When Adobe acquired Macromedia, a lot of people thought that’d be the end of Director. After all, Director and Flash have had increasingly overlapping capabilities for some time, and Director seemed like something people used years ago. Think again: talk to people doing interactive design, and Director — for better or worse — lives on.

With the Director 11 update announced this week, that’s unlikely to change any time soon. New in this release:

• Vista support on Windows, Intel support on Mac
• Bitmap filters (a la the bitmap API in Flash 8/9, I’m assuming)
• Full JavaScript support and Code Snippets
• Enhanced Flash support with CS3 and Flash Video support
• Built-in physics via AGEIA PhysX
• Native DirectX 9 3D support

Now, anyone for a Voyager interactive CD-ROM (as pictured right, from the Director heyday)?

Physics and 3D? Impressive stuff. So I should be excited, right?

Apple slipped in some almost silent updates last night to its portable line: MacBooks have been updated to come pre-installed with Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5), and sport Intel’s Santa Rosa chipset. This provides frontside bus speeds up to 800Mhz (up from 667Mhz), and includes a new integrated graphics chipset, the Intel GMA X3100 which should offer a speed boost for end users and increased shader support for developers.

Apple also silently updated the MacBook Pro, which now has an optional 2.6Ghz CPU upgrade (up from 2.4Ghz), for a mere $250.

Leopard improves not only OpenGL performance with some advanced backend llvm compiling, optional Quartz GL rendering, but also enhanced OpenGL extension and shader model support on certain cards. According to the Mac OpenGL dev list (which just today posted some new information regarding 10.5 - ironically the OpenGL cababilities matrix does not yet list the GMA X3100), Apple supports Shader Model 4.0 on newer ATI hardware, and possibly on NVIDIA 8-series cards (yet to be confirmed).

Both of these are good news for visualists - better graphics capabilities in 10.5 and updated integrated graphics chipsets will support more advanced visual effects for those who want the slimmer MacBook, and who doesn’t want dual 2.6Ghz of power in the MacBook Pro?

Ed.: My only disappointment with Apple is that there’s not much in the mid-range price-wise, and the Intel chips still lag behind dedicated graphics chips like the NVIDIA GeForce Go (8600 in the case of the MacBook Pro). But the flipside for the bargain-hungry: each time Apple bumps its MBP, you have a shot at getting clearance or refurb versions of the previous model at the sweet spot.

Note that the MacBook doesn’t support the advanced 3D features with its integrated video chip. The X3100 video on the PM965 chipset supports only Shader Model 3.0 and OpenGL 1.5, which leaves out some important shader features, etc., of use to visualists. So, if you can shell out the cash for the MacBook Pro, it will give you far more advanced 3D features — and by extension, hardware-based video. (On the Windows side, it also means DirectX 10 over DirectX 9, but the important thing is the integrated shader architecture.)

Yesterday Apple released iTunes 7.3.1 and Quicktime 7.2. With updated h.264 transcoding, numerous bug fixes and free fullscreen support for those without Quicktime Pro. It also provides iPhone exporting options and seems to enable 640×480 captures from certain iSights which were limited to 320×240.

Oh, and it breaks Rosetta.

Ok, not to be overly sensational, it does not break Rosetta for everyone, but a large number of users are reporting issues opening PowerPC applications on Intel Macs post Quicktime 7.2 update. It seems as though installing the OS X 10.4.10 Combo updater after installing Quicktime 7.2 has fixed the issue for some.

You might want to sit this one out for a while folks until the dust settles. You can read about this issue over at Mac Fixit: The QuickTime 7.2 disaster: Breaks all CFM apps on Intel-based Macs (Office, Photoshop CS2) for some; Problems playing Flash.

On the eve of Macworld Expo, Adobe has announced it’s finally restoring feature parity between the Mac and Windows versions of its Production Studio suite. That means Premiere Pro, its video editing app, and Encore DVD, its DVD authoring package, will both be available as part of the Mac suite.

That makes three Intel-native (and Intel-only) Mac releases:

1. Premiere Pro: First Mac release since its completely-rebuilt, Windows-only 2003 upgrade. (see original Adobe announcement)
2. Encore DVD: First time on the Mac since its 2003 introduction.
3. Soundbooth: New product; first major Adobe-developed Mac audio app ever and the first “Macromedia” audio app since SoundEdit 16 sales were discontinued in 2004 (after a long, slow death).

