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  Movie Maker 2 Final Release Available Today
Time: 00:00 EST/05:00 GMT | News Source: ActiveWin.com | Posted By: Robert Stein

Thank you Michael. "Microsoft Plus! Digital Media Edition users: Transitions and effects included in Plus! Digital Media Edition require the final version of Windows Movie Maker 2. Download the final version on January 8. "

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#1 By 442 (65.33.152.78) at 1/8/2003 12:09:47 AM
Just in time to still fall far behind Apple's iMovie 3 and the seamless integration of it and the other "iApps".

#2 By 2459 (24.233.39.98) at 1/8/2003 12:40:46 AM
Too bad MS has been doing seamless integration for years.
First people shun integration. Now that Apple does it, it's cheered? Sheesh.
Same old hypocritical double standard.

This post was edited by n4cer on Wednesday, January 08, 2003 at 00:41.

#3 By 442 (65.33.152.78) at 1/8/2003 1:06:06 AM
Missed the point totally....typical Windows user.

#4 By 135 (208.50.206.187) at 1/8/2003 1:23:27 AM
jaredbkt - "Same old hypocritical double standard."

I'd say he hit the point dead on.

#5 By 1845 (12.209.152.69) at 1/8/2003 1:28:40 AM
Hmm, so (perhaps) Apple gets a point for the new iApps. Microsoft surpasses them just about everywhere else.

#6 By 2960 (156.80.64.132) at 1/8/2003 9:40:42 AM
n4cer,

Nice try :)

There is a MAJOR difference between Integrating and tying applications with the OS and integrating applications.

TL

#7 By 2960 (156.80.64.132) at 1/8/2003 9:41:58 AM
#7,

Don't forget it's $20 PER COMPUTER, for the leash-enhanced XP PLus Pack.

TL

#8 By 2960 (156.80.64.132) at 1/8/2003 9:45:08 AM
"Typical Apple zealot. At least find out who you're flaming. "

LOL!

Thanks man. I needed that!

That's the funniest thing I've read all year (so far).

One of ActiveWin's star MS Zealots using the words Typical and Zealot in the same sentence and directing them towards another platform user.

Please, stop :) My sides are hurting :).....

TL
Still proudly cross-platform and getting a kick out of it all.

#9 By 8589 (66.169.175.34) at 1/8/2003 10:22:18 AM
Why do you think they are called Mac-N-Trash ? And besides, last time I looked this site is called ActiveWin, not ActiveMac.

#10 By 2332 (12.105.69.158) at 1/8/2003 10:34:41 AM
Guys, it's unlikely that any of us have used either iMovie3 or WMM2, so I'm not sure how we can tell which is better at this point. I will say that I've read Paul's review, and WMM2 looks pretty cool. (Although, to be honest, I don't really care about making movies on my PC.)

As far as iMovie and OS integration... perhaps it's not quite like OS tie-in, but do you Apple people realize that even though you're paying 50 bucks for iLife, you still MUST have an Apple made DVD writer? Apple specifically wrote iMovie to ONLY work with Apple hardware, even though there are countless other, cheaper DVD writers available that do all the same things.

Would this be called hardware tie-in?

#11 By 3339 (65.198.47.10) at 1/8/2003 12:35:40 PM
kevinu, too bad Apple has an add-in pack of transitions (still not the number of WIndows transitions, but...), a well-published SDK for transitions/effects development (the article posted today suggests the creation of effects for MM2, but it is not an SDK or API yet), has four third-parties selling excellent bundles of effects at a very reasonable cost, and numerous other effects available for free through download sites.

And, oh, too bad Windows adds up a hundred effects by doing things like Warp Soft, Softer, Softest (why isn't it one effect that you set the level of softness); Spots White, Spots Black (Why can't I set the color); Streaks Horizontal, Streaks Vertical (why can't I set the orientation)... etc. I would say 20 or so more powerful and edittable effects with a third-party market of over 400 effects and an open SDK is better than 100+ that could be boiled down to 30 or so lame effects.

#12 By 3339 (65.198.47.10) at 1/8/2003 2:11:40 PM
A little bit of further comparison between the two apps--mostly because PT's defense is idiotic, but I haven't downloaded MM2, or iMovie3 for that matter yet, so I haven't been able to perform a more comprehensive comparison--but PT claims that more is simply better. I disagree, but not for the reasons Baugh posts--that simpler is better--but because quality is better.

but I digress... Here is my example:

MM2 has these video effects: Fade in, From White; Fade Out, To White; Fade in, From Black; Fade Out, From Black....

