A couple new Mac applications have been introduced at Macworld 2008. One is Iris [no, not that Iris], which has a public beta now available. Iris is a photo editing application, similar to Pixelmator, Acorn, and the ever-popular [but also very expensive!] Adobe Photoshop. Iris is a Leopard only application, so for now, I am not able to try it out [i do have access to one Mac with Leopard on it, but not at the moment]. I’m also wondering if a name change is in store for one of the apps, since one can’t have two Irises in one’s Applications folder! As a registered and happy owner of the original Iris, I’m going to be curious to see how this plays out.

Another, just introduced and demoed app is a blog editing one from Panic. This only just hit the Twitter wires, so there’s not yet any information about it. Personally, I use MarsEdit and have ever since it was bundled with NetNewsWire. But, being from Panic, I wonder what they have done to enhance the blog authoring software field. I’m also curious if Panic will start to become more like Rage Software, who have really moved headlong into both the web editing software field, and the SEO field. Panic’s last app was Coda, an ‘all in one’ web editing app that combined the powers of 4 similar apps into a single one: Transmit, TextMate, CSSEdit, and iTerm. Though I own and use Coda, I still like using the 4 other apps on their own better, as Coda’s features do not mimic the power of using the separate apps on their own. That said, Coda has some unique features that the other apps lack, such as the ability to work in collaboration with others around the world on a document.

So it will be interesting to see what Panic brings to the table with their blog editor. An often asked for feature of MarsEdit is WYSIWYG support; I’m sure Panic’s app will feature that.

January 18, 2008 1:08pm UPDATE: Well, it seems I fell hard for a “twitter prank” that was intended for MarsEdit’s author, Daniel Jalkut. Panic is not entering the weblog editing field. Suffice to say, I don’t always believe what I hear on twitter, but when 2 people post similar messages at nearly the same time, I tend to believe them. There’s nothing more annoying, or fun to watch, than drunk Mac developers at a Macworld conference.

Though, Daniel, if you’re reading this [and i’m sure you’re not], WYSIWYG would be nice.