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J ouY
SPECIAL REPORT
THE ESSENTIAL MACINTOSH® RESOURCE
www.macworld.com
ALSO INSIDE
*MP3 EXPLAINED
*333MHZ iMAC RATED
*PALM CONNECTIONS
*400MHZ G3 ACCELERATOR
CARD ROUNDUP
$6.99 International
| 07>
0 ""70992"069240 "8
(© 1999-¢ple Computer: Al rights reser Te pple lc reer ademas and Pour Mac aud Thin different are ademas of ple Computer Ic. Ober prtuct and company names mentioned
State of the Pentium-crushing art. Chip vs. chip, the G3 has been
crushing Pentium processors since the day it was born’ But what
about computer vs. computer performance, using demanding
applications like Photoshop? Good question. For that,
we surrender the podium to what is fast becoming
one of our favorite authorities, PC Magazine: %
“The Power Mac*G3 outperformed the (450MHz
Pentium IT) PC in 12 of our 13 tests by an average of 35%” and
continues to “outperform” even the 500MHz Pentium III, they say.
Factor in our built-in 128-bit 3D graphics accelerator, storage up
to 100GB, high-speed networking and revolutionary open-door
design — and it’s an open-and-shut case. © Think different:
‘eran: may be trademarks of thar spective companies. *Comparizon based on BYTEmar lege inde proceso test. Quote reprinted from PC Magaine Online March 1999. © 1999 Z0 inc Al rights reserved.
2
68 The iMac Challenge
88 So Long, CDs
Features
Cover Story
BY CHRISTOPHER BREEN AND
MICHAEL PENWARDEN Ad hype
ide, which is really easier to use:
n iMac or a consumer PC? We
recruited a panel of new computer
buyers to spend quality time with
nswer. The
both and give us the
results may surprise you.
80 You Can Take It with You
BY DAVID pocue Want the
power ofa Mac in your palm? New
Mac conduit software finally lets
Palm organizers talk to Microsoft
Office, FileMaker Pro, and other
key Mac apps.
BY JIM HEID ‘Toss out your ca
s-
settes and compact discs—MP3 is
the wave of the music future. The
format that lets you create, down-
load, and play CD-quality music on
your Mac, MP3 will forever change
the way you consume your tunes.
July 1999 MACWORLD
I1auULY 4192 9:8
cWOr
1s the iMac really a new computer buyer's best
friend? page 68.
Show your art on the Web with
JavaScript slide shows, page
103
108
111
Incorporating MacUser
ON THE COVER
Photography by Mark Jobann
Create
Motion
After Effects 4 Expert Clinic
ey sim Helo Hit the ground
running with this video-effects
tool’s fab new features.
Graphics
Image Alchemy
BY BROOKE C. WHEELER ‘Trans-
form plain layered images into
complex concoctions.
Web
Invigorate Your Site
with JavaScript
By por! smitH Create slide
shows of artwork on your Web site
with simple JavaScripts.
27
28
28
29
29
Better Web 3-D for you and me,
page 29.
News
QuickTime 4 Moves
Upstream
Apple introduces a pumped-up
version of its multimedia system
software, with live streaming
capabilities.
Epson Rolls Out New
Printers
Epson unveils two new photo
ink-jet printers, plus an iMac
version of its Stylus Color 740.
Finally Here
Apple moves into the digital-
video arena with its release of
Final Cut, acquired last year
from Macromedia.
1 Want My Web 3-D
VRML may be languishing, but
developers are hard at work on
the next generation of 3-D stan-
dards for the Web.
Product Watch
New products for your Mac,
including 3-D paint software
from Maxon and an ODBC
Driver for FileMaker Pro.
17
23
63
176
10
97
99
Laser printer and desktop imagesetter
in one, page 44.
Opinion
The Vision Thing
BY ANDREW GORE
Apple turn QuickTime 4 into
the gold standard for Web video
and audio streaming?
Can
The Game Room
BY CHRISTOPHER BREEN
Geezer’s guide to Virtual Game
Station.
The Desktop Critic
BY DAVID POGUE Micro-
soft: even more nefarious than
previously thought.
How to Contact Macworld
Secrets
Unlock Your Printer’s
Potential
BY JOSEPH SCHORR Coaxthe
best photo-quality output from
your inexpensive color printer.
Quick Tips
BY LON POOLE
and shortcuts.
Tips, tricks,
Good-bye, audio CDs—hello, MP3, page 88.
34
36
38
39
40
42
47
49
51
56
58
60
61
Reviews
$8%%: Mac OS X Server
“Server software
H8H% Crescendo G3 400/200;
$88 JoeCard 400/200;
$88 Maccelerate 750;
$8%% Mach G3 400/200;
$98% Maxpowr G3 400/200;
88% PowerForce G3 400/200;
$88 PowerJolt 400/200
G3 upgrade cards
$988 Fireworks 2.0.2
Web graphics tool
998% Bryce 4
3-D terrain generator
$688 3D Invigorator;
$888 Extensis PhotoGraphics
Photoshop plug-ins,
$$ Headline Studio 1.0
Web animation tool
$898 Xanté Accel-a-Writer 3G
Laser printer
988% ProMax Technology TurboMax
EIDE storage system
#8$% Apple iMac 333MHz
Consumer system
88% Adobe Golive 4.0
Web-page editor
$8%% Alps MD-5000
Color printer
$%% Asanté FriendlyNet Dual 56K;
$%¢ Asanté FriendlyNet ISDN
Internet-access servers
$8% Amapi 3D 4.1
3-D modeling tool
$88$% BlissPaint 2.0
Color-animation software
$¢$%% TelePort 56K Internal Modem
Internal 56K modem
$¢%% Spring Cleaning 3.01
Uninstaller utility
$99 Cruise Control 1.0
Task-automation utility
$% Bookéndz
PowerBook G3 dock
www.macworld.com July 1999 3
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ELITE 12/600 $849 ELITE XL 20/600 $1599 ELITE XL 608 LC $999
600 x 600 dpi resolution 600 x 600 dpi resolution 600 x 600 dpi resolution
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GCC Technologies isa registred rodemork of GCC Technologies, Ine
Blite 12/600, Elite 1212, 2 Ete XL 608 LC, Elite XL 20/600, Elite XL
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6
July 1999
% Ranked TOP 1% of 1998 Software Reviewed 7
Macworld
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MACWORLD
Macworld
DITOR IN CHEF Andrew Gore
EDITORIAL
torron ‘Michael Penwarden
SENIOR EOITOR/NEWS AND REVIEWS
ephen Beale
senion eorron/oeranrments Naney Peterson
SenIOR 6oITOR/FEATURES Jason Snell
stwion ASSOCIATE EOITORS Allyson Bates,
Linda Comer,
Scholle Sawyer
ASSOCIATE EoITOR Brooke C. WI
ler
ASSISTANT tOITORS Michael Gowan,
Jonathan Seff
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Henry Borun
Deke Me
Christopher Breen, Bruce Fraser, Ted Landau,
nu, Rik Myslewski, ‘Tom Negrino, David Pogue
Lon Poole, Stephan Somogyi, Franklin N. Tessler
INTERNATIONAL EDITORS
Steven Noble, Australia; Bernard Le Du, France; Andreas
Borchert, Germany; Enrico Lotti, Italy; Yoshio Moriya, Japan
Tomasz Bitner, Poland; Daniel de Blas, Spain; Lennart
Hakansson, Sweden; Fred Jame, Taiwan; Rahattin Apak, Turkey;
Simon Jary, United Kingdom
LAB
TECHNICAL DIRECTOR Jeff Pittelkaw
ta omREcTOR Kristina De Nike
SENIOR AR ANALYSTS Jelly K. Milstead,
Kevin Mitchell
ASSOCIATE LAH ANALYST Gil Loyola
Inventory coonDINATOR Ulyssis Bravo
copy EDIT
MANAGING FOITOR Claire H. Breen
wul-Michael King
cory ewer Jon Zobeniea
sewion corr coro Elissa Rabellino
ART AND DESIGN
ans ointcron Sylvia Ch
Associate orsicutns Martha Katt,
Michael Rattary
esien associates Jackie Goodman,
Jonathan Woolson
ONLINE
VICE PRESIDENT, SALES, &
HER weeney
pinecror oF content Matthew Rothenberg,
Sen10R ONLINE EDITOR Philip W, Dyer
ASSISTANT CONTENT ENGINEER Jessica Graves
DiRecroR, susiuess DEVELOPMENT FoR ONLINE Nicholas Harvey
ONLINE AD PRODUCTION MANAGER Steve Spingola
RIC
Image Communication
eye candy }
The power of color to entice. To mesmerize. To make presentations more involving. You |know | the use of color is as unlimited
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Choose 4 at www.macworld.com/getinfo
Project Scheduling Made Easy! Macworit
PaEsioen AND CeO Colin Crawford
Assistant TO THE CEO Sharon Sanderson
CoE rnanciac OFFICER Stephen L
susimess manacen Eos de Feminis
accounmine coonomaToR Ronda Bittner
assistant Christian Semmet
tim not a project management expert, but everyone thinks | am. DIRECTOR OF HUMAN RESOURCES
Most of my time is spent completing tasks, so | need a scheduling 5 OMAN RESOURCE MANAGER
too thats easy, fast, and flexible.
DISPLAY ADVERTISING SALES
FasfTrack Schedule 6.01 fils the bil. It keeps me organized
and in control cisplaying all my project details in rch, colorful f © Open/Export MS Kf ‘aeKRmCaiak Steve Phevin (415/243-3509)
timelines, FastTrack Schedule provides ust the ight : suss a anette coonomaton Karla Kyras (415/278-8542)
amount of power because it's more sophisticated m [SALES ASSISTANT Jennifer Russell (415/243-3577)
Vos but easier fo use and halt 3 ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Coretta Wright (415/243-3615),
elie DE cigs NATIONAL ACCOUNTS MANAGER Sara Culley (970/327-4499)
sASTERN ADveRTisinc OmRECTOR Cynthia Ramsey (973/243.
