You don’t have to look all that far back for Apple’s most recent cockup, either. Sandwiched in between the enormous successes of the iMac and iPod sits the G4 Cube. Many of Apple’s biggest flops have actually been excellent products, marred more by insane marketing than any technological flaws. In that sense, the G4 Cube was an absolutely archetypal Apple product. Launched in July 2000, the Cube was a superb piece of design work. It took Steve Jobs’s vision of the iMac as a kind of technological fashion statement to the next level, and combined it with the elegant design that is Jonathan Ive’s trademark. And, to give credit where it’s due, Apple’s backroom engineering teams did some amazing work by managing to cram the whole thing into such a compact enclosure without having it melt the moment you turned the power supply on.

But if the design work was impeccable, Apple’s marketing was insane. The Cube was way too expensive for the consumers that lapped up the iMac, while professional users just looked down on it as an expensive toy.

The Cube cost almost as much as the current top-of-the-range flat-panel iMac, yet it didn’t include a monitor – flat-panel or otherwise. Buying a decent monitor took the price up to more than £2,000 for what was little more than a smaller version of the iMac. Not surprisingly, the Cube sold poorly and was shelved a year later.

The Cube wasn’t Apple’s first hardware failure – there’s the story of the PowerBook 5300, which still ranks as one of Apple’s most humiliating product launches ever.

It came at a bad time, too. The PowerBook range had been a massive hit for Apple in the early 1990s, and at one point Apple was actually the number one manufacturer of laptops, outselling any of its PC rivals. But when Apple introduced the first Power Macs in 1994 it had trouble getting the powerhungry PowerPC processor to work inside a battery-driven laptop system. PowerBook sales had started to flag so the eventual launch of the PowerBook 5300 in August 1995 was an important event for Apple. But, just as Apple started to ship the first units to customers, two early sample units caught fire – one at Apple’s factory in Singapore, and another one that had been taken home by an Apple employee. The fault lay in the Sonymanufactured batteries that were exploding while recharging off the mains power supply.

Apple had to recall every single one of the new PowerBooks, but as soon as it sorted out one problem, others sprung up. Cracks started appearing in the plastic casing, and the power plug had a knack of snapping and falling off. Oh, and the power supply wasn’t strong enough for some of the expansion cards you could put into the card expansion slots. The machines also had a tendency to crash if you pressed certain combinations of buttons.

This endless succession of problems ground the PowerBook’s reputation into the dirt, and damaged Apple at a time when it was already struggling. The company’s financial results suffered and within six months, CEO Mike ‘Diesel’ Spindler was gone.

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Steve Jobs will give Mac fans a sneak preview of the next generation of Mac OS X at Apple’s forthcoming Worldwide Developers Conference in June.

Mac OS X 10.4, codenamed Tiger, will be demonstrated to WWDC attendees by the Apple chief on the opening day of the special five-day event, which kicks off on 28 June at San Francisco’s Moscone West.

Unusually, very few details of the new OS have been leaked and speculation on online forums is intense as to what Mac fans can expect in the new release. According to Mac rumour Web site AppleInsider (www.appleinsider.com), technologies expected to make their debut in Tiger include improved networking support, a new version of the Safari Web browser, enhanced security features and a metatdata database.

One feature that definitely will be included in Tiger, however, is the impressive new spoken interface technology that Apple will introduce as part of its Accessibility program.

Other activities at the event include conferences on the framework of OS X technologies and enterprise development, and special labs where software developers can try out their code on the latest Mac systems.

If you’re planning to head down to the WWDC it will cost you $1,595 to register for the Apple fest. Sign up today by visiting developer.apple.com/wwdc

Apple has celebrated the first birthday of the iTunes Music Store in style by launching a new version of iTunes that provides access to the third generation of the digital download service.

The revamped Music Store now features QuickTime music videos; allows users to upload, share and rate their iTunes playlists; and makes changes to the way that digital rights are managed. Purchased music can now be stored on up to five different computers (up from three), but the same playlist can now only be burnt seven times (down from 10).

