Text content (OCR)
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New iMacs, Final Cut Pro 2, Rio 300, 3 Analog-t ‘to-DV converters,
2 CD-RW drives, Escape tpom-Monkey.Istand, and much more!
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Shoot video of whatever lurns you
on. Then use iMovie” 2 (included)
to edit out the boring stuffand
create cool video effects like cross
dissolves and rolling credits, Add
a biller soundtrack from your ~
favorite CD and you're ready to
ur movie with the world.
» .
ie Feprewl aS Hh Zw
Imagine keeping thousands of
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Add an AirPort Card and you can
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With iTunes (included) you
can rip MP3s from your favorite
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library on your iBook. Then create
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With iMovie, iTunes and iTools, the new iBook is
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the File Ghare Follé"
|
: | @
d |
No. 69 July 2001 Volume é Issue 7
highlights
A better machine. A better magazine.
how to
22 Nitro-Burning
Funny Macs
The new Gqs and Titanium
PowerBooks are for wusses. At
least, that’s what we who don’t
‘own them tell ourselves. Real
Macs are those their owners
have salvaged and put
together in some wildly weird
| way—we're talking a G3 stuffed
| into an LC 475 pizza box and
detailed with flames ora
gun-totin’ camouflage 9600.
by the MacAddict Staff
w
Hatshall he
34 Vanity Mac
\fyou've been feeling down and out lately, it’s time fora little
esteem boost—but rather than spend $80 an hour on a therapist,
let the Mac treat you. With a ate of tinkering and some cool
shareware, you can tum
your Mac into an ode to
yourself. By the end of this
exercise, you'll feel as
coddled and well loved as
a brand-new puppy.
by Nikki Echler McDonald
Pepper starts her campaign to
bring back the sock puppet.
41 The Handspring
Wilderness Handbook
When you think of survival in the
wilderness, you probably think of food,
water, blankets, and a compass. Well,
sure, technically that stuff’s essential.
It also doesn't hurt to have a Handspring
and a bunch of modules tucked away in
your coat pocket. by Jack Miller
A giant leap forward in
human-beaver relations.
Get the Web
into Excel
Oh, sure, you could just look
up some item on the Web,
then cut and paste it into
Excel, or even retype it—but
if that satisfied you, then you
probably wouldn’t be reading
this magazine. Now you can
get information from the Web.
directly into Exce! so you always
have the latest data at your
fingertips. by Maria Langer
70 Make Your
Own iDVD
Themes
Ifyou’ve got one of those
supercool SuperDrives that
can burn DVD-R videos,
you're probably getting
mighty tired of iDVD’s
stock themes. Here’s how
to make some of your own.
by lan Sammis
74 Use Mac OS X as
an Anonymous
FIP Server
Whether it’s artwork,
software, or just long
polemics about the price of
eggs, Sometimes you have
files you don't want to keep to
yourself. Here's how to turn your
Mac OS X box into a full-fledged
anonymous FTP server.
by Buz Zoller
Whoa! These 3D glasses
really do work!
The real Classic environment.
‘Warning: Eating those round,
blue thingies may cause
physiological harm.
REPRINTS:
Volume 6, Issue 7
Now show a little skin.
Cover photo by Amold Tiosejo.
For reprints, contact RMS at 717-399-1900,
SUBSCRIPTION QUERIES.
Please phone customer service toll-ree at 888-771-6222.
‘Macaddict (\SSN 1086-548%) is published monthy by Imagine Media, Inc., 150 North Hit Dr, Brisbane, CA 94005, USA. Periodical-ciass postage paid at
Brisbane, CA, anc al adalionel maling offices. Newsstand cistibution is handled by Curtis Circulation Co. Basic subscription rates: one year (12 issues -+
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‘imagine Media, Inc. also publishes Maximum PC, Business 2.0, PC Gama Next Generation, and PSM. Entire contents copyright 2000, Imagine Media Inc.
Alt rights reserved. Reproduction in whole o in parts prohibited. Imagine Media, Inc. is not afliated with the companies or products covered in MacAdclct.
Fide-Along enclosed in the folowing ections: A3, B, 81, B2 PRODUCED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
JUL/O1 | MacAdaict|5
conien
every month
10 Editor's Note
Creating FrankenMacs can be fun!
12 Letters
You’re keeping us on our toes from as far
away as the Arctic Circle. Takk! ( That’s “thanks”
in Icelandic.)
14 Get Info
Find out all about Apple’s slim new iBook,
lan’s shock at the moment of
impact was woefully apparent.
what's in a Carbonized app, where in the world It's Apple's
MPEG-4 is, and why graphic designers should version of the
White Album...
stay off the Mac OS X boat for now. Get help
with impotent PowerBook batteries and iMacs
in the outback. Plus, your own personal IMAX
experience, free Web-based calendars, and
much more.
20 Scrapbook
Hellfire and brimstone! The world’s a
stream on the QuickTime 5 player. It's hot!
44 Reviews
Ready 2, take 2, and action! We give Apple its
close-up with Final Cut Pro 2.0 and the new hippy,
trippy iMac Special Edition. We also tune in to the
Rio 800, Sonicfire Pro, Sony’s Digital Relay, and
Formac’s FireWire CD-RW. Plus, there’s much
procrastinating to be had with Escape from
Monkey Island, Heroes III Complete, Monopoly
Casino, GameRoom, and more.
64 Powerplay ——
Presto takes on the Myst series, with a lot of
acting assistance from Cyan. glTron makes
its way to Mac OS X, and we dig through the
a
Sawece a) mem
and what they
created after the,
um, listening party.
Greetings from Myst Ill...
wish you were here!
Game of the Year edition of Unreal Tournament
to see what makes it tick.
80 Ask Us
Lots of Mac OS X-related questions this month
(go figure), along with the latest rundown
on Video CDs. We also give you a few Mac
cleanliness tips.
104 Shut Down—___———
We've managed to isolate all the fear, uncertainty,
and doubt (FUD) surrounding Mac OS X into a
single page of the magazine!
Where have you been all my life?!
‘Bye, Cheryl! We'll miss you.
Bye Niko, hi Niko! Normai month?
Maybe next time, Now get on your
knees and dance!
6 | MaeAdaict| JUL/O1
TEAM
EDITOR IN CHIEF David Reynolds:
EDITORIAL
MANAGING EDITOR Jenifer Morgan
SENIOR EDITORS Narasu Rebbapragada (news),
Cathy Lu (features), Jan Sammis (technology)
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Kris Fong (reviews)
DIGITAL MEDIA EDITOR Andraw Toluca
WEBMIONSTER Niko Coucouvanis
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Rat Anzovin, Steven Anzovin,
Joseph 0. Holmes, Buz Zoller
ART
ART DICTATOR Christopher imiay
ASSOCIATE ART DICTATOR Leslie Brown
PRODUCTION
PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Alchard Lesovoy
PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Hans Hunt
ADVERTISING
ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Don Kimenker
REGIONAL AD MANAGER Michelle Paredes
SR. ACCOUNTS MANAGER, DIRECTSALES Ana Epstein
AD COORDINATOR Matt Wheeland
CIRCULATION
GROUP CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Kate Balley
SENIOR NEWSSTAND MANAGER Jonathan Venier
DIRECT MAIL MANAGER Melissa Richards
BILUNG AND RENEWAL MANAGER Robyn Patty
FULFILLMENT MANAGER Peggy Mores
DIRECT MARKETING SPECIALIST Mary Wickin
150 North Hil Drive, Brisbane, CA 84005
(418)468-4684, www.imaginemedia.com
(CHIEF EXECUTIVE/FUTURE NETWORK Greg Ingham
-PRESDENT Jonathan Smpson-Bint
\VP/EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Matt Frme
VICE PRESIDENT/CFO Tom Valentino
VPICIRCULATION Holly Kagel
'YP/HUMAN RESOURCES Stave Uebman
GENERAL COUNSEL Chates Sc
PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Simon Whitcombe
DIRECTOR OF MARKETING Mary LaChapall
(MARKETING MANAGER Kati Cle
‘ie leis ined t people nha Pave pean A pes
“Or forthe emt Tens
Imagine Media inc. is part of
The Future Network pic,
Future Network ot groups ct
Tol +48 1225 442244 « worythofuturenetwork ple.
‘Mocla With Passion
Bath, London, Milan, New York, Pars, San Francisco
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© Copyright Connectix Corporation. Connectix and Connectix Virtual PC are trademarks of Connectix Corporation. All other trademarks are property of their respective holders.
@ Aisc
You Can Go
Outside Next Year!
{nfoManager...
“Forget it, Mr. High-and-Mighty Master Control!
You're not going to make me talk!”
8 | MacAadict | JUL/O1
1
rN
Indoor Fun for
the Summer!
© InfoManayer Shareware
It's a productivity application and file utility in one.
InfoManager enhances many applications by adding
intuitive tools to help you get things done faster. Now, when
you open something as basic as a SimpleText document, a
toolbar appears, making text formatting and file management available with a
click of the mouse. Find out why BusinessWeek Online called this shareware app
the “ultimate info organizer.”
@ eZedia MX Demo
Need to create an interactive presentation with buttons, movies, text, and
graphics? eZedia may be the answer. This intuitive, cross-platform multimedia
tool is megadollars cheaper than Director, but it’s powerful and easy to use. Asa
special offer, the company is giving MacAddict readers—that means you—a
great deal on the product. Check out the demo on The Disc and take advantage
of this exclusive offer!
@ Tux Racer Beta
In the style of Star Wars Pod Racer, Tux Racer is a racing game in which you
play...a penguin. But you’re not just an average Joe or Jill penguin—you’re going
for the gold. Assume the belly-down racing position and navigate through icy
terrain while collecting herring! Trust us, it's more fun than words can describe.
This Mac OSX port of an OpenGL Linux game is truly a blast.
@ giTron Freeware
In the eighties, Tron pioneered computer-generated imagery in movies, and
arcade games influenced by this film sprouted up everywhere. One of the
most famous and exciting scenes was the Light Cycle game. Now you can relive
the thrill by piloting your own Light Cycle, dodging walls and beams to stay
alive. glTron’s look and feel stays faithful to the movie, and no other Tron game
has come this close. Best of all, it’s free and it’s available in both PPC and Mac
OSXversions.
Fenny Mess Movie In a bold effort to improve upon our
already feature-film quality, professional
staff videos, we took a few hours from our
busy editorial schedules to bring you
some movies using the Macs from our
“Nitro-burning Funny Macs” article (this
issue, p22). We put more time than usual
into making this month’s staff video, and
-| we wanted to show you some behind-the-
‘scenes footage so you could see how we
| created them. Just a word of caution:
J Don't ‘tug your PowerBook behind a
@ bicycle. We're trained professionals.
Well, be
it can'take you out
than you can say,
careful
more Mac OS X icons, plus the exclusive
“Best of Mac Show Live,” with interview
highlights from www.macshowlive.com.
ry mont! we i have boi
materials on The Disc foryou to
check out.
The LaCie photon! 8blue” display. Thin enough to hang on a wall and
versatile enough to orient in either landscape or portrait position, the constant
backlight of the 18" LCD screen combines with a removable color-enhancing
hood to make for thin, brilliant color no matter how or where it’s displayed
logo ore trademarks of LaCie, Ltd. Patent pending
lacie.com photon] 8blue “ and the LaCi
>
LACIE Mode for ideas.
La Ld. Ail
ealfor s nore
Getting dirty can be fun,
10
ack in March 1998, we ran a cover
[ES feature about performing truly
ludicrous hardware upgrades,
such as turing a Quadra 800 into a G3
running at 275MHz, complete with halfa
gig of RAM anda retracting antenna. While
the upgrades we proposed were doable,
we only went halfway—we didn't actually
install airbags, hydraulic lifts, or miniature
butane flamethrowers. instead, we
concentrated on more mundane things,
such as upgrading hard drives, processors,
and RAM.
