Like many others, I’ve been patiently waiting for Macromedia Adobe to update Director for quite some time now. The product hasn’t seen an update since 2004, and even that one wasn’t that hot. After years of no news whatsoever, Adobe finally announced Director 11 in February, and it began shipping this past Tuesday.
My first reaction to Director 11… Adobe, you should be ashamed of yourself for charging money for this piece of crap!
If you’re a Director user, the $299 upgrade basically buys you official support for Windows Vista and Intel Macs. That’s it! Any other (minor) features boasted by Adobe are over-hyped and under-delivered. For all practical purposes, this release should have been called Director 10.2, and given to us as a free update. As evidence to how little has actually changed in Director, the first thing the app does when you launch it is phone home to Macromedia.com.
In terms of Mac support, the new Director is extremely limited. Although Director 11 shipped 6 months after Leopard, Leopard is not officially supported for authoring or playback. For authoring, Director 11 only supports 10.4 on an Intel Mac. Director 11 does support playback on PPC based Macs, but also only on 10.4… nothing older, and nothing newer. I have done some preliminary testing running Director 11 under Leopard, and so far everything seems to work OK. There is no word from Adobe on when Director will officially gain Leopard support.
One other item that should be mentioned about Director now being able to run natively on Intel Macs is, none of your existing Xtras will work. All previous (Mac) Director Xtras are PPC only. You’ll need to get updates for all of those before they’ll work with Director 11.
Adobe also now boasts, “support for more than 40 video, audio, and image file formats”. Of course, they won’t tell us what formats those are exactly. I can’t find a list anywhere. I guess it’s up to us to guess. I can tell you 2 that are NOT supported… PDF, and Flash video (flv). I was shocked by this! Considering the fact that those two formats are core components of Adobe’s distribution system, how could they not build in support? Adobe Illustrator is also not one of those mysterious 40 formats, which is surprising since Adobe announced full Creative Suite compatibility when they first announced Director 11. They’ve since removed that statement from their site.
There’s just one last complaint I want to voice. This one is extremely minor, and pretty nit-picky, but I think it illustrates Adobe’s commitment to Director… They couldn’t even be bothered to make a custom folder icon like they do for all of their other applications. How freakin lazy is that?
My best advise… if you don’t really need Vista or Intel Mac support right now, then don’t bother buying Director 11. Unfortunately, I had to. :(
I recently finished some work for a new startup here in San Francisco called, Sprout. I built this movie for them (above).
Their product is called Sprout Builder. It’s an easy to use drag-and-drop, WYSIWYG Flash interface for building live, interactive multimedia content that can easily be added to any web page. Basically, they’re widgets… or as they call them, Sprouts. They introduced the Sprout Builder at the DEMO conference on January 29th.
I have to admit, when they first approached me to make the movie, I thought to myself… another widget maker, big woop. But, when I started to play around with the Sprout Builder I realized that they’ve actually made a pretty cool tool, with a lot of power, that is easy for just about anyone to use. It’s way ahead of anything else out there right now.
With Sprout Builder you can build relatively simple things like rss feed readers or countdown Sprouts (widgets), but you can also build very complex multi-page, interactive micro-sites, using just the pre-built components that they give you. The Sprout Builder has its own drawing and text tools, but you can also upload (or link to) your own images, video, audio, etc… The Sprout Builder has an intuitive interface, that will be familiar to anyone who has used tools like Photoshop, or Powerpoint.
Unfortunately, the Sprout Builder is currently in Closed Beta, so not everyone can get their hands on it just yet. But, you can sign up on the site to be notified when it’s opened up to everyone. If you have a website, it’s worth checking out.
Check out these reviews to see what others are saying about Sprout…
Oh, and as long as I’m talking about this, I might as well through out some shameless self-promotion. After all, from what I hear the movie has been pretty well received. If you’re interested in having me produce some marketing material for you, feel free to contact me through my online portfolio site.
If you follow many of the Apple sites out there you’ve probably already heard of the MacHeist Software Bundle. If you haven’t, it’s an awesome set of 12 Mac applications that you can get for just $49. To buy the apps individually you would pay $428.65. It really is an amazing deal.
Even if you only want one or two of the applications, the bundle can totally save you some cash. For instance, the app I wanted the most was Snapz Pro. It normally sells for $69. So, even if I don’t use any of the other apps I’ve saved $20.
