MacAddict 075 200211

> Reviewed: New Power Mac, 17-inch iMac, 20GB iPod, Xserve SEs 5 www.macaddic' MacAdciict SPECIAL HANDS-ON REPORT: NEW MAC & JAGUAR Inside the New Power Macs TESTED: Speed That Will Blow Your Mind DISSECTED: What Makes Them So Fast Living With OS 10.2 Jaguar EXPLAINED: Feature-Filled and Fun to Use ANALYZED: Expensive? Yeah, But Worth It ATIE MA ENTERTAINMENT EXPERIENCE — How to make your Mac the heart of your home entertainment center. BLOG ON! Foist your righteous opinions on the world with your own OS X Weblog. Supporting the Mac aficionado since 1987 We know Mac! Rely on Mac Warehouse for: ¢ Our Experience 15 years, 34 million orders fulfilled © Our Knowledge You have a question, we have the answer * Our Service We're open for business whenever you call Oh, and our 24/7 Tech Support is FREE for the lifetime of your product. cence Mac Warehouse has. all the latest technology, including the new Apple iMac® G4 with 17-inch display and the EPSON Stylus C82 InkJet printer! macwarehouse.com We have the Mac you want — and more! Call us today. MAC WAREHOUSE Ss. Epson =6« AN SONY, C]D cc 1-888-769-8169 FEATURES 20 The New Power Macs: Inside and Out Dual processors, dual Level 3 caches, dual hard-drive buses, dual RAID capability, dual display ports, dual optical-drive bays—the all-new, all-dual Power Mac G4s are here, and we show you all the techie geeky good stuff inside. by Rik Myslewski re te , _24 Up Close and - Personal with Jaguar Debating whether to spend $129.0n Mac OS 10.2 (aka Jaguar) oron 13 six-packs of Sapporo Premium Draft? Then check out vy our in-depth, hands-on guide. We love beer as much as we as love the Mac, so you can trust our opinions to be unbiased. by Niko Coucouvanis, Cathy Lu, and lan Sammis > ae 30 Your Mac may already be the hub of your digital life, but it can also be the core of your home-entertainment center. We show you the latest TV tuners, wide-screen monitors, projectors, and speakers. by Kristina De Nike Our swii gin’ MacBachelor M: HOW TO 60; Learn how to use FSCK, haw to transfer fonts to Mac OSX, and how to rub out red-eye. Also, protect your Mac from lightning, rid your Dock of that pesky question mark, and more. by Buz Zoller NOVEMBER2002 [E#&:- NO.75*VOLUME7*ISSUET1 ear eer pee ance eecuaaemesnenmeneenme | 62 Captain's Biog, Star Date 2002... ON THE COVER Looking for a new dub-dub-dub home now that your Mac.com site has self-destructed? We show you how to create a Weblog site and serve it up via Mac OS X. by Todd Stauffer 66 Though American Idol contestants have nothing to fear, you can make your Mac sing anything. We show you how. by Kris Fong aoe Photograph byMarkMadeo “Stairway to Heaven’ — ‘Highway to Heli”—the choice is yours. November 2002 MacAddict 03 EVERY MONTH 8 He’s been a good buddy for over 18 years, and now he’s unemployed. 10 Apple’s busily gobbling up juicy software companies—but why? Small-business owners will delight in a new version of QuickBooks for Mac. Boarders will be stoked about a new shareware snowboarding game. Gamers will go gaga over ail the Macs at QuakeCon. Plus we bring you wireless cafes, AOL for X, and more. 39 45 ‘MP3 player 52 ‘scanner 50 a first.person shooter 54 Co keyboard 55 C speaker system 55 flash-memory drive 40 Dua c) G4 tower 46 Trecorder at ‘small-business accounting 48 w j art-synthesis software 54 Hifi USB home-stereo connector 53 iMac all-in-one Mac 46 TV recorder 49 VST audio plug-ins 42 real-time strategy game 44 office productivity suite 43 1U rack-mount server 56 The best of the best from recent reviews. If the editors of MacAddict went shopping, this is what we'd buy. 94 Max meets ferret lovers, accordion addicts, and office torturers. ME BIG TRO causes big trouble. You vent your vehemence about .Mac, and the Ultimate MacAddict Quiz humbles the hubris of a few. 95 Put your design skills to the test. Here’s your chance to design a T-shirt and win a brand-new Power Mac G4. 96 Jaguar. The name of the newest version of Mac OS X conjures up images of power and grace—but what other names did Apple's marketing gurus consider? 04 MacAddict November 2002 QUICK TIPS ..drom this month's issue. Find files fast. OS X's Go To The files faster than navigating throug our folder forest. From “Create and Serve Your Own High-End Blog,” p62 Solve your drinking problem. If spilt milk—or coffee or beer- has cost you more than a couple of replacement keyboards, the silicon-cast, water-resistant, and totally washable CoolMac Keyboard can help. From Reviews, p54 Personalize your iChat icon. You can use any image as your iChat icon- simply drag the image file onto the existing icon, and iChat will resize it for you From “Up Close (rctcc and goion ts buoge and Personal with Jaguar,” p24 Use OS X’s built-in disk utility. From ithe Terminal, you can use the FSCK Unix command as a Norton Disk Doctor alternative to check and repair your file system. From Ask Us, p60 ave Get instruments cheap. Don't have the cash for real musical instruments or audio sampi A $15 copy of Melody Assistant buys you an orchestra, arock band, and then some. From “Make Your Mac Sing,” p66 Change your desktop automagically: In Jaguar, you can on your desktop to > lange images as often as you want From “Up Close and Personal with Jaguar,” p24 stretch your imagination ~ ™Ultima CD The CRW-F1 With Exclusive DiscT@2 Technology ) With its innovative design, Yamaha's all new CRW-F1 compliments the style and appeal of any contemporary Mac. Engineered for easy connectivity via FireWire, SCSI and USB 2.0, the CRW-F1 delivers reliable performance, high quality and top speed CD recording with whisper quiet operation. Among its long list of impressive new features, CRW-F1's revolutionary DiscT@2™ Laser Labeling Systern stands out as the world’s only laser based "tattoo" system to etch graphics and text onto eliminating the need for labs discs, 3. Next, enter the exclusive new Advan Audio Master ©2002 Yamaha Electronics Corporation, Mu Quality Recording System and discover Yamaha's studio quality advantage. Add in the industry first Ultra Speed ReWrite, triple-guarded SafeBum technology, Roxio's award winning Toast 5 Lite, Adobe Photoshop LE, and a live recording mode, and you will discover why critics herald the CRW-F1 as the most complete CD Recorder in the World! Whether you use OS 9 or OSX, an iBook, an iMac, ora G4 Tower, let Yamaha CRW-F1's extraordinary features and technologies take you to a world with infinite possibilities and where stretching your imagination is just the beginning... YAMAHA 4 CONTENTS a better machine. a better magazine. Photo To Movie 1.0.5 If Apple’s slide-show screen saver lights your fire, you'll go totally up in flames when you create a movie by zooming and panning over a digital photo with this way-cool app. theDisc 59 UNSUNG HEROES Not all the great apps available for your great Mac are from companies with megamillion-dollar marketing budgets. On this month’s Disc we give you dozens of utilities, games, graphics, and productivity apps that you may never have heard of—but that you're sure to make part of your daily Macsperience. groBoto 1.6 Trial This 3D art-synthesis app involves some tricky physics under the hood, but to you it’s a powerful, versatile, and just plain fun tool for creating organic-looking image: Eyeballs—those friendly menu-bar eyes that followed your cursor in the days of old—are back for Mac OS X. Cuppa reminds you when to take the teabag out of your cup. Useful? Maybe. Fun? Definitely. This month the MacAddict Army continues its tour of Mac Expo New York 2002, including a Steve sighting at the opening of the trés chic weary) Oe) iHam on IRye 1.1.1 (Classic) iHam on iAye 1.1.1 (OS X) Melody Assistant 6.0.5 Melody Assistant X 6.0.5 MetroGnome 0.1.5 (OS X) Peak 3.1 tral Stave Jobs 1.2.1 (OS 9) Stave Jobs 1.2.1 (OS X) DEVELOPMENT MySQL 3.23.51 (OS MySQL 3.23.51 (Jaguar) PMachineFree 2.1 REALbasic 4.5 tral REALbasle 4.5 (OS X) tra! FUN & GAMES Bag of Unusual Strategy Games 1.1 (Osx) BridgePro 1,0,0.13 tre! Cave Dig 3 1.1 Change My Image 1.0.3 demo Fakle Flair Challenge 1.0 Fakle Flait Challenge 1.0.2 (OS X) Gravitass 1.01 (OS X) Marathon Resutrection b1.2 Slope Rider 1.0.1 Tiger's Eye Pub 1.1 06 MacAddict November 2002 theList AUDIO & MUSIC GRAPHICS & MULTIMEDIA Harmony Assistant 8.0.5 Aquatint 1.0.1 (OS X) Harmony Assistant X 8.0.5 AXELedge 1.5.3 sal ‘Can Combine {cons 3.0.4 (OS X) groBoto 1.6 tra! ‘Microcosm demo Photo To Movie 1,0.5 (OS X) Virtlx Sample Effects 2 INTERFACE BigFoot 2.0 (OS X) Eyeballs 2.1 (OS X) Sné (OS X) WeatherPop Advance 1.4 (0S x) INTERNET & COMMUNICATION Caem 4.0.6 ‘Caom 4.0.6 (05 X) Internet Explorer 5.2.1 (OS X) ‘MacSniffer 1.061 (OS X) Netscape 6.2.3 (0S X) PRODUCTIVITY Accountedge 2 trial AccountEdge 2 (OS X) tia! BBEdit 6.5.2 demo (etait Manhattan Apple store. Biaze 1.5 Blaze 1.5.3 (OS X) Cuppa 1.0.1 (OS X) Haxtal TextEdit 1.1 Office v. X tesrerve ThinkFree Oflce 1.7.2 tal ThinkFree Office 2 (OS X) tie! UTILITIES Mactracker 1.7.1 ‘Mactracker 1.7.1 (OS X) Merger 1.0.3 (0S X) Perfboard 2.1 (OS X) ReKey 1.0 (0S X) ‘Scrapper 0.6 (OS X) System Optimizer X 3.1 VueScan 7.5.43 SPONSORS DriveSavers: Commercial mask, LLC: BridgePro 1,0.013 tral MYOB: AccountEdge 2 trai MYOB: AccountEdge 2 (OS X) rah REAL Software: REALbasic 4.5 rial REAL Software: REALbasic 4.5 (08 X) tat MacAdcict THE TEAM PUBLISHER Don Kimenker EDITOR IN CHIEF Rik Myslewskt EDITORIAL, MANAGING EDITOR Jenifer Morgan EXECUTIVEEDITOR Cathy Lu SEMOR EDITORS Kris Fong, Narests Rebbepragada (news) ASSOCIATE EDITOR Nike Coucouvanis (reviews) RESIDENT SANDALWEARER Cyrus Farivar EPONYMEDIIOR Max CONTREUTNG EDITORS Rat Anzovin, Steven Anzovin, Joseph O, Holmes, Frank O'Connor, Angus Paicean, lan ‘Sammis, Deborah Shadovitz, Andrew Tokuda, Buz Zoller ART ART DIRECTOR Christopher Imlay ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR Leslie Brown Osborn PHOTOGRAPHER Mark Nadeo PRODUCTION PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Richard Lesovoy PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Hans Hunt ADVERTISING REGIONAL AD MANAGER Michelle Paredes. SENIOR ACCOUNTS MANAGER, DIRECTSALES Ana Epstein AD COORDINATOR Jose Urrutia. SENIOR MARKETING MANAGER Allson MeCreory CIRCULATION. GROUP CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Tina Radich NEWSSTAND MARKETING MANAGER Mimi Hall BILLING AND RENEWAL MANAGER Robyn Patty FULFILLMENT MANAGER Angela Martinez DIRECT MARKETING SPECIALIST Mary Nicklin 1e Media, Inc. 150 North Hill Drive, Brisbane, CA 94005 (CHIEF EXECUTIVE/FUTURE NETWORK Greg Ingham PRESIDENT Jonathan Simpson-Bint \VP/EDITORIA. DIRECTOR Matt Firme \VP/CFO Tor Valentino VPIGROULATION Holiy Klingel \VP/HUMAN RESOLRCES Steve Leitman GENERAL COUNSEL Charles Schug PUBLISHING DIRECTOR. Simon Whitcombe DIREGTOR OF MARKETING Mary LaChapelle DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL SERVICES Nancy Durlester Imagine Media inc. is part of The Future Network pic. Future was founded in the UK in 1985, Today it publishes over 60 ‘specialist consumer 35 worldwide. its the leading [publisher cf video games and home-computing magazines in the UK and Italy. The company also licenses 37 of is titles, resulting In over 60 local editions in a further 22 counties. Future employs: ‘more than 1,000 people In offices in Bath, London, San. Francisco, New York, Paris, and Milan. The Company Is isted on the London Stock Exchange (symbol FNET). ‘Tel +44 1225 442244 + www.thefuturenetwork:plo.uk Media With Passion Bath, London, Millar, New York, Paris, San Francisco REPRINTS: For reprints, contact AMS at 717-399-1900. ‘SUBSCHIPTION QUERIES: Fiease email medoustserv@cdsfulfiiment.com or call ‘customer service tol-free at 888-771-6222, Volume 7, Issue 11 Mesiciaiot (SSN 1006 5460 6 ub sed rion by Imagine Media, Inc., 150 North Hi Dr, Brisbane, CA USA, Periocical-lass postage paid at Brisbane, sccnicnal naing oftes. Nowsctarc cise laon ls handled by Curtis Circulation Co. Basic subseriotion rates: one year (12 Issues + 12 CD-ROMs) US. $39.90, Canada $43.95, US. Sepa unl on Canaan price includes postage anc GST j2aganens, eM Oe, Ouse he US, ard Cada pee is $5806, US, pwepai funds ony POSTHAST teatona Changes MacAGtlst BO, box 8120, Haan TA 1593-0828. Imagine Media, nc, also publishes Maximu7? PC, PC Gamat Oficial XBox Magazine and PSM. Enlire conterts copytght 2002, magine Media, ne. Al ights reserved, Feproduction