Text content (OCR)
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E-mail
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Australian Macworld October 04
010
Australian Macworld October 04
Buzz.
G5 comes home
The long-awaited G5 iMac
was finally unveiled in
Paris, bringing the next-
generation PowerPC
processor to a more reach-
able price point. The
response has generally
been favourable — but is
it enough to revive the
spirit of the original iMac?
Interface.
Commentary.
Mailbox.
Education.
ReadMe.
Soapbox.
0
Test drive.
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aya
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ene
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Fat glass offers value
for size
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its own
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VectorWorks 11
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Productivity and drafting
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New version brings ease
and flexibilty
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Includes revolutionary
changes but retains ease
of use
CopyWrite 2.1
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A simple system for
organising and editing
manuscripts
Digital Camera
Link for iPod
att
Transfer your photos on
the go
Fourth-
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Hein
Adopts click wheel,
extends battery life
Magic Bullet
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#4ee
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Hot Links
www.apple.com.au/imac
Another Cube?
Prove me wrong.
WO and a half years ago, in his keynote address at the
San Francisco Macworld Expo, Steve Jobs unveiled the
ign of the iMac G4. The G3-based iMac had
been revolutionary in its day and catapulted Apple to the fore-
front of computer industrial design. That design, though, had
become a little long in the tooth — thanks in no small part to ill-
conceived notions like “Blue Dalmatian” — and the pressure on
Jobs and Apple to deliver a new revolution was intense.
The iMac G4 delivered. It was radical. It was distinctive. It was
elegant. Its match of form and function made the translucent
plastic of the G3 iMac seem opaque.
Jobs revelled in the machine's obvious success. So confident
was he that the right design decisions had been made that he
even went so far as to show off some of the design sketches that
had been rejected, and explain why.
One of the designs incorporated a flat-panel display, mounted
on a tilt, with the logic board directly behind the screen. That
design was rejected, said Jobs, because it would have required
mounting the optical drive vertically. Mounting an optical drive
radical di
vertically, he said, reduced its performance by about 20 percent.
I was reminded of that keynote when I saw Phil Schiller,
unveiling the iMac G5. There can be no doubt that this new iMac
is an attractive machine, and an impressive engineering feat
getting the G5 processor into an enclosure so thin. It gives the
road warriors among us hope that maybe a G5 PowerBook is
possible after all.
The thing is, it looks just like that rejected idea for the iMac
G4. Like, almost exactly. Memo to Steve: if you're going to pull
designs out of the bin, don’t ever tell us they were in the bin.
What's more, it doesn't look revolutionary or distinctive either.
It looks like a lot of the PC clones that followed the G4 iMac’s
lead (many of which were probably modelled after the sketch
Jobs discarded two and a half years ago). It’s a good, solid
design, but not breathtaking in the way its predecessors were.
Then there’s that vertically-mounted optical drive. Jobs never
mentioned a 20 percent performance hit when he launched the
G4 Cube with its vertical drive, and it seems to have been
forgotten for this one as well (credit to Stephen Withers for
pointing out that, since the iMac G5 isn’t quite vertical, maybe
you only lose 17 percent).
Someone at Apple explained to me that it’s no longer the case
because of “improvements in the design and technology of
optical drives”. These must be some good improvements since, as
Australian Macworld October 04
far as | know, the laws of physics haven't been revised in the
interim and gravity still works the same way. Frankly, I'll believe
it when I test it.
My biggest concern with the iMac G5, though, is its price.
Where the original iMac represented a significant improvement
in the attainability of Mac technology, the iMac G4 pushed the
price much higher with its choice of flat-panel display. Despite
great advances in manufacturing, flat panels are still more
expensive than CRTs, and so the iMac G5 is not the Mac “for the
rest of us” that the Bondi Blue jellybean was.
Rather, the “consumer” Mac is now the eMac, while the iMac
brand has been pushed into the eerie mid-ground — too expen-
sive for consumers, not expandable enough for professionals.
That's where the Cube went to die.
Maybe there is a large market out there for “pro-sumers” or
“con-fessionals” or whatever you want to call them. The Cube
— though it certainly had its fans — didn’t find them, and
slowing sales of the iMac G4 in its final months suggested that
it didn’t either.
The G5 iMac is cheaper than the G4 iMac was — by as much
as $700 if you compare the top-end versions of both machines
— and that plus the obvious performance gain should help it find
some market. There is, however, still a $600 gap between the
most expensive eMac and the cheapest iMac. I suspect many
people who are shopping in the price range of a 1.6GHz Combo-
drive iMac G5 will look at a 1.25GHz SuperDrive eMac and opt
to save the money. Sure, the iMac is a faster machine, but is it
that much faster? Enough to justify the sacrifice of $600 and a
SuperDrive? Again, I'll test it and let you know.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the G5 iMac will be a solid six-run
out-of-the-park hit like the original iMac and finally silence the
irrational people who think Apple should get out of computers
and focus on iPods.
If it isn’t a hit, the pressure will be on the team developing the
G5 PowerBook like never before. Suddenly they will be the ones
on whom Apple’s reputation as a market leader will rest. Woe
betide them if the G5 iMac has a disappointing first quarter and
they’re not able to deliver a product in the first few months of
next year to counter it.
Time will tell. &%&
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Your magazine, your forum.
017
For the next three issues,
Conexus (02 9975 2799) will be
giving away a pair of Mentor
RCH100 professional surround-
sound headphones valued at
$289 to the Australian Macworld
reader who sends in the most
interesting or provocative letter.
The headsets in the Mentor
range surround each ear with six
independent chambers, creating
the sensation that each sound is
coming from a different direction.
This unique physical design
distinguishes the Mentor range
from attempts to imitate surround
sound using software alone.
The Mentor headphones also
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in the professional (330g) form
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sound separation, and in the
deluxe (140g) form factor for
maximum portability. The RCH-100
provides a built-in AC97 decoder,
So you just plug it into your Mac's
USB port. OS X is required. ',
Hot Links
bryce.daz3d.com
Get Bryce here
www.ozomnis.com
Australian Omnis developers
School of thought
I This photo was taken in
Goulburn NSW, Wollondilly Public
used to be an Apple school — |
wonder if they regret the switch?
Jack Brouwer
Goulburn, NSW
Colour blind
I've just finished the last page
of my 09.2004 issue of
Australian Macworld and had a
chuckle at the last sentence of
Alex Rieneck's Soapbox article.
As | sit here in front of my black
G3 PowerBook, I'm wondering
what possessed him to write
“Ever wondered why Macs are
white?" I'll have some of what
he's on thanks!
Roy Brandner
The Basin, Vic.
Alex was trying to make a
humourous point about Apple |
making its computers white in
order to overcome prejudice
against them. — M.JC.P
Letters should be e-mailed to matthew.powell@niche.com.au with
a subject header of “Mailbox” or by post to Australian Macworld
Mailbox, 3/165 Fitzroy Street, St Kilda, Victoria 3182. Letters of fewer
than 200 words are given preference. We reserve the right to edit
letters and probably will. To be eligible for the Mentor prize, you must
include your full name and address, including state or territory.
Pining for the fjords
In your review of ArtMatic
Voyager (Test drive, 08.2004)
Bryce was described as
Corel's now-discontinued-on-
the-Mac application”, In fact,
Bryce has recently been
acquired by DAZ Productions
(see “Hot links"). Latest version
is Bryce 5 and runs on Mac OS
8.6 or later including X. Bryce is
a great application. | love it.
Masato Niizeki
Carnegie, Vic.
Thanks for letting us know. | was
unaware that Bryce had been
revived, but I'm certainly glad to
see it back. — MJC.P
The MacGyver
method
Much as | admire Sean
MeNamara's construction of a
4.5V battery from old coat-
hangers, chewing gum and
string (Help folder, 09.2004), the
fact is that the real (Rayovac
cube’) article is available from
Dick Smith for the princely sum
of $4.91. | bought one just the
other day.
Steve Cooper
fernet
I had a look at my local Dick
Smith and at the online site and
couldn't find one, but it’s good
to know that persistence can
pay off. Sean's solution still
works, of course, if you're not
lucky enough to find the real
deal, — M.JC.P
Still standing
MI enjoyed reading your
article regarding the long-
standing developers in the
Mac community (Buzz,
09.2004). Being a Mac addict
and an Omnis developer, it's
great to see Omnis getting a
mention. At the recent
OzOmnis conference (see "Hot
links”), Gwyneth Gibbs gave
us a presentation which
included a slideshow of their
“museum” of Omnis versions
over the years, including the
Omnis 3 packaging you
showed in the article
Omnis 3 still runs today on
the modern Macs (albeit in
Classic mode), which | believe
is a testament to the stability of
the application and the
platform
Paul Mulroney
Bentley, WA
Greener batteries
am stil using my beloved Ga
TiBook for work and play, and it
shows no signs of buckling under
current demands. | would,
however, like to make one request
of Apple regarding its battery
technology: make it recyclable.
| am on my second Li-ion
battery and, as we all know,
these have a limited lifespan.