First off, aren't these transitions, not effects? Secondly, this is one transition in iMovie: set the direction of the Fade (In or Out), drop a black or white frame before or after the transition.

So--if PT thinks numbers win, well, that's one point of disagreement. But if Microsoft is going to win the numbers game by having very dumb effects (or are they transitions, I'm confused) that aren't very flexible, which produces the opportunity to boil down 4 effects to 1... Well, let them win the numbers game.

#13 By 2459 (24.233.39.98) at 1/8/2003 2:13:16 PM
TL, I'd say that Apple has the OS tying part down pretty well since the iLife Apps come with new Macs, and because Apple's current products all require Jaguar. Nice that Apple would leave the original OS X users out in the cold.

#14 By 2459 (24.233.39.98) at 1/8/2003 2:17:40 PM
Sodajerk, the DX Media SDK is used for creating the effects and transitions in MM2. The same goes for Microsoft Producer. Besides, on Windows, all that is needed for an API is a dll.

#15 By 3339 (65.198.47.10) at 1/8/2003 2:18:17 PM
enforcer, how is that tied though? The OS works fine without them. Each app works fine without the others. They are not tied. Quicken comes with new Mac--that doesn't mean Quicken is tied to OS X.

#16 By 3339 (65.198.47.10) at 1/8/2003 2:32:24 PM
enforcer, I get how it works... My comment needed to be mitigated by the change in position today. Until today you could not find any mention among the MM blurbiage that custom effects were possible. I find it interesting that it's only using DX7. I also find it interesting to see that the base effects/transitions objects number 9 and 10, respectively; parameters are much more numerous. That provides a bit of insight into how ridiculous it is that they generate a high number of effects.

Also, I see that if you do not use XML to create the effects, you need to create dll files. Great. And there isn't really a system of importing/exporting effects.... It doesn't seem very friendly at this point.

This post was edited by sodajerk on Wednesday, January 08, 2003 at 14:36.

#17 By 2459 (24.233.39.98) at 1/8/2003 2:34:29 PM
They are tied to the OS because you can only run them on the latest version. This creates the situation where people wanting to use the iApps, or any new Apple (and some third party software) have to spend more money on an OS they thought they were paying for the first time.

Also, unless Apple uses a lot of redundant code, these apps (most of them, anyway) require Quicktime (or at least some of its components). It doesn't matter that the apps can be installed separately, Office apps can do that, what matters is the parts of the platform are required for the apps to work with full functionality. This part is what makes these apps tied to the latest Mac OS X.


#18 By 3339 (65.198.47.10) at 1/8/2003 2:42:21 PM
Tied equals not backward compatible? Are you smoking crack? Any app that doesn't have backward compatibility is tied to whatever OS it was created for? Come on, enforcer, because that's the definition you are applying.

And your second definition--any app which uses system resources is tied to the OS? Again, are you smoking crack. Most apps will utilize some system resource or the other. The question is whether or not a portion of the app is required to run the system. Again, this is not the case.

You've got some ridiculous notions as to what would be "tying", particularly when I seem to recall you belieiving that IE wasn't tied to the OS in the past... Now you think lacking backward compatibility or using system resources is tying?

Like TL, I'm having a hard time holding my gut in....

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, HA!!!!

#19 By 2459 (24.233.39.98) at 1/8/2003 2:57:01 PM
Hmm, so now QuickTime is a system resource? In the past, you implied that this was not so -- that it was a separate application.

#20 By 3339 (65.198.47.10) at 1/8/2003 3:13:07 PM
QT Player is an application. It can be deleted and not disturb the system. QuickTime is also a framework and a library. Two different things. I'm not changing my story.

As I have argued from the very beginning--if MS had made the html render engine an API that IE linked to but not a part of IE, they would have avoided the whole trouble. Instead they said it was a system API but built the related dlls into Explorer. Same argument on my part, but in the latter, MS was tying.

#21 By 2459 (24.233.39.98) at 1/8/2003 3:35:33 PM
The tying claim did not stand.

Besides, this is what I've said IE was in the past, and basically one of the definitions MS was entertaining when everyone was trying to figure out exactly what middleware was.

