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Apple -- and iCEO Steve Jobs -- dominates Seybold S.F. '99SAN FRANCISCO -- Thanks to the keynote of Apple Computer iCEO Steve Jobs (see following story), the 1999 edition of Seybold San Francisco became a mini MacWorld Expo. The focus of the trade show, held here Aug. 31-Sept. 3, was certainly on the new hardware introduced by Cupertino, Calif.'s Apple Computer Inc., the G4 Macintoshes and the yet to-be-shipped 22-inch flat panel display. The new Mac OS 9 was also a part of the demo. But that was then, and this is now. One model of the stylish, new silver-and-slate G4 is currently shipping, clocking in at 400-megahertz and weighing in at $1599. These were most of the G4s being shown on the show floor. I can't say for absolute certain, because I didn't check on every one. I didn't know then what I know now ... that the currently available G4 is for the most part an old G3 with a G4 heart, i.e. a G3 motherboard with the new G4 chip. The G4 is speedy and powerful, a real supercomputer on your desktop. It can do a gigaflop of mathematical operations (that's a billion floating point calculations) or slap a filter effect on a 60-megabyte Photoshop file and not get too hot under the collar (thanks to a big heat sink on top of the chip that looks like a mini downtown). It's actually the Velocity Engine, or in yesterday's lingo, the AltiVec chip, that's responsible for the speed gains. Still, by any measure, the G4 is one state-of-the-art computer. Yet as I write this, the even speedier 450- ($2499) and 500-megahertz models ($3499) have not shipped. Those are the real G4s, redesigned in places besides the processor. The interim CEO of Apple was one smart fella to have a shipping hardware product to announce at Seybold. In the past, Apple has been plagued by low and slow availability of announced products, particularly PowerBooks. But at Seybold, it was good, old WYSIWYG time, at least with the computers. The attendees were so dazzled by the look-and-feel of the G4 that one of the two new items should have been available. The other one -- the biggest and best looking flat panel display to date for any computer, the Apple Cinema Display monitor -- isn't available unless you purchase an as-yet not-shipping G4 in a package. At a mere $3999, it costs more than any of the G4s with which it is bundled. What you get for the money is state of the art, a really big screen (the equivalent of a 24-inch cathode-ray tube screen) with a small desktop footprint that is bright, virtually glare-free and can fit two full letter-size pages side by side with room to spare. (For those of you who make up broadsheet newspaper pages, it will display about the top half of a page.) If the G4 is the ultimate Photoshop machine, then the Cinema Display is the ultimate Photoshop monitor. But don't think this monitor can be hooked up to any old Mac, or even a G3. The signal is completely digital and the monitor only runs from a special digital video card that's a part of the new high-end G4 models (not even the currently shipping one). And don't forget that most applications will have to be rewritten or add a special plug-in to take full advantage of the new G4 chip speed. Adobe has thoughtfully written a plug-in already that can be picked up at the web site (http://www.adobe.com/).
Softbooks and hard Quark
The short answer is yes, there certainly was. Web content and repurposing was one main theme, with an interesting announcement from Quark Inc., which stepped onto a new Avenue (and it wasn't Quark Immedia, which seems about as dead as Adobe PageMill). Another area of note was the continued evolving of that Holy of Holies, accurate color across multiple devices. From German science comes a new discovery ... some Java applets, special colored metallic strips and a web browser and presto ... color calibration for monitors over the Web. Throw in a smattering of software upgrades (including Quark XPress 4.1 and Adobe Photoshop 5.5), some new font handling software for networks, some hardware (printers, scanners and FireWire drives, and an accessory or two), and that was the floor show for 1999. Let's take a look:
Its large, back-lit, grayscale screen is easy to read, and a simple click flips through the pages of a document. The icons and buttons are so clearly and intuitively marked that anyone could be using it in a minute or two. The built-in modem and Ethernet connection allows downloading of new materials without the need for a PC. The device is powered by a removable, rechargeable battery pack that has a claimed life of five hours, and one hour for a quick recharge. The Softbook Reader also permits bookmarks and simple annotation of document pages. There has been a recent agreement with the Washington Post and Newsweek for those publications to provide information in the Softbook format, which adds to an earlier agreement with Time, Fortune, Money, PC Magazine and PC Week. Softbook Reader is also at the heart of a circulation system developed by Central News Technology, a subsidiary of Central Newspapers Inc. of Phoenix. The Softbook Reader is used by carriers to determine what products to throw at what addresses in the Circ-2000 system. The Reader is a pretty impressive system for reading and distributing documents for business. However, this is not a laptop PC: an interesting device, even if it currently seems more at home on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise.