‘VICE PRESIDENT, SALES, & PUBLISHER Matt Sweeney
NATIONAL ACCOUNTS MANAGER __Jessica Ross (415/243-3583)
NATIONAL ACCOUNTS MANAGER Paul Bonarrigo (508/533-4020)
The presentation-qualty schedules clearly J : account executive Jo Zottarel (516
ilustrate project objectives and deadlines . a. SHOPPER ACCOUNT MANAGER Niki Stranz (415/24)
fecone eanmierten and sworren accourr manacen Carol Johnstone (415/24
Glients informed and up-to-date.
Ina single schedule, | can RESEARCH
sorPeR AoMuistaaTive assistant Alissa Mach (415/24
outline multiple projects, : - SEWOR RESEARCH ANALYST Philip Hibbert
make assignments,
track cash flows, set-
up dependencies—
‘even add graphics.
Whether I use it
MARKETING
MAREETING MANAGER Francesca Koe
ONLINE MARKETING MANAGER Kelvin Gee
TRADE SHOW/EVENTS MANAGER Nancy Galanty
once aweek or every day, ~~ MACWORLD GLOBAL PRODUCT SUPPORT CENTER
FastTrack Schedule makes wy COORDINATOR Sharon Sanderson
project scheduling easy.
PRODUCTION
For the free Demo CD, more info, VICE PRESIDENT OF MANUFACTURING Anne Foley
orto place an order cali 800-450-1982. PRODUCTION OIRECTOR Cynthia Neustadt
MANUFACTURING TECHNICAL OIRECTOR Clayton Haberman
DIGITAL AD COORDINATORS Russ Nordmeyer,
Mae Seoxe
Version 6.01 Hac
Schedule Tomorrow's Success Today.” AEC ee <r epagermadid
Shopper, ad Conplccu Consumers ested trademarks of
195A Sere re Mir Cope ans aera si « ac Publishing, LLC 3 Ape logo, Mac and Macintosh
sepa stermeoe meen Earns Seathen ss poecavertmas | | Works best with ae segstered trademarks, and Macletter and PowerBook are
sarees Conte ee Sas, pasa 0 5 Homa ‘MacOS85 trademarks, of Apple Computer, nc. Pointe the Unies States
of america. Copyright © 1999 Mac Publishing, LLC Al rights
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8 July 1999 MACWORLD
Without the disappearing act.
You find a great performer. Tops in the field. Amazing feats follow. You call for
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Portfolio,© MacTemps,® and WebStaff® are now Aquent Partners.
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VST FireWire Hard Drives
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Printed reprints are highly effective
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10 July 1999 MACWORLD
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ave cuTLER
Tales of Web Travelers
N HER “WEB TRAVELER'S COM-
panion” (April 1999), Shelly Brisbin
recommended a workday-diversion Web
site called the Onion. In viewing this Web
site, I was shocked to find that it con-
tained adult-oriented material unsuitable
for children. I would appreciate it if in
the future Macworld would do a better job
in reviewing its recommendations and not
include material that most people would
find offensive and inappropriate.
Davip McCowan
Lexington, Kentucky
ENJOYED VISITING THE SITES
described in the “Web Traveler's
Companion.” You emphasized that the
Web is worldwide, but unfortunately you
provided only American sites. Arguably
the best news site in the world is main-
tained by the British Broadcasting Corpo-
ration, at http://news.bbe.co.uk, and con-
tains the same quality of coverage as the
BBC’ radio and television services. The
site provides news, history, analysis, reader
feedback, and relevant links and breaks
coverage down by continent so that read-
ers may explore their region in depth.
GAGGAN Boparal
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
USUALLY AGREE WITH MOST OF
the reviews and awards in your mag-
azine, but sorry, Macworld, I’m not
agreeing this time! In the “Web Travel-
er’s Companion,” Shelly Brisbin picked
MIT's Info-Mac HyperArchive for best
shareware site. I didn’t even have it in my
bookmarks, so I thought I would check
it out. I searched for Flash-It, the screen-
capturing software. The MIT site had no
clue. I went back to my favorite, ZDNet
Macintosh Software Library (www.zdnet
.com/mac/download.html), and I found
the application on the first try.
MICHAEL §
DeKalb, Ilinois
New Life with Linux
TEPHAN SOMOGYI'S EXCELLENT
article about Unix on Macs (“The
Beauty of the Beast,” April 1999) men-
tioned that LinuxPPC can make an old
Power Maca great Web server. Older Macs
with 68030 and 68040 processors also can
take advantage of the OpenBSD operating
system. In the small company I recently
worked for, we set up a Centris 650 with
OpenBSD and Apache and found it very
adequate for our Web-service needs. This is
not something for the fainthearted, but it’s
a great way to recycle pre-PowerPC Macs.
Ihave even seen a Mac SE/30 running as a
decent FTP server with OpenBSD.
Davip SIMMONS
Alexandria, Virginia
_ Leiter's
sy HANKS FOR A TERRIFIC INTRO-
ductory article about Unix options on
the Macintosh. I use LinuxPPC R4 on my
Motorola StarMax 3000 and can attest to
the extraordinary speedup—booting, start-
ing Netscape Communicator, and doing
page layout in Communicator are all at least
three times faster than with Mac OS 7.6.1.
But I agree that it is not for everyone.
I cannot count the times I was thankful
for my ten years of Unix experience. Get-
ting the X Windows graphics system run-
ning optimally is tricky, and not all video
cards are fully supported by the kernel or
X Windows. My MacPicasso 540 video
card, for example, does not yet have a
valid color map, so applications are quite
ugly—although in the spirit of Linux, I
am testing and debugging kernel patches
to correct this, and the patches will be
incorporated into a future Linux release,
‘The next version of LinuxPPC, called
RS, reportedly has significant improve-
ments in installation, as well as the very
nice GNOME desktop, which I’ve used
on Linux/Alpha. When it becomes avail-
able, please review the upgrade so read-
ers can better evaluate the Linux option.
ADAM CLAYTON PowELL IV
Arlington, Virginia
The Good, the Bad, and the NT
ACWORLD SEEMS TO BELIEVE
that Windows NTT is superior to the
Mac OS (“Put Your Files in the Fast
Lane,” April 1999).
‘Time after time the magazine down-
plays the Mac OS and implies that NT is
where we're headed, or where we should
be headed. NT is headed downhill.
‘The inclusion of a Windows NT 5
beta—which probably won't be released for
continues
www.macworld.com July 1999 17
660/450MHz Windows®
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times faster than VirtualPC®
and tracks a real Pentium® II
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Mac/Windows®
Compatibility
When you're tired of fooling
around with other people’s
PCs, or some pokey PC
software emulator, it’s time to
step up to a real Windows®
compatibility card for your
Mac — the Orange®PC. You
know it’s serious when the new
OrangePC 450 MHz
benchmarks side by side with
areal Pentium? III; it’s also 10
times faster than VirtualPC®.
And OrangePC is better than a
PC clone anyway. OrangePC
is seamlessly integrated into
your Mac giving you a single
platform footprint, live copy/
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Choose 60 at www.macworld.com/getinfo
18 July 1999 MACWORLD
LETTERS
another year, if ever—and exclusion of Mac
OS X Server was just the latest example of
Macworlds obvious bias. The tests showed
the current Mac OS superior in file-serving
performance, but you almost seemed dis-
appointed that NT didn’t win.
Be proud of the Macintosh. Things
are only going to get better on the side
of the good guys and worse on the side of
the “evil empire.”
KEN C. SHERMAN
Melbourne, Florida
We did not include Mac OS X Server in the story
because it was not shipping at the time, and a
public beta was unavailable for our tests. For
our assessment of Mac OS X Server, please see
this month’s Reviews.—Ed.
PDF for Presentations
IM HEID’S ARTICLE “PRESENTING
with HTML” (Create, April 1999) pre-
sents good arguments for using a univer-
sal format as a presentation medium, but
he promotes the wrong one. Adobe’s
Portable Document Format (PDF) fea-
tures all of the same benefits plus some not
inherent in HTML—scalability, built-in
navigation tools, text search, output to
film, and embedded fonts. Plus, any print-
able file can be converted to PDF with
Acrobat PDF Writer or Distiller, and most
Adobe products save directly to PDE.
C. ScotT MILLER
Studio City, California
Surfing with Efficiency
A S | READ JOSEPH SCHORR’S “URL
Magic Tricks” (Secrets, April 1999), I
looked for him to talk about a timesaving
trick I use: in addition to my browser's
bookmarks, I have hundreds of URLs
saved in different ClarisWorks spread-
sheets for different topics.
You can collect URLs in spreadsheet
files that you might name “www (Some
‘Topic).” For example, in my folder on recre-
ation, I have three spreadsheets: “www
Sports&Recreation& Games,” “www Trav-
el&Attractions,” and “www Tourist
Offices.” I now have 53 such files organized
into a hierarchy of folders related to topics
that interest me.
Each spreadsheet has many URLs that
Ican select, copy, and paste into a browser
window. I organize my URLs into conve-
nient subtopics within each spreadsheet
and hot-link those that I use often.
RicHARD L. Goopsopy
San Diego, California
Crossed Cables
COULD NOT BELIEVE WHAT POOR
performance David Pogue got from
his cable modem (“Differently Cabled,”
The Desktop Critic, April 1999). Twenty-
four seconds to download Macworld.com?
Golly, my cable modem is several times
faster than his.
Pogue downplays the advantages of a
cable modem. It is about the same price as
an Internet service provider and less expen-
sive than having a second phone line and an
TSP. Pages that used to take minutes to
download now take seconds. On poorly
handled sites, there is only a little difference
in download speed, but Macworld.com is
not one of them. I’m used to downloads of
at least 80 Kbps, and similar uploads.