in whole orn paris prohibited, Imagine Media, Inc. is not affitated with the companies or products covered in MacAdvict, Ride-Along enclosed in the folowing editions: AS. B, Bt, B2, B3, Ba, B5 PRODUCED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Nothing will be safe. Not a memo. Not a note, Not ‘the tags on every piece of luggage you own. With CorelDRAW® Graphics Suite I, we can’t blame you for wanting to design every single thing that pops into your mind. Reshape objects freely with pressure-sensitive Roughen and Smudge brushes. Mask complex shapes in one step with an ingenious new CutOut tool. Minimize and reuse design elements with new Symbols support. COREL" cooKsEs ioe CREAM All while you see exactly what you're doing in real time with the help of Live Effects. Even if what you're doing is getting a little carried away. Corel PHOTO-PAINT? Corel RAVES and the winner of over 350 industry awards, CorelDRAW* Take a closer look at www.corel.com/graphicssuitel| or go to www.corel.com/resellers to find out where you can get it. Available for Windows® XP and Mac? OS X. enjoy what you do: WAREHOUSE graphic design photo editing web graphics animation MacConnection 4 Good-bye to a Buddy e immediately noticed he was gone. How could we not? We'd known him for over 18 years, and now he was nowhere to be found. Gone, Solid gone, My 14-year-old daughter, Rox, was with me at the time. Her first reaction was confusion. Then disbelief. Then anger. “it’s like losing a national icon,” she fumed. “No, it’s not like losing a national icon, it is losing a national icon! What if McDonald's golden arches were changed into little blue lumps? It’s like that. It’s like ifthe president moved out of the White House. It’s like if ‘Smokey the Bear were an otter!” Although Rox’s last simile threw me for a bit of a loop, | shared her shock. Rox continued: “| have a relationship with my Mac, and when | see that it’s happy, I’m happy. When | tum on my Mac and it makes that ‘ch-woo!’ startup sound, and | see the little Happy Mac, he makes me smile.” Sorry, Rox, but the Happy Mac is gone. As of August 24, 2002, and the introduction of Mac OS 10.2 (better known as Jaguar), Apple has STAFF RANTS Narasu Niko Coucouvanis Kris Fong Rebbapragada Antiobfuscationist Spotted Sourpuss Dally Affirmation Editor a . s Happy hooza wuzze? Nothing—MeDonald’s ‘The reassurenos. Every We been running sucks! Oh, we're talking time | tured on my Mac, Jaguar for weeks now ° about the startup thing? the Happy Mac said, “'m OK, You's OK." retired—or fired—its longtime symbol. It doesn’t matter which—an old friend is gone from the Mac’s startup sequence, Exactly 18 years, 7 months, and 2 days after that red-shorted athlete tossed her sledgehammer into Big Brother's face, a silvergray Apple icon has replaced the Happy Mac. Rox again: “They should switch it back. Everybody already knows what the international sign of Apple is: It’s like, well, an apple—like, duh! So why deprive people of the Happy Mac’s happiness?” | don’t know, Rox. Sure, the Mac's design has changed drastically since the Happy Mac first appeared, We've come a long way from undistinguished beige or gray (uh, platinum) boxes. The Mac’s operating system no longer lives ina little 9-inch, 512-by-342-pixel monochrome screen—and l'll take a gorgeously Aquafied 1,920-by-1,200-pixel Apple Cinema HD Display over that tiny one-bit prison any day of the week, Butstill... The Happy Mac's job has changed as well. His role is no longer defined by his evil twin, the Sad Mac, whose crossed eyes, arcane codes, and Chimes of Death signaled big trouble, Mac OS X's harbinger of doom is the well-named kernel panic—and for my money, a screen tom apart by DOS-style error commands is far more effectively daunting than any panic the Sad Mac could ever induce. The Happy Mac, to be honest, is no longer needed. But still... I'm going to miss the lil’ guy. His grin has greeted me on manya morning and has jump-started my day. Sure, it’s comy, and sure, it’s sentimental—but hey, I'm a Mac addict, and I'm passionate about that pile of plastic, silicon, glass, and metal with which | share every day of my life. 1 know how you feel, Rox. I'll miss the Happy Mac, too. It’s hard to say good-bye to a buddy.—Rik Myslewski Max Hi miss his carefree insouciance—'m just glad he wasn't replaced by a grinning Stevie the J. ® Lesile Osborn Knee Jerk Happy Mac remains with me as tong as) ‘A Happy Days Mac with a picture of the Fonz. Asaay! 08 MacAddict November 2002 and my Mac is just as happy as ever. But realy, this anthropomorphization thing Is getting out of hand, How about an integrated coffeemaker se lean stick around and watch my Mac start up instead of pressing the power button on my way into the kitchen for a caffeine fix? Cathy Lu z aes Jaguar Wrangler ‘The Happy Mac wes calming, a sign that ‘everything was good inthe world (and ‘on my Mac, of course). Ii miss that dally reassurance. I'l probably have to start taking Prozac now. ‘An unhappy PC. Il miss its reassuring grin that seemed to ‘say, “What did you expect—the bomb?” ‘An Aquatied version of Clarus the Dogcow that rolls over when you try to tip it. Or maybe Chester the Cheetah could be tured away fram his Cheetos contract. Jenifer Morgan ‘aka Jeni Jetson Not so much; twas kind of a square, you know? ‘Afood-item manu interlace where | could order authentic-tasting Organic Twinkies, the ‘creamy filing infused with folic acid, crushed flax seed, and 12 other essential vitamins and minerals. remain in my old-school Classic world. ‘Thanks, Quark! How ’bout a Mood-o-Meter, ‘0 let me know how much my ‘puter feels like ‘working at the beginning of each day. ‘Since Jaguar is so speedy, though, we ‘may have a few differences of opinion. Especially on Fridays, Chris Imlay ‘Needs a Vacation The fact that it wasn't always happy. | could relate to its ‘mood swings. Uke the new gray Apple logo with the 007 bomb timer just fine. | even wish they would replace thet new lollipop beach ball with it. PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARK MADEO ft? Office v, X lets Mac users effortlessly open, edit, and Save any Office file, to make PGs a breeze. Complete with easy-to-use, exclusi lac tools that simplify complex tasks. And it's built for MacsOS X, so it's the most reliable, easygoing Office yet. : O fice mac [Go> www.officeformac.com to download a free 30-day trial of Office v. X today. CoE IN the news of the mi th in bite-size chunks BUYING INTQ THE BIG LEAGUES Apple Acquires Pro Entertainment Compan quietly snapping up high-end video lat companies for the past 18 months. These barely publicized acquisitions may seem insignificant on their own, but taken as a group, they show that Apple is going after big-time entertainment in a big way. APPLE'S SHOPPING BAG Apple began its multimedia-buying spree in April 2001 with Focal Point Systems. Apple used Focal Point’s FilmLogic to develop its Cinema Tools ($999) add-on for Final Cut Pro 3. While Apple owns the DV-editing market, it’s now going after filmmakers who pple (www.apple.com) has been A1S FOR ACQUISITION February 2002 April 2001 July 2001 software. oe @ les use higher-end digital and film formats. Cinema Tools ups Final Cut Pro’s 24-fps editing capabilities with film cut lists and 24-frame edit-decision lists for high-definition video. In July 2001, Apple acquired Spruce Technologies and its DVD-authoring tools for $14.9 million in cash. While Spruce’s products were Windows only, presumably Apple has incorporated or will incorporate them into its own iDVD ($19.95 upgrade) and DVD Studio Pro ($999) products. In February 2002, Apple shook up the postproduction world and acquired Nothing Real and its Shake product for $15 million in cash, A high-speed compositing software for June 2002 Apple buys Focal | Apple buys Spruce | Apple buys Nothing | Apple buys DVFonts | Apple buys Silicon | Apple buys Apple buys eMagic Point Systems for | Technologies for its} Real, which and India Protitiing | Grail, whose Zayante for its and its popular its FilmLogic DVD-authoring tools. } produces the software from Rayz compositing _ | FireWire device professional audio film-editing tool. Shake compositing | Prismo Graphics. | software competes _| technologies. software, Logic with Shake. high-resolution special effects, Shake has been used in the production of Hollywood blockbusters like The Lord of the Rings, Gladiator, and Titanic. Apple recently announced Shake 2.5 ($4,950) for Mac OS X, which should be available by the time you read this. june, 2002, Apple Bought a ee its ant ia va @ Apple also en Silicon Grail, which created the Chalice 2D film-compositing tool and the Rayz compositor. A Shake competitor, Rayz also offers effects and color-correction tools for Hollywood movies. In June Apple also bought Zayante, whose software provides FireWire connectivity for hardware devices. Apple paid a total of $21 million for the acquisition of these three companies. Apple's latest acquisition, announced in July 2002, is the German audio-software company eMagic, whose Logic Audio software is popular among professional musicians. Apple bought eMagic for $30 million in cash, So why would Apple invest upward of $80 million in niche video and audio companies? Given Apple’s reported $1.24 billion in cash in the third fiscal quarter of 2002, the expense wasn’t huge, and what Apple gets out of it may be well worth the cost. July 2002 Audio. QUICKBOOKS REVAMPED New 5.0 Version Finally Announced Fame firsttime since 1996, Intuit will release a new version of QuickBooks for Mac ($179.95 expected price, www .quickbooks.com) in early 2003. Despite its lack of development, QuickBooks Pro 4.0 for Mac ($199.95) has been the best- selling accounting software for the Mac until recently, when MYOB became the number-one provider of Mac accounting software with its FirstEdge ($99, www .myob.com/us) and AccountEdge ($249) products. There’s no word yet on what new features to expect. 10 MacAddict November 2002 ALL GAMER i New Titles for Mobile Phones New cell phones with fast data-download times, cole this.—Carrie Shepherd CALLING Stop yakking and start playing. screens, and even joysticks SPRINT www.sprint.com/mr Requirements: 3G-enabled PCS phone Price: Not available yet Flicky As a bluebird, you must rescue baby chicks from the evil Meow. World Wrestling Entertainment Mobile Madness Punch, kick, spin, and body-slam World Wrestling Entertainment superstars. Sega Monkey Ball This popular GameCube game has you guiding a sphere-encased monkey. S lor are ripe for gamers on the go. bananas and These cool games should be avoid pitfalls available by the time you read in Sega Monkey Ball. MotoGP Cybiko is the safe way to drive with your cell phone. > ACCORDING 70 NIELSEN/NETRATINGS, 702 GET INFO PERCENY OF MAC USERS ONLINE HAVE A- COLUEGE OR BOSTGRABUATE DEGRE OMPARED PEREEN NO MORE WINDOWS For one thing, Apple can now ensure that Windows users will never see another new version of these products again, a fact that has many in the industry hopping mad. While Apple will support existing versions of Shake, 2, an ic Au other Ge ee, ha ne\ development will appear only on the Mac—and only in Mac OSX. Apple can now drive the adoption of key Mac OS X technologies like Core Audio, whose Audio Units plug-in architecture is a brand-new way for developers to create standardized plug- ins compatible with all Mac OS X audio applications. (See “Core Audio Is King,” (: sector. A » the lead Michael Gartenberg, research director of Jupiter Research—think Apple will keep the tools as separate software packages. “We're going to see a professional product lineup,” he says. Either way, it looks like Apple is targeting the video postproduction 0 is iain sbatchedte, ( but adding compositing tools a la After Effects puts Apple in a position to appeal to this highly technical bunch of film professionals. “If Apple can come up with a no-compromises first-class editor and a no-compromises first-class finishing tool, there’s a real market,” says Ben Waggoner, DV magazine contributing editor and author of Apple is going after big-time entertainment in a big way. right, for more information.) Sounds great, but right now few are biting. Before effects developers will adopt Audio Units over existing protocols, they need to see that the audio-software developers with whom they work are adopting it, too. Now that Apple is an audio-software developer, it can push the industry toward Mac OSX. CAPTURING THE HIGH END How Apple will incorporate these newly acquired products is not yet known. Some say Apple will use Shake and Rayz to beef up Final Cut Pro’s. compositing tools. Others—including AT&T www.attwireless.com/mmode Requirements: Handset compatible with GSM or GPRS Price: $2.99, $7.99, or $12.49 plus data-download charges Kung Fu Pit one of six kung-fu masters against a computer or human opponent. Star Trek: First Duty Here’s your chance to become a Star Fleet officer. Complete a four- Steve Jackson’s Sorcery This mobile RPG brings spells and elves together. Air Aces Experience dogfights in a WWI biplane in this two-player air-combat game. Make it so, on the go. year training course, and you're on your way. Compression for Great Digital Video: Power Tips, Techniques and Common Sense, which CMP Books should publish by the time you read this. While boutique companies characterize this industry, their purchasing power is anything but small. Waggoner estimates that a company might buy $30,000 in new equipment per year. Time will tell what Apple plans to do with its newly adopted children, but it’s clear that the company is not satisfied courting only the iMovie and iTunes users of the world. Apple’s buying its way into the big leagues, one company at a time.