While my original battery
remains cased up | wondered
recently whether it could be
rebuilt. After all, the bank of
cells within it are just “plain
wrap” Panasonics
Australian Macworld October 04
018
However, a battery specialist in
our area told me that to have it
rebuilt would cost $249 and it
would have to be sent to
Queensland. Given that some
resellers have new ones on sale
for $219 | couldn't see the point.
Surely it would make Apple
more visibly environmentally
responsible if it had a battery
recycling program. This would
not necessarily translate for
Apple into loss of sales for new
PowerBooks, due to an
increase in their working life. In
fact, it would mean that older
but functioning models would
be more easily passed onto
one's spouse or children, thus
providing a tangible incentive
to upgrade!
Mike Fuery
Wodonga, Vic.
Not far from the tree
Since it became clear that the
iPod was a hit with more than
just the Macintosh fraternity |
have pondered a larger
question: why are people
buying the iPod and using
Tunes when they have ignored
Apple in the past?
| cannot help but wonder why
the iPod buying hoards don't
see a connection between the
quality and the ease of the iPod
and other Apple products. Surely
it has occurred to them that if the
iPod is well made and functional
then so would other Apple
products like OS X and the iMac.
If recent figures are to be
believed, Mac sales are on the
Coming to Australian Macworld
The Hub. Photo printers: Geiting you!
on paper.
AMW Labs, DVD burners: Dual
leaving mo
Photoshop tips: T!
To advertise. Call Dominic Miller on 03 9525 5566.
To subscribe. Free-call 1800 804 160.
Australian Macworld October 04
your Mak
up — but they are nothing like
the figures of the iPod. You
have to wonder why.
Even when you sit a
Winteller in front of the Mac
and show them all the things
you can do — things that
would reduce their PC toa
crawl or a blue screen — they
still just shrug their shoulders.
“It's good, its great, but | have
a Windows box"
And that's it! They will not
change, they will not seek to
buy a computer that will replace
their Virusbox just like they
replaced their dust-collecting
MP3 player for the iPod.
It's a mystery.
Wake up Wintel drones! The
iPod is merely an example of
the quality, the edge, the ease
of use and the unparalleled
functionality of The Mac.
Renny Willins
Theodore, ACT
Interesting argument, Renny. By
not-dissimilar logic, the fact that
| use (and quite like using)
Microsoft Word means | ought to
be equally impressed with
Microsott’s operating system
offerings, doesn't it?
Mysteriously, I'm not
Do other readers have any
thoughts on this conundrum?
—MJC.P
All the winners
to Specialty packagi
out printir
Stencil art:
ylights F
Packaging design: Wc
Corrections
W Incorrect URL 1. In our Test
drive review of digital video
converters (08.2004) we printed
the wrong URL for Canopus
Australia. It should have been
\www.canopus-aust.com.
@ Another incorrect URL.
In our feature on accounting
software (09.2004) we had the
wrong URL for SapphireOne
That one should have been
www.sapphireone.com,
And the hat trick. Our
nostalgic piece on the early
developers for the Mac platform
last issue (Buzz, 09.2004) was
undermined somewhat by
printing the wrong URL for
Omnis, which continues to this
day to be developed for the
Maz. Its URL is www.omnis.net.
Coming to Desktop
Southern Cross Student Packaging Awards:
To advertise. Call Astrid Fridenberg 03 9525 5566.
To subscribe. Free-call 1800 804 160
Macworld
Ocyober 2004 / Issue No. 81
‘Associate Publisher
Grant Arnott
(ant arnoti
Editor
Matthew JC
matthew powel
National Advertising Manager
Dominic Miler
dominic:miler@riche.com au
Cover Digital Imaging
Mantred Schmia
manfred sct
Production Manager
Anrie Darker
annie darker @riche.comau
sandraisk iche.com.au
Prepress
Manired
Emma Meagh
‘emma mea
(niche) :
Australian Macworld
‘Chairman and Publisher
Nicholas Dower
Managing Director
Paul Lidgerwood
Finance Director
John Clarke
‘Studio Design Manager
Kooly At
keelyatking@niche.com au
‘Subscription Inquiries
Free Call. 1800 804 160,
subscriptions@niche.com.au
CTP IPrint
Hannanpaint Victoria
o392i3.3itt
ISSN 1329-9484
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021
Pred a La PI ae «Id
News, views
& chatter
from the world
of Macs.
®
Hot Links
www.apple.com/imac
Right to the source
. .
iii
iMac G5 wows Paris J
Configurations. The new iMacs come in 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz
PPLE'S senior vice-president of worldwide marketing, Phil
Schiller, took a cue from his boss, CEO Steve Jobs, as he G5 processor speeds, but all share a Front Side Bus (FSB) archi-
unveiled one more thing at the end of his keynote to tecture and support for 400MHz DDR RAM. All the new systems
kick off September's Apple Expo in Paris: an iMac G5 that | also sport Serial ATA (SATA)-based internal storage and Nvidia
includes the entire system inside a 17- or 20-inch LCD screen. GeForce 5200 Ultra graphics with 64MB of VRAM. The new iMac
Continuing the all-in-one theme that started with the original | has peripheral connectors mounted vertically on their rear panels;
CRT iMac, the G5 edition features a new industrial design that the systems feature audio in, audio out — supporting analogue
does away with the hemispherical base of the previous generation | or digital output, much like Apple’s AirPort Express — a mini-
all together. Schiller said that the new iMacs would be available VGA connector, three USB 2.0 ports, two FireWire 400 ports, a
in mid-September (as this issue went to press, Apple Australia 56K v.92 modem and 10/100baseT Ethernet. Support for 802.11g-
confirmed it had shipped its first units to resellers). based wireless networking is optional using an internal AirPort
All iMacs feature common traits, including a widescreen | Extreme card, as is an internal Bluetooth interface.
aspect ratio and a slot-loading optical drive built into the right- The base 17-inch iMac G5 comes equipped with a 1440 x 900
hand edge of the system. They come —_ = . pixel screen, 80GB 7200RPM hard disk
mounted on an anodised, centrally
mounted aluminium pedestal that 533MHz Front Side Bus and 1.6GHz
allows the system to tilt up and down processor, for $2199. A 1.8GHz model,
from 25 degrees to -5 degrees. The || — 3 E with a 600MHz Front Side Bus, is
systems also feature downwardly- equipped with a DVD-R SuperDrive
and costs $2499. The 1,680 x 1050
resolution 20-inch model, sporting a
1.8GHz processor, 160GB 7200RPM
hard drive and SuperDrive, costs
$3199. @ Brad Cook and Peter Cohen
drive, DVD-ROM/CD-RW Combo drive,
firing speakers whose grilles are
used to vent air into the machine; a
rear vent on top displaces hot air. i]
Apple says the new iMac operates *
at 25dB when idle.
Australian Macworld October 04
022
mes G5
The market responds
NALYSTS are unanimous in their support for the new
iMac and the strategic ties Apple has drawn between the
consumer desktop and the iPod in marketing the computer.
“From the company that brought you the iPod”. The
marketing campaign for the iMac G5 will leave no doubt in
consumers’ minds what else this computer company has deliv-
ered lately. “From the company that brought you the iPod” will be
part of the message consumers will get when they see advertising
for the iMac G5.
“It’s meant to express a couple of things — It’s not to hide behind
the iPod or to downplay the Mac at all,” Apple's Phil Schiller said.”
Since we designed the iMac, a lot has happened at Apple — prob-
ably the most influential thing that has happened in years is the
iPod, both in terms of product design and having greater reach in
the marketplace, It's still an iMag, it's still what an iMac is about.”
The design and marketing of the iMac G5 with its ties to the
iPod makes a lot of sense to analysts, who have seen the iPod as
one of the shining stars in Apple's product lines.
“I think the new design will surprise many people,” said
Technology Business Research analyst Tim Deal. “While I think
this was the natural next step for Apple in terms of the evolution
of the iMac’s all-in-one design, I also think that it is unconven-
tional. It’s simple, functional and almost spartan in appearance.”
iPod division not leaving the Mac behind. when
Apple made two divisions in the company this past May, one for
the iPod and one for the Macintosh, many people felt that the
Mac was taking a second seat to the success of the iPod.
Marketing campaigns and much of what has come out of Apple
has focused on the iPod, but Schiller says that is not the case.
“I know people thought that and I really hope that when they
this iMac that it shows that it's not the case,” said Schiller. “We
applying our innovation and engineering design talents to eve
see
thing we do, including the iPod and all of our Mac product lines.”
