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MacAddict 107 200507

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  • SourceMacAddict-107-200507.pdf
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Source: Internet Archive — Aggregated Apple-era periodicals, 1981–2012.
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@ °”. DUMP GOOGLE! WE SHOW YOU HOW TO SEARCH SMARTER [Ul MacAddi TTER MACHINE. A BETTER MAG SPECIAL REPORT: Our experts show you how tomasterthe MOST POWERFUL MAC OS X EVER SAFARI RSS ©) iCHAT AV & 4 DICTIONARY =: FONT BOOK QUICKTIME7 2. -MAC SYNC &) HOW TO: > Create a Dashboard Widget > Hypercustomize iChat > CanoScan LiDE 500F > Protect Your Home Network > Drive Genius . -and 20 more > Exploit Photoshop Elements } REVIEWED: z OLYMPUS STYLUS VERVE > ; > Final Cut Express HD q Airdlick | ry Ly] AirClick ‘ ye Remote Control for iPod Sd + Control your iPod, iPod mini, or computer from up t0 60 feet away - y/ * Uses RF signals that travel through walls for é remote control use anywhere in the house = a + Tiny remote attaches to backpack, bike, steering me wheel - anywhere for on-the-go control H a Nee : 14 é = | tak ~ = —= = = ae =. iTalk Lapel Mic iPod Voice Recorder Multipurpose Stereo Microphone “Internal microphone and —_ Passthrough jack for + Self-powered microphone laptop quality speaker headphones or additional with stereo-quality sound + Connect external speaker + Swivel clip for easy + Connects directly to Talk, microphone or headphones « Automatic level control for attachment iMic, or PowerWave perfect recordings y: \ iTrip FM Transmitter for iPod (19% TuneJuice Battery Backup for iPod and iPod mii + Provides up to 8 hours of + The only FM Transmitter + Choose any empty station vi tt designed exclusively forthe from 87.7 to 107.9, and additional power to iPod iPod & iPod mini change your iTrip stations + Uses any disposable or «Powered from the IPod - directly from the iPod rechargeable 9-volt battery no batteries necessary + Carry emergency iPod * Works with any dockable ‘¥ a: Sa wherever you go iPod or iPod mini z learn more at www.gri' iffintechnology.com $2999 iVault Aluminum Case for iPod shuffle + Elegant, protective enclosure for iPod shuffle * Available in Silver, Purple, Blue and Red “Four screws ensure that your iPod shut completely secure and only comes 01 iVault when you went it to “includes 36" USB cable for connectivity while your iPod shuffle is protected time-shift recording | + AM/FM radio for your Mac or PC + Record your favorite programs | while you listen or schedule recordings for later + Easily transfer recordings to iTunes + Pause and resume live radio or scroll back in time and record RoadTrip FM Transmitter, Charger, and Cradle ic USB Audio Interface + Power and charge an iPod or iPod mini fr te + Adds stereo audio inputs and outputs non any javolt cidarets ig to any USB equipped Mac or PC + RoadTrip transmitter module works separately as an FM transmitter for your home computer “Transmits on a full range of frequencies from 88.1 to 107.9 } + Includes everything needed to record albums and tapes to make MP3s and CDs + Plug-and-Play simple, no install required “4 SightLight FireWire Light for iSight * Custom-designed Fresnel-based lens diffuses light to even out shadows ) + Auto setting automatically senses the | amount of ambient room light and adjusts its output accordingly + Shares the iSight's FireWire connection | Dock400 & Dock800 | Dock Cables for iPod + Take advantage of the FireWire 800 or FireWire 400 port on your computer - no more unplugging another device to sync your iPod | + Charges and syncs your iPod or iPod mini | = Connects to iPod or iPod Dock } sy =< | i learn more at www.griffintechnology.com PowerMate USB Multimedia Controller Knob | + Eliminates repetitive keystrokes | + Great control for iTunes, iMovie, and GarageBand | + Programmable for any application + Now in Brushed Aluminum and Black | | } | ; | iCurve | Invisible Laptop Stand | + Keeps laptop cool with maximum | air circulation | | | } + Raises laptop screen to the perfect height and creates room on the desktop for an external keyboard and mouse + Fits all Apple PowerBooks and iBooks J ULY2005 *VOLUME10*ISSUE7 a better machine. a better magazine. features O 12 Taming Ma §=6Tiger We test the limits and discover the hidden powers of Spotlight, Dashboard, and all the other features of Mac OS 10.4. by Niko Coucouvanis, Roman Loyola, and Rik Myslewski 5 28 Search Party ‘ Google’s great, but why not explore some specialized search engines for shopping, travel, research, and more? by Robert Strohmeyer how to 52 Ask Us We have the answers you seek; whether you’re wondering how to use an old monitor with your new Mac mini or trying to teach your Mac and PC to get along. 54 Take Charge of iChat 59 Ease into Photoshop Elomers Hypercustomize your interface, Once you find out fo troubleshoot connection problems, tailor what Photoshop’s custom alerts for your buddies, and more. little brother by Dan Pourhadi can do, you may kick yourself for 56 Create a Dashboard Widget _ buying Photoshop CS. Fill Tiger’s Dashboard by Niko Coucouvanis with all the cute lil’ widgets residing in the back of your twisted lil’ mind. by Niko Coucouvanis 61 Snoop Your Home Network Hunt down hackers and search for slackers trying to hitch a free ride on your Wi-Fi connection. by Alex Handy Cover image by Oliver Wolfson 02 MacAddict July 2005 every month 05 Editors’ Page Apple’s OS innovations have changed the way we work, but they haven't all been gems. 06 Get Info The Apple Stores are grand, but are mom-and-pop Mac shops a dying breed? Find out what they can do that Apple Stores can’t. Plus: Mac podcasts, Tiger-training books, and more. 31 Reviews 40 Backdrop Designer Photoshop plug-in 42 BTMicro Bluetooth mouse 49 Burning Monkey Mahjong mahjong game 43 CanoScan LiDE 500F flatbed scanner 38 Cheetah3D 3D-modeling software 44 Chessmaster 9000 chess game 41 Combo 1.8-Inch ION Drive portable hard drive 42 Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour real-time strategy game 45 Drive Genius disk-utility software 39 Eye Candy 5: Nature Photoshop plug-in $2 Final Cut Express HD video-editing sofware 36 FR-7 V-Accordion digital accordion 48 D300 digital music player 44 iBoom iPod boom box 47 Flicks movie organizer 34 MetaSynth 4 aucio-synthesizer software 49 MicFlex microphone 49 mini Skirt: glo Mac mini stand 46 Photo to Movie 3.2 photo-effects software 48 ShutterBug Web-authoring software 45 Solio solar iPod charger : 37 SoundSoap 2 audio-cleaning software 41 StoreJet 1.8-Inch Portable HDD portable hard drive 35 Stylus Verve point-and-shoot camera 47 Visual Thesaurus 3 word-reference app 46 WireTap Pro sound-recording software QUICK TIPS FROM THIS MONTH'S ISSUE > DITCH DASHBOARD liyou unlock Dashboard’s Developer Ifyou sign mode, you can run a widget in the Finder. up fora free From “Create a Dashboard Widget,” p56. —.Mac trial, the you@mac > | WANT MY HDTV .com iChat How can you watch your HD video if you handle is can’t yet make an HD DVD? Record HD yours to keep movies back to your camera’s tape, attach even after the the camera to your HD telly, and roll. trial ends. From Reviews, p32. 50 The Hot List We’d spend our own hard- money on these products. 78 Log Out 78 Letters One reader opens up a Mac museum; another turns to to build a better mousetra| > FREEBIE@MAC.COM From “Take Charge of iChat,” p54. CONTENTS 79 Contest Harness your hilariousness and win yourself an Olympus Evolt E-300 digital SLR! earned 80 Shut Down What happens when there’s a Apple breakdown in the corporate- Pp. communication chain? > EASE INTO ELEMENTS You probably ~ = eee don’t need all of Photoshop CS2's pro features. Buy Elements instead, and spend the cash you save ‘on an acre of RAM. Or send itto us. From “Ease into Elements,” p59. July 2005 MacAddict 03 O04 <1 | CONTENTS ithe Cisc a better machine. a better magazine Widget addiction is afflicting Tiger adopters everywhere, and we’ve got the cure: 23 nifty little widgets to crowd your Dashboard bar. You'll also find four fun games, a gang of great graphics apps, and a whole lot more on this month’s Disc. Massive Assault Photo to Movie en Genius demo demo demo In this strategy game, Sure, iPhoto’s got great ‘ Repair, defragmentation, 3] warfare after World War slideshows and iMovie’s duplication, and more— 9! Il is bloody, tense, and got Ken Burns on this burly drive utility a whole lot of nail- staff—but this app can will keep your Mac’s ke biting fun. do much, much more. drives running right. Mo lal Beal AUDIO & MUSIC tailDash 1.5 freeware | iMaginator 1.0.1 PRODUCTIVITY Peak LE 4.1.3 trial TV Tracker 1.0 freeware | _ shareware Mariner Write 3.6.5 ‘SoundSoap 2 demo video | VelaClock 1.0 deino Photo to Movie3.2.2demo demo WireTap Pro 1.0.1 WikityWidget 1.1 Picture Rescue 1.1.0 trial ‘shareware shareware UTILITIES INTERFACE ChronoSync 3.0.1 DASHBOARD DEVELOPMENT DragThing 5.6 shareware _ shareware Bloglines Notifier 1.0 | REALbasic 5.5.5 demo DiskTracker (Classic) 2.3 freeware INTERNET & DiskTracker (OS X) 2.3 Capture 0.7.5 freeware FUN & GAMES: COMMUNICATION Drive Genius 1.1.1 demo Creatures InMyHead | Geneforge 3 shareware HTML-OptimizerX94_ Fink 0.7.1 freeware 1.1 freeware Massive Assault 2.0 shareware FinkCommander 0.5.3 DaisyTracker 1.0 demo JiWire Portable Hotspot freeware freeware Kill Monty 1.0.2 Locator 1.0 freeware Flores 1.1 freeware shareware Qvolab Phiink 2.1demo SPONSORS Hula Girl2.1 freeware Tribal Trouble 1.0 demo pagesender 3.4 JiWire Portable Hotspot JiWire WiFi Hotspot shareware Locator 1.0 freeware Finder 1.0 freeware GRAPHICS & Picture Patrol 9 1.5 Peak LE 4.1.3 tia! MacAddict Faux Fire ‘MULTIMEDIA shareware Picture Rescue 1.1.0 trial freeware Cheetah3D 2.2b2 beta Picture Patrol X 4.5 ‘SoundSoap 2 demo MAYA Cards 1.0 treeware IFlicks 1.1 shareware ‘shareware video Memory 1.0 freeware Meteo 0.2 freeware miniDropper 0.9 freeware F a minQane 0. nar Staff Video: Patience 0. Yee » We Fought the Package Tracker 2.0 ‘rosvare J Law, and. .. Penny Atcade Comic- We spared no expense to bring you the Niewing Widget 1.3 gripping tale of Reviews Editor Roman Seen Loyola's failed attempt to videotape SistiGatn (isoiae San Francisco's Tiger-release party. Snake 0.9 freeware UPGRADE Ifyou don’t receive the Disc with your copy of MacAddict, you might want to consider upgrading. Each monthly Disc contains cool demos, useful shareware and freeware, and the inimitable MacAddict Staff Video. To get 12 issues of MacAddict that include this vatue-packed disc with your subscription (prorated if necessary) for just $1 more per issue, call 888-771-6222—the operator will take care of everything. 