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Suiteness By David Leishman dleishman@maccentral.com
Adobe Systems announced this week that it is updating all its professional Web, publishing and creative applications, and bundling them in the newly-created Adobe Creative Suite.
Veteran users of any of Adobe’s applications have plenty to cheer about. If you use more than one of the apps — Photoshop and Illustrator, for example — the tighter inter-application integration and the “Version Cue” file-browser/navigator are grounds for an extra shout.
Product integration seems to be a central focus of major Mac-related software companies that are strong in a specific market: As they release the “second wave” of their products built for Mac OS X, they also move to more clearly define and strengthen their market position.
The Creative Suite embodies Adobe’s role as the leader in image-creation and editing.
Macromedia’s MX suite ties all the company’s “second generation” OS X-based Wed content and development apps more tightly together, and offers comprehensive client-to-server solutions. The company also has a Web video-conferencing tool, Breeze, that, although Windows-based, accommodates Macs OS 8.6-OS X clients.
Apple’s iApps and professional creative studio tools were built with integration in mind, and already this is leading to “offspring” products that fill gaps between their parent apps. Soundtrack, a new music editing app, is bundled with Final Cut Pro 4 (FCP), and greatly enhances FCP’s audio capabilities. This also means that video editors don’t need to spring for a full-blown music sequencer, like Apple/Emagic’s Logic, just to do a modest amount of professional sound-editing.
Microsoft Office is already the clearly-defined “owner” of the desktop suite arena, so it needn’t hurry to release a next-generation product. But the company faces a unique challenge when it does ship an update: Given the strength of its initial OS X offering, it will need to offer a host of new features and even-better-integrated document management, in order to spark upgrades.
QuarkXPress, released for OS X only a short while ago, likely won’t go “second-wave,” nor become suite-based, anytime soon. Its mostly high-end desktop publishing/production clients will gradually move to the new platform, balancing IT management and software budgets as they go.
Still, Quark will need to be thinking about integration, too. Publishing, more than ever, is moving to re-purpose print content for the Web, and XPress docs often need to be re-worked before they’re ready for a purely digital world. So, unlike the other companies and products noted above, Quark needs to rely on other companies’ apps to provide soup-to-nuts solutions. That may not seem so sweet after awhile.
Apple News
Apple named among Top 10 Most Innovative Companies
Apple has been named as one of the Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in a new report released by Cheskin, a consulting and research firm, and Fitch Worldwide a brand and design company. The study surveyed over 500 senior business executives across the U.S. in a range of industry sectors. Somewhat surprisingly (as least to Mac users), Microsoft was cited most frequently as one of today’s most innovative companies.
Silicon.com names Jobs ‘Agenda Setter for 2003
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Adobe CEO: Relationship with Apple ‘great’
Apple renames, extends .Mac promo
Apple, HP downplay Dell’s music announcements
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Hardware News
Avid Technology Inc. announced on Monday the release of Avid Xpress Pro (AXP) and Avid Mojo. AXP is Avid’s software professional solution for nonlinear editing using either Digital Video or analog source material., and features “Film Composer,” which provides 24p film editing capabilities and support for Panasonic’s AG-DVX100 24p camera. Avid Mojo is a FireWire-based device that can capture standard definition video and accelerate media I/O and conversion operations.
Direcway satellite broadband service goes Mac
Panasonic intros DMC-FZ10 Lumix digital camera
Altec Lansing inMotion adds external speakers to iPod
Mini Mouse 800 RF built for mobile professionals
PowerLite 9300i projector to offer SXGA+ resolution
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Software News
Adobe Systems Inc. on Monday announced the Adobe Creative Suite (CS), which includes updates to the company’s professional Web, publishing and creative applications — Adobe Photoshop CS with Adobe ImageReady CS, Adobe Illustrator CS, Adobe InDesign CS, Adobe GoLive CS and Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Professional. The suite adds many new features to all of the applications and tighter integration between the products.
SpamSieve update works with Apple Mail, more
‘AppleScript for Absolute Starters’ released, free
MacSpeech releases Word X ScriptPak for iListen
Lynda.com offers Flash MX 2004 movie-based training
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Around the Web
Is the Web your source of information?
A Slashdot thread affirms that a lot of readers get their daily informationfrom the Web. But knowledge and research, most opine, is still better found (and read) in a book, even though it’s a shame “you cant grep a dead tree.” And because the Web is such an important tool for so many people, it’s worth noting a report at Telepolis on how “the lethal combination of Nature and the human preoccupation with economic ‘efficiency'” can lead to informational and societal blackouts. (You may need to make allowances for the translation from the German, and the anti-capitalism references.)
MailBucket: an email-to-RSS gateway
Consumer high-definition video format due soon
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