Avid Technology announced its plans to expand the wide range of video and audio content creation solutions that will be available for Intel-based Mac systems, including the new Mac Pro workstation introduced last week at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WDCC). The Avid Video division expects to deliver new versions of its industry-standard Avid Xpress Pro and Media Composer systems for all Intel-based Macs by December. Following the arrival of the new Mac Pro workstation, Avid's Audio Division, Digidesign, expects to release a compatible update to its acclaimed Pro Tools HD 7.2 software in September. Full qualification for the existing Intel-based Mac versions of Pro Tools LE and Pro Tools M-Powered on the new Mac Pro workstation is also expected in December, although preliminary testing indicates that both applications will run without problems. In addition, Digidesign's business unit, M-Audio, expects to qualify various hardware interfaces for the Mac Pro workstation by December. A wide range of Digidesign(R) and M-Audio(R) systems are already compatible with the Intel-based computers that Apple released earlier this year.

"As the only nonlinear editing manufacturer to offer video applications on both the Mac and PC, we'll be able to leverage our cross-platform development expertise to fully harness the power and performance of Apple's new Intel-based Mac workstations. This is great news for our audio and video customers who prefer to run our industry-standard video and audio systems on the Mac," said Mike Rockwell, vice president and CTO of Avid Technology. "Throughout the Mac's history, we've supported every version of its OS, and since 1998, we have optimized our products, codecs and software processing routines for Intel chipsets. Avid, Digidesign, and M-Audio customers will experience tremendous performance enhancements compared to previous Macs, and we're looking forward to innovating even greater video and audio solutions on this platform in the months and years ahead."

In addition to continuing development on Intel-based Mac systems, Avid's video and audio businesses plan to maintain backward compatibility with PowerPC-based Mac systems. Avid and its businesses also expect to support future versions of the Mac OS, including the forthcoming Leopard OS announced this week at the Apple WWDC. Specific timing for Leopard OS support will be announced after Apple begins shipping the new OS some time in 2007.

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