04 MacAddict July 2005 MacAddict EDITORIAL EDITOR IN CHIEF Rik Mystewski MANAGING EDITOR Sean Molloy FEATURES EDITOR Jake Widman HOW-TO EDITOR Niko Coucouvanis REVIEWS EDITOR Roman Loyola WEB MONKEY Nick Muerdter EPONYMEDITOR Max: SONTRIBUTING EDITORS David Sees mee ART ART DIRECTOR Mark Rosenthal ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR Peter Marshutz PHOTOGRAPHER Mark Madeo CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER Samantha Berg BUSINESS PUBLISHER Bernie Lanigan, 212-768-2966 x4001 EASTERN ADVERTISING MANAGER “Anthony Danzi, 646-723-5453, EASTERN ADVERTISING DIRECTOR, Dave Lynn, 949-360-4663 WESTERN ADVERTISING MANAGER ‘Stacey Levy, 925-964-1205 NATIONAL ACCOUNT MANAGER Nate Hunt, 415-656-0535 MARKETING MANAGER Kathl itt ADVERTISING COORDINATOR Jose Urrutia, 415-656-8919 PRODUCTION PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Richard Lesovoy PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Larry Briseno CIRCULATION CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Amy Leder NEWSSTAND MARKETING MANAGER BILLShewey BILLING AND RENEWAL MANAGER Mike Rill NEWSSTAND COORDINATOR Alex Guzman FULFILLMENT MANAGER Peggy Mores DIRECT-MAIL MANAGER Stephanie Blake DIRECT MARKETING SPECIALIST Robin Connalt FUTURENETWORKUSA 150 North Hill Drive, Suite 40, Briebane, CA 94005 ‘www futurenetworkusa.com PRESIDENT Jonathan Simpson-Bint VICE PRESIDENT/CFO Tom Vatontine VICE PRESIDENT/CIRCULATION Hotty KUinget, GENERAL COUNSEL Chartes Schug PUBLISHING DIRECTOR/GAMES Simon Whitcombe PUBLISHING DIRECTOR/TECHNOLOGY Chris Coetho PUBLISHING DIRECTOR/MUSIC Steve Aaron PUBLISHING DIRECTOR/BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Dave Barrow EDITORIAL DIRECTOR/TECHNOLOGY Jon Phittips EDITORIAL DIRECTOR/MUSIC Brad Tolinski DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL SERVICES Nancy Durlester PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Richie Lesovoy Future Network USA\s part of Future PLC Future produces carefully targeted special-interest magazines for people who share a passion. Weaim to satisty that passion by creating titles offering value for money, reliable information, smart buying ‘advice and which ere a pleasure to read. Today we publish more than 100 magazines in the US, UK, France ‘and Italy, Over 100 international editions af our magazines are also ppublihed in 3 other countries across the world The Future Network pic isa public company quoted on the London Stock Exchange [symbol: FNETI FUTUREPLE 30 Monmouth St, Bath, Avon, BAI 26W, England ‘wor futureple.com Tol +44 1225 447266 CHIEF EXECUTIVE: Grag Ingham GROUP FINANCE DIRECTOR: John Bowman REPRINTS: For reprints, contact Ryan Derfler, Reprint Operations ‘Specialist, 717.399.1900 ext. 167 or emai: futurenetworkusa@reprintbuyer.com SUBSCRIPTION QUERIES: Please email medcustserv@cdsfulfllment com or call customer service tollsfreeat 888-771-6222. Volume 10, Issue 7 ‘MacAuddiet (SSN 1088-5453) fe pushed monty by Fuze Network USA 150 North Hil De, Sto. 40, Bisbane, CA 94005, USA. Periodalciass postage paid Biebane, CA, and at addtional malig offess. Newsstand trout 1 Co. Basie euberpon ras: one yer (12 sues + 90, Canesa $43.95, US. pepais funds only. Canaan pice nudes postage and GST 128220686. PM 0962992, Outsde the US. and (Canada, prices $5295, US. prpald funds ony, POSTMASTER: Send access sc. PO He 2, Haan 3-8, Fie Nevo ature Snowboarding, Sowtoard Jounal, Snowboard Te Now. ‘Shateboard Trade News, and Sorspbook Answers. Enle contents copyright 2006, Future Neto USA. Al ights reserved. Reprocucton n wl orn pa is prcibod. Future Network USA snot afilatad vt the compare r products leche Rde-Along enclooue ing extions-A2. Bi, 82. PRODUCED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Puicatons Mal ‘Aajoomert #0043651, Rum: 49602 Waker Road, Wear ONNBA 63 A History of Ingenuity Innovation has been the name of Apple’s game for nearly 30 years. And although Apple’s hardware has consistently led the personal- computing world in quality and style, it’s the Mac’s operating systems that have brought the most important advances to the world of personal computing (see “Taming Tiger,” p12). That said, while many of the OS breakthroughs have been of “How did we live without these?” caliber, some have been deservedly consigned to the dustbin of history. Such as... HOW DID WE LIVE WITHOUT THESE? * Hierarchical File System (1986) Before HFS was introduced in System 3.0, you couldn’t nest folders inside of other folders. Try to picture navigating through your files if that were the case today. © Progress Bar (1987) Originally, when you copied a file, folder, or disk, you simply had to guess how long that process would take. Then the Progress Bar appeared in System 4.2 to assure you that, yes, it really was taking that long. + Multitasking (1987) Today we all keep multiple applications running simultaneously, thanks to Mac OS X’s finely tuned preemptive multitasking. System 4.2’s MultiFinder introduced the \ess-capable, but still mighty welcome, cooperative multitasking, and we all became far more productive. DUSTBIN OF HISTORY © AJUX (1988) Mac OSX wasn’t the first Unix-based Mac operating system—that honor goes to A/UX, which petered out in 1995, having never made much of a splash in the first place. * Interapplication Communication (1993) If you never could get this, method of sharing information among different applications working consistently and correctly, you weren’t alone. * OpenDoc (1996) Even though Apple, IBM, Novell, Borland, and Lotus all supported this “document-centric” technology, it lived a short and tortured life because application developers needed to completely rethink the way they wrote and distributed apps—and figure out a way to make money while doing so. The list, of course, goes on. And on. And only time will tell which of Tiger's innovations will become indispensable and which will become mere footnotes in the history of the world’s greatest personal computer. Enjoy, 72 ‘ comingsoon;august2005 Here’s what our editors are preparing for the next issue of MacAddict. EDITORS’ PAGE Q. What Itwas the modem. At first | avoided them as toys for Star Trek geeks and calculator programmers, but when they hit 14.4 Kbps I finally got one—and I haven't gotten much work done since. ‘Sean Molloy CLUTTER-MANAGEMENT SPECIALIST ‘What innovation most changed the way you work with your Mac? ‘Thanks to the desktop-clearing capabilities of Exposé, days will pass before | realize that I've got 147 ‘applications open. Now if only they made something like that for my real desk. pemmmy Jake Widman pisktoP Jockey * ‘What Innovation most changed the way you 9) work with your Mac? ‘That whole folders-and-desktop thing, Remember before that, when your workspace was called The Floor, and you'd just throw things anywhere, and every 80 often the Media Operating Module (MOM) would come along to put things away and you wouldn't know where they were? That was such a drag. Roman Loyola FALSE STARTER What innovation most changed the way you work with your Mac? The first-generation Power Macs made a terrifying car crash sound instead of the startup chime if something was amiss at boot. To this day, when | turn on my Mag, I'm a bit anxious unti | hear that pleasing, familiar startup chime—only then can | relax. Peter Marshutz siTTING BY THE DOCK OF THE BAY What innovation most changed the way you work with your Mac? Hove the Dock, it really makes navigating around my Mac easy: switching applications; bouncing between documents, Web pages, anything—it's great. Mark Rosenthal sto Poke = GP) What innovation most changed the way you work with your Mac? \ Before cooperative multitasking, | couldn't see the big deal about having multiple applications running at the same time. Looking back, | bet | spent two hours of my workday Just opening and closing apps! Max BACKING UP INTO THE FUTURE (2 +S What innovation most changed the way you work with your Mac? felis When System 1.1 was released on May 5, 1984, it improved the interrrinable floppy-copy speed—or lack thereot—that plagued the original System 1.0. The fix would have been released sooner, but rumor had it that Apple's system-software programmers wasted multiple man- years backing up their work on 400KE floppies in System 1.0. Got bugs? Who doesn’t? In our fifth-annual bug hunt, we'll identify some oi the most threatening species and show you how to exterminate them trom your Mac. Remember that blogging story we promised for this month? Tiger devoured it-—but it'll be back next month, along with a Field Guide explaining little-known startup codes and key combinations. We'll also take the mystery out of iPhoto slideshows, create a backup system with AppleScript and a FireWire hard drive, build a homebrew Steadicam rig to stabilize shaky video footage, and delve into the powers of Automator. We'll also have reviews of Adobe's InDesign CS2 and Photoshop CS2, Wacom’'s Cintiq 21UX, Apple’s new dual 2.7GHz Power Mac, and more. July 2005 MacAddict 05 06 Gial Apple's chain of stores continues to grow, but there are still reasons to visit an independent Mac store. tep into one of Apple’s gleaming stores, and you may think you’ve died and gone to heaven—one populated with seemingly infinite iPods, multitudinous Mac minis, in-store workshops, and a crack team of Mac Geniuses that dispense free advice. Apple’s retail strategy appears to be paying off—titerally. In a recent quarterly report, Apple claimed that its retail stores raked in a $45 million profit during the first quarter of 2005, up from just $9 million a year ago. But not everyone is celebrating. Many Apple resellers are screaming that Apple just isn’t playing fair. In the knock-down-drag-out battle between Apple and independent resellers, do mom-and-pop shops stand a fighting chance? And where do you, as a Mac user, stand to get the best deals and service? New Apple gear. Not surprisingly, Apple retail stores are your best bet for scoring the latest and greatest Apple products. Apple stocks its own stores first before sending shipments (often in short supply) to its resellers. Apple Stores also play hardball when it comes to price; find any Apple-branded hardware or software at a reseller fora lower price, and Apple will match that price (though only up to 10 percent below the current Apple Store price). A few individual resellers claim that these practices are anticompetitive; some resellers are taking Apple to court to level the playing field. Former Apple reseller Tom Santos is among them. Santos, the owner of the recently shut- down MacAdam store in San Francisco, filed a lawsuit accusing Apple of a laundry list of anticompetitive tactics, 06 MacAddict July 2005 l@ news of the month in bite-size chunks PHOTOGRAPH BY SCOTT OLSON/ GETTY IMAGES. including poor or no allocation of products, pawning off used computers as new ones, consistent improper billing and overbilling for repairs, and undercutting its resellers in price wars. “When Apple opened its stores, it said, ‘We're going to support you,” says Santos. “What a bunch of crap—a bunch of lies designed to keep us around until they don’t need us anymore.” Other resellers agree. Elite Computers & Software founder Thomas Armes, who recently had to close all five of his stores (which brought in $20 million in sales in 2002), also has a suit against Apple citing unfair business practices. And in mid-February 2005, three California consumers and two former Apple resellers joined forces to file a class-action suit against Apple. The suit echoes many of Santos’s and Armes’s complaints; it also accuses Apple of directly marketing to the resellers’ private customer lists. Non-Apple stuff. Apple may hoard its newest products for its own stores, but resellers often have a greater supply and JOIN THE iSCENE Recently, the New York Post and City Magazine ran stories about the hipsters and singles at the SoHo Apple Store in New York City. Wired News (www.wired.com) wrote about Hollywood celebrities who visit Apple Stores. The vibe’s different at your locally owned Mac store—it’s PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF APPLE variety of third-party products such as digital cameras, scanners, and printers, as well as older Mac products you won't find in an Apple Store. Need a wireless card for your old G3? An ergonomic keyboard and mouse? A five-megapixel digital camera? There’s a good chance that you’ll have more luck finding it at an independent reseller. If you’re making a big purchase, an independent Apple reseller is more likely to cut you a deal in hopes of getting you hooked on service. “We make deals easier,” says Yunus Motiwalla, operations manager of the Anaheim, CA-based L.A. Computer Company. “The Apple Store isn’t geared to help dedicated buyers looking to make usually more community oriented, down to earth, and laid back. Chances a members of your local patronizing the store. you'll find sers’ group ichelle Victoria Hey, Mac, come here often? Lines like this one big deals. They’re just at the Chicago branding stores with Apple Store are the basic $8-an-hour common with employee.” big store events, Service and help. such astheTiger If you need a quickie release. memory upgrade, don’t know how to reset your iPod, or can’t figure out why your Mac won't work, then sidle on up to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store fora free face-to-face consultation. Depending on the store, you may be in for a wait. The line at the flagship San Francisco Apple Store is often several hours long. The impatient can make a same-day appointment to avoid lines, while the really impatient can buy into Apple’s $99 One of San Francisco’s last independent Mac stores, MacAdam, closed its doors earlier this year. ProCare plan, which lets you reserve a Genius up to seven days in advance. lfyou have a serious problem, though, you're better off heading directly to your local Apple reseller instead of an Apple Store. Why? Most Apple Stores aren’t full-service centers, which means they can only make the most minimal repairs. on-site; everything else is sent out for repair, which could take days, if not weeks. At the L.A. Computer Company, technicians do all the work on-site and can often make repairs while you wait. Lou Dunham, one of the owners of Bethesda-based MacUpgrades, says he has a great relationship with the Apple mini store that opened up a block away from his own store last December, “We've referred customers to them for products that we can’t get, and they refer customers to us for products that they no longer service or for on-site service, which they don’t provide,” says Dunham. “We've exchanged a lot of business with the Apple Store, and I’m really happy with them.”