MacWorld0102February2001

LEARN TO BE A EXPERT Build Amazing Web Animations and Interfaces, page 60 Customize Your Mac 20 WAYS TO Improve Your Interface Automate Your Actions Get Your Stuff Faster Modify Your Applications Edit Your Digital Video Three Midrange DV Editors Pick Up Where iMovie Leaves Off a CanoScan D660U re Scanner CanoScan N656U Scanner CanoScan N1220U Scanner BJC-85 Printer E& Mac The Canon Think Tank System™ The $400, $450 and BJC-8200 printers all feature individual ink tanks to reduce ink waste and save you money. Plus, the ink sensor system alerts you when you're running low. Peripheral Take a quick look around. You'll find a Mac compatible Canon peripheral for just about any purpose you could imagine. From higt resolution printers and scanners to the world’s best-selling portable printer, we've got what ii takes to keep Mac users smiling. And witt Award-Winning Portable Printer Need a traveling companion for your iBook™ or PowerBook G3? Our 3.1 pound’ BJC-85 Color Bubble Jet Printer was namei “Best of Show” at the Macworld San Francisco 2000 Expo. (©2000 anon Compute Sten, ln. Cano, BC, Bubble et, Canse Kaw Ho, CanSean, Cato Think Tank Syste, MuliPASS and 7 trademarks ol Cano lz. Ma: 2nd he Mac log are trademars of pple Coat nc. restrd in the BJC-8200 Printer $450 Printer Vi = ision $400 Printer more than sixty years of imaging expertise built into every single detail, the term “state- of-the-art” is somewhat of an understatement. Come and see for yourself. Visit us on the Mitinie eaeee Internet at www.ccsi.canon.com/macfriendly or call 1-800-OK-CANON for more information. Canon knownow" Visit us at Booth #707 in the Macworld Expo. Advanced Flatbed Scanners Superior Multifunction Printers Our new CanoScan® family showcases a host of innovative Print. Fax. Copy. Scan. After introducing the world’s first features including our Z-Lid™ Expansion Top (on select models) and Mac-compatible multifunction printer, we've taken technology to a built-in 35mm film adapter on the CanoScan D660U Scanner. a new level with our MultiPASS™ C555 Multifunction Printer. and ther couse, ter produc and trond names ae trademars of thei espectivecnners.Speciatis sujet to change what tie. tS pounds wth AC adape and optional Baty pack In Canada, call 1-200-262-1121. Disturb the peace. Tranquility is highly overrated. Earsplitting high SoundSticks speaker system, is most definitely not. For more seismic details 1 A Harman international Company. ©2000 Harman Multimedia. Harman Kardon and SoundSticks are trademarks of Harman International. Toll-free 877-266-6202 idelity sound, like the kind you'll get from our new 40-watt, USB-enabled check out www.harman-multimedia.com. harman/kardon Circle 3 on card or go to www.macworld.com/getinfo Opinion 9 The Vision Thing ANDREW GORE Move ov Eddy: h 21 Feedback Readers respond. it's the Andy Awards 125 The Game Room ANDY IHNATKO. return to those old board games once in a while—on your Mae, of cou 196 The Desktop Critic DAVID POGUE Is the piracy getting in the way of progress? Buzz 26 Macs in Playboy; comic-book artist Scott McCloud; iSmell; and joesparks.com, home of Radiskull. How-to 60 Macworld’s Flash 5 Expert Guide 70 Take Control of FileMaker Pro scott Love T ansfo! FileMaker Pro's ger databases into c automated powerhouses \ the ScriptMake feature. 74 Free Your Fonts in QuarkXPress TERRI STONE AND AMY CONGER Learn how XPress can handle verything fror letters to filling t pictures and words. pir em 78 Quick and Easy Web-Site Plans JEFF CARLSON Adobe GoLive 5 helps you map out blue- prints and tum them into nctioning sites. 83 Mac 911 CHRISTOPHER BREEN Netscape m bum CDs, and install ith ease lock plug-ins macworld Your Mac, Your Way CHRISTOPHER BREEN Whether or not you plan to switch to OS X, you can do a lot now to make your Mac look and act the way you want it to. Check out our cool tips and tricks for customizing your operating system and applications. Macworld.com Get the latest Mac news and exclusive online reviews, and browse our subject-by- subject index of post Macworld stories. On the Cover Photograph by Tony David February 2001 Incorporating MacUser Go Beyond iMovie GALEN FOTT Apple's iMovie is an excellent program, but what happens when you want to take your moviemaking to the next level? Macworld looks at three pro- grams that lie between iMovie and the $1,000 Final Cut Pro to help you find the best digital-video editing program—or pro- grams—for your needs. Far Out, Man Let the charismatic characters on Macworld’s three February covers inspire your artsy, workaday, or techno