Pogue’s conclusion that the only real
advantage is not having to spend time con-
necting via phone line is a gross disservice
to a wonderful new technology.
James E. GRamze
Dearborn Heights, Michigan
Weirdly enough, my cable modem continued to
slow down after I wrote the column. I called
Microsofi tech support and learned about a conflict
between RAM Doubler and Internet Explorer
4.5. Without RAM Doubler, Web pages appear
on my screen in two or three seconds, which is
much more representative of a cable modem’s
actual performance. 'm happier with that cable
modem with every passing day—David Pogue
Disproving an Adage
A NDY GORE STATED IN “BARGAIN
Hunters, Beware” (The Vision Thing,
April 1999) that “if a deal seems too good
to be true . . . it is.” That is not always the
case. One day I was procrastinating and
came across 800.com. It was selling three
CDs, DVDs, or VHS tapes for $1. My first
thought was the same as Gore's: this was
too good to be true. After further exami-
nation I found there were no catches to
the deal, and it even included shipping and
handling. They even offered the more
popular films and recordings. So I ordered
three movies, and in about four weeks I
continues
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20
Conquer Disk Damage
July 1999
DiskWarrior is a revolutionary new utility that combats
disk damage. It quickly rebuilds, recovers and optimizes
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638
LETTERS
received my three movies. My credit card
was billed only $1. So if a deal seems too
good . . . it might actually be true.
MICHAEL FRANK
Waterbury, Vermont
Faster Than a Speeding Pentium
I ‘M A RECENT MACINTOSH CON-
vert and was a little skeptical about
Apple’s claims that the G3 processor is
faster than a Pentium II and that Mac OS
8.5 is better than Windows 98. I’d like to
apologize to all Mac users and to Apple
for any misconceptions I may have had.
T bought a lime iMac after looking at
them countless times in the stores and
reading about them in Macworld and at the
Apple Store. I was very impressed with the
speed of the G3 processor. I decided to
test it out against my Pentium II 350MHz
computer, so I placed both computers side
by side and turned them on. By the time
the Pentium I computer finished booting
up, my iMac was already surfing the Net.
Kudos to Apple for designing a fantastic
computer and OS, and thanks to Macworld
for the informative articles. Without all
that information I might never have
bought an iMac—I shudder to think.
MICHAEL JACK HOOPER
Twentynine Palms, California
Letters should be sent to Letters, Macworld, 301
Howard St., 16th Fl., San Francisco, CA 94105; via
fax, 415/442-0766; or electronically, to letters@
maeworld.com, Include a return address and day-
time phone number. Due to the high volume of mail
received, we can't respond personally to each letter,
We reserve the right to edit all letters. All published
letters become the property of Macwoyld.
Contrary to our assertion, Alsoft’s
DiskWarrior can see some unmountable
disks (Reviews, April 1999).
Silicon Graphics? version of Unix is Irix,
not Irex (“Put Your Files in the Fast
Lane,” April 1999).
Only some of Extensis Intellibance Pro
4.0's functions don’t show up in Adobe
Photoshop’s Actions palette (Reviews,
April 1999). In the review, we erro-
neously indicated that none of the func-
tions appeared. m
Bon
More connected.
ughest judge in town (I've ga pand he's got mine)
id Back up my Palm V" organizer with my Mac.
With just one touch
eS —— oo
‘www.palm.com Palm Computi 10 egeciover Of the world’s leading handheld platform.
Ts Cocco wee 4
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Attorney
~<
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JOHN niTrER
To the Victor Goes the Stream
The Vision Thing
by Andrew Gore
APPLE MUST FIGHT STRONG CURRENTS TO WIN THE INTERNET-BROADCASTING RACE
OR YEARS NOW, TV
and computers have
been swimming up dif-
ferent forks of the same
stream, headed for the
same destination from
various directions. Tele-
vision has struggled to
become more interac-
tive. The computer industry, on the other
hand, has labored to engage, fascinate,
and enthrall computer users.
Both are headed toward an enriched
form of interactive media that offers peo-
ple choice and control without giving up
quality and timeliness. Until now, you
couldn’t have it all. But thanks to ever-
burgeoning bandwidths brought to you
by technologies like cable modems
(thanks, television industry) and DSL
(thanks, computer industry), it’s becom-
ing possible to shove massive amounts of
video into households in real time.
Up a Creek
Thanks to media-compression and
-streaming technologies like Microsoft's
Windows Media Technology and Real-
Networks’ RealMedia, the quality of
Internet video keeps getting better. It’s
possible now to watch an entire channel's
worth of programming live, with no wait-
ing for files to download—albeit in a small
window and with a few annoying skips
and pauses. But even this low-fidelity
experience has proven good enough to
spark an explosion in Internet streaming.
And the quality of audio-only streaming
is so good that Internet radio could devel-
op audiences larger than the wireless vari-
ety in short order.
Into this world Apple brings Quick-
Time 4.0, the edition of the venerable
media standard that’s able to stream
media live over the Net. At first glance,
the massive amount of QuickTime con-
tent already on the Net and that content’s
high quality would make it a fait accom-
pli for QuickTime 4.0 to displace Win-
dows Media and RealMedia and reign as
the King of All Streaming Media. But
Apple will find overtaking these two pop-
ular formats a challenge.
When it comes to video from the
archives, QuickTime has the advantage.
Roughly 50 percent of all video stored
on the Internet is in QuickTime format.
And QuickTime already serves as an
intermediate step between the source
material and other Internet streaming
technologies. According to Apple, 90
percent of the content served up by
RealVideo servers was previously in
QuickTime format.
However, when it comes to broad-
casting live video and audio, the advan-
tage goes to RealNetworks and Micro-
soft. What counts here is the number of
Web sites that have already based their
Net broadcasting technology on those
two companies’ formats. Being so late to
the market with robust streaming sup-
port, Apple has to swim hard and fast
against a very strong current to catch up
with RealNetworks and Microsoft. After
all, setting up a streaming Web server isa
difficult task, and the Web sites that have
already invested significantly in one par-
ticular format are unlikely to get rid of it
any time soon. From their standpoint, if
the technology they’re currently using
isn’t broken, why fix it?
Spawning Grounds
Luckily for Apple, there are still opportu-
nities here. Because the bandwidth to
support even a moderately satisfactory
streaming experience is still limited to
businesses and the households lucky
enough to have high-speed access, video
streaming is still a relative rarity. The trick
for Apple won’t be to go after the pio-
neering sites that have already cast their
lot with a particular standard.
What Apple can do is ride the big wave
that follows the first brave adopters of new
technologies. It must connect
with the vast number of sites
that would like to offer stream-
ing but have steered clear of it
because of cost, logistics, and a
seeming lack of demand. To
reach them, Apple must make
serving live video inexpensive
and easy. The Mac OS X Serv-
er—based QuickTime Stream-
ing Server is a step in the right
direction, but the company also
needs to let other companies
use Apple’s software and hard-
ware package to roll out and
support those systems through-
out the world. There are thou-
sands of site owners out there
who would jump at the chance
to offer live video and audio streaming if it
could be set up and made to work without
a huge output of time or money.
It’s true that Apple is late to offer
streaming as a part of QuickTime, and
that the two formats already on the mar-
ket have made a lot of headway. But while
the current is strong, this stream is also
wide—and with a little aggressive mar-
keting, QuickTime’s superior technology
could still win the race. m
Questions? Comments? E-mail them to
Andy at visionthing@macworld.com.
www.macworld.com july 1999 23
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JEFF NEUMANN
JULY 1999
QuickTime 4 Moves Upstream
APPLE'S MULTIMEDIA
SOFTWARE GETS LIVE
STREAMING CAPABILITIES
by Stephen Beale
pple’s QuickTime
logo, already a com-
mon sight on many
Web pages, could
become even more
familiar to Internet users as
the company rolls out a new
version of its multimedia soft-
ware with live streaming capa-
bilities. Upgrade to Quick-
Time 4.0, and the same
browser plug-in you use to
view QuickTime movies on
the Web will let you watch
live broadcasts as well. It’s all
part of Apple’s strategy to
make QuickTime the reign-
ing multimedia standard for
the Internet.
Apple unveiled Quick-
Time 4.0 in April at the
National Association of
Broadcasters convention in
Las Vegas. Along with the new
version, Apple announced that
it will give away the source
code to the QuickTime-based
server software needed to
host live Internet broadcasts.
A public beta version of
QuickTime 4 is available for
free download (www.apple
.com/quicktime/). Apple
won't say when the final ver-
sion will be available.
Live Streaming
QuickTime 3 introduced the
ability to stream QuickTime
movies over the Internet,
meaning you could begin
watching a movie as it was
being downloaded. However,
unlike RealNetworks’ Real-
Media or Microsoft’s Win-
dows Media (formerly Net-
Show), QuickTime 3 did not
support streaming of live
audio or video broadcasts.
QuickTime 4 supports live
streaming through Apple’s
new QuickTime Streaming
Server software, which Apple
will make available as a free
update to Mac OS X Server.
Apple will also offer an open-
source version of the soft-
ware, the Darwin Streaming
Server, that developers can
download for inclusion in
their applications (see “Apple
Goes Open Source with Mac
Server,” News, June 1999).
By opening its streaming
software, Apple hopes to make
it as easy as possible for devel-
opers to include live broadcast
capabilities in their server
products. Silicon Graphics,
IBM, and Cisco Systems are
already working to incorpo-
rate QuickTime streaming
functions into their servers.
Because QuickTime stream-
ing is based on standard Inter-
net protocols, Apple says it
should be relatively easy for
developers to create cross-
platform versions of the soft-
ware. In contrast, the stream-
ing servers from Microsoft
and RealNetworks are based
on proprietary streaming pro-
continues
www.macworld.com July 1999 27
tocols. Neither server is avail-
able in a Mac version.