—Nikki Echler McDonald > PRINTER PAL NEW STUFF Epson PictureMate Deluxe Viewer Edition $243 wwyrepson.com Available: June To print on this portable photo printer, just insert your camera’s memory card. You can preview your images on the 2.4-inch LCD and adjust brightness, saturation, sharpness, cropping, and more. A battery is available for $69.99. Keep your photo tab close at hand, > USEUSENET PICS Brainchild Picture Patrol 1.5 $19 www.brainchild.nl Available: Now This app can search through Usenet newsgroups for downloadable pictures, You can read newsgroup articles, decode the attached pictures, and save the images to your hard disk. > COMFORTABLE GLISSANDO Edirol PC-80 $495 www.edirol.com, Available: Now This USB MIDI controller has felt- cushioned and spring-loaded keys; 24-bit, 96kHz audio capability; low- latency driver support for Core Audio, WDM, ASIO 2.0 and OS standard drivers; and stereo powered speakers (2.watts each). 61 ebonies and ivories to tickle. IMAGE COURTESY OF EPSON IMAGE COURTESY OF EDIROL IU duly 2005 MacAddict 07 GET INFO tt ews of the month in bite-size chunks DROOLWORTHY ‘Sexy Stuff We Can't Wait to Get Our Mitts On Pa Rum Pum- Pum Pum> The 16 velocity-sensitive pads on M- Audio’s Trigger Finger ($249, www .m-audio.com) are designed for playing drum sounds, but you can generate any MIDI triggers you wish. The eight knobs and four faders can be assigned to MIDI parameters such as volume, pan, pitch, and effects. Trigger Finger also has preprogrammed maps for Reason, Live, GM Drum, XG Drum, and iDrum. IMAGE COURTESY OF M-AUDIO €To Serve and Protect Ifyou're planning on using your Mac mini as a server, it should feel nice and comfy inside UStec’s iLAN (price to be determined, www.ustecnet.com), a cabinet that includes cables, ports, and a 10/100Base-T Ethernet switch and router. You can customize the cabinet to include a security-camera system, satellite-TV multiswitch, and broadband amplifier to boost your cable-TV quality. IMAGE COURTESY OF USTEC 08 MacAddict July 2005 NOW IT’S PERSONAL lizzard recently gave players of ‘its popular massively multiplayer online role- playing game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft a reason to engage in player-versus-player (PvP) combat with Honor Points and Rewards—next, they plan on taking PvP to the next level with Battlegrounds, a sort of up-close-and-personal version of Warcraft Ill that pits Horde against Alliance in special areas of the world. The goal: Slay the enemy’s general and destroy its headquarters, There are several ways to achieve victory: You can lay siege to guard towers, graveyards, and GET INFO [5 QO Same old World of Warcraft. Hot new player-versus-player action. minor villages to control more of the map; you can also capture mines to gather resources for your fellow players. After killing an enemy player, you can loot the corpse fora token and give it to your team’s master magic user. When you’ve handed over enough tribute, the spellcaster will summon a huge epic figure to smash your opponents.—Matt Osborn World of Warcraft Price $49.99 (plus monthly fee) Available |Now Blizzard Entertainment ‘www.blizzard.com Tribal Trouble Price $24.95 Available Now Oddlabs wwiwoddlabs.com/ tribaltrouble,php NO REST FOR THE NATIVES > In Oddlabs’ new real-time strategy game, Tribal Trouble, hapless Vikings stumble upon a tropical island and plan to conquer the noble natives who cail it home, And whata home it is! Randomly generated terrain means no more repeating the same old boring maps over and over again as you traverse the 3D-RTS terrain. Gather resources, build buildings, train warriors, and create a powerful chieftain to eliminate your foes.-MO TIPS & TRICKS: STAR WARS BATTLEFRONT These tips will keep you from being a nerf herder in Star Wars Battlefront.—MO OWN SOLO Play the single-player game to get acquainted with all of the maps and classes in each faction, Find a class that fits your playing style—but be flexible. If your team has too many troopers, be a pilot instead. Pilots can dish out health and ammo; they can also repair vehicles and turrets. STAY ON TARGET Starfighters are hard to control, so fly slowly. Jedi Starfighters, X-Wings, and TIE Bombers have rockets with lock-on capabilities that help targeting. YF ZAP! Playas the native chieftain, and you can fry foes with lightning. GSI: Dark Motives Price 7BD Available July Aspyr Media at WWW.aspyr.com + Atrighty then, Dr. Autopsy— digin. ur netvesi@ng skills as-you examine erime stion witneSSess and analyze evidence with juipment. Expect the same voices af@igraphic situationS-as in the television show, but be forewarned; It might be a crime to eat dinner While you play.—MO ABUSE THE FORCE It’s easiest to kill a Jedi hero while on the planet Tatooine. Just hop on a speeder bike and push the Jedi Into the Sarlacc’s maw. (Duh.) FIGHT THE SMALL FIGHT On. the Profile Select screen, create a new profile named Jub Jub. When you enter a game, everyone will be Ewok-sized. Now you can take out all your Return of the Jedi frustrations. July 2005 MacAddict 09 Bookeviews >>>>>>>. YOUR GUIDES TO TIGER Ihat comes with every copy of Apple’s newest version of Mac OS X, Tiger? Questions! You'll want a good Tiger book on hand when you're digging into OS 10.4’s many new features. Here are a few references to check out.—Michelle Victoria THE LITTLE MAC BOOK, TIGER EDITION by Robin Williams (Peachpit, $14.99) ‘www.peachpit.com Robin makes even Tipe ton the most complicated subjects easy to understand. THE MAC OS X TIGER BOOK by Andy fhnatko. =) (Wiley, $24.99) www.wiley.com If it’s written by Andy, it’s a fun read packed with useful information. MAC OS X BIBLE, TIGER EDITION by Samuel Litt et al. (Wiley, $29.99) www.wiley.com Alongtime favorite among Mac devotees. Mac OS X = Bug oi ihe Month >>>>>>> RAM-SLOT FAILURES MAC OS X TIGER POCKET GUIDE by Chuck Toporek (O'Reilly, $9.95) ‘ www.oreilly.com O’Reilly’s pocket guides are ‘es compact, succinct, and invaluable. MASTERING MAC OS X @ V10.4 TIGER by Todd Stauffer and Kirk McEthearn my (Sybex, $39.99) al www.sybex.com lou for extensive troubleshooting and maintenance help? Here ’tis. TEACH YOURSELF VISUALLY MAC OS X TIGER by Erick Tejkowski (Wiley, $24.99) www.wiley.com When words are overwhelming, turn to this visual guide. G.Machixit ting Solutions for the Macintosh well-traveled PowerBook or iBook takes a lot of abuse—enough that your RAM modules may one day work themselves loose. This odd phenomenon can even affect deskbound Macs. You may not even know you've lost useable RAM until you check About This Mac (in the Finder, Apple Menu > About This Mac) to see how much RAM you have, orwhen some of your apps ... possible fixes. run ... painfully ... slowly. Here are some OBSERVE PROPER SEATING Chances are that your RAM is simply seated improperly. Remove the module and reinstall it. Make sure the connection is tight. ROTATE YOUR RAM Try switching your memory modules around. Move RAM in upper slots to lower slots and vice versa. TEST YOUR LOGIC Dig up Apple’s Hardware Test CD (it comes with all Macs, so you probably have it somewhere) and run its memory-diagnostic test. If you get an error message that reads “post/0/2048 SODIMMO0/J25LOWER,” you may have a faulty logic board. Apple will give you a new logic board if your’Book is still under warranty. If your ’Book is out of warranty, you can find replacement boards at PowerBook Medic (www.powerbookmedic.com) and PBParts.com (www.pbparts.com). 10 MacAddict July 2005 fyou’re in the market for a new PDA, palmOne unleashed the Tungsten E2 ($249, www.palmone.com), which has a 320-by- 320-pixel color LCD, 32MB of nonvolatile flash memory, built- in Bluetooth, and longer battery life than the Tungsten E. Econ Technologies’ ChronoSync 3.0 ($30, www.econtechnologies .com) lets you sync files and folders from one disk location to another. The new version comes ith a revamped interface, new synchronization features, and much more. Jumsoft released Keynote Animations KKKKKK “abel etapa ALIALLONGOud CJ C= IMAGE COURTESY OF PALM almOne’s ase 3.0 ($45, www generation, Jumsoft.com), a collection of 100 animated objects for Apple’s Keynote and Pages. The collection includes animated illustrations for business, science, education, engineering, and law. Mariner Software shipped Mariner Write 3.6.5 ($59.95, www -marinersoftware.com), which has new AppleScript features, an improved Find, and several software fixes, SmileOnMyMac’s pagesender 3.4 ($29.95, www.smileonmymac.com) has some minor bug fixes and several new features, including the abilities to sort fax history chronologically and pause and resume faxing. Bare Bones Software announced PunchOut ($149, www.barebones .com), a backup application for Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger). PunchOut uses 0S 10.4’s Spotlight to analyze stored data for backup and has a Dashboard widget that monitors your backup. TLA Systems announced DragThing 5.6 ($29, www.dragthing.com), an alternative to the Dock that supports OS 10.4’s Smart Folders and has better image previews.—Michelle Victoria PUMP UP THE PODCASTS [eee load up your ’Pod with podcast fare? Give these Mac- related shows a listen.—Roman Loyola THE MACCAST www.maccast.com For Mac geeks, by Mac geeks. MACHELP FROM HAWAII http://radio.weblogs.com/0142820 Alil’ bit of istand flavor with your Mac. MY MAC GUYS. http://mymacguys.blogspot.com Two buddies talk Mac shop. ONE MINUTE TIP hitp://radio.weblogs.com/0141930 Mac tips—fast and friendly. YOUR MAC LIFE www.yourmaclife.com Internet show hosted by Mac addict Shawn King. DURAN DURAN: MAC SERIOUS ‘or 1980s new-wave superband Ouran Duran, only Macs will do. “We're so reliant on Macs, it almost scares me,” says keyboardist Nick Rhodes. “No PCs.” Duran Duran used Apple products to produce Astronaut (their latest CD), the accompanying GET INFO SHAREWARE PICK OF THE MONTH PT Www-tonbrand.nl $17 (Gis down your Web site’s code using HTML-Optimizer X. 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Digital Oroo Website-fag html 19 bonus DVD, and their videos. “All files were done on Pro Tools,” says Rhodes. “We used .Mac accounts for sending each other MP3s.” Rhodes loads samples into his keyboards by connecting his iBook to his vintage Roland Jupiter 8 synthesizer, “You can playa whole show on a Mac.” Chums gets down with Funky Betty (left) and Groupie (right). Simon On their recent video shoot LeBon (top) for the song “What Happens and Nick Tomorrow,” the band used a Rhodes. Power Mac G5 and an array of Mac software including Adobe After Effects and Final Cut Pro HD to transform themselves into animated constellations. Rhodes even turned his iBook into a makeshift synth keyboard. “| put chords on single keys,” he said. “| wrote notes like, ‘USFRJPQ.’ People would look at them, knowing that chords run from A to G, thinking, ‘What the hell?””—Joshua Rotter ‘wo cases from Chums stand out this month: the Groupie ($30, www.chums .com) for your iPod mini and the Funky Betty ($35) for your standard-size iPod. The Groupie is made from PVC and comes in metallic colors. The Funky Betty is made of pack cloth with a ripstop texture and comes in crazy camouflage color combos—the only problem is you can’t access the iPod’s controls through the case. Both cases have a belt clip, a lanyard, and a carabiner clip.