aesthetic. Macworld’s Flash 5 Expert Guide PHILLIP KERMAN Don’t slave over your Web animations. Our complete guide to Macromedia Flash 5 will help you take advantage of new features that let you work smarter and faster. Reviews Speech-recognition software 86 99% VioVoice Enhanced Edition Internal ATA hard drives 88 $9$ APS/IBM Deskstar 75GXP $49 Moxtor DiamondMax 80 $472 Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 45 $84 Quontum Fireball Plus LM $89 Seogate Barracuda ATA Ill $89 Seagate U Series 5 $68 Western Digital Caviar WO4008B Compression utility 91 $9487 Cleaner 5 Adobe Photoshop plug-in 93 $8661 Eye Candy 4000 LCD pen tablet 95. $6%% Wacom PL500 Web authoring tool 97 $4$% PageSpinner 3.0 Audio-editing software 99 $688 Peak VST 2.5 Small-network firewall 100 $$$ WatchGuard SOHO: Web-log analyzer 102 $681 Funnel Web 4.0 3-D-compositing software 104 $$#1% Combustion 1.0 3-D-modeling software 107 $996 Strota 3Dpro 3.0 AppleScript Development Environment 109 #§$% Script Debugger 2.0 Flat-panel display 111 $44 Silicon Graphics 1600SW Visor phone module 112. #69. Handspring VisorPhone Professional digital camera 113 $88¢ Canon EOS 030 Font-creation software 115 $46 Fontlab 3.1 Web-site-optimization utility 117 $86 SpoceAgent 2.0 Charting software 119 $687 Chorts Pro 1.5 Statistics software 119 $986%2 IMP 4 Video-editing software 121 $1 Canon Video Home Edition Cross-platform file-sharing utility 121 $868% MocSOHO Research tool 121 $868 2001 Grolier Encyclopedia Copyright software 123 $668 Official Copyright 1.5 MIDI accompaniment software 123. $68$ Home Concert 2000 SHE PUSHED THE BUTTON THAT PRINTED THE COMP THAT MATCHED THE EXACT COLOR THAT THE CLIENT DESCRIBED AS MORE FROM A DREAM XEROX PRINTERS MAKE IT HAPPEN. Tektronix Phaser 780 Tabold Color Laser Precision Color Matching up to 1200 op $4098" THEDSCUMENT ComPANy X E ROX XEROX NETWORK PRINTERS In color matching, “close enough” just doesn’t cut it. When color is critical, count on the Tektronix Phaser® 780 tabloid color laser printer, now part of the Xerox family. With PhaserMatch” ICC custom profile software, you can match the output of a specific press, paper or ink, And with built-in automatic color calibration, you'll get accurate, photographic-quality color at up to 1200 dpi from your first print to your last, on everything from postcards to 12° x 18° full bleeds. To see what a difference precise color can make, call 1-877-362-6567 ext. 1720 or visit us at WWW.xerox.com/officeprinting/match1720. Copyright © 2000 XEROX CORPORATION. Al ght ered. Kort, The Dacunet Cangas Phase and Phase ae raderaris of XEROX CORPORATION. "eros a Wadena ol Teton, ne henae ie KEROX CORPORATION, “Estate US, al staring pce. Rael pce may vy. Circle 32 on card or go to www.macworld.com/getinfo www.nemetschek.net 1-888-646-4223 VectorWorks Object-Based CAD for Professionals am Design is ever changing, dynamic. From initial concept, through production and revisions, the entire process becomes faster and easier with Vector Works. Productivity of Object-Based Design VectorWorks’ next-generation Object technology accelerates the design process. Now, creating common design elements is effortless. Objects such as doors, windows, nuts and bolts can be created and edited with a simplemouse click. an Strength and Proven CAD Technology ) ‘The Best Selling CAD software on the Mac and, an emerging standard on Windows, Vector Works provides everything you need for 2D drafting and 3D modeling. But, that’s not all. An integrated database tracks costs and materials, and built-in presentation capabilities can literally help you sell the job. The VectorWorks Advantage With VectorWorks you get it all—The productivity of Object-Based Design combined with the flexibility and control of proven CAD technology. Giving you an extra edge, VectorWorks ships FREE solutions for Architecture, Landscape, DTM, Theatre Lighting and Mechanical Engineering among others. © And, VectorWorks’ built-in scripting environment makes creating custom “* solutions, and automating routine tasks easy. No other CAD program offers so much for so little! Add-on Products Expand VectorWorks Core Capabilities RRQ RenderWorks-Bring you designs and animations to life with realistic BY 8 EJ textures and dramatic lighting and shadowing effects. Integrate Design, Production and Project Management into a system delivering unparalleled productivity. NEMETSCHER NORTH AMERICA fr VectorWorks ARCHITECT-The ultimate in architectural CAD. Circle 46 on card or go to www.macworld.com/getinfo | ometime on the evening of January 8, 2001, Macworld will reveal