Apple’s streaming technol-
ogy also benefits from the
other capabilities in Quick-
Time. QuickTime product
manager Steve Bannerman
notes that streaming content
can be incorporated with other
media types, so you could have
a CD-ROM title that pulls in a
live video stream, or an inter-
active QuickTime movie with
controls that let you jump from
one video channel to another.
A single QuickTime movie can
even include streams originat-
ing on multiple servers.
Despite these advantages,
there’s no assurance that
Apple’s streaming technology
will catch on. Microsoft and
RealNetworks are well estab-
lished in this market, and
both offer specialized soft-
ware for handling tasks re-
lated to live streaming, such
as pay-per-view operations.
With its open-source strategy,
Apple hopes that other devel-
opers might step in with such
products, but there’s no guar-
antee that they will do so.
Other Goodies
Aside from the real-time
streaming capabilities, Quick-
Time 4 adds new playback
software, a more flexible
continues on page 30
Epson's Stylus Color 740i
Epson Unveils
Photo Printers
NEW INK-JET MODELS
OFFER FASTER OUTPUT
AND SHARPER IMAGES
by Michael Gowan
pson (800/463-7766,
www.epson.com) has
released the latest
additions to its Mac-
intosh-compatible
ink-jet printer line, including
two new photo printers and a
flavorful version of its Stylus
Color 740.
The $299 Stylus Photo
750, successor to the Stylus
Photo 700, uses a
six-color process to
print photo-realis-
tic imdges at up
to 1,400-by-720-
dpi resolution. It
produces sharper
images than its pre-
decessor by using
6-picoliter ink drop-
lets, compared with
11 picoliters for the
Stylus Photo 700.
It’s also faster: at
720-dpi resolution,
Epson claims, the Stylus
Photo 750 can print an 8-by-
10-inch photo in about two
minutes, compared with five
minutes for the previous
model. The printer will be
available only through mail
order and online outlets.
Epson will continue to sell
the Stylus Photo 700 through
retail stores for $249.
If you're going for the
big picture, the new $499
Stylus Photo 1200 offers the
same resolution, droplet size,
and print speed as the 750,
but with a maximum print
area of about 12 by 44 inches.
It replaces Epson’s Stylus
Photo EX.
Epson also announced an
“iMac” version of its Stylus
Color 740 ink-jet printer
(see Reviews, January 1999).
The $279 Stylus Color 740i
features an iMac-inspired
translucent design with a
blueberry cover. If you don’t
like that flavor, you can order
a lime, strawberry, tangerine,
or grape cover for $14.95.
All three printers feature
USB and serial connections.
Final Cut Is
Finally Here
APPLE RELEASES VIDEO
SOFTWARE ACQUIRED
FROM MACROMEDIA
by Stephen Beale
pple Computer’s
decision last year to
acquire Macro-
media’s Final Cut
software raised a few
eyebrows. The company that
had so successfully narrowed
its focus to Power Mac hard-
ware and the Mac OS now
appeared to be diverting its
energies into the applications
realm. The acquisition also
seemed to place Apple on a
collision course with Adobe
Systems, whose Adobe Pre-
miere dominates among
under-$1,000 digital-video
packages. But now that Apple
has released Final Cut, its
intentions are clearer: the
company sees huge potential
in digital video, and it wants
to ensure that the Mac plays a
central role in what is likely
to be a booming market.
Middle Ground Apple
says that the $999 package
occupies a middle ground
between Premiere and high-
end digital-video systems
from Avid Technology and
Media 100. In addition to
offering basic video-editing
functions, Final Cut provides
many of the compositing and
special-effects features found
in Adobe After Effects. It also
KEVIN. CANDLAND
BRYAN wiceiNs,
offers some productivity fea-
tures commonly found in
high-end video-editing pro-
grams, such as the simultane-
ous trimming of multiple
tracks and sophisticated audio-
syncing functions.
Final Cut also provides
tight integration with the
high-speed FireWire inter-
face built into the Power Mac
G3, as well as many—but not
equipped digi-
tal camcorders based on the
popular DV standard. You can
control DV cameras directly
from Final Cut, copying
audio and video to your hard
disk for editing.
Explosive Growth? Apple
sees DV as one of several fac-
tors contributing to explosive
growth in digital video. Tim
Myers, Apple's senior product
manager for video products,
notes that video professionals
and consumers alike now have
access to relatively inexpen-
sive digital-video-capture
dev In addition, oppor-
tunities for distributing digital
video are expanding, thanks
to the Internet and
DVD. What's missing,
he says, are afford-
able, y-to-use =
tools that are well
integrated with sup-
porting hardware, a
niche that Apple hopes
to fill with Final Cut and spe-
cial configurations of the
Power Mac G3.
Adobe Systems, for its
part, is touting Premiere’s
tight integration with other
Adobe packages. The compa-
ny has announced a forth-
coming Premiere plug-in that
will allow the program to
take advantage of new func-
tions in QuickTime 4, in-
cluding direct control of DV
cameras and the ability to
produce “hinted” movies to
reduce file size. Final Cut also
competes with EditDV, a
digital-video-editing pro-
gram from Digital Origin
(formerly Radi
Web 3-D
Heats Up for
Mac Users
METACREATIONS READIES
METASTREAM FOR MAC
by Stephen Beale
or Macintosh users, the
ability to view and nav-
igate 3-D graphics on
the Web has been more
promise than reality.
The Virtual Reality Modeling
Language (VRML), the reign-
ing 3-D Web standard, has
failed to catch on among Mac-
intosh or PC users. However,
two companies, MetaCrea-
tions (805/566-6200, www
tions.com) and the
sed Cycore (www
-cycore.com), are attempting
to remedy the situation by
introducing their own Web-
based 3-D graphics technolo-
gies. In the meantime, an
industry group called the
Web3D Consortium, with
support from Apple, Micro-
soft, and other heavyweights,
is working on an official suc-
cessor to VRML.
Metamorphosis Meta-
Creations introduced __ its
MetaStream technology a year
ago, but the initial version,
developed with cooperation
from Intel, was available only
for the PC. The company is
now preparing a Mac version
of the MetaStream player, and
current Mac releases of Bryce
and other MetaCreations
software packages can export
scenes as MetaStream con-
tent. Although you need a
browser plug-in to view the
content, MetaCreations scored
a coup last year when Micro-
soft agreed to distribute
MetaStream with Windows.
Formerly known as “The
Visual Computing Software
MetaCreations
f as “The
Creative Web Company.”
One victim of the transition
is apparently chief design
officer Kai Krause, who left
the company in April for
undisclosed reasons.
With its new focus, Meta-
Creations plans to offer tools
that make it easier to create
3-D graphics for the Web.
One of the most intriguing
new programs is Canoma, a
$499 package that creates
environments from a
still photographs. For example,
you can use aerial photos of
a city to create models of
buildings that you can
navigate with the
MetaStream player.
At the Core
Cycore’s 3-D tech-
nology, Cult3D, is
aimed at electronic-
commerce applica
tions. It has two com-
ponents: a Windows-based
3-D authoring package and a
free cross-platform Cult3D
Animation player. You don’t
have to pay for the design
software, but you do have to
pay a $3,600 licensing fee for
each 3-D model you post.
Web3D As MetaCrea-
tions and Cycore push their
plug-in technologies, the
Web3D Consortium (www
.web3d.org), successor to the
industry group that estab-
lished VRML, is working on a
new accredited standard for
3-D graphics on the Web.
The standard, known as X3D,
is based on the Extensible
Markup Language (XML).
Product
WATCH
Play Fetch with FileMaker
FileMaker Pro is playing with the
big boys of information manage-
ment now that FileMaker (800/
325-2747, www.filemaker.com)
has announced enhanced support
for the ODBC database standard.
FileMaker 4.1. gave you the abili-
ty to read ODBC databases. Now,
with the company's new ODBC
Driver, you can use FileMaker as
an ODBC data source, permitting
ODBC client programs, including
Microsoft Word and Excel, to
interact with FileMaker data-
bases, You can download a free
preview of the driver from the
FileMaker Web site.
Stay Updated Keep your soft-
ware current without the hassle
of surfing to dozens of Web
sites. Insider Software's (800/
700-6340, www.insidersoftware
com) UpdateAgent 3.0 scans
your Mac for installed software
and then searches the Web for any
free updates. The new version pro-
vides an improved interface and
greater control over file down-
loads. You can download updates
through Insider's Web site for $50
per year, or purchase a CD version
for $90 per quarter or $250 per
year. A onetime update of your
Mac's software costs $12.95.
New Dimension to 3-D Now
you can spruce up your 3-D
models without rendering them.
Maxon Computer's (877/226-
4628,
Painter,
Painter3D, lets you paint directly
on the surface of 3-D objects using
continues
www.maxon.net) 3D.
like MetaCreations’
a brush or pencil tool. Painting
effects include glows, transparency,
and surface relief. The program is
expected to ship this fall; price had
not been set at press time.
Scans for Everyone Canon
Computer Systems (800/652-
2666, www.ccsi.canon.com) has
unveiled two new flatbed color
scanners. The $499 CanoScan FB
42005, scheduled to ship in June,
offers 1,200-dpi resolution and
connects via a SCSI port. For sim-
pler needs, the $129 CanoScan
FB620U features 600-dpi resolu-
tion and a USB connection. It
should be available by the time
you read this.
Printer Equality No need to
be jealous of PC users’ abundance
of printer choices. Infowave Soft-
(800/663-6222,
Jinfowave.com) $249 PowerPrint
for Networks lets Macintoshes
print to any of 1,600 PC printers
ware’s www
‘over an Ethemet connection. The
bundle includes printer drivers, a
10/100BaseT multiprotocol print
server, and a printer cable.
