[BZ]

So I have been wondering. What will OmniGroup do to is apps to use all the great Tiger technologies?

iSync prefs/bookmarks?
Smart Folders for OmniWeb items, history, cache?
Smart Folders for OmniGraffle?
Dashboard stuff?

BZ

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Probably make Omniweb more unstable with fancy effects.

[zizban]

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
Probably make Omniweb more unstable with fancy effects.

Give up anbd port all their apps to SCO Unix.

[cpac]

(1) OmniDictionary to become dashboard widget

(2) Spotlight integration with OmniWeb (have OmniWeb history and bookmark results show up in global Spotlight searches).

Also, I'm not sure if this would be feasible really, but if OmniWeb's history actually created a full-text database of pages visited, this could really be outstanding. You could, under such a scheme, type in things like "last week couch" into the Spotlight search and find the pages you visited last week mentioning couches (a listing on Craigslist, some retail site, an eBay auction item.

(3) Spotlight integration for OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle (plug-ins or whatever so that documents are properly indexed by Spotlight)

(4) iSync preferences, Licenses?, bookmarks, history, etc.

(5) Leveraging of core image in OmniGraffle? (don't know enough here to say whether this could add anything)

[m a d r a]

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
Probably make Omniweb more unstable with fancy effects.

what he said

[cpac]

Originally posted by m a d r a:
what he said

Can we please not turn this into an OmniWeb bashing/praising thread? I find OW to be very stable and have problems only when I have lots of Flash and/or Java pages open at the same time. You're free to use other browsers if you think stability is such a huge issue.

[BannanaFiend]

Given the ammount of time since a bugfix release for OmniWeb has come out, I can only imagine that they are busy integrating the new webkit that comes with safari 2 to improve performace, rendering, etc.

That spotlight integration would be pretty rocking as well, though.

[Moose]

Originally posted by cpac:
Can we please not turn this into an OmniWeb bashing/praising thread? I find OW to be very stable and have problems only when I have lots of Flash and/or Java pages open at the same time. You're free to use other browsers if you think stability is such a huge issue.

I will praise OW only so far as to say that it makes it exceptionally easy to view neither Flash or Java.

If, for some reason, I really need to view one of them, I can use Safari. Right now, the only thing I use that *requires* Flash is Discover Deskshop, and I use nothing that *requires* Java.

[BZ]

Really surprised we have seen nothing of OmniGroup in this thread. They have been way too quiet.

I don't like it.

BZ

[larkost]

Originally posted by BZ:
Really surprised we have seen nothing of OmniGroup in this thread. They have been way too quiet.

I don't like it.

As someone who frequents the Omni mail lists, I wouldn't worry too much. The engineers have been busy. And anyways... Omni usually gets quiet (at least about details) before they release something.

[Krypton]

Originally posted by BZ:
So I have been wondering. What will OmniGroup do to is apps to use all the great Tiger technologies?

iSync prefs/bookmarks?
Smart Folders for OmniWeb items, history, cache?
Smart Folders for OmniGraffle?
Dashboard stuff?

BZ

Not to burst your bubble, but smart folders are just a concept - not some magical API or framework. Thunderbird has smart folders, as does NewsFire.

What you ought to be looking out for, are apps which utilise CoreImage - of which there will be a few in the coming weeks

[CaptainHaddock]

I'm rooting for Omni to use CoreImage and make a Photoshop clone! I'd sure prefer to give them $100 than to give Adobe $500.

[aabernathy]

Originally posted by BZ:
Really surprised we have seen nothing of OmniGroup in this thread. They have been way too quiet.

I don't like it.

BZ

Hey, we're still under NDA! Also, we're pretty busy and don't check these forums in an organized fashion - I just happened by and noticed this thread. (We focus on our mailing lists and support email.)

There are some Tiger technologies we expect to adopt quickly, and some things we'll take advantage of more in the future, but if I announce any specifics or dates then something will probably crop up to make me a liar. Expect to hear from us soon.

-andrew

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally posted by cpac:
(1) OmniDictionary to become dashboard widget

There's already a built in dictionary and thesaurus widget AND a neat right-click "Look up in Dictionary" menu-item which displays a sweet little popup box with the definition. It's probably one of my favourite new features

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally posted by CaptainHaddock:
I'm rooting for Omni to use CoreImage and make a Photoshop clone! I'd sure prefer to give them $100 than to give Adobe $500.

Haven't we established a million billion times that Photoshop is a WHOLE LOT MORE than a pack of filters?