The non-Music Store related parts of iTunes have also been improved, with a new feature allowing users to print CD jewel case inserts, a ‘Party Shuffle’ feature for creating automated playlists and a new lossless encoding format.

“iTunes has exceeded our wildest expectations during its first year,” said Apple boss Steve Jobs. “Our third generation iTunes Music Store just blows away any other online music service,” he added.

Sadly for UK Mac users, there is still no firm date set for a European roll out of the service, although Jobs did say that Apple was targeting a date later this year. Problems agreeing on licensing terms with the European music labels are understood to be holding the launch up.

Apple launched the iTunes Music Store, which charges 99 cents per download, in April 2003. Since then Apple has seen competition from a resurgent Napster, Microsoft and Sony. Apple’s service is buoyed by a catalogue of over 700,000 songs and has sold over 70 million downloads in its first 12 months, giving Apple a respectable 70 percent market share of the legal downloads market at time of writing.

DVD creation app DVD Studio Pro has also had a makeover and moves to version 3. The application can now encode footage shot in HD to the MPEG-2 format, but there are also plenty of new features to get DVD creators excited, including 30 professionally designed transitions, QuickTime-based ‘Alpha’ transitions and support for surround sound DVDs.

High-end compositing and visual effects tool, Shake, also gets an update. Version 3.5 is optimised for the G5, includes new tools for shape-based morphing and warping, and improved network rendering management. More details about Apple’s new products can be found at www.apple.com/uk/software. Rest assured that iCreate will be reviewing the new releases as soon as they become available.

According to Apple, Motion allows video editors to bypass the keyframing procedure by using a system called ‘Behaviors’. These use procedural animation techniques to simulate advanced motion effects, such as the effect of gravity or the elements. The program does features a keyframing editor, however, affording precision control to the more technically minded editor.

“With its revolutionary technology, breakthrough ease of use and low price tag, Motion may do for motion graphics what Final Cut Pro did for non-linear editing – bring the ability to create pro-quality results to the masses” said Rob Schoeben, Apple’s vice president of Applications Marketing.

The launch of Motion places a big question mark over whether Adobe will continue to develop a Mac version of After Effects or whether After Effects 6.5, also launched at NAB, will be the last Mac version. When Adobe launched its new Digital Video Collection last year, the lack of Mac releases for new products Premiere Pro, Encore DVD and Audition effectively signalled that Adobe was no longer prepared to compete against Apple.

Only After Effects remains – a legacy of the program’s large Mac user base. Regardless of the whole Apple/Adobe scenario, Motion is certainly generating huge interest. Steve Paris runs The Bristol Mac Centre, a Mac consultancy specialising in digital video. He says clients can’t wait for the new software. “With Motion, FCP, DVDSP and Logic, my clients will have everything they need to edit, design and create media for any format, all from one supplier. And they all want a look at Motion.”

Although Motion stole the show, several important updates have also been made to Apple’s other pro digital video applications. Videoediting solution Final Cut Pro has been rebadged as Final Cut Pro HD in reference to its ability to now handle footage shot in broadcast-quality high definition, without additional hardware. The update is free to all FCP 4 owners and costs £699 to new users.

Apple stole the show at NAB 2004 (National Association of Broadcasters) by unveiling updates for all of its major professional digital video applications and a brand new motion graphics program called Motion.

Speculation had been rife before the Las Vegas trade show that Apple would be making a major announcement after the firm issued cryptic invitations to the media containing the phrase “Moving Pictures. Moving Sound. Moving the industry.” Nobody was expecting to see Apple launch a rival to Adobe’s mighty After Effects suite, though, especially one priced at just £199.

Motion is designed to make motion graphics – a notoriously complicated subject – far easier to create. NAB showgoers cheered as the program was demonstrated.

The software allows users to create animated text, video and graphics; add and instantly preview multiple filter and particle effects to DV footage; and apply natural movement to type and graphics without the need for complicated keyframing commands like those seen in programs like After Effects.

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