Serial Savior Don't throw
away those serial-port peripherals
just yet. The $39.95 Stealth Serial
Port from GeeThree.com (www
.geethree.com) converts the blue
Power Mac G3's internal modem
slot into a standard: mini-DIN8
serial port for printers, digital
cameras, and other serial devices.
Installing the port precludes use
of the modem.—EDITED BY
MICHAEL GOWAN
30 July 1999 MACWORLD
“QUICKTIME 4
MOVES UPSTREAM”
continued from page 28
installer, a handful of new file
formats, and improved ver-
sions of the Sorenson and
Qdesign codecs that were
introduced in QuickTime 3.
As with the real-time stream-
ing functions, many of these
features were designed to
make QuickTime more ap-
propriate as a universal media
format for the Web.
QuickTime Player The
QuickTime MoviePlayer is
now known as QuickTime
Player and features a re-
vamped design resembling
the interfaces in Kai’s Super-
Goo and other MetaCre-
ations programs (see “A
New Look for QuickTime
Player”). The QuickTime
PictureViewer, used to view
and convert still images,
sports a similar new look. As
before, Apple will offer the
QuickTime Player in Basic
and Pro versions.
Flexible Installer Down-
loading previous QuickTime
versions was an all-or-nothing
propositio ‘ou wanted any
part of the software, you had
to download the whole thing,
a hefty 7MB to 8MB. Quick-
Time 4.0 includes a flexible
new installer that lets you add
only the components you
really want, making the soft-
ware more attractive to users
who might balk at the
prospect of a huge download.
You can choose from a
2.2MB Basic Playback down-
load for viewing QuickTime
movies and streaming Web
content; a 2.7MB Enhanced
Playback download that adds
support for QuickTime VR,
Video for Windows (AVI),
MPEG files, video effects, and
interactive movies; and a
5.6MB QuickTime Authoring
download that adds compo-
nents for creating QuickTime
movies. A Custom Download
option lets you pick specific
QuickTime components.
QuickTime 4 also provides
for easier software updates; a
menu option in QuickTime
Player automatically accesses
Apple’s Web site to download
new components.
New File Formats One of
QuickTime’s big advantages is
the long list of image, audio,
and video formats it supports.
Developers of QuickTime-
based software can easily add
the ability to import or export
the supported formats. It’s
also a boon for Web develop-
ers, because the QuickTime
browser plug-in lets you view
a host of media types that
might otherwise require sepa-
rate proprietary plug-ins.
New readable formats in
QuickTime 4 include Flash-
Pix, a bitmap image format
developed by Live Picture,
Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard,
and Eastman Kodak; Flash,
the vector animation format
developed by Macromedia;
and MP3, a popular standard
for downloading music from
the Web. With Flash sup-
port, you will be able to use
Flash animations as inter-
active elements in QuickTime
movies. For example, you
could include animated menu
items that take the viewer to
different parts of a movie.
QuickTime 4 also in-
cludes new versions of the
Sorenson codec, used to
compress QuickTime video,
and the Qdesign audio codec.
Apple says the upgrades offer
higher quality, faster en-
coding, and new features
designed to accommodate
QuickTime’ streaming capa-
bilities. Sorenson Vision (435/
792-1100, www.s-vision.com),
the developer of the Soren-
son codec, has announced a
$199 Mac OS program,
Sorenson Broadcaster, that
configures video or audio
for streaming through the
QuickTime server software.
Along with announcing
QuickTime 4, Apple released
Final Cut, the digital-video—
editing software the company
acquired last year from Macro-
media (see “Final Cut Is
Finally Here,” elsewhere in
this section).
Fly on the Wall :
HERE'S A MULTIMEDIA PROJECTOR THAT Deri
LP330, from InFocus (800/294-6400, mcnieen ie
weighs just under five pounds and measures 9.0 by 1051
ARNOLD Toso
Gladaptec
of r
Saerifice Nothing.
G 0 ahead, upgrade to that new G3 without sacrificing the SCSI peripherals
aor . 4 you depend on. And in case you didn’t know, Adaptec® SCSI cards support Apple’s
beg old SCSI Manager and newer SCSI Manager 4.3 devices so you can connect to
pays or "whatever SCSI peripheral you might be using. But it gets even better. Adaptec
DoMAlN SCSI significantly outperforms Apple’s previous built-in SCSI, enabling your
PoweRDOM
Jaz, scanner, and other peripherals to operate at peak performance. So if you want
to upgrade to a new blue G3 without sacrificing anything, get an Adaptec SCSI
card. For more information visit www.adaptec.com/mac.
INSPIRING.
Introducing Adobe® InDesign™ software.
It’s the all new page layout and design
application built from the ground up to let
your imagination do the talking.
Whatever you dream up, you can make it
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Adobe interface—which you already know
from Adobe Photoshop® and Illustrator® It
supports Adobe's Portable Document Format
(PDF) standard, and can even open and work
with your existing QuarkXPress® files. You're
basically unstoppable with InDesign.
The future of professional publishing
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SERVER SIGNALS A NEW
ERA IN MAC NETWORKING
COMMON CONVERSATION
starter among Macintosh server
administrators is “The Mac
would be a great server if only...”
If only it had preemptive multi-
tasking. If only it supported multiple net-
work interfaces. If only it supported
remote clients. Mac OS X Server is
Apple’s answer to the “if onlys.” A com-
pletely different operating system from
Mac OS 8.5, OS X Server not only
addresses all of its predecessor’s short-
comings but also retains the flavor and
familiarity of the graphical user interface
we know and love.
Like the end-user version of OS X,
due next year, OS X Server features a
completely new (to the Mac) operating-
system kernel that’s based on Mach 2.5
and BSD 4.4 Unix and offers preemptive
multitasking, protected memory, process
management, and standards-based script-
ing. The server edition, which is geared
toward file, client, and Internet serving,
includes Apple file sharing, an Apache
Web server, WebObjects application-
development tools, and a new feature
called NetBoot for managing networks
of client workstations. This last feature is
clearly the most enticing aspect of OS X
Server in that it should vastly simplify
network administration while lowering
deployment costs.
Installing OS X Server couldn’t be
simpler: insert CD, boot computer, click
Mac OS X Server
on Install. A setup assistant asks you a few
salient questions about your network and
which OS X Server features you plan to
use and then automatically configures the
server for you. Once it’ installed, though,
you'll find that many advanced features
use a command-line interface rather than
the familiar Mac interface, making OS X
Server a challenge to use. (If you spring
for the $4,995 bundle—OS X Server pre-
installed on a Power Mac G3—you don’t
need to worry about installation and you
get a handy System Image CD for restor-
ing your system.)
The New Stuff
Considering OS X Server's radically dif-
ferent innards, you're probably wonder-
ing about the look-and-feel of its applica-
tion-level services. It’s a mixed bag: from
the client’s point of view, using OS X
Server file sharing is largely indistinguish-
able from using AppleShare IP, while OS
X Apache offers a completely different
experience from AppleShare’s Web server.
NetBootis an entirely new animal, with no
parallels in the current Mac universe.
Users access OS X Server's Apple file
services exactly as they have all previ-
AL PRODUCTS
REAL RATI $
Reviews you can trust: Macworld rates only final shipping products, not prototypes. What we review is what you can actually buy.
OUTSTANDING: $O993$
VERY GOOD: $99 coop: $$¢
FLAWED: $$ UNACCEPTABLE: ¢
34 July 1999 MACWORLD
ROBERT PASTRANA
ous Mac OS file services—by
mounting remote disk vol-
umes and using them as if
they were local. OS X Server
uses a Web-based manager
— Mac OS x Server
— WebTen 2.11
As a Web Server, OS X Lags
= Solaris 2.6
—= Windows NT Server 4.0 IS
that AppleShare administra bart
tors will welcome: just point a 2 2,500
Web browser to the Remote z
Administration URL and you = 2,000
can add users, change permis- 2
sions, and control server per- ea
formance from any authorized Red
workstation (even from Win- ‘
dows-based systems). OS X ae
Server is not AppleShare IP,
however; it lacks printing, a
e-mail, DNS, Windows file- 4 4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 44 48 52 56
sharing, and firewall functions. Clients
The Apache Web server —
bundled with OS X Server is Behind Our Tests We tested Web-server performance using ZD Benchmark Operation’s WebBench 3.0
a full port of the standard
Apache distribution. This
means you can run off-the-
shelf Apache enhancements,
download new Apache Group
updates, run Secure Sockets
Layer (SSL) encryption, and
support multiple Web sites, although
none of these additional features are easy
to exploit. Apache isn’t Mac software,
and Mac zealots will find a lot to com-
plain about with Apache’s administra-
tion, especially compared with that of
other Mac-savvy Web servers. Although
Apple includes a setup assistant to help
you perform basic Apache configuration
chores, serious users must resort to old-
fashioned text-file editing to configure
advanced features such as SSL encryp-
tion. Fortunately, Tenon Intersystems is
working on a graphical interface and
SSL overlay for OS X Apache that will
address these shortcomings.
NetBoot lets you remotely boot Mac-
intosh G3 computers from an OS X
server, using the server as the sole source
of such resources as application programs,
printer access, and disk storage. (This fea-
ture requires a firmware upgrade on older
G3 Macs.) A special Macintosh Manager
deputizes a specific client machine as an
administrator, from which you then
establish basic NetBoot parameters and
the network topology. When you boot a
client Mac from an OS X server, the client
prompts you for a user ID and password
and then establishes remote access to
resources—preferences, desktop organi-
zation, OS configuration, and server vol-
umes—for that user. Thus, you can log
(www. webbench.com). The servers consisted of an Apple Power Macintosh G3/400 running
Mac OS X Server and Tenon Intersystems’ WebTen 2.11; a 500MHz, multiprocessor Compaq
41850R running Windows NT Server 4.0 Intemet information Server (liS); and a Sun E250
running Solaris 2.6. The 56 clients—a mixture of 233MHz Pentium Ils, 200MHz Pentium Pros,
and 166MHz Pentiums running Windows 95—were connected to two Extreme network
switches divided into four segments —Macworld Lab testing supervised by Kevin Mitchell
onto any client Mac via Macintosh Man-
ager and access your personal computing
environment. NetBoot makes central-site
administration easy, reduces the cost of
client computers, and improves overall
network security by giving administra-
tors a single point of control.
