Following the recent Apple ‘Back to the Mac’ event, this event did, quite literally, see Apple going back in time, to a previous mini-paradigm in mac computing. Not just back to PowerPC, but beyond G5′s G4′s, G3′s, 604′s and 601′s, but all the way to the 680xx-based Mac era.
Why do I claim this? Well, one of the major announcements for Mac OSX 10.7 ‘Lion’, was the introduction (or should I say re-introduction), of the Launcher; an application last seen in MacOS7.
Classic MacOS Launcher
So why re-introduce this feature now? Well, perhaps Apple are trying to build on the success of the application launching screen for its mobile bevices (iPad, iPhone etc), and bringing this to the mac now may signal yet another shift in the Mac world, to smaller, more portable computing devices (the newly unveiled 11″ MacBook Air fitting into this category well).
Quite simply, the Launcher is a window of buttons, which can be made to fill the screen. Clicking a button will launch an application directly, avoiding the need to navigate through the Finder if the application you want is not in the Dock. Perhaps this even signifies Apple’s realisation that the Dock has its limitations; 1) it is not practical to hold all your Applications (or Apps as they are now called), and 2), the dock takes up space along the side of your screen; no good if your screen is quite small!
So once again, the oldest ideas have proven to be the best. I remember fondly using the Launcher on my Performa 630, the computer which introduced me to the world to Digital Video Editing. It had a built-in TV card, a video-input card, and came with Avid Videoshop 2.0. Okay, it couldn’t handle even half-resolution SD video at full frame rate; but worked perfectly well creating quarter-PAL Quicktime movies; fine for making small-frame movies for the web.
Maybe now is the time to resurrect my beloved Apple Performa 630, and use it once again for video editing.
Avid Videoshop
And you thought that Apple TV was a actually new idea? Its not the first time that Apple have attempted to remediate the TV and computing Platforms!
Apple TV/Video System
My Performa 630 came with this system pre-installed. I could watch TV, connect my camcorder, and edit video – all out of the box. And this was in 1995!
Tags: Apple TV, Avid, Launcher, Lion, MacOS7, OSX, Performa 630, Remediation, Video, Videoshop
