Year: 2002

MacMinute today confirmed that Apple has acquired Nothing Real, creators of the highly-acclaimed Shake and Tremor 3D compositing and animation tools. Nothing Real had previously announced and demonstrated Shake running under Mac OS X at Macworld Expo New York last July. Shake is currently available for Linux, Windows, and Irix (SGI), and was used extensively in “The Lord of The Rings,” as well as several other movies.

Nikon has announced that NikonScan 3, its software for supporting its line of flatbed scanners, will be available for Mac OS X in April. Mac OS X support for the NikonScan Photoshop plug-in will not be available at that time, but a release date will be announced at a later time.

Swap Cop 1.0 is anew free utility that lets users choose the volume where the Mac OS X swapfile is stored, which can provide a minimal performance gain and free uphard drive space on the default volume. The utility is released under theGNU General Public License, with the source code also available.

Sales of Apple’s new flat-panel iMac in Japan declined during the week of January 21 to 27, placing it third on the list of top desktop models sold after maintaining the top sales position the week before. The sales slip can be attributed to the new iMac’s shipping delay, according to Bit Cafe (as noted by MacSurfer,), in addition to the absence of display models in most major retailers in the country.

As the State of Maine continues to struggle to reach an agreement on a proposal to outfit seventh- and eighth-graders with iBooks, one state Senator has proposed cutting the program in half and outfitting only seventh graders with the laptops, according to the Lewiston Sun Journal. The savings, about US$12.5 million, would be used to restore education and social service cuts, as the state faces a $250 million budget deficit this year.