This month, we decided to go all the
way with our upgrade story—to do it right.
Each editor at MacAddict was given an
older Mac and a two-part upgrade
directive: Make it powerful and make it
match your personality. Man, was |
surprised at the results—five unique Macs,
each brought up to G3 status or higher,
and each with custom equipment that
reflected the personality of its creator.
Along the way, we figured out great
upgrades for each class of Mac we hacked,
hope you'll find something in this
month's cover feature that you can use for
your own Macintosh.
| have a special affinity for these types
of hardware hacks. | grew up on a ranch in
rural Colorado, where you learned
mechanical work out of necessity. Whether
that meant welding a bad hitch or
rebuilding the engine In a ‘68 Ford F-150
pickup truck, being handy with a wrench,
torch, and some bailing wire was essential
to keeping things up and running. This also
meant we were free to try new and
interesting modifications to our equipment
soit would work faster or better, or so it
would do something it was never intended
to do. Although cur modifications didn’t
always work out the way we'd intended
(the less said about the VW Bug with the
lawnmower engine, the better), most of the
time they served their purpose.
‘That spirit of tinkering has served me
well in the Macintosh arena. Instead of
boring out the cylinders to see if! can geta
little more power out of a 327 engine, now |
spend my time with motherboard jumpers
and upgrade cards. The end result is the
same, though—a faster system. And once|
broke through my fear of making any
modifications to my Mac’s actual case by
painting it or removing certain less than
MacAddict | JUL/01
Hey—isn't that Ricardo Montalban over there?
aesthetically pleasing bits, | became a new
person. | felt capable of daing just about
anything to my Mac without fear—mainly
because itall still worked at the end of the
day, even though | was taking the chance
that it might not. And that’s been one of
the most rewarding experiences I’ve had
during my MacAdaict tenure.
For those of you thinking of building
your own nitro-burning funny Macs, let
me offer two bits of advice. The first,
which actually disguises a caveat, Is that
you should not attempt to modify your
hardware if you have any reservations at
all about the possibility that your hardware
may be rendered unusable or that you
may inadvertently signal aliens from outer
space with designs on our farm animals.
Despite the boring looks of certain PC
cases (and older Mac cases, for that
matter), computers are the shape they are
for many good reasons, including radio
shielding, cooling, and shock absorbency.
When you modify your Mac’s case by
painting It, cutting it, or moving your
motherboard, you're changing all of these
variables —and you run the risk of
damaging your hardware. The second bit of
advice is to go for it. It’s a lot of fun to build
a custom computer case, especially one
that contains a super-powered Macintosh
thatyou upgraded yourself. Even ifyou
decide you'd rather not modify your case
design, you can still pump up your RAM,
hard drive, processor, and expansion
options to amazing new heights.
Finally, if you build your own funny Mac,
please send in photos of your beastie to
letters@macaddict.com. We'd love to see
what you come up with.—David Reynolds
Q. What's the skankiest
unintended use to which
you've puta piece of
hardware?
AA. Ata former workplace,
| was forced to use an old Dell to do design.
One day, the hard drive mysteriously fried. |
swear | had nothing to do with it}
(Q. And were there any injuries?
AA, Every bizarre Windows error message
took away a little piece of my soul, but having
my boss admit he should've bought a Mac
helped repair the damage.
lan Sammis
Senior Crash Test Dummy
Q. What's the skankiest
unintended use to which
you've put a piece of
hardware?
A, Welt, atone point |
used the passenger-side window of a parked
Honda Civic as a personal deceleration device,
(In other words, | hit it with my head while
running—rather quickly).
Q. And were there any injuries?
AA. No bodily injuries—safety glass is great
stuff. It’s also very pretty when it’s spreading
out in 2 rough hemisphere centered around
your head. My wallet sustained the most
serious injury didn’t have an insurance
policy to cover that sort of thing.
Jenifer Morgan
‘Walk Softly Editor
Q. What's the skankiest
unintended use to which
you've puta piece of
hardware?
A. Ona dare, ‘hita friend of
mine over the head (hard)
with a squeal stick toy (the
name of which is pretty
skanky, if you ask me) when | was eight.
Q. And were there any injuries?
A, | broke the toy, made her cry, and was left
behind in the car while everyone else got to go
into the dinosaur museum.
ILLUSTRATION BY LESLIE “CRUISING FOR BRUISING BROWN USING RLUSTRATOR 20
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Use a PC? Look for Easy CD Creator® 5.
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‘Copyright 2001. All rights reserved. Rx, the Roxio logatype, the Roxlo tagline, and Toast are trademarks of Roxio, Ine. which may be reglatered in eome jurtaclctione, Easy CD Creator Is a regltered trademark of Roxé, In.
‘Adaptec lea trademark of Adaptec, Inc, which may be registered In some juriadictions, All other trademarks used are owned by thelr respective owners.
WRITE TO US: MacAddict,
180 North Hill Dr, Brisbane, CA 94005
or letters@macaddict.com.
FOR CD PROBLEMS: Go to
httpy/support.imaginemedia.com.
FOR SUBSCRIPTION QUERIES:
Call (toll-free) 888-771-6222.
ANIMAL UPGRADE
We purchased this Apple lle in 1983 to
collect data transmitted from special
electronic collars fitted on sheep. Although
the experiment ended long ago and the
Apple lle was covered in plastic and stored in
a bar, scientists found new use for data
never uploaded from the old floppies. We
were all delighted and amazed that in less
than an hour, thanks to a Keyspan serial-to-
USB adapter, we were dumping data from
the Apple Ile onto the Titanium G4 also seen
in the photo.—Randy Bradley, computer
Specialist, U.S. Meat Animal Research Center
Ah, the resemblance. You have your mother's
key caps.
THE POWER OF PLAINTALK
Itworked! It worked! 88 mphl I’m very
excited and happy, too, that lan’s little trick
with the PlainTalk microphone worked
(“Record Your Mac’s Voice,” Apr/03, p70). |
modified the microphone a tiny bit so that it
used one of the 1/4-inch jacks (the big ones).
Now I can plug my electric guitar straight into
my Mac! It \ooks great. Thanks, lan.
—Ryan Powers
FLY THE MAC-FRIENDLY SKIES
Just because I’m an instrument-rated private
pilot with 500-plus hours flying time doesn’t
mean I’ve got it all figured out. Landings are
still one of the biggest challenges for any
pilot, so it was great to see such an in-depth
explanation in laymen’s terms of this dark
science. | have to believe Ms. Morgan Is either
la] Macaig un
You write. We publish. Any questions?
ILLUSTRATION BY DAO ROSS
Hey, guys—a lemming clued me in on this great cliffside trail!
a pilot and/or an instructor herself—her
grasp of things aeronautic was inspiring for
pilots and gamers alike, Now, if] could only
get GPS info on an on-board Titanium G4, my
two favorite worlds would collide!—Tom M.
Yes, you're right. Jenifer Morgan is a licensed
pilot.Ed.
MAKES SENSE
Regarding his March 21, 2001, Web article,
“Should | get Mac OS X?” (www.macaddict
.com/osx), Sammis may want to add another
group to the list of people who should
install OS X as soon as they can. This group.
is new users. | intend to buy my first Apple
computer this year, and I’d rather learn the
latest operating system first before spending
time on older operating systems.
—Ralph W. Tack
THE FIRST-ANNIVERSARY
GIFT IS PAPER, ANYWAY
| was happy to see that Mac OSX shipped
out on the same dayas my girlfriend’s and
my one-year anniversary. | would have gotten
her the OS as an anniversary present, but
she’s a PC user. Don’t worry, I’m sure | can
convince her to get a Mac by next year,
—Chris
MACADDICT ON VACATION
I had the pleasure and good fortune of
picking up MacAddict a few months ago
while | was on a trip to Aruba. While waiting
to board the plane back to the states, |
entered a tiny broom cioset of a store in the
Aruban airport. The only reading material
offered was a few Penthouse issues dating
backto the mid-nineties, a PC gaming
magazine from when Space Invaders was.
Still hot, and the heavenly MacAddict. | had
never heard of your magazine before then
and had the pleasure of paying about $18
U.S. for it. | fell in love with it! My only beef is
your using REALbasic for The Disc’s interface.
What are you guys thinking? It’s all about
Macromedia Director!—Dennis Gadeikis
CRUEL AND UNUSUAL
ANIMAL TESTING
This Web site (www.leamlink.emory.edu
/peep/index.htm)), which chronicles
scientific experiments performed on Peeps,
struck me as an interesting fusion of your
Peeps fetish and your PC-destruction fetish.
This is what really goes on at those
institutions of higher leaming. | particularly
liked the Low-Pressure Peeps experiment,
which subjected the candy to a vacuum.
Keep up the spectacular work.—E.K. Beale
Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation failed to bring
back this poor Peep, but it was still yummy.
GLAD TO HELP OUT
| always had the inkling that MacAddict was
the coolest Mac publication around (come
to think of it, it’s also the only mainstream
Mac magazine that regularly contains useful
articles), but | never realized just how cool
until | saw As the Apple Turns broadcasting
from the MacAddict.com Web site. Can!
just send a big, whopping thank you to the
team at MacAddict for helping all of us
MoUs 2996 10H 8. Svan AV. aS Aa NOMIASKTH
> Surviving the Broadhant
Survival Guide
Cw) oOo": again, we wrote a wildly controversial article. This
time itwas “The Survival Guide to Broadband”
(May/o1, p26), where we took the plunge and declared DSL the
winner. Some of you applauded aur decision, same were none
too thrilled, and others offered their own spin on the issue.
DELIGHTED SL
Kudos for the well-written, insightful
article about cable versus DSL. You
validated my choice of DSL—thank
youl—R.G, Rhoades
THE RURAL CONNECTION
in the “O Broadband, Where Art Thou?”
section (May/o1, p34), MacAddict
magazine states: “For those of you who
live in rural Montana—well, there’s
always satellite, right?” | do {ive in rural
Montana and have been using SDSL
(Single-line DSL) for over two years. in
fact, | run a 100 percent Mac OS (Mac
OS X Server) software and Apple
hardware company for Web
development and hosting, which uses
SDSL (running at 384 Kbps for now) to
serve Web sites. We have the service
level of a T2 fora fraction of the cost.
Just wanted to let you know the FCC
map Is probably grossly inaccurate.
Ain't Montana cool?—Parker
TRIBAL SQUABBLES
Your “Tribal Challenges” (p32) were
off-balance, It seems as if you were
comparing the best possible DSL
service against the worst possible cable
service, | have about a halfa dozen
friends using DSL here in Phoenix, and
an equal number using cable, Only one
of the DSL users reports speeds as fast
Apple Turns fans in our time of crisis?
You guys really rockl—Answergeek
When the popular As the Apple Turns
(wwwappleturns.com) experienced some
DSL hell, we agreed to host the site
temporarily. it’s back up now.—Ed.
UNFORTUNATELY, IT IS
What happened to digitalFOTO? | looked
for the Web site and found a notice saying
that the magazine has “closed its doors,”
Please say it isn’t so!—Katie Bretsch
Take heart. Kris Fong, digitalFOTO’s
features editor, is now our take-no-
prisoners reviews editor.—Ed.
as the cable users get, all of the DSL
users have experienced intermittent
service outages, and they all pay more.
\ don’t think a sample size of one
person is avery useful comparison
for someone trying to decide which
type of connection to use.
—Michael Gibbs
In researching this article, we ended up
comparing @ ton of the better DSL
Services to one of the worst cable
modem providers, but that was the
selection of providers available to us at
the time of our testing. Although we
did declare a winner, the point of the
article was aot fo tell you to get DSL,
but rather to provide some guidelines
for comparing your available options,
We apologize if we didn’t make that
clear throughout the article.—Ed.