—Michelle Victoria { susmirvourcase i a itn ih ie a i OTe [iSSout pod cess onh hte. 2 foros n an C8008 Pee eal w ann rs IMAGE COURTESY OF SHORE FIRE MEDIA duly 2005 MacAddict 11 PowerPC G3, G4, or G5. processor 256MB RAM (to which we say, “Hal” Get yourself at least 512MB) « 3GB disk space (1GB more for developer tools) * Built-in FireWire* * DVD drive for installation (CDs are availabie for $9.95 extra; see www.apple.com/macosx/upgrade/requirements.html) * Apple-certified video card for Core Image enhancements (list of supported cards available at www.apple.com/macosx/features/coreimage; as of press time, Mac minis and (Books can't take full advantage of Core Image) Gra MacAddict July 2005 Our experts show you how to make Apple’s big cat jump through hoops, purr like a kitty, and eat out of your hand. by Niko Coucouvanis, Roman Loyola, and Rik Mysltewski et’s cut to the chase: Q. Is it really worth shelling out $129 for Apple’s new operating system, especially considering that the previous version squeezed an equal pile of cash out of you a mere 18 months ago? A. Yes. Tiger’s potent combo of interface enhancements, upgraded apps, and under-the-hood muscle will change (for the better) how you and your Mac work together. We here at MacAddict have been mucking around inside successive beta releases of Tiger for months now, getting to know its innards, its powers, and its quirks. We tried to choke the new Spotlight search function with humongous gigaheaps of text, video, and image files, and we failed—its performance remains breathtakingly snappy. We tried to choke iChat AV’s multiparty videoconferencing by denying it Address Book. Automator.. Calculators Dashboard Desktop & Screen Saver. Dictionaries... ING TIGER the bandwidth it thirsts for, and we succeeded—at Apple’s stated minimum iChat AV requirements, videoconferences look like hell. We tried to ferret out each and every one of Tiger’s improvements, from the productivity-enhancing eye candy (iCandy?) of Dashboard to the Romulan Bird of Prey--level invisibility provided by the new Stealth Mode, and we failed—every time we thought we'd found the last of Tiger’s new niceties, another cry of “Damn! Check this out!” tose from one of our cubicles. Now it’s time to share what we've discovered with you. If you've already brought the big kitty home, we'll show you a pile o’ tricks that you don’t yet know your new pet can do. And if you’re still pondering that $129 price tag, we’re willing to bet you’ll be reaching for your credit card about the same time you reach page 26. QuickTime 7. Safari RSS. Security Spotlight TextEdit. VoiceOver Parental Controls... Preview.. Print & Fax *An Apple spokesperson told us that Tiger doesn't actually require bult-in FireWire; rather, the advent of FireWire coincided with Macs capable of handling Tiger, and the company figured that simply calling FiroWire a requirement rather than detaling all the required technical specs would be easier for everyone involved. July 2005 MacAddict 5} Search your entire hard disk— nd do it smartly. HT use your Mac, and that’s mostly because of Spotlight. Sure, you'll try every one of the tasty Dashboard widgets; you'll play around with Automator until you realize you don’t really do anything all that repetitive with your Mac; you'll even try some four-way videoconferencing and wish you had the bucks fora bandwidth upgrade. But you'll use Spotlight every day—you can hardly avoid it, as its little search boxes invade your menus, toolbars, and iApps—they even infiltrate the Open and Save dialogs of non-Apple software. More than any of Tiger’s other 200-plus new features, Spotlight delivers on its promise: lightning-fast searching with super- customizable results. Spotlight starts searching even before you can bang three letters into the search box (so searching for the word search might return a sea of seas), but it trims the results so quickly that you barely notice. The magic lies in Tiger’s enhanced file system, which continually feeds the main Spotlight index and remembers what you’ve looked at lately. Technically speaking, Spotlight is a different animal than the good-ol’ Command-F searching you’re used A pple claims that Tiger changes the way you oS” to, but the former powers the latter. Click on the menu bar’s magnifying-glass icon for a quick-and-dirty Spotlight search; for something quicker and dirtier, highlight a word on the screen and Control-click it to bring up a Contextual Menu with a Search In Spotlight option. The traditional Command-F power search now launches a modified Finder window with the usual left-side Sidebar and two search limiters to get you started—Kind and Last Opened—though you can add as many more as you'd like. And what about these Smart Folders that everyone’s so jazzed about? Simply click the Save button in the Search window to save your search results as a Smart Folder; open up the Smart Folder later, and Spotlight will automatically rerun that search. (This only applies to results from Command-F searches—you can’t save menu-bar searches as Smart Folders.) Smart Folders add themselves to the Finder Sidebar by default; a default Saved Searches folder resides in your Library folder, though you can stash Smart Folders anywhere, You can’t actually place anything in a Smart Folder yourself, however—they’re just for storing the results of the automatic Spotlight search.—NC > ae Searching with Spotlight can seem like overkill, especia to do with what you’re looking for. Do yourself a favi Results pane, turn off any of the 14 categories that are! example). Once you've checked off the categories Vol the order in which you want to see the results. To Set uj and click the plus-sign icon to add folders or entire if you're lazy. Just keep in mind that “privacy” is a rel Privacy settings only apply to Spotlight searches inil Command-F or File > Find—and that means the setting it you're looking for (Fonts, for ig the active categories into it, the System Preferences not those started with siders, either. i of Soca 2 Sm oananaces 3 folder Peonle Bu Gomes Fate $ Currency Symbols sy Punctuation © Niscelaneous se crnsses ¥ Gane band Toda ems SY Presenations 1 ¥ FOF Documens BS mow Sh Sytem Preferences Fe tootmas 5 ve i Movin Sort Within Group by: Name light even shows up in the Character Since Yesterdn i Sie Yesterday tte , digging out more interrobangs This tony han ever dreamed you had. This Yer Given the mountains of results ; ‘ : wer Spotlight can find, you might want Computer to tweak what it displays ahead aoe of time. you can always doit ime in the results window. = = S — = —) ss 7) S = EW MacAddict July 2005 FINDER Better disc burning and Smart Folders are Finder's most far-out features. technology (more on that ina moment), but the smarts don’t step there. Smaller smarties include new Contextual Menu items and new items in the Application » Services menu for tying Tiger together. Select an item on the desktop or highlight a word in a document, and you can choose from a number of actions: Look up your word in the Dictionary, create a font library from selected text, launch a Slideshow, search with Spotlight, create Automator Workflows, and more. And when an app “unexpectedly quits,” the experience is a teeny bit less annoying: The error dialog now has a Try Again button to relaunch the app that bailed. Burnable Folders. Burning discs from the Finder was one of OS X's initial marquee features, but Tiger finally makes it a feature we'll actually use. Create a Burn Folder (File > New Burn Folder) and drop in all the stuff you want to burn. The folder fills up with aliases, and when you're ready, you just press the Burn button beneath the toolbar to seal the deal (that is, burn the T he big addition to Tiger’s Finderis Smart Folder oe # , WS-Godailam4p 08 The Man Who Sold the ots Word = items While you can burn a Smart Folder to a disc, keep inmind that it’s technically empty. (Note the little alias arrows.) disc). With the old way, you had to drag all your files to a blank disc at once and click twice to burn the disc; Burn Folders, by contrast, let you amass files over time, assembling a load of aliases so you don’t have to keep track of the originals or move them into a temporary holding folder. ‘Smart Folders. Smart Folders are essentially another way to use Spotlight (see “Spotlight,” p14). Create one by selecting File » New Smart Folder from the Finder menu, or simply use the search box in any open Finder window—once your results start filingin, the window sprouts a Save button along with some searchable locations (Servers, Computer, Home, or any folder or volume you add via the Others button) and a plus-sign icon for adding search criteria. So what happens if you click that Save button? Your Smart Folder sprouts a groovy little action icon; the next time you open that folder, it polls Spotlight’s continually updating index and busts out the latest results, lickety split. Smart indeed. The obvious question is, “Can | put a Smart Folder inside a Burn Folder?” The answer is yes, but it’s not the automatic backup solution you might be hoping for. When you burn a disc with a Smart Folder inside, it saves the Smart Folder’s search criteria and fancy icon, but not the files inside—they’re not actually inside the Smart Folder, you see. What you can do, however, is use a Smart Folder to find the items you want to back up and then drag them from the search window into a Burn Folder. Presto, a smart—-or at least somewhat educated—backup folder.—NC VOICEOVER Hey, Mac, now you're talkin’! a step or two ahead of those built into Windows— and with the addition of the VoiceOver screen reader, Tiger leaps even further ahead. VoiceOver provides a remarkably capable, vastly configurable, and instantly responsive screen reader designed to help vision-impaired users control their Macs solely by using their keyboards, Although VoiceOver’s feature set is far too. tich to be described here, you can begin T he Mac’s assistive technologies have always been investigating it by choosing System Preferences > Universal Access, clicking the Open VoiceOver Utility button, then selecting Help > VoiceOver Help for a thorough introduction to this powerful tool. Even if you have no personal need for VoiceOver, you might enjoy the utility’s 10.0 ais siPropunclation katinss. Pronunciation tab; justclick ‘Text: Witaj Maj! Trzecl Majl the plus- a rondo: [esi eis ——] sign icon z to open the een Se Pronunciation Giignore Case Galant aD e=s) teach your Mac how to VoiceOver is designed for English | pronounce speakers—but with a bit of prodding, unfamiliar its Pronunciation Editor can simulate words.