Pinch-hitting for Mr. Kurtz

MacWeek, Feb 23, 1998

Hey, there. Me again: Brett, Mr. Mac the Knife's intern and - as it turns out - his editorial understudy. Pretty nifty, huh?

We're not exactly sure where the boss is this week. Some people around here (even our kindly publisher) are reading a lot into the fact that Mr. K. was last seen walking down Folsom Street wearing some sort of fancy leather back brace and toting a half-gallon jug of peach schnapps.

Aw, shucks! No offense, but some folks just have their minds in the gutter, if you ask me. Personally, I'm pretty sure the big guy's just off on another top-secret tip hunt. In the meantime, it looks like Yours Truly is back in the rumble seat!

Big drip

While the boss swears he's never tasted anything like my nonfat, triple-layered, hazelnut caffe latte with a twist (he calls it "the nectar of the gods"), there are still people out there who swear by the rich, satisfying flavor of 100 percent pure Java.

That latter group apparently includes some engineers at Apple, who seem to be brewing up technology that will filter QuickTime into a new generation of "Mac-friendly" Java media applications (whatever that means). My landlady says the QuickTime-for-Java project is in limited seeding already; hope they used a big hoe!

The real thing

Speaking of green, growing things: MetaCreations is reportedly ready to rock and roll with a stripped-down, $99 version of its Painter natural-media graphics package. The new package will sell under the label Painter Classic (kind of like that business with Coca-Cola way back in the '80s, huh?), and it says right here that it will be aimed at "prosumers" (whoever those are).

Best of luck to MetaCreations and Painter Classic! (Just be careful if you decide to use Michael Jackson in your TV spots; remember what happened with Pepsi, OK? 'Nuff said.)

Mark my words

Speaking of things that are bound to catch fire: Some of the older guys around here keep asking me to come into the "demo room" for a closer look at some exciting new capabilities in store for Adobe Acrobat. They tell me that, among other things, the next version of the portable document technology will fold in the capabilities of Re:mark, Ambia's cross-platform plug-in that lets users add nifty annotations such as highlighting and ink circles. That's all well and good, fellas, but why do I have to wear this?

Watch those power lines!

Speaking of weird parlor games in strange places: Word in from Tokyo, Japan, is that Fuji Photo Film was giving the folks attending Macworld Expo there last week private peeks at a sleek, new consumer camera with a megapixel resolution. (Note to self: Wasn't Megapixel the giant capybara in that Godzilla movie?) While details were as sparse as the hairs on old Mr. Knife's ears, Megapixel has been spotted approaching the power plant. Unless the army can stop it, the new gadget should reach the people of Japan by early April.

Blue-light special

Finally, the rumors are running thicker than Nanna Blanche's 40-weight pancake syrup about Apple's super-tuff new PowerBook, also known as Wall Street.

According to some Young Rotarians who happen to be close personal friends, Wall Street will be done up in colored plastic, like Aunt Selma at that weird nightclub near Fort Wayne, Ind. Unlike any of my relatives, though, it will include lots of memory - 4 Mbytes of video RAM, in fact, allowing it to display 1,024 by 768 pixels in 24-bit color.

Is a fat man in black leather hanging around your lobby? If so, we need him back. Call Brett at (415) 243-3544; fax (415) 243-3535; mac--the--knife@macweek.com; http://www.mactheknife.com.