THE SIMPLE SOLUTION
Regarding Dave Hamilton's segment
‘on sharing an Internet connection
among several Macintosh computers
(“Share Your Broadband Connection,”
May/o1, p37), we tried software like
Surfdoubler and hardware like Friendly
Share, but neither option worked very
well, We finally called AT&q, and for $5,
per month percomputer, the company
Issued each workstation a unique IP
address.—Craig McDowall
That works too.—Ed.
GAMERS UNITE
Wait a minute. You say you only have one
Mac to host games right now, and Unreal
Toumament gets priority, What kind of
Mac do you need? How about a call for
volunteers for such a system? You've got.
this community, man, use it. Beg. | know
of two Power Towers in my inner Mac
circle that no one’s using (granted, i can’t
exactly pass these to you without the
owners’ permission), so give us specs! Do
you need a 733MHz Gg to host these
games, orwill an older system donated by
some Mac user be good enough? We're
here for you.—Ruprecht jones
TOO BAD
YOU CAN'T
CLEAN
OUT YOUR
GARAGE
THIS
Spring Cleaning
Out with the old, in with the new.
Spring Cleaning™ 4.0 with iClean™
safely removes old software and wipes
away cookies, cache and other Internet
tracks, Reclaim disk space plus protect
yourself from prying eyes. Regain peak
performance with the
#1 uninstaller for
Macinzosh! piiene sy,
CCopright 2001 Aladin yes, In
Qe up your life.
My Name Is Book, iBook
Faster Processors, Better Displays, and New
Optical Drives Do a Consumer Portable Good
buying an iBook that resembled a makeup case, wait no
| f portability, burnability, and masculinity kept you from
longer. Apple recently unvelled faster, lighter iBooks with E
‘PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF APPLE COMPUTER.
greater display resolution and CD-RW and/or DVD-ROM drives.
Swaddled in understated elegance (White and Silver), the iBook
finally looks more like the serious machine itis, and less like a
powder compact.
Steve Jobs unveiled the new machine at a special press briefing
at Apple’s Cupertino, California, headquarters. After reminding
event attendees of the iBook’s success (more than 700,000 sold
since the model’s inception in September 1999 as of press time),
Jobs spoke for approximately 45 minutes about the new model. “It’s
the perfect center of your digital lifestyle,” he said before reciting
Apple’s marketing slogan for the machine: “Your life. To go.”
It’s certainly built to go: The new iBookis only slightly larger
than an 8 1/2-by-11-inch tablet of paper. It weighs only 4.9 pounds
and is a mere 1.35 inches thick. With its new magnesium frame,
polycarbonate plastic, and rubber-mounted 10G8 drive, it can
Survive a more rough-and-tumble lifestyle than the last set of
iBooks—and it survives with a lot more finesse. In line with the
Titanium G4 PowerBook, the form factor is the ultimate in simplicity,
and so’s the name—Apple design guru Jonathan Ive calls the color
scheme simply “White and Silver.” Fitted with a 500MHz G3
processor, this book goes faster than ever. And when your life
doesn’t come with a power outlet, you can rely on the iBook’s
5-hour battery life.
Even more impressively, with this model Apple shrewdly
addressed two major drawbacks of previous iBooks: display
Hey Four-i’s
Apple Makes iBooks Available In Four Pricing and Feature Configurations
Compleie with CD-RW, DVD-ROM, and James Bond good looks, all
this machine needs is a thermonuclear detonator and a BMW.
resolution and drive options. While the screen size on the new
iBooks remains unchanged from that of older iBook models (22.1
inches diagonal), the maximum resolution is now 1,024 by 768
pixels, up from 800 by 600. Plus, the new iBook comes with four
different optical-drive options at four price points. You can choose
a CD-ROM ($3,299), DVD-ROM ($1,499), CD-RW ($1,599), orthe
droolworthy combo CD-RW and DVD-ROM ($1,799).
Once you're done marveling at the impressive CD-burning,
DVD-viewing options, your practical side will appreciate the
increased memory expansion capabilities. This iBook’s memory is
expandable up to 640MB (for all but the base model), instead of the
320MB that previous iBooks offered. it also has an extra USB port.
While some things change, others remain the same. The iBook
still contains a 10GB hard drive, 8MB of VRAM, and an ATI Rage
Mobility 128 graphics accelerator. So while the iBook comes
bundled with iMoviez {and iTunes), for hard-core video editing on
the go, you'll probably still need a Titanium G4 PowerBook.
The new iBook is tops—at a lowered base price to boot. While
it's designed primarily for teachers, students, and consumers, with
its slick design, this system might weasel Its way Into professional
milieus as well.—NR
Make That To Go
$1,299 $1,499 $1,599 $1,799 pple has coined the phrase “Your
63/500 G3/500 63/500 Life. To go” as the marketing hook.
128MB 128MB for the new iBooks, Here are some other
1068 Ultra ATA 70GB Uitra ATA” 40GB Ura, ATA. ‘tems you can get to go.
8X DVD-ROM _ BX4X24X CI DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo Big Mac and fries: You can also Super
2USB pots = USB po 2 2.USB ports Sizeit.
1 FireWire port 1 FireWire port 1 FireWire port 1 FireWire port Chinese food: Comes with free delivery.
“RGB video ott = RGB video out = RGB video out’ «= RGB video out Abride: The mail-order variety.
Audio/video out port Audio/video out port Audio/Video out port + Audio/video out port Memory: Buy it at MemoryToGo.com,
‘SMBVRAM ~"" 8MBVRAM = BMBVRAM = BMBVRAM Mobile home: Comes complete with
White and Silver White and Silver White and Silver White and Silver kitchen sink.
Quick Facts Apple announced back in April that it shipped its
a S millionth iMac. What does a figure that large
The 5 Million Mark
actually add up to?
* A stack of 5 million iMacs would measure at least
1,184 miles deep. That's about one-third of the way
down to the center of the Earth.
14}
iecrarcliein AO)
PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF APPLE COMPUTER
New Book, Old Book,
White Book, Snow Book
Whether you call the
new IBooks Snow or
White, they boast some
substantial hardware
improvements that set
‘them apart significantly
from earlier models.
Number of USB ports
X-It Interviews
Back to School
Apple Rejoins the Race to Educate
L ast year Apple lost its dominance in the education
market to Dell Computer, according to market
research from IDC. On the warpath to win backits rule,
Apple has since unleashed a 600-person educational
sales force and nationwide series of technology
workshops for K through 12 educators. Apple extended
the ultimate olive branch—the first order for iBooks—to
a school district in Virginia. The district ordered 23,000.
“It's in the DNA of our company,” Jobs said of
Apple's participation in the education market.
Dr. Mark Edwards, superintendent of Henrico
County Public Schools in Virginia, sald the first of the
iBooks would arrive this summer, one for each
student In the district’s eight high schools. Of the
deal with Apple, Edwards said, “We are totally
pumped about it.”—NR
—
Indigo or Key Lime
Q8A with a Mac OS X Developer
hy bring an app to Mac OS X, and
what's Involved in the port? We
didn’t know, so we asked one of the biggest
OS X software developers, Macromedia,
about its products for the new operating
system. MacAddict spoke with Scott
Thompson, senior software “alchemist” for
Macromedia’s FreeHand 10 for Mac, an
OS X port.—/S
MacAddict: How long did the port to Mac OS X
take to build?
Thompson: \t took a little over a year from
beginning to end—but that included adding
some features. The port was part of the move
from FreeHand 9 to FreeHand 10.
MacdAddict: What's the best thing about coding
for Mac OS X?
Thompson: The tool set. Under Mac OS 9, an
entire class of problems crops up (memory
errors and the like) that are difficult to debug.
Under Mac OS X, you can catch these errors
using the debugger and fix them easily. That
makes the Mac OS 9 version of the software
better as welll
MacAddiet: What’s the worst thing about coding
for Mac OS X?
Thompson: Trying to develop code for an
operating system that’s under active
development using development tools that
+ Placed side by side, 5 million iMacs would wrap around the Earth at the
0 times in a giant display of unity not seen since the 1990 hit
e Are the World.”
are also under active development can
leave you in a nebuious state where it’s
not at all clear what's at fault when you
tun into problems. There’s also a lack of
documentation at the moment.
MacAddict: What new feature of FreeHand 10
are you most proud of?
Thompson: Well, personally I’m most
proud of the Carbonization, because that’s
the piece I’ve been working on! Overall,
though, I’d have to say the gradient blend
tool is probably the coolest new feature—
it lets you create all sorts of interesting
3D-ish textures.
MacAddict: Are there any Mac OS X-specific
features in FreeHand 10?
Thompson: Our goal with FreeHand 10 was
simply to get it onto the Mac OS X platform.
Now that we're there, we're actively
considering using OS X features like Quartz
and Unicode support for the next version of
FreeHand.—iS
@ FreeHand File fdit View Modify Text Control Xtras Window Help =
Thu 3:51 PM|
DSHASG(%+(HR[/ASleoavalwoua]
ing Pan
je ate © #7 i |
Look Wooo
FreeHand 10 runs native (Classic-free!) in Mac OS X.
pounds—
+ A heap of 5 million iMacs would weigh approximately 175 million
it's about 1,000 times the weight of the space shuttle
Endeavor (with main engines installed).
JUL/O1 | MacAdaiict 15
get into
iMac Survival Challenge
Left to Its Own Devices, Can the iMac
Make It in the Australian Outback?
none of the last few episodes of the CBS reality
‘TV show Survivor ii, contestants in the Australian Fu
outback chatted with family and loved ones at home via &
an Indigo iMac! This got us thinking, what are the ze
iMac’s chances for survival Down Under?—CL u
Situation: Poisonous snake bite pete mai 4
Survival Rating: Good alliance sold me A
Reason: Snake versus plastic? Synthetic down the river. 3
materials win every time. Situation: Stolen by a kangaroo Situation: Humidity
Survival Rating: Good Survival Rating: Decent to good
Situation: Torrential rainfall Reason: Babies of the red kangaroo leave the Reason: Queensland humidity can reach the
Survival Rating: Slim to decent pouch when they weigh approximately 4.5kg. high 90s, and the iMac can withstand humidity
Reason: The Queensland tropics (where The iMac weighs in at 15.8kg, Ouch. up to 95 percent. The iMac shouldn't even have
‘Survivor i! was filmed) see an average of 1 to 12 a bad hair day,
Inches of rain per month. Since rainwater is fairly Situation: Temperature extremes
pure, there's a chance the iMac would boot up Survival Rating: Decent to good Situation: Altitude
after drying out, but we wouldn't bet on it. Reason: Temperatures in the Queensland ‘Survival Rating: Good
tropics fluctuate between 46 and 84 degrees Reason: The highest point in the Queensland
Situation: Flash flood Fahrenheit on average. The iMac's operating tropics is 1,622 meters. The iMac will operate
Survival Rating: Sim temperature is between 50 and 95 degrees at up to 3,000 meters. However, if someone
Reason: Twigs, rocks, crud, dirty water—the Fahrenheit. The iMac should survive except on pushes it off a cliff, the iMac’s chances for
IMac is most likely screwed in a flash flood, really hot days, survival decrease rapidly.
Shareware Pick of the Month =
| InfoManager 2.0 [Eres $49.95 URL: www.kagi.com/macease 3: fo
* ry : BLACK BEAN AND ROASTEG
5) fyour desktop is a tangle of cryptically named information
snippets, you might benefit from InfoManager. This diminutive ‘The rousted vegetablew add great depth of!
