*** From the Archives ***

This article is from October 4, 2001, and is no longer current.

Under the Desktop: X Will Mark the Spot

Business-as-usual took a holiday at last week’s Seybold Seminars conference and expo in San Francisco. The show’s timing, so close on the heels of the terrorist strikes, made it difficult to gauge the success of the announcements or the mood of the industry. Still, on the system front, it was evident that only one platform is addressing the future needs of cross-media publishing professionals. Surprise: It’s Mac OS X.
Turnout at Seybold was down for both attendees and vendors alike — no surprise there — so there was little jostling in the aisles. I was told that more than 20 companies took a bye from the expo. The reason was more than fear of flying: the evolving recession is making itself felt in marketing and travel budgets; layoffs are taking their toll in the industry; and the expo schedule conflicted with Yom Kippur, a major Jewish holiday. All reasonable if unfortunate reasons to pass on this season’s show.
With this mood of diminished expectations, I entered the Apple keynote presentation. I foresaw little news for the professional content creator. Yes, Mac OS X is the future. The Mac is the hub of a digital lifestyle. All worthy tidings, but words we’ve heard many times before.
Steve Jobs delivered the anticipated story: Mac OS X Version 10.1, which he dubbed the "mainstream release," would be available at the end of the week (it was available on September 29). While priced at $129 for new buyers of a retail shrink-wrap copy, the updater CD-ROM will cost only $19.99 for Mac owners with the operating system already installed on their machines. However, Apple announced that an "Instant Up-to-Date" kit will be offered free to existing Mac OS X owners through October or while supplies last. That’s quite a number of machines, since Mac OS X has shipped on all Macs since late May. The upgrade isn’t available for download online.
Thankfully, the update is fast, much faster than Version 10.4, supports a wide range of printers via existing PDDs, and offers keyboard navigation. And we can finally play DVD movies!
Color Shift
My perspective changed regarding the relevance of the 10.1 operating system to creative professionals following demonstrations of two new additions to Mac OS X: improved color management and advanced scripting. Both are important technologies to professional content workflows.
According to Apple, Mac OS X’s Quartz 2D graphics engine supports the International Color Consortium’s Version 4 profile specification. ColorSync is more closely integrated into the OS.
Apple Vice President of Marketing Phil Schiller declared that "soft proofing is built into the OS" and showed color-managed images displayed in the Mac OS X Mail application. He used a Show Profile script to automatically display the profile information for the image and changed its color space by dragging a profile into the image window. That was impressive.
This deep integration of ColorSync will be appreciated in cross-media workflows, where an image will be repurposed in print, on the Web, or even on video. As I’ve harped on in a previous column, all images deserve proofing, whether destined for print or a web page. When creating images for online viewing, content creators should keep in mind the performance and color capability of the viewer’s display. An image may look fine on a high-resolution CRT but be grossly different (or just gross) on a low-resolution flat panel. This color-fidelity will grow in importance with images destined for the organic light-emitting diode displays that will be used in next-generation phones and PIMs.
In my experience, Web development environments care little about color. For example, my Web authoring program lets me "soft proof" the different ways that PCs and Macs handle HTML and text. At the same time, the program ignores the fact that the two platforms have different native color gammas.
With Mac OS X v10.1’s ubiquitous color management, I will be able to open an image in multiple windows, each displayed with its own profile. One window might correspond to the color space of a physical output device, while others could give me a look-see at a particular combination of platform and display characteristics.
Follow the Script
Meanwhile, the demonstration of AppleScript’s integration into Mac OS X v10.1 was equally exciting. Scripts have gained a place on the Finder ToolBar, as well as a new Script Menu on the right-hand side of the menu bar.
Sal Soghoian, Apple’s AppleScript product manager, demonstrated AppleScript Studio, a forthcoming scripting development environment that will meld AppleScripts with Mac OS X’s Interface Builder graphical interface tool and Project Builder integrated development environment. Due later in the year, the environment will let scripters create full-blown script/applications with an Aqua user interface. Soghoian ran a complex script that automatically produced a real-estate catalog using a database and Adobe InDesign.
In Figure 1, you can see a script called Ad Builder that is gaining an interface with three tabs, one for each of its three steps, and a button that will start its compilation process. Figure 2 shows the same script in the Project Builder environment.


Figure 1: Ad Builder looks like an application, but it’s really a script with an interface.

Figure 2: The same script that generated Ad Builder shown in the Project Builder environment.

AppleScript Studio could herald a new era in custom programming on the Mac. For the Mac market, AppleScript Studio may fill a position similar to that held by Microsoft Visual Basic in the Windows world.
Scripting, however, offers several advantages for content creators over straight coding. First, its natural language makes it easy to create custom automation solutions that meet the needs of an existing workflow, rather than forcing the workflow to accommodate the requirements of a particular application. It boosts productivity, as well.
Second, it lets us leverage our current investment in expensive and powerful content-specific applications. And scripts let us pick the strongest features of applications for our solution. Most developers pour their energies into a select group of features and pay less attention to others, which are just items for a checklist.
The caveat is that applications and their features must be scriptable. But the list of scriptable programs is long, especially in the content creation field.
What to Do?
So, the question remains: Should you upgrade to Mac OS X today?
The answer is perhaps. But content creators must ask a different question: Will your business or workflow improve with a transition from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X? That’s the only true test.
My suggestions from last May on approaching the transition still hold true. Perhaps like you, I have a passel of old but still-serviceable SCSI-based peripherals and little budget for replacement. Still, I am dedicating my primary machine to Mac OS X while keeping the others on Mac OS 9. And I’m waiting for Mac OS X versions of my workhorse applications.
There’s a rabbinic saying that casts some wisdom on this situation: "Storms pass, but the driftwood remains." My current workflow, with its older hardware and software, is much like driftwood — worn but still productive, and tested by time.
Read more by David Morgenstern.

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