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| Note: This is an old newsletter. Some of the links may not lead to where they're supposed to lead. |
The big 2.0 is coming, price changes, a nice discount on fonts, a word about Spotlight, some nice review, and quite a few about the Intel-inside-Mac thing. Also, something about Accordance, Bookends and Sente
Table of Contents:
Mellel News:
What's going on:
Mellel tips:
Mellel News
2.0 is coming -- Mellel 2.0 our next version, is drawing near. This version will include lots of new and important features (I'll talk about those in a bit) but even more importantly, 2.0 will mark a change in perspective.
During its first three years Mellel developed from a bare-bones text editor into one of the best word processor for Mac OS X. Now it's time to move to the next level.
Up until now, Mellel offered advanced options for writers and scholars in the "middle section" of the writing process: writing, organising via the outline, citing, adding footnotes, etc. With Mellel 2.0 and beyond, we intend to extend Mellel to cover the writing process more fully: from jotting the initial ideas, and making notes, going through indexing and cross referencing, and to working with editors, publishers and even going to print.
To be sure, Mellel is not and never will be a tool for publishing, newspapers, high-end brochures or magazine. The rest, up to low to mid-level book publishing, is fair game.
OK, now that I've got this off my chest (and never once wrote "FrameMaker"), a little bit about the options in Mellel 2.0.
- Columns: This is one of the main features in 2.0 and in our internal tests works nicely (i.e., better than the competition).
- Keep options: This set of options lets you control how pages will begin and end: no leftover lines on top or at the bottom, no orphan headings, and so on.
- Hyphenation: This one is a big-big issue, especially when using columns and most especially with languages with long words (you know who you are). We have quite a few pleasant surprises here.
- XML: Another big change. Moving to a new file format that is easy to convert to other formats (including other XMLs) and making Mellel documents safer for you: the content of the document exists as plain text within the XML file.
- The rest: There are literally dozens of new features that we plan to implement (or already implemented) in Mellel 2.0. Many of those are "apropos" options: since we've done x, we might as well add y because it makes sense. Some of those apropos additions will undoubtedly seem to many of you the main course, not the addition, but that's another story.
Price changes with Mellel 2.0 -- Mellel's price is going to go up with version 2.0. The reason for this is, quite simply, that 2.0 is worth it. Actually, we think that Mellel 2.0 will be worth quite a bit more than it will cost so, it'll still be a great bargain.
If you are considering purchasing Mellel or already purchased it, that's good news, because Mellel 2.0 will be a free update for all registered users.
In other words, the current dirt-cheap pricing -- $39 for a regular license, $29 for education and $59 for a 5-pack (5 licenses) -- will carry you safely to Mellel 2.0 and beyond, free of charge.
Discount on fonts -- Want to get good fonts for less? Well, there's a way. We've reached an agreement with Linguist's Software, a font maker specialising in language font to offer a 20% discount off any Linguist's Software fonts for Mellel users.
To get the discount, all you have to do is click the link and the rest will follow.
Reviews! Reviews! -- We had spell of dry weather of sorts in terms of reviews, but we're back with a vengeance. OK, let's see:
- Sunday Times (UK): David Hewson, a writer, wrote about Mellel in the Sunday Times describing it as "fast, powerful and, unlike Word, easily handles the structure of long, complex documents, such as books and academic theses". A more detailed review is offered in his blog.
- Printing World: Andy Benedek, writing for Printing World, had this to say about Mellel: "All this pigeon-holes Mellel as a writer's word processor. Where MS Word impedes, Mellel facilitates. Its foreign language capabilities are exceptional, but do not intrude. It's interface is simple and well thought out making the task of getting words out of one's head and on to the page so much easier."
- iCreate: In this review, not available on-line (iCreate is here), Mellel got 85 our of 100. A-, that is.
- Mac-Delta-C: A German online magazine had this to say about Mellel: "Bottom line: Mellel is a mature, fast and efficient word processor... in everyday use, Mellel proves an efficient tool for work on text from a letter to a thesis"
- A comparative comparison: Want to compare Mellel with lemons? Well, if you think that our comparison wasn't fair, you might want to take a look at this one (in German). Mellel comes on top, of course.
- Ralf Schmid: Writing for the journal of his ad agency here (it's a kind of a blog) Mr. Schmid has some nice things to say about Mellel. It requires you to handle the delicate task of reading German. If not, do the silly thing and put your trust in us that it's a favourable review and just enjoy the neat site design.
Spotlight and Mellel -- When Tiger (OS X 10.4) was released we thought it'd be a problem to make Mellel Spotlight aware. We reckoned it would take us about a month or two to achieve this. Then we got back to our senses and remembered that we're the miracle makers, and so we waved our magic programming wand and it was done in a week. It self-installs and works very nicely, by the way.
What's Going On
Intel Inside: What does this mean? -- Apple's surprise announcement it is going to switch to using Intel chips in its computer starting in 2006 took many by surprise. The Mac sales were up, its current processor, the G5, was still running strong. There seemed to be no real reason to press for a change at this point.