Jupiter Research Senior Analyst Joe Wilcox says the new design
shows how serious Apple is about its Macintosh computers.
“Many people have asked whether Apple would dump the Mac
in favor of iPod,” said Wilcox. “The new iPod positioning and
even iPod-like look show how serious Apple is about selling
computers. Apple’s hidden message is that if you buy an iPod
you really need a cool Mac to go with it.”
In fact, with the ties to the iPod and the penetration Apple has
with the iPod in markets outside of the traditional Mac audiences,
the iMac may be a first-time purchase for many people, according
to analyst Tim Deal.
“Naturally, | think Apple’s loyal customer base will love
them,” said Deal. In addition, Apple has a real opportunity to
position this as a first-time Mac-owner product to the uniniti-
ated. The iPod has given many PC owners their first taste of
Apple’s technology; the new iMac may very well be their
second. @ Jim Dalrymple
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Hot Links
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Check out PIXMA
N late August, Canon launched an entire | s
range of photo printers and all-in-one
devices based on a new printing plat-
form it calls PIXMA. The print head at the
core of the PIXMA range delivers ink
droplets as small as one picolitre, which
Canon claims will produce unprecedented
curacy and colour consistency.
The new range also includes multi-function
devices which, for the first time from Canon, fully
support Mac OS X. The MP750 ($499) and MP780 ($599) multi-function printers feature print
speeds up to 25ppm in black and 17ppm in colour, with the ability to produce borderless 4 x
6-inch photos in as little as 36 seconds. They also offer dual paper paths, a duplex unit, elec-
tronic sorting, scanning with a maximum of 2400 x 4800 dpi resolution and PictBridge
compatibility for printing photos directly from a digital camera. The MP780 also includes a
Super G3 fax modem with 250-page memory and colour and black-and-white capability.
The MP 130 ($249) offers print speeds up to 18ppm in black and 13ppm in color, with the
capacity to print borderless 4 x 6-inch photos in as few as 58 seconds. It can also scan at
a maximum 1200 x 2400 dpi resolution and can create individual files from several
photographs scanned in a single pass.
All three of the new Pixma MP Photo All-in-One printers feature USB 2.0 connectivity and
come bundled with Easy PhotoPrint and ScanSoft OmniPage SE software, with the MP 130 also
coming with Arcsoft PhotoStudio. Canon expects to ship the new models in November,
Highlights of the printer range. The entry-level PIXMA iP 1000 delivers ink droplets
as small as five picolitres in a compact and stylish unit that will sell for a mere $89. Its
slightly bigger brother, the iP 1500, delivers smaller (two-picolitre) droplets and costs $129.
The iP4000R ($449) features 802. 11g wireless networking, print speeds up to 25ppm in black
and 17ppm in colour, with the ability to produce a borderless 4 x 6-inch photo in as few as
36 seconds. The iP5000 ($349) can handle the same print speeds but doesn’t offer wireless
networking. However, it features the finest print head of the range, offering single-picolitre
accuracy. The iP6000D ($699) can print the same borderless picture in as few as 75 seconds
but also includes a 2.5-inch colour LCD screen for fine-tuning the printing process and its
media slot accepts a range of storage cards for direct printing of photos. It also features an
infra-red port for direct printing from mobile phones, but (strangely) not Bluetooth,
The flagship iP8500 ($599) can print a 4 x 6-inch borderless photo in as little as 21
seconds or an 8.5 x 11-inch picture in approximately one minute. It's compatible with
Adobe RGB mode for printing images photographed that way with a Canon digital SLR
camera. All four iP printers offer PictBridge technology and come with Easy PhotoPrint
software. They're also all compatible with Mac OS X v10.2.1 and will ship in October.
Software issues. AMW’s initial test of the software that comes with the printers was
slightly disappointing. The in-built colour-correction facilities are designed very much for
portrait-style pictures and offer virtually no brightness or contrast adjustments for images
that don’t include people. We were also concerned that the CD label-printing software has
no facility to place text on a curve — an obvious requirement for CD labels and a feature
that is included in the Windows version of the software.
issues. @ Brad Cook and Matthew JC. Powell
Canon said it would address the:
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Hot Links
www.microsoft.com/mac
All things Mac and Microsoft
Microsoft intros
new mice, keyboards
ICROSOFT has introduced a swag of new mice and
M keyboards: Wireless Optical Desktop, which comes with
a wireless mouse and keyboard; Wireless Notebook
Optical Mouse; Digital Media Pro Keyboard; updates to the Optical
Desktop Elite for Bluetooth and the IntelliMouse Explorer for
Bluetooth, and Standard Wireless Optical Mouse. There is also a
wired Optical Mouse designed by renowned French designer
Philippe Starck for $60. All are USB-based and work with Mac OS
X v10.1 or higher, with the wireless devices requiring AA batteries.
The Wireless Optical Desktop ($150) package features a Curve
Design keyboard with a Zoom Slider, which enables enlarging and
reducing text and images by sliding a lever, and My Favorites keys
that you can map to frequently-used functions. It also comes with a
Wireless Optical Mouse that offers the ability to scroll horizontally as
well as vertically by tilting the scroll wheel. The Wireless Notebook
Optical Mouse ($70) will be available in slate or winter blue colours
and includes a receiver that snaps into its underside when not in use,
automatically shutting it off to conserve battery power.
(Australian Macworld’s initial tests of the Wireless Notebook
Optical Mouse were not encouraging. Despite the Mac finding the
mouse on its USB bus, it did not respond to mouse movement.
Hopefully this will be fixed with a software update by the time
you read this.)
‘Starck Wired Optical Mouse
The Digital Media Pro Keyboard ($60) is the wired version of the
keyboard available in the Wireless Optical Desktop package while
the Standard Wireless Optical Mouse ($90) is a basic three-button
with a scroll wheel mouse available in black or white. Microsoft
noted that the buttons have been integrated with the body of
the mouse and that its advances in research should enable users
to get six months of battery life.
The updated Bluetooth devices ($300 for the Desktop Elite and
$150 for the Mouse) should, according to Microsoft, be more
widely compatible with other Bluetooth profiles, meaning you can
link to your mobile or PDA with the same Bluetooth connector.
There’s also a more compact Bluetooth receiver for those without
internal Bluetooth modules. @ Brad Cook and Matthew JC. Powell
tm SOFTWARE
®
Hot Links
www.microsoft.com/mac
Mactopia
Virtual PC update adds G5 support
IRTUAL PC didn’t exactly get off to an auspicious start as
\ / part of Microsoft's product line, A few months after buying
the emulation program from Connectix, Microsoft
announced that the software, which allows the Mac to emulate
PC hardware, was incompatible with the Power Mac G5.
Microsoft hopes things go more smoothly with Virtual PC 7, the
first major Virtual PC release the software giant has overseen.
Version 7 features long-awaited G5 support and other improve-
ments aimed at enhancing usability.
Why the delay in adding G5 compatibility? For reasons of
speed, the old version of the application made some processor-
related assumptions that weren't valid for the G5 chip. Making
Australian Macworld October 04
up for lost speed, Microsoft has tweaked the new version to show
15 percent increases across the board, regardless of the system
being used. Virtual PC 7 also uses the OpenGL graphics tech-
nology in Mac OS X to speed up scrolling, redrawing, and other
interface-related activities. G5 users should also see improvements
in disk-intensive tasks such as copying files.
Virtual PC 7 uses the familiar Apple installer instead of the
drag-and-drop installation of earlier versions, so it’s easier to
assign more RAM to your virtual OS; the update also offers
better setup assistance. In addition, version 7 enters Stand By
mode by default, rather than shutting down; this saves time
when you return to your virtual environment. For printing, the
new Virtual PC can send a PostScript file to your Mac printer
driver, which then converts that file to PDF before printing it.
Since Mac OS is doing most of the work, printing should be
faster and more accurate.
The first two versions of Virtual PC 7, featuring the Windows
XP Professional ($499) or Windows XP Home ($449) operating
systems, should ship in October. A $499 Windows 2000
Professional version should follow in December.
Microsoft Office for Mac, Professional Edition, which includes
Virtual PC 7, will also ship in October. @ Jonathan Seff
025
@ TWENTY YEARS OF THE MAC
®
Hot Links
movies.differentdistrict.com/play.php?id=207_0_28_0_M
The Lemmings ad
(Un)happy days
URE, Apple is basking in well-deserved kudos as part of
the 20th anniversary of the Macintosh. But not everything
touched by the company in the past two decades has
turned to gold. In fact, Apple’s history is littered with products
or ideas the company would just as soon bury in a landfill along-
side the last remaining Lisa computers. Here are five Apple misses
you shouldn't expect to see feted on the cover of AMW when
their 20th anniversaries role around. @ Philip Michaels
1985 Microsoft Pact
BRating 66606
MWhen October 1985
The idea. Apple CEO John Sculley gave Microsoft the right to
use some Mac OS technology in Windows, in exchange for
| continuing to upgrade Word and delaying a Windows version of
Excel for a year.
