4 years ago Apple was looking for authoring tools, and licensed AMT, that could promote their upcoming multimedia technology ScriptX, from Kaleida. Kaleida was a joint venture between Apple and IBM. The intention was that they would create a technology that could be seen as the Postscript for multimedia. They saw it big, so they started to work with a large group of engineers. They started from scratch and they rewrote every technology that was already there: created their own QuickTime, SoundManager,... Now the idea was that as soon ScriptX would come out, AMT switched the AMT PE for the ScriptX technology. But out of preliminar tests it appeared that the ScriptX version used a lot more memory, was many times slower and it was buggy. At Apple they started to realize that ScriptX was just an over engineered product and also their was a lack of interest from third party developers. Macromedia would never replace their multimedia playback engine with the one from ScriptX. As soon Apple realized the failure of ScriptX they lost interest in AMT. Sometimes we see some sporadic improvements in the situation, but they are rare. The funny thing about this is, is that a small team of 3 Belgium engineers have beaten a factory of multimedia experts from Kaleida. Just because they made a couple of smart moves: based on standard OS API's, like: QuickTime, SoundManager, ... , they created their own very simple lightweight multimedia framework, elegant programming language, ...

Apple is the biggest problem for the success of AMT:

In the past Apple didn't showed much interest in AMT:

• All the AMT customers were pleased by the upgrade from version 1.2 to version 2.0. One of the enhancements was the new AML compiler + AML interpreter: it generates code that is at least 50% smaller. For most of the titles it meant that their title suddenly used 2MB less memory. For the users of AMT PE the development time became suddenly 3 times faster, etc. As you can see pretty big enhancements. You have to know that this technology was already working for over a year before Apple brought it to the market. If your company depends on the success of a product, if you care even a little bit about your customers or if you want to gain market share you would bring these kind of enhancements as fast possible on the market.
  
• Lately Apple introduced an XTra to view and manipulate QuickDraw 3D files inside Director. Where is the version for AMT? Do you think Microsoft would write an extension to enhance Netscape? Of course Apple has to promote its own technology, but at least it can start this first in their own products.
  
  
• Distribution: wow this was a sour point for many years, first they tried it through APDA. APDA is the distribution channel for Apple Developers software. It was after 2 years that they realized that designers, scriptwriters, story board writers,... the main audience for AMT wasn't reading those APDA catalogs. Now they moved it over to Claris, certainly this was an improvement. In the beginning they had some trouble, because here in Belgium it took about 5 months before version 2.0 of AMT was available. Thanks to a local AMT evangelist at Apple, who met the Claris people, things were getting better and in the summer of 96 you could see AMT in every major catalog in Belgium. Still Claris has a lot to learn: figure out how to sell an authoring tool and bring newer version quicker to the market. We are currently waiting already 3 months for the new AMT (v 2.1.1). The Golden Master of this product was finished in the first week of December.
  
  
• Support: At the introduction of AMT there was support from Apple, we all remember Kate Adams. But as soon she left this position there was nobody to replace her. This was felt at the introduction of the major upgrade of version 2.0. All the support happened through a mailing-list that was setup by an AMT fan. It were devoted AMT customers that helped each other AMT. On this mailing list their was no support from Apple. If you look at QuickTime mailing list, it is full of Apple employees. List problem lasted for more then a year, since a couple of months Apple hired Dan Crow, one of those devoted AMT customers and probably the most active supporter of AMT. When you look back to this situation it strange that you bring a product to the market without support.
  
  
• After the introduction of AMT 2.0, Apple didn't do anything with the product for at least 6 months. They didn't even came out with bug fixes, which you always have after a major upgrade. It were AMT customers that found the solutions to the major problems and try to help others. But these solutions were only available to AMT customers that were on the AMT mailing list and they had to use AMT PE, which is a very small group. So thousands customers of AMT were left in the cold. Probably they lost a lot of customers.
  
  
• Apple never had a clear strategy with AMT, and especially with AMT PE. First they intend to replace it with ScriptX, some people thought that OpenDoc could be something for AMT, some people thought that HyperCard should be integrated, and now lately the new strategy is QuickTime Interactive. (see later) But they never listen to AMT customers. But since Apple hired a full time engineer it is clear that they know now what the customers want.

If Apple could be brought to court for their lack of interest in AMT, any jury would convict them.

Apple should sell AMT

So far the only thing what we can tell about Apple is that besides the AMT team, nobody cares about AMT. Now a days this becomes even more clear because everybody is fighting for the rescue of their department during the corporate changes. Still it is strange to hear that from Apple, because they pioneered the multimedia market. It all started back in 1985 with HyperCard. In the beginning it was not really used as a multimedia authoring tool but more like a rapid application builder, a market that is now dominated by Visual Basic. It became very popular because Apple gave it away for free for so many years. HyperCard stacks never played well from CD and also wasn't cross-platform, so as multimedia tool it wasn't useful. But Apple didn't do much to enhance HyperCard (As AMT user this must sounds familiar.). Certainly around the ScriptX period the development completely stalled. At that time Apple moved AMT forward as the solution for multimedia authoring. It was a big hit and became #2 in the multimedia authoring tool market. But a lot was changed inside Apple, it became a big corporation with a huge number of different departments. Just like in the government every department tries to become important and try to find bigger funding's for their projects. For that you have to be a skilled politician, currently the AMT team never find big funding's.