—RM passable Polish. July 2005 MacAddict (BE Max sees himself (bottom) as his familiar mirror image, while his brethren appear as they do in real life. only lives up to its potential if you have hefty hardware and a fast Internet connection. iChat AV’s most dramatic new capabilities are multiperson audio and video chatting. In fact, “chatting” is a bit of an understatement— full-blown conferencing is a more accurate description. Both audio and video conferences are easy to set up. Icons in iChat’s Buddy List indicate whether a buddy is available for audio conferencing (a phone icon) or video conferencing {a camera icon). Single phone or camera icons tell you that the buddy can participate in a one-to-one conference; stacked icons indicate that a multiple- person conference is possible. To initiate a conference, you'll need a more powerful Mac and a faster Internet connection than you'll need if you merely participate (see “No Wimps Need Apply,” below); under ideal Te upgrade to iChat AV promises a lot—but it Apple's stated requirements for iChat AV are absolute minimums: While it’s possible ‘WF to join a video conference with a minimum- level computer, our testing showed that your video quality will be downright lousy. TO INITIATE Your Mac AUDIO One-to-One 56 Kbps 428 Kbps Ten 1GHz G4, dual Participants 800MHz 4, One-to-One IP 6 Four Ki 1 Participants any G! di NO WIMPS NEED APPLY Ble) MacAddict July 2005 Your Connection Your Mac any G4 or G5 G4, or conditions, ten people at a time can participate in an audio conference, and four can in a video conference. To invite a crowd into an audio conference, first select one buddy, then click the phone icon at the bottom of the Buddy List window. That buddy is then prompted to join the conference; after he or she does, click the plus-sign icon at the bottom of the Audio Chat window, and a list of buddies available for audio chat appears; invite them to the conference one by one. You initiate a video conference in the same way—but our testing proved that all Macs are most definitely not created equal when it comes to video conferencing. Our test quartet of Macs included 1GHz and 1.33GHz iBooks, a 1.67GHz PowerBook G4, and—as the initiating Mac—a dual 2.5GHz Power Mac G5, each equipped with an Apple iSight video camera. When we first hooked all four Macs to a 10/100Base-T Ethernet switching hub connected to the Web over MacAddict’s trio of high-speed Ti lines, not one of the four Macs displayed any “I can conference!” stacked-camera icons. To make our quartet multiconference, we had to limit each Mac’s bandwidth in iChat > Preferences > Video. As you’d expect, the higher the bandwidth limit and the more powerful the Mac, the better the video quality in a four-person conference. At 2Mbps, the 1GHz iBook could display video only slightly less crisp than the dual 2.5GHz Power Mac G5’s decently focused images; at 100Kbps, on the other hand, the 1GHz IBook’s video wasa splotchy, blurry mess, while the dual 2.5GHz Power Mac G5 provided a seriously = ¥ wh eee When four MacAddict editors held an iChat AV video | conference, boss-man Rik | (front and center in the left conference), initiating the conference on a dual 2,5GHz Power Mac G5 with a 2Mbps bandwidth limit, had a decent view of his colleagues; poor GHz G 100 Kbps Jake (right conference), stuck 800K on a 1GHz iBook at 100Kbps, saw his fellow editors even blurrier than in real life. 70 PARTICIPATE Your Connection 56 Kbps 56 Kbps 0OMHz G3 or 100 Kbps sers of HD (high-definition) video will get the most out of QuickTime 7, as it now supports H.264, an MPEG-4 video-compression standard that can deliver high-quality video at lower data rates (Apple says you can get the quality of MPEG-2 video for half the data rate). This will help you keep all those HD videos you'll be making (or Apple hopes you’l be making) more manageable for your hard disk and Internet connection. H.264 also makes QuickTime 7 than just new HD support. You no longer have to switch out of full-screen mode to access movie controls; a control panel now appears when you move your mouse. A new A/V Controls window lets you quickly adjust audio and video playback. You can also capture movies directly through the QT piayer if you have a FireWire video camera or Webcam. Oh, and you'll find one other “feature” of note: a ton of grayed-out items sprinkled throughout the menus. These functions are only video scalable, so regardless of where you're watching your video—ona mobile phone, on your iMac G5, or on a 30-inch Apple Cinema Display—it will look good. But there’s more to Take a gander at QuickTime’s new A/V Controls. available after you upgrade EQNS ses SN) to QuickTime 7 Pro ($29.99). ‘Open ile. xo| What away to tease you pen UN xu aes see {Ga Openimaye Sequence, oo} about what you’re missing, oe wa] huh?—RL GOS xs [mSne As ous Seiten seee You have to upgrade to teen “45 | QuickTime Pro to access Save and many other grayed-out features. he new features in Tiger’s DVD Player make your Mac a compelling alternative to your set- top DVD player. What’s new? Video Zoom. Nota fan of those black bars on widescreen DVDs? You can use Video Zoom (Window > Video Zoom) to zoom in and get rid of the bars without losing image quality—though you'll end up cropping out parts of the image on the sides if you maintain the image proportions. You can choose to not maintain image proportions, but then people may end up looking tall and skinny. Video Color. If you’re watching a DVD in strange lighting, you can use the new Video Color controls ‘Video Zoom Video Color Don’tlike letterboxing? Video Zoom can crop your image. Just don’t tell your videophile friends. DVDs in a whole new light. Video Color lets you watch your (Window > Video Color) to adjust Brightness, Contrast, Color, and Tint using slider bars. Audio Equalizer. Listening to concert DVDs? You'll want to use the Audio Equalizer (Window > Audio Equalizer) to tweak the sound for the best quality. Other new features include Bookmarks (Window > Bookmarks), which let you index part of a DVD for later access; Video Clips (Window > Video Clips), which indexes segments of a DVD by marking the start and end points; and DVD Navigator (Window > Navigator), which displays info about the DVD (such as time elapsed, viewing angle, chapter, volume, and more) ona screen that floats above the DVD- viewing window. Try doing all that with your set-top DVD player.—RL Tweak sound output with Audio Equalizer. July 2005 Desk Accessories are reincarnated in the form of Tiger’s Dashboard. there existed little one-trick apps called Desk Accessories. They were designed to perform simple tasks: The Calculator crunched numbers; you could write notes with Stickies; and Scrapbook let you instantly access artwork (oh, how we miss the Scrapbook!). Sadly, Desk Accessories went the way of Mac 0S 9. But Desk Accessories are back with a vengeance (hooray!)—only now they’re called widgets. They reside in Tiger’s Dashboard, they look ago, in a Mac OS generation far, far away, marvelous, and they’re even more helpful than @ Desk Accessories were thanks to the handy ~ Dashboard interface and access to the Internet. What’s a widget? Widgets are small apps ° dedicated to small tasks; they’re made up of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code. There are three types of widgets: Accessory widgets, such as Calculator, are self-contained and don’t need the Internet or data from another larger app; Application widgets, such as an iTunes player, rely on a larger app on your Mac; and Information widgets, such as Weather, pull information from the Internet. Apple includes 14 widgets with Tiger: Address Book, Calculator, Calendar, Dictionary, Flight ‘Tracker, iTunes, Phone Book, Stickies, Stocks, Tile Game, Translator, Unit Converter, Weather, and World Clock. The name of the widget pretty much tells you what it does; for example, Weather tells you if it’s sunny, rainy, cloudy, or snowing in any part of the world. Widgets are relatively easy to create, so expect a ton of widgets from third-party software developers. JiWire (www. jiwire.com), for example, already has a widget that lets you look up Wi-Fi hotspots anywhere in the The Dashboard gives you instant access to small, single-purpose apps. Every Dashboard needs a hula girl. SEM MacAddict July 2005 DashBlog. world, regardless of where you are. Don the Dashboard. Widgets hang out on a separate pseudo-desktop called the Dashboard. To open the Dashboard, click on the Dashboard icon in your Dock, or press the F12 key on your keyboard (you can reassign this hot key in System Preferences >» Dashboard & Exposé). The Dashboard opens on top of your Desktop in an Exposé-like fashion, and all of the widgets you’ve chosen to display appear in one screen. To choose which widgets you want to have open, click on the plus-sign icon on the lower LO eft of the Dashboard to open the widget bar. fey To add a widget, just click on its icon or drag it to the Dashboard. You can even have multiple ) instances of a widget open—five Weather widgets, for example, to tell you what mother nature’s up to in Lovelock, NV; Intercourse, PA; Climax, GA; Conception, MO; and Baby, France. Add more widgets. A More Widgets button lies on the right side of the widget bar; if you click on it, you’ll go to Apple’s Dashboard Widgets Web site (www.apple .com/downloads/macosx/dashboard), where you'll find dozens of non-Apple widgets, such as a FedEx/UPS- package tracker, the aforementioned JiWire widget, Stopwatch, DashBlog (which lets you make blog entries), Hula Girl, and more. Many are free; some are shareware; and others are demos of larger, full-scaled apps, To add a new widget to your widget bar, just download it. If it’s packaged properly, the download will decompress and then automatically install itself into the proper location on your hard drive (/Library/ Widgets). Launch Dashboard, and you'll find the new widget listed alphabetically in your widget bar.—RL Track the speed of your sneakernet with Track your Amazon purchases with the FedEx/ UPS package tracker. n the surface, you might think Automator is just a new handy visual interface for good old AppleScript—that’s what we thought at first—but Automator is a whole new method to automate mundane, multistep tasks, such as turning a document into a password-protected Encrypted PDF (see “Go with the Flow,” below). Sure, an AppleScript guru could bang that out easily; but Automator makes it so you don’t have to know squat about AppleScript. Simply drag and drop prescripted Actions into the order you want Automator to execute them. Now, instead of opening your file, calling up the Print dialog, selecting Encrypt PDF from the PDF menu, supplying a password, and AUTOMATOR 2 saving the document, you can make turn the process into a one-click affair by creating an Automator Workflow and saving it as an application or Contextual Menu plug-in. It’s easy to add more Actions to, say, zip the file into an archive, save a backup, and mail the file to everyone in your Address Book who has a birthday in September. However, because Automator relies heavily ‘on precoded Actions—which are not trivial to create—it isn’t as flexible or powerful as AppleScript. But Automator comes with a stock Run AppleScript Action, meaning if you’re an AppleScript expert already, you can make your Workflow as complex as your skills allow.—NC Making a Workflow couldn’t be easier. Follow along as We create a little Workflow app that creates an encrypted PDF out of any document We drop onto it, Next, add the Encrypt PDF Document Action. A handy pane in the bottom- left of the window explains the selected action. Kick your Workflow into gear with the Get Selected Finder Items Action. At run time, all you have to do is give the encrypted PDF @ name (and check the handy Status indicator up top). the form of a slick new start page that gives quick access to everything—your Mail, HomePage, iDisk, and all the .Mac services. But the best news can be found in the Sync section of your .Mac Preferences pane: You can now sync your Keychains, Mail Accounts, Mail Rules, Signatures, and Smart Mailboxes to your .Mac account (in addition to the Calendars, Contacts, and Bookmarks you could sync before). We’ve heard grumblings, however, that syncing Contacts via .Mac between Address Book apps that aren't identically configured can make data in mismatched fields disappear. (If only one of the Address Books contains the contact’s T iger brings a little extra to .Mac subscribers in birthday, for example, that information may vanish during the sync process.) To avoid this potential bummer, select Address Book » Preferences, click the Template tab, and use the Add Field pull-down menu to get your entries in matching order.—NC Suddenly, .Mac has become the hub of our digital life. July 2005 MacAddict (iE) e’ve always liked the idea of using Apple’s Wi: but its clunky performance and limited features made it tough to get any work done. Mail 2.0 looks to change all of that with new features centered primarily around Tiger’s Spotlight search technology. Aside from the obvious—industrial- strength mailbox searching—Spotlight also powers the new Smart Mailboxes, which remember and instantly execute your most complicated (or simple) search queries, just like the Finder’s Smart Folders (see “Finder,” p15). Mail taps into other Tiger technologies, too, such as Parental Controls, which let you specify whose email gets through to Junior’s mailbox and whose gets routed to yours. Slideshow controls let you view the photos you receive in emails as a full-screen slide show; there’s even an easy option to send the keepers directly to iPhoto. The new Connection Doctor springs into action the first time you launch Mail, automatically checking and testing your online connection as you fill in your account settings; and NTLM 2 (NTLAN Manager 2) support brings the Microsoft Exchange email-server compatibility some have been crying for. The interactive spelling checkeris nice—but it’d be nicer still if it could correct errors automatically. Mail makes emailing photos much smarter: Attach an @ Wail File _Edi View Mailbox Message Format Window ee waazal = jo SSS Se Chat_Attach Address Fonts To: |max@macaddict.com Subject:|waaaal Sy] Account:| nko Cou. fl) Slonature: ae oS Look ma, no more oversized pictures of little Junior! image file to a message, and it sprouts a pop-up menu that lets you specify the image’s outbound size—Large, Medium, Small, or Actual size. There’s also some identity foolery for .Mac users: You can use your .Mac Email Aliases from within Mail. Sayonara, spam!