Apple Media Toolkit: Is it good for you?
Paul Holmes
How do you feel it rates with in comparison with say Macromedia's
Director. Are there projects where it you'd prefer to use it? What about
the price - good value? And does it's simplified user interface simply
mean it's not as powerful as Director?
Paul Holmes
D N Crow
Okay here goes. The first thing to note is that there are two distinct
components that make up the Apple Media Kit (AMK. I'll try to use Apple's
terminology throughout, but its a little contradictory in places...).
Firstly there's the Apple Media Tool (AMT) which is the "simplified user
interface" you refer to. This is a program that allows you to put
together simple multimedia presentations made up of QuickTime movies,
PICT images, text components and sound files. Basically you draw a "map"
of all the screens in your presentation, showing how they are linked:
this is done using a graphical layout tool.
Once the map is established, you then specify the layout of each individual
screen: what media elements it contains and where they are placed. You can
also specify simple interactions; for example you can specify that when
the user clicks on a particular PICT image on screen 1, the link to screen 2
is activated with a cross-fade effect between them.
Basically the AMT allows you to build a slide-show, where the slides can
contain multimedia components and they can be connected in a network rather
than just a linear sequence.
The AMT is very well made: intuitive to use, reasonably fast (though this
in one area where it could be better) and remarkably robust for a 1.0
release.
The second component of the AMK is the Apple Media Tool Programming
Environment (AMTPE). This is the real heart of the system. The AMT allows
you to produce a standalone presentation which runs on either Macs or
Windows machines. It also allows you to save your presentation as "text",
which creates a description of the presentation written in the Apple Media
Language (AML, also known as Key).
AML is a fully object-oriented programming language with an object framework
specifically designed to support multimedia projects. It is based on the
Eiffel OOPS with Pascal syntactic flavorings.
The AMPTE requires Apple's MPW 3.3 programming support environment, and
is pretty basic. On my machine it compiles AML programs but I can't
run them under the MPW debugger provided.
Basically you hack the code produced by the AMT, adding the facilities you
want. Because AML is a fully-fledged programming language you can produce
complex presentations using it. Apple's literature suggests the following
as possible uses for AML:
a database search engine for an electronic catalogue
Access to Apple's speech technology
Conditional branchine on user input
Accessing functionality of Macintosh or Windows toolboxes
High performance sprite animations
You can call C routines from AML code to gain access to greater speed or
low-level system routines (e.g. Mac toolbox routines). The interface
between AML and C is very well thought-out. Certainly much cleaner than
writing HyperCard/Director XCMDs and XObjects.
One of the problems with the combination of the AMPTE and AMT is that once
you have altered a presentation that has been layed-out using the AMT,
there is no way to reimport the updated version into the AMT. Thus you
loose the facility to author in the very nice intractive AMT environment.
There are also problems with the AML: several parts are currently "not yet
implemented" and there are some bugs in there.
However, overall, I am mightly impressed with the AMK. The AMT is much
the easiest tool available (certainly knocks the socks off Director and
HyperCard: I can't speak of Authorware), though it is limited in the
presentations it can build. The AML is a really nice language: powerful
yet high-level and truly object-oriented (*everything* is an object and
it requires strict conformance to the object model). The easy interface
to C routines is a definate plus. If you are a programmer and want the
power to author high-quality standalone multimedia presentations, then
the AMK is probably the best thing on the market right now.
There are problems: the AMPTE needs maturation (I think version 1.1 is
likely to be much more complete and robust, at least I hope so). The
cost is way too high: currently you can get the AMK for $3,495 until
the end of the month when the price reverts to $4190. I understand
from Apple that this price does not even include any technical support:
there is a separate developer's programme (which costs several thousand
dollars per year: I don't have the details of this yet) if you
want support. That's a *huge* bill for a product which isn't even
complete in the form they are shipping. Come one Apple: get wise to
this.
Anyway, I would definately recommend the AMK if you are doing serious
multimedia development. Its an excellent tool.
Dan