Avenue.quark (that's its official name) is an XTension designed to easily convert XPress pages into XML (Extensible Markup Language) for repurposing in a number of ways. XML has been explained before (see The Cole Papers, July 1998), so the big brother of the Web's HTML should be no stranger to readers. As the first major layout program to offer this extensibility, Quark seems to be catching on to the standards-based push in content repurposing. Structured content is the foundation for XML and its sibling, HTML. Through a Document Type Definition (DTD), a list of element types that apply to documents using the DTD can be compiled and then applied to the document. Avenue.Quark facilitates this process by automatically constructing tagging rules based on Quark document styles and structures. The pre-release demo was limited to just one DTD, but the software showed promise in ease of deconstructing Quark documents into tagged XML ones. Quark also announced a free upgrade, XPress 4.1. A solid upgrade, it builds into XPress some functions formerly handled by XTensions, like managing guides and super step-and-repeat, while adding some welcome new functions, like a filter for Microsoft Word 8, import ability for HTML text and a scissors tool that can "cut" text and picture boxes as well as lines and text paths.
Small companies, big ideas
I have to confess I am writing this entire Seybold report using the Laptop Easel and an AlphaSmart 2000. The slight, built-in angle lets you rest your wrists in the proper position, while the display is kept at the correct angle for optimum viewing. The core is light, durable foam, with a washable cover that comes in six colors, has a built in carrying handle and two pockets big enough to hold a Zip, floppy or similar 3¢-inch disk. The high-density foam is even firm enough to be used for old-fashioned writing. I'd call it a best buy for $39.95 right from the factory. Seybold isn't usually noted for being a sales-oriented show, but this case was a happy exception. Another small company with a mission was Mindgate Technologies Inc. of Flintville, Tenn. The company's product, Print Chef Pro 3, is the flip side of print-on-demand, variable data printing. Print Chef has been around for the Macintosh since 1992, but Version 3 is now available for Windows as well. Print Chef Pro is an application that sits between the print job and the printer and controls what data gets placed on the page by means of recipes. This software works with nearly all printers, enabling impositions, banners, booklets, job control, bar codes and print logging, to name just a few of its jobs. Set up properly, this could be on-demand printing for all the forms a business might use. I can't say how well the Windows version works, especially on Postscript printers, but if simplification and automation in business forms handling is a priority, this could be the ticket to eliminating print shop bills. Another jack-of-all-trades in the software field is Miami-based Deneba Software's Canvas 7. This software upgrade puts several more blades in this one-program-does-it-all Swiss Army Knife. The drawback all these years has been the existence of Photoshop, which has hung onto its No. One spot by being simpler, if a bit behind in Web usefulness. Canvas 7 takes a lot of memory to run -- at least 32-megabytes, with 64 recommended -- and has adopted Sprite technology to make a more seamless edge between vector and bitmap art. Canvas does what it does very well, but even more so with new SpriteEffects, allowing the application of image editing filters to any object, including text. Lots of creative freedom, but the question remains ... will unlimited creative freedom ever unseat Photoshop? While it's a good thing to have around, for most, it's not the only thing.