What went wrong. By agreeing to do what it probably would
have done anyway, Microsoft got a hand from Apple in developing
the OS that would eventually marginalise the Mac platform —
for free
Carl Sagan
BRating O8
When November 1993
The idea. Apple engineers gave the Power Mac 7100/66 the
code-name “Carl Sagan” as a tribute to the famous astronomer.
What went wrong. Sagan, thinking Apple was trying to profit
from his reputation, was less than honoured — especially when,
after his initial complaints, the code name was changed to BHA
(which allegedly stood for “Butt-Head Astronomer’)
Pippin
Rating ©
When March 1996
The idea. Apple teamed up with toy maker Bandai to develop this
66MHz game console that could also connect to the internet
What went wrong. More expensive than a PlayStation! Less
powerful than a Macintosh! Scrapped by its developers ina
single bound!
Lemmings
BRaling 666 Power Mac G4 Launch
@When January 1985 ~ | Rating e
The idea. Eager to recapture the success of its “1984” Super Bowl
ad from the year before, Apple bought another chunk of commer-
cial time during Super Bowl XIX to advertise the forthcoming
Macintosh Office.
What went wrong. What went wrong: Off-putting and a bit of a
downer (the spot featured businesspeople marching single-file off a
cliff) the ad bombed
™When October 1999
The idea. Apple unveiled its Power Mac G4 in 400MHz, 450MHz,
and 500MHz configurations.
What went wrong. A shortage of G4 chips forced Apple to scale
back the Power Mac configurations to 350MHz, 400MHz, and
450MHz, but it didn't cut prices. Mac users were understandably
disgruntled about paying the same price for less processing power.
Precision
Australian Macworld October 04
026
m BRIEFS
©
Hot Links
www.mozilla.org/products/firefox
Firefox web browser
www.auc.edu.au/index2.html?audf/scholarship/index.html~mainFrame
Apple University Consortium
www.skype.com
Internet telephony
www.osde.com.au/
Open-Source Developers’ Conference
Firefox 1.0 preview release now available
Web browser Firefox has reached version 1.0; a preview release is
now available )see “Hot links"). Firefox features pop-up blocking,
tabbed browsing, a Google search window built into the toolbar,
privacy tools, RSS integration, customisation options and more. In
addition, it comes with developer tools that include a JavaScript
and CSS error warning console and an optional Document
Inspector that helps you learn where problems may lie with your
web pages.
You can expect to see the final release of Firefox 1.0 sometime
in the fourth quarter. System requirements calll for Mac OS X
v10.1.x, a G3, G4 or G5 running at 266MHz (a G4
running at 667MHz is recommended), 64MB
RAM (256MB recommended) and 72MB hard
drive space. The software is free, although you
can also order it on CD for $US5.95. @ Brad Cook
AUC offers student scholarship
The Apple University Consortium (AUC) is offering
a Student Scholarship Program that is open to full-
time students studying at AUC member universi-
ties in Australia. The scholarship includes a
PowerBook, programming tools, support from a
high-level mentor, support to attend Apple's
Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San
Francisco, support to attend the AUC’s own
Australian Academic & Developer's Conference, and
a chance to participate in Apple's internship program
in Cupertino
Students selected for the scholarship are expected
“to produce innovative applications for the Mac plat-
form, working individually or with other participants in the
program.” Applications close on October 15, 2004. More details,
see “Hot links”. @ Peter Cohen
Photoshop Elements 3.0
‘Adobe Systems introduced Photoshop Elements 3.0, a major
upgrade to its consumer-level photo editing application, in mid-
September. The update adds several new features and enhance-
ments that allow the amateur and pro alike to edit photos with a
few mouse clicks.
While many Mac users currently use iPhoto to brighten a picture
or reduce red-eye, Adobe says the two products don't compete
and can easily be used in conjunction with one another.
“People wanted an integrated solution and iPhoto already had a
lot of the functionality, so we chose to build a product to comple-
Australian Macworld October 04
ment iPhoto,” Tapan Bhat, Director of Product Management,
Digital Imaging at Adobe, said
In addition to the Quick Fix, which allows you to correct some of
the most common types of flaws in photos, Adobe has added
Smart Fix to Elements 3.0. Smart Fix automatically detects and
fixes lighting, colour and contrast of an image for you. Both Smart
Fix and Quick Fix have an advanced option that will allow you to
control the enhancement levels manually using slider bars.
Elements 3.0 will also include many other feature improvements
such as editable and searchable metadata, Spot Healing Brush &
Healing Brush, the ability to use Camera Raw files, PDF
slideshows, and Web Photo Galleries to name just a few.
Elements 3.0 will be available in a few months. @ Jim Dalrymple
and Peter Cohen
Skype offers free internet telephony
Skype Technologies has released a beta of the Mac OS X version
Of its free software for making phone calls over the internet. Skype
features contact management functions, call and message
tracking, file transfers up to 2GB, instant messaging, end-to-end
encryption in all transmissions and more. It also includes the
company's SkypeOut service, which enables
you to pre-pay for calls to land lines and
mobile phones anywhere in the world for as
little as two US cents per minute; a rate sheet
‘on the Skype web site (see “Hot links” breaks
down the prices. The software requires Mac
OS X v10.3, a G3 running at 400MHz, 128MB
RAM and 20MB free hard drive space.
@ Brad Cook
Dual licensing
QuarkXPress 6 users haven't had too many
kind things to say about the licensing poli-
cies for the desktop publishing application.
Quark has responded to some of the
complaints — it's altering its single-user
license so QuarkXPress 6 users can install
and activate the program on a second
computer at no additional charge. (Existing
Quark Mobile Licensing customers can request a coupon
toward the purchase of Quark software or services.) That should
produce a little goodwill for Quark; more important, it helps
designers who use a desktop in the office and a laptop on the
road produce a lot more work. @ AMW Staff
Aussie open-source conference
The first Australian Open-Source Developers’ Conference is
scheduled to be held at the Caulfield campus of Melbourne’s
Monash University from the first to third of December. Registration
should be open by the time you read this. See “Hot links" for
more info.
The conference should be of interest to the Mac community
because of the open-source underpinnings of Mac OS X, but there
is another angle: one of the organizers of the conference is Tony
Smith, who was instrumental in setting up the first Australian
Macworld Expo back in 1985. @ Matthew JC. Powell
027
Off the net
Latest shareware and
@ TheConcept
1.0.1 $US39.95
Shareware X
(10.2 or later)
TheConcept is a
brilliant research
tool that helps
you search better online. Enter a search
term, and it will search Google for those
keywords. It then visits each of the web
sites recommended by Google, and
analyses terms on those pages. Finally, it
presents you with a cross-referenced list of
terms to help you search more laterally. |
@ Mac Business 2.94 $US22.95
Shareware X (10.3 or later)
Super-simple time management and
invoicing for very small businesses. Just the
program for people who don't want or need
a complex accounting package. Includes
client database, to-do list with iCal
integration, and customisable invoices.
@ Mailbase 1.0b12 $US97 Shareware X
(10.3 or later)
Archive e-mail out of your favourite e-mail
client into a database with lightning-quick
search. Supports Apple Mail, PowerMail,
Entourage, Outlook Express, Claris Emailer
and Eudora.
@ Document Manager 3.0 Freeware X
(10.3 or later)
Tool for school IT managers to create
student directories on a file server, then
allow teachers to view “classes” of students
and their submitted assignments.
™@ Bloxter 1.13 $US19.95 Shareware X
Space invaders crossed with Tetris
Great fun!
ce €
free downloads
@ MPlayer 2.0b8r2 Freeware X (10.3
or later)
Bug-fix of the popular MPlayer video player
software that allows playback of movies
with AAC soundtracks.
I Nightie-Night 0.9 Freeware X (10.3
or later)
Sleep-timer for iTunes: gradually fades your
music out and then sleeps the Mac. When
your Mac awakes, it fades the music back in.
MW iBush 2.3 Freeware X (10.1.5)
Ask President George W. Bush to
incoherently ramblerate on any topic you like
1 DockSwitch 1.4 Freeware X (10.3 or later)
Switch between multiple Dock sets. Great if
you use many graphics apps sometimes,
but most of the time only need Dock access
to a smaller set of apps, for example.
@ KidzMail 1.5 $19.00 Shareware X (10.1
or later)
E-mail for kids! Mum and dad set up the
address book, then kids just do the hard
work of drawing pictures into e-mails and
choosing who to send them to
@ PodGourmet 1.0 $5 Shareware X (3rd
or 4th gen iPod)
Recipes for your iPod. Use at your own
sticky-fingered peril
@ WirelessDriver 1.0.0b5 Freeware X
(10.2 or later)
Use third party Wi-Fi cards in your
PowerBook. Avoid paying Apple's
outrageous prices. Get 802.11g on a “non-
Extreme” PowerBook.
