(For those new to the column, Forward Migration is our term for companies moving from Wintel machines to Macs — or at least adding or increasing the number of Macs they use. A Forward Migration Kit is an overview of Mac OS products for a particular occupation, such as photography, optometry, etc.)
Evan Mather, an independent filmmaker in Los Angeles, is a big Mac fan. Two of his recent award-winning projects — “Fansom the Lizard” (Best Animation, One Reel Film Fest, Seattle) and “Airplane Glue” (Grand Prix, Seoul Net Festival, Seoul, Korea) were edited with Final Cut Pro, Apple’s high-end video editing application, he told MacCentral.
Mather uses a beige G3/266 Minitower upgrade with Sonnet PCI card to G4/500 with a 40GB HD and 384MB RAM. And he just purchased a Power Mac G4/867. Why the Mac?
“I like its ease of use, the integration of hardware and software, the relative low cost and availability of digital video software (Final Cut, Premiere, After Effects) and other design software (Photoshop and Illustrator),” he said. “I also like the pioneering lead Apple has taken in QuickTime, FireWire and now DVD. And, of course, there’s style. It’s simply cool to use Macintosh.”
Visit the filmmaker’s Web site for examples of his work.
Meanwhile, after a short absence from the Web, SeeBeale.com — the first interactive multimedia virtual tour of world famous Beale Street in Memphis, TN — has returned.
See Beale uses Apple’s QuickTime VR (QTVR) technology to showcase 360-degree panoramic views all the way up and down Beale Street. Some panoramas contain 3D directional audio to enhance the experience and there are many bonus views and a few secret links, Webmaster Craig Isley told MacCentral.
SeeBeale.com was photographed in the fall of 1999, and has been posted free to all, without advertising, as a permanent document of Beale Street at this time. The site has received thousands of hits from hundreds of countries, and used by educators as an example of what is possible with QTVR, Isley said.
Do you have a Forward Migration story? Send it our way.
Requests for help
Now it’s time for our weekly requests for help from folks who need your advice and/or assistance in forward migrating — or at least being able to keep the Mac platform alive and thriving in their businesses. Contact the requesters directly at their e-mail addresses.
Morri Glaser ( mglaser@pacifica.edu ), IT User Support, Pacifica Graduate Institute: ” I am looking for a Mac solution for integrating the library, bookstore, student enrollment, student e-mail, faculty & staff email, groupware. We have several different databases currently. The ability to centralize and pool from the same database is of utmost importance.
William S. Willis ( bill-willis@acs.sch.ae ), director of technology, American Community School of Abu Dhabi: “The American Community School of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates is a Mac-based school serving American families with two hundred computers for its 600 K-12 students. We need help convincing Apple to sell us PowerSchool, or help finding a similar product. We would like to migrate from our current student information system program (SASIxp from National Computer Systems) to a product such as PowerSchool that generates reports that could be accessed by parents through the Internet.
“Last year the folks at PowerSchool were willing to sell their product worldwide, but since its purchase by Apple, they have closed the door to our market area. Are there any Mac-friendly, similar products out there?”