—Narasu Rebbapragada VERIZON WIRELESS www.verizonwireless.com Requirements: Verizon Wireless Z-800 and Kyocera 3035¢ Price: $1.25 per day to $7.25 per month EA Sports 2002 FIFA World Cup Check out the footie action and authentic player rosters from a top-notch sports-game developer. (Kyocera 3035e can’t run this title.) Magic Date Ball Ask the ball a yes or no question to solve your dating conundrums, Puzzle Penguin As Puck the penguin, you move heavy blocks of ice onto heating elements to clear caverns. Let's hear your phone say “Goooal!” CORE AUDIO IS KING Why Mac OS X Audio Is Better _ Than Mac OS 9 Audio Lower Latencies Mac OS X reduces the time it takes your Mac to receive, process, and output audio to speakers, so you can hear audio recorded from a live source in near-real time. 2 Multichannel Support Mac OS 9’s Sound Manager supports only two audio channels. For more, you need third-party drivers. Mac OS X Core Audio natively supports a multichannel 1/0, so you can feel more confident that your Mac OS X apps and hardware will work together. Plus, Core Audio lets multiple applications share the same sound card or device, so you can be running a multitrack recording program like Bias Deck ($399, www.bias-inc.com) while using an editing program like Bias Peak ($499). Easy MIDI The Mac OS X MIDI Setup Assistant defines a systemwide configuration for MIDI instruments to use with all your Mac OS X applications. 4 Plug-and-Play USB Mac OS Xwill automatically recognize USB MIDI and audio hardware without requiring third-party drivers. 5 Standardized Plug-ins Mac OS X has a system-level plug-in architecture (called Audio Units), so theoretically developers can create plug-ins using a common standard. Plug-in developers are waiting to see which audio software packages (like Apple’s newly acquired Logic) support Audio Units before they jump on this bandwagon. CINGULAR WIRELESS ‘www.cingular.com/beyond_voice/games Requirements: Wireless Internet and compatible phone (see Web site for list of models) Price: $0.99 per game Street Brawl ll Beat up human or computer opponents with the right combination of offensive and defensive moves. Buzztime Trivia Up to ten players can match wits in a real- time trivia contest, Interpol Travel internationally to track down the art Sometimes it’s thief who stole the better if you can't Mona Lisa. ‘see your opponent. November 2002 MacAddict 11 2 | GET INFO ine news of the mor DROOLWORTHY ‘Sexy Stuff We Can't Wait to Get Our Mitts On The Aquos can hang vertically like a bat, in case you're a vampire or something. LCD Wide-screen TV Samsung Electronics www.samsungelectronics.com $1,499 (15-inch display), $2,099 (17-inch display) 7; pretty, and smart, Samsung Electronics’ 15-inch and 17-inch LCD-TVs let you watch TV or video via DVD-input, S-Video, of RCA connectors, and work on your computer. These 2.2-inch-deep displays are HDTV- and DTV-ready, have a built- in 181-channel TV tuner, and connect to your Mac with a VGA adapter. The displays come with a tilt stand, but their wide viewing angles make them perfect for wall mounting. —Whitney Hess RETURN TO QUAKECON Macs Attack at Annual Gaming Show thad drama, it had thrills, and most important, it had Macs. QuakeCon 2002, id Software's (www.idsoftware.com) annual meet-and-greet session with eager fans, was the biggest and best yet, attracting over 3,000 enthusiastic gamers to the company’s sleepy hometown of Mesquite, Texas. Best known for developing the famous Quake, Doom, and Castle Wolfenstein shooter series, id Software hosted a four-day gaming extravaganza featuring ATl’s Quake Ill: Arena and Retum to Castle Programming god John Carmack reemphasized his commitment to OS X. Wolfenstein championship tourneys. A cool $20,000 went to overall Quake III champion LeXer, while the Doctors clan scooped the competition in Wolfenstein to eam a team payday worth 25 grand. 12 MacAddict November 2002 Watch TV without suffering from email withdrawal. Aquos _ Wide-screen TV Sharp Electronics $7,999.95 ‘o more glare. Sharp Electronics’ Aquos wide-screen 30-inch LCD TV is superbright, with a 170-degree viewing angle. The energy-efficient 3-inch-deep display is HDTV ready; has a built-in 181-channel TV tuner, S-Video, and RCA inputs; and connects to your Mac with a VGA connector. If you want to wall-mount your TV, you can detach the stand, and the Aquos image inverter lets you rotate the picture if you want to hang it vertically.—Whitney Hess Wwww.sharpusa.com days of gaming fun the street. Mac game publisher Aspyr Media (www.aspyr.com) hosted a sprawling booth, which allowed attendees to free-play Retum to Castle Wolfenstein and Jedi Knight!! on 44 shiny dual-gigahertz G4s with Cinema Displays. The company also contributed iMacs with AirPort to ‘handle the busy QuakeCon registration process. How busy was it? For the first time in QuakeCon history, the Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC) area of the show was filled to capacity, and by day two a sign reading “Sorry, BYOC full” greeted new attendees, The climax was the id team’s presentation of Doom Ill, which concluded with a keynote from programming god John Carmack. During his nearly two-hour chat, Carmack reemphasized his full commitment to the Mac OS X platform, while acknowledging that Doom III performs a little more sluggishly on Power Macs than on PCs.—Chuck Osborn PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF SHARP PHOTOGRAPH COUTESY OF SAMSUNG. QuakeCon’s four straight keeps dudes like these off PHOTOGRAPH BY CHUCK OSBORN The most evolved computers now have multi-functions and printers to match... COLOR LASER From $1499 woRKGROUP —~ BD asc pare When it comes to imaging solutions that are LASER PRINTING LASER PRINTING, nN I ees j rr 7 er From $299 every bit as innovative as your Mac, we're rom the only name you need to know. That's because our award-winning line of Mac-compatible printers and Multi-Function Center® models are designed to deliver both FLATBED MFC —., 5 i asad ees eae: maximum performance and value. From $299 Sie eee From $449 COLOR From our full line of high-quality printers, to versatile all-in-one multi-function units which print, copy, scan and more, you'll find our products are every bit as evolved as our customers. A VARIETY OF MODELS AVAILABLE AT: MacWarehouse, MacMall, MacConnection, MacZone, CDW, CompUSA, Office Depot, LASER MFC —— COLOR MFC Staples, OfficeMax, Fry’s, J&R Computer World From $299 From $169 At your sidé. (©2002 Brother Intemational Corporation, Bridgewater, NJ. * Brother Industries, Li., Nagoya, Japan For more information please call the Brother Fax-Back System at 800-521-2846 or visit our web site at www-brothercom * All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property oftheir respective owners. /| GET INFO the news of the month in bite-size chunks. WIRELESS STANDARDS... ,.and the People Who Love Them | nternational iFolk tote cell phones that travel abroad, download music, and talk to computers. Not you, though, since U.S. wireless carriers have been slow to adopt these cell-phone bells and whistles. Not anymore. Check out the new technologies coming to a phone near you. Here’s what they mean andwho might ook good wearing them.—NR Technology WhatitMeans What It Does Who It Befits TDMA Time Division __| This standard is becoming ahas- | Tony Danza: Multiple Access | been now that wireless providers _| C'mon, I'm still are phasing out TOMA networks in | the boss of Europe, Latin America, and North | late-night cable, Ametica in favor of the popular GSM standard. CDMA Code Division | The Qualcomm-developed CDMA | Steve Jobs: Muhiple Access | standard competes with GSM. wish | had 11 Seeing that only 11 percent of the | percent of the world uses CDMA, itseemstobe | market. losing out. Eo | Gsm Global System — | Most of the world operates Colin Powell: for Mobile ‘on GSM's four frequencies: They love me at Communications | 800MHz, 900MHz, 1,800 MHz, home, they love and 1,900MHz. A triple-band me overseas. phone like the Sony Ericsson T68i, which operates at the top three frequencies, will better your chances of placing a call overseas. GPRS General Packet | GPRSis the data equivalent of Carl Lewis: Radio Service | GSM and the standard Apple fused to will use to support iSync. GPRS —_‘| be fast. networks can potentially move data at a peak rate of 115 Kbps— great for downloading concert tour dates but not the concart itself, PoC Persenal Digital |Some9 percent of the wireless | Ayumi: Cellular world, primarily in Japan and to ‘swear I'm some degree in Korea and Taiwan, | famous uses this standard, iMode is NTT | in Japan. DoCoMo’s wireless Internet service based on the PDC standard. keev Wideband | Code Division Wideband CDMA is the Qualcomm | Serena CDMA Multiple Access | 3G (third-generation) standard __| Williams: that GSM networks are looking to_| I'm number one! adopt, promising speeds of upto _| I'm number one! 2 Mbps. Japan's NTT DoCoMo is migrating to wide-band CDMA. CDMA2000 | Cede Division | Qualcomm’s other 3G voice and _| Venus Williams: Multiple Access | data standard has peak data- ¥m number two! 2000 transfer speeds of 144 Kbps and Pm number two! will evolve to 2 Mbps. EDGE Enhanced Data | EDGE‘is the 3G standard that ‘Anna Rates forGSM | was to evolve out of TDMA, but iis_| Kournikova: Evolution. speeds are only 384 Kbps, soit I'm not as will probably lose out to 3G CDMA | good, but I'm standards. better looking. Wi-Fi Wireless Fidelity | Wi-Fi is essentially 802.11b (that’s | Samuel L. right, AirPort). Current mobile Jackson: phones don't utilize Wi-Fi, but {am the ultimate engineers are working on it. badass. Bluetooth | Siuetooth This short-range signal for mobile | Denzel wireless devices is finally coming into its Washington: technology own. Apple recently announced —_| Finally, I get the ‘that Jaguar's iSync transfers data | recognition that from iGal to Bluetooth devices, I deserve. 