@ iPodBackup 1.1b4 Freeware X (10.3 or
later)
Use those empty gigs on your iPod for
something useful, like backing up your
home folder. This cleverly doesn't backup
your music folder, for obvious reasons.
@ MenuCalendarClock 1.0 $US14.95
Shareware X (10.2.8 or later)
Put an enhanced clock and drop-down
calendar in your menu bar, then import
birthdays from your address book and
events from iCal.
@ PlainClip 1.0.5 Freeware X (10.2
or later)
Strip formatting from any text in the
clipboard. A godsend for graphic designers.
@ Hack to the Past 1.0 Freeware X (10.3
or later)
Revert OS X's annoying 3¢+Shift+N for new
folder back to the old Mac OS X standard,
38+N
™@ TNEF's enough 2.0 Freeware X
Ever received an e-mail you couldn't open,
with a “winmail.dat" attachment" That's
Microsoft's proprietary TNEF e-mail format.
This utility will open it for you.
™@ MacFreeSCl 2.0 Freeware X (10.3 or
later)
Play old Sierra adventure games like Space
Quest and King's Quest on your Mac, using
this Cocoa interpreter for Sierra's SCI game
language
1 Printer Setup Repair 4.1.3 $US20
Shareware X (10.3 or later)
Fixes a multitude of things that can go
wrong with OS X's printing system
®
Hot Links
www.ausmac.net
Download the software in Off the net
Performance
Re:seller.
The view from the other side of the counter.
By Fleur Doidge.
Take a tablet
RECENTLY uncovered Apple filing for a European design
trademark suggests the vendor is still considering plans for
PDAs or tablet-style computers. The documents reportedly
contain sketches of what looks like a small iBook screen, sans body,
but with an iPod dock-type port on the side. Indeed the just-unveiled
iMac GS looks like it could, with little modification, morph into a tablet
in some future revision.
Resellers will be waiting with bated breath to find out if these
reports are true. Indeed, they have been waiting for some time. Could
such a device — should it ever leave the
drawing board — ease current stress on
Apple resellers?
The scheduling seems decidedly off.
Other, previously successful, vendors are
leaving the PDA market. Distributors
stocking tablet PCs in this country have
been near-unanimously underwhelmed by
customer demand, as have mass-market
retailers. Apple, however, has sometimes
been accused of doing its own thing —
operating on Apple time, regardless of the
rest of the market.
Maybe Apple knows something that
Gartner, IDC, Toshiba and Sony don't. Some
analysts, such as Gartner's Andy Woo, have
said that the day of the tablet is coming but
®
Hot Links
www.gartner.com
Gartner Group international market research
www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/13/apple_tablet_mac/
Apple tablet rumours
onic technologies are still tiny, there is an undoubted snowball effect
implied within the very term ‘convergence’
Few doubt the trend will gather momentum
For PDAs and tablets, the link with the digital home is obvious
Both are aimed at unifying divergent functions in one device, with
the notion of using that one mobile device across the network at
home, on the road and at work.
Funky, user-friendly digital functionality has long been Apple's raison
d'etre. However, Apple is now facing competition from other vendors in
that space (witness Windows Media Center),
as well as in other traditional Apple verticals
such as education and the creative profes-
sions. The niche is going mainstream (again)
Many Apple products are a hard sell, and
getting harder as personal computing gets
ever more commoditised. The trade-off —
that aura of quality, exclusivity and innova-
tion — won't sustain all the resellers out
there. There are a lot more Apple resellers
than Ferrari dealers in Australian towns.
Apple needs to come up with more saleable
product with good margins, whether through
service, support or the product itself. Resellers
can't survive by simply shifting boxes any
more; they need powerful value-add. A guy
can only sell so many iPods, especially when
dawn is a long way off. Tablet PCs are
doomed for some time to remain expensive, niche devices for
particular applications in specialised verticals, such as healthcare
and architecture.
It seems unlikely an Apple tablet would reliably reap enough
revenue to reward the devotion of Apple resellers. Just what your
small local reseller needed: another pretty box to gather dust on the
shelf until that one person in a million walks in.
Warning signs. Resellers can and will go where the profits lead
them. Next Byte, Apple's largest reseller in Australia, is doing quite
well with its little sideline in selling PCs, for instance
One of the places resellers want to go today is into the digital
home. More than just Apple's “digital hub" concept, a “digital home"
is a dwelling where digital technology enables home functions
(lighting, refrigeration and temperature control), and entertainment
features (TV, radio and movie-watching), to converge
Most vendors interpret that as meaning offering more function- |
ality from one box, and connecting all the technologies around the
house on one network. Although profits from such relatively embry-
Australian Macworld October 04
there's not many on the shelf.
Further, copying music from CDs — even for personal playback
on a secondary device — is illegal here. What happens to the dealer
channel when and if Australia starts to get tough about enforcement?
A knife-seller isn't held liable if the buyer runs off and murders
someone, but if a dealer is selling a product with no legitimate use,
that's another story.
There's no indication when, if ever, the iTunes Music Store will be
available here. The only legitimate use for an iPod in this country
(unless you're a muso and use your iPod solely to store music you
wrote) is its voice recording and contact management functionality.
It's unlikely that the majority of iPod buyers are using the devices for
that. Which brings me back to the PDA question.
If Apple knows something about the market for PDAs or tablets
that the rest of us don't, it needs to get a compelling product onto
shelves in time to satisfy resellers who are starting to look elsewhere.
If it's working on something, let's see it. If, on the other hand, its
plans for the “digital home" do not involve a tablet-style device, time
is running out for it to make those plans clear.
Rome wasn't built in a day by one guy with an iPod, you know. £&
THE SERIOUS JUMBO JET
Introducing the new SJ- 1000EX
.
G for a demonstration 1800 500 119, or
Call Roland
visit www.rolanddg.com.au
Perfection
= Roland
Get Serious!
s ¢ Training
030
(Christopher Breen and Joe Kissell.
Photograph by Peter Belanger
Illustrations by Steve Forney
SURVIVAL
GUIDE
PICK THE PERFECT PROGRAM,
MANAGE YOUR MAIL
AND ZAP SPAM
Do you find it increasingly difficult to deal with the
daily flood of e-mail? Do you wish your e-mail
client could share information with other Mac
programs? If so, it may be time for you to choose
a new e-mail program.
E-mail management is no place for nostalgia —
you shouldn't stick with a client simply because
you've used it since the Keating government.
You're better off basing your choice on the volume
of e-mail you receive, the control you need over
your e-mail program, and how well the app fits into
your workflow.
homepage.mac.com/aamann/Eudora_Mailbox_Cleaner.html
Eudora Mailbox Cleaner
www.scriptbuilders.net/category.php?id= 1667
Paul Berkowitz's AppleScript collection
homepage.mac.com/aamann/Eudora_vCard_Export.html
Eudora vCard Export
wwwalittlemachines.com
Outiook2Mac
junkmatcher.sourceforge.net
JunkMatcher
www.austlii.edu.au/
Get info on Australian anti-spam laws
Australian Macworld
CHANGE E-MAIL CLIEN
oe (
Create an e-mail wish list. &
Before you can find the perfect fit, you need to th
understand what features are most important a
to the way you use e-mail. To help you sort it \
all out, first consider some of the big issues. X
Money matters. If price is your primary concern,
you can’t go wrong by choosing an application you already
have — Apple Mail. Likewise, if you've shelled out money for the
Microsoft Office 2004 suite, you already own Entourage.
Spam protection. If you have an e-mail account, you will get spam.
Many ISPs and company networks try to filter out the obvious spam
before it reaches you. If yours don’t do that — or if you're still
overrun with the stuff — you'll want an e-mail client that can take
on the task. All the programs we recommend here offer spam filters
that learn how to identify incoming spam correctly and remove it
from your in-box. If you receive a lot of spam, you'll further benefit
from a program with sophisticated mail filters, such as those included
with Entourage or Bare Bones Software's Mailsmith. These filters
can help you isolate the spam that circumvents your other barriers.
Simplicity. Completing day-to-day e-mail tasks shouldn't require
excessive brain activity. If you often receive or create HTML-
formatted messages, for example, you should think twice about
adopting an e-mail client such as Mailsmith, which makes you
jump through hoops to do either. You should also consider the
accessibility of the information you need. If you routinely use
OS X's Address Book or iCal, you'll be happier if your e-mail
client does, too.
Manageability. Some people keep every message they've ever
received in one in-box. And that's fine for very light e-mail users
or people who don’t mind weeding through an endless list of
messages. If you receive a lot of mail, you'll benefit greatly from
a program with sophisticated mail filters that can automatically
sort and prioritise your incoming messages.