How Well It Works
Macworld Lab compared OS X Server's
file-serving performance with that of
AppleShare IP 6.1 and Microsoft Win-
dows NT Server 4.0. We found that OS
X Server makes a mediocre file server,
capable of handling more users than
AppleShare IP but generally taking twice
as long to move files. Still, OS X Server
was almost twice as fast as Windows NT
Server (when running AppleShare on
Windows NT; OS X doesn’t support
Windows file sharing). You won’t want to
run OS X Server if you need stellar file-
serving performance, but if you're using it
as a NetBoot server, you'll find the con-
current file serving a great convenience.
We tested OS X Server’s Web-server
performance against that of Tenon’s
WebTen 2.11, Windows NT Server 4.0
Internet Information Server (IIS), and
Sun Solaris 2.6. OS X Server's Apache is
a decidedly slower Web server than
‘WebTen running under Mac OS (see “As
a Web Server, OS X Lags”). With ten or
fewer users, the two performed compa-
rably, but under heavier loads, WebTen
served up to 40 percent more requests
per second. OS X Server's performance
was similar to that of Solaris running
Apache, but the large-scale, multiproces-
sor NT Server IIS far outstripped OS X
(asmaller NT Server configuration com-
parable to the Mac tested wasn’t avail-
able at press time).
Macworld's Buying Advice
With performance numbers well below
those of traditional Mac OS servers, Mac
OS X Server really isn’t a contender in
transaction-intensive environments; stick
with AppleShare IP and WebTen for file
and Web serving, respectively. But as the
herald of a new paradigm in Mac net-
working, OS X Server's NetBoot feature
promises to simplify network administra-
tion vastly while giving users new freedom
from their physical desktops.—met seckman
RATING: $$$ PROS: Preemptive multitask-
ing; protected memory; NetBoot client/server
paradigm; multiple network interfaces. CONS:
‘Mediocre performance for file and Web serving;
incomplete graphical interface; incomplete docu-
mentation. COMPANY: Apple Computer (800/
795-1000, www.apple.com). LIST PRICE: $499.
www.macworld.com July 1999 35
| Reviews
4OOMHz G3 Upgrade Cards
FAST G3 CARDS ARE WORTH A SECOND LOOK
HEN WE LAST EVALUATED
G3 upgrade cards (see “Born-
Again Macs,” February 1999),
400MHz G3 accelerators for
pre-G3 Power Macs were just
coming to market and were so prohibi-
tively expensive that we could not recom-
mend one. Prices have since come down,
and with a couple of new manufacturers
joining such familiar faces as Newer
‘Technology and Sonnet Technologies,
time was ripe for a second look.
We tested seven 400MHz G3 accel-
erators that plug into the processor slot
of the Power Mac 7500, 9500, and 9600:
Mactell’s PowerJolt 400/200, met@box’s
JoeCard 400/200, Newer Technology’s
Maxpowr G3 400/200, Phase 5’s Maccel-
erate 750, PowerLogix’s PowerForce G3
400/200, Sonnet Technologies’ Crescen-
do G3 400/200, and the XLR8 Mach G3
400/200. Most of the cards also work with
some Macintosh clones from Power
Computing and Umax Technologies.
All of the cards boosted the perfor-
mance of our test platform, a Power Mac
9500, approaching the speed of our
400MHz reference system. However,
although prices have fallen dramatically,
these cards still aren’t inexpensive, and
you may find that it’s best to save your
cworld
LAB TEST
money for a true G3 Power Mac.
Most of the cards installed easily,
although you may have trouble if you
want to accelerate a Mac clone housed in
a low-profile box. The Newer Technolo-
gy and XLR8 cards have removable
brackets so they can fit in the smaller
enclosures, but the other cards are too
large. Mactell’s PowerJolt was a tight fit in
our test system, and it requires a separate
power connector for a cooling fan that’s
mounted to its heat sink.
Most of the cards feature switches to
change the CPU speed or other settings.
The PowerForce G3, PowerJolt, Mac-
celerate 750, and JoeCard all feature
rotary switches, but in the latter two, the
controls are inaccessible when the cards
are installed. The Mach G3 has 12 DIP
switches that you can set from the top.
‘The Maxpowr G3 has four DIP switch-
es to set which Mac model you’re using.
The Crescendo G3 was the only card
that dispenses with switches altogether,
largely because it doesn’t let you change
CPU or cache settings.
Performance
To gauge performance, we ran CPU
benchmark tests using the MacBench 5.0
Processor test (see “Speed, but at a
Speed, but at a Price
Best result in red. Reference system in italics. MacBench 5.0 scores are
relative to that of a Power Mac G3/300, which is assigned a score of 1,000.
‘Mactell PowerJolt 400/200
met@box JoeCard 400/200
Newer Technology Maxpowr G3 400/200 ————
Phase 5 Maccelerate 750
PowerLogix PowerForce G3 400/200 ————
Sonnet Technologies Crescendo G3 400/200
XLRB Mach G3 400/200
Apple Power Macintosh G3/400 ————
MACBENCH 5.0
E Processor !
1,290
1315
4322
4,288
4,293
4,288
“4,273
1,323
J
:
i
Behind Our Tests
‘We tested all cards on a Power Macintosh 9500/132 with 64MB of RAM, a 16GB
RAID storage system with an Adaptec 2940UW Ultra Wide SCSI card, an ixMicro
x3 Pro Rez graphics card, 2 2MB disk cache, and Mac OS 8.5.1. Displays were
set to 1,024-by-768-pirel resolution at 24-bit color—Macworld Lab testing
supervised by Jeffy K. Milstead
36 July 1999 MACWORLD
Price”) and also timed typical operations
in Adobe Photoshop 5.02. There was
some discrepancy between the two sets of
tests. MacBench showed a small but
noticeable gap in CPU scores between
the slowest and fastest cards, and a cou-
ple of cards nearly matched our reference
system, a 400MHz Power Mac G3. The
Photoshop tests (not shown) yielded a
narrower speed difference among the
cards, but here the blue Power Mac clear-
ly outpaced all of the cards.
Why the difference? The system bus
in the blue Power Mac G3 is much faster
than those in older Power Macs, so the
new G3 systems should be faster than
older Macs equipped with G3 upgrades.
The MacBench Processor score empha-
sizes CPU and cache-bus speed over sys-
tem-bus speed, while Photoshop relies
more on overall performance.
Nevertheless, both sets of tests
showed relatively little difference
between the fastest and slowest cards.
The top performer was the Maxpowr
G3, followed by the JoeCard. The slow-
est card was the Mach 3, which never-
theless boosted our Power Mac 9500's
performance well past that of a 300MHz
Power Mac G3. Newer Technology
introduced the Maxpowr at $1,599,
making it prohibitively expensive, but
after two rounds of price cuts, you can
now purchase the card for a much more
reasonable $749.
Most of the cards let you boost per-
formance even further by stepping up
the CPU speed (a process called over-
clocking) or increasing the speed of the
cache bus. For example, when we boost-
ed the Maccelerate 750 to 440MHz, the
card outpaced our reference system in
the MacBench CPU test. But again, the
reference system was faster in our
Photoshop tests.
Although you can get a performance
boost from overclocking, we don’t rec-
ommend it because it can lead to frequent
system crashes. You can test your system’s
ability to handle the higher speeds by run-
ning Apple’s Graphing Calculator—or
any other appropriate software—in demo
mode overnight. If your system is still
running in the morning, it’s likely that
you can get away with overclocking.
Aside from the Sonnet and Newer
Technology cards, all of the accelerators
give you the option of stepping up the
CPU speed by setting DIP or rotary
switches. However, to access overclock
frequencies on the Maccelerate 750, you
have to cut a trace on the circuit board,
which voids the warranty.
By default, all of these cards run the
cache bus at half the CPU speed, hence
the “400/200” in most of the model
names. However, some cards include
software that lets you experiment with
faster cache-bus speeds. You can get a
slight performance increase, but again at
the potential cost of frequent system
crashes. The Newer Technology and
XLR8 cards have automatic sensing fea-
tures that prevent you from using cache
speed settings that won’t work.
Different Power Macintosh families
have different system-bus speeds, and
we found that some cards handle the
variations better than others. The Mac-
celerate 750 operated reliably at a bus
speed of 53.7MHz, but the XLR8 card,
at its default bus setting of 50MHz,
could not boot in a Power Macintosh
9500, which uses a S0MHz system bus.
We had to reduce the card’s bus setting
to 49.1MHz to run our tests.
Compatibility has improved tremen-
dously since Macworld last tested G3
upgrade cards. Previously, we found
that some cards had trouble booting
from disk arrays or running Retrospect
backups due to architectural differences
between Power Mac G3s and older
Power Mac systems. Since then, most of
the vendors have released software that
fixes the problem. In this round of test-
ing, all of the cards successfully booted
from a disk array connected to an
Adaptec 2940UW Ultra Wide SCSI
board. We also ran a series of Retro-
spect backups to a SCSI DAT drive
without any errors.
Speed Demons
However, some compatibility issues
remain. With any G3 upgrade, you may
notice display artifacts due to conflicts
with the Power Mac’s built-in video.
The only remedy is to install a PCI
graphics card. In addition, Apple will
not guarantee that Mac OS X and its
successors will run on older Power Macs
PowerLogix’s PowerForce G3 400/200 (front)
and Sonnet Technologies’ Crescendo G3 400/200 (back).
with or without G3 upgrades.