14 MacAddict November 2002 NEWSTUFF Zip 750MB FireWire Drive Xx lomega, www.iomega.com, $199 Available: Fall 2002 fomega’s new 750MB Zip disks and drives are durable alternatives to comparably priced external hard drives. At about $13 each, 750MB Zip disks offer acheap solution for those looking to archive projects and files, Epson Stylus 2 Photo Printers Epson, www.epson.com, $199 (Stylus Photo 825), $299 (Stylus Photo 925), $399 (Stylus Photo 960) Available: Now Epson’s Stylus Photo 825 and 925 print straight from CompactFlash, SmartMedia, and Sony Memory Sticks. The 925 prints border-free and comeswith a roll-paper automatic cutter. The Stylus Photo 960, the top of the line, uses a tiny 2-picoliter ink droplet for more-precise prints. All printers are six-color and connect to your Mac via USB. xD Picture Card Olympus Optical (www.olympus.com) and Fujifilm (www.fujifilm.com), $19.95 (16MB), $109.95 (128MB), pricing unavailable on 256MB and above Available: Now Olympus and Fujifilm announced a new type of memory card with the potential to hold up to 8GB of images. Currently, 16MB and 128MB sizes are available, with a 256MB size planned for the end of the year and 1GB to 8GB sizes expected sometime next year. Used with a CompactFlash adapter, the xD Picture Card is compatible with any CompactFlash-supported camera. Formac Studio DV Formac, www.formac.com, $289 Available: Now This FireWire analog-to-DV converter iets you import video directly into Apple’s Final Cut Pro ($999, www.apple.com), Apple’s iMovie ($49), and Adabe’s Premiere 6 ($549, www.adobe.com). YOU'VE GOT X AOL for Mac OS X Released n August 2002, America Online released AOL for Mac OS X. AOL has Mac-ified its software from the ground up with new features, such as an email and instant message counter in the Dock, a new Netscape Gecko Web browser, QuickTime-viewable streaming video and audio, and AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) compatibility with Apple's iChat. The latest Zip drive bumps up storage to. 750MB per disk. ms Hips 19 Fo Sp oy BN NORA Complete Accounting and Small Business Management AccountEdge | is knowing you've got what it takes! 0 what it takes 0 II busi BOF aeenfilly, jusiness (op y joo ~ (°- 4 [ ae i i fe Award Winning Small Business Accounting and Management Software Join the over 400,000 MYOB customers worldwide who trust their business success to MYOB products. From business basics to complete management, MYOB has what it takes to Mind Your Own Business better. Available for Macintosh and Windows. Visit us online for a FREE Trial Version www.myob.com/us/md 800-322-MYOB(6962) Small Business. Smart Solutions: 16 <| GETINFO the news of the month in bite-size chunks EXTREME STORAGE Insane Storage Technology Provides Insane Storage Capacities he year is 2006. You just bought Apple’s newest iPod with a high-res, full-color LCD display. Into ityou pop a cartridge about the size of a postage stamp, and you have instant access to dozens of full-length movies. Insert another cartridge, and choose from 50,0000 500-page books. ‘The video iPod may be only wishful thinking, but the staggering storage advance isn’t. Dubbed “Millipede” by the IBM engineers who created it, this real-life breakthrough technology could pack 60,000 songs on a space as small as the magnetic disk spinning in your iPod’s hard drive— and do so in a way that’s nothing like today’s hard-drive technology. The way Millipede works is analogous to how bits and bytes were stored in the dark ages of computing (think 1960): as holes punched into cardboard punch cards. Back f then, one hole equaled one bit. Where Millipede drastically differs is thatit's small—really, really small. The Millipede card is a ludicrously thin plastic film, and the punch is a silicon needle approximately 2 nanometers (2 billionths of a meter) thick at its tip; 3 billion Millipede holes can fit into the space of just one old-fashioned punch-card hole. The result is a chip that can pack 1 terabit (1 trillion bits) into 1 square inch. That’s over 20 times the storage capacity of today’s best hard drives, which max out below 50 gigabits (60 billion bits) per square inch. Each of these minuscule V-shaped cantilevers is a scant 50 micrometers (millionths of a meter) long—and yes, this is an actual photo. On a Millipede chip, thousands of eensy- weensy needles are mounted on the free ends of thousands of silicon levers, known as cantilevers—one needle per cantilever. The cantilevers are arranged in a grid suspended a few micrometers (millionths of a meter) The Millipede chip packs 20 times the storage of today’s best hard drives. above the plastic film. Tiny electrical motors minutely maneuver each row of cantilevers up, down, back, and forth. As each row strikes the plastic film, some of the needles are heated to 400 degrees centigrade, and some are not. A hot tip melts a hole in the plastic; an unheated tip bounces off. One hole equals one bit—and at only 10 nanometers wide, the holes are so tiny that these bits can add up to one boatload of storage capacity. This tiny chip houses a whole new way of storing data—and lots of it. 16 MacAddict November 2002 No, it’s not a flock of robot woodpeckers—this illustration shows Millipede needles poking information-storing holes into a thin plastic film. The process of reading the data is even more mind-boggling: First, the needle tip is heated to only 300 degrees centigrade, then it’s cantilevered back at the plastic film. If the tip goes into a hole, silicon beneath the plastic draws some of its heat away. If it doesn’t hit a hole, the tip touches the plastic film and stays hot—not hot enough to melt the plastic, but hotter than a tip in a hole. Now, try to wrap your brain around what happens next: The temperature difference between the cooled and still-hot tips creates a difference in their electrical conductivity, which supporting circuitry reads—a cooled tip registers a bit, a hot tip doesn’t. Still with us? Congratulations. Erasing a Millipede hole is pretty straightforward: A 400-degree tip melts plastic on either side of that hole; the edges of these new holes obliterate the original hole. Besides moving up and down to write, read, and erase holes, each needle-equipped cantilever can also move back and forth and side to side over an area about 100 micrometers square, into which it can punch many thousands of holes. Current Millipede designs have 1,024 cantilevers; under construction are 4,096-cantilever models. When will Millipede storage chips hit the market? Developers first need to iron out many problems—such as how to build the tiny suckers reliably and cheaply—but the smart money says the year 2005 looks possible. Get ready to toss out your archaic hard drives and memory cards.—Rik Myslewski your =, tie Si insets teen I26MB Wa tay te ies ‘s9picaons ead aa a DOC ETT Pa Ly Upgrading your memory doesn't have to be complicated. F] af |=] SST CT rele] Peay E a ean a You need Crucial RAM. Select your system make and model at Crucial.com, and you'll find memory guaranteed to be compatible with your system or your money back. It's that easy! Best of all, you'll get the same top-quality memory the world’s leading computer makers install in their systems. Visit Crucial.com and get great memory eee $ 4 69 256mB Pc100 spRaM direct prices. for today’s most popular systems Price reflects an automatic 10* discount for ordering online. Prices may vary according to specific system requirements, ‘The price listed was valid on 8/23/02 when we sent this ad to the publisher; however, prices may have dramatically increased or decreased since then. Visit the FAQ section of Crucial.com to lea more about why memory prices go up and down. ‘ezaiagen ete nA i ra. Th ony Ea een Cia i he Cd ad Me eid re Mo ele. aes dr ty mpc ae ‘Se Tosa Sl cen ont esa esha hl aay fn eon me Pow USS HS Far dw Ena euesnena Css oar a te eat apse aN Order online: www.crucial.com cr ucial or call toll-free 1-888-363-2562 A Division of Micron The Memory Experts ‘18 {| GET INFO the news of the month in bite-size chunks : | i E RE I O The next time you're traveling around the United | States, stop in at one of these cafes, hotels, or Fl N D Al R p airports with AirPort wireless Intemet access. —Christopher Ott and Cyrus Farivar US. Cities with Wireless 802.11b Access ae Pe Pisa INFO ze he worst thing about AirPort is going without it. _ ~~ a 2 ROR SEATTLE DENVER MADISON, WI CHICAGO Aurafice Internet and = Cafe@Netherworld (www.netherworld.com) — Michelangelo’s While we found no official wireless cafes, check out the Web site ot the ee Coffee Bar 1278 Pennsylvania Si. « 303-861-8638 Coffee House Chicago Wireless Developer User Group (www.chicagowireless.org) 616 and 612 ‘$2 per hour using the cafe's wireless card 114 State St. + 608-251- for alist of city streets with wireless network access. E.Pine St. or free if you bring your own 5299 + $11 permonth : = Se 208-860-9977 + Free paris on the Platte plus onetime $15 setup fee : Starbucks (www.parisontheplatte,com) (www.cafeconnection net) Balan : 102 Fi . + 303-455-2454 » Embassy Suites Hotel ee J HS iEeS. Saag eine 4776 Benjamin Franklin Pkwy. » 215-561-1776 » $10.85 per day me $29.99 per month* f] , BOSTON : Pi - Trident Booksellers Cafe SAN FRANCISCO 332 Newbury St. » 617-267-8688 + Free Cate Destijt 1 Union St, « 415-291-0808 = Free eS Starbucks 123 Mission St. » 415-543-1510 * NEW YORK $29.89 per month* Cyber Cafe Times Square ; . 250W, 49th St. + 212-333-4109 » $4 for first 4 5 20 minutes and $0.46 for each additional minute ‘ Bryant Park LOS ANGELES. (Yes, AirPort in the park) = Sixth Ave. between Buzz Coffee 8000 Sunset Blvd. + 323-656-7460 > ‘$10 per hour or $2.50 per 15 minutes 40th and 42nd St. « Free = SEDONA, AZ DALLAS HOUSTON, TX ATLANTA here dat Lp nt saa Ravenheart of Sedona Starbucks Starbucks Four Seasons Hotel hee Aas NWe Ae . Free 1370 W. Highway 89A + 928-282-5777 + 901 Main St. « 711 Louisiana St.+ 75 14th St. » rf $2.75 for 15 minutes or $10 for 1 hour, 214-741-9833 = 713-225-2318 404-881-9898 Rappahannock Coffee (www.tappatannockcotfee.com) Using provided laptops only $29.99 permonth* $29.98 permonth* $10.70 per day 2406 Columbia Pike, Arlington, VA » 703-271-0007 « Free “With a T-Mobile Wi coadband account (www.tmobilebroadband.com) ‘ Pd BA & OTH ER LOG ANG ON S Ifyou’re looking for wireless locations in places not included here, “check out the following information sources: Surf and Sip_(voww-surtendsip.com) ‘TMobile Wireless Broadband (800-281- Wayport (888-492-9767, www.wayport Wi-Find Check out Wi-Find’s Web site Search Surf and Sip’s Web site for £8563, htfp/lacations.tmobilebroadbané.com) com) Wayport’s Web sit lists more than ‘www.wi-find com) to search for wireless coffeehouses around the United States ‘Mobile Wireless Broadband’s Web site sts 450 hotels and nine airports in the United aovess points by zip cove, ‘that offer wireless service. Starbucks cafes as wellas U.S. aiports that ‘States that offer wireless access. For more New York ity foationas offer wireless access, see wwwanyewireless.net. SHAREWARE PICK OF THE MONTH SLOPE RIDER Monte Boyd Interactive www.vipernet.au/~yodashut $15 fter freeriding down every other major game platform, snowboarding finally hits the Mac. In Slope Rider, you can race against a computer opponent in Alpine mode or go solo in Freestyle mode. You can execute combination moves like flips and grabs and even do rail slides. If you get bored of the ten included ON THE | courses, make your own with Powder, the course-creation app Ji) DISC | that comes with Slope Rider. Both Slope Rider and Powder give g 00:11:19 de ea? e Biecooete you fast 3D performance with particle effects using OpenGL. You're the king of the hill right now, but wait until you = —Andrew Tokuda hitthe ground. 