of the head of Apple might still be a bit fogged over from the '70s, if you know what I mean. But of late I've begun to see glimpses into the larger, more coherent plan, one that seems more like a well plotted course than an acid trip. This new deal with Nothing Real brought it all into focus for me for the first time. And I must admit I like what I'm seeing. ...Read More »

Publishing: Is the Worst Over? By Dave Nagel If you're in publishing, you probably aren't feeling a tremendous sense of job security at the moment. For the last year, you've watched as one by one (or, in some cases, dozens at a time) of your colleagues were handed their walking papers. And even in the aftermath of massive layoffs and magazine foldings, you can still hear the ominous sputtering of the Corporate Chainsaw of Cost Cutting down the hall. ...Read More »

Analysis: iCan't Believe It By Dave Nagel Today Intel introduced the 2.2 GHz Pentium 4 processor with support for DDR memory. AMD also today announced its Athlon 2000+ chip, complete with a 266 MHz front-side bus. What do Mac users get today, on the first day of the big Macworld Expo? A redesigned iMac running at speeds slightly slower than the current professional desktop models. ...Read More »

Prodigal Mac: Iceberg Lettuce Is Clearly the Superior Salad Green By Kevin Schmitt Ladies and gentlemen, Kevin Schmitt is back, and this time it's personal! Kevin returns this week from his nice, long holiday break full of the spirit of the new year and maybe a little--just a little--bile left over from the previous year. He also has some friendly advice for us Mac psychofanatics: "Cool off." ...Read More »

Talkin' Smack: Microsoft-Free by '03 By Dave Nagel When I upgraded my primary system to OS X back in the early days, I got to see what life was like with virtually no professional-level native applications. It gave me some time to experiment--unconsciously at first--with my own core needs. Which applications were worth booting into Classic for? Which were worth leaving OS X altogether when Classic couldn't cut it? ...Read More »

Talkin' Smack: How I Spent on My Christmas Vacation By Dave Nagel I've used this column in the past rather mercilessly to deride the computer retailers in my environs. Victims of my Vorpal prose have included Microcenter, CompUSA and Fry's, and now I have one more to add to the list--the Apple Store itself. But before I get to this, I first have to give props to one of those stores I've dissed so harshly in the past. ...Read More »

State of the Art: Writeoffs? Right on! By Dave Nagel It's tax deduction time in the Nagel household. This year, instead of fathering new children to keep down my annual bill to the government, I've decided to do something different--go out and purchase a bunch of great new toys, which, coincidentally, fulfill some of my home office needs, and therefore my tax-deduction needs. Whether I will enjoy them as much as I have enjoyed my current children has yet to be seen. They should be cheaper to maintain. At the very least, they should help to keep me out of IRS jail for another year.... ...Read More »