You also may want a client that offers flexible scheduling.
Although all e-mail clients can download mail every couple of
minutes, only high-end programs such as Entourage and Mailsmith
let you create more-complicated schedules — for example, to access
a rarely used account only on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Advanced control. If you regularly receive or send high volumes
of mail, you may need something that goes above and beyond
the normal call of duty. You might want to use AppleScript,
Apple's native scripting language, to automate some of your e-
mail client's tiresome tasks. Or you may want to be able to add
mail headers to your outgoing e-mail messages — a PGP finger-
print header, for example.
Proper access. E-mail is hosted on one of two kinds of servers
— POP (Post Office Protocol) or IMAP (Internet Message Access
Protocol). POP accounts, which download messages to your
computer, are more common than IMAP accounts, which store
mail on your ISP’s server. However, many web-based e-mail
services — including Apple's .Mac — require an IMAP connec-
tion. If you use an IMAP account and your client doesn’t support
it, the client is useless to you.
Australian Macworld October 04
Rs
Find the right fit.
OS X users have several options when it comes to
choosing an e-mail client, but three programs
stand out from the rest in terms of features,
reliability, and performance: Apple Mail,
Microsoft Entourage 2004, and Bare
Bones Software's Mailsmith 2.1. The kind
of e-mail user you are will determine
®
The casual e-mailer. You receive a light to moderate amount
of e-mail and don’t spend much time trying to keep it organised,
beyond dividing it into folders. You already use (or would like to
use) Apple’s Address Book and iCal programs, and you want an
e-mail program that can take advantage of them.
Recommendation: Apple Mail 1.3.
Why: Apple’s e-mail client has evolved into a reasonably mature
application. Mail is accessible enough for beginners and
complete enough for people who need to manage a moderate
amount of e-mail.
Mail includes all the basic rules necessary to capably route
messages to different mailboxes (although the list of rules isn’t
as extensive as that of Entourage or Mailsmith). Users who
collaborate with others via e-mail will particularly appreciate
Mail's Thread view, which groups messages that are part of an
ongoing exchange. Mail's scheduling options are extremely
limited compared with those in Entourage — you can't create
multiple schedules, and you can’t ask Mail to check your mail
less often than once an hour. There is potential for adding more-
advanced features; Mail offers solid support for AppleScript and
lets you trigger an AppleScript from a mail rule.
Of course, Mail's greatest advantage is its integration with other
Apple applications. You can configure iCal to send announce-
ments of upcoming events through Mail, and you can add
contacts to Address Book with the click of a button.
your choice.
The Office e-mailer. You rely on Microsoft Office to get your
job done, and you want an e-mail program that seamlessly inte-
grates into your workflow. You get a moderate to heavy amount of
e-mail and you need a way to sort through your incoming
messages quickly, pick out the important messages from the not-
so-important notes, and file them away in the appropriate folders.
Recommendation: Microsoft Entourage 2004.
Why: Entourage offers nearly every feature found in Mail (except
integration with other Apple programs and message threading)
and many more.
Entourage’s greatest strengths lie in its management features. Its
mail rules can filter messages in ways not possible in Mail — for
example, you can create rules that apply only to messages
formatted as HTML. Its Mailing List Manager greatly simplifies the
process of sorting mailing-list e-mail. The program's Project Center,
which allows you to organise contacts, events, mail, and docu-
ments by project, is unmatched in any other e-mail client.
033
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isan entender
Take three. Here's a look at Mail (top), Entourage (middle), and Mailsmith
(bottom) in their default browser modes.
Entourage can schedule more tasks than Mail can. It’s also the
only e-mail client in this roundup that can trigger an AppleScript
from a schedule — for example, to archive messages when you
quit the program.
Entourage doesn’t share information with Address Book or iCal.
Instead, it offers its own tools for managing contacts, calendars,
notes, and more. If you work in a cross-platform office, you'll
appreciate the program's superior support for Microsoft Exchange
Server — server-based software that lets Entourage and Outlook
users share contacts and calendars over a network. Entourage is
also the only Mac e-mail client that can send and receive
Hotmail.com messages by default.
Entourage’s weakest link is its single database. A bloated data-
base can slow down performance, and if it becomes corrupt, you
could lose everything. If you choose Entourage as your e-mail
client, you should regularly back up Entourage’s Database file
(located in your user folder at Documents: Microsoft User Data:
Office 2004 Identities: Main Identity).
The e-mail commander. You're no e-mail novice. You use
e-mail for advanced tasks, such as running a newsletter or
managing multiple accounts, and you need to have full access to
your e-mail settings. You also want a no-nonsense program that
can quickly search and manipulate a high volume of e-mail.
Recommendation: Bare Bones Software's Mailsmith 2.1.
Why: Although Mailsmith is approachable enough for typical
Mac users, it tends to appeal to a highly technical — and proudly
geeky — audience.
If you're accustomed to other e-mail clients, you may be
thrown off by Mailsmith’s spartan interface and its lack of
amenities common in other e-mail programs — for example,
support for HTML messages (though you can view such messages
in your default browser at the click of a button), support for
IMAP e-mail accounts, and an in-line spelling checker.
For exercising complete control over your e-mail client,
Mailsmith’s list of features is hard to beat. Although the program
doesn't search mounds of messages as quickly as Qualcomm’s
Eudora, Mailsmith does a better job of pinpointing the messages
you're after, thanks to its highly configurable search feature. For
example, you can search for words that begin or end a text string,
or use special grep characters to identify loose patterns of text.
The options for creating mail filters are just as expansive.
Mailsmith offers built-in support for PGP encryption and
Michael Tsai’s powerful SpamSieve software — which is superior
in many ways to what you'll find in Mail or Entourage. If you're
handy with AppleScript, you can automate nearly all of the
program's functions.
Make the switch.
Regrettably, there’s more to switching e-mail clients than just
deciding which one suits you. There's also the sometimes-messy
business of moving e-mail and addresses to a new home.
Most e-mail programs have an Import command that auto-
mates the process of moving your e-mail, contacts, and other
data. If the Import option doesn’t support your client — or if
it doesn’t do a sufficient job — there's still hope. You can
almost always get the job done with a third-party utility or
by manually converting your files into the standard mbox or
vCard formats.
Moving to Mail. if you're moving to Mail from Entourage,
Outlook Express, Netscape/Mozilla, or Claris E-mailer, open Mail's
Import Mailboxes command (File: Import Mailboxes) and select
the appropriate import option. You can also import mbox files
that you created in another application. In the Import window,
select Other, click on the right-arrow button, and navigate to the
location of the mbox files. @
@
What about Eudora?
Sharp-eyed readers will notice that
Qualcomm’s Eudora 6.1 doesn’t appear on
our list of recommended e-mail clients. Although Eudora has
been a past favourite — particularly for users who need nearly
infinite control over their e-mail settings — the e-mail land-
‘scape has changed and, regrettably, Eudora has been slow to
change with it.
It’s true that Eudora makes quick work of searching massive
mailboxes and offers almost limitless ways to customise your
mail settings (for example, you can designate which headers
will appear in messages sent from a particular account). For
most advanced users, these perks won't make up for the
program's aging features, including limited filtering options —
Eudora provides just two If conditions and four Then actions
for sorting messages.
It also does a poor job of displaying complex HTML
messages. And although Eudora is scriptable, its scripting
dictionary is out of date, so the program is more difficult to
script than Mail, Entourage, and Mailsmith.
If Eudora suits you, by all means stick with it. If the program
no longer fits the bill and if you need absolute control over your
e-mail, | recommend switching to Mailsmith.
Australian Macworld October 04
034
Although Mail offers to import e-mail from Eudora automati-
cally, the process is far from ideal — it ignores attachments and
removes HTML and rich-text formatting from your messages.
Instead, use Andreas Amann’s free Eudora Mailbox Cleaner (see
“Hot links”). This utility correctly transfers messages, as well as
filters and nickname files.
Contacts. Mail stores its contacts in Apple’s Address Book. You
can import addresses from Entourage, Outlook Express, Palm
Desktop, Eudora, Claris E-mailer, or Netscape/Mozilla by using
the Import Addresses AppleScript.
If you haven't already installed OS X’s Script Menu (look
for a tiny scroll that appears in the Finder's menu bar), go to
your Applications: AppleScript folder and double-click on the
Install Script Menu item. Then, from the Finder, click on the
newly installed Script Menu and choose Address Book Scripts:
Import Addresses.
Moving to Entourage 2004. E-mail Entourage’s Import
command (File: Import) will transfer e-mail messages and
addresses from Entourage, Outlook Express, Eudora, Mail,
Netscape Communicator, and Claris E-mailer. If you're coming
from a different e-mail client or from a different computer,
first export your messages as an mbox file, and then drag this
file onto the Folders On My Computer entry in Entourage’s
Folders pane.
