For those of you without a Final Cut Pro hookup, Apple is now offering iMovie (a dumbed down version of Final Cut Pro) for free download from their site for owners of PPC G4s or iMacs.
One word of caution: if you expect pro video editing capabilities, don’t even bother with the 19MB download. The software works well, with transitions and simple editing tools, but it’s not high-end. If you’re happy with Premiere or Final Cut Pro, then stick with those.
This story is so stupid I had to share it with all you losers reading our lame site.
[ we only like the few of you that are here every day… 🙂 ]
Adobe is pushing a new XML-based web graphics format (sponsored by the W3C) called SVG, or “Scalable Vector Graphics.” They claim that it can offer PDF-quality printability, as well as color management, server-independent image mapping, and improved quality, interactivity, and database connectivity all around. Basically, the idea is that the browser actually creates 2-D vector graphics on the fly based on plain text instruction. It also works with CSS for positioning and other visual elements. There is a nice article about it on WebMonkey as well.
Check out Adobe’s commitment to the new format…their beta development tool already has support for both major browsers on Mac and PC. Definitely worth keeping an eye on…
Yea, MS slaughtered in the last week, along with all my favorate stocks, by way more than 15%, but this was an interesting blurb regarding Apple, especially when I bought a PPC 8500, and apple stock was around $13.00 a share. I should have bought stock instead of the computer. In any case – Apple’s 2-year run from the mid-teens to nearly 130 where it stands today was not easy to forecast by many who had given up on this innovative computer maker in the mid 1990s. Although it is unlikely that Apple’s stock will again be a ten-bagger, there are many signs pointing to this very positive run continuing for the forseeable future. DLJ announced last week that Apple’s newest products, including an upgraded PowerBook, iBook and Power Mac G4, were “flying off the shelves”, leading to greater than anticipated sales and margins, at a time when many PC manufacturers are seeing sales struggle. In addition, Apple’s board of directors is looking to allocate an additional 600 million shares this next April, in what many see as an anticipated 2-1 or ever 3-1 stock split, the first for the company in quite some time. At a time where many PC makers are lowering margins and fighting a race to the bottom in price and features, Apple is leading the way with innovative designs, software and access to the Internet without sacrificing price margins or quality. Even if you are not familiar with Apple’s products, you should soon find yourself familiar with Apple’s stock.
So if anyone was totally asleep at the wheel yesterday, Microsoft was found guilty of everything we know they already do. Now they will be streching out this verdict over the next few years through appeals. Anyone else bummed about how long this is taking besides me??
Oh yeah… thanks to the stock market, the companies overall value droped 15% last night. I think it’s wonderful Apple is kicking the shit out of everthing on the stock markets.
Okay. So Hotline provided me with Internet Explorer 5b1 long before it was released to the general Mac-using webpublic. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t surprised with the final release. From what I can tell so far this MS product is actually a worthwhile download. Just a few of its high and low points:
Good:
1. At only around 8MB is size, it’s even possible for the average 56k modem user to download within a reasonable time.
2. It seems that that pesky memory leak in the beta versions has mercifully vanished.
3. The fact that the Address Autocomplete is finally up to par with what Windows users have had for ages (and it’s even translucent! Wow! Just like Windows 2000 menus! Where do you suppose they got that idea?
4. That page holder is nifty for the intranet I use every day but don’t want as my start page.
5. The interface is all Aquafied and lined like an iMac. It’s actually a pretty good looking browser. You can even change the color. I don’t know why you would, though, because….
6. It autoselects its color to reflect the color of the computer it’s installed on… (I’ve only seen it automatically be blue on a blue and white G3 and graphite on a G4… If it can select the interface color to match the iMac it’s installed on, that would be interesting).
7. Again something Windows users have had: you can now have folders of links on your toolbar now, not just links. This is actually really handy… assuming you spend your time organizing your bookmarks.. which would, let’s face it, be more than a little pathetic.
8. For all you Flash developers out there, it seems that IE5 now FINALLY understands Javascript passed from within a .swf file. You have no idea how long I spent trying (and failing) to get standard popup windows to work in IE4.5.
Bad:
1. While it has a tighter rendering engine than any other Mac browser, I have had some problems with it selectively ignoring top and left margin=0 commands in my body tag. You hit reload, and it obeys, reload again, and it’s back to faulty code rendering.. not something I’m too happy about.
2. It has a fondness for ignoring the bold tag… That’s not too cool either.
That’s about it. Only a couple problems.. (although it’s taken my system down a couple of times… might be an extension thing.. I’m still figuring that out. And I’ve had a few suspicious Error Type 11 failures with not IE, but other applications that NEVEr crash. Like SimpleText.). Those problem are pretty annoying, though. We’ll see if MS can get a patch out relatively quickly (ha!).
Hey kev…here’s that $300 PC you were looking for…eMachines eTower – Cyrix M-2 366, $299.00 at PCMall.
SO I am a lone MAC user in a 100+ co. that runs all windows & NT. After completing a multimedia project for a trade show using powerpoint (which sucks) with embedded quicktime movies and animations running millions of colors and 30fps, there was a request to use a wintel machine for the show. The project was created on a G4 400, and with 50 megs RAM dedicated to powerpoint, the presentation ran smooth and seamless. Well, I tried running a few of the animations (which I DOWNSAMPLED) on a few pc’s, and this P3 650Mhz with a 16Meg graphic accelerator just choked. So I tried about four other systems and got even worse results. So in the end I had my mac at the trade show and have ammo to lob at the engineering kooks. Feel free to Send your support
