MacCentral received word Wednesday that at long last, Broderbund's ThePrint Shop Mac OS X Edition 1.0 has finally shipped to retailer's store shelves. It's also available for online sale.
The completely reinvented Mac OS X-native version of Broderbund's popular consumer-oriented printing software was first unveiled to the public at last summer's Macworld CreativePro Conference & Expo in New York City by its developer, Software MacKiev. Macworld's editors awarded the software their Best of Show recognition for the product at that show.

The Print Shop Mac OS X Edition 1.0 was originally expected at the end of August, but Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther's" release held up the product's introduction for a couple of months, according to Software MacKiev president Jack Minsky, who spoke with MacCentral by phone this morning from his company's U.S. offices in Boston, Mass. Panther uses a different print model than either Jaguar or Mac OS X v10.1, which necessitated further engineering.

What Mac consumers are left with, though, is a complete desktop publishing package that comes with templates to help make greeting cards, signs and posters, pamphlets, banners, stationery, business cards, envelopes, calendars, CD labels and cases and much more -- more than 6,000 templates in all. Also included are more than 12,700 images that can be integrated with these projects. 129 custom fonts are included too.

New to this release of The Print Shop is a scrapbook that you can use to store frequently used photos, text, graphical objects and more, along with an effects palette that reorganizes all the different effects you can apply to your creations. Shapes and lines can be created using an integrated tool, and The Print Shop supports transparency as well. Vector-based graphics now scale smoothly when they're enlarged. And if you're printing to Avery-made labels,The Print Shop can download new Avery label templates from its Web site to stay up to date.
The Print Shop Mac OS X Edition 1.0 also touts integration with Apple's "iApps," including iTunes, iPhoto, iCal and iDVD. You can import track lists from iTunes for use in your CD label projects, for example. iPhoto images can be imported. Apple's own Address Book utility can be used to create mailing lists for merge-print projects. And iCal calendar data can be imported for custom calendars. DVD label templates have been included that complement the built-in themes included with Apple's iDVD software.

Minimum system requirements call for Mac OS X v10.1.5 or Mac OS X v10.2.3 or later, including Mac OS X v10.3. A G3/350MHz or faster Mac is also required, along with 192MB RAM, 150MB hard disk space and 800x600 pixel display.

The Print Shop Mac OS X Edition 1.0 should be available on the shelves of Apple's retail stores and other locations. You can also order it online direct from Software MacKiev's Web site. It costs US$49.95.