Finda app uses your Mac’s Clipboard to store and organize text notes from 1 pound phum tomatoes, halved leagthwise
InfoManager within any application. Think of InfoManager’s ever-present floating |
ee! palette as your personal (and stylish) 24-hour librarian. a.
InfoManager works like this: Highlight the text you want to save, (V2 teaspoon dried oregano
y ‘cups (or more) canned vegetable broth
go to the palette, and click the paper icon to save the selected text 314 cups cooked black beans or two 15-ounce cane black beans,
into a new or existing note. The note doesn’t even have to be open. — Face
InfoManager saves your information as a text file and uses Tey
SimpleText to display it; however, you can change the File Creator ‘This looks yummy, We'll just save it for later. The :
Code and work on that file in Microsoft Word, BBEdit, Nisus Writer, Teh
and other text-editing and -formatting apps. We saved recipes from InfoManager comes with a slew of keyboard coy
Internet Explorer and contact information from Palm Desktop, then shortcuts. Good luck memorizing them. We needed [essa Specs]
arranged our notes in neat little folders. Balloon Help to figure out what the myriad of icons did. SSeS)
InfoManager is also aesthetically minded, with a full range of The price is steep for shareware ($49.95), but ifyou’re [tet =f
text-formatting tools. You can sort lists alphanumerically and print a meandering Web surfer with a knack for forgetting a =]
them with margins and time stamps. Click the icon of the rosy-red where you put things, this one’s for you.—NR 12 Pont
lips to hear Bubbles, Fred, or any other Mac OS Speech voice speak a es
the selected text. Our favorite was Cello, which sang text to the tune This formatting palette will eon
PSG
of Edvard Grieg’s /n the Hall of the Mountain King. beautify all your notes,
Quick Fact
16} MacAddict} JUL/O1
}
——— a a a es
Our Picks: Free Web-Based Calentars
Clear Your Day, Not Your Wallet
A llyou need to organize your life using one of these nifty calendars is a Mac and an Internet connection, and who doesn’t have those
already? So get on out there and start scheduling.—AT
NETSCAPE CALENDAR
www.netscape.com
You may think Netscape’s
browser sucks, but its
calendar feature turned our
heads. Like others, this
calendar keeps track of
appointments. Unlike
others, it extracts date and
‘time information from
Netscape’s database of
events—book releases,
local festivals, holidays,
concerts, and our favorite
television shows—and
marks it on your personal calendar. You'll never miss 7he X-Files again.
Netscape Calendar can even teil you which
episode of The X-Files is airing tonight.
‘SCHEDULEONLINE
www.scheduleonline.com
This one’s great for
groups. The free Silver-
level membership keeps
Step:
lick the Show conics
check box toview ichedullog
eons.
track of everyane’s penipa
appointments through eu conin nse
a series ot screens. creme crc
Schedule a group ‘page tallow double
meeting, then check
to see if it conflicts
with anyone else's bak | oe
appointments. Should New to scheduling? ScheduleOnline offers a
you get realy Serious tutorial on its features.
about scheduling, you
can upgrade your account to Gold level, which adds immediate access to
group schedule conflicts.
The Magical Mystery MPEG-4
CALENDARS.NET
www.calendars,net
Calendars.net lets
Webmasters embed
calendar in a Web
page, then display
that calendar with
pizzazz. Format
your events and
appointments in
multiple colors and
add animated GIFs. i
Internet Explorer users Why go to a calendar’s Web site when it can come
can even place text ‘ight to yours?
that scrolls sideways within date fields.
Calendat TITLE Here
WEBADDRESSBOOK
www.Webaddressbook.com
WebAddressBook's calendar
is our winner for overall
productivity. It offers
Webmail, an email feature
that manages your POP3
email accounts in full HTML;
bookmark storage with
import and export support
for Internet Explorer and
Netscape; a notepad that
integrates your contact
information; a to-do list with
schedule integration; and
data import and export
functionality from a variety of
PIM programs.
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=
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Saison Sonos wm how pes [S]
Chock-full of features, WebAddressBook is our
favorite free Web-based calendar.
What Is It and Where Is It?
PEG-s is like the emperor's new
clothes: hailed as great, but invisible
to most people. At least now we can see the
outlines of undergarments. At April's National
Association of Broadcasters trade show in
Las Vegas, a few companies (like Apple and
Media 100) showed off MPEG-4 encoding
technologies for streaming video,
Unlike its siblings—MPEG-1 (popularly
used for VideoCDs) and MPEG-2 (used for
DVDs)—MPEG-4 promises to deliver high-
quality video at extremely small file sizes,
making it the perfect vehicle for streaming
media. Plus it’s not a bandwidth snob. It
scales well from 28 Kbps to 10 Mbps for
viewing on a PowerBook, PDA, cell phone,
set-top box, iMac connected via dial-up, or
a DSL-connected G4.
Apple announced a preview version of
QuickTime with support for MPEG-4 encoding
and decoding. In private briefings at the
show, the company unveiled its own MPEG-4.
video codec but didn’t announce firm
availability dates for products.
So where are the products? Part of the
holdup is that companies are waiting for
MPEG-4 intellectual property owners
{including Philips and IBM) to setthe
licensing fees. Sorenson Media is one such
company. “We're finished with our codec,
and we're ready to rip,” said Ed McGarr,
Sorenson Media’s vice president of sales and
marketing. “We haye potential customers
waiting at bay.” Sorenson Media announced
its MPEG-4 beta at San Francisco’s Macworld
Expo in January 2001.—NR
* Since the iMac efficiently puts the computer and monitor into one unit,
those 5 million iMacs saved the Earth at least 15 million feet in monitor
cabies (this caiculation is based on the standard 3-foot cable).
+ With 5 million iMacs, there’s roughly one iMac for almost every person
in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia in the year 2000. This leaves
19,538 people afflicted with iMac envy, however,
SUL/O1 | MacAdaict|17
Free yourself from
the mobile mess.
QCP 6035
Smartphone
Kyocera
$499
he Kyocera Smartphone, a combined cell phone and Palm 0S
handheld, can minimize the clutter for gadget geeks.
At 7.34 ounces, the Smartphone is a trimodal cell phone with
CDMA digital PCS, CDMA digital cellular, and analog coverage. With
talk time of up to 5 hours (180 hours on standby), it features a
speakerphone, voice recording, and voice dialing.
The Smartphone is also a Palm OS PDA with standard Address
Book, Date Book, Memo Pad, and To Do List features. Send email
or surf the Web using an HTML browser, Wireless Application
Protocol (WAP), and Short Messaging Service (SMS), Even Hot Sync
it to your Mac using a USB interface. And the Smartphone leaves
more room in your purse for...another gadget.—Whitney Hess
www.kyocera-wireless.com
MVC-CD300
Eye-Trek FMD-700
www.olympus-eye-trek.com
$1,199.95
Olympus
o you fancy having a private movie theater everywhere you go?
Olympus’s new Eye-Trek FMD-700 gets you out of the multiplex
and right into the movie.
Plug the glasses into any device with RGB video-out to watch video
‘on the Eye-Trek’s LCD screen. Olympus says the viewing experience is
equivalent to watching a 52-inch screen from 6.5 feet away. Video
quality is 720,000 pixels with a horizontal resolution of over 500 lines.
The Conirol Unit also has an audio-in port
for the ultimate in surround sound.
You could get 150 movie tickeis
for the price, but would they be
as cool?—Whitney Hess
jaRTESY OF OLYMPUS
t;
HOTOGRAPH CO%
i
i
i
You always wanted a
portable movie screen.
Sony
www.sel.sony.com
$800
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF SONY
Go crazy taking pictures—this little device can
stoie !envall for you: ¥
Pp rolific photo takers have yet another option for shoving loads of digital pictures onto
teensy-tiny media. The MVC-CD300 is the newest addition to Sony’s Mavica series. This
3.3-megapixel camera records images and MPEG video directly onto a mini 8cm CD-R or CD-RW
disc, each of which can store 156MB of data. The camera also features 3X optical and 6X digital
zoom, a 2-inch LCD, a 3-shot burst mode, and sophisticated manual controls.
So why invest in yet another media standard when you just robbed the town bank to
purchase a handful of SmartMedia and CompactFlash cards? It’s cheap. Each CD-R costs about
‘$5, and a CD-RW costs about $8. The catch? The camera itself is about $800.—NR
ome products leave you feeling just a little, well, soiled after you say their names.
Hey, don't blame us. We didn’t make them up.—DR
FunStick Pro Kai’s SuperGoo MPecker (changed to MPegger) ThrobberDeveloper
Macsense, www.macsense,com ScanSoft, www.scansoft.com Proteron, www.proteron.com Vizspring Software,
www. vizspring.com
ThrustMaster ThrustWare BodyPaint 3D Airport Thrabber
ThrustMaster, Maxon Computer, Todd Bangerter, Microsoft anything
http://us.thrustmaster.com Www.maxoncomputer.com: Www.versiontracker.com (Cheap shot, we know.)
Quick Facts - iMacusers have defended their hardware colorjchoice
at least 5 million times. We have no hard facts, but
we're pretty sure Tangerine got a few glances.
The 5 Million Mi
« [Mac users have thought about buying an external Zip
drive at least 5 million times. A group slightly short of
that number has considered an external floppy drive.
18) MacAdoict| JUL/O1
Designs On 0s X Mac Publishing Industry Gears Up for Apple’s New OS
Tabs
fyour daily mood swings depend on
iatore 0 View Wind Walp Tae
whether QuarkXPress is running smoothly,
or ifyou live and die by Photoshop, you may
need to wait a bit longer before migrating to
Mac OS X. MacAddict talked to some graphics-
centric companies to find out how they’re
coping with the port to OS X.—CL
Adobe
Adobe has promised Mac OS X support for all
of its major apps. According to Dave Evans,
Adobe's senior evangelist of professional
publishing, the next major releases of Adobe’s
premiere products should be OS X native.
Adobe did demo a pretty slick version of
InDesign running under OS X at Seybold, so
we know one exists, but mum’s the word on
when you can expect Carbonized versions of
Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive, and InDesign.
announced?) Mac 0S X
Fie tai Laven Type Obes
Transparency is one af the cool
CT iosmapindde 8
form
i oN sw
new features of the officially unannounced (or is it unofficially
version of InDesign.
Corel
The company that Mac users have
traditionally loved to hate is finally promising
to deliver just what graphic artists want:
brand-new, fully Carbonized versions of Bryce
5 (summer), Painter 7 and CorelDraw 10 (late
summer), and KnockOut 2.0 and KPT7 (late
fall). But as lan LeGrow, Corel’s executive vice
president of creative products, tells it, the
toad to X-ville has not been entirely smooth.
For one, the company had to develop
CorelDraw based on betas of CodeWarrior,
which was in tum based on betas of Mac
OSX, Then there’s the issue of porting the
user interface—applications like Bryce, which
utilize a specialized UI, are a bit easier to port
than programs that will adopt the Aqua
interface. Finally, the Mac OS X debugger
doesn’t stop at the actual line that contains
the bug. “It’s like going back ten years in
terms of tools,” says LeGrow.
Quark
Quark, the company that always shows up
late to the party but still ends up drawinga
crowd, is firmly on the Mac OS X boat. But
first it needs to deliver on QuarkXPress 5.0,
which will run under Mac OS X in Classic but
will not be Carbonized. Quark 5.0 will ship
“when it’s done” (developer-speak for “we're
late.”), It was in the alpha stage as of March.
According to Brett Mueller, product
manager for QuarkXPress, the version that
follows 5.0 will be OS X native. The company
will hopefully release it three to five months
after 5.0 comes out. Quark’s goal is to finish a
native version by the time its customers are
ready to move to Mac OS X—according to
Quark’s research, that will be in early 2002.
