software technology

adobe revises video production studio

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for the mac user, any announcement from adobe use to receive the same cheers and shouts that an apple product release would receive. that was before apple began releasing products built from the ground up for the mac. apple has more mac developers than anyone on the planet, trying to make the mac the most relevant platform for media production and creation. because apple does not worry about operating peculiarities (worrying about apple quartz extreme as compared to microsoft directX technology), they can customize their applications to sing on mac, instead of concern themselves about a dueling operating system strategy.

when it comes to media development, the mac is the way to go with final cut pro, motion, DVD studio pro, shake, logic pro, soundtrack pro, and aperture. adobe has after effects professional, premiere pro, photoshop, audition, encore DVD, and illustrator. of the adobe production studio, only after effects, photoshop, and illustrator work on the mac. if one needs to edit sound using audition, or authoring a DVD using encore DVD, or even editing a project using premiere pro, you have to use a windows based PC.

the lines are blurring in the coming year as both the mac and windows PC will utilize the same GPU (NVIDIA or ATI), CPU (intel core duo), and motherboard architecture (intel chipsets), so the apples to oranges comparison will no longer hold. no more will we have to guess what operating system based on the powerPC or intel core duo will reign supreme. when we have similar applications that run equally well natively on microsoft windows as well as apple mac OS X on the more or less the same hardware, we will know who makes the better machine.

i look forward to seeing where adobe takes its mac development, as the operating systems will determine the moves and motivations of customers, instead of the decisions of IBM versus intel, or freescale versus AMD. It’s an intel world now. May the best OS win.

CES 2006 preview

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two years ago medialive canceled the annual trek to the las vegas strip for comdex, the largest gathering of IT professionals on the planet. no one event has taken it’s place, but the heir to the event this year will be the international CES 2006. historically, panasonic, samsung, cisco systems, and HP gave keynotes, but this year intel, sony, yahoo, and google deliver addresses.

intel has already reshaped their company logo and processor line for what looks be be an incredible year of product introductions. yahoo and google move outside of internet search to offer a whole slew of web services and applications, some may say only now at a nascent level. computer processors and graphics engines have already exceeded the expectations of the average user generating e-mail, simple documents, and balancing a spreadsheet, but with the introduction of high definitions video and multi channel audio, even the consumer wants a few processors to rev up the music rips, transfer of photos on to portable viewing devices, and simple HD editing. What a year 2006 will be.

apple in 2006

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if you wait long enough, everything comes to los angeles. dvexpo west opens at the LA convention center from 7-9 december 2005, and panasonic has prepared a presentation on the DVCPRO HD AG-HVX200 camcorder. so 2006 will usher in a new generation of affordable hidef, along with other computational milestones in the mactel world.

if you would have asked me a few months ago about the intel platform, i would say it was good for the x86 operating systems (solaris, linux, irix, windows), but did not have much of an impact, since i was a mac user. this summer everything changed and i’ve become a intel fan.

intel has some work to do to improve the energy efficiency and performance of their silicon, but in about a year, there stuff will rock our world. they’ve been working on a few initiatives ever since andy grove left the company. they’ve botched up a few items like itanium and the calyley (LCOS) microdisplays. grove lead intel for almost 20 years, replacing gordon moore, until craig barrett took the reign for a short 7 years, and now we have paul otellini. otellini took over in may 2005, and for his debut announced that apple computer is their latest customer. then came the woodcrest, conroe, and merom stuff in september at IDF, and next month otellini will keynote at CES 2006 in las vegas releasing the viiv platform.

i wonder when apple will keynote at CES? so 2006 will be a great year for intel and apple as their partnership may start as early as january at macworld expo 2006 in san francisco, and i can’t wait for some great products. sometime in 2006 we should hear about mac OS X leopard, the successor to mac OS X tiger, which should ship around the same time as microsoft windows vista (Q1 2007). never before, in my recollection have apple customers been privy to such long term planning, and budgeting so we should know when to upgrade systems and applications.

apple has a fantastic digital media platform based on final cut pro. in this suite of products called final cut studio, we have DVD studio pro, soundtrack pro, motion, and complementary shake and logic. these applications make staying on the mac platform worth the long wait, since these apps are so tightly integrated into the OS. they perform well, have regular upgrades, and have a devoted user community. in los angeles, i get to go to three monthly user group meetings:

motion graphics los angeles
los angeles final cut pro user group
los angeles logic pro user group

the future is bright. apple will lead the way into the intel transition. apple consumer electronics like ipod and future stuff will lead in new growth and dominance.

so as the year closes out, merry Christmas and happy new year to all. 2006 should be the true transitional year from powerPC to intel, NTSC (SDTV) to ATSC (HDTV), AG-DVX100B to AG-HVX200, and war to peace (i pray).

video ipod revolution

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apple delivers a knock out blow to VC-1 and other proprietary standards. AVC, or advanced video codec, also known as H.264 by the ITU and MPEG-4 Part 10 by ISO/IEC is an open standard developed my many patent holders. VC-1, the public face of microsoft window media 9, along with flash video 8, or on2 video are both welded shut boxes of technology with one patent holder to take the reins.

multiple companies including apple, IBM, Barco, Dolby Laboratories, Fraunhofer Institute, HP, Motorola, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung Electronics, TANDBERG television, and Texas Instruments have all joined forces to give consumers product choice and unlimited possibilities. the fruits of that partnership were the first successful H.264 or AVC product, the sony playstation portable device, and now the second mass consumer product, the apple ipod.

north american disney TV shows are only the start of what is possible in AVC. the codec can scale from mobile phones at 128 pixels all the way to 1080 pixels high definitions images. all media is going to AVC for content delivery for quality, compression efficiency, and broad support through the consumer electronics industry, information technology industry, and broadcast industry.

end of mac 3D?