the names of the 30 best Macintosh products of the year, the recipients of our annual Editors’ Choice Awards. Selecting Eddy winners is a long and arduous process, in which the best minds at our disposal and the only inde- pendent testing lab in the Mac market work for months to deter- mine which—among the hun- dreds of products that shipped in the past year—are the best of the best. You can see right now who's been nominated at www -macworld.com/subject/eddy/. Because so many products are evaluated and found want- ing, it truly is an honor just to be nominated And keep an eye on that URL; as soon as the awards are handed out, we will post the names of the lucky few to receive a golden statue. The Eddy Awards are a sur- vey of editorial preference. But with the support of the Macworld Lab and the 30-plus editorial experts who partici- pate in the process, the result you get is as close to scientific as possible. And that's great. But it does leave one small hole: What are our personal preferences? What products do we use to sate our own Mac lust, and why? That's where the Andy Awards come in. Like the Eddys, these prestigious awards are also based on a survey of editorial preference. It's just that it's only one editor's preference—mine. So without further ado, let me present the Andy Awards. The Amazing Kreskin Award The winner is: Google (www.google.com). I will admit to being a bit prejudiced on this one, as I was a beta tester for Google for more than a year before it was released to the public. However, | got to be a tester because I've used so many Web-based ANDREW GORE The Andy Awards A SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF ONE Man's FAVORITE PRODUCTS S continues search engines. And frankly, none holds a candle to Google. In my mind, the real test of a search engine is the telepathy factor: how often does it give me what I want on the first page of my search, when even /'m not really sure what I'm looking for? It's scary just how often Google gets it right the first time. The Oldie but Not Moldy Award The winner is: SonicBlue’s Rio 500 MP3 player. There's nothing more annoying than that feeling you get when the state-of-the- art computer you bought just six months ago is now ready to be put under glass at the Smith- sonian. Besides death and taxes, obsolescence in techno- logy is the only thing you can't avoid. That's why I was so pleased when it turned out that my Rio 500 (one of the very first they made) wasn't rendered obsolete when the Rio 600 shipped— and its value was even enhanced; my original Rio has twice the built-in storage of its shiny new sibling! The We Know Better Award The winner is: the Apple Pro Mouse. Yes, it's optical; yes, it looks cool; and, yes, it’s not round. All good reasons to like the new Apple mouse, but not quite enough to earn it an Andy Award. No, the reason I'm honoring the new mouse is this: For years users have been begging Apple for a two-button mouse. So what does Apple do? Ship the world's first no-button mouse! The Devil Made Me Do It Award The winner is: Diablo II, Let's be honest— we all know playing video games takes us away from the important things we should be doing. But we don't care; we want to be corrupted. When it comes to products designed to corrupt us, what could be better than a www.macworld.com February 2001 9 "Everything worked fine yesterday. Now, five minutes before the big meetitig, nothing is working." Big problem? No problem! Just(Réwind to yesterday! Reverse Disasters and Mistakes...Guaranteed! With one click, Rewind™ takes you back to happier times. Remember when everything worked and life was good — before tragedy struck? By tracking every change you make, Rewind can take you back in time to previous sys- tems, preferences, or any file versions. Better than backup, it's quicker, more current, con- tinuous, and complete. Rewind even offers an emergency start- up mode to get you up and running in seconds, even with- out a System CD. Best of all, you won't see any performance hit and Rewind needs as little as 5% of your disk space. Remember: In a Bind? Click Rewind! at The gQdbi of Procctvty. Phone: 800-344-9160 or 614-413-4000 email: sales@poweronsoftware.com |tp://wwew.poweronsoftware.com/macworld Circle 118 on card or go to www.macworld.com/getinfo | 10 Februory 2001 www.maeworld.com game about the Devil? I've lost more productive time playing Diablo II than I care to think about. But I have gained such inesti- mable benefits as sleep depriva- tion, alienation from my family, and having something besides general temperament in common with 