IDBII S$ Random Notes from the TIL
Recharging Your Laptop Battery
s your PowerBook G3 or iBook battery losing juice? Does the
battery icon fail fo show up in the Control Strip, or does a red X
G3-series owners. After running the Battery Reset 2.0 extension and
app, restart and run the newly installed program to
the
appear over the battery extension during startup? Try running Battery
Reset 2.0, a small software utility (consisting of an extension and an
application), downloadable from http://asu.info.apple.com
/swupdates.nsf/artnum/n11542, that resets your battery so it will
fully discharge and recharge.
Using the utility is easy for iBook owners (lucky sods). Once you
install Battery Reset 2.0, the extension itself should fix any battery
problems. Things are a little more complicated for PowerBook
battery—make sure you plugged the PowerBook into a wall outlet.
After running the app, eject and reinsert the battery to start
charging. A lightning bolt should appear on your screen. If it doesn’t,
Tun the app a second time. Since the application drains the battery,
you'll have to recharge it before your second run.
ne final note: On PowerBook G3-series Macs, you may have to
reset your AppieTalk connection, time zone, key repeat rate, and alert
sound after running the utility.—DR.
These tips, tricks, and tawdry stories were taken from Apple’s Tech Info Library at http://til-info.apple.com.
+ Apple has tried to seduce you into buying an Earthlink account at least
5 million times, using an option to connect to the Internet through the
popular ISP
+ In anticipation of this sales goal, Apple tried to cram 5 million dots onto
the Blue Dalmatian iMac. Instead, that model achieved the dizzying effect
you get from trying to hold your breath too long.
JUL/OL | MacAdaict | WW
SCIOpe
Tempering the gospel with a
The Spinout 360
Why are these trees upside down? Because
« QuickTime 5 debuts Cubic VR, a technology
Sakes Alive: that generates seamless 360-degree
a 5 i. panoramas of products, projects, cities,
It $ QuickTime Bl landscapes, or just about anything else you
want to see up, down, and all around.
paki cias kebbaprageag Waming: Some Cubic VR movies provide
hy should you download the QuickTime 5 great insight, others just make you
media player? Because this new rev nauseous. View sample movies at your own
is a lean, mean streaming machine. And it’s free! risk at Apple’s Cubic VR Gallery (ww.apple.com/quicktime/products/gallery).
CNN Headline News
Fuzzy Wuzzy Was rs x
Reconnaissance
Some QuickTime TV streams
come in at higher quality than
others. This ghostly-looking
segment is about detained
U.S. navy personnel returning
from China.
Sound Off
Now you can access a graphic
equalizer right on the player's face.
| choose Show Sound Controls from the
Movie menu, then adjust the Bass,
Treble, and Balance to your tastes.
How Ya Streamin'?
Does your download seem a
little slow or fast? Find out by
choosing Get Movie Properties
from the Movie menu to check
Data Rate, Packet Loss, Buffer
Size, and other information
about your streamed movie.
PaLANE = Free Cable?
tas TREE i
Si Buu Gun o* [ab Well, sort of. Click the TV button, and
Ce the QuickTime 5 playeropens the
window at right, where you can
——— choose from a wide variety of news
and entertainment movies. You can
save any movie as a Favorite, then
access it quickly by clicking the heart
icon behind the TV tab.
Flash 4ward
QuickTime 5 supports
Flash 4, which content
creators can use to add
increased interactivity
toa QuickTime movie.
Show More Skin QuickTime 4 supported
That silver window’s so square, isn’t Flash 3, but if you're
it? QuickTime 5’s custom skins let viewing media created
you slip into something a little in Flash 4, you’llneed
hipper. Content creators can add QuickTime 5 to take full
skins like the one shown here to advantage of its
their media. Unlike Casady & features. Apple also
Greene’s Soundjam, where you add enhanced MPEG-1 support
skins to the player itself, QuickTime to include streaming. Previously, QuickTime 4 users
5 stores the skin as an additional could view MPEG-1 content only if they downloaded
track, attached to the content itself. it locally to their hard drives. MPEG: is a popular
format for Video CDs and for educational video.
20} MacAddict| JUL/O1
Committed to Extending
OS X
Support!
Sonnet Technologies Mac* OS X Support Solutions
Regardless of what you may have heard, many Macintosh® computers enhanced with Sonnet processor upgrades
can run OS X! If your Power Macintosh G3 or G4 computer is enhanced with a Sonnet processor upgrade, you're
set—our Encore” product line supports Mac 0S X now. Do you have an “officially” unsupported PCI machine such
as a Power Macintosh 7300/7500/7600, 8500/8600 or 9500/9600? With Sonnet, you're covered—Sonnet has
engineered a breakthrough OS X compatibility solution for these computers when combined with our popular
Crescendo”/PCI upgrades! Delivery is slated for late May 2001, available for download. As for PCI adapter cards,
our Tempo™ Ultra ATA66 and Tango” FireWire"/USB cards are OS X compatible today.
Great News for Newer Technology Customers
There’s no need to feel left out if you're a Newer Technology customer—Sonnet's commitment to extending Mac OS
X support also includes a program for MAXpowr ZIF and MAXpowr PCI G3/G4 processor upgrades! Sonnet will
release OS X compatibility solutions for MAXpowr processor cards in the near future.
If you own one of these Macs and Sonnet makes a product to go into it, then we have an OS X
solution for You!
> Power Mac G3 & G4 Series > G3 All-in-one » PowerTower Pro
» Power Macintosh 7300, 7500, 7600 Series > G3 Blue & White > PowerWave
» Power Macintosh 8500, 8600 Series > G3 Desktop » UMAX J700, $900
» Power Macintosh 9500, 9600 Series > G3 Minitower
> G3 Server
EE
fONNSS
SIMPLY FAST
PROCESSOR.CARD
For a complete statement on Sonnet’s Mac OS X compatibility solutions, go to
www.sonnettech.com/news/macosx_update.html
WE SOUP UP FIVE OLD MACS TO
by the MacAddict Staff
photography by Arnold Tiosejo
The antistatic strap is not as
stylish as the Madonna
bracelets of the eighties, but |
those never saved your Mac
from being zapped by static.
4
|_| The PoworDomain 39160 adapter can be "p:rwtmene
| used in any Macintosh G3 computer with
‘a motherboard at or above revision B.
12
Oh, crap! We've got Rev. A.
:
Turning off these |) 2>
fests may help your |
Mac recognize your
new RAM.
Once a sluggish 25MHz Macintosh LC 475 pizza box, Hot-Rod Elsie now careens
through modern-day apps with a swift 333MHz G3 processor, showing off a mean, sporty
exterior that houses 256MB of RAM and a 40GB hard drive. She can even seat up to three
PCI cards, thanks to her convertible turbo scoop. No longer just a bookend, Hot-Rod Elsie
leaves her 680X0 siblings in the dust. She’s ready to cruise through games, apps, and Internet
sites with ease,
Apple G3/333 motherboard, power supply, and fan (salvaged from an old beige G3)
40GB Barracuda ATA Ill hard drive ($229 SRP, Seagate Technology)
‘Two 128MB RAM DIMMs ($65 each ESP, Ramjet)
Pr or. We gutted our LC like a fish
to make room for the G3 motherboards
Cards. We cut a large rectangle out of the case’s top to
access the Pcl slots. Because of the tight conditions, we mounted a fan
‘on top ofthe case to keep things cool down below. We built the scoop
to force air down—we recommend using heat-resistant material, such
as Plexiglas.
2.RAM. installed two 128MB DIMMs:
to give Elsie a brainy 256MB of memory.
3, Sto Because the LC’s case is
fairly small in comparison to the beige
3's, we had to screw in the hard drive
backward to accommodate
its connection.
5. To make the monitor, serial, ADB, and Ethernet ports
eels w We cut the back of the LC’s case. We also jacked up the
back of the casing—not eS Or 7 ay
just because it looks
cool, but to allow
enough clearance so we
could attach the power
supply to the
motherboard. Because
ofits size, the power
i r ‘supply rides shotgun on
me ‘the outside.
‘Two words: kernel panic. ingen rales, a no-go.
with the available isi Slots, adding FireWire,
isioeards, and other niceties
lomesa reality. A CD-ROM and Zip drive are
balso Welcome passengers.
‘SUL/O1 | MacAdaict|25
cheap sleGtie qiutta
how). For the aepttiny/near-banger
le one goes on the
Ifyou try to seat a
~ Motherboard with a 256MB =
module stuck to the bottom— (M chip goes an top.
well, you can’t. the bottom
stomp'n FX software, a set of plug-ins, mimics
‘guitar stomp boxes (foot-controlled on-off
plug a guitar into the Mac to create distortion,
4, Software.
tup. We plugged a
guitar directly into the iMac’s
microphone input using a
standard audio cable with a
miniplug adapter. The output of
our electric guitar was lower
than line level, so we used the
Gain control in the Sound
control panel to boost the
signal. We could effectively
uccess, since Newer Technology, the upgrade
sr, hhas gone out of business. Much to our surprise,
lled and ran without a hitch.
gluing the knobs onto the face,
ina “cranked to 11” position.
riginal Since we
. we affixed
Mezzanine Port. The old iMac has little in the way of upgrade options.
It does, however, offer the Mezzanine port, so you might consider
boosting the graphics performance by installing a Voodoo 3dfx card
there. Though 3dfx has gone out of business, you might find the card
on eBay.
JUL/O1 | MacAaddict | | 27
28 | MacAdcict | JUL/O1
BlueChip LS G3/500 upgrade card ($599 SRP, PowerLogix)
256MB of RAM ($96 ESP, Memory To Go)
VST Expansion bay Zip 100 drive ($220 SRP, SmartDisk, www.vsttech.com)
VST Expansion bay 10GB hard drive ($500 SRP, SmartDisk)
VST Expansion bay DVD-ROM drive ($250 SRP, SmartDisk)
Agere (previously Lucent) Orinoco PC Card (Silver) ($133 ESP,
www.orinocowireless.com),
AirPort Base Station ($299 SRP, Apple, www.apple.com)
Scanning lights ($35, specialist import store for car parts)
iListen speech recognition software ($139 SRP, MacSpeech,
www.macspeech.com)
Parrott Jamaica USB headset and microphone ($70 SRP, VXI,
www.vxicorp.com)
. We wedged a PowerLogix upgrade card into MITT and
subseaventy booted her up with absolutely no problems. The
BlueChip card is available for the
Lombard G3, as well as the older
Wall Street and Main Street G3
PowerBooks (233MHz and up). You
can opt for the top-of-the-line
500MHz card or go for the slower
466MHz. We chose to give MITT a
turbo boost up to 500MHz, in a new processor card
because how else can we expect —_required that we move the RAM from
her to save the world? One glitch: our ard to th one.
Several days after we inserted the
upgrade card, our PowerBook started misbehaving—it wouldn’t wake
up from sleep and crashed at startup. We're not sure whether this
problem resulted from installing the new card, but we corrected the
errant behavior by resetting the Power Manager, which controls
functions like sleep and wake, backlighting, and trackpad control. To
do this on the Bronze model, shut down, then hold down the tiny reset
button located between the external video and modem ports on the
back panel for five seconds. (Check out Apple’s Tech Info Library at
http://tilinfo.apple.com to see how to reset the Power Manager on
other PowerBook models).
2. By adding 256MB of RAM, we bumped MITT up from 128MB to
320MB of memory. And no, you’re not doing the math wrong. RAM on
the PowerBook is a bit tricky. The device has two RAM slots—one on
top of the processor card and one on the bottom (on the pre-FireWire
PowerBooks, the bottom slot can only take low-profile modules, as
opposed to standard-height ones). Since we initially had 64MB of RAM
installed in each slot, we had to replace the top ‘module altogether
with our 256MB module. Note that while you can buy 32MB, 64MB,
and 128MB modules that will fit into either slot, the 256MB module is
only available for the top slot.