—NC for tables (Format > Text > Table), Spotlight-searchable document properties and comments (File » Show Properties), and the option a to save your document as an HTML file, tables and all (File > Save As> File Format > HTML). You can also add live HTML links to any text: Select the Te a lot to like about Tiger’s beefed-up TextEdit, such as support Merge Calls” Split Celts text you want to link to a URL, select Format Text » Link, and then enter the 3 8 target URL (be sure to include the http://), or drag it into the box Pore coer ee Bie ei tee oa ires ee Columns from your browser's address bar. If you want to editthe URL | Alignment of an HTML link you’ve placed in a file, Control-click the = pa Fea) linked text, choose Edit Link from the Contextual Menu ===) Crile) that appears, then edit the URL in the Link Destination cal Pare sheet that drops down.—RM 31) ] 3 ty x 2) TextEdit now offers plenty of nifty options to help you set your tables. ‘Cell Background (Color ria (| | EUs MacAddict July 2005 PRINT & FAX Tiger makes printing more efficient by eliminating som of the clutter. he nicest change to the Print & Fax Preferencepane (System Preferences > Print & Fax) is more-efficient printer setup. Instead of switching you to a separate Printer Setup Utility when you want to view your printer’s stats, Tiger now displays the stats in the Preference | pane. When you click on Supplies For This Printer, you're automatically taken to the online Apple Store. You still need Printer Setup Utility, however, to manage the details; when you click SST on the Printer Setup button, the utility launches and gives you a complete lowdown on your printer, including driver versions, network location, paper tray options, and more.—RL The Print & Fax Preference pane gets a makeover. Name: eddy Lamar OOOETF367056 ind: WP ase 300 Sees sats: ee ea fo hi ear Selected Printer m Prin Dialog: (Last Printer Used eta Paper Size nage Seun: (Usiater Ss @ Ab caer ctw revere umes: Automator and Spotlight help turn Address Book into a super-powered a pple’s own little contact manager is now smarter than ever, thanks mostly to the addition of Smart Groups. Like the Smart Folders, Mailboxes, Playlists, and Albums in other Tiger apps, Address Book’s onboard search is powered by Spotlight, meaning it can quickly scan every field in your address cards (not just the obvious fields). You could, for example, search for all of your former coworkers who are now Apple employees. We can think of lots of ways Address Book could work hand-in-hand with Automator, especially if you have numerous contacts to impress by always remembering birthdays and other pertinent dates you’ve added to their cards—just use Automator to link Address Book to iCal and Mail, and you'll be sending timely greetings on autopilot. Sound too tricky? Try Address Book’s new Action buttons: Click on the title next to a card’s phone number, and up pops a menu offering to fire off an SMS message or dial your Bluetooth cell phone. If you’d rather use the phone hanging on the kitchen wall, Large Type displays a phone number full-screen so you can read it from across the room. Brilliant! But our favorite new addition to Address Book is its printing support. Select a Group or Name and press Command¢-P (or go to File » Print) to bring up the new Print dialog, which sports smart, easily adjustable presets for envelopes, mailing labels, lists, and pocket address books. PLE 1=800-MY-AP i Ew Address Book can dial your cell phone for The presets let you easily lay out and print your contacts however you want. Still not sold? Three little words: Synchronize With Exchange. For those of you who know what that means, you—or teleprompt the number if you want to use the landline or fax machine, Printing envelopes—not to mention pocket address books—has never been so simple. that’s probably ’nuff said.—NC July 2005 MacAddict (Fay with OS X from the beginning—font management. InDesign jockeys and prepress pros have long cursed OS X’s font management as, to put it mildly, suboptimal. Tiger’s Font Book changes all that—or at least makes a noble effort. OS X still keeps its fonts in at least three separate folder types—one for the system, one for all users, and one for each user account—but Font Book 2 puts the whole kit and kaboodle at your fingertips. It’s about a jillion times better than its predecessor thanks to sensible font grouping; user-creatable Collections and Libraries; easy font validation and resolution of duplicate fonts; plus a la carte font enabling, disabling, and removal. We have to wonder, though: Where ¢ are the smart font folders—the ones that auto-activate when you launch the document that uses them? We'll be looking for that in Font Book 2.0.1. Meanwhile, Font Book seems like the perfect place to try your hand at developing an Automator Workflow—except that you'd have to write the Actions yourself. As we write this, Automator only has an Action for activating fonts in a TextEdit document. Bust out the Validator. If your Mac is behaving like it’s possessed by demons, it might have something to do with font corruption. Font Book 2 helps you find out if your fonts are actually funking things up: Select a suspect font (or use the shotgun approach and select your main All Fonts collection) and select File > Validate Fonts, The Validator checks every aspect of Fe: Book 2 soothes another sore spot that’s been Tiger's new font manager actually does a font’s constitution (including its Table Directory and Character Code Mapping Subtables, whatever those are). Validator flags minor and serious problems, anda handy pull-down menu lets you display only warnings or errors. If you find anything serious, check the box next to the problem font, press Remove Checked, and the miscreant goes straight into the Trash (with a proper warning, of course).—NC All a (Q Filter Rules ) Problems may have been found with some fonts during Please review the reported problems before continuing. 1G ¥[P Gurmukhi Cy ‘WMonotypeGurmukhi oO Font Table Directory o Glyph Location Table Oo Horizontal Metrics Table o PostScript Compatibility Table t-} ‘Character Code Mapping Table Directory Qe Duplicate Font o GENERICOPENTYPERULENAME @ Font Name Table ° | Character Code Mapping Subtables o } Missing OpenType Data i’) i System Validation 2| @ check alt Validation is a good thing, but Font Book alerted us to errors that didn’t seem to be there, Font Book Collection All Fonts Baskerville User Big Caslon Computer Cochin Copperplate New Collection New Library t Rename... | Disable “Classic” | Delete “Classic” Add Fonts... t a ABCDEFGHIJKLM NOPQRSTUVWXYZ abedefghijklm nopgqrstuvwxyz 1234567890 Font Book puts key font controls at your Contextual Menu fingertips. July 2005 introduced, the “Gee willikers!” demo du jour was the Graphing Calculator utility, which could smoothly rotate complex 3D graphs based on equally complex equations. It was an absolute mind boggler; but if you put it up next to Tiger’s new Grapher (/Applications/Utilities/Graphen), it would look like a’57 Chevy parked next to a Mercedes SL600 Roadster. At the risk of stretching the metaphor too far, the ’57 Chevy was a damn fine machine in its day—but we'll take the SL600 ina head-to-head drag race, thankyouverymuch. You may never need many—or even any—of Grapher’s capabilities, but fire itup at least once to revel inits geeky chic. When you do, you'll be greeted with a New Graph dialog; E leven years ago, when the first Power Mac was Grapher’s Inspector allows you to make graphs as flashy as you are. CALCULATORS Got numbers you need crunch? Tiger's got you cove choose the 3D Graph tab, then select Default in the left- hand list. Click Open, then select any of the 3D graphs in the Examples menu. You'll be presented with a rotating mathematical marvel and the equation upon which it’s based. Select and change some of the numbers in the equation, and enjoy the computational ride. Also, don’t neglect exploring the Inspector dialog (click the icon) and Grapher > Preferences » Equations, Numbers, and Advanced. Ifintegration using the fourth-order Runge- Kutta Method isn’t your cup-o’-tea, Tiger offers you an enhanced version of the Calculator app that shipped with earlier versions of OS X (/Applications/Calculator). Pre-Tiger, the View menu offered you two choices: Basic and Advanced, Now you have three options: Basic (your standard, bare-bones four-function calculator); Scientific (previously known as Advanced); and our favorite, Programmer, in which you can crunch away in decimal, octal, or hexadecimal bases and even see the results of your ANDing, ORing, NORing, and XORing in the corresponding ASCII or Unicode characters. Oh, and for you old Forth programmers, don’t miss View > RPN (Reverse Polish Notation).—RM You can do more than the name would suggest. PDFs, has grown a lot in Tiger. With Preview’s new tools, you won’t have to spend as much time using other apps to perform simple modifications to your documents and images. The Image Correction tools in Preview (Tools » Image Correction), available for image files such as JPEGs but not for PDFs, may remind you of the tools available in iPhoto, with slider bars for Exposure, Gamma, Saturation, Contrast, Brightness, and more. Changes are permanent once you save a file, so be careful—Preview doesn’t archive an Original the way iPhoto does. When you Get Info on a picture (Command-i), you can add a list of Keywords to your picture, making the image searchable by Spotlight. When you open a PDF, you can add comments using P=: the built-in app for viewing images and the new PDF-annotation tools. In the Tool Mode section of the tool bar, you'll find a button that lets you choose Text Annotation or Oval Annotation. Text Annotation adds Post-it-like squares of text to your PDF, while Oval Annotations can circle items you want to call attention to. The Image Correction tools are grayed out for PDFs, but you can crop the page or the whole document at once. Preview’s new screen-capture tools are available in File > Grab. When you take a screen capture via Preview, the shot opens in a new Preview window. You can perform three types of screen captures: Selection, which allows you to take a snapshot of a portion of your screen by clicking, dragging, and releasing the area; Window, which lets you select a particular open window; and Timed Screen, which takes a shot of your whole screen after a 10-second delay.