Come on,
admit it. You know you were thinking it. You'd taken note of
Apple's near total lack of public attention paid to its Macintosh
line over the past three months, and you were beginning to
wonder whether the company hadn't given up on the platform
entirely. You saw announcement after announcement come out
of Apple about iPod-this and iTunes-that, so much so that you
were about to conclude that
Steve Jobs had fallen so deeply in love with being the uncontested
king of digital music that he'd given up on the whole personal
computing thing entirely. Perhaps given orders to Jonathan
Ive that he not develop any new hardware that weighed more
than six ounces. Possibly sent the entire team of software
engineers on a year-long fishing trip. Maybe even deluded himself
into thinking that three million iPods users really was a larger
number than 25 to 40 million Mac users. And as a Mac user,
you don't want to admit to yourself that you were thinking
it, but you know that you were.
Well, never
fear. It turns out that the Mac software team wasn't spending
quality time in some faraway fishing village after all. Nope,
instead, they were simply holed up while undertaking the task
of no less than reinventing the entire face of Apple's professional
software application arsenal. Not that any of what was announced
Sunday afternoon (anyone want to explain the timing of that?
and don't talk to me about NAB, that's just too many letters)
has any direct relation to me. None of the software announced
even falls into the category of apps I can afford, let alone
find some use for. But to the untrained ear, it sounds like
good stuff. In fact, here's a quick look:
There's a
new version of Final Cut Pro (the pro version of iMovie that
just plain scares me), which technically holds the version
number "4.5" but is being marketed under the letters "HD."
Even I know that it doesn't stand for "Hard Drive," and in
fact it's short for "High Definition." So apparently, those
of you who do that stuff I already don't understand with Final
Cut Pro, can now do it in some way that relates to HDTV. Or
something. In any case, the FCP 4.5, or make that the FCP HD update,
is available for free to all FCP 4.0 users, and the usual thousand
bucks for everyone else. No word on whether FCP 4.0 and below
has been officially renamed something subliminally degrading,
such as "FCP Low-D", or perhaps "FCP sucko version."
There also
just happens to be a new version of DVD Studio Pro (the pro version
of iDVD that has me breaking out in hives in fear), and
since this is a whole new version, it's going to cost you (whoops,
there goes another grand). But the good news is that there's
an upgrade program for all those millions of customers who
purchased the old version on or after yesterday (is
that even possible? are Apple Stores even open that late on
a Sunday?). So what exactly does the new version of DVD Studio
Pro do? A lot of cool-sounding things I don't understand, including
something to do with -- no surprise -- High Definition. Ah,
I think we see a pattern developing here.
So what else
do we have? Ah, let's see, a new version of Shake, which now
rings in at version 3.5. It's not a free upgrade for anyone
beyond Avi Tevanian's immediate family, but the good news is
that current owners of version 3.0 can upgrade for a mere $799,
and no, I didn't leave a decimal point out of there. Good thing
the pro guys aren't in charge of iLife pricing upgrades, eh?
I don't really know any of what Shake does, except that the
last seven movies to win an Oscar in some category or other
all used Shake, which means that there's probably no reason
for me to think that I'll ever need to consider using it for
anything (I got turned down to produce "Lord of the Rings 4:
everyone's really old and Bilbo's a walking skeleton by now"
at the last minute). But I did manage to find the letters "HD"
more than once on the Shake 3.5 description page, so let's
just assume that we're still sticking with the High Definition
theme here, and that it's not really a reference to some new
reunion movie involving the cast of Happy Days (ah, I love
it, this crap just writes itself sometimes).
Lastly, and
tell me you didn't see this one coming, we have an entirely
new product. It's called "National Debt" and sells for eight
trillion dollars. No actually, it's called "Motion" and sells
for a "breakthrough price" of only $299. As in, "breaking through
my budget," perhaps? Well, it's described as "the only motion
graphics package with real-time previews, procedural behavior
animation, yada blah etc..." which is to say
that it's a good thing I don't need it, because if I did, it
would just blow my carefully-planned eMac budget all to hell.