100,000 teenage boys. And since I've finally won the game and freed myself of the Diablo II addic- tion, all I can say is, I can't wait to get my hands on the Diablo I! Expansion Pack. The Choice Editor Award The winner is: Adobe ImageReady 2.0. Next to my e-mail, Web brows- er, and, of course, word-processing program, my most-used application is an image editor, | use image edit- ing for a vast array of tasks, from building animated GIFs for my Web site to viewing photos from my digi- tal camera. | have access to all the image editors available for the Mac, but I've found only one that does it all. No, not Adobe Photoshop ImageReady. It slices, it dices, it opens everything, and it has easy and powerful text handling and a nice slate of effects. I've even grown comfortable using layers to edit complex images. Frankly, | find ImageReady to be superior to Photoshop. There, I've said it; you Photoshop and Fireworks fanatics may begin the flame mail. The Timex Award The winner is: WebStar Server Suite 4.2. When it comes to the Internet, I'm a competent amateur who doesn't have enough sense to be afraid to try new things. When i set up my first Web, e-mail, and FTP server in my son's closet, | had no idea what I was letting myself in for. Different software, conflicts, DNS configuration, caching—it was a nightmare. Then along came WebStar, and my server hasn't had a down day since. (I wish I could say the same for my Macworld office e-mail.) It's reliable, fast, and flexible. When I want to try some- thing new, there's almost always a plug-in available to do it, And administering the server, even from my office in San Francisco, couldn't be easier. It's the Internet hedo- nist's best friend! The Swag Award The winner is: Apple. When you work in the Mac industry, the one thing you can be sure of is, you'll never have to buy another T-shirt To see what I mean, just come to Macworld Expo in January and walk the floor for a day. You're guaranteed to collect enough T-shirts, hats, bags, and useless tchotchkes to last at least a year. Most of this stuff is wasted on me, After 17 years in the business, [ have enough T-shirts to start my own Gap store, However, | did get something at last summer's Expo that I do use—every day, In fact, I got it from a company not usually known for being free with the trade-show swag. Everyone who managed to make it into the main keynote hall got a free Pro Mouse, courtesy of Apple. I hope Apple not only continues this trend but also tries to one-up itself. | know— how about a free iMac DV to every- one who shows up for Steve Jobs's keynote speech in San Francisco? I understand he's got a few spares lying around. m ANDREW GORE is Macworld's editor in chief. To comment on this column, pleose visit the Vision Thing forum at www .macworld.com/columns/visionthing. DESIGNED FOR THE WAY YOU WORK Roy Fox, cag ts Hollis, Maine Cire ot abe Comeipaeotware users a a : eT vs an > | y \ 1 © | » 3 ‘Small Business. Smart Solutions.” 800.322.MYOB Antique frames. Quartz movements. Th myob.com/us to day Macworld VP OF CONTENTIEDITOR IN CHIEF Andrew Gore BREAKTHROUGH STUDY REVEALS THE VP OF CONTENT. Shone Clork t01roR, MAcWoRLD.coM Joson Snell ‘xscunve fo1TOR Scholle Sowyer McFarland stook rorrons, REVIEWS. Linda Comer, David Weiss sewtoR korron, MACWoRLD.COM iso Schmaitor sem ¢HOW-T0 Torri Stone om ASSOCIATE EDITORS. Lotus Abroms, Jennifer Berger, Mathew Honan, Kelly Lunsford, STARTLING NEW DATA : ; pan ee Jonothan Se Brett Larson, Adrienne Robillard DITORIAL ASSISTANT Bonnie Hvle CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Henry Bortmon, Christopher Breen, Adam C. Engst, Bruce Fraser, Jim Heid, Tod Landou, Dake McClelland, Tom Negrin, Nancy Peterson, Dovid Pogue, Stephon Somogyi, Franklin N, Tessler LAB DUCT EVALUATION. Kristino Do Nike esr manaoeR Jomes Galbraith semion tan anatrst Joly K, Milstood Lan ANALYST Gil Loyolo PEOPLE AREN’T THE SAME SIZE. ASSOCIATE TEHNICAL ANALYST. Ulysis Brovo Las aoministearor Joson Cox copy eoiT Iannone eo110R Jeoniler Scholl ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR. Charles Purdy corr eoitoRs_ Dione Ollis, Sve Voolke! ART AND DESIGN Most furniture is built around DESION DiREcTOR Shoron Anderson the average person. But, darn, ASSOCIATE DESIONER Jackie Goodmon we've never met one. So we build Pisin asoowres: Moe Congas workstations to fit you - your legroom, albie Neer your reach, your equipment. To learn O ee . ‘conraurine DEsionet Jennifer Steole more about our sized-to-fit AnthroCarts, TECHNOLOGY FURNITURE* lifetime warranty and passion for MACBUY.COM service, visit