The promotion is for a limited time. As of the time of this post it’s only going for another 5 days and 10 hours. If my math is correct, that would mean they’ll stop selling it sometime next Wednesday (1.23.08).
For any of these applications that you either already own or just don’t need, the MacHeist people give you the ability to “gift” the applications. At the time of purchase you can register each app to yourself, or to someone else, by entering their name and email address. I already own a few of these, so this was a great option for me.
One other awesome thing about MacHeist is they give 25% of what they make to charity. They’ve already raised over $200,000. They have a list you can choose from when you buy the bundle, or you can have them automatically split it between all the charities. You can see the list on the bottom right of the home page.
I think MacHeist is awesome, and I was going to help promote it no matter what, but as it turns out they’ve introduced a referral program. If you use my link to buy the bundle, they’ll send a couple more apps my way for free. So, if you’re planning on buying the bundle, please use the links in this post. :)
UPDATE (1.22.08): The bundle is now up to 14 Mac apps, bringing the value to just shy of $500. The promotion ends tomorrow so don’t miss out!
I’ve been pretty swamped this week but I thought it was about time I got to a followup post to my Macworld predictions. I didn’t do so well this year. Most of my predictions were actually wrong. And, in all honesty, what was announced left me slightly disappointed.
Macbook Air (aka Rich Guy Toy)
As we all know by now, the big announcement this year was Apple’s new ultra-slim laptop, the Macbook Air. The new Macbook Air is, in a word, stunning. It’s also an engineering marvel, and we should all praise Apple (and Intel) for this accomplishment. But, as cool as the Macbook Air is, I honestly can’t see myself buying one anytime soon.
In my opinion, the Macbook Air is totally inappropriate as a primary machine. And, with a price tag ranging from $1799 to $3098 for the base models, it’s an extremely expensive secondary machine. The technical specs on this computer by no means justify its price tag. You’re really just paying for the wow factor. On a side-note to this, I think it’s kind of sad that the largest hard drive available for the Macbook Air has LESS capacity than what’s available in the iPod (Classic).
I was all for Apple moving into the sub-notebook market, but unfortunately they chose to enter through a route that will be out of reach for most people, myself included. Apple’s clearly targeting consumers that require very little form their computer, and are willing to pay top dollar for it.
iPhone
Apple made some significant usability improvements to the Google Maps application. I was really glad to see that. If you haven’t seen these features, there’s a guided tour available on the Apple site.
Apple also gave us the ability to add web-clippings to the home screen, and rearrange the home screen icons. I find this moderately useful.
I just have one question for Apple regarding the iPhone… Where’s my freakin ToDos? The ability to sync iCal ToDos should have been part of iPhone software 1.0. After 3 updates they still haven’t added this feature. What the hell? I don’t understand why this is so difficult. Can you tell I’m pissed about this? Please, Apple… give us ToDos!
Time Capsule
Time Capsule is Apple’s new hardware companion for Leopard’s built-in backup feature, Time Machine. It’s basically an Airport Extreme base station with a built-in hard drive, allowing you to wirelessly backup all of the Macs on your local network. They come in 500GB ($299) and 1TB ($499) capacities. For what you get, these prices aren’t bad. In fact, it’s more than likely that I’ll be buying one of these… partially because I was planning on buying a new Airport Extreme anyway to replace my aging NetGear router that has become a little flakey.
Apple now offers 3 Airport base stations… Airport Express, Airport Extreme, and Time Capsule. If you’ve been considering buying one, but you’re not sure what the difference between them is, Apple’s broken it down on this comparison chart.
iTunes Movie Rentals
Not much to say about this. It is what it sounds like. You can now rent movies through iTunes. They cost $2.99 for library titles, $3.99 for new releases, and $4.99 for HD. Initial selections are a bit small (especially for HD), but all major studios are on board.
Apple TV Take 2
Well, Apple didn’t come out with an actual television like I predicted, but they did make some significant updates to their Apple TV set-top box. The biggest news is you no longer require a computer to use it for viewing iTunes store content. The Apple TV can now access the store directly. You can also access Podcasts, photos on .Mac and Flickr, and YouTube videos. Apple also lowered the price to $299 for the 40GB model and $329 for the 160GB model.
No New Displays?