‘MITT was running OS X long before we inserted our processor upgrade.
Thankfully, that didn’t present a problem. We ran the Flash utility that
“came with the upgrade card in Mac OS 9.1, installed the card, then
‘booted i into Mac OS X with nary a hitch. We even got a pleasant
‘surprise—applications in the Classic environment actually ran at a
respectable speed!
3.6 ion Bay. We
gathered a set of expansion
bays that we could swap in
and out. These included a
Zip 100 drive, a 10GB hard
drive (we opted fora
Temovable hard drive so we SS
wouldn’t have to storeour =A
top-secret data on MITT—after all, she might fall into the wrong hands),
and a DVD-ROM drive. The DVD-ROM drive also required that we insert
a DVD-video PC Card (included) when we wanted to kick back and
watch movies to provide MPEG-2 decoding. We only ran into one hitch:
When we launched Apple DVD Player (version 2.1), it gave us a strange
error message (see the message, above). We then tried going back to
an old version of the software (version 1.1, downloadable from the
Apple site), which worked just fine.
The application “Apple DVD Playe
bbe opened because
“DyDRunt ‘GetBounds_7cGWorldFv"
ld not
could nat be found.
‘You may need to install a newer version of
Bounds _7CGWorld
4. Networking. AirPort compatibility is a feature that started with the
FireWire G3 PowerBooks—but that didn’t stop us from going wireless.
The Orinoco, a module you slide into the PowerBook’s PC Card slot,
allows your machine to interface with an AirPort Base station—great for
quick Internet access while you’re on a mission. One word of advice:
When you configure your PowerBook to get on the network, use the
AirPort software—not the Mac-unfriendly Orinoco software (note:
Orinoco does not work on Mac OS X).
We decided to give MITT a set of scanning lights as a
tribute to her Knight Rider sibling. We powered the lights via a 9-volt
battery and attached a switch so we could turn them on and off at will.
. Because every artificial intelligence device needs to
understand its owner, we installed the iListen speech recognition
software so MITT would react to our voice commands. Unfortunately,
she doesn’t respond to much more than “Open Internet Explorer,” but
it’s a start. At this point, more training is in order.
1. Internal Hard Drive. To add more internal storage, all you need is a
2.5-inch notebook hard drive, available from IBM, Fujitsu
(www.fujitsu.com), and any number of other companies. Note that
different models allow varying drive heights—the Wall Street series
allows you to go up to a 19mm drive, while the Lombard and FireWire
models are limited to 12.5mm drives.
z. Vire. If you’re living in the pre-FireWire world, you can update
your G3 PowerBook with a FireWire card bus, like those from Belkin
a Lae com:
e. Other VST expansion-bay options exist in
the form of cD -RWs, SuperDisk drives, and Zip 250 drives.
JUL/O1 | Meee
our typical modern kid, decked out in lollipop-colored
glitter, and fluorescent stickers. Powered by love (and
javers dance to the beats of happy hard-core music,
who feel the vibe. The Candy Mac is their machine. it
p, gussied up inicolor on the outside and juiced with
i inside. It pum 45GB worth of nonstop beats, set to
psychedelic swirly fights—emanating)happy, happy, Joy, joy to ail those around.
Newer Technology Maxpowr G4/500 ZIF upgrade card (no longer available)
428MB of RAM ($52 ESP, Memory To Go)
Radeon Mac Edition PCI video card ($199 ESP, ATI Technologies, www.ati.com)
Nexus 128 card ($211 SRP, ATI)
FireWire-USB combo card ($210 SRP, Belkin, www.Belkin.com) :
Two VST FireWire drives—20GB ($470 SRP, SmartDisk) and 25GB (no longer av:
PV230 monitor ($9,995 SRP, Panoram Technologies, www.panoramtech,cor
Soundjam MP Plus ($40 SRP, Casady & Greene, www.soundjam.com).
ProMedia 2.1 speakers ($300 SRP, Klipsch, www.klipsch.com)
a Macscget iat
| ae ee eee ies eee eee 2 SE rene OS ee ee ee
1. Processor. Installing the Maxpowr G4 upgrade card was a painless
procedure. The only catch was that initially we weren’t receiving the full
400MHz of speed the card promised. To remedy that, we had to set
the DIP switches on the card to
match our G3’s stock bus speed.
The manual quickly and easily
walked us through that
procedure. The Candy mae isa
5. Graphics Cards. The Candy Mac arrived with three empty PCI slots,
and we used two of them for video. Why? To drive our three-panel
Panoram PV230 monitor. It requires three video cards, so we used the
G3’s original ATI
Rage Il graphics
chip plus a Radeon
card and a Nexus
128 card. We
popped the cards
into place, screwed
| them down, and
Grabbing the card on both ends and gently rocking,
we eased the Radeon card into the PCI slot. It
ATS site) required a firm push—but no excessive force.
id the same picture. If you don’t have access to a
, you can plug a projector into your monitor port for an
| effect—try Epson’s PowerLite 50c multimedia projector
y.epson.com). Finally, we plugged Klipsch’s ProMedia
the audio port.
Candy Mac needed only one piece of software—
\e’s Soundjam MP Plus. We chose the Thumper visual
can download a few others from the company’s Web
Casady & Greene's
SoundJam MP Plus
is the only software
you need.
; | Internal Hard Drive. You can put an extra IDE drive in the empty
3 4/2-inch bay. Be forewarned, though: This first-generation beige G3
will only support two IDE devices.
2. Memory. While Apple doesn’t mention this, you can upgrade the
memory in your beige G3 desktop to 768MB if you can find three
256MB low-profile DIMMs that fit into the slots. We found some at
MemoryX (www.memoryx.net) for $99 each.
Mac OS X ran just fine on the Candy Mac, with the following caveat: We
_ had to erase and then reformat our hard drive in Mac OS Extended
Format. (Our original G3 had a Standard Format hard drive.) We simply
chose Erase Disk from the Finder’s Special menu, although that wiped
‘out everything on our hard drive. Thank god we had those FireWire
drives to make a backup.
JUL/O1 | MacAdaict fe
ia ime rie
Bre mers '
Mach Carrier G3/400 upgrade card ($359 SRP, XLR8)
152MB of RAM (approximately $300 new)
3dfx Voodoo 1 (no longer available, about $20 on eBay)
ProTV Stereo ($139 SRP, Formac, www.formac.com) 1
SX serial card (only the SX Pro serial card is available
OrangeLink FireWire-USB card ($139 SRP,
www.orangemicro.com)
Etherx PCI 10/100 Fast Ethernet adap
Kingston Technology Compi
ExpressBus Plus (S120 ESP,
The Upgrade
1. Processor. These daj
weakling that will quickl
anything less than a G3 isa pathetic
[prey to stronger, betterarmed machines.
shich i
lachine for the RAM scavenger—
(Fast Page Mode) or 5V EDO
j, buying this RAM new is expensive—to fill
Maximum of 1.56B would cost an
}. Storage insion Bays. The 9600 has three half-height bays
and one full-height 5 1/4-inch bay. We scrounged up a SCSI CD-ROM
drive and a SCS! 2GB hard drive, giving MadMacs a grand total of 4GB
of storage. i
4. Expansion Cards. One of the fe
opportunities (computer shows
liquidations, etc.). To take full
advantage of serial devices (P;
and older graphics tablets, ton
a few), we added both a Keys}
SX serial card and a Belkin
ExpressBus Plus, giving MadMac
a grand total of seven serial ports!
You can never have too many serial
ports. OK, this may be too many—but
how else could we dial into seven
‘bulletin-board systems at once?
Interface
7 WademPort
Printer Port
Serlal On USB
Key SK E2Port #1
Key SK E2Port #2
Key XEZPort #3
Serial Port:
Port speed:
Handshake:
Modem
Modem Seta
Telephone:
Dial up to:
The Mac OSX installer
9600 uses a substal different motherboard from the beige G3s
{the oldest supported machines), and OS X doesn’t come with the
necessary drivers for the older board.
Key sxezPort#4_ |W
5. Graphics Cards.
We scavenged an
obsolete 3dfx Voodoo
|-while it's nothing.
special by modern
standards, it vastly
improves the
Dé ilties of the even
obsolete ATI Mach
9600, While a modern
card would be better,
it would also be
expensive—and looters
can’t be choosy.
The Voodoo | can’t handle 2D graphics by itself—
we had to route our video signal from a 2D card
through the Voodoo and then into the monitor.
6. Networking. The best
we could do was throw
ina 10/100Base-T card
and hope for the best.
Thankfully, Kingston is
‘one of the few
companies that sells
cheap Ethernet
adapters with Mac
support. All we had to
do was download the
‘AppleTalk (MaoIP)
Ethernet built-in
ot via
Configure:
DHCP Client 1D
Name server addr
That second Ethernet port is ten times faster than
the built-in one—to heck with the motherboard!
7. The Extemais. Using liberal amounts of hunter-green and sage-
green spray paint and Some brown acrylic paint, we camouflaged
MadMacs so it could stalk ailing 7500s in search of additional RAM
and PCI cards. We also added a toy rifle, painted black, for intimidating
lesser machines into handing over their peripherals.
ee Upgrade Options ——___
1. King-Size Hard Drive. Unless the terrifying postmodern world for
which we built MadMacs actually materializes, 4GB is an absurdly
small amount of storage space. Rather than use the 9600’s internal
Fast SCSI chain (which at 1oMB per second is much slower than any
modern interface), consider an external FireWire enclosure from
a company such as MacAlly (www.macally.com) to house a cheap
IDE drive.
2. Modern Graphics Card. In a few years the Rage 128 PCI video
cards sitting in all those blue-and-white G3s—a vast improvement
‘on our Voodoo 1—will be fair game for the scavenger who keeps a
sharp lookout.
3. CD-RW, DVD-RAM, or DVD-R. Since we screapeeel our floppy drive, we
still have a free full-height bay. A good choice for this slot would bea
iemovable storage device like a CD-RW, DVD-RAM, or DVD-R drive from
Sony (www.sony.com) or LaCi yww.lacie. com). Unfortunately, since
the 9600 doesn’t have any IDI uses, mostmodern intemal devices
won't work—so you'll have to find an extemal FireWire device.
‘The MacAddict staff took hits of laughing gas before building their funny Macs.
JUL/O1 | MacAadict | 33
Bs (l/
to Make Your Mac More Like You
aC
hat’s the difference between us and the animals? Vanity plates,
baby. And opposable thumbs, if you want to get technical. We
humans feel the need to personalize everything from our cars
(MIPORSH), to our butts (Sean and Nikki Forever), to our computers
(see this article). And that’s OK. Customization is a natural and healthy
form of self-expression. What's not natural, however, is a hard drive
that’s still called MacintoshHD.
Ifyou’re still looking at the same prefab desktop, factory-default
menu bars, and dull folder icons that came with your Mac, changethem
now and change them often. With the right tools and techniques, you
can customize everything from desktop icons to startup pictures. And
although these tips are geared toward Mac users running pre-Mac OS
X system software, we haven't forgotten you early adopters. We've
culled through the little that's out there for Mac OS X and found a few
gems that will add a splash of personality to your new desktop as well.