our website. It's more ‘assistant propucen Cothy Begien fun and comprehensive than your . INTERNATIONAL EDITORS average trip down cyberspace. ‘AVAILABLE AT: Steven Noble, Australis; Bernard Le Du, Fronce; Andreas WWW.ANTHRO.COM Borchert, Germany; Enrico Loti, Haly; Yoshio Moriya, Japon; or 1-800-325-3841 Tomasz Bitner, Poland; Daniel de Blas, Spain; Nils Holmlev, Sweden; Anderson Huang, Taiwan; Bohottin Apok, Turkey; See us at Macworld San Francisco, booth #2007 Simon Jory, United Kingdom 12 February 2001 www.macworld.com Think Storage (then think lots of storage for lots of users) D3ware so | | 1.877.283.9273 * 1.650.327.8600 * www.3ware.com Introducing the first Ethernet SAN for the Mac, the 3ware NSU. The Network Storage Unit delivers consolidated, scalable storage that can be accessed by all your MAC users. Now you can keep all your data online — not stored on CD’s, Zip cartridges or tape. From 240 GB to terabytes if you need it, the 3ware NSU provides high performance, reliable storage that’s easy to install and manage. What could be more simple? orage, think 3ware. 2) 3ware ©2000 5ware, Inc. All rights reserved. Products mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies. Think this is the only way to make project scheduling easy? Think again. So maybe scheduling a project isn't as simple as pushing a button or turning a knob, But it's also not rocket science hen you use the right tool, FastTrack Schedule 7.0 make: it easy to organize, track, and manage all your project details. In minutes, project plans come to life in rich colorful schedules that are sure to turn heads and get resul Whether you have a day orth of tasks or a long project, FastTrack Schedule's three dis: tinct views display your information the way you want=as a schedule, a cal endar, of as a resource graph that tracks the people, equip: ment, and materials essential to project succe: And with our new compatible Palm OS version of FastTrack Schedule, you can syne schedules | between your desktop and handheld. So even fj) p00] hen you're on the go, you're schedules are right at your fingertips for eas; ing and editing. For a free demo version or to order, call 5 today at 800.450.1982 or visit www.aecsoft.com. Easily the best in Project Scheduling! @ = so? AEC Eo ae gay 14 February 2001 www.maeworld.com ‘VP/CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER DIRECTOR OF FINANCE ACCOUNTING COOROINATOR ‘VP OF HUMAN RESOURCES HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGER CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER i secciaust nccerTIONIST ‘rice assistant Colin Crowtord Stephon Daniels Eos de Feminis Ronde Bitine Ricardo Sondovol Murphy SucTsen Wu lynn Heiberger Jennifer Torres Jose “Pops” Jora Chery! Richardson Morvella Simpson DISPLAY ADVERTISING SALES ineR associat | TT MANAGER | ‘UBLISHER, EAST | SALES BUSINESS MANAOE | ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE | NATIONAL ACCOUNTS MANAGER ‘AccoUNT ExEcUTIVE REGIONAL ACCOUNTS MANAOER ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE SALES ASSISTANT SHOWCASE ACCOUNT MANAOER SHOWCASE ACCOUNT MANAGER SHOWCASE SALES ASSISTANT ONLINE SALES MANAGER ONLINE Accounr excuTive Stove Plevin (415/243:3509) Cynthio Romsey (973/248-1197 Gabrielle Lindsley 3.3578) Pov Bonarrigo (508/533-402¢ Jo Zotarelli (516/277-4134) ley (831/768.8472 Morgoro! Level Groon 415/243-3582) Coratta Wright (415/243-3615) Michalle Dovis 3.9577) Jim DeCleone (415/243:3662) Janecke Housken (415/243-3583) Niki Stroni 243.9664) Carol Johnstone (415/243.3691) Fronck Zamoro (415) 3.3628) Doug Detletsen Derek Song (415/243-3557) Circle 84 on card or go to www.macworld.com/getinfo MARKETING DIRECTOR OF MARKETING. Hilary Weber MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS manaote Sharon L, Cordesse anxenino stavices MANAGER Toro C. Gibb ONLINE PROGRAMS MANAGER. Joo Rofletto MARKETING COORDINATOR Bryan Irwin PRODUCTION pRDUCTION oInEcTOR Steve Spingolo PRODUCTION MANAGER. Lowis Loe RES MANAGER Alan Anzolone | [AD COORDINATOR Megan Matteoni ONLINE sewton reeHNoLogy oiRecror Poul Forester ONLINE PRODUCTION MANAGER Ron Neo! ONLINE PRODUCTION ASSISTANT. Benjamin Edlovitch wermastes Michoe! R. Evans foah are regttered trademarks, and Macteter ond PowerBook ore 2000 Mac Pblshing, LUC Al igh revered 5 eres always room for Belkin. Go ahead. With USB hubs and accessories from Belkin, you can have everything you want— deliciously fast transfer speeds, delectable connectivity options, savory styles, and the sweetest colors. We've got a range of USB treats for every computing environment and appetite. Try the petite Pocket Hub or go all the way with the tall stack of the BusStation™. You'll keep your connections handy without bursting your desk space at the seams. In fact, you may end up with more. So indulge without guilt—there’s room. ou eG belkin.com Belkin Components + 310.898.1100 + Fax 310.898.1111 + Compton, CA » Atlanta, GA + United Kingdom + Holland All rights reserved. All trade names are registered trademarks of respective manufacturers listed. ©2000 Belkin Components. 