The one thing that really stunned me this year was no new Cinema Displays. I would have bet money on this one. At very least I expected built-in iSights. After all, it’s been quite a while since they quietly stopped selling the stand-alone versions.
One interesting side-note about this is if you go to the Apple site, and click on the store, Displays aren’t even pictured. They’re listed under accessories. It’s as if they’ve become second class products.
We’re only a couple of days from the Macworld 2008 keynote so I thought it was about time to post my predictions. After all, what’s Macworld without predictions?
As we all know by now, the banners that went up over at Moscone Center read, “There’s something in the air”. Like most people, the first thing I asked myself when I saw this was, what’s in the air?
Now, this might sound kind of crazy, but the first thing that jumped into my mind was, “Spring is in the air” (ya, I know, it’s still Winter). And, what happens in spring… people get out and do things. In other words, they become more mobile. Follow me so far? I know it’s a bit of a stretch, but that banner could mean that this keynote will be all about mobility. I do have one other interpretation that I’ll cover later in the post.
Banner interpretations aside, here’s my predictions…
Ultra-portable Macbook (mini?)
Like everyone else, I’m pretty confident that Apple will be releasing a sub-notebook computer. Laptops account for most of Apple’s computer sales, and I think they’ll be doing everything they can to continue that trend. It’s also entirely possible that this new machine will have an optional docking station, suggested by the patent recently awarded to Apple.
Many people seem to think that this new Macbook Mini will be 13 inches wide, but ultra thin. I personally think that’s just too big. I’m betting that it will be somewhere between 8 and 10 inches wide. I would doubt it would be bigger unless Apple plans on discontinuing the Macbook.
Macbook
Originally I wasn’t convinced that Apple would be doing anything to the Macbook. But, I was reading a prediction on another site (I can’t remember which one) that talked about the Macbook being incased in Aluminum. That actually makes total sense. After all, Apple seems to be purging white plastic from their lineup. The iMac recently went through this transformation, as did the iPod, iPod shuffle, and iPod nano. I think it’s entirely possible that Apple will apply this new look to the Macbook as well. I would also like to see them give the Macbook the new backlit LED displays, like the ones being used in the 15″ Macbook Pros, but I’m not sure if that will happen. Another point in favor of this prediction is aluminum cases are better on the environment than molded plastic, and Apple has been trying to become more environmentally responsible.
On a quick side note, I think it’s a bit ironic that Apple still uses the iconic white iPod in it’s advertising, even though Apple no longer sells a white iPod.
Macbook Pro
I think we’ll be seeing new Macbook Pros as well, mostly because the current design has been around for quite some time now. I think one of the biggest changes will be in the keyboard. Apple has made their Macbook and standalone keyboard use very similar keys and there’s no reason for them not to transition the Macbook Pro to this same style as well. I also think there’s an outside chance that Apple will introduce a new 20″ model.
iTunes Movie Rentals
I think most people are in agreement that this will happen. As with TV shows and movies for purchase it will be a handful of studios to start, adding more later.
iPhone
Native iPhone applications! This is a no-brainer. Apple announced back in October that an iPhone / iPod Touch SDK (Software Development Kit) would be available in February 2008. I’m sure Steve will demo a few of the new apps created by 3rd party developers who were hand picked to get a preview release of the new SDK.
iPhone software update adding lots of new features, including access to the new iTunes movie rental service.
16GB iPhone. I personally think they’ve had 16GB iPhones sitting in boxes since the day they announced the price drop and elimination of the 4GB model. At the last minute they decided not to introduce the 16GB model, as they knew they would be crucified (more than they were) for putting out a new model just 2 months after product introduction.
No 3G. I don’t think Apple will introduce a 3G iPhone until later this year, at the earliest.
Apple TV
I think we’ll see a major upgrade to the Apple TV. Or, it may get dropped all together. My other interpretation of the banners hanging at Moscone relate to this, so I’ll address it later in this post. If the Apple TV does get upgraded, I’m not sure if it will reach a true DVR status, but it will definitely be able to interact directly with the iTunes store (and new rental service) without requiring a computer or iTunes (but it will still pull from those if available).
Leopard 10.5.2
Not much to say about this. Mostly bug fixes and slight enhancements. But, I think it will finally allow Time Machine backups to Airport attached storage (probably with a software update for the Airport base station as well).