Contacts. If you have contacts, calendars, notes, and other bits of
data stored in Microsoft Outlook or a personal information
manager such as Palm Desktop, you can easily bring them to
Entourage 2004 with the help of Paul Berkowitz’s collection of
AppleScripts, Export-Import Entourage X (see “Hot links”). This
collection includes more than 50 scripts for moving almost
anything into and out of Entourage X and 2004.
If you have vCard files that you exported from another appli-
cation, you can also import these by dragging them into
Entourage’s Address Book window.
Moving to Mailsmith. When you launch Mailsmith
for the first time, it offers to import mail and contact infor-
mation from a variety of programs, including Eudora, Claris
In a computing world rife with incompatible standards, the mbox
and vCard file formats offer a rare sliver of sanity. By converting
your data into these two cross-platform standards — mbox for e-
mail messages and vCard for contacts — you can quickly and
easily move much of the information in your e-mail client and
address book to other applications, or even to the same applica-
tion on a different computer.
Creating mbox files. To generate an mbox file from Entourage,
Mail, or Mailsmith, just click on one of the program's mail folders
and drag it to your desktop. Repeat this for each folder you want
to move. Note that in Entourage, the newly generated mbox file
won't include any of the folder’s subfolders. You'll have to drag
these to the desktop separately.
When you drag Mailsmith’s mailboxes to the desktop, they
become text documents by default. To import these files into Mail
Australian Macworld October 04
a
Ay>@
Import mail from Microsoft
Outlook for Windows
When contemplating a move to the Mac, one of the first ques-
tions many Windows users ask is “Will | be able to access my
old e-mail, contacts, and calendars on my new computer?”
Thanks to Outlook2Mac (see “Hot links”), the answer is yes.
Outlook2Mac painlessly converts Outlook mail to a form that
you can import into Mail, Entourage, or Mailsmith. It will also
export contact and calendar data to any program that supports
the vCard and iCalendar (.ics) file format standards —
including Address Book, iCal, and Palm Desktop.
Outlook2Mac is remarkably easy to use. Simply purchase an
appropriate version of the program (separate versions are
available for Outlook 2002/2003/XP, Outlook 2000, and Outlook
97/98) and launch it. The software then walks you through the
process of exporting the needed data. You can select specific
mailboxes, a range of calendar dates, and the most appropriate
file format for the data export. If you're moving to Address Book
or Palm Desktop, you'll need to export your Outlook contacts
as a single vCard file. Likewise, iCal requires a single .ics file
for calendar data. If you're moving to Entourage, you'll need
to export your data as individual vCard and .ics files. You
should also instruct the program to filter out any attachments
that won’t work with your Mac — files ending with an .exe
extension, for example.
E-mailer, and Mail. If you need to import mail from other
clients or want to add messages after the initial import
process, you can do so by dragging mbox files into the
Mailsmith window.
Contacts. You can also import contacts from Eudora and other
vCard-compatible applications by exporting them as vCard files
and dragging them into Mailsmith’s Address Book window.
(Mailsmith uses OS X's Address Book, so you don’t need to
import these contacts.)
porting to standard file formats
or Entourage, you must first append the .mbox extension to them.
Eudora doesn't support this drag-and-drop method. To access
its mbox files, open your user folder and go to Documents: Eudora
Folder: Mail Folder.
Creating vCards. In most cases, creating vCards is also a drag-
and-drop affair. To export vCards from Apple’s Address Book —
which both Mail and Mailsmith use — just select the contacts you
want and drag them to the desktop. You'll end up with a single file
with all the selected contacts.
Unlike Address Book, Entourage won't export multiple contacts as
a single vCard file. So if you plan to export multiple contacts, it’s a
good idea to first create a folder to hold all of the resulting vCards.
To export Eudora’s nicknames as vCard files that can be
imported into Apple’s Address Book, Entourage, or Mailsmith, use
Andreas Amann’s free Eudora vCard Export (see “Hot links”).
GET ORGANISED
E-mail was supposed to be a time-saver, Hand-
sorting an inbox overflowing with personal
messages, business correspondence, mailing-list
deliveries, and jokes from clueless cousins (not
to mention the load of unsolicited e-mail you
receive each day) can take a substantial bite out |
of an already busy day. |
What you need is an e-mail strategy. Here are | —
seven ways to take control of your jammed in-box.
Establish rules. One of the easiest ways to automate filing
duties is to create a mail rule — a set of criteria that tell your e-
mail client how to sort and file your messages when they arrive.
This not only makes your inbox more manageable, but also helps
you quickly prioritise your incoming messages. For example,
you can use rules to assign colours to different types of mail, so
you can quickly distinguish work assignments from family
gossip.
To access rules in Entourage, go to Tools: Rules and click on
New. In Mail, go to Mail: Preferences: Rules. In Eudora and
Mailsmith, go to Window: Filters.
Regardless of the program you use, the basics of setting up a
mail rule are essentially the same. You use If statements to tell
your e-mail program how to identify the messages you want
to control, and Then statements to specify what to do with
those messages.
For example, if you have two e-mail addresses — one for
personal mail and one for business mail — you might find it
useful to separate these messages into two different mailbox
folders. Such a filter would look like this:
If: Any Recipient is me@personal_address.com
Then: Move Message to Personal E-mail Folder
For more-powerful filters, you can combine multiple If and
Then statements. For example, to make sure you give prompt
attention to messages from your company’s bigwigs, you might
want to move their incoming messages to a From The Boss folder
and play a suitably ominous sound.
Aye, aye, boss! A mail rule that alerts you to the presence of messages
from higher-ups may save your bacon.
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Description: "Wake Up!
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——== SO
Perform the following actions.
Ba} to maibox: ([ From the Boss Fa)
WO (Basso
“Forward Message BA ©: chris@thebeach.org
(Move Message
Play Sound
OoO®
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” (Message...)
eae)
035
re.
Take control of mailing lists. Using rules
is also vital if you subscribe to mailing lists —
particularly ones that don’t offer digests, but
rather copy you on every message sent to the list.
Entourage has a handy Mailing List Manager
feature (in the Tools menu) that automates the most
laborious aspects of managing such lists. For example, it
can move incoming list e-mails to a designated folder, break
list digests into individual messages, and delete duplicate copies
of messages you send to the list. If you don’t use Entourage, you
can set up something similar — but much more basic — by
creating a mail rule that picks out any message with the list's e-
mail address in the From field and moves it to a dedicated
mailing-list mailbox.
Follow a conversation. Some e-mail exchanges can span
weeks and include half a dozen people. You can often get a quick
overview of the back-and-forth by sorting your mail by Subject,
but this method is far from perfect: I can’t tell you how many of
my message threads have started with the subject lines “A quick
question” and “Hello.”
With Entourage, you have only the sorting method. Mail and
Eudora offer more-efficient solutions. In Mail, go to View:
Organize By Thread. Mail then groups all your related e-mails —
and only the e-mails relevant to this specific thread — under a
single heading highlighted in blue. You can view all of the
messages in a thread by clicking on the arrow to the left of the
highlighted message. To group messages by thread in Eudora, go
to Special: Sort: Group Subjects (or just option-click on the
message's subject line).
Get a better view. Most e-mail programs offer basic sorting
options — such as Message Status, Subject, and To. Entourage
2004, however, lets you further arrange your messages into
groups — larger categories of sorted messages that you can then
quickly collapse or expand.
For example, you could use the Groups feature to slim down
your Entourage database by eliminating large files from your
inbox. Turn on Groups by going to View: Arrange By: Show
In Groups. Now when you sort your messages by Size (View:
Arrange By: Size), Entourage groups them into categories such
as Small, Medium, Large, Huge, and Enormous. To eliminate
all of your Enormous, Huge, and Large files, click on the
Group header (which selects all messages in the group) and
press delete.
To further control your messages, you can define how they are
sorted within individual groups. For example, you may want to
eliminate only some large files: those that are older than a week or
that are from certain individuals. To do this, create a new custom
arrangement (View: Arrange By: Edit Custom Arrangement) that
groups items by size and then arranges items within the group by
Sent or by From. Click on OK to save your new arrangement. To
apply this view to your inbox, go to View: Arrange By and select
the saved custom arrangement.
Australian Macworld October 04
036
Find anything fast. Most e-mail clients offer an advanced
search option that uses multiple criteria to scan all your stored e-
mail. Entourage’s advanced search option even lets you include
contacts, notes, and calendar options in the hunt.
Apple Mail won't let you search by more than one criterion, but
there is a workaround. Create a rule that uses multiple criteria to
identify messages and then copies those messages to a special folder.