IE is just an executable, only a few hundred KB. The rest, XML/HTML, rendering, etc., are system components that include functionality developers can program against. I've said this before. You can look at IE or WMP as sample apps that showcase the functionality of the OS. Sun, et al, apparently weren't satisfied with that so they demanded an all or nothing scenario. Thankfully, they lost.

#22 By 3339 (65.198.47.10) at 1/8/2003 3:47:42 PM
The separate charge that tying was in and of itself a monopolistic act did not stand, but it was shown to be tied. We don't need to reiterate this again.

Yes, IE is just an executable, but this is not what MS argued. MS argued that if they had to remove IE they also had to rip out the system components because these system components were a part of IE, making the system unusable, but at the same time claiming it was a system API. This was the crux of their legal trouble. If IE was just a showcase, it would function like other apps using those system resources--i.e. it would not include those system resources on install or uninstall--instead MS argued exactly the opposite which rendered the OS unusable. What you argued would have been just lovely and I would have been happy, but that is far from the truth isn't it?

Apple avoids this whole issue. You can delete QT Player without ripping out the system resources. This would allow other apps (Office, IE, Adobe apps, many others besides Apple) to use the media components, but you would not have the media player app. In fact, conversely, you could also keep QT Player and play some media files without using the QuickTime framework (some media layers would be provided for through QuickDraw, CoreAudio, CoreVideo, or Flash, for example).

At the very least, I think you have to abandon all definitions for tying that you have previously used. A general definition of tying would be neither app (the tied-in and the tied-to) would function without the presence of both. This is simply not the case.

This post was edited by sodajerk on Wednesday, January 08, 2003 at 15:59.

#23 By 2459 (24.233.39.98) at 1/8/2003 4:25:56 PM
I don't think things would be much different had MS argued differently. As it stands, we have the removal of all end-user access to the application (Start Menu icons, etc.). For the end user, this produces almost the same results as removing just the exe. The upside is that you don't need to find your Windows CD whenever you want to add the app back.

I think the problem was that most people, including "the competition," didn't understand that the removal of a small file was all that was needed. For end-users, the argument was that the app and all of its components should be removed. "Why should harddrive space be taken up by components I believe I don't use?" They wanted the old-style Windows setup back.

Some competitors wanted to actually replace included MS functionality with their own. This simply couldn't be done on the level they wanted because even if they supported all required interfaces, the rusulting output for the end-user could be drastically different from what was expected. The other problem was that many of these companies didn't want to use the provided APIs despite the APIs being there for that purpose. When you write apps for an OS, you should use the services the OS provides. The end-user will thank you for this, as the app will conform to the expected behaviors. Not only did some of the competition not want to use the native interfaces, they didn't want the native interfaces available. Sun is currently trying to argue this point against the inclusion of .NET, which is just a new Windows programming API/runtime/framework that should eventually replace Win32/DX/etc. Java can be had on Windows today via Win32, and tomorrow via .NET. But again, they want an all or nothing scenario because they don't fully understand how things work.


#24 By 2459 (24.233.39.98) at 1/8/2003 4:26:11 PM
The current stance on what makes an app an app came from questions in the court case: If you remove app A's exe, the functionality of app A still exists. Is this satisfactory? Do you think the functionality of app A should be completely removed? Some system/3rd-party app functionality depends upon the availability of app A's functionality. We can't let those things break. Choose the scenario that you want that removes end-user access to app A, but still allows dependant apps/system services to functioncorrectly and transparently. What you want is not possible, it breaks other apps. Choose something else. We can't do that. So, you want all or nothing? OK.

This post was edited by n4cer on Wednesday, January 08, 2003 at 16:28.

#25 By 3339 (65.198.47.10) at 1/8/2003 4:39:58 PM
I agree, enforcer, that the "competition" confused the issue, but I disagree that Microsoft didn't contribute to this or couldn't have changed the whole problem. They were quite specifically the ones who decided to remove the SYSTEM components when asked to remove IE. This was quite specifically my stance from the beginning--if they are a SYSTEM API, why do they get removed with IE? They created the problem--they chose to associate those components as portions of the "application" IE.

It was Microsoft that chose for itself to say these components were a part of IE, and when they removed them, they broke the system. In fact, they still insist today, that the IE exe needs to be on the system, that the best they can do is "hide" it.

So it is by MS's own actions and definitions that I claim and assert that they did tie...

On the other hand, I wonder--since we are digressing further and further from the topic--can you accept that the iApps are not tied to OS X?

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