20AD339 Circle 64 on card or go to www.macworld.com/getinfo SEE THE BEST TALENT AT CREATIVEGROUP.COM Great talent is hard to find — except at The Creative Group. As the leading specialized staffing service for marketing, advertising, creative and web professionals, The Creative Group has the connections to the creative pros you're not going to find anywhere else. Having the best creative talent available on demand - gives you the edge over the competition. Creativegroup.com draws the hottest talent as a leading online employment resource. Visit The Gallery at creativegroup.com to view the work of our associates. art directors / copywriters graphic designers / web designers account managers / marketing managers 888.846.1668 — creativegroup.com t (s THE CREATIVE GROUP MARKETING & ADVERTISING PROFESSIONALS The Creative Group. EOE Circle 134 on card or go to www.macworld.com/getinfo 16 February 2001 macworld HOW TO CONTACT MACWORLD Subscription Information and Services Phone 200/288-6848 or 850/682-7624, from the United States cond Canada 303/604-7445, from all othe US Mail Macworld Subscription Services RO. 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Al leters published in ‘Mocworld or Macwarld Online become the propery of Mac Publishing 1 Sand your questions or tips on how to use Mac computer, ipherols, or sofware to Macworld, Moc 911, 301 Howard Sire! 174105; lox 415/442-0766; oF e-mail © your nome, address, ond tle ues Mac problems th other Moc 1 the Mac 911 Forum (wrwmacworld.com/tubject aed MacwoRLD exPa As the llagship sponsor of Macworld Conference and E Macworld encourages all subserbers to attend ‘his exciting bian jl industry event, For mare information about regi as, conference schedules, dates, ond much more, [ | What inspires the pictures that inspire? L _I OLYMPUS Inspiration | three in a series “Sometimes your world gets shaken up. Some force far greater than you could imagine and totally out of your control changes everything you knew to be true. A photograph is an opportunity to represent a state of mind. | guess for me, a photograph is an opportunity.” - David LaChapelle David LaChapelle | used the Camedia E-10 SLR ith 0.8x wide conversion lens for 7.2mm {28mm equivalent], AF mode - normal ‘xposure: Mai Ith}, aperture f9.0, ISO 80, manual white balance - 5500°K ight: Studio uty dis — OLYMPUS | digital Presenting the latest in a long series of inspirations. This is the camera that will change the industry. With the development of the Camedia E-10 SLR’s 4.0 megapixel CCD, even the most advanced lens designs became suddenly outdated. That may sound hard to believe. Until you consider that none were developed with the extra-critical tolerances in mind that such an advanced CCD requires. Asa result, our 14-element, fully multi-coated ED and aspherical glass 4x zoom lens was completely rethought to yield even finer focus and resolution. Combine it with shutter release lag times equal to traditional SLRs, full control and our exclusive TruePic” technology, and you have a camera like no other. Would you like pictures like no other? Ask your Olympus reseller all about the E-10 SLR. See what we've done with digital photography. Then go out and see what you can do with it. http://e-10.olympus.com. — — The photo you've been trying to take your entire life may have always been buried between frames two and three. To help capture those hidden moments, Olympus created the Camedia E-100 Rapid Shot. The E-100 Rapid Shot fires in blistering bursts at speeds up to 15 fps. Shutter speeds are as fast as 1/10,000th of a second. We've even developed a pre-capture mode, to make sure you never miss a shot. And it’s all done through a 10x Olympus aspherical glass zoom lens (35-380mm equivalent} with image stabilization and a 2.7x digital telephoto (1080mm equivalent). We encourage you to ask your Olympus reseller about every- thing this lightning-fast camera offers. It's our hope the E-100 Rapid Shot will help you see photographic opportunities you've never seen before. =— http://e-100rs.olympus.com CAMEDIA The P-400 photo printer — The finest digital