So take some inspiration from the exterior decorating tips in this
article and transform your desktop from a sterile computing device into
a warm extension of your inner self.
by Nikki Echier McDonald
illustration by Shag
» BoilerPlate™f # ‘You know how Linda
Tripp looks now, as
‘opposed fo how she
looked when she was
hanging out with
Monica? Well, you can
1.Change Your Theme
You don’t wear the same outfit every day (unless you’re doing the kind.
of nine to five that involves lockdowns and license plates), so why
should your Mac? For an instant desktop redesign, download Greg
Landweber and Arlo Rose’s cult classic, Kaleidoscope ($20,
www.kaleidoscope.net) and dress up your desktop in any number of
Boiler Plate™*
crazy costumes. Kaleidoscope themes will completely change your Resdhte get similarly dramatic
Mac’s look—if not your life—and we’re talking from the desktop pattern makeovers for your
down to the cursor. Head to the Kaleidoscope Web site and choose Mac by simply using
from a vast selection—or simply spend your next vacation designing Kaleidoscope.
one of your own. Right now, Kaleidoscope is compatible with Mac OS 7
through 9.1, although the Web site says an OS X version is in the works.
2.Turn Yourself into an Icon
Don’t even bother to redecorate your desktop if you aren’t planning on
doing something with all of those drab folder icons. You wouldn’t give your
house a fresh coat of paint and ignore the trim, would ya? Didn’t think so.
The best way to make your Mac feel like home is to litter yourself, your
friends, your family, or your pets all over the desktop. You can use a
number of icon editors to draw or edit your own, including ResEdit (free,
download from www.resexcellence.com), Ksoft’s CP_IconEdit ($20,
www.ksoft.net), and Craig Hockenberry’s IconBuilder ($29 for Lite Guess who that
version, $69 for Pro version, www.iconfactory.com), a Photoshop filter. is? Don’t wait for
That said, we went with David Catmull’s easy Icon Machine ($25, fate, Tum yourself
www.uncommonplace.com), which gives you all the necessary editing into an icon using
tools to create beautiful icons and doesn’t require that you dirty your {con Machine.
hands mucking with ResEdit.
The less-motivated computer redecorator can skip the do-it-yourself projects by using
premade icons, of which there are many. IconFactory (www.iconfactory.com), the one-
stop shop for everything Icon related, has links fo all kinds of icons, including fish, faces,
and funky folders. Check out the action and tell them MacAddict sent you, and you'll get
absolutely no special treatment whatsoever.
Make Your Own icon
Making icons is easy. Ifyou can hold a pencil in your hand, you can draw an icon of just about anything you want. Making good icons, however,
Tl As If You Didn't Know: To
Feplace an icon, click it and
select Get Info from the File Menu. in
the General Information Box, select the
icon and paste in a replacement icon.
is considerably more difficult. We'll show you how we made an icon of our personality-laden cat, Speak, using Icon Machine,
Step 1. Open Icon Machine and Pues Step 3. When you're
select New Icon from the File ==} done drawing, you
menu to open the program’s need to create the
editing window. The tools in the 2 icon resources that
palette on the left look and act Soa allow your system to
similarly to tools you've probably Ol rae use your image. Do
seen in other artsy programs. IS this by dragging the
Ityou know how to work a pencil, |) — — image in the 32-bit
you should be righé at home here, {| |=] once onto all
of the other empty
Step 2. Grab the penciland start boxes on the right,
drawing, You'll see your Just drag and drop to give
progress reflected in the small your art the resources it
box on the upper-right side needs to become an icon, Wanturciconsicon-sseak Origa [A
(Showing a 32-bit icon preview)
and in the somewhat larger box Step 4. Assign your ‘You'll never become a
in the lower right (a preview of icon active desktop New icon 8N_ | great icon if you don't
pate “ 5 Open. 0 itt
how your icon will look against duty by selecting dose sew | apply yoursel
your en background). i AY Icon © from the Rave es |
You can draw using Apple's fest onhy rae ONE on pk orga BY ‘ile menu, then Save As... 95
recommended icon colors; the choosing the folder Apply Icon To...
standard set of 256 colors; or ‘Wes Speak is black and white, butevery yirere you want your
black and white. Icon can use.a {ittle color. new icon.to appear,
Ven Find Audion 2.1, AppearanceHopper 1.91, ClearSide 2.01, CP_loondit 25, Icon Machine 2.0.1, tconBuilder Pro v2.1, loonographer 2.0.2, DeskPicture 4.5.1, Kaleidoscope 2.3.1,
Carbon:
Cat 28 PPC, Dog 2.1 PPC, MacFishtank 01, Forest
7.2, NekoOnDesKtop 0.92, MenuStrip 1.8, and demos of Intelitews 3.0 and FontLab 21.2 on The Disc,
JUL/01 | MacAddict }35
|
3.Get a New View
You might not have a room with a view, butyou can
change your scenery to suit your mood by replacing your
desktop pattern with a photo, drawing, or pattern (of
course, for the really vain, a flatteringly Photoshopped
picture of yourself is the way to go). Te change your
desktop picture from within the Mac OS itself, just go to
the Appearance control panel, click the Desktop tab,
select Place Picture, and pick the picture you want.
You can even drag a folder full of images onto the
Appearance control panel’s desktop-picture controls,
and your Mac will randomly pick a background image
every time you restart.
For more control over the process, Peirce Software’s
DeskPicture control panel ($20, www.peircesw.com) provides a faster See
route to swapping images and offers editing tools your OS lacks. This Cee | Gee Con
down-and-dirty editor comes with simple tools that letyou cropand || @ ore
resize PICTs, JPEGs, GIFs, and EPS and PhotoCD images directly on your _ miata Been leet
desktop. If your life lacks adventure, you can set the program to change — |} SA Activate (ieranaeia Grats
your desktop photos randomly or at set intervals.
Tons of great sites offer free photos that you can download as dallpaher 14 4g i
ifyou don’t have any of your own. We're guessing that ifyou wanta good: y
underwater photo ofa school of sharks, you'll likely have to borrow one. A
few places to try include MacDesktops (www.macdesktops.com), PixelPoke
(www. pixelpoke.com), and DeskPicture (www.deskpicture.« on. which, has
that shark pic you’re looking for.
Desk Picture =
irce
Configuring DeskPicture to match your screen's
resolution calls up a dialog box that lets you add a
picture. Pick a picture irom anywhere on your
desktop, then just edit and replace.
GheckPictares 2)
[orange blocks
pastel gradient
redare
1548K of mamory being used
4.Give Yourself a Big Hello. eV: z ; ine
Only God, Steve Jobs, and a team of Apple engineers can change your Mac’s startup ‘Mac
tune, but you can add a personal greeting to the routine of booting up with little @G
effort. First, select the Sound control panel from the Apple menu (for pre-OS 9 Bymare
systems, this is the Monitors And Sound control panel). Make sure you have the right | teat
input source selected (a built-in or external mike), then select the Alerts icon. Once H | tem
you've done that, record a greeting—just click New Sound and record yourself saying | a
something like, “Hello, Nikki! You’re wonderful!” Your recorded sound will appear ia
along with Sosumi and Glass in your Alert Sounds list. Close that window, thenopen { i Cate)
the System file inside the System Folder to find the sound you've just created. Drag it ‘You wanna go where everybody knows your name? Would you
into your Startup Items folder, then restart your Mac to get a little self-love. settle for a warm hello from your Mac?
5.Put Everything into Your Own iriting
Anyone who has ever received an old-fashioned letter in the mail knows RE
how much more personal a handwritten message feels than a cold,
typed email. You can give your desktop that signature touch by creating
and using a font in your own handwriting.
Making a font isn’t easy, however. It takes time, patience, and a few
pricey programs, namely Adobe Streamline, Illustrator, and Photoshop
($122, $399, and $609 respectively, www.adobe.com), as well as
Macromedia Fontographer ($349, www.macromedia.com). Why so
many programs? Well, it’s best to draw your letters first, then scan them
using Streamline, touch them up in Photoshop, save them into
Fontographer using Illustrator as a Clipboard of sorts, and then create
the actual font in Fontographer. Sure, you can do everything with
Fontographer, but it is much harder and probably wouldn’t look all that
great. If you've got the tools and the time, check out Chank Diesel’s
tutorial at www.chank.com for a step-by-step how-to on creating fonts
from scratch. The only other commercial font editor available for the
Mac is Pyrus’s FontLab ($399, www.pyrus.com). Again, you can use it as.
a stand-alone, but you may not be happy with the results. Tl
Ifyou don’t have the tools or the time to write your own font, you can
always pay someone to fake your signature—take a look at Alexander
Walter ($99, www.walterware.com) or Chad Johnson ($50 print font, $75
cursive font, www.peret.net/~chadly1/fonts/fonts.htm)).
You can turn your handwriting into a font using Pyrus’s FontLab.
‘As if You Didn't Know: To change the font your system uses to
display lists and icon names, go to the Appearance control panel
and select the Views Font of your choice. You'll need to contact a third
party such as Weedhopper Press's AppearanceHopper 1.9.1 ($9,
www.whpress.com) to change any other system fonts to a specialized font.
36 | MacAdaict| SJUL/OT
6.Make Every Sound Mean Something
Each time you empty the Trash, delete junk you no longer need, or simply press the
spacebar, you can make it a special occasion, complete with its own soundtrack,
Riccardo Ettore’s Sounds4Fun control panel ($14, www.hebel.net/~rettore) tets you
attach sounds to almost any action you can commit with your keyboard. Stock your
system file with sounds, then use SoundsgFun to select an action and match it to the
sound of your choice. You can also use Sounds4Fun to set personalized audio cues
that fet you know when your Finder is finally done loading, when a massive copy job
ends, and when you've gat Caps Lock on. For a new supply of sounds, use the
method we describe in “Give Yourself a Big Hello,” p36, to create your own, or
download them from the Web (for instance, try www.geocities.com/Vienna/7018
/alerts.htm)).
Yo! The Alert Sound Randomizer from ClixSounds ($20 download, $29.95 CD-
ROM, www.clixsounds.com) is similara Sounds4Fun in that it lets you create and set
alert sounds. However, if you buy the CD-ROM version of the program, you also get
more than 1,000 prerecorded sounds to play with.
Do you hear something? Get your Mac to talk back by
assigning sounds to every event using Sounds4Fun.
7.Give Your Desktop the Gift of Life
OK, so your computer greets you personally and your Trash calmly thanks you every time you throw something away,
but despite these personal touches, your little house doesn’t feel quite like a home. The solution? Get a pet!
[a]
cunds 4Fun © 1967-98 Ricoardo Ettore ~ All Rights Reserved
‘you find this program fun enough to keep, please send USBI4 to:
looardo Ettire, 37 Winn Road, Lordon SE12 SEX, England, UK.
Registratlons via Kast also weloome
Tio event Cust playing) fa] [he sauna
+ Alert (Beep) re] [System fe
Inert Floppy Disk fey | Droplet ry
Eject Floppy Disk fe | Hello nic
lnsert oD Hello Sean
Ejtot 0D | |_inaigo
Disk with bad sectors is inserted] | | iTivabeenialtinatorai
Unreadable dik Is inserted Once
Floppy Disk Swap Request Simple Beep
[sehen fitting ther Trash oan 7 ‘Sosumt
‘Yhen emptying te Trash || | Wi ep ie
startup y :
Finder has leaded (| Sizer 3140
Restart as
pea File: System te
Spacebar Is pressed |
Return key is pressed | ——— =
Tokay i prernt FI
ete key iz pressed
Basra beccey Fe] (_Resster.._} [ Preferences.
True caregivers will love BrightChick ($10, www.kagi.com/mushroomsoftware), a
virtual baby chick that you must feed, water, pet, and play with just to keep it
clucking. The little chickadee takes up almost no space and is adorably addictive.
However, if you're looking to adopt a lower-maintenance pet, download StimpSoft’s
Cat.app 2.8 of Dog.app 2.1 (free, www.stimpsoft.com). The disembodied dog and
cat heads bark, purr, and occasionally belch. For those of you who are neither dog,
They bark, they meow, they belch. norcat, nar chick people, there’s always the MacFishTank (free, www.wildcatsw Wild Cat Software's
Stimpsoft’s Catapp and Dog.app —_.com). Goofy green fish take over your desktop and tum it into cartoon aquarium. MacFishTank is fabulously
are figureheads with attitude. fishy freeware.