Images and PDF
SID stands for multiresolution Seamless Image Database in a device-independent format that comes with plug-ins for Adobe Acrobat, Quark XPress, Photoshop and soon InDesign on both the Windows or Macintosh platforms. The question isn't, "Is it good?" but, "Will it catch on?" MrSID images can be included in PDF documents, but the high level of compression will make the documents much smaller. Another aid to PDF workflow (one of the new mantras for the 21st century) is the ability to edit PDF pages on the fly, without having to rebuild the entire page. That's where PitStop, from Enfocus Software Inc. of San Mateo, Calif., comes in. The new 4.0 version includes a macro capability that allows users to set up sets of recurring operations and apply them to all documents being checked. Reminds me of scripting. Another very handy feature is the unlimited undo, which makes it possible to change the PDF document back to the way it was at any step in the document checking and repair. As PDF files become more and more a part of the day-to-day workflow in publications, tools like PitStop become a necessity. Back on the PDF workflow range, Intense Software of Vancouver, B.C., Canada, has an Adobe Acrobat 4.0 tool for Windows and the Macintosh that allows creation of color-separated files within Acrobat and prints those files to any device. It also allows screen angle adjustment over a range of photos and pages, or just a single one. Document-wide color conversions are as simple as clicking a single button and any color space can be converted into another. PDF Wrangler also allows full color selection capabilities in Acrobat for the first time, and previewing of individual plates and overprints directly in Acrobat. With software capabilities like this, it soon will be "all PDF, all the time." To speed that workflow along, it takes big, fast, hard disks for all those large graphics files, and that's where the VST FireWire Hard Drive from VST Technologies of Acton, Mass., comes in. To use these drives, which are a technology step up from SCSI and have none of Scsi's termination problems, it's necessary to own a PowerMac G3 or G4 with built-in FireWire connections, or buy a FireWire PCI. These small, colorful drives come in hot-tamale colors, red and orange, and in sizes ranging from 4-gigabytes to 14-gigabytes. An external power source is optional. The biggest of these drives is only an inch high, but these mighty mites could be an essential part of any new Macintosh.
Color correcting the web
Here's how it works: A user logs on to a WebSync-enabled web site and then starts a step-by-step process, with each of the four film strips applied to the screen of the user's monitor, and matched to an on-screen color. When completed, a monitor profile cookie on the user's web browser is created, so whenever that particular web site is accessed again, all downloaded images are automatically color modified to match the user's profile stored in the cookie. The system is very slick, and works, if you allow your browser to accept cookies. That leaves no worries about modifying your monitor's color setup in other applications. This easy, but elegant way of assuring color fidelity is certain to be a boon to Internet commerce and on-line shopping and catalogs. The people at Canto Software of San Francisco didn't incur large travel expenses to attend Seybold, but they did have a major revision of the company's asset management software, Cumulus 5. Cumulus 5 now supports the Linux operating system, as well as the Mac OS, Mac OS X, Windows NT and UNIX on the server side, and supports Mac OS, Windows 95 and 98 and NT clients as well. The new version also handles PDF Job Tickets, versioning and check in-check out, as well as the creation of multimedia slide-shows from cataloged assets, with output in QuickTime. With multi-OS support and stronger web publishing tools, it's a simple case of local folks make good. An essential part of any Macintosh, new or old, is control of fonts. That's why DiamondSoft Inc. of Mill Valley, Calif., announced Font Reserve Server at Seybold. Although it won't be shipping until the first quarter of 2000, it's touted as the first truly client-server font management technology and runs on Windows NT, while the clients are solely Macintosh. This setup is a bit goofy, for it would be better if Font Server ran on Mac OS X, and it probably will someday. It communicates via TCP/IP, which is the Internet standard, so all is well networking-wise. And of course, it employs the tried-and-true Font Reserve database, for storing and managing all fonts in a central location. To do the sophisticated font management and access that Font Reserve Server demands, it really needs a server host system that supports true multitasking and multiuser access to the same fonts at the same time. Unfortunately, even Mac OS 9 won't do that. Whether a Font Reserve for Windows is imminent remains to be seen. There will be other announcements in the coming months, according to company officials. In any case, it's obvious that DiamondSoft has become a player on the Macintosh font scene. A long-time player in the world of Macintosh fonts also has a server product. Suitcase, recently acquired by creativepro.com (formerly Extensis) of Portland, Ore., and upgraded as Suitcase 8 Server, is shipping now at a price of $500 for five users. What the product does is good, but it might as well be called Suitcase Syncher, rather than server. Suitcase 8 Server keeps each person's individual font suitcases across a network. It runs on Open Transport 1.3 or better, and almost anyone's Mac can do the job, as long as it's running system 8.6 or better. A Windows NT 4.0 system can also be a server. Fonts can even be synched via the Internet, since everyone has a set of fonts. It's a good, simple, easy-to-use system, although not the real client-server that Font Reserve Server is. For today's needs, it's shipping now. A lot more went on during the three well-received days of Seybold San Francisco. The diversity of products available was amazing, and the amount of selling that has crept into the show was of record proportions, by my observations. If the frenzied pace of change and announcements continues, the 21st century version of Seybold San Francisco will be far beyond Buck Rogers' most vivid imaginings. -- George Powell
Apple Computer Inc., From THE COLE PAPERS, October 1999, Copyright © 1999, All Rights Reserved.
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