Macworld News: Adobe brings Premiere back to the Mac (Official Adobe announcement due later today)

Intel-only Soundbooth development caused a bit of a stir in the Mac community, but it’s clear that Adobe has decided they can develop these products for two platforms if it means developing for only one processor architecture. After a difficult year of making the Intel transition, in other words, 2007 will be the year Mac users can reap the rewards. I’ll be especially interested to see what video performance is like in the OS X release of Premiere, as the Mac has some very nice optimizations for video.

The response so far from Mac users seems to be very positive; a lot of Mac advocates are (rightfully) seeing this as real momentum — long lost momentum — for the Mac platform. Some will continue to question Adobe’s Mac commitment, but it’s important to note that Adobe didn’t really “drop” Premiere support on Mac. They re-built Premiere almost from scratch in 2003, and decided it didn’t make sense to make that version run on the Mac, partly because Apple made it clear they wanted to own the whole platform. Don’t get me wrong: I love Apple’s pro apps, both on the music and visual side. But I love multiple vendors and competition even more.

Ironically, the biggest challenge facing the Mac release may be that Mac users just aren’t very familiar with the package. I’ll talk this weekend about some of the integration features, but as good as Final Cut Studio is, my own feeling is that Adobe’s suite has both better, more comprehensive integration, and a more complete suite to integrate in the first place. Motion, while a powerful tool, isn’t comparable to After Effects, and Apple has no equivalent of Photoshop or Illustrator.

But whichever suite you choose — or if you use a combination of both — for the first time in a long time, the Mac will have some real competition. And Mac creatives won’t have to go buy a PC just to run the full suite. Windows just won my 2006 platform pick. The Mac may dominate 2007.

Now, about a Mac release of DV Rack to complete the picture. (Hey, at worst you can boot into Windows on Boot Camp.) (Jaymis: Your wish is their command: Previously mentioned ScopeBox was released recently and is the subject of an extensive review and comparison with DV Rack. Of course, Adobe have purchased Serious Magic, so the future may indeed hold a Production Suite bundled tethered shooting tools.)

Adobe will have demos of Premiere next week at Macworld; we’ll be there to cover it.

Live visualists get one tasty upgrade in the form of Modul8 2.5, with lots of Mac-centric exclusives:

1. Hardware-accelerated rendering: Built on Core Video (requires OS X 10.4 or later), Modul8 has switched entirely to GPU-accelerated rendering. While other software offers bits of acceleration as an option, the new Modul8 will actually require 10.4 and a Core Video-capable machine; others will have to stick with 2.0.3. Unforgiving of older hardware, yes, but could be great for getting the performance you crave. (I’ve seen these features work just fine on the integrated Intel chips on the MacBooks, etc., so generally you don’t even need a high-end machine.)
2. Freeframe, Core Image Filters: Custom image processing is now opened up both to the increasingly-popular, cross-platform Freeframe standard, as well as the Mac’s own Core Image.



Don your mask: 2.5 now has cropping, alpha-channel filters, and a fully-featured masking system.
3. Crop, mask, and key: (Sorry; somehow that came out naughty-sounding.) Here’s where Modul8 starts to set itself apart: the new release includes lots of new alpha-channel filtering options (alpha blur, alpha crop), plus an entirely-integrated masking system. It really moves Modul8 closer to true, live image compositing, which has always been a goal of this package.
4. Multi-projection: Via PCI-Express, you can run up to four graphics cards on a single Mac, for up to eight projectors, a configuration fully supported by Modul8. That’s the good news; the bad news is this means lugging around your G5 or MacPro for those of you on the road.
5. Intel-native: Gentlemen, start your MacBooks.

And there’s more … new, more programmable modules and compositing, color pickers everywhere, a revised media window that lets you delete in-place, move to the Finder, and adjust quality settings, improved recording, and other enhancements. This comes on top of other unique settings in Modul8: per-pixel transparency, a built-in drawing module for text and graphics, BPM sync, and (particularly unique) extensible modules that can be customized at the UI level or built in Python.

garageCUBE Modul8 [Product Page; Upgrade Details]

Modul8 looks to me like it’s become the VJ app to beat on Mac. Hope to have a review soon. And this heats up the cross-platform battle, too, as Windows users wait on more hardware acceleration in an upcoming release of Resolume.

Of course, the other route to go is to build your own app using tools like Jitter (which just got easier thanks to v001). You’re unlikely to recreate something like this — but you could build only what you need, just the way you like it, and nothing more.

Thanks, Anton! Now, can we quit all our other jobs and just do this, please?