Jobs seemed to disagree. He quoted several reasons for the move, amongst them the strong growth in Mac sales, and Apple's sturdy financial situation, but his main argument was simple: while the G5 is a strong competitor in the processor arena now, it doesn't have much of a future where it counts. From Apple's perspective this means one thing: they could not get a G5 processor into their PowerBooks.
The reason why IBM, the maker of G5, could not deliver a low voltage version of the processor is not really important. IBM probably could, but perhaps did not care or value such an effort as worth its while. Luckily, Apple, perhaps foreseeing such a scenario, had a secret contingency plan: it developed Mac OS X all along the way to also run on Intel processors.
This contingency plan allowed Apple to draw a very ambitious transition plan: the new MacIntels will start selling in 2006 (probably earlier rather than later that year) with the transition to an all-Intel Mac product line complete by mid-2007. By the end of that year, Jobs predicted, the switch will be all but through.
Apple's move raised many question amongst Mac owners. First and foremost, perhaps, was simply: what do we do now? If we need to purchase a new computer, should we buy a G5 now, or hold on to what we got and wait for the MacIntels? Isn't buying a Mac now like batting on a dead horse? Further, what will happen to our software? Will we have to re-purchase everything? Pay for upgrades? Will we be able to run our software on a G4 or G5 Mac three years from now? An what about five?
On the software front, Apple provide two important tools for the transition: Xcode 2.1 and Rosetta. The first is a new version of Apple's developer toolkit with the special addition of allowing developers to create a "universal binary" application -- that is, an application that will run smoothly on both current machines and MacIntels.
For about 90 per cent of the developers and application, there's little need for anything else. Mellel, for example, will need a few hours of tweaking, and it'll be ready for release, running just as well on both types of machines. Other applications, and especially those not written especially for Mac OS X, the transition will take a bit longer. Nevertheless, it's a minor headache, and more importantly, it's an exclusively developer's headache.
There are some applications that will take longer to switch to the new processor. For the benefit of those, Apple offers Rosetta: a programme that will allow such applications to run unmodified (that is, in their current form) on MacIntels. To put it more simply: it's a way Apple offers to run Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office at a reasonable speed.
To run at full speed, Adobe and Microsoft will have to move to Apple's Xcode. When that happens, the problem of creating an application that runs on both Gx processors and Intel will also be eliminated.
Looking into the future, the combination of an easy way to create universal binaries and Rosetta essentially eliminates a scenario of applications created especially for MacIntel which will refuse to run on existing machines. It's simply too cheap for developers to support both types of machines. Put differently: Any application you now have will continue to run and being updated for your existing machine as well as MacIntels.
This double-assurance also removes much of the doubts surrounding purchasing a new Mac before the release of the MacIntels. Almost all the software for OS X will run on a Mac you buy now just as fast as it will run on future MacIntels. The G5s run just as fast as their Intel equivalents. There is no reason to either postpone or expedite a purchase.
There are several exceptions to this general rule. If you need your machine to also run Mac OS 9 applications, you'll probably need to have a Gx Mac. In contrast, if you consider buying a notebook computer and intend to use it for some heavy-duty number-crunching (e.g., movie editing), you'll probably do wisely to re-evaluate your purchasing decision (=wait). If you have similar intentions but want to purchase a desktop machine, now or later will probably don't make a difference.
There are, however, some of you who might want to wait not in order to run existing software but, rather, to run future software that will run on MacIntels. This is pure speculation, but it seems that the new machines will open a door for much faster Microsoft Windows emulation, running at about 80-90 percent of normal speed of "native" Windows.
Mellel Tips
Accordance 6.6 -- OakTree Software released version 6.6 of Accordance, the premier Bible study software. The most significant changes in this version (which is kind of the reason I'm telling you about this) is that it now using Apple's Quartz engine to smooth text appearance. It does wonders to the way text looks and feels. Of course, it works very nicely with Mellel (even nicer with this version), which is always a good thing.
Bookends and Sente -- For the last couple of month, many have asked us which bibliographic reference software we recommend: Bookends of Sente. The reason for those questions was, of course, our recent announcement about Sente, which now collaborates with Mellel similar to the way Bookends already does for a while . We answered all of them by saying that this is something we cannot do.
The main reason we cannot give a recommendation is that we would be silly to do so. RedleX are experts in word processing. When it comes to bibliographic software, we're amateurs. No point asking us if our answer isn't worth much.
Second, we don't like "who do you like best" question during regular office hours. It's standard policy in RedleX that all mothers love all their children and/or applications collaborating with Mellel exactly the same.
Third, and most importantly: we think that Bookends and Sente are both good in the sense that they enrich our selection of alternatives to Endnote. Competition is good. For them. For us. And especially for Endnote, who desperately needs a good kick in the hoofed mammal of the horse family. Who knows, perhaps some day they'll start developing the application again...
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