—RL Preview boasts new Image Correction tools. Oval annotation lets you make comments. July 2005 MacAddict (Px Faster news updates an Stealth Mode surfing? We'll take it! ilding on a solid pedigree of tabbed browsing, Brees: Google searching, and SnapBack buttons, Safari RSS is leaner, meaner, and generally cleaner than its predecessor. The big news (as you could guess by its title) is the integrated RSS reader. If you haven’t heard of RSS, it stands for Really Simple Syndication (though we've also heard Rich Site Summary and Rich Site Syndication), and it’s a way for news-heavy Web sites and busy blogs to deliver headlines, summaries, and other bits of information to readers without any of the traditional Web-site trimmings. We used to viewRSS content in dedicated RSS readers, such as NetNewsWire ($39.95, http://ranchero.com/netnewswire), but Safari RSS displays it right in your Web browser. Just click on for the little RSS icon in the address bar (Safari shows the button automatically when you visit a site offering RSS) to get that site’s RSS feed, and bookmark it for whenever you need to update your headlines. Safari also speeds up your online time-wasting, rendering full-blown graphical Web pages 1.8 times faster (or so Apple claims) than‘the old version and a full four times faster than Internet Explorer. We’re no clock-watchers, but Safari RSS seems way fast. And the entire past, page by page. speaking of speed, remember how much time you used to waste digging through your History to find that one page about marmots? Now you can simply press the little open-bock icon or select Bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks to open your Bookmarks manager; select the History icon in the Collections list and type marmot in the search box at the bottom to search all the URLs and page titles in your History list. In the “clean” department, we're sure Private Browsing mode wasn’t developed specifically for concealing your addiction to online porn sites, and we're sure you have plenty of perfectly respectable reasons to use a sneaky browsing mode that leaves no telltale traces in your cache, cookies, or history of the sites you've visited. Heck, even the Downloads window politely declines to list the files you download—just keep in mind that the actual files you download with Private Browsing stay where you put them. If Private Mode sounds like a dirty dream come true for juvenile delinquents looking to cover their online trails, there’s a remedy: Safari works hand in hand with Tiger’s advanced Parental Controls (see “Parental Controls,” p25).—NC rue to OS X’s “easy Unix” roots, Tiger’s networking advancements are great for ’Nix Jocks and normal folk alike. For Joe Home Network, new Network Diagnostics (sort of like a retroactive Setup Assistant) help you isolate a dead connection and figure out whether the culprit is your network settings or your hardware configuration. Remote workers and other power networkers get advanced support for secure remote access thanks Telecommuters and system administrators will dig their new options. to WebDAV, VPN (Virtual Private Network), and even NTLM 2 (NT LAN Manager) for Windows SMB (Server Message Block) servers. In a focal-network environment (such as your office), you can now browse just about any type of network from the comfort of a Finder window. And for you System Administrators: Deep, deep within Tiger’s bowels, you'll find a Korn shell for husking around with Sun servers.—NC SEC TY Keep prying eyes from even seeing your Mac online by activating Tiger’s new Stealth Mode. ith Tiger, Apple better protects users from malicious creeps while making it easier fora Mac's rightful users to work and play. Take the Firewall, for example: Now you can avail yourself of Advanced functions (cleverly stashed behind %__ the Advanced button) such as Firewall Logging, which keeps a record of blocked traffic and foiled break-in attempts. Our favorite new Firewall trick, though, is Stealth Mode—it not only stops hackers from getting into your system, it also hides your Mac’s very existence from the rest of the Internet. You'll cruise the ’Net like a cloaked Romulan Bird of Prey. Sort of. The updated Keychain Access utility (/Applications/ Utilities) sports two smart new assistants that make it easier to use OS X’s righteous under-the-hood Unix security. The Password Assistant’s icon (a key- looking thing) appears in any dialog box where you’re prompted to set a password; click the icon, set the type and length of password you want, and the assistant automagically generates 10 suitable passwords. The You tell Password Assistant what type and length of password you want; it automatically generates 10 for you to choose from. cleverly hidden Certificate Assistant (Keychain Access > Certificate Assistant) lets you create your own self- authorized security certificate; create a certificate authority with which you can create certificates for other people; or request, view, and evaluate certificates created by other users or certificate authorities. Certifiably cool.—NC PARENTAL CONTROLS Tiger can now help you protect both your Mac and your kids. Tiger can help you prevent both eventualities. Anew Parental Controls tab has been added to the Accounts pane of System Preferences; click it and you’re presented with a pane that displays Mail, Finder & System, iChat, Safari, and Dictionary icons. Clicking the check box next to any of them changes the status of the selected account from Standard to Managed (Admin accounts can’t be parentally controlled) and displays a sheet into which you can enter the limits you want to set. To limit Mail, you need to enter the email addresses that the managed account will be allowed to exchange emails with—but you can’t add a list of proscribed addresses. in the Finder & System pane, you first choose either Simple Finder (which functions as it did in Panther) or Some Limits. Select the latter option, and you'll be able to limit the managed user’s access to certain system functions and applications (see screenshot, right). Clicking the plus-sign icon in the iChat sheet brings up iChat’s Buddies dialog, which lets you select approved chat Buddies. Safari controls are a bit more complex to set up. First, log into the managed user’s account and launch Safari. K:: can mess up Macs. The Web can mess up kids. Now, when you trytoaccessa Web site that’s not in Safari's Bookmarks bar, you get an error page telling you that “Safari is limited by parental controls.” The page contains Prevent your kids from mucking two buttons:Go —_ about in your Mac’s innards. Back and Add Website. Click Add Website, and you're asked for an administrator’s name and password; when you supply them, a sheet appears prompting you to name the Bookmark, which is then added to the Bookmarks bar or folder. Parentally controlling the Dictionary merely sanitizes its contents—the definition of crap, for example, becomes merely “a losing throw of 2, 3, or 12 in craps.”—RM July 2005 MacAddict (2 DICTIONARIES A s Tiger’s new calculator offerings enable you to work with numbers ina variety of ways, so do the new dictionaries provide you with several different levels of verbal advantage. Launch the new Dictionary app (/Applications/ Dictionary), then begin typing the word you seek in the upper-right search field. As you type, Dictionary narrows down its word list to match the letters you've typed—if you type an unrecognized word, Dictionary makes helpful suggestions. When you see your desired word, click on it and you'll get both a list of its definitions and, if appropriate, its synonyms. You can display results in > 10 different text sizes ranging from minuscule to ginormous (and yes, adedict |'adiia} You can also cut and paste words into other apps. ° The most extraordinary feature of the Dictionary app, however, ‘apeton who fsadred tn apocticlar Stance, peal an egal deere rai 1 th ad, formatan enue devotee of a ‘pevited hing o arty: 4met ako be ‘sven gt abt | ac anfsed ca ac |GIN eal 20s ceo frm the obser verbs ona both of those are in the Thesaurus). heb wasabrtormtion rom oer When all you need is a quick definition, this widget will suffice. is that each and every word within is hyperlinked to its definition. When, for example, you took up hypochondriacal and find the unhelpful “of or affected by hypochondria,” just double-click on hypochondria to bring up its more helpful definition—instantly. Dashboard’s Dictionary widget, while useful for quick- and-dirty lookups, is a pale shadow of the Dictionary app. There’s no hyperlinking, for example. Far more impressive is the integration of the system Dictionary into Apple-supplied apps such as TextEdit and Mail. Hold down the Dictionary-invoking key combo (Control-Command-D is the default), drag your mouse over any word, and its definition pops up in a small window; see the word’s Thesaurus entry by selecting Oxford Thesaurus from the Oxford Dictionary drop-down menu, or click More to launch the Dictionary app and go to the selected word’s definition in the blink of an eye.—RM expanded into two folders: Nature and Plants, both of which are bolstered with far richer selections of, well, images of plants and nature. A new Black & White folder contains five new—and more restful—additions to the stock collection. And as before, the Desktop & Screen Saver pane ties into iPhoto, allowing you to display images from any of your iPhoto albums, More iApp ties are found in the enhanced Screensaver tab. An iTunes Artwork screensaver lets you display up I: Tiger’s Desktop pane, the Nature folder has been SCREENSAVER & DESKTOP to eight rows of CD covers from your iTunes collection, and a newRSS Visualizer displays a spinning and continually updating array of your choice of 80 news feeds from Safari’s RSS implementation.—RM Check out Tiger’s elegant new selection of black-and-white desktop images. TIGER TIDBITS e stumbled on a few unheralded kitty tricks. Wi: ‘we thought were pretty cool and decided to share them: © If you shoot pictures with different digital cameras, simply enter one of the cameras’ model names into Spotlight to find photos shot by that camera. * Type a few letters of a word in Mail, Stickies, or TextEdit, and press Escape. You'll be presented with a scrolling list of all the words that begin with Ee MacAddict July 2005 that letter; click one of the words to insert it into the document. * You don’t even have to open Font Book to make a font collection: Simply click on a document in the Finder (we tried Microsoft Word and Adobe InDesign docs) and select Finder » Services > Font Book » Create Collection From Text. ta S MacAddict editors Niko, Roman, and Rik are still debating whether Mac OS 10.4 is Panthera tigris tigris, altalca, — sumatrae, corbetti, or amoyensis. OmniGraffle OmniGraffle Pronunciation: 6m‘né-graf’] Noun: 1. A powerful, yet easy to use Mac OS X diagramming and drawing application. 2. A tool to create org charts, family trees, flow charts, network diagrams, school projects, posters, CD covers, and almost anything else you can think of. 3. A great way to make all your PC-using friends really, really jealous. Learn more and download a free trial at www.omnigroup.com/julymacaddict @ENI SEARCH PARTY By Robert Strohmeyer earch engines are supposed to help you find your way through the vast the Internet, but these days, finding your way around all the new searg be almost as baffling. Familiar “crawler” engines such as Google and Yé databases of Web sites by constantly scouring the Web for new sites—bu paper on American history or trying to find flights to Pittsburgh, you don’t need a : billion resul just the right ones. Try some of the following sites next time and get where you want to go faster. AS Ao | TEOMA TEOMA www.a9.com >crawler with customizable results www.teoma.com crawler with refinement tools An Amazon.com subsidiary, A9’s goal is to provide a search If you’ve never tried Teoma, do it now. Its crawler engine uses experience as personalized as your Amazon shopping subject-specific search technology to sort sites by relevance experience. A9 keeps track of your recent searches, lets you keep and popularity, rather than simply counting the number of a diary of visited sites, and makes site recommendations based other sites linked to them. But the real reason Teoma is worth on past searches. The main window provides buttons to add your while is its Refine feature, which suggests ways to dig columns such as Images and Reference to the Google-provided deeper into your subject. And if that’s not enough, it also main results, and you can add new buttons to see Wikipedia includes collections of links from experts in a wide range of entries, medical literature, or other people’s searches. subjects. Teoma only does keyword searches, though—you’ll still need alternatives for images, news, music, and maps. pee TRAVEL \ BLAST www.gigablast.com crawler with refinement tools KAYAK.COM [kayak In an effort to out-innovate Google, Gigablast is building new = features all the time. At press time, the site’s index contained www.kayak.com amere 1.5 billion sites (compared to 8 billion for Google), but > queries other travel sites to consolidate results the results were plenty potent. Most intriguing is the site’s Giga Kayak.com doesn’t just consolidate travel results from more Bits feature, which shows which sites have the most results for than 100 travel sites such as Expedia and Priceline.com; it also your keywords. Gigablast can also return pages related to your adds extra tools for refining your results to get the best price, search that don’t necessarily have your search terms. Gigablast best travel dates, and best lodging. It vastly improves the doesn’t yet offer specialized searches for images, so Google’s travel-search interface by automatically showing you airports still got Gigablast beat in that regard. near your destination as you type, eliminating the Expedia- esque annoyance of entering a search only to be told the engine couldn’t figure out what airport you were looking for. MSN SEARCH http://search.msn.com BESTE . >crawler plus Encarta encyclopedia database | Be SideStep Microsoft just can’t help itself: Whether there’s a need or www.sidestep.com not, the company is determined to wiggle its way into every queries other travel sites to consolidate results nook and cranny of the Net. In an effort to take top seat in the While it’s not quite as simple to navigate as Kayak.com, search world, it now offers MSN Search. The results, compiled Sidestep makes buying easier by taking you directly to the by the company’s own crawler, MSNBot, are impressive, travel site that provided your result. It also searches more sites providing relevant results with little extraneous junk. The than Kayak, and that means more results. Our search for flights site’s integration of the Encarta encyclopedia makes it a great from SFO to Tokyo saved us more than $100 over Kayak’s resource for quick research. results. 