18 MacAddict November 2002 xe 5/5 Joyner encore! NWN < CRESCENDO’/PCI G4 Hz Processor Upgrade Card for PCI Power Macintosh Computers The power to create a modern digital hub. The freedom to enjoy iPod, ‘Tunes, and iMovie without a hitch. The speed to handle OS X. With up to 1 GHz of power in a plug-and-play processor upgrade, Sonnet turns last year’s desktop into this year’s digital media center. No other upgrade even comes close. You'll experience such gratifying performance improvements it will feel like a new machine. Sonnet Technologies. Simply Faster. Accelerates performance to new levels Encore/ST compatible with AGP Graphics, Gigabit Ethernet, Digital Audio, Quicksilver, and G4 Cube* models Crescendo/PCI compatible with 7300-9600 and clone-equivalent machines Installs in minutes. Simply Fast. No jumpers, no switches, no control panels. OS X Ready fONNSS SIMPLY FAST * Cube requires additional installation kit, and professional installation is highly recommended. ** PCL X Installer available for additional fee. Encore/ST G4 is built for 05 X. Store InsideancOut Apple may not have unveiled abe tise Sane the G5, but it has overhauled gf Nvo, the new Power the G4, giving us faster dual —_ Mac G4s aren’tthe processors, a powerful new long-awaited G5 models : that have inspired motherboard, and speedier alnine teemmtichirabid RAM. Here’s an in-depth look _ speculation as who at what’s new and how it all actually won the 2000 presidential election. comes together. Nor isthe top-end model powered by PowerPC processors with stratospheric clock ratings. Fair enough, but worry not: All three of the new Power Mac G4s have heaps of power, exceptional expansion possibilities, and some rather unusual—some might even say odd—under-the-hood details. Here’s what’s new about the Power Mac G4s and how everything comes together internally to make these machines fly. Power and. expandability The most obvious “What the...?” aspect of the new Power Macs is the doubling-up of a broad range of system hardware and capabilities, including the following: Dual processors across the line: 867MHz, 1GHz, and 1,.25GHz. Each processor is a top-of-the-line PowerPC G4 with the swift, short pipeline (a seven-stage one, to be exaci) and broad-shouldered Velocity Engine we’ve come to know and love. The 867MHz Mac features a 133MHz system bus, while the two high-end models get a speed boost to 167MHz. Dual Level 3 caches: 1B of DDR SRAM per processor for the 867MHz and 1GHz machines, and 2MB per processor at the 1.25GHz level. The 1.25GHz PowerPCs talk to their caches at a 5:1 ratio—that’s 250MHz—and the 20 MacAddict November 2002 867MHz and 1GHz models talk at a 4:1 ratio, or 217MHz and 250MHz, respectively. DDR SDRAM: You can equip each Power Mac with up to 2GB of DDR SDRAM in four DIMM slots (more on the role of DDR SDRAM later). That's up from the previous 1.5GB limit for RAM in the previous Power Macs. Dual hard-drive buses: The first is an ATA/100 bus that comes with a 7,200-rpm 60MB, SOMB, or 120MB drive, depending on which configuration you buy. An empty ATA/66 bus stands ready for expansion. Dual drive capability: Each of the two hard-drive buses can support—you guessed it—two drives. Add four 120GB drives (the maximum the Macs can handle), and you’ve got a voracious 480GB monster. Dual RAID capability: Mac OS X’s Disk Utility allows you to choose between RAID 0 (data striping multiple disks for better performance) or RAID 1 (mirroring multiple disks for better reliability). RAID even has dual meanings. Depending upon whom you ask, it stands for either redundant array of independent disks or redundant array of inexpensive drives. Dual display ports: Each of three supported graphics cards has one ADC and one DVI port. By default, the 867MHz model ships with an nVidia GeForce4 MX, while the two high-end machines come with an ATI Radeon 9000 Pro, A powerful nVidia GeForce4 Titanium is a $250 or $350 build-to-order option (the price depends on which graphics card comes by default in the system you buy). ADVI-to-VGA converter comes with all systems. Dual opticat-drive capability: The 867MHz model ships with a Combo drive, and the other two models ship with a SuperDrive. You can choose to add a second optical drive to any model to achieve faster CD write and rewrite speeds (the SuperDrive writes CD-R discs at 8X and CD-RWs at 4X, while the Combo drive features 16X and 10X speeds, respectively). The doubling theme continues with two FireWire ports and two USB ports (actually, Apple says the systems have four USB ports, including the ones on the keyboard—we think that’s just plain cheating), but then the theme falters Included Software ire comes preinstalled on all new dual Power Macs. Here’s what you'll find on their hard drives (and on their Software Restore discs); Mac OS 10.2 Internet Explorer 5.2 Mac OS 9.2.2 EarthLink 2.6.3 trial Mac OS X Developer Tools Acrobat Reader 5.0 QuickTime 6 Art Director's Toolkit 3.0 iChat 1.0 FAXstf 10.0 iMovie 2.1.2 FileMaker Pro 5.5v2 trial iPhoto 1.1.4 GraphicConverter 4.4 iTunes 3.0 OmniGraffle 2.0.4 iDVD 2.4 OmniOutliner 2.0.1 DVD Player 3.2 PixelNhance 1.5.8 Mac OS X Mail 1.2 Snapz Pro X 1.0: 3 ay by Rik Myslewski F : ee photography by Mark Madeo abit. Audio, for example, is blessed with four ports: analog- stereo audio line in and line out, a minijack for a pair of 10-watt Apple digital speakers, and~mirabile dictu!— a jack for a headphone or powered speakers, located where it should have been all along: on the front of the machine. There’s one 10/100/1,000Base-T Ethernet port and one modem port—for a total of two networking ports (OK, now we're stretching our theme a bit)—and Apple has upgraded the internal modem to a V.92 model (from Y.90). Many dial-up ISPs have yet to adopt this relatively new standard, but when your ISP upgrades, you’ll benefit from faster file uploads, snappier connections to frequently called numbers, and the ability to put your modem on hold while you answer incoming voice calls. One final doubling: The nVidia GeForce4 MX has 32MB of DDR frame-buffer memory. The ATI Radeon 9000 Pro has double that at 64MB. And the nVidia GeForce4 Titanium— you guessed it—doubles that number yet again to 128MB. Double your pleasure, indeed. The Inside Story While all these double-double specs-specs are-are impressive-impressive, they really don’t get to the core of what makes this new line of Power Macs so interesting. For that, you need to go deep into the belly of the beast. To do so, we rooted around inside a new Power Mac, scoured technical literature, and asked Apple some pointed questions. Before you read on, though, be forewarned that Apple spokesfolks aren't keen on giving out deep background information on any of the company’s products: “Apple declined to comment” is an oft-used response to many a question about the guts of its machines. In fact, so much of our information is informed analysis rather than Apple- sanctioned fact that we've invented a new acronym for this November 2002 MacAddict 21 story, which we'll use when we describe a feature about which Apple declined to comment: ADTC. The chips that power the new Power Macs are from the Motorola MPC745x family (ADTC). The fastest of these chips for which Motorola has published specs is and THEN ©. the MPC7455, and it tops out at 1GHz. Our assumption is that either Apple has access to a PowerPC G4 chip with a higher clock rate that it uses in the 1.25GHz model (ADTC), or Apple’s engineering geniuses are coaxing a higher speed out of a 1GHz MPC7455 certified for use in a higher-temperature environment (ADTC). While this may ) sound like dangerous overclocking, using these certified chips at a faster clock rate in a well-cooled environment such as that of the new Power Macs is entirely legit. In any case, we don’t know which scenario is tue—and Apple and Motorola ain’t talking. Of more interest, though, is the fact that the new Power Macs use a system controller called U2, originally designed for the Xserve (ADTC). This chip is one powerful puppy. It combines a Gigabit Ethernet controller (IEEE 802.3ab), a 400-Mbps FireWire controller (IEEE 1394a), a fast hard-drive bus controller (ATA/100), and a PCI bridge with a DDR SDRAM memory controller. Putting Ethernet and FireWire support directly into the system controller frees the PCI bus from the Ethernet and FireWire data traffic that slows PCs, which commonly use PCI cards to provide these features. Putting the PCI bus bridge inside the system controller is another smart move on Apple’s part, since this bridge connects directly to the controller’s 667-MBps internal bus. Apple claims this move allows the maximum bus throughput toreach 266 MBps—good news for pros, who will stuff the Power Mac’s four full-length PCI slots with cards. The ATA/100 hard-drive bus supported by the system controller bumps up the speed from that of the ATA/66 bus in previous Power Macs. But that ATA/66 bus hasn't gone away-—it’s still there, supported by a separate I/O controller chip called KeyLargo (ADTC), which also supports USB, the V.92 modem, the audio chip (ADTC), dual internal optical drives, and other system services. The new system controller has one more job: managing up to 2GB of DDR SDRAM, or double data rate synchronous dynamic RAM, which can run at—surprise!—double the read/write rate of RAM in non-DDR machines (See “Inside DDR SDRAM,” Oct/02, p13). Since the 1GHz and 1.25GHz Power Macs have 167MHz system buses, they can achieve Although the new Power Mac Gé4 towers look similar to the QuickSilver models they've replaced, when you open up both machines, you'll see that their innards have migrated. Speaker 22 MacAddict November 2002 = Optical Drive Bay Now: dual, front center Then: single, front above center Drive Bays Now: four, front and rear Then: two, rear dt WAY. AGP 4x Siot with Card ee bal Now: center, above RAN = Thon: center, below RAM ; HEN® \ Heat Sink 2}. Now: huge, on the bottom Fb The ee. | 2MB DDR SRAM L3 cache 1.25GHz PowerPC AGP Slot | Installed: ATI Radeon 9000 Pro with 64MB of DDR SDRAM Maximum: nVidia GeForce4 Ti with 128MB. of DDR SDRAM : one ADG, one DVI ATA/100 Bus Installed: one 120GB 7,200- rpm hard drive Maximum: two 120GB 7,200- |] rpm hard drives Por ATA/66 Bus Installed: empty Mi 4120GB 7,200- rpm hard drives if UATA Bus Installed: SuperDrive | | @vo-R/cD-RW) | Maximum: | | SuperDrive and } Combo (DVD- | ROM/CD-RW) 64-bit 167MHz Maxbus Throughput: 1.3 GBps Ittakes a lot more than a pair of powerful processors to make the new dual-everything Power Mac G4 sing—in fact, it requires an entirely new motherboard, adapted from the one made for | the Xserve. Here’s a look at all the important players and how they work together. 1.25GHz PowerPC G4 250MHz cache bus Throughput: 4 GBps PROCESSOR MODULE DDR SDRAM Installed: one 512MB PC2700 (333MHz) DDR SDRAM DIMM Maximum: four 512MB PC2700 (333MHz) DDR SDRAM DIMMs. Slots: four U2 System Controller Chip_| Memory management, PCI bus bridge, FireWire, Ethernet, and ATA/100 bus ‘controllers Controller Chip USB, mocem, sound, VATA, and ATA/66 bus MOTHERBOARD 2MB DDR SRAM 13 cache amaximum theoretical throughput of 2.672 GBps between main memory and the system controller. That’s an impressive number, but note that we didn’t say “between main memory and the PowerPC processor.” Here’s where the new Power Mac architecture is, shall we say, suboptimal. When data passes from the dual PowerPC processors to the system controller, it must do so over the Motorola-supplied front-side Maxbus (ADTC) at a throughput rate of only 1.3 GBps—and Apple did confirm this figure. The reason? The MPC745x family of processors doesn’t currently support DDR. If you’ve hung in there with us this far, it’s probably dawned on you that we’ve just stumbled upon a bottleneck: two high-speed processors contending fora single 167MHz bus to get to the system controller. And you'd be right. Sorta. One reason it’s not a fatal flaw is that the well-named Maxbus uses a number of efficiency- enhancing tricks—way too geeky to go into here—that improve throughput not only to the system controller, but also between the two processors. As a result, the Maxbus makes that 167MHz seem even faster. Where the DDR SDRAM shines is in supporting Apple’s implementation of DMA (direct memory access). DMAis a scheme in which different system components—FireWire, Ethernet, the AGP graphics card, and PCI, for example— can pass data amongst themselves without involving the are processors. This nearly 2.7 GBps of throughput means the system can get a lot of work done very quickly without making the processors play traffic cop. How Fast Does It Go? So, let’s review what we know—and surmise—about the new dual-everything Power Macs: Double everything? Check. New motherboard design? Check. Fast DDR SDRAM? Check. Better PCI integration? Check. Faster and more-expandable storage? Check. Possible data-throughput bottleneck between the processors and the system controller? Check. All well and good, but what you’re atl wondering, of course, is whether all this technical hoo-hah adds up to better performance. The short answer is, “Damn straight.” For the longer, more-detailed answer, check out our review of the new dual 1GHz Power Mac on page 40. We think you'll be impressed. Nothing makes editor in chief Rik Myslewski happier than block diagrams, pin-out specs, and bus-protocol descriptions, except maybe Chee-tos—like Rik, they're Dangerously Cheesy™. ssieniatiiinadaeadameemmiaimiacaieiall November 2002 MacAddict 23 iS t UoClose and-ersona f you’ve been looking for a reason to ditch Classic Now that the Jaguar update of Mac OS X is ready to purr away on hard drives everywhere, we take it out for a spin. Is Apple’s ferocious new feline worth the $129 upgrade cost? We add up its features and let you know. —° Mac OSX, the decision to upgrade is a little more difficult. After all, you've already shelled out a bundle on the original Mac OS X and 10.1 upgrade. And now Apple wants another $129 for Jaguar? What