That said, I'd love to see someone take a crack at it, but remember Adobe has 18 years of development and polishing as a head start.

[CaptainHaddock]

Originally posted by - - e r i k - -:
Haven't we established a million billion times that Photoshop is a WHOLE LOT MORE than a pack of filters?

That said, I'd love to see someone take a crack at it, but remember Adobe has 18 years of development and polishing as a head start.

Hey, I know that as well as anyone. But CoreImage, CoreData, and ATSUI still have a significant chunk of the work covered. Tiger even adds built-in RAW format support, doesn't it? So Omni (or Panic, or Delicious Monster) could:

1. Reverse-engineer a few key formats like PSD.
2. Create a layer-based image-editing setup like Photoshop.
3. Implement the most important Photoshop tools.
4. Add support for different colour-spaces like CMYK and Lab.
5. Integrate with iPhoto.
6. Implement a clean interface that is more Mac-like.

And Bob's-your-uncle, you have a very respectable 1.0 product, as good as Photoshop for 75% of a person's needs. By 3.0, it'll be a contender in the pro market. In fact, there are still a lot of weaknesses in Photoshop that OmniDesign could improve on to make a superior product.

Sure I'm dreaming. I just think there's a lot of potential there. Pages gave us a fresh approach to word processing. Keynote embarrassed PowerPoint. Now let's see someone improve on Adobe.

[BZ]

Originally posted by - - e r i k - -:
Haven't we established a million billion times that Photoshop is a WHOLE LOT MORE than a pack of filters?

That said, I'd love to see someone take a crack at it, but remember Adobe has 18 years of development and polishing as a head start.

Not that Adobe is too quick, but couldn't they just as easier implement CoreImage into Photoshop to speed things up?

Also, I would imagine the pluggin developers would start putting out CoreImage based pluggins.

BZ

[BZ]

Originally posted by aabernathy:
Hey, we're still under NDA! Also, we're pretty busy and don't check these forums in an organized fashion - I just happened by and noticed this thread. (We focus on our mailing lists and support email.)

There are some Tiger technologies we expect to adopt quickly, and some things we'll take advantage of more in the future, but if I announce any specifics or dates then something will probably crop up to make me a liar. Expect to hear from us soon.

-andrew

Good to know you guys are alive and kicking. Hoping to see some nifty enhancements to Omni Apps as well as some cool new ones.

BZ

[entrox]

I want a ripple-effect when clicking links in OW. Useful? No. Awesome? More than Strongbad could ever imagine.

[Moose]

Originally posted by BZ:
Not that Adobe is too quick, but couldn't they just as easier implement CoreImage into Photoshop to speed things up?

When you write your flagship software suite for two completely different platforms, you tend to write very abstract code that doesn't depend too much on a particular OS's APIs to do the heavy lifting of your application.

Also, I would imagine the pluggin developers would start putting out CoreImage based pluggins.

Same thing. Targeting two platforms pretty much kills any chance of you using CoreImage.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by Moose:
When you write your flagship software suite for two completely different platforms, you tend to write very abstract code that doesn't depend too much on a particular OS's APIs to do the heavy lifting of your application.

It may, however, be possible to write a Photoshop plugin which in turn accesses CoreImage plugins. I don't expect Adobe to do this, but I give the third-party developers a month before the first such plugin appears.

[jyunderwood]

I would like to see omniweb look more like a Tiger app.

kind of like what John Hicks worked up:



mainly I just want to get rid of drawers. and I would like the see OW bookmarks in spotlight searches.

just for kicks, not tiger centric but how about growl support?

other apps, Dashboard stuff like motion and iphoto have in OmniGraffle or OmniOutliner. - actually I don't see how that wold help usability so forget it. but the ripple effect would be a cool thing for Graffle when you put down an object it ripples the page.

[gregomni]

Originally posted by cpac:
Also, I'm not sure if this would be feasible really, but if OmniWeb's history actually created a full-text database of pages visited, this could really be outstanding. You could, under such a scheme, type in things like "last week couch" into the Spotlight search and find the pages you visited last week mentioning couches (a listing on Craigslist, some retail site, an eBay auction item.

FYI, We've had a page content index in OmniWeb since version 4. In OW 5, go to the bookmarks page, select the History collection, and enter in "couch" in the search field while it is set for either "Web Page Content" or "All History Info" and you'll see. It's true that we don't handle the "last week" part, though.

(I have visited 5 pages containing the word "couch". Two of them are this topic and now this reply form I'm typing in right now.)

[Amorya]

Originally posted by jyunderwood:
mainly I just want to get rid of drawers. and I would like the see OW bookmarks in spotlight searches.