images deserve to be the finest digital prints. The Olympus Camedia P-400 dye sublimation printer offers true photo-quality, continuous-tone prints and enlargements. Allin just 90 seconds. Combined with our E-10 SLR or E-100 Rapid Shot, the P-400 gives you rich, stunning, professional-level prints and enlargements. OLYMPUS Focus On Life Call 1-800-8-CAMERA or visit wwrw.olympus.com/digital for more information. © 2000 Olympus America Inc. ‘TruePicis a trademark of Olympus America Inc. Specifications are subject to change without any notice or obligation on the part of the manufacturer. FEBRUARY 2001 Feedback M oy 1 Two G4s _— forthe Price of One Deadly Modems When you discussed satellite as an access method (“Kill Your Modem," November 2000), you left out one detail that’s important to me: latency. Satellite access * methods are very fast, but there's a large time delay ow Maliprcea Maas There Chon, at Ty ah ew A tion travels to your dish from the ISP Internet gamers call this high ping Effectively, the information addressed to you is delayed betore it reaches your dish. Once it gets there, however, you do get the full 400 Kbps, For surf- ing the Web and exchanging e-mail, it's fine. But for games such as Quake or Unreal Tournament, satellite is fast enough only for losing matches. Todd Beaubien Houston, Texas get cable or DSL service in their homes: it's called wireless broad- band. My ISP installed a TV antenna on my roof, similar to those used for local radio-frequency transmission of “wireless cable” television. You must have line-of-sight to one of your ISP's T here is hope for people who can't antennas, but that's the only restric- tion. Speed is based on what you're willing to pay for, and there's a setup fee that covers the needed hardware Aside from some start-up glitches, my service has been very good. It's 24/7, it's fast, and it doesn't interfere with or even require a phone line. David S. Angal Medford, Oregon nother high-speed alternative is es: a service good for anyone outside the three-mile limit of coverage for DSL. Unfortunately, IDSL does not provide concurrent voice capability. as DSL does; it simply provides high-speed Internet access (in my area, a maximum of 144 Kbps in both directions). Also, ISDN provides an important option that was not fully explained. One copper wire pair into your home, connected to an ISDN terminal adapter (router), provides two "chan- nels.” Each can be used as a voice line (you actually get two phone numbers) or a data/Internet line (at speeds up to 64 Kbps per chan- nel). ISPs charge either for a single- channel (64 Kbps) or dual-channel (128 Kbps) dial-up. With dual-chan- nel, you can make or receive phone (compared with DSL, cable, or ISDN) when informa- calls while online. The system automatically drops one channel to handle the phone call, and then re- establishes the full Internet connec- tion when you're done with the call Ben Levi Boulder, Colorado IDSL is a useful alternative if your home or office is too isolated for DSL. However, you can expect to pay two to three times as much for IDSL's drastically slower speed around (144 Kbps), ISDN's voice features can be useful, providing you purchase equipment that utilizes them. To learn more about ISDN's voice capabilities, see "Con- nect with ISDN“ (October 1997) or visit www.macworld.com/1997/10/features /3915.html.—Ed, Size Matters espite Apple's claims to the con- D trary, connecting the Cube to its external power supply, monitor, headphone adapter, speakers, key- board, and mouse results in a morass continues www.macworld.com February 2001 217 of cables littering your desk. I'd much prefer a headless PowerBook with built-in UPS (the battery), expandabil- ity (PC card slot), infrared to talk to my Palm (without a cradle), and access- ible media bays for quickly adding a Zip, DVD, CD-R, or hard drive. Then the detachable display could be clipped on for portable use. Of course, I'm biased. I've used the G3 Series PowerBook as my desktop machine since it was intro- duced. Best of all, when I'm done computing, | close it up, slide it out of the way, and get my real desktop back. Try that with a Cube Anthony Burokas Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Keyboard Solutions ne of the cons that was listed in Macworld’s review of the Apple Pro Keyboard was its lack of a power key (November 2000). To compensate, | created three simple AppleScripts and assigned them to function keys (F13, F14, and F15) so I could use my keyboard for sleep, restart, and shutdown commands. To boot up, | still use the power button on the