Now that us lowly users have been unwillingly pushed down the slippery slope that is product activation, this particular article is equivalent to the proverbial closing of the barn doors after the horse has escaped. Actually, it's more like picking up the door and leaning it on the charred ruins of the barn after it burned down years ago, what with the horse having run out to flee the fire, but I digress. Since activation refuses to just go away entirely, I still (naively) think that there's a balance that can be struck between legitimate users and software publishers.

Well, WWDC 2004 has come and gone, and with it, another chance for the faithful to fill up on the Steve Jobs Kool-Aid. And while our respective tummies are sloshingly full of Aluminum Displays and Tiger goodness, the real news that came out of the conference may just be what wasn't explicitly shown rather than what made it into the Stevenote. And since reading the Apple tea leaves is always good wholesome fun, I definitely feel some of the ol' rampant speculation coming on.

Like many of you, I spent the better part of this last week constantly refreshing my various browser windows in the hopes of catching the absolute latest news coming out of Vegas (insert obligatory "baby!"), where NAB just closed up shop until this time next year. Of course, I don't have to remind anyone who was grabbing the (very) early headlines; Apple was quite busy providing whiz-bang fireworks on what is usually a traditional day of rest. The scene stealer of the day was the more or less unexpected announcement of Motion, Apple's forthcoming (and presumably, by some, After Effects-killing) motion graphics program. But does the birth of Motion really mean After Effects is on its way out of Mac-land? After almost a week of thinking about it, I have to say I'm of two minds about what may play out.

The last couple of weeks have brought a lot of news and rumors about Flash, with the funny thing being that surprisingly little of it actually had anything to actually do with the Macromedia product itself. The long and short of this recent Flash flurry is that a lot of it points, either directly or indirectly, to the emergence of yet another "Flash Killer," this time with our fine friends in Redmond driving the bus.

You may or may not have noticed that Macromedia.com has undergone a major redesign recently, one that assigns at least some reality to Macromedia's vision of rich internet applications (or RIAs) being the future of web design and development. But after examining the parts of the site that best exhibit Macromedia's direction, one can't help but ponder what the ultimate value is for web users.

Man, I sure do love my Flash MX. I find myself using it to some extent in each and every interactive project I do, and it's even creeping its way into my motion graphics workflow on video projects as the straight-up QuickTime-friendly animation tool it certainly is capable of being. There's only one little, nagging problem. I'm finding that the more time I spend in Flash MX, the less time I'm spending on a Mac.

Well, this is probably the end of the line, at least for now. As of this morning, and barring a rather large reversal by Macromedia in the near future, I will no longer look to Director as my primary interactive authoring application of choice. This is indeed a sad day for me, as I recently just marked my tenth anniversary working with Director. Why have I been forced to take such a drastic step? Why am I cutting my losses and looking elsewhere? Because, sadly, I can no longer afford to pony up and pay the Director Mac tax.

Folks, I'm tanned, I'm rested, and I'm ready. (Translation: my usually butt-white Irish skin is a lovely late-summer pink, I've been lazy, and Dave Nagel was about to hand me my rear end on a shiny silver platter garnished with a lovely sprig of parsley if I didn't get him something to publish soon.) I hope everyone out there in Mac-land is doing about the same, because if this summer has been any indication, the next year or so should be a very interesting one for the professional end of the Mac market.

'Scuse me, but do you have the time? My watch reads about 11:55, and I'm not sure it's right. I could've sworn it's earlier than that. You see, Uncle Steve said that when the clock hits twelve the transition to Mac OS X would be complete, and my trusty Justice League of America wristwatch purchased back in the days when the '040 chip was about to give way to the PowerPC 601 is telling me that it's damn near twelve. Maybe my watch needs another battery, but on the other hand, maybe it's actually correct. Maybe it is as close to twelve as it claims to be. Man, how time flies.

I've only got ten days left, and by the time you read this, it will probably be even less. I've been slowly, and with increasing sadness, watching the "days left" counter on my Flash MX trial version tick down from thirty. I'm at ten days and counting before I have to break out the old credit card and plunk down my hard-earned $199 for the upgrade from Flash 5. I'm not all that pleased about that, since the version 5 upgrade was fifty clams less back in the summer of 2000, but I feel I have no choice. That's because in the span of less than three weeks, I have come to completely love and depend on Flash MX.