Since a couple of years Apple is busy with QuickTime Interactive (QTi), you could see this as a ScriptX 2. This time it offers a much more low level API and it is done by the QuickTime team. We all know how good this team is and they are seen as the jewel from Apple. So maybe this time it could work. Still they never can convince companies like Macromedia or mFactory to choose for QTi, because then they will loose control of the playback engine. So, again Apple needs an authoring tool to promote this technology. They have chosen for ... HyperCard. They put a team of several engineers on this project to rewrite HyperCard from scratch based on QTi technology. HyperCard will finally get color and thanks to QTi it will be cross platform. They have chosen for HyperCard, because Apple owns the complete source code of HyperCard and this is not the case for AMT also there are a lot of HyperCard fans (politician) inside Apple and they know how to pull the strings. But is HyperCard used by multimedia developers? No, Myst was the last big title that used HyperCard. The company Voyager, one of the big promoters of HyperCard, switch over to Director and mTropolis. So nobody is using HC anymore for multimedia development. Still this leaves Apple with the question what to do with AMT? Force it in the direction of QTi, but then it has to give up AMT PE. What many developers sees as the major advantage of AMT, because it is an OPEN multimedia framework. AMT PE is currently the ONLY real 'developer solution' to the multimedia problem. If the QTi strategy will be taken then Apple will have two authoring tools that will do the same thing and Apple is a company with financial difficulties? Also QTi won't be out this year so it will stall again further enhancements of AMT.

Apple is known for his great technologies like QuickDraw 3D, QuickTime, QuickTime VR,... If these technologies want to become successful they need support from third party developers. So they are vital of the success of Apple. Because Macromedia is an important third party developer Apple has to listen to them. And as we know AMT is a direct threat to Director. Some people inside Apple feel that Apple shouldn't sell tools like AMT and leave this market to third party developers. Strange because Macromedia is now focusing more on the Windows platform. These people use their influence to jeopardize the future of AMT.

Also people in the HyperCard team feel that AMT never should obtain Scripting because they want that HyperCard should be the only scripting tool. AMT will never survive in the current multimedia market if doesn't have scripting, so again corporate politics are jeopardizing the future of AMT.

These kind of situations would never come in corporations that are market driven that want to sell and make profit. Companies like Adobe and Microsoft they want to make money with their products. Their departments are not fighting against each other they are fighting for market place. Apple should realize that if AMT has to survive it should change the current situation. Give the product a real chance and listen to their customers what they need and don't let the product be a playball of corporate politician. Maybe they should move it to Claris or otherwise sell it to another company.

Apple is also a company that changes course all the time. If you see the course for Multimedia Authoring tools: First HyperCard, then AMT, then SK8, then AMT and now back HyperCard. The same thing happened in many other technologies: for example the C++ Framework: first MacApp, Bedrock, ODF and now back MacApp. Instead of enhancing current technologies they completely changed course. And then Apple is surprised that they loose customers. They always forget that People have invested time and money in learning these new technologies.

Who should buy AMT?

Any company that will buy AMT can do a better job. Even if it is a small company because if their future depends on the success of AMT they will do everything to satisfy the customer, this is something that Apple currently never did or could do. The budget won't be a problem either because Apple never spend some serious dollars on AMT. But of course if they want to compete with Director they should enhance the product.

Can you make money in the multimedia authoring tools?

Currently the market is dominated by Director. This is very strange because it is an animation package forced to be an authoring tool, because of their time line approach. All the latest introduced authoring tools ( mTropolis, ClickWorks) that appeared on the market used the concept from Apple Media Tool. Director is a product that has more haters then fans: because it has a world class reputation for his bugs. Most of time you are busy with finding tricks to bypass these bugs.

Any Redmond Bulldog who know this would immediately smell blood and start influencing the media to promote their product. By having a stable product on the market with the right concepts you can beat Director

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About the author

Marc Van Olmen works at Sky4 Studios and wrote an AMT extension that is called "AMT Accelerator". This extension let run AMT titles about 2 to 8 times faster from CD. Sky4 Studios is very happy to be one of the few AMT add-on developers and we have very good relations with Apple, especially with the Apple Media Tool team. Marc Van Olmen wrote this article because he is what you call an "AMT Evangelist". And he hates to admit it, but for some of his projects he also used Macromedia Director. He is now busy with something completely different a QuickTime based shoot'm up game that he hopes to finish this year...