| The Ultimate Business Machine Technology, business And, not least, about by: Bernard Teo
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Tue 15 Apr 2003 OS X Graphics and Font ManagementCategory : Technology/fonts.txt Graphic designers contemplating the conversion to OS X ought to take a look at these two Apple documents - Using and Managing Fonts in OS X, and Quartz Extreme - to get a feel for what they're missing. Imagine not having to deal with Adobe Type Manager (ATM), screen fonts, printer fonts, QuickDraw, or even Postscript (for drafts). OS X works with Postscript Type 1 fonts, Mac TrueType, Windows TrueType, Adobe Multiple Masters, Apple's .dfont (introduced in OS X), and the emerging standard, Open Type. It has a built-in font rasteriser with advanced typographic capability that can render stuff like this :
Quartz, which draws everything you see in OS X, is resolution-independent. It will take advantage of higher resolutions wherever it can (e.g.,it will draw at 600 dots per inch when given a 600 dpi printer). If you present it with a Postscript printer, OS X has a built-in Postscript rasteriser that will do the conversion. All you need to use a Postscript printer is a PPD file (the exact same ones used by OS 9). This is needed to tell OS X about the features that are supported by the printer. There's really no need to supply an OS X machine with third-party Postscript drivers. What this means is that OS X users have a much wider range of printers to choose from. From my observation, OS X output produced on non-Postscript printers is about 80-90% of the quality of the same output produced on Postscript printers, quite unlike the days of OS 7, 8 and 9 when non-Postscript printers were virtually unusable with a Mac. There's so much good in OS X that designers really ought to switch, and fast. Wait for Quark at your peril. The Design of TechnologyCategory : Commentary/harmony.txt Only on the Apple site will you get something that combines art and technology quite so exquisitely. "Twenty-first century print designers find themselves in an intriguing position. Their medium is ink on paper - but their days are spent eyeing pixels on screens. Their technique is based on centuries of tradition - but their technology is changing at a rapid pace. Their business often depends on stable client relationships - but their portfolios depend on doing challenging, cutting-edge work. Striking a balance among these demands can sometimes be a high-wire act. But that's exactly what gets a designer's blood flowing." - A Design Studio Makes the Move to OS X. I am more than a fan. I have a vested interest in keeping this platform alive because there is no happier person in the world than a craftsman in total harmony with his tools. An OS X-on-Broadband TutorialCategory : Commentary/broadbandtutfinis.txt I've just finished a tutorial on using SingNet, PacNet and SCV broadband with OS X machines. I'm working on another - how you should set up an Aiport Base Station to make the whole OS X-broadband combo work like heaven. Maybe, after that, this madness will be totally satiated. Good reads todayCategory : Commentary/gdreads1504.txt What's going on in the music industry these days; why are the music labels losing money, and what's Apple role in all these? Bill Palmer puts together one of the better pieces of analysis I've read about Apple possibly buying Universal Music. Are you reading this with your freshly-minted Safari with tabs? Go over to the Surfing Safari weblog and read about what's good and bad about this latest release. For instance, I've just realised how usable Safari's History menu really is. Was it always like this? Still not working with DBS, though. The Multiple-Mac HouseholdCategory : Commentary/multiPChousehold.txt We've got three Macs at home, one for each of us - I work on an iBook, my wife uses a Tibook, and our kid uses an old Graphite iMac (which doubles as a back-up server) just for fun. I'm just reading how the multiple-PC household is driving a dramatic growth in wireless home networking. This is Apple's sweet spot, where the whole of its offerings is so much greater than the sum of its parts. Imagine the components - the portability of the PowerBook, the beauty of its design with the Apple logo nicely lit in a dim light, the little touches that makes even a kid want to anthropomorphise a mere machine (my kid calls his iMac Gilbert after the cat in the Caillou kid show). And I can't imagine anyone wanting to use anything less than the Airport Base Station in the home. Trade a slick milky-white compact beauty (that always looks just about to take off) with a black, clunky, antenna-sticking-all-over-the-place contraption? No way. You are your own IT department at home, so choose the best. It need not cost more, you know. |
Mac@Work
Services running on this server, a Mac Mini running Mac OS X 10.9.2 Mavericks:
all set up using MailServe, WebMon, DNS Enabler, DNS Agent, VPN Enabler, Liya and our SQL installers, all on Mavericks. |
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