Thursday, January 9, 2003

MacWorld 2003 seemed to me to be one of the more interesting shows in years, despite the incredible shrinking North Hall's implication of harder times and fewer vendors. The show was the scene of amazing new laptop announcements, a bevy of digital hub software announcements from Apple, and many other new and updated products from other vendors were shown. I think OS X was the basis for much of the excitement. For all the "two MacWorld's" worth of announcements, Steve didn't even mention Apple's X11 for X. Reportedly any X11R6 application can be ported to OS X with a simple recompile. This should make it easier for software authors to port their UNIX-based applications to OS X. OS is becoming popular amongst the uber-geeks as exemplified by O'Reilly and Associates, and this kind of improved support for an older UNIX GUI should enhance that effect, and also be welcomed at universities and research labs. CreativeMac summarized the keynote and show as relates to creative pros The QuickTiming site is offering show coverage focusing on all things QuickTIme MacMinute tells us about Kaydara announcing the immediate availability of FBX for QuickTime. By installing the FBX component, high-end 3D content can be viewed using QuickTime, reducing the need for dedicated viewers. Charles at Playbacktime covers the introduction of a new QuickTime wired movie editor called eZediaQTI. EyeSee360 showed off their new PhotoWarp 2.0 software for their 360 One VR product, which will be available in a preview release in the next few weeks. Oh, yeah, one more thing... outside the North Hall there is an exhibit of printed panoramas you might want to check out. The IQTVRA exhibit features 30 incredible large-format panoramic images by photographers from around the world (including yours truly). You can order prints from an online Gallery. The prints are Digital Master prints by Photomation in Anaheim, CA. 7:00:01 AM

Apple introduced a web browser called Safari, based on the KHTML/Konquerer open source code. It's available now, in beta. I think this is a good development because there is a need for a superfast browser on OS X; these days operating systems need to have reliable HTML rendering services available; and there's nothing wrong with more competition in the formerly moribund browser space, even amongst open source projects. For those who develop web sites integrating VR, or who use OS X, there's a lot of info on Safari: David Hyatt's weblog (he created Chimera, now works for Apple on Safari): http://www.mozillazine.org/weblogs/hyatt/ Apple's Webcore page: http://developer.apple.com/darwin/projects/webcore/ WebWord: http://webword.com/weblog/001333.html Diveintomark was one of the first to test Safari: http://diveintomark.org/safari/ OS X Goodies: http://www.osxgoodies.com/node.php?id=22 Macfixit special report on Safari: http://www.macfixit.com/MFIbeta/article.php?story=20030108084927319 Don Melton (Safari Engineering Mgr) explains choice of KTML as starting point: http://lists.kde.org/?l=kfm-devel&m=104197092318639&w=2 Six Apart's Sixlog has initial reactions: http://www.sixapart.com/log/2003/01/initial_reactio.shtml Mac OS Planet Review: http://www.macosplanet.com/newsmanager1/html/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=38 Safari Enhancer activates some hidden features: http://gordon.sourcecod.com/sites/safari_enhancer.php AppleScripts for Safari: http://www.apple.com/applescript/safari/ Timothy Appnel at oreillynet.com comments: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/2559 Evolt review: http://www.evolt.org/article/On_Safari/12/52694/index.html MacSlash discussion about the big picture and Safari: http://www.macslash.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/10/0044210 MacSlash discussion about features: http://www.macslash.org/expo/03/01/08/0438250.shtml 6:59:09 AM

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