Extensis is making a “preview release” of Portfolio 6 for Mac OS X available for immediate download.
The release marks the first phase of a plan to bring the entire Portfolio product line to Mac OS X over the next several months, according to company spokesperson Nicole Andergard. Registered owners of Portfolio 6, which began shipping in February, will be eligible to receive a free upgrade to the final Mac OS X version of Portfolio 6 when it becomes available later this summer.
Meanwhile, Portfolio 6 Server for Mac OS X, which extends the image-cataloging and file-management power of Portfolio to larger workgroups, will be released next month. The Mac OS X edition of Portfolio Server will be fully compatible with both the currently-shipping version of Portfolio 6, as well as the native Mac OS X version that will ship later.
Extensis is making this early (alpha) release of Portfolio for Mac OS X available to the public in response to strong interest from customers who would like to begin using the digital asset management program in a fully native Mac OS X environment, Andergard said. The preview version doesn’t include all the features currently available in Portfolio 6, but offers several fully-implemented Mac OS X features, including the ability to catalog any file, folder or disk in Portfolio using a contextual menu that appears in the Mac OS X Finder, she added.
A list of the features that aren’t yet implemented in this release is included in the documentation that comes with the pre-release software. Extensis plans to release updates to the preview on a regular basis, and to introduce a beta version of the software within the next four to six weeks, Andergard said.
The Portfolio 6 for Mac OS X Preview is available now from the Extensis beta Web site. Pre-release software is free and will expire in September.