front of my iMac. A template follows (you can replace sleep with restart or shut down as desired) tell application "Finder" activate display dialog "Sleep?" buttons {'Cancel", "OK"} default button 2 with icon stop if the button returned of the result is "OK" then sleep end if end tell Joshua Sucher Brooklyn, New York The Feedhag No one has accused the Mac OS X programmers of organizing a rash of alien abductions—yet. But we've received just about every other conceivable comment about what they've done with Apple's new operating system. Some conspiracy theorists allege that “Mac OS X is really OpenStep 5"—and therefore just a retread of Steve Jobs’s Next operating system. Reader “Bone” was so excited that he wrote, “I'll fork over $30 today to get Aqua and Unix on my dual- processor G4," Even in the Mac world, it seems, we must agree to disagree. Take Jeff Paris, who feels Apple could make some good money by offering a product for people who prefer the good old days: “Start thinking about a separate OS for us that leaves out all the bloatware you keep adding to your system upgrades, OS X being the latest iteration.” Now if only they could get System 7 to run ona G4. Then again, reader Tom Pittman feels that Mac OS X is itself a retro operating system, reminiscent of old software—and not in a good way: “The Finder is gone! They replaced it with a feeble clone of Windows Explorer.” Another concerned reader said simply, “God help Apple if they don’t keep OS 9.” OS 9 That's already been taken back to the mother ship in an attempt to figure ‘out voice recognition. 22 February 2001 www.macworld.com coincidentally, your November 2000 issue arrived the same morning as my (back-ordered) Apple Pro Keyboard from the Apple Store. While Franklin N, Tessler's review was right on with respect to the short USB cable, | discovered that the box contained an extension cable (about one meter long), apparently at no extra cost. Thanks, Apple, for doing the right thing for a good “out of box” experience without even being asked! Lou Kreig Colchester, Vermont Double Vision urely a magazine such as Macworld, with its devoted and discerning readership of graphic artists, would know better than to reverse a photo without correcting asymmetrical elements (like the Apple logo). And surely it would know better than to place such a photo on the cover (November 2000). And surely it would know better than to do it in the very issue that extols the history and wonders of Photoshop! Byron Salazar Gainesville, Florida ‘Surely. Unless, of course, the designer was trying fo achieve a mirror-image effect with the second G4.—Ed. Letters should be sent to Feedback, Macworld, 301 Howard St,, 16th Fl,, San Francisco, CA 94108; via lax, 415/442-0766; or electronically, to letters@ macworld.com, Include a return address and day- time phone number. Due to the high volume of mail received, we can't respond personally to each let- ler. We reserve the right to edit all letters, All pub- lished letters become the property of Macworld. The high-definition camera system described in “Direct to Video” (Buzz, November 2000) wos developed by Sony Electronics and Panovision. m I'd heard a lot of buzz about ATI's new RADEON™ MAC EDITION, it's stunning 3D acceleration, 32MB DDR graphics memory and flexible display support. | wondered, would this graphics accelerator really make designing, easier and faster? Wow! it didn't take long to find out. RADEON™ MAC EDITION, rendered the most complex 3D elements faster than I'd ever seen, even when working in 32-bit true color! My projects “ na literally sprang to life with incredible detail and realism. But RADEON™ MAC EDITION isn't all work and no play. The 3D gaming — on my lunch break of course, is just as incredible with noticeably faster frame rates. With the fastest rendering speeds available, animations 7 are fluid and life-like. Plus, | can hook up to a TV for a Spoken experience. 3D rendering SAD Ex Ns performance, awesome gaming and display flexibility make RADEON™ MAC EDITION one wicked card! “Overall the most advanced 3D and video graphics chip to date for the Mac.” www.xlr8yourmac.com, October 16, 2000 Copyright 2000 ATI TECHNOLOGIES INC. All rights reserved. ATI and RADEON are trademarie andor eitoredraderars of Al Teenolgies Ie ll oer company andor Witt ati COM Droduet names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners, Circle 114 on card or go to www.macworld.com/getinfo SHE CLICKED WHICH SENT THE IMAGE © % HAT PRINTED WITH SUCH DEPTH AND CLARITY a THAT IT EXQUISITELY CAPTURED EVERY SINGLE SLIMY DETAIL. -” aaa Xerox