Displays
I don’t think they’ll be anything radically different, but they will incorporate a built-in iSight. I think it’s also possible that Apple will begin offering an option for the glossy display, since according to Steve Jobs, everybody loves those. I would like to see them get the new backlit LED technology, but everything I’ve heard says that’s still too expensive for larger screens.
One more thing…
So, I mentioned that I had another interpretation for, “There’s something in the air”. TV is in the air… as in the broadcast signal. My breakout prediction is that Apple drops the Apple TV in favor of, well… an Apple TV… I mean a real TV. The kind you watch.
Before you call me crazy, consider one thing… by February 17th, 2009 all US TV stations will cease to broadcast analog TV signals in favor of digital TV (DTV). 2008 and 2009 are going to be huge years for TV sales. Apple, along with most computer makers, have been tryng for years to get from your office into your living room. It makes a lot of sense for Apple to capitalize on this surge in TV sales to break into the market. The current version of the Apple TV was just a stepping stone… a way to test the market. Now they’re ready to bring out the real thing.
It goes without saying that the new Apple TV will have full access to the iTunes store, and its new movie rental service, in addition to broadcast television.
Think this sounds crazy? Netflix, the king of online DVD rentals, would disagree. They are basically trying to do the same thing. They’re in talks with TV manufactures to incorporate their movie on demand service directly into TVs.
Now, Apple could follow the Netflix model and try to get TV manufacturers to connect to iTunes, but we all know how Apple likes to control the hardware too, so I personally think it makes total sense for them to make their own TV.
Well, those are my predictions. We’ll see on Tuesday what really comes out. Unfortunately I have a meeting Tuesday morning, so won’t know until later that morning how close I was.
I wanted to have a complete redesign of the site by 2008, but that obviously didn’t happen. But, I did do a few small upgrades the other day. In addition to upgrading to the latest version of Wordpress, I also added a some functionality through 2 great plugins…
SRG Clean Archives This is a great plugin for making a more useful archives page. The default archive format for the theme I’m using just had links to the past months and categories. It wasn’t very useful. Now it has each post listed in chronological order. The plugin also has some spiffy Moo Effects built in, but I chose not to use those.
Sideblog This plugin allows you to add Asides to your blog. I’m calling them Quickies. Asides (or Quickies) are things you want to link to or write about but don’t necessarily warrant a full-blown post. I’m still working out some formatting issues, but you can find the new Quickies in the sidebar. If you subscribe to the feed, the quickies will come in with all the standard posts. One nice thing about this plugin over some other methods for adding asides is it doesn’t limit the number of standard posts that get displayed on the page. All asides also get archived along with all the standard posts.
One of my New Years resolutions is to be more organized with my time. Like any self-respecting computer geek I turned to software to help.
A while back there was a lot of buzz around OmniFocus, the new task management app from OmniGroup. At first I didn’t pay much attention because I though…Ya, whatever… a new ToDo app. But, after watching their demo movie (available in the sidebar on the OmniFocus page) I realized that this app does pack a lot of power. I can see how it could help someone like myself get things done, when used correctly.
OmniFocus 1.0 is scheduled to be released tomorrow (1.08.08). The full retail price of $79.95 (usd) is a little out of reach for most casual users. But, you can get it for $39.95 if you buy it before it’s released. If you think you may want to use OmniFocus, I would grab it today and save 40 bucks.
One of my News Years Resolutions is to keep in more regular contact with friends. One way I decided to do that was to stay logged into a chat client. It’s not for meaningful discussions, but just for the occasional, Hi there kind of thing.
I’m using Google Talk, via iChat. The big problem I’ve had so far is the connection continually gets dropped, and I can’t figure out why. I can’t seem to stay logged in more than about 1/2 hour.
Has anyone else had this problem with Google Talk / iChat?
Today only (4.24.08) Evernote is opening up its private beta to anyone who wants to join. You need to use THIS LINK. Evernote is an awesome app for clipping content and organizing it on your desktop or on the web. It's worth checking out. [ via Web Worker Daily ]
Apple is offering a FREE 1/2 day seminar on using Final Cut Studio and Final Cut Server. The list of cities isn't long, but luckily there's one here in San Francisco on June 26th.
Woohoo! One of my favorite Apple Mail Plugins, Mail.Appetizer, has new betas out for Tiger and Leopard. I totally thought this software had gone bye-bye. I'm glad to see it's still being developed.