gives? Apple says the price is more than fair. But of course Apple would say that, so we decided to appoint ourselves judge and jury and evaluate Jaguar on its features versus its cost, assigning each major new feature a dollar value. Note that we said major: Because Jaguar brings more than 150 additions to the table, we only looked at the biggest and best of them—the ones you'll likely care most about, So is Jaguar worth 129 big ones? Read on and find out. The Finder While the Finderis still, and will always be, the Finder, Jaguar offers some improvements on how you get around your system. First there’s the return of spring-loaded folders. A bit of history for Mac newbies: Apple introduced spring-loaded folders in Mac OS 8, and users quickly hailed them as the best invention since salad-in-a-bag. The company rudely ditched them in Mac OS X, but has now reintroduced them OS X, Jaguar is that reason. In the immortal words of one famous Mac magazine, it’s time to switch! If, however, you're already a faithful devotee after much prodding. The concept is simple: Drag a file onto a folder and hold fora moment, and that folder will spring open, allowing you to drag your file onto another folder, and so on. By the way, spring-loaded folders now work in List, Column, and Icon views. If you don’t like this feature {but who wouldn’t2), turn it off in the Finder Preferences 24 MacAddict November 2002 Mac OS and upgrade to Mac window, where you can also adjust the delay before folders spring open. Another rockin’ improvementis an integrated search field in the Finder window's toolbar, which searches for files, folders, and subfolders within that window. If the nature of your search is more complex (Say you want to search the content of fites for a certain word) or requires the use of multiple criteria, press Command-F while in the Finder to bring up the Find dialog (in previous Mac OS X versions, this command brought up Sherlock). Fora simple file-name search, use the conveniently placed integrated search box (top). Need to get more specific? Bring up the Find dlalog (bottom). Jaguar also includes a major change to the Finder: The entire Finder is now multithreaded. Multithreading basically means that an application—and remember, the Finder is an app—can execute a number of commands in parallel. You’tl notice this under-the-hood change in just about everything you do—windows open and close move snappily, server connections get up and running faster, and so forth. Also, when you connect to a file server, no longer do you have to wait for the list of its contents to appear. Lists show up first and icons fill in later—that’s because different threads now handle file names and their icons. The Finder: What's It Worth? We figure that the convenience of spring-loaded folders, the Finder's increased performance, and a Find function that doesn’t involve Sherlock are saving us at least half an hour a day in productivity, whichamaunts to about $12.50 (hey, we're on journalists’ salaries here) $ 5 50 . Jaguar Specifics Mac OS 10.2 (aka Jaguar) | Price: $129 single user; $199 Family Pack } (five-Mac license); $19.95 if you bought Mac OS 10.1.x or anew Mac with 10.1.x on or after July 17, 2002 (offer ends Oct 31, 2002) Mac OS 10.2 Server (aka Jaguar Server) Price: $499 ten-user license; $999 unlimited; $19.95 if you bought OS X Server 10.1.x or an Xserve on or after July 17, 2002 (offer ends Oct 31, 2002) ‘System Requirements for Mac OS 10.2: Any Mac with an Apple-supplied G3 or G4 processor (except the original PowerBook G3; no upgrade cards supported), 128MB of RAM, 3GB of hard disk space recommended (1.5GB should suffice) interface Besides a redesigned Finder, you'll notice a number of interface tweaks that make the Mac OS X experience easier, prettier, and more convenient. For one, there is a redesigned Get...oh, we mean Show...oh, we do §® frankieiog mean Get Info window. In Jaguar, Show Info becomes Get Info again (has Steve Jobs been hanging out with Prince?) and is hella Kind: PEG Image ‘Size: 320 KB on disk (327,128 bytes) Where: Desktop: ‘Created: Thu, Aug 22, 2002, 10:07 AM Modified: Thu, Aug 22, 2002, 10:07 AM © Stationery Pad more efficient. Instead of having to navigate through different options via a pop-up menu, you use a series of reveal triangles yoke to tweak privileges, as file-name extensions, = what application opens a > Ownership & Permissi particular file type, and so Semmens —__ on, all in one fell swoop, The new Get Info window Is so much more convenient than Mac OS X's previous Show Info window. Other nice additions include a new Jaguar desktop theme (we assume no animals were harmed in the making of this desktop picture) and the ability to have OS X change the desktop at designated intervals (for instance, every minute, every day, or every time you log in). We also love some of the Dock tweaks. For one, the Dock is now semitransparent, without lines. Even better, every time you minimize a window to the Dock, that window appears with its application’s icon—no longer do you need to squint to discern whether that’s a Mail, Excel, Netscape, or Explorer window. When you minimize windows, the Dock tells you what app they J} belong to. No more squinting! (4) -———- November 2002 MacAddict 25 Sherlock 3 Our little Sherlock is all grown up, now sporting partnered content in new channels for searching pictures, stocks, movies, yellow pages, eBay, airline flights, the American Heritage Dictionary and Roget's |i Thesaurus, foreign- language translation, AppleCare, and of course the Internet at large. Plug-ins for individual sites are gone, making the general Internet Channel less useful than before—it only searches About.com, AskJeeves, Lycos, Best Site First, and Overture (we’d never even heard of those last two). ‘AcApple Locksmith ‘Apple Financial Sve Education (908) 996-1041. (408) 255-5080 TTUDV LEFT onto VALLEY OR 2 BEAR RCH onto BAYSHORE BLVD. STUR\ HET ome TUNNELAY “¢TURN RIGHT onto LAGOON STURN LETT onto SIERRA PORT PRY ‘STURN RCT ooo US 101 GOUT 7 BEAR RIGHT onto 380 CHEST) FOLLOW SHO OVEST) ast REARS LEFT SFOLLOK a rad goes into 1280 60710 TOFOLLOW | 280GOUT) asie BEARS LTT STURN UT oro ENTE L? Mr. Watson, we presume? Sherlock 3 Isadead ringer for the awesome (yet unrelated) search-from- the-desktop app named Watson. Internet searches work much as they did before; Sherlock returns a list of page titles, and you double-click one to load it in your Web browser. In the other channels, though, Sherlock struts its real stuff—Yellow Pages, for example: Type Apple Computer, and Sherlock shows you everything from the phone number toa printable map. Sherlock also offers driving directions (provided you first enter your own location in Sherlock's Preferences). All of this, and Sherlock never once sends you to your browser. Unfortunately, we couldn’t convince Sherlock that Brisbane, California, is 40-some miles from Cupertino, not 3.02. Except for the Internet channel, all channels deliver the information you want right in a window—even a QuickTime trailer when you check a movie schedule. We don’t need no stinkin’ Web browser. Sherlock 3: What's It Worth’ For people who use Web resources like www.m-w com (Merriam-Webster Online) and Ge image Search almost daily, Sherlock 3 is a huge convenience, providing instant desktop acceSsito.your favorite sites, ifit used our regulars s for channels www.dictionary.com and www.gettyimages.com, we'd pay the whole $129 just for Sherlock. As is, or until ‘ecause it’s still not as cool as Xarelia’s Watson are ($29, www.karelia.com), which performs a similar service. $25 26 MacAddict November 2002 Quartz extreme Unlike Sherlock 3, iChat, or the newly tweaked Finder, Quartz Extreme is the kind of thing you may not notice at first—that is, you won’t notice its absence until you try playing a DVD while surfing the Web and writing a letter in Word. As you’ve probably experienced, things can really slow down and the video may get jumpy (of course, it doesn’t help if you’re working on a now-dumpy 350MHz Power Mac G4). Quartz Extreme is a breakthrough technology that speeds graphics processing by using OpenGL to convert each interface window into a texture, which then goes to the graphics card for rendering rather than burdening the main processor. You can’t turn it on or off—jaguar automatically takes advantage of Quartz Extreme ifyou have a powerful enough graphics card. According to Apple, Quartz Extreme kicks in on Macs equipped with an nVidia GeForce2 MX, GeForce3, GeForce4 MX, or GeForce4 Ti, or any AGP ATI Radeon card with at least 16MB of VRAM. Quartz Extreme: What's It Worth? With Quartz Extreme, any task that requires a lot of comp! of onSereen objects (for instance, playing QuickTime or DVD movies) gets handed off to the video card, leaving your processor freeto.deal with other work. Provided you have an up-to-date video card, thats 4 Big deal and worth the costief at least one DVD movie—$14.99 (we shop at Target, OK $14.99 Mail If offers for female Viagra, refinancing at a low mortgage rate, and lurid pictures of barnyard animals are ruining your elife, you need Mail, which does a damn effective job of identifying spam and getting it out of your face. Mail uses an intelligent spam filtering technology called adaptive latent semantic analysis, which studies keywords in context rather than just looking at whether they appear. Ons / OS & caus Odete Reply Reply Al Forms Compote Mallones etal Notun Sesch“atkmdp Sect subsetptlonsanthrop.... Take delight 6:03 00 young@hearstcom How To Sure AS a Freelancer-9.. Today 10-day Hawai Islands Suing fr... Today Princess Croges Mail differentiates junk malts using a very apropos dirt-brown color. The filter works amazingly well and correctly caught more than 90 percent of our spam right off the bat. When you first start up Mail, you're in Training mode. That means Mail will load all of your messages into your in-box, marking in brown those it deems to be spam. If it’s not spam—say you really are looking for the best Viagra prices—simply click the Not Junk button at the top of the message. Mail learns that it shouldn’t mark messages from that source as junk. Say Mail lets a piece of spam get through—just indicate that the message is Junk, and again, Mail learns. Once you trust that Mail is doing right by your email, switch the junk filter to Automatic (in the Mail menu). This throws all of your unwanted email into a Junk folder you can check occasionally to make sure important messages from your boss didn’t accidentally find their way in there (unless that was your intention). The best part: You can continue to train Mail ad infinitum, even in Automatic mode. One more Mail feature of note: You can now create separate accounts with separate in-boxes. No longer do your home, work, and Mac.com accounts have to—ewww— share an in-box. Mail: What’s It Worth? Mail is worth at least 50 cents for every piece of spam don’t have to look at. At about pams a day, that’s $12.50. $ 2.50 iChat x There are two things we love about iChat. — |rsssavoaene moe One, it makes us feel like we’re actually CD having a live conversation. Two, we don’t have to use America Online’s client— You can use Apple designed this baby’s interface. any Image iChatis an AOL Instant Messenger “TePresent (AIM) client, meaning it only works etree a ifyou’re chatting with other users on roalzeaand - A\M—you can’t chat with users of, say, positions it. MSN Messenger or ICQ. The coolest thing about iChat is its interface. Instant messages appear in little conversation bubbles, cartoon style (although if this annoys you, can change it to regular text via View >» Show AS Ase) Equally cool, a HGS |-out bubble appears next to a person’s icon when someone . (either you or the person with whom you’re chatting) is in the middle of typing—which cuts down on confusing cross-chatter. Apple has always been the king of customization, and iChat is no different. For instance, you can iChat’s conversation bubbles give you that authentic arguing-with-a-real-person vibe. easily choose a picture to represent yourself. Apple provides a number of icons for differentiating user accounts, and lo and behold, those pictures work perfectly in iChat—simply drag one of them from the Library > User Pictures folder onto your icon in the Buddy List window. Or you can take any of your own images and drag’em