8.Lose That Smirky Startup Screen
Like most Mac users, you probably have atonof ff > 7 Text Properties)
mysterious extensions that take forever to load, Caption:
forcing you to spend more time staring at that [Welcome Nikki and Sean
crooked, smirking Mac startup screen than you Font:
spend with your own wife or husband. Don’t put sire: [7 Pesto: 8
up with it—change it! You can create your own
startup screen with a personalized welcome
message using Azine Software's ClearSide 2.0,1
($10, azinesw.macos.net).
Allyou do is select
Designer from the
File menu, paste your
image directly onto the
template, type a short
message, and then save
changes when you quit. The
next time you start up,
yau’ll be looking at a piece
of your own work.
Ifyou’d rather download
some predesigned startup
screens, ResExcellence has
an extensive collection. OF
Course, ifyou go that route, azine Software's bare-bones ClearSide editor lets you create
you must be preparedt© 3 new startup screen using your own words and pictures.
edit your System file with
ResEdit~a potentially hazardous occupation. Still, if you're willing to face the risk,
the actual hack is pretty simple. (For more information on howto do this, see “Hack
Your Mac,” Apr/oo, p30.)
Color
Mac OS X Users,
Over Here!
We didn't forget about you. There just weren’t a whole lot
of desktop-decorating tools out there for Mac OS X as of
press time. But don’t despair—eager shareware developers
are working right now to bring you icon editors, funky
backgrounds, and kooky accessories to personalize your
new operating system. In the meantime, try on one of
these for size;
1. MenuStrip 1.5 ($12, www.MacPowerUser.com) enables
you to adjust high-traffic settings such as volume and
resolution quickly without leaving the menu bar at the top
of your screen.
2. Iconographer ($15, www.mscape.com) allows you to
edit icons for Mac OS X—as well as earlier operating
systems. It doesn’t, however, run natively in the new
OS—not yet.
3. Forest ($10 for 6 worlds, $19.95 for 15 worlds,
www.macunicorn.com) lets you relax to the soothing
‘sounds of nature in different worlds, replicating outdoor
environments that range from the rustling of trees to the
crashing thunder of a summer storm.
4, NekoOnDesktop 0.91 (free,
www.lisai.net/~hamada/Acti/MacOSX) lets you raise a
litter of one to five
desktop kitties who frolic, You don’t even have
Sleep, and get sick all to scoop kitty litter
over your screen. for your Neko cats.
JUL/O1 | MacAdgict|37
Serenity Now!
You can base your desktop décoron
anything from your favorite colorto.
an uncontrollable sushi fixation, but
ifyou want to create a motif that's
simultaneously soothing and
productive, consider using feng shui
design principles. This ancient
Chinese philosophy of creating
harmony through the balance of
energy, or chi, offers guidelines for
decorating homes and offices
soas to promote health, fortune, and
happiness. You can do the same for
your Mac by following these five feng
shui principles. ’
1. Don’t let bad chi sneak up behind
you. Ifyou can, setup yourcomputer
so you're facing the door or looking
outward. If you're stuck staring at the
walls, attach a mirror to the wall orto
your computer so you can see any
trouble that might be coming.
2. Keep your working area and your
desktop clean, Clutter prevents the
movement of energy and can block
your chi. If you’re in a rut, this may
be why. Throw away all of those
Post-it Notes junking up your monitor _
and keep track of to-dos digitally.
You'll find an assortment of great
shareware organizers at TUCOWS
(www.tucows.com), a fully stocked
shareware library with an incredible
Mac section.
3. Throw out the old to make way for
the new, Get rid of old programs, files,
and folders. Feng shui followers
believe cleaning house makes space
for new opportunities you might not
even know exist.
4, Choose your desktop colors wisely,
Red and gold (yes, a dark yellow would
suffice) used together are supposedly
very lucky; green brings prosperity;
blue inspires tranquility; and too much
black, not surprisingly, can leave you
feeling, well, depressed.
5. Keep it simple. Too many conflicting
design elements will distract and
unsettle you. Flashy icons, talking
Trash Cans, and crazy Kaleidoscope
schemes can cteate a battle of energy
that leaves you exhatisted.
9.Treat Your MP3
Player to a “Face” Lift
Odds are good that if you breathe air, live on the planet
Earth, and use a computer, you've also downloaded an
MP3 ortwo during your lifetime. While there are a ton of
MP3 players, Panic’s Audion 2.1 ($19.95 for player only,
$32.95 for player and encoder, www.panic.com) is the
best marriage of fashion and function. Sure, iTunes
(www.apple.com) is free, but you can’t change how it
looks unless you’re handy with ResEdit, and even then
you can only do so much. While Casady & Greene's
Soundjam MP Plus player ($39.95, www.soundjam.com)
allows you to swap in new skins, many of them are
downright ugly.
Truly superficial types will go nuts over Audion’s ability
to swap “faces” faster than Hannibal Lechter in the midst
ofa breakcut. Just hit Panic’s Web site and download a
premade face, or locate the link to the Audion Faces
eGroup, a support group of sorts that will help you
construct your own face. Also, as of press time, Panic had
a public-release version of Audion 2.1 for Mac OS X. And,
according to the guys
at Panic, future
versions of Audion
(which may be out by
the time you read
this) will feature a
face editor that allows
you to create the art
in Photoshop (instead
of having to mess
with ResEdit).
The matrix is real, Neo, and we're using it
to play our favorite MP3s!
No ifs, ands, or oinks about it—Audion’s
pig face makes for a clever disguise.
An apple a day keeps
your MP3 player
Even Judy Jetson chugging away.
would be jealous of this
space-age face.
10.Read Only the News That’s News to You
You can tum your desktop into a virtual news network programmed to meet your specific interests with
the help of Aladdin Systems’ intelliNews ($20, www.aladdinsys.com). intelliNews installs a movable
strip that you can dock anywhere onscreen, featuring customizable channels that include headlines,
stocks, sports, weather, and movies—all of which you can set to update as often as every 15 seconds.
You can use IntelliNews to track stocks, scrounge up headlines from your favorite news sites, deliver
local weather updates, and tell you when the new Steven Soderbergh flick is playing at your local
theater. It’s all about you, baby.
py “, r
Bae Ae aa & : ec 1
IntelliNews’ strip of searchable channels gives you only news you can use, and takes up hardly any space to boot.
Nikki Echler McDonald is a fornier MacAddict editor who collects $50 bills, sushi icons, and rare desktop pattems.
38) MacAaddict| JUL/01
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Lost in the great outdoors?
A Visor might save your lite,
by Jack Miller
hat sets the
Handspring Visor
apart from other PDAs is its
Springboard expansion slot, that
magical little gateway into the world of truly versatile
handheld computing. You know the drill; just pop in
amodule, and presto—your organizer is now a digital
camera, or a mobile phone, or a tactical nuclear device.
That’s the hype, anyway.
To put the vaunted Springboard architecture through
its paces, MacAddict devised the ultimate test: send an
unsuspecting writer into the frozen New England
wilderness in the middle of winter armed with nothing
but the barest human essentials, a Handspring Visor Prism
($449, www.handspring.com), and a slew of add-ons
carefully chosen to maximize the chances of survival.
In its hunt for the perfect survivor, MacAddict somehow
settled on me—a certified couch potato with no sense of
direction who generally regards nature as that stuff on
public television where a big cat turns a gazelle into a Snak
Pak. | guess if / can use a Visor to survive in the woods,
anyone can. The journal entries on the following pages
document the harrowing tale of what transpired when
nature, technology, and the outdoors-challenged collided.
JUL/O1 | MacAadict | 41
The Survival Utility Beit
ability to record movies.) This is
what | used to visually document
my journey.
al ere’s a breakdown of the
survival gear we assembled
for this death-defying trip into the
heart of darkness:
Geode GPS module
($289, www.
geodiscovery,
com). Digital
map with a live,
constantly
updated “You are
here” marker.
eyemodule digital camera
($129.95, www.eyemodule.com).
Tums any Visor into a digital
camera capable of capturing full-
color 320-by-240-pixel images.
(The eyemodule2 is now available
with 640 by 480 support and the
hat sort of ' leg should | tackle? A slightly more
W ‘outdoorsy type might opt for the challenge of a weeklong
naked and barefoot charge up Mount Everest with nothing
but a hunting knife and a length of string. |, on the other hand, rarely
venture out in daylight untess I’m out of coffee or the house is on fire.
Also, | frequently get lost trying to find the upstairs bathroom. As such,
{decided to face my own mortality by plunging headlong into...the
woods across the street from my house!
Hey, come on, they're spooky! I've lived in this place for a year and
a half now, and | haven't set foot in those woods once. On top of that,
any forest outing during a New England winter bears the potential for
frostbite, hypothermia, and ensuing hilarity. So show a little respect,
The Journey Begins
10:15 a.m. Time for last-minute preparations. Springboard modules,
check; strawberry-flavored rations, check; mortal fear of the unknown,
check. With one tap | back up my Visor to the Backup Moduleandhbid.
farewell to my loving fiancée, Katie.
10:45 a.m. Here it is: the menacing shade
of our local forest preserve. Will l emerge
as a ruddy mountain man at one with the
natural world, or will wild skunks drench:
me in the foul stench of defeat before
| tearing the flesh from my bones? Only
time wilitell.
ThE paint of no return,
It's All Fun.until
Someone Loses an Eye
14:15 a.m. Bored. Concluding that Thoreau
Was far too easily amused, | bust out the
i survival gear for.a quick entertainment fix.
Backup module ($39.95, www
-handspring.com). Backs up and
restores yout Visor info in minutes
with a mere tap of the stylus.
MinijJam MP3
module with 64MB
multimedia card ($259,
www.innogear.com). Freezing to
death in a snowdrift? An hour's,
worth of tunes helps dull the pain. Pocket Express Entertainment
Pack ($39.99, www.pocketexpress
.com). Eight games to keep your
mind off your impending demise,
including Tetris Classic and Lode
Runner: The Legend Returns. Now
that's survival gear!
OmniSky Minstrel S wireless
modem and service ($299, $39.95
per month, www.omnisky. com).
Stay tethered to the Net even when
there’s no phone line around.
12:45 p.m. My carpal tunnels bear
evidence that the Visor’s buttons
aren't ergonomically designed for
game use. An extended Tetris
Session in subfreezing weather may
have been unwise.
Tetris makes everything okay—
until it makes things worse,
12:25 p.m. The pain worsens. | seem fo recall hearing something
about aspirin deriving from some form of tree bark; should | gnaw ona
tree until the pain in my wrists subsides? A quick check in the Medical
Letter Handbook of Adverse Drug Interactions reveals that mixing baby
aspirin and cocaine can lead to fetal renal failure, but I'm neither
pregnant nor a cokehead, so | go for it. Now, let’s see—which of these
trees looks most like aspirin?
12:40 p.m. Helpful hint: IFyou're
going to gnaw ona tree, make sure
you've got some dental floss handy
fox all those splinters. Wrists feel a
little. better, though.
‘Two words: Needs salt.
Hungry Like the Wolf
4:15 p.m. This strenuous bout of game-piaying and tree-chewing has
given mea rumbly in my tumbly. | prepare for a Twizzlers sugar boost
but am beset by the ultimate disaster: They're stale! What to do?
These twizzlers are all! have to keep me from turning into a one-man
Donner Party. It may be time to tum to the Net for help.
1:30 p.m, | set up the OmniSky wireless module, and I'm now
surfing the Web with Bluelark’s Blazer
aa FOU CuK ial,
MAPBLAST!
browser (free, www.bluelark,com).
Maybe the best course of action is to
tart a
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