All of the cards ship with control
panels and/or system extensions need-
ed to enable the acceleration. You can
use the control panels to set cache speed
and other options. Mactell’s control
software features a cluttered interface
that resembles a race car’s dashboard
but does display the current
CPU and cache speeds so you
can tell if the card is working.
Macworld's Buying Advice
Prices for 400MHz G3 upgrades
have fallen dramatically, but
they’re still on the high side, rang-
ing from $699 to $959. Because
the performance differences are
minimal, price and ease of use
should be the key buying factors.
Fortunately, the top performer in
our tests, Newer Technology's
Maxpowr G3, is heavily discount-
ed from its original $1,599 price
tag. We also liked Sonnet Tech-
nologies’ Crescendo G3, which
features a three-year warranty.
The lower prices make these
cards worth a close look, and it’s likely
that prices will fall even further. You still
may be better off saving your money for
a Power Mac G3, but if you have a heavy
investment in your existing hardware or
you don’t want to give up a six-slot
machine, then consider one of these
accelerators.—JeFFY kK. MILSTEAD
Speedy G3 Upgrades
‘Mouse List
Company Product Rating Price Contact Pros Cons
‘Mactell Powerlolt 400/200 Pilg $699 888/622-8355 fs inexpensive; decent Poor documentation; installation
‘worew.mactell.com performance. ‘Tequites Separate power connector.
met@box JoeCard 400/200 fill $945 949/862-1180 Has good performance; 1s a little expensive.
www joecard.com three-year warranty.
Newer ‘Maxpowr G3 400/200 iii $749. 316/943-0222 1s fastest performer, Has no overclocking option.
Technology wovw.newertech.com good software.
Phase 5 ‘Maccelerate 750 +e $849 610/586-5703 Works at faster bus ‘Overclocking voids warranty,
wwvw phases de speeds; decent price.
PowerLogix PowerForce G3 400/200 Bila $959 888/769-9020 Has fiexible speed settings; Isa little expensive.
‘wwew.powerlogix.com decent performance;
three-year warranty.
Sonnet ‘Crescendo G3 400/200 Elisa $699 ‘800/786-6260 {s easy to install; ‘Has no overclocking option.
Technologies wowewsonnettech.com three-year warranty.
XLRS- ‘Mach G3 400/200 tty $879 (888/957-8867 Good software and manual; Didn't work at default
by Interex wwrwx8.com fits in low-profile clones; system-bus speed.
high-quality wrist strap.
www.macworld.com July 1999 37
Fireworks 2.0
SOLID WEB GRAPHICS TOOL GETS EVEN BETTER
EFORE MACROMEDIA FIRE-
works, Adobe ImageReady, and
Adobe ImageStyler came along,
Web graphics designers had to
jump through hoops—usually
involving Adobe Photoshop and an array
of Photoshop plug-ins and shareware util-
ities—to prepare images for the Web.
With the release of Fireworks 2.0.2, Web
graphics tools have come of age. This
update fills in some of the original pro-
gram’s gaps and adds an assortment of fea-
tures nearly every Web designer will find
useful. Though the program is still lack-
ing in a few areas, it covers the basics so
well that it’s hard to remember how we
got along without such a tool.
Second Time's the Charm
Like its predecessor, Fireworks 2.0 lets
you export images as GIFs, JPEGs, or
PNGs, the most common image-file for-
mats on the Web. Besides transforming
existing images into Web-ready formats,
Fireworks offers vector-based drawing
tools and pixel-based image-editing tools
that let you create and modify images and
export them to Web-friendly file formats.
One of Fireworks 1.0’s cleverest fea-
tures was its ability to apply an effect—
such as a glow, bevel, or drop shadow—to
any object, even editable text blocks. The
problem was that you could assign only
one such effect to an object. With Fire-
works 2.0, you can apply all those effects
to an object, and once you’ve created a set
of characteristics you can save it as a pre-
set style in the Style palette. Another
improvements that the program now dis-
plays a text item on the canvas as you type
and style it in the Text window, so you can
see how it will look in your document.
Perhaps because it’s a cross between
an illustration tool and an image-editing
tool, Fireworks still has some interface
quirks. Since the program can interpret
brushes and selections as either object-
based (as in Macromedia FreeHand) or
pixel-based (as in Photoshop), it’s easy to
get confused about which mode you're in
at any given time. Fireworks 2.0 offers a
couple of solutions to the problem: click-
ing on a bitmapped-image object with the
marquee, lasso, or eraser tool automati-
38
July 1999 MACWORLD
cally places you in image-editing mode,
and in this version you can toggle easily
between the two modes. However, if you
want to touch up a bitmapped-image
object with the paintbrush tool, you have
areas that change when you place your
mouse over a different part of the image,
for example. But if you’re just creating
simple button rollovers, Fireworks 2.0
can actually be more difficult to use than
its predecessor. Previously, all you needed
to do was create two versions of an image
and choose Export; now you have to
choose Simple Rollover from a pop-up
window in the Behaviors palette and then
use the Hotspot tool to create an area that
overlays your image.
SS Unthled- 1 9 10s SB
However, Fireworks 2.0
does correct one of the earlier
version’s major shortcomings:
you can now section your doc-
ument into multiple image
files, a feature that gives
designers much greater free-
dom and can also speed page
loading. Sectioning a docu-
ment is simple—just place
guides at key points on your
iwi
image and choose the Slice
Along Guides option in the
Save dialog box. You can also
slice your document into bits,
Tes S1O-TeD Ts ef)
using the Hotspot tool to
Starting Fires Fireworks 2.0 lets you add multiple effects, such as
glows, bevels, and drop shadows, to a single object
to double-click on the object and then
select the brush tool and begin to paint.
Otherwise you’ll be painting in vector
mode, a la FreeHand, with your strokes
floating on top of the bitmapped image.
An Expert Exporter
One of Fireworks 1.0’s banner features
was its Export window, which let you
adjust GIF and JPEG settings to get the
best balance of file size and image quality.
Fireworks 2.0 also allows you to view four
sets of image settings at once and compare
the results, but this version adds the clever
Export To File Size wizard. You select a
target file size for your exported image,
and Fireworks chooses image settings
that reduce your image to the desired size.
It’s a great time-saver. The new version
also offers much greater control over a
file’s color palette, a feature competitor
ImageReady has always offered.
Fireworks 1.0 let you create multi-
frame images for rollover buttons, but
version 2.0 improves the interface for
doing so. The program now sports a
Behaviors palette straight out of Macro-
media’s Dreamweaver, and it lets you
create some pretty complicated actions—
create areas you can export as
individual files.
Two other new features
make Fireworks more useful for Web
animators. An onionskinning box in the
Frames palette lets you preview the
position of images in other frames of an
animation, and a set of VCR-style con-
trols at the bottom of the document win-
dow lets you quickly view animations
without opening the Export window.
Because the program still lacks any sort
of tweening capabilities, however, you
have to create even simple animations
one frame at a time.
Macworld's Buying Advice
If Fireworks 1.0 won the battle of the
Web graphics tools by a nose, version 2.0
is out in front by several lengths. If you
buy only one Web graphics tool, Fire-
works 2.0 is the one to get.—iason sneLL
RATING: $$$§ PROS: Solid export features;
powerful drawing tools; can apply multiple styles
to an object. CONS: No tweening capability;
creating simple rollovers is more difficult than in
previous version. COMPANY: Macromedia (800/
457-1774, www.macromedia.com). COM-
PANY'S ESTIMATED PRICE: $199.
Bryce 4
3-D SCENE GENERATOR KEEPS
ETACREATIONS’ BRYCE BEGAN
its existence as a fun way to
create both natural- and alien-
looking 3-D landscapes, not as
a serious application for creative
professionals. But with its intuitive inter-
face, powerful texture-generating func-
tions, and ultrarealistic rendering capabil-
ities, Bryce has become a useful tool for
many 3-D pros while remaining approach-
able for hobbyists. Version 4 doesn’t add
any earth-shattering new features, but it
does offer refinements that should please
both groups of users.
Playing Mother Nature
If you’ve never known Bryce’s charms,
this 3-D rendering and animation pro-
gram lets you create realistic—or surreal-
istic—landscapes with relatively little
Sin & Moon
Sun Controls
Starry Night Bryce 4’s new Sky Lab lets you create star fields,
comet showers, and other heavenly effects.
effort. Drop ina terrain, apply a stony tex-
ture, and choose a sky preset, and you can
produce an eye-catching mountain scene
within a few minutes. You can also set up
keyframe animations in which objects
move as a virtual camera flies through the
landscape. It’ all done within a well-con-
ceived, if quirky, interface that does a
good job of shielding novices from the
program's underlying power.
‘This version’s predecessor, Bryce 3D,
represented a quantum leap over Bryce 2,
adding animation functions and a faster
rendering engine. Bryce 4 is a more evo-
lutionary upgrade. Graphics pros will
most appreciate Bryce’s new import and
export functions, especially the ability to
GETTING BETTER
import scenes and objects from New Tek’s
LightWave 3D. You can also bring in
USS. Geological Survey digital elevation
files to re-create real-world terrains. And
you can export textured Bryce terrains in
a variety of popular 3-D formats (Bryce
can export other models, but the method
is a little cumbersome).
Kiss the Sky
Perhaps the biggest addition to Bryce 4
is the new Sky Lab, which offers fine
control over the sun, moon, and atmo-
spheric elements (see “Starry Night”).
You can add star fields or comets; change
the moon phase; and determine the
appearance of clouds, fog, and haze. A
preview window lets you see the effect
quickly rendered within your scene or
against a neutral background, and a
timeline in the dialog box can
animate sky movement.