onto your icon, and iChat will resize the picture for you. Awesome. You can even customize your Away and Available messages by clicking your status in the Buddy List and selecting Custom. Like AIM, iChat comes with a list of emoticons and supports file transfer; unlike AIM, iChat does not have Create your a stock or news ticker—but we're not too torn up about that. rete and Away messages: to suit your mood. iChat: What’s It Worth? Since instant-messaging programs are free, we're inclined to give iChat a valle of $0. Yet considering its awesome interface and the fact thatwe don’t have to use an AOL product, we'll value iChat at $6about one-quarter the cost of an AOL monthly membership. $6 Address Book Do you have eight different copies of your ex-wife’s address in eight different applications and devices? Address Book can help. Address Book is a central repository for your contacts— to borrow a phrase from Apple, it’s a hub. Simply enter contact information, and any application that supports Address Book services (for instance, Mail and iChat) can access that information. Apple is hoping for future support from third-party vendors. As of press time, Apple hadn’t released iSync, so we couldn’t test how Address Book works with a Palm OS device. Address Book will import contacts stored as vCards and in LDIF (LDAP data interchange format). The easiest way to move your contacts from Palm Desktop is to export your contacts by category as vCards. You can then create a correlating group in Address Book and drag the vCard file onto that group to import those contacts. Or you can export all of your contacts at once and then organize them into groups within Address Book—there’s even a command for creating a new group from selected contacts. Entourage offers f; i a more annoying challenge. It can only export multiple contacts asa text file, which Address Book doesn’t recognize. Unfortunately, Entourage only lets you create vCards one contact ata time, and frankly, we'd rather Address Book is clean and simple—the way we Ike our contact managers. November 2002 MacAddict 27 QuickTime 6 may look pretty much the same as QuickTime 5, but there’s a lot going on underneath that makes your viewing more pleasurable. be stuck in an elevator with Charo than have to export and import all our contacts one at a time. Fortunately, Jaguar comes with an import contacts script called (mport Addresses.scpt (Library > Scripts » Mail Script) that allows you to move contacts from Entourage (as well as Palm, Eudora, and other apps) to Address Book. Still, the best way to maintain the integrity of information and fields is through vCards. Address Book: What’s It Worth? Acontact manager that organizes our lives, reduces hassle, and saves Us time? Sign us up! Right now, we like it more than Palm Desktop, which is free, so we'd certainly shell out $10 forit as sharewares $ re) QuickTime 6 QuickTime 6 has a couple of new tricks up its sleeve, the biggest of which goes by the name of MPEG-4. Media-savvy readers will recognize this as the progeny of MPEG-2 and MPEG-1 Layer 3 (aka MP3). Advanced audio coding (AAC) is a big part of MPEG-4. Developed at Dolby Labs, AAC provides smart variable bit rate (VBR) encoding and other signal-processing juju to provide CD-quality audio at a lower bit rate than MP3. It works great—we couldn’t hear the difference between a 2MB 96- Kbps MP4 and a 3MB 128-Kbps MP3. The MPEG-4 codec brings two new features to QuickTime: instant-on streaming, which promises video on demand to broadband users (the key word here is broadband, and we still endured some buffering over our fat Internet connection—though not much) and QuickTime Broadcaster, a free download with which you can easily broadcast MPEG-4 video and audio (AAC) streams over the Internet ora local network (see “How To Broadcast Your Own Show on the Web,” Sep/02, p68). On a fast server and a fast LAN, instant-on is impressive. Apple claims QuickTime Pro 6 is the first coast-to-coast MP4 converter, meaning that it can both play and encode MP4 files. Unfortunately, you have to fork over $29.99 for QuickTime Pro (out of the box, QuickTime 6 is limited to playback). If you do spring for Pro, you can perform basic cut-and-paste linear editing and export audio and video files to dozens of formats—including old standards like AIFF, QuickTime Movie, and System 7 sound, as well as the latest and greatest, MPEG-4. QuickTime 6: What’s It Worth? Well, since any non—Jaguar-using schmo can download QuickTime 6 for free, it’s worth $0. IF Apple provided $0 QuickTime Pro with Jaguar, then we'd be talking the big bucks. 28 MacAddict November 2002 Rendezvous We don’t get to throw around the term industry standard all that much when talking about Apple, but that’s exactly what Apple hopes Rendezvous will become. Based on the ubiquitous IP (Internet protocol) and Apple’s so-called zero-configuration technology, Rendezvous effectively cuts out the middleman (manual configuration), and sniffs out devices with available services—mainly Macs and servers (Mac, Unix, or NT) to which you can io Panes oo ee connect, and aa printers you nares can share. geen hes beeen The zero- hina ae eel Gas) configuration nc partis cool, but Suet asane 0 age ts tgs Apple uses the Specs is leeeliacrinded word zero pretty g mont raed Seas loosely—you pny Slee still have to renner sire configure your = identi If, ileges Mac to allow ientity yourself, set access privilege for your Mac, and you're ready to services like file, Rendezvous. application, and printer sharing, or to enable local network Rendezvous Messaging for interoffice iChat encounters. What you won't have to do is futz with AppleTalk Zones or local IP addresses—it just happens. All you have to do is select Connect To Server from the Go menu. Rendezvous works on any IP-based network, including AirPort and wired Ethernet. Bottom line: If yours is a one-Mac home, you can’t rendezvous with anyone else, so this feature isn’t necessary. However, you'll find it useful if you’re tooling around on a network. Rendezvous: What’s It Worth? Taking the difference in price between the single-user version of Jaguar ($129), in which Rendezvous may be useless, and the Family Pack ($199), in which Rendezvous will be incrediblyuseful, we get $70s Divide that by two, since only half of yowwill find Rendezvous useful (we didn’t arrive at that figufe scientifically, by the way), and we have $35. $35 Windows Networking So you’re hiding your Mac inside the gutted hulk of a Dell to protect it from the watchful eyes of your AppleTalk-hatin’ IT department. Will Jaguar let you get on a Windows network? In a word, yes. The formerly frustrating Connect To dialog has emerged as a powerful tool—it can browse AppleTalk zones and Windows workgroups with equal Something for Everyone if you think. la guar merely come FOR GEEKS If your journey across from Linux or BSD left you feeling disappointed, you'll find that Jaguer is a definite step up from 10.1. It comes with more libraries installed, making it much easier to run standard Unix tools. The Terminal application now handles full VT220 emuiation and works much better at font sizes other than the default, and—best of ail—_transparent Terminals are now a feature, not a hack, The addition of CUPS (common Unix printing system) makes printing from Terminal work exactly as it would in other Unix versions, with Ipr, pc, and all the other usual suspects supplanting the nonstandard Print. While we still miss features like virtual desktops, overall 10.2 is a much Unixier Unix. FOR DEVELOPERS If you're a developer, the major new feature of Jaguar is the inclusion of GCC (GNU G compiler) version 3.1, This marks a major milestone for Apple, which has managed to. merge the compiler it inherited from NeXT with the current version of the compiler that comes with almost every other Unix in ‘existence. From now on, you can download the newest version of the OS X compiler from the Free Software Foundation and compile using the most current tools, just as you'd do in Linux or Solaris. ith some enhanced networking features, a cool chat again. While Jaguar holds a lot of appeal for the average Mac user, it also offers plenty of features for specialized groups. FOR IT PROS, System administrators and overworked IT drones will love Jaguar from both sides of the fence: admin and end user. Thanks to the new Netlnstall and improved NetBoot, you can install software—even OS updates—from one OS X Server machine instead of visiting each Mac individually. Add to that Xserve's headless operation, and you can da those Network Installs from a dumb terminal connected to an Xserve's serial port—pretty smart, Jaguar also supports some non-Apple- ‘specific standards, such as Open Directory (LDAP) services and scripting out the wazoo with Python, TCL, Ruby, fast CGi, anda server-optimized Java Virtual Machine on top of Perl, MySQL, and PHP, Jaguar even supports non-Apple machines, providing file- and print-sharing services via Samba, WINS, and NFS to Windows, Unix, and Linux clients. The best part is that Jaguar makes these technologies point-and-click simple with setup and maintenance apps like Open Directory Assistant, Workgroup Manager, and Server Monitor. FOR TEACHERS Schools with limited IT expertise will welcome the simplicity that Rendezvous brings to printer and file sharing, Also, NetBoot makes it easier to boot all the nt, and a better mail app, think machines off a central server, while Netinstall lets OS X Server owners install Jaguar over anetwork. Also, if you don’t want kids screwing around on the classroom Mac, you can create an account (in the Accounts preference pane) and assign students certain capabilities. For example, you can prevent students from accessing email or the Intemet by clicking the Capabilities button and making appropriate selections after adding 2 new user. FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES Jaguar offers more options if you're dealing with a limitation on your hearing or sight. You can locate these features in the Universal Access preference pane, which includes the ability to zoom the screen to a 20x level of magnification, set everything to display as. white on black, and set the screen to flash every time an alert sounds. FOR GRAPHIC ARTISTS WHO CAN'T TYPE if the keyboard is your enemy, meet Ink, Apple's handwriting-recognition system, which works in any application that supports text. You won't find the Ink system preference | unless the system sees a Wacom tablet and driver installed. Unfortunately, Ink only recognizes print (not cursive), and it takes some getting used to if you tend to connect your letters. | facility, and connect to shared volumes on either (it can connect to FTP servers, too: Just type the URL, and the server will show up in the Finder). Unfortunately, print sharing is another matter. While Jaguar makes it easy to print to AppleTalk and LPR printers, there’s no way to connect to Windows shared printers, At press time, even the leading third-party solution for that problem—Thursby Software’s Dave ($149, This Mac shows up twice—once on the Mac network, then again on the Windows network. Jaguar-compatible public beta should be available by the | time you read this). While this shouldn’t bea serious problem (modern versions of Windows set up LPR queues by default these days), it could cause you trouble if the IT folks in your office are bozos. Windows file sharing is the biggest improvement to Mac OS X’s ability to talk to the Dark Side, but it’s hardly the only one. Jaguar comes with a built-in VPN (virtual private network) client (tucked away in the Internet Connect application) that should make it easy to connect to VPNs (which let a machine pretend to be on a corporate LAN when it’s actually outside). Apple has also altered Mail to “Goanect to Server www.thursby.com)— work in tandem with an Entourage server. ae didn’t yet run in : If MacAddict (gureons-cou 8 ees! 10.2 (although a editors Niko Coucouvanis, Cathy Lu, and lan Sammis belonged to any feline species, they would be fat domestic housecats, the kind who sleep, purr, eat, and drool lot. He M se YOUR: MAC TIVO: SEINE RECORDERS, aAUT IF e= ee PINEF fon sy OF; ie a Ht rl = SOUL OF YO! 2 by Kristina De Nike photography by Mark) Madeo © iS MacAddict Tuners & ecorders Ever sit at your Mac wishing you could have the baseball game running in a corner of your screen? You'd still be able to get work done, but when Barry Bonds hits number 74 (we can dream, can’t we?), you wouldn’t miss it. The simplest devices for bringing TV into your Mac—the ATl and Eskape Labs tuners—let you watch TV and record it live. The latest DV recorders from El Gato and Formac use the Internet to schedule recording of shows. EL Gato’s EyeTV even gives you TiVo-like pause and replay controls. One caveat: If all you want to do is watch TV, you’re better off going to your local spr x re Devens window MyTV gives you basic live-television viewing and recording with easy-to-use controls. 