In the Mac version demonstrated for the developers, a click and pull of the mouse an operator reshaped an animated face, watched it change shapes as he pulled it through a virtual knothole, twisted it and turned it. And, Kerris says, the desktop Mac G4 is extremely popular with web animators and a lot of film and motion picture post-production artists. Jobs also touted the addition of Adobe's InDesign to the Mac OS fold. Apple says users have downloaded 50 million copies of its video and audio software QuickTime. Criticized as one of Apple's few poor design decisions, it has been removed.
Channels now appear on the playback screen itself, more in the look of a browser.
QuickTime is rapidly gaining favor with Internet programmers for its clearer video and ease of use. Jobs joked that he should distribute the new copies on boxes of breakfast cereal, taking a cue from America Online's mass distribution of software disks for its service. The new version of QuickTime this summer will feature MPEG1 video compression for higher definition video, Flash 4 for more dramatic animations and a spiffed up QuickTime Virtual Reality that can depict scenes in all directions. QuickTime VR now shows panoramas or images in full circle. The new version shows an image or place in all directions.