Macworld Town Meeting Report
"When we made it to the convention center, we caught Adam Engst (TidBITS) grading Apple on their Internet strategy. (BTW, this is the 1st Town Meeting in NY.) Here's Adam's grades:
N/A - Apple needs to push MacOS as a better client web server.
A - E-commerce: apple.com, TIL & AppleStore.
C - Net community: Apple doesn't reward its customers enough. Lamented on the lack of Guy Kawasaki's efforts even though near the end of his tenure, the EvangeList got a bit out of hand.
I - Mac OS X Server: wants to know how people are using it. People are using NetBoot, but he hasn't *personally* seen many people using Apache or WebObjects (I have).
Commented on how it takes him less than 30 minutes to configure a MacOS mail, ftp & web server. Will MacOS X be this easy?
Paul Kent then introduced Steve Wilhite, Apple's new VP Marketing from VW. He broke the ice by commenting on how he started using computers with the Mac. Joining VW, he started to "p... o.." the IT department there by slowly infecting the secretarial, marketing, PR departments with Macs until VW went through its down period and forced a single platform, IBM. Steve found Steve through Headhunter.net. Apple's brand is one of the few brands in the world that inspires individuality, extensibility, lack of pretension, honesty and integrity. Also, he noted that he's most impressed by the AppleMasters program and that lead him to introduce Kanwal Sharma, AppleMasters Program Manager.
Paul Davis was up next. We all braced to relive the WWDC presentation but he cut the art part short and introduced a brand new software product for the Mac by Synthetic Software: Studio Artist. The people behind it are Candace Patchkins and John Dalton who created Deck and is also a neuro researcher. He combined his 2 skills along with the power of the G3 to create "smart software, intelligent assistant software" that takes graphic synthesizer technology to visual artists. The software has the entire human visual cortex model so it can either create or assist in the creation of art. Has over 200 controls just for the look of the paint. It ships today for a show special of $195 ($295 list). This software is very cool & would be wonderful if it were Mac only. This was just the beginning of the new Mac software being shown off....
Michael Blackes from Pineline was up next to show off a new game engine by David Smish who created Virtus Walkthrough. This on-the-fly 3D renderer can max out the bandwidth of a monitor. They're working with Michael Crichton (also an AppleMaster) to make a Mac game for next summer with the engine.
Also very cool is a new After Effects plugin by Digital Water called Tsunami that creates water effects like in the movie Titanic. Demos are available at atomicpower.com. The software has Mac specific features and is tweaked to run faster on a G3 than on an SGI.
David Mash, VP of UC Berkeley's School of Music, showed Vision DSP & how he used his Mac to create a score for Adobe's product CD's.
Jim Ludtke showed his art from the work with the REsidents (e.g. Freakshow, Bad Day on The Midway). He's currently working with Disney (ABC) on Tube Dwellers. His guest developer was Creedo Interactive who makes LifeForms."
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