32 MacAddict November 2002 electronics store and getting a good-quality color TV for about $300. You can’t beat the price ona standard TV, and if you get anice model the picture is clear, the blacks are black, and the colors are bright. There are a few reasons television broadcast looks better ona TV than on your Mac. One reason is that the NTSC standard for American television is 720 by 480. The USB solutions you use to bring TV into your Mac are mostly 320 by 240. The Formac studio DV/TV is 720 by 480, but even that has to convert from the NTSC scan frequency of 15KHz to a computer monitor frequency of 30KHz to 80KHz, which leaves the image grainy. Also, trying to watch TV at full screen using any of these devices is pretty disappointing. That said, bringing TV into your Mac has some advantages. For instance, you may not be able to sneak a TV into your office, but you can hide a TV-viewing window on your Mac lickety-split. Or you may have room for a 21-inch computer monitor in your cramped studio apartment, but not both a monitor anda TV. Also, a TV tuner for your computer is ideal if you want to record TV and then mess around with it in a video editor. All of the Mac TV tuners will work with aTVantenna, although you'll get better quality if you connect them to cable. In addition to letting you watch TV, the four Mac products out there also give you the ability to record live TV and to capture video over a composite RCA connector or S-Video to your Mac, except the EyeTV, which only brings in composite video. The most basic and inexpensive USB TV tuners are ATI's Xclaim TV USB Edition ($99, www.ati.com) and Eskape Labs’ MyTV/fm ($155, www.eskapelabs.com; see Reviews, p46). The Xclaim TV is OS9 only and supports a variety of compression types, including Motion JPEG, a series of JPEG-compressed images. Its quality is about the same as MPEG-1’s, but it produces larger files (for more on MPEG, see “MPEG Explicated,” left). The Xclaim TV also allows you to read and save closed- caption text—great if you want to get a transcript of Oprah without paying for it. You can set the application to watch for specific words and alert you when they come up. Eskape Labs’ MyTV works in 0S 9 or OSX. It also captures video in a variety of formats, including Motion JPEG but not MPEG. It is a little more difficult to set up because you connect your speakers to the MyTV box and then string the included audio cable from the box to your Mac. If you'd like to get more out of a TV tuner, you have two options. El Gato’s EyeTV ($199, www.elgato.com; see Reviews, p46) connects via USB, is Mac OS X only, and uses MPEG-1 compression. El Gato has an agreement with TitanTV, a Web-based service that allows you to look up your local TV listings and schedule shows for recording. EyeTV gives you two compression settings. The lower compression rate is around 0.2 MBps, or 700MB for an hour of video. The higher rate is about twice as large (1.4GB foran hour of better- quality video). Unfortunately, QuickTime Pro Vaal EyeTV gives you controls for pausing and replaying live TV. strips out the audio when you convert MPEG- 1. and MPEG-2 to DV video for use in iMovie. EyeTV’s coolest feature is that you can pause and replay live TV (as with TiVo) —handy when the phone rings during The Young and the Restless and you need to find out who cheated on whom after you hang up. The Formac studio DV/TV with TiVeRon software ($399, www.formac.com) is the only FireWire product. FireWire’s higher bandwidth means the device can capture a resolution of 720 by 480. FireWire also allows you to capture TV directly into iMovie, convenient for editing out less-desirable footage—say, any of young Anakin’s speaking scenes in The Phantom Menace. The OS X-only TiVeRon 1.0 software and the scheduling Web site were not ready at press time, but should be available by the time you read this. According to Formac, TiVeRon will allow you to set a channel and recording time, but for now it won’t let you pick the program by name and then let the Web site figure out when to record. You can schedule your studio DV/TV to start recording from a remote location—so if you’ve forgotten to set your VCR for Friends, you can use the TiVeRon Scheduler at work to tell your studio at home to record it. \fyou have a DV camcorder, you already know that video consumes drive space like Shaquille O’Neal on an eating binge—to be exact, an hour of DV video swallows 15GB. This type of hobby takes a big hard drive or two. If your Mac’s storage shy, you can select another compression format such as MPEG-4, which will only take up 1.5GB for an hour of video. a Sony GDM-FW900 The ideal setup fora home-entertainment Mac is a large, beautiful monitor for your desktop and personal entertainment needs, and then a projector on a second monitor connection forwhen the gang comes over to watch Sex and the City or Lord of the Rings on DVD. For your main monitor, you have to decide between a flat-panel LCD display ora bulky CRT monitor. LCD displays have been coming down in price over the past few years, but they still cost substantially more than CRTs. CRTs also don’t suffer from viewing-angle problems—as your gaze moves from side to side or up and down, the colors stay the same. On the other hand, LCDs take up. much tess room, are easier to move around, and tend to be brighter—and the latest and greatest models have much-improved viewing angles. One of our faves is, not surprisingly, the Apple Cinema HD Display ($3,499, www.apple.com). The charm of the Cinema HD—besides its lovely design, which will enhance any room’s decor (do we sound like a Pottery Barn catalog?)—is that it has very good viewing angles for an LCD. Plus, its wide screen will give you a larger picture when you're watching a movie. A word of warning if you’re going to spring for this puppy: Connect it to your Mac’s AGP graphics card with an ADC connector. We tried it with a PCI DVI card and 2 DVI-to- ADC adapter and got nasty artifacts in dark scenes. High Definition (that’s the HD in Cinema HD) actually encompasses more than one specification. HD can refer to 1,920 by 1,080 pixels, refreshed 60 times per second at a 2:1 interlace (yielding 30 complete fps), or 1,280 by 720 pixels, refreshed progressively at 60, 30, or 24 fps. The Cinema HD display supports “both 1,280 by 720 and 1,920 by 1,080 resolutions. But the Cinema HD isn’t just for entertainment—its expansive (and expensive) real estate is fabulous when you’re editing video or images. Ifyou have your heart set on an LCD but your budget is somewhat less than $3,500, you have other options like the Formac gallery ($899 to $949, depending on the connector) and the Sharp LL-T1820 ($1,299, www.sharpelectronics .com). Also, the Sony SDM-V72W ($999, www.sonystyle.com), a 17-inch multimedia LCD, is just one of a wave of wide-screen LCDs that will be hitting shelves in the months approaching the holidays. Sure, 17 inches is a little small, but the Sony SDM- V72W's versatility almost makes up for it. You can plug a game system, PC, or DVD player into it and truly make it the center of all your entertainment. Its 16:9 aspect ratio makes it good for viewing HDTV and wide-screen movies. It uses Sony’s Wow speakers (the same ones you'll find in Sony’s Vega televisions), which are better than the built-in speakers on your Mac but don’t exactly filla room. Of course you have hundreds of CRTs from which to choose, but the gorgeous Sony GDM-FW900 ($2,000)—a 24-inch CRT wide-screen display—may be the sexiest. It has bright colors and nice detail if you have room (and the muscles) for its 22 by 20 by 20 inches and almost 100 pounds of heft. Another option is the Samsung SyncMaster 765 ($219, www.samsung.com), a 17-inch CRT featuring MagicBright. This technology provides three brightness settings, so you can increase brightness when you are watching video and decrease it for text and Internet surfing. November 2002 MacAddict 33 | | | idl Projectors Multimedia projectors are the latest fashion “do” from all the projector companies. What sets these projectors apart from business models is that they generally have better speakers, better analog-to-digital converters, and lower brightness optimized for make-out sessions...uh, we mean viewing in dark rooms. Home-theater projectors tend to be heavier, although the heaviest are only about 15 pounds—the weight of a four-month-old baby ora fat cat. Just because it’s called a home-theater projector, though, doesn’t mean it’s the right projector for your home. Projector speakers aren’t very good, and you have to compete with the sound of the projector’s cooling fan. Get separate speakers. Projector brightness is measured in lumens, and current projectors range from 800 lumens to over 3,000. Projector manufacturers assume you'll be using home-theater projectors in a fairly dark room. If you have good drapes or only want to use the projector to watch the midnight horror movie, a low-brightness projector can give you better detail in dark, shadowy scenes, If you plan on using the projector for your Super Bowl party, you’d be better off with a business projector that has 2,000 lumens. A higher-lumen projector is easier to see when the lights are on. Many home-theater projectors use the Faroudja image-processing chip (www.faroudja.com), designed to convert analog video from your TV or VCRtoa digital RGB image, However, this doesn’t help if you’re feeding a signal directly from your Mac, so you may not need that feature. Epson’s PowerLite TW100 Multimedia Projector ($4,999, www.epson.com), 36 MacAddict November 2002 the company’s first home- entertainment projector, uses a three-LCD technology. Its 700 lumens are fine for a darkened room, but for brighter surroundings the Epson PowerLite 730c Multimedia Projector ($3,844) is a better choice at 2,000 lumens. We also liked the color quality of the InFocus ScreenPlay 110 ($4,999, www.infocus.com), a 1,000-lumen DLP projector. If you don’t know your DLPs from your LCDs, here’s the deal: LCD (liquid crystal display) projectors use three tiny active-matrix, polysilicon LCDs, each about the size of a postage stamp. Each LCD creates an image’s red, green, or blue content. DLP (digital light processing) is Texas Instruments’ term for digital micromirror device (DMD) technology. DLP uses an array of tiny mirrors tilted by microscopic electrodes that a digital signal controls. As the mirrors move, they reflect red, green, blue, and white light toward a projection lens. In general, DLP projectors have better detail and brightness, especially in still images and text, and LCD projectors offer better color quality. Speakers The pretty pictures may entrance you, but to bring the complete movie experience home, you have to beef up your sound system. A good audio setup is the difference between watching your favorite movie and feeling as if you’re in the movie. The built-in speaker on your Mac is only strong enough if you are a few feet away from your computer, not if you’re sitting on the beanbag chair in the back of the room. The minijack on the back of your Mac lets you connect a Set of more powerful stereo PowerLite TW100 speakers, but the sound from this jack has a limited range, and Apple no longer offers RCA connectors. Luckily vendors are coming out with products that take advantage of USB audio. If you’re using your Mac as a component of your home-entertainment center for movies or to play MP3s, you may want to connect the Mac to your stereo or home- theater receiver and use those speakers. Connecting a Mac to a receiver is pretty straightforward: Run down to your local electronics store and buy a cable witha 1/8-inch stereo-jack adapter on one end and a pair of RCA connectors on the other end (RCA a