28 MacAddict July 2005 U COM Answers.com. S.C encycloped Meeteearch engines just point you to sites hare you might find what you’re looking for. Answers.com goes the extra mile by consolidating entries from GuruNet, Wikipedia, and other encyclopedic resources to give you what you’re looking for without sending you elsewhere. It also features a 1-Click Answers utility that you can install on your Mac for instant explanations—just select the word or phrase you want to look up, and press Command-Option-G for instant answers. BECOME BECOME: This shopping site locates reviews, buying guides, and other such information. If you already know you want that 42-inch Sony Plasma HDTV, go right to price sites like Froogle and PriceGrabber; but if you’re still trying to decide between LCD and plasma, Become is a good start. = OODLE Like a massive interactive classifieds section, Oodle lets you browse for stuff you want, from cars to jobs. Clicking Cars > Volkswagen > R32, for example, shows you a sports hatchback with low mileage in San Francisco for only $29,000. The results are mostly culled from www.craigslist.com (plus some newspapers), but Oodle is far easier to search through. oedle dortal to classified-ad s * V]-%% PINPOINT cr f on shopping sites only By crawling through listings at thousands of different online stores, Pinpoint (run by America Online) lets you comparison shop without being flooded by cluttered listings. Type in iSrainboost BRAINGOOS | With a natural- language engine similarto that of Ask Jeeves, Brainboost lets you ask plain-English questions and displays complete answers, as well as pointers to the sites they came from. Also like Ask Jeeves, however, the answers may or may not be the ones you’re looking for. For example, when we asked, “Why do birds sing?” the top result explained, “Because they trust God.” We were hoping for something a little more scientific. But the answer to “What is Independence Day?” was perfectly adequate. PowerBook 15, for example, and you'll get several pages of prices, plus a pop-up window that lets you specify whether you're looking for a computer, battery, case, or something else. BAS EOC CH OUZABA ae Zabasearch take away most of the Tait in n finding people on the Internet. We searched for our own names and were horrified by the accurate results. Then we looked up our old girlfriends (yeah, like you never did that) and got a solid page of addresses and phone numbers. None of the apparent links FA CTBITE Miacibites Crawier with conte Factbites esate itself as “more interested in content analysis than link popularity,” and it’s true. The results are heavy on the encyclopedia entries, which makes it great for facts and history and not much use if you’re looking for the name of a dentist in Tulsa. It’s also got a sidebar list of Related Topics that may point you to useful ancillary data at least lead you on an interesting information trail (Independence Day > Green Day » Green Bay Packers, for example). worked in either Firefox or Safari, though. oT s& aS Obi ‘ NF % When y you're more interested in oe people are than where, Zoominfo is a handy little site. It crawls the Web looking for descriptions of people in a variety of press-release sites, media outlets, and public databases, then extracts and summarizes descriptive information. When we looked up our own names, it gave us a pretty good recap of all our great Mac stories. July 2005 t 29 PHOTOGRAPH BY PETE MCARTHUR In Stores Now! v ie Mac ASPYR ce {ESRECONTENT RATING _womiesthar) ord Electronic ts Dstntor GE choltenge Everuthing MacAddict RAT e0e0eCce AWESOME Poledning software Portable HDD portable parc rie Sompatipte with le'd send oul Mac OS X or later. hareame” % . mot eo on ‘ Compatib! Mac OS 9 or earlier. Final Cut Express HD BARGAIN-PRICED PROFESSIONAL VIDEO EDITOR cleanly remove actors from green-screen backgrounds (for compositing work); it can also create noticeable video artifacts in scenes with a lot of fine details or quick camera pans. Still, HDV works fine for other jobs: low- budget indie films, documentaries, news compilations, and wacky-but-classy family videos—and Express makes capturing and editing HDV a breeze. To get an HD project started in Express, just select the Easy Setup that Final Cut Express HD’s core interface is the same as the one in Final Cut Express—but that’s not a bad thing. pple has gone certifiably gaga over HD (high-definition) video these days. The lovefest now extends to Final Cut Express HD, which lets you edit At $299, Final Cut Express HD is a great deal. HD video with a wide assortment of pro-quality tools at a bargain basement price of $299. That’s an exciting step, to be sure—but whether HD support is genuinely useful to today’s casual filmmaker is a totally different matter (see “To HD or Not to HD?”, right). There are actually a number of HD formats in the digital world, and Express HD works with (and only with) the relatively new HDV format. Think of HDV as HD for the common man—a growing number of prosumer HD cameras use HDV to store crisp, clear imagery on MiniDV tapes. That’s a nice convenience, butit comes at a price—HDV cameras COMPANY: Apple CONTACT: 800-795-1000 32 MacAddict July 2005 REQUIREMENTS: DV; 500MHz G4; HDV: 1GHz G4; MacOS 10.37 orlater, Quartz Extreme graphics; 0F 408-996-1010, www.apple.com 384MB RAM (512MB forreal-time effects and PRICE: $299 (full), $99 (upgrade) Soundtrack, 1GB for HDV editing); 15GB disk space suits your HDV footage’s resolution. HDV cameras shoot in one of two resolution modes: 720p (1,280 by 720 pixels with progressive-scan frames) or 1080) (effectively 1,920 by 1,080 pixels with interlaced frames). After Express transcodes the HDV into a custom video codec, editing in Express works just like it always has with standard DV video. Recording the video back-to tape, however, requires heavily compress their video, and that extreme compression makes HDV poorly suited for some jobs. For starters, it limits your color-correction options, since HDV doesn’t record a lot of color information to begin with. The compression makes it harder to | TO HD OR NOT While it’s relatively easy to shoot and edit HD video, it’s not as easy to actually distribute it. First off, your audience needs an HD television to watch your video, and most folks still use standard-definition boob tubes—you may wind up having to convert your HD imagery to standard definition, losing many of HD’s benefits. What's more, there are no HD-capable DVD players on the market yet, so you can’t play your HD masterpieces on a DVD player (though Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players are due later this year, just in time for the holiday shopping season). Given these gotchas, what can you do? You can record your edited HD movies back to your camera’s tape, attach the camera to your HDTV, and roll the tape. You can also save your videos as QuickTime files and play them directly on your Mac—QuickTime 7’s new H.264 compression technology keeps HD-file sizes relatively small, so you may even be able to email short movies to friends. TO HD? og MacAddict RATED project's video to Soundtrack, where you can compose the video's score by arranging prerecorded music loops in time (you geta library of some 4,000 quality, royalty-free loops, using a wide variety of instruments and styles). You can change a \oop’s. musical key and speed it up orslow Use Soundtrack to score your video with prerecorded loops. a render that lasts several times longer than the length of your movie. Soundtrack and LiveType. In addition to HDV support, Express now Ships with two handy stand-alone apps that first appeared in Final Cut Pro: LiveType and Soundtrack (not to be confused with Soundtrack Pro, which is part of Apple’s new Final Cut Studio). Interested in adding music to your edited video? Express can export your it down without affecting pitch. This flexibility and a simple interface lets pretty much anyone create a rich, original score; when you’re done, Soundtrack automatically transfers the audio back to Final Cut’s Timeline as a stereo AIFF mix. LiveType is a second cousin to Apple’s Motion ($299, www.appie.com); it lets you quickly create fancy typographical effects. Unlike Motion, LiveType focuses almost exclusively on text animation and doesn’t require an industrial- strength Mac in order to run. You can design your titles using any TrueType or PostScript font, or you can try one of the 27 included animated fonts (though most have a cartoony feel). You can also customize type with over 150 animated effects (bounces, rotations, moving glows, color cycles, and a lot more), each of which can be keyframed. The only hitch: While LiveType looks impressive in a demo, you won't be able to intuitively figure out its interface or easily come back to it after a few months out of practice. Expect to put in a few solid hours to get a feel for it before getting real value from it. The bottom line. This upgrade is all about Soundtrack, LiveType, and HDV support. There are no interface changes, and Express still doesn’t let you log individual video clips as you capture them, nor does it let you consolidate edited projects so they keep only the video your edits actually use. But hey, if Express did that, you might as well call it Final Cut Pro. At $299 (or $99 for an upgrade), Final Cut Express HD is still a great deal.—Helmut Kobler IM PICKINGS Wanna buy an HDV camera? As of press time, there were only two models available: JVC’s JY-HD10U ($3,995, www.jvc.com) and Sony’s HDR-FX1 ($3,699, www.sony.com). Both shoot in a widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio, but the |VC model records video at 1,280-by-720-pixel resolution and 29.97 progressive frames per second (progressive mode gives video JVCJY-HD10U. Eeny meeny miney mo, want HD video. a slightly less flickery look); the Sony mode! shoots at an effective 1,920-by-1,080-pixel resolution and produces interlaced frames that are slightly more flickery (conventional NTSC TVs also use interlaced frames), Still, we favor the newer Sony for its higher resolution, a unique 24-frames-per-second film mode, and a bunch of other refinements. SONY HDR-FX1 July 2005 MacAddict 33 REVIEWS better living through smarter shopping M usicians and sound designers can now finally breath a sigh of relief: A Mac OS X-native version of U&! Software’s unique MetaSynth has finally arrived. And it really, really rocks. Really. MetaSynth is a fascinating synthesizer like no other. Its central concept is that any visual image can be represented in sound b

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