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to my amazement, autodesk has made a definitive agreement to acquire Alias. autodesk acquired discreet some years ago and acquired 3ds Max. Now maya and motion builder may die since they directly compete with autodesk products. only the future will know the actual outcome, but this is not good for competition.

maya and motion builder were also the power players on mac OS X, so maybe 3ds Max may move to OS X too, but maybe they’ll drop support on my platform of choice.

ACTC dreams

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by becoming apple certified, if nothing else, i will be able to get 90% off apple software like final cut pro, dvd studio pro, logic audio, webobjects, OS X server, and nothing real shake. the small $495 investment, nets me $4000 in savings.

from the keynotes, especially the SUN one, all of us need to develop our projects to open standards. microsoft has an integrated welded box approach, IBM has a “don’t try this by yourself” approach. and SUN offers an integrateable solution, so when you need to run apache server or veritas, you can, but you might break the elegant development over decades and billions of dollars the package that is solaris. my action points have to be:

    secure my computer facility with smart cards
    secure with biometrics
    secure with a lock and key
    secure with power backup
    secure with redundancy
    secure with location disparity
    run on java, UNIX, linux, or open source
    go MPEG-4
    the network is the machine
    metcalf’s law of growing networks holds
    rock’s law of rising semiconductor price holds true
    moore’s law of semiconductor performance hold true
    look for 64 bit architecture
    run fit clients with a dedicated server (netboot)
    simplify the network with fewer computers
    fire everyone
    use oracle database on big iron

comdex 2002

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i’m back from comdex 2002, las vegas NV. here are some interesting links from the show:

now some reflections from the show on monday and tuesday. this year, due to the economic collapse, terrorist attacks, and the republican administration, the IT sector is flat or down horribly. this made it possible to come out to comdex much earlier than normal, to hear the keynotes live. last night bill gates, chief software architect shared his vision of the future. what did gates and a 6 billion dollar research budget get him and microsoft? gates showed and stunned the world with a web enabled alarm clock. with this fantastic device, you can tell the time. you can set an alarm to wake up, and like some mystical omen, check the weather and driving conditions. is this an innovation, or just a small laptop with an embedded OS? i felt sorry for the 3 years of research. next up was the future of web services.

how could disparate systems communicate with legacy systems, ecommerce engines, and harness the power of 30 years on the ARPA NET? gates showed us the remote printing of a two page document to kinko’s. like some transcendency, the microsoft team showed us a print dialog box that looked like a print dialog box. instead of printing locally, the order moved over the web to a kinko’s printer. i could do this seven years ago with a PDF workflow. again gates had egg on his face. the few good nuggets he did show were smart displays, a LCD panel connected wirelessly via 802.11 network back to the main CPU, which allows the user to take her work away from the desk and onto the couch. using as simple stylus as a mouse, and a wireless keyboard, the knowledge worker has a new flexibility to share info. imagine a imac screen that not only swivels, but you can take off the G4 tower. so maybe the 6 billion was well spent, but not really.

in every show, the hope is to make strategic business decisions. the theme for the show keynotes, was nothing is impossible and do the solutions of today, instead of dream of technologies of tomorrow. for the last five years, i’ve been dreaming of ubiquitous heterogeneous wired and wireless networks, but as soon as my opportunity came around, the rug would be pulled from under me, as northpoint communications, rhythms network, sprint ion, @home, and other connectivity companies went belly up. i was the face of disaster, as my business ideas circulated around web services, so no broadband internet, no company. i’ll be concentrating on more mature technologies of today, and utilize and leverage over a large fulcrum my web experience, to create DVD’s, and on the side become an apple certified digital hub specialist.

patio repair & OS X

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if all goes well today, i should finish the patio, having already made it weather tight with a fortifiber membrane. i now want to cover all the material with hardiplanks, a fiber cement siding product with a 50 year guaranty. then i pack for a three day run to comdex in las vegas. maybe after that a trip to philadelphia, but this is too far into the future to plan. i’m preparing to become an apple certified technical coordinator, by passing a simple 56 question test. by the end of the year, i’ll be a real apple OS X engineer!

file naming convention

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classic and OS X file naming conventions are changing. with the limitation of 32 character file names in classic, one had to fine tune file name. up came programs like portfolio and cumulus to making sorting file and images easier. with OS X we get 128 character names, so file description are much nicer. ever since OS 8.6, the HFS+ filing system allowed long file names, but it was never implemented.

OS X solved all these issues, and now i make an effort to make long file names. if i have a link file name, it may be called “www.greenconcepts.com tradeshow listing”, instead of the classic way of “greenconcepts.com shows.” now that most of my files originate on the web, i name most of my files with “apple.com white paper on dual processor platforms” instead of “apple.com dual G4.” so i’ve included the URL where i’ve found the original content, so i can go back in the future to download updates. my next class might be OS X secrets. maybe it should be a book?