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.

Of course, I'm going to take all the credit.

It seems that only a mere couple of weeks after my somewhat controlled rant at Macromedia, something got done. The powers-that-be over there finally said, "You know, that Kevin is absolutely correct. Start the port of Flash over to OS X right now!" And here we are, less than one month later, and they're already done. All is forgiven! Praise be!

Here I was, thinking I was all clever with the original title of this week's column, which was "Let's Put The Mac Back In Macromedia." While I was sitting around, patting myself on the back, some other columnist at some other site put my title out of play by naming his piece something oddly similar. While I had to come up with a new title, the content of my thoughts remain the same, and it boils down to the following: I've been more than a little peeved at Macromedia for a while now.

Just imagine the following conversation actually happening around a hundred some-odd years ago:

Painter #1: Pablo, you are a (expletive deleted) idiot. I can't believe you consider yourself a creative professional using that poor excuse for a paintbrush. It's all style and no substance, and you can't even get a whole lot of paint for that brush.

Painter #2: Vince, what the hell is the matter with you? It is your paintbrush that truly sucks, you conformist, apologist stooge. Just because everyone else uses that kind of paintbrush doesn't mean it's the best. Why don't you go slice your ear off or something, and let's talk when you see the light and start using the kind of brush I like.

If the preceding sounds ridiculous, why can't a lot of people make the same leap and consider that the partisan platform rhetoric they spew sounds just as preposterous? Read More...

Dear Santa Jobs,

It seems like all the other good little boys and girls here at DMN got to write a list to the Santa of their choice, so I chose you. I just wanted you to know that I have been extra, EXTRA good this year, after being really, REALLY bad for the last three years. I got sick of the other Santa, Santa Gates, promising to give me the super-good presents I wanted, but never leaving me more than a lump of coal. And Santa Gates always tried to convince me that he actually left me something good, but I knew it was just a lump of coal. Plus, he was never satisfied with just taking the couple of cookies I left for him. He would try to get into the cupboard and take all the rest of my food, along with my plates and dishes and silverware, all the while claiming that I was getting valuable innovations from him by his doing so. So I had to go back to you, Santa Jobs, for this year. You're a pretty good Santa, 'cuz you've given us lots of good loot. One time, you gave us a profitable company again. Other times, you gave us iMacs, G4 PowerBooks, OS X, decent video cards, and other neat stuff. You even gave us some early presents this year with the announcement of Final Cut Pro 3 for OS X and showing us DVD Studio Pro running on OS X. Those are all good presents, but the one thing about good presents are that we always want better ones next time.

Before I get into this week's topic, I want to give a quick shout out to all of you who graced my virtual inbox with letters of sympathy/support/commiseration after reading my previous column about my TiBook shopping experience. I apparently didn't just touch a nerve, it seems I grabbed the nerve, stretched it all the way across the room, and let it snap back like so many rubber bands. I don't think I let anyone's message fall through the cracks unanswered, but please accept my apologies if that happened to you. And to all my new "friends," whom, judging from their creative use of profanity I would venture to guess vehemently disagreed with my point of view, I'd like to extend a hearty round of thanks for engaging me in such witty repartee. However, I doubt those readers in question are likely to be with us this week, so let's just move on.

A few weeks back I wrote an installment of Prodigal Mac called "Excuse Me While I Pull My Hair Out." I'm sure many of you, as I did, took the time to print out and frame that fine work of prose, so I'm betting everyone is extremely familiar with it. However, as a service to you, the reading public, I will summarize that column in one sentence or less:

I hadn't bought a Mac since 1997 and I couldn't figure out which one would be best for me, so I begged you all for help.

There. Now we're all caught up. I received a decent amount of mail from you about that column, all of which can pretty much be boiled down to one of three responses:

I have a little test I like to call The Legend Test. It goes something like this: Let's say that the producers of a particular product decide to attach some form of the word "legend" to the advertising of their product. "The Legend of Brand X Barbecue Sauce," for example. To apply The Legend Test to a statement of this type, I place it in The Cowboy Scenario. Basically, if you can imagine cowboys sitting around the campfire at night uttering the same words without it sounding completely ridiculous, then it passes the Legend Test. Here's a statement that passes The Legend Test: "There once was a kid at school who could take out the class loser from fifty feet away with a spitball."

I'm a big "what if" guy, so during my three-year-plus experiment over in the land of Windows, there was one particular "what if" that I couldn't help thinking about. It went a little something like this: What if you took the few good parts of Windows and merged it with most of the Mac OS? My answer to this particular question was usually, "Man, you'd have one pretty outstanding operating system."

Since there are only a smattering of Apple-branded stores strewn across this great land of ours, I imagine that a good many of you out there have not had the opportunity to actually set foot inside of one. Oh, I'm sure you've seen pictures or heard stories, some of which have grown to mythic proportions. "Steve Jobs personally mans the cash register at every store!" "They have 400,000 software titles just for the Mac there!" "I heard that the employees can smell the rank stench of Windows on you, so be careful!" "My God, it's full of stars!"

For those Prodigal Mac readers that go WAAAYY back with me to the column's humble beginnings, which was all of about four weeks ago, you've probably noticed my fondness for analogy. I wouldn't dare disappoint both of you by skimping on this installment, so let me take you back to an experience you've probably had (or may currently be having) in some form or another.