Things have been fairly quiet from Curious Labs lately. I was wondering if anyone has heard any rumors, inuendo etc about the following: 1) when will the new propak to cinema hosting plugin be a reality and WILL it support Cinema 7.1 on mac OSX?? 2) How far along is the alleged Poser5, and will it Be available for MAC OSX?? 3) Is Michael-2 really right around the corner?? Anyone heard anything in these areas???

4 Will they ever get their registration page up! 5 Will they ever fix the numerous memory leaks and other annoying bugs present in Poser 4.03!

question 3) doesn't really have anything to do with Curious Labs. Daz3d is the one you should be asking about Michael 2 :-)

The consensus regarding OS X is that Curious will follow the rest of the Mac developer community, which will probably hold off until Adobe comes out with an OS X version of Photoshop. The incentive to switch isn't terribly high in a user base that consists entirely of OS 9 users (which is true, when you consider that OS X comes with a well-behaved OS 9 in 'classic' mode). Also, part of the impasse on OS X has to do with Apple's lukewarm to nonexistent support for any machine predating the iMac. Even WindowsXP and ME didn't require every PC owner to go out and buy a new machine just to get some more features. As far as I can tell, there isn't really a Poser 5 in the sense of a project with a target launch date. I think from what I hear that the current focus is on Pro Pack and ironing out the bugs in it, then working on the features which didn't make it to Pro Pack (one of which I can't mention but will be well received when it's real). If I had to guess version 5 will probably be out no sooner than 2002, and even then that might be optimistic. What I would like to see is what wish-list features were the most requested, regardless of whether CL is planning to implement them.

According to Steve Cooper, after the Max and Lightwave plugins, they were going to create Cinema 4D and Truespace plugins. Then mabye, one of these days they will get to a Carrara plugin.

...providing there's still a Carrara by that time, by when it may be absorbed into its sister product.

From the review I read about Amapi 6 in 3D World, they need to concentrate on making it a better app first.

part of the impasse on OS X has to do with Apple's lukewarm to nonexistent support for any machine predating the iMac. Even WindowsXP and ME didn't require every PC owner to go out and buy a new machine just to get some more features.<< Excuse Me, but I Am fairly certain that that my 4 year Old Beige G3 Minitower predates the Imac. and its running OSX and OS 9.1. While i think the upgrade frenzy has gone to ridiculous extremes( selling 1 GHZ processors to Office workers to run MS word and powerpoint!!) I also think You cant expect new, powerful and modern stable operating systems and accompanying software to be backward compatible with people who insist on clinging to their tandy 5000's and Macintosh IIci's. as far as the theory that curious labs is" waiting Adobe" to port to OSX: WHY???!! an OSX Version of poser 5 shouldnt need an OSX version of Photoshop to run or JSC paint shop pro for that matter. I suspect that their wont ever be an OSX version of poser, but oh well, at least i will still be able to export the highly detailed millenium models out of poser and rig and animate and render them in my new OSX native version of cinema 4DXL 7.1 from Maxxon So I can't complain.

OK, let me clarify. I bought a 7500/100 back in 1995 because it specifically offered the ability to have its processor upgraded. When finances permitted I bought a G4 card from newerTech, raising it to a 330 mHz G4. Then, when Apple came out with OS X, the hype was that Apple wasn't going to support any G3s/G4s that didn't come native with the machine, despite the relative unlikeliness that there would be a compatibility issue (those card manufacturers were building to Apple spec). That is the bogusness I was referring to, not the idea that Poser should be coded for 68K-based Macs (not only no, but hell no). I think the programmers are waiting not out of fear but because they'd rather wait for Adobe to find all the bugs and special situations of coding hi-end graphics apps for OS X, and moreover, to see how heavy the porting curve is between OS X and whatever the predominating flavor of Windows is going to be.

Because of some of the feedback here in this forum, I haven't any intention of getting Pro-Pack until it's really perfected. It doesn't seem worth the investment, as yet. Am I wrong? On the other hand, I'd love a Poser upgrade, perfected, of course.

I think the programmers are waiting not out of fear but because they'd rather wait for Adobe to find all the bugs and special situations of coding hi-end graphics apps for OS X,<<< How is adobe Going find "All the bugs and special situations" of programming for the the 3D community when their primary focus is 2D bitmap image editing and post script color management . The quartz graphic display system of OSX is based on Adobes PDF technology I Can open PDF files natively in OSX's Built in Preview Application without the presence of acrobat!! and save files as PDF as well. So ironically Adobe will most likely have an easy time Porting photoshop to OSX And the OSX Native version of illustrator is about to be released. the 3D Programmers over at newtek didnt sit around waiting for someone else to to do the grunt work . And Alias Wavefront's MAYA 4 for OS X will be available very Soon. And of course my seat of Cinema 4DLX 7.1 is an ultra stable high end 3d app now running on an ultra stable OS. because of OSX Unix Core I know of people running their native UNIX apps on the mac right now so Curious has NO excuse not to continue to support the mac community unless they are content with poser becoming a marginalized"gateway tool" for 3d enthusiasts who want easy access to those wonderful Zygote figures for their real programs.