For instance, if you wanted to find all your business-related
messages older than seven days that CC’d your co-worker Fred,
you'd create a rule that looked like this:
If: CC contains Fred
Date Received Is Greater Than 7 Days Old
Account Is meémybusiness.org
Then: Copy Message To Mailbox Fred
To apply the rule to a selection of messages, go to Message:
Apply Rule. Everything that meets these requirements will appear
in your Fred mailbox, which you can delete once you're done.
Create e-mail archives. Any good e-mail maintenance plan
should include a backup strategy. That way, if a question comes
Tip
Organise your rules. The order in which mail rules appear is impor-
tant. E-mail programs apply rules in the order they're listed. So if
you've created a filter that moves all messages sent by Jane Doe to
‘one mailbox and another filter that transfers all messages that came
from the Mintie Lovers mailing list to another mailbox, Jane's
message expressing her love for Minties will be filtered by
whichever rule appears first. If one of your rules doesn’t work,
check to see whether another rule higher in the list conflicts with it.
WIN THE SPAM WAR
Imagine going to your (real) mailbox every
day, pulling out hundreds of flyers, and then
sorting through them to find the one bill or
personal letter you were expecting. For many of
us, this is exactly what the spam epidemic has
become: a frustrating and time-consuming daily
ritual of weeding out offensive and irritating offers
so we can get to the messages we actually want
and need. To make matters worse, spammers’
tactics are constantly changing — rendering spam- |
proofing strategies that worked a year ago all but
useless today.
Even by conservative estimates, spam now accounts >.
for well over half the e-mail sent worldwide. You can fight back
— in many cases by using tools you already have. Stopping spam
involves much more than just clicking on a check box. A good
spam-fighting strategy includes keeping your e-mail address
away from spammers, using common sense about reading and
replying to spam, and fine-tuning your built-in filter for
optimum accuracy.
Australian Macworld October 04
up months or even years from now, you'll have an intact, search-
able record of the correspondence. Archiving all of your messages
at once can be unwieldy. A better approach is to create separate
archives of related messages. This way, you can conserve space
by backing up only the messages you need.
One easy way to create these archives is to filter messages as
you normally would while also filing away a copy in a separate,
archived mailbox. For example, if you employ freelance workers,
you might create a rule that filters their messages to a mailbox for
whatever project they are currently working on and sends copies
to a mailbox called Quarterly Projects, which you archive four
times a year.
When you're ready to back up your archive file, just drag the
mailbox from your e-mail client (if you're using Mail, Entourage,
or Mailsmith) to the desktop to create an mbox file that you can
then burn onto a CD. To locate Eudora’s mbox files, open your user
folder and go to Documents: Eudora Folder: Mail Folder. Later, if
you need to access the information in an archived mbox file, just
open it in a text editor or drag it back into your e-mail client.
Archive Entourage projects. If you use Entourage
2004's Project Center to group related e-mails, tasks, and
documents, you can archive projects via the Export command.
In the Export window, enable the Items That Are In The Project
option and choose a project from the pop-up menu. To save
space, tell Entourage to delete messages once they're archived.
Entourage will create an .rge file. To restore the data in this
file, select File: Import: Import Information From An
Entourage Archive. If you don’t want to permanently return
the messages to your mailbox, import them into a new iden-
tity (Entourage: Switch Identity) and delete the identity when
you're done.
Don’t let the spammers find you. so
who exactly are these spammers, and what do
they want with you? Although some spammers are
hoping you'll give away personal information so
they can steal your money, most just want to sell
you something. Clever hackers write programs that
gather potentially valid e-mail addresses, and then
they sell these addresses by the hundreds of millions
to spammers — often ordinary people hoping to
make a quick buck. Spammers know that most of
their messages will be deleted or ignored, but they
make up for this in volume. If even a tiny fraction of
their messages results in a sale, spammers can make a
considerable sum.
Your first line of defence, then, is to stay off the radar of spam-
mers and their address-gathering programs.
Guard your address. The easier it is for someone to find your e-
mail address, the more likely you'll be the target of junk mail. So
avoid publicising your e-mail address on web pages or in news-
group postings. If you really must post your address online, turn
037
it into a graphic with no mailto link. If you need to enter an
address in web forms for online purchases, contest entries, and
the like, consider getting a second address, such as a Hotmail
account, just for this purpose. This will let you keep your primary
address private and relatively spam-free.
Practice the silent treatment. Resist the temptation to reply to
spam messages — even to unsubscribe from them. In most cases,
no one will read your reply. If it does get through, it simply
confirms that your address is valid. In general, you can safely
unsubscribe from newsletters and other mailings from legiti-
mate companies with which you've done business — but if |
you've never heard of the mailer, chances are any Remove Me
links are bogus.
The same is true of bouncing messages — returning a spam to
its sender in hopes of tricking the spammer into thinking that
your address is invalid. Savvy spammers can still tell that a
message reached its destination. Besides, since spam messages
are sent out by the millions, spammers aren’t likely to bother
removing invalid addresses from their lists.
Turn off HTML. Spammers can tell that you've read their messages
by using a web bug, a small graphic that your e-mail client
downloads when you display a message with HTML formatting.
The graphic's URL contains a unique identifier tied to your e-
mail address, so merely displaying the message tells the
spammer's server that you've read it.
To thwart web bugs, turn off the display of HTML graphics in
your e-mail client. By default, Entourage 2004 doesn’t download
images unless the sender is in your address book. In Mail, open
your Viewing preferences and deselect the Display Images And
Embedded Objects In HTML Messages option. If you receive a
legitimate HTML-formatted message, you can easily download
the images by clicking on the Load Images button in Mail or the
Download Pictures link in Entourage 2004.
Take advantage of spam filters. Of course, it’s almost
impossible to elude spammers completely. This is where your e-mail
program's built-in spam filters come into play. Spam filters function
take the time to mark it as junk. In Mail, select the message and
choose Message: Mark: As Junk Mail. In Entourage, choose
Message: Mark As Junk (or press $8-shift-J in either program).
Similarly, if your e-mail client mistakes a legitimate message
for spam (called a false positive), correct that mistake by marking
the message as Not Junk.
Introduce it to your friends. Because legitimate messages some-
times include the same words and phrases as spam, the best way
to prevent false positives is to create a white list — a list of people
whose messages should never be marked as junk.
Entourage’s spam filter automatically exempts messages from
anyone listed in the Entourage Address Book. Similarly, you can
have Mail exempt anyone in the OS X Address Book by opening
Mail's Junk Mail preferences and selecting the Sender Of Message
Is In My Address Book option. Then be sure to keep your address
book up-to-date with the names and e-mail addresses of everyone
who regularly sends you mail. To add the sender of a selected
Mail message to the OS X Address Book, choose Message: Add
Sender To Address Book (or press 38-Y). To add a sender to
Entourage’s Address Book, go to Tools: Add To Address Book (or
press 3£-= [equals sign]).
Optimise Mail’s settings. Mail's default spam settings
offer a good start to fighting junk mail, but they should be
considered just that — a start. There's plenty more you can — and
should — do to optimise Mail's spam sensitivity.
Go automatic. Mail provides two modes for filtering junk mail.
The default — Training mode — simply uses colour to distin-
guish suspected spam from legitimate mail. This lets you
monitor whether Mail is flagging spam correctly. Once you
become comfortable with Mail's choices, you should switch to
Automatic mode,
In Automatic mode, Mail moves all suspected spam to a Junk
mailbox, letting you largely ignore its existence. Despite the
confusing names, switching from Training to Automatic mode
Better protection. To make Entourage less tolerant of spam, make sure its
Junk E-mail Protection setting is High.
as e-mail gatekeepers, separating invited guests from the riffraff.
Apple Mail 1.3 (included with Panther) and Entourage 2004 |
both offer significantly better spam-fighting tools than their |
predecessors. In fact, if you're using earlier versions of Mail or |
Entourage, I recommend upgrading for the spam improvements |
alone. To put these built-in filters to work, you need to train them
to recognise the type of company you like to keep — and the type
that should be left on the curb.
Practice makes perfect. Mail and Entourage use statistical junk-
mail filters — programs that try to learn which words and
message attributes distinguish spam from legitimate mail. When
you identify an incoming message as junk, the filters add infor-
mation about that message to a database, making it easier for
them to identify similar messages in the future. Likewise, the
filters track the attributes of valid messages to avoid marking
them as spam. By constantly updating their databases, these junk-
mail filters get smarter as you use them and are able to better
adapt to the latest spamming tactics.
For statistical filters to be effective, you must diligently correct
their mistakes. If your e-mail client fails to identify a spam message,
Junk E-mail Protection
{level Safe Domains }
Entourage can move messages that appear to be junk e-mail to a special
Junk E-mail folder.
‘What level of junk e-mail protection would you like?
ONone
Turn junk e-
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