I prefer the drawers. I wish they'd left it alone in Mail in Tiger. In fact, I much preferred OmniWeb's bookmarks drawer to the current system.

Amorya

[nica]

Will OmniOutliner 3 be included as part of the Tiger discs? The same way 2.2 was included in Panther?

[Person Man]

Originally posted by nica:
Will OmniOutliner 3 be included as part of the Tiger discs? The same way 2.2 was included in Panther?

It wasn't included with Panther. It was part of a software bundle that came with particular Macs.

[aabernathy]

Originally posted by nica:
Will OmniOutliner 3 be included as part of the Tiger discs? The same way 2.2 was included in Panther?

Originally posted by nica:
Will OmniOutliner 3 be included as part of the Tiger discs? The same way 2.2 was included in Panther?

OmniOutliner is not (and never has been) included with Mac OS X. It has been (and continues to be) bundled with "pro" hardware (PowerMacs and PowerBooks) in several markets, including the U.S., but I'm not actually sure of the exact list of markets. The same is the case for OmniGraffle (the standard edition - the Professional edition is not part of any such bundle).

That is, the bundle is hardware-based, not software - buying Panther does not give you the right to use OmniOutliner or OmniGraffle with no other license, and buying Tiger will also not give you a license to our applications. If your computer came with OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle preinstalled by Apple (and only certain machines in certain markets did), then you do have a full license to use those applications (with whatever version was included with the computer - point release updates are typically free to those who own the same major version). If you have reformatted the machine you purchased and need to recover the bundled licenses to Omni software, you need to restore from the CDs that came with the computer. These bundled licenses are tied to the hardware - they are non-transferable.

To the best of my knowledge, Apple is still bundling OmniOutliner 2 with those systems that include the bundle. When and even if they choose to start bundling version 3 instead is something that depends on many factors, including manufacturing schedules and who knows what else.

-andrew

[Moose]

Originally Posted by Millennium

It may, however, be possible to write a Photoshop plugin which in turn accesses CoreImage plugins. I don't expect Adobe to do this, but I give the third-party developers a month before the first such plugin appears.

Great.

And, as I said, your plugin won't work on over half of Photoshop installs because Core Image isn't in Windows.

[Chuckit]

Neither is Altivec.

[Millennium]

Originally Posted by Moose

Great.

And, as I said, your plugin won't work on over half of Photoshop installs because Core Image isn't in Windows.

So what? I already said that I didn't expect Adobe to be making this one. If someone wants to target Mac Photoshop users, why shouldn't they?

[Superchicken]

I think Apple kinda blatantly left a challenge to Adobe to include CoreImage support in Photoshop. I think there are two options really, Apple doesn't know Adobe wants to do this but simply wanted to challenge em, Apple knows Adobe is not willing to use CI in which case they're creating bad press, Apple wants to create buzz before Adobe included CI support in CS2 or 3.

I imagine Adobe can't really ignore CoreImage, and might have to actually see about rewriting many filters as ImageUnits so that they fend off any possible clones. Otherwise Photoshop could become a second class citizen to a Mac app that given a few years could get to where Photoshop was a few years ago. Sure they probably wouldn't get in things like Vanishing point, probably not the healing brush, and a few other really high end things, but I think a 3rd party vendor could get to the level of PS Elements with a fair bit of effort. As well if they ignore CI Apple might just decide to take a shot at it, and if they do then I think Adobe might end up abandoning the Mac platform in general.

[Moose]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

Neither is Altivec.

Altivec doesn't substantively change the high-level way in which things are done.

It changes the low-level math behind what gets done.

[Moose]

Originally Posted by Superchicken

Otherwise Photoshop could become a second class citizen to a Mac app that given a few years could get to where Photoshop was a few years ago.

You mean like Premiere?

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Moose

Altivec doesn't substantively change the high-level way in which things are done.

It changes the low-level math behind what gets done.

How would this not be true of CoreImage?

[Moose]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

How would this not be true of CoreImage?

There's a huge conceptual difference between optimizing your own APIs' math for processor support (Altivec, SSE, etc.) and using a different API.

APIs like CI are a big "no" when you're a huge company that needs to have your flagship software package run on two different platforms. You want your platform-specific code to be:

1) What you need to get the app bootstrapped on the target OS.
2) If your app is heavily CPU-bound, processor optimizations.

You don't want 95% of your application's functionality to work one way on one platform and another way on a different one. Photoshop on Mac OS X needs to be functionally identical to Photoshop on Windows.