Along with the new Sky
Lab, Bryce 4 features several
enhancements to the Terrain
Editor, one of the program’s
longtime strengths. Via a pop-
up menu, you choose from a
variety of terrain styles, such
as rolling hills and lava flows,
to use as a basis for your own
topologies. A helpful new
tiling feature automatically
removes seams between adja-
cent terrains. You can also
apply Adobe Photoshop filters
to terrain maps; the software
ships with a selection of filters from
MetaCreations’ Kai’s Power Tools 3.
Render Me This
Bryce’s ray-tracing engine is a double-
edged sword. On the plus side, it produces
incredibly realistic imagery. On the
downside, it can be painfully slow on an
older Power Mac, although G3s handle
the rendering process reasonably well. If
you plan to do serious animation with
Bryce, a G3 is a necessity: a 50-frame,
320-by-240-pixel QuickTime movie that
rendered in 70 minutes on a Power Mac
G3 took 9 hours on a 604e system.
Fortunately, Bryce offers several
options to speed rendering. New in this
version is a nifty rendering brush that lets
you selectively render a scene by painting
into it. It works much like a progressive
JPEG image, spraying a pattern of dots
until it has completely rendered the area.
As with the rendering engine, it performs
much better on a Power Mac G3 than on
an older 604 system.
Also new is a timesaving nano-preview
that lets you create quick versions of your
animations at thumbnail size. In addition
to showing the actual animation, the pro-
gram displays each frame in a storyboard,
so you can render scenes selectively. It
would be nice if you could drop every nth
frame to save time, but the preview is rea~
sonably fast even on a 604e system.
Aside from the nano-preview, Bryce’s
keyframe animation features haven't
changed from the previous version’s. Set-
ting up an animation is easy: you can have
the program add keyframes as you move
the camera and objects, or you can add the
keyframes yourself. But there’s also a lot
of power here: you can animate almost
any aspect of a camera’s or object’s move-
ment, and edit the motion paths within
the scene or in the program’s Motion Lab.
Bryce’s texture-generation features
also remain unchanged from the previous
version’s, but that’s nothing to complain
about; the program has long had one of
the most powerful texture generators of
any 3-D software. You can choose from
dozens of realistic preset textures, with
lots of options for modifying the presets
or creating new ones.
Macworld's Buying Advice
Bryce 3D, which added animation capa-
bilities and a speedier rendering engine,
was a huge advance over the previous
version. Bryce 4 is a much more modest
upgrade. Animators will appreciate the
timesaving nano-preview, and 3-D pros
will like the new import and export
capabilities. But aside from the Sky Lab,
there are no major additions here—just
refinements to what was already a pow-
erful and easy-to-use 3-D landscape
generator.—sTEPHEN BEALE
RATING: $$$ PROS: Easy to use; powerful
texture- and terrain-editing features; realistic
ray-tracing engine. CONS: Slow rendering on
older Power Macs. COMPANY: MetaCreations
(800/472-9025, www.metacreations.com). LIST
PRICE: $249.
www.macworld.com July 1999 39
Adobe Photoshop Plug-ins
PHOTOGRAPHICS AND 3D INVIGORATOR ADD HEFTY GRAPHICS CAPABILITIES
DOBE PHOTOSHOP HAS MUCH
pixel-pushing prowess, but
some tasks fall far beyond its
native capabilities. Extensis’s
PhotoGraphics and Zaxwerks’
3D Invigorator are plug-ins designed
to bring vector and 3-D graphics tools,
respectively, to the Adobe Photoshop
workbench. Each product succeeds—
although not completely—as a quick-
and-dirty replacement for stand-alone
graphics software.
Vectors to Go
PhotoGraphics is a straightforward vec-
tor-based drawing program. It provides a
reasonable selection of basic shape tools,
a well-implemented Adobe IIlustrator—
style path tool, and a powerful text tool.
You can choose from multiple levels of
antialiasing and create objects with vary-
ing degrees of transparency.
The plug-in’s professional type-for-
matting functions should appeal to
designers who have struggled with Photo-
shop’s text limitations. You can set up
character style sheets, adjust horizontal
and vertical scaling, apply superscripting
and subscripting, and specify different
colors for characters in the same text
block. PhotoGraphics also offers an
effortless text-on-a-path function, letting
you place type along the edge of any shape
or curve created with the plug-in. The lat-
ter feature might be reason enough for
some designers to get the package.
Much like Illustrator and Macro-
media Freehand, PhotoGraphics lets you
group text and graphics into layers, a use-
ful feature for managing complex illus-
trations, If you're still using Photoshop 4,
you'll appreciate the plug-in’s close
approximation of a permanently editable
type layer.
When you save a PhotoGraphics
drawing within Photoshop, the vector
objects convert into bitmaps, but the
Photoshop file also retains the vector
data. At any time, you can reopen the file
(as long as PhotoGraphics is installed),
edit, and rerasterize the objects—a
tremendous boon to any Photoshop artist.
PhotoGraphics doesn’t replace a ded-
icated illustration program, but having
40 July 1999 MACWORLD
vector tools available in Photoshop is a
great time-saver. Our biggest gripe is that
you must create all objects within Photo-
Graphics—you cannot import graphics
from other programs, even using the
Clipboard. We'd also like to see a larger
variety of editing functions, such as basic
distortion tools.
Reaching for New Depths 3D Invigorator packs
many controls into a small amount of screen space.
Into the Third Dimension
Moving into the realm of texture and
depth, 3D Invigorator lets you import
EPS and PostScript graphics and extrude
them into realistic-looking 3-D objects
without using an external rendering pro-
gram. Once you import the 2-D graphic,
it immediately shows up in the main edit-
ing window, with a surprisingly rich set
of camera, lighting, and rendering con-
trols. The plug-in supports compound
objects, permitting properly rendered
holes, as in the O or D characters.
If you have QuickDraw 3D installed
in your system, you can see a very fast
shaded preview of the image. You can
rotate, scale, and edit the object, with
rapid previews of adjustments even on a
garden-variety 604e Mac (G3 Macs
update the display instantly). The fast
preview capability is critical, because the
plug-in’s controls provide many ways to
tweak the object. In addition to the
quick shaded view, you can also display
a wire-frame representation or full ren-
der preview.
‘The flexibility of shading and extru-
sion options will please even experienced
3-D artists. The plug-in also offers a huge
selection of beveling styles. You can edit
any existing bevel shape and specify dif-
ferent bevels for the holes in an object.
However, you cannot set different bevels
for the front and back faces of an extruded
object, a surprising and seemingly arbi-
trary limitation.
‘The plug-in’s speedy renderer sup-
ports soft shadows, spotlights, environ-
ment maps (to enhance the realism of
shiny metal textures), and more. One fea-
ture that should find its way into other
3-D software is the ability to view a scene
from the perspective of a light source, a
great way to see a spotlight’s target. You
place the final rendered image on the cur-
rently active Photoshop layer.
The sheer number of editing con-
trols may overwhelm the 3-D neophyte,
but the interface is well organized and
visually effective, delivering substantial
functionality in a minimal amount of
screen real estate.
Macworld's Buying Advice
Mac artists who already own good 2-D
illustration and 3-D rendering software
might find these plug-ins redundant. In
addition, 3D Invigorator is expensive,
considering that you can buy a full-fea-
tured 3-D program such as Ray Dream
Designer for about the same price.
Nevertheless, both plug-ins extend the
reach of Photoshop in ways truly useful
for creative professionals.—pavio sieony
30 Invigorator
RATING: $§$$ PROS: Rich set of bevel styles;
good lighting controls; fast renderer. CONS:
Expensive; interface overwhelming at times.
COMPANY: Zaxwerks (800/549-0250, www
zaxwerks.com). COMPANY'S ESTIMATED
PRICE: $199.
Extensis PhotoGraphics
RATING: $$$ PROS: Powerful text tool;
‘easy to use; retains vector graphics within Photo-
shop files. CONS: Limited tool selection; no
import capabilities. COMPANY: Extensis (800/
796-9798, www.extensis.com). COMPANY'S
ESTIMATED PRICE: $150.
# CENTURION
March, march, march... Get to
keep on the lookout for the
Barbarians. Oh rumor
has it the Ga maybe
on the me
‘a camel over
lirector said he'd turn me over
he Jion tam Ikayer. “EL
not-fight
hilla?” Arghhtt
*) GLADIATOR
Ive got to get to the Temple of Mars
to make a sacrifice before tonight's
contest in the Colosseum. I think I'm |
losing my touch, Last night the lions
nearly took my head off! If only I
hadn't missed that last lesson at the
diator School
3"
ym wwnw.mac-games.com
1199 Sea Orie nc Mah rere
rare
lng nd rere ademas Ses ine, ne
acs aregiteed Vader tapi Compu ne
se 102 at www.macworld.com/getinfo
| Reviews
Headline Studio
POWERFUL BUT FLAWED WEB ANIMATION TOOL
REATING ANIMATED GIF IMAGES
for the Web—especially for ban-
ner advertisements—has always
been a chore. Newer Web graph-
ics tools such as Macromedia
FireWorks and Adobe ImageReady can
help, but only to a limited extent.
MetaCreations’ Headline Studio 1.0
offers more power and control than
Ersatz Interface Although Headline Studio's interface superfi-
cially resembles the Mac's, cursor movements are sluggish and you vi
can't see other applications through the textured background.
those programs, but a strange inter
and some unfortunate feature omissions
prevent it from living up to its potential.
It's All about Banners
make it clear what Headline
Studio is nor—it’s neither a cel-animation
tool nor a utility for optimizing GIFs or
JPEGs. Instead, Headline Studio is
igned to create animations that involve
text. ‘Translation; it primarily targets
people who create animated banner ads.
Although Headline Studio’s features
are geared toward manipulating text, they
also work on imported images and shapes
drawn within the program. Using Head-
line Studio's floating palettes, you can
adjust the tracking and leading of text;
stretch, skew, and color both text and
objects; and alter any text or object’s opac-
ity. The result: Headline Studio make
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