And you know what? I think I left one part of Motion's
product description
out: "Final Cut Pro HD integration." Yep, just wanted to
make sure it was there. I officially detect a pattern. And
if you don't, I have no hope for you.
And in yet
another surprisingly consecutive Mac-related announcement,
and I'm not sure that it's a new product so much as it has
something to do with Apple and Panasonic working on something
called "HD over FireWire," which is to say that it takes all
that other stuff and somehow ties it all together with something
else I don't grasp. If I ever reach a point where I actually
have some desire to know what "VariCam-native DV-HD codec"
is, someone just shoot me. Unless it means that I've landed
some really cool job in which I get to work with whatever that
might be, in case, you know, don't shoot me.
And as if
updating all your existing pro apps so that they fit with the
theme of a brand new pro app and then wiring them all into
some hoopla with some new partner weren't enough, there also
just happens to be something called Xsan which, in addition
to making it entirely impossible to continue fighting the battle
to get the "X" in "MacOS
X" to be pronounced as the roman numeral "ten" in mixed
company, also does something with taking all your XServes and
other storage devices and tying them altogether so that no
space is wasted, or something. Sounds like you'd actually have
to have a few XServes lying around in order to put this to
good use, so it seems reasonable that I'm not going to have
to shell out for Xsan's "surprisingly affordable" $999
price point (who writes this stuff? I've got to find this guy
and get him to write my advertising pitches). In any case,
it's at least mildly worth pointing out that Xsan, pronounced
backwards, could almost be "Xanex." I don't know
why I felt compelled to point that out, but that's what I do
when a whole slew of new products are announced that are
all over my head: I make fun of them. Come on, admit it, you
do it too. Actually, it would appear that the initial marketing
pitch behind XanX, or Xsan or whatever it's called, has something
to do with, and I'm stealing your lunch money if you haven't
already guessed this, storing your HD.
So, you see,
all of these new announcements are all interrelated in at least
some way, and it's not just the fact that they're all priced
with enough digits that you're left just begging for a decimal
point to appear in there somewhere. You see, they're all centered
around the HD theme, and they appear to be so tightly integrated
that perhaps, like iLife, they ought to collectively have their
own name. Maybe "iCan'taffordthis." Or "iMortgagedmyhousefortheseapps,"
or "Thisiswhymoviescost$8.50atthetheater." Whatever.
But as much
as I (and ninety-nine percent of you) could absolutely care
less about any of these new professional-grade apps, the one
thing that we should take away from this weekend's announcements
is this: contrary to what you might have been thinking, Apple
is in fact continuing work on the Macintosh platform after
all. Its developers have not been hibernating all winter, and
in fact they've not only been upgrading their pro products,
they've actually introduced a new one. Or was it two? I lost
count. Anyway, just know that Apple really is still working
hard to crank out great new and innovative software for the
Mac. And for that matter, it was only January that we consumer-level
folks got our hands on brand new versions of iPhoto, iMovie,
iDVD, and GarageBand.
So just how
spoiled are we? Apple goes three months without releasing any
new software, and we start to fear that they'll never do so
again? I'd say that's a pretty good spot to be in. Furthermore,
now that the pro apps have all been upgraded and trotted out
the door, the developers are probably turning their attention
back to our beloved consumer software titles as we speak. Although
if they really have been looking for a quiet weekend to go
fishing, now might be a good time.
I know, I
know, now that you've seen proof that Mac software is in fact
still being developed, you're wondering where all the hardware
went to. And all I can say is, have we learned nothing from
our little software withdrawal episode? Just because Apple
hasn't announced more than a trace of new Mac hardware in the
past few months, it doesn't mean that they're not feverishly
working on it. But in the mean time, you might want to make
a few phone calls to the local fishing villages to see if they've
got anyone staying there registered under the name "Ive" or
"Rubenstein." Just a thought.
No
Panther user should be without:
