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New development tools for the Macintosh platform should provide quite a boon for developers gearing new products to the Mac market. These products, including the Apple's Media Tool and Media Tool Programming Environment, are briefly summarized.
A range of new development tools for the Macintosh platform, including two bedrock offerings from Apple Computer itself, should provide quite a boon for developers gearing new products to the Mac market. These products include Apple's own Apple Media Tool, Apple Media Tool Programming Environment, and Release 19 of its subscription-based Essential*Tools*Objects toolset line. They also include a new edition of Kaleida Labs' ScriptX programming language and Interactive Media Corp.'s Getting Started 2.1.
Apple Computer, Inc. opened 1996 by announcing updates to two of its key developers' aids, the Apple Media Tool and the companion Apple Media Tool Programming Environment, and a new release in its growing Essential*Tools*Objects (E.T.O.) toolset line. Version 2.0 of Apple Media Tool, an objectbased, cross-platform multimedia authoring tool, is designed to enable users to create interactive titles without programming or scripting. The new version of Apple Media Tool can be used to develop projects that will run fully native on Power Macintosh systems and incorporates new features such as support for QuickTime VR, custom color palettes, AppleScript, hypertext links, and more. Other new features include an improved user-interface browser, drag and drop capability for media elements from anywhere on the desktop, feature extensibility, continuous cross-screen sound, Rich Text Formats (RTF), flipbook animation, and cross-platform run-times for Mac OS and Windows.
The latest installment of the Apple Media Tool Programming Environment enables programmers to customize Apple Media Tool features and optimize projects created with Apple Media Tool, while providing a powerful, objectoriented development environment for developers of interactive titles. The Apple Media Tool 2.0 bundle includes the required subset of Macintosh Programmer's Workbench (MPW) software, and the programming environment works in conjunction with the MPW shell for debugging multimedia projects, allowing programmers, for example, to inspect objects, step through code, and set breakpoints while a program is running. Apple Media Tool 2.0 will retail for $495 as a standalone application and $1195 in the standard bundle. The Apple Media Tool Programming Environment carries a $995 suggested retail price. Upgrades to earlier versions of the tool and the environment are available for $195 and $295 respectively.
Concurrent with the Media Tool releases was Apple's shipment of release 19 of its E.T.O. and MPW development products, toolset components that include software elements designed to increase ease of use and decrease time to market for developers of Mac-based applications. Key features of release 19 include MrC/MrCpp and SC/SCpp, two sets of runtime-enhancing C and C++ compilers; MacApp 3.3, a significant upgrade to Apple's objectoriented application development framework which includes support for Open Scripting Architecture; Power Macintosh Debugger 2.0; SOMobjects, an object-oriented programming technology for building, packaging, and manipulating binary class libraries; and MrPlus, a new performance tuning environment for enhancing native Power Mac applications. The E.T.O. subscriber package, which includes all toolset releases, is available for $595; subscription renewals for 1996 are sold at $195.
Apple's ongoing developer program is enjoying its own advancements with the release of ScriptX Language Kit 1.5, the second iteration of Kaleida Labs' multimedia object-oriented programming language. Version 1.5, which enables multimedia development for Internet and CD-ROM, will be shipped to all members of the Apple Developer Program subscription service through a quarterly update. The new edition adds such features as TCP/IP support and a platform-independent persistent object store to its existing multimedia class library. With ScriptX, live objects or applets can be created and stored once, retrieved from a Web site, and added dynamically to a running application. Improvements to the programming language include enhanced printing and MIDI support, image compression, and development tools. Membership in the Apple Developer Program is tier-priced from $250 to $1500; more information on the program is available through the Apple Web site at http://dev.info. apple.com/developerservices.html.
Another major upgrade of an existing multimedia authoring aid that will benefit developers for the Macintosh Platform is Interactive Media Corporation's Interactive Multimedia-Getting Started 2.1, a CD-ROM-based "multimedia trial disc" designed to allow both novice and professional Macintosh users to try their hand at multimedia authoring without scripting, timelines, flowcharts, or complex interfaces. Interactive Multimedia-Getting Started 2.1 consists of five key elements, which include 13 examples of multimedia projects that first-time developers can observe and dissect; 10 interactive tutorials on using Special Delivery 2.1, IMC's multimedia authoring tool; a trial version of Special Deliver 2.1; a collection of license-free clip media, including backgrounds, photos, music, and videos; and tryout and demo versions of popular tools for multimedia file management, video editing and special effects, image enhancement, 3D modeling, painting, texture creation, sound editing, capturing animated screens, and more. Getting Stared 2.1, which ships at $24.95, is bundled with Apple Computer's new Apple Presentation System.
(Apple Computer, Inc., 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014-2084; 408/996-1010)
(Kaleida Labs, Inc 1055 B Joaquin Road, Mountain View, CA 94043; 415/335-2056; Fax 415/335-2096)
(Interactive Media Corporation, P.O. Box OO89, Los Altos, CA 94023; 415/948-0745)
Copyright Online, Incorporated Mar 1996