Fans of Apple Computer Inc worried about how much longer the company can keep its edge over IBM’s PS/2 machines now that IBM seems to be copying every Apple innovation can rest assured that Apple hasn’t run out of steam yet. The Macintosh-based system assembled by Eddie Shah to produce his ill-fated Post newspaper proved that it is perfectly feasible to equip a daily newspaper production office with Macs at a fraction the cost of using custom-designed computer systems, and it now sounds as if the Mac will be spawning a whole new generation of low-cost television production companies. To prove such a system, Microbytes Daily reports, Apple this week officially opened its own full-time television studio for internal use, and plans that it should produce about 80 hours of interactive corporate TV in its first year of operation. The aim of the programming is to get training and the Apple message across to employees, sales staff and business partners, but the crucial aspect is that Macs are being used at Apple TV in almost every stage of programme-making – the preproduction processes of scripting, storyboarding and resource administration;$4te production process, routing, running the teleprompter, lighting control; post-production – editing, graphics, digital audio; and distribution – both data distribution while work is in production and distribution of final programmes. The studio took eight months and $1.5m to build, and has a staff of eight in Cupertino and a network of 30 satellite downlink stations around the world. Apple TV won’t make its own programmes – instead, departments will go to the stu dio to produce interactive training videos or product introductions instead of going to outside video production houses. Apple is also installing a fibre optic network throughout the buildings in its Cupertino headquarters, and using the real-time video cards such as the new $400 MicroTV board for the Mac from Nolan Bushnell’s new comp any Aapps Corp in Sunnyvale (CI No 1,240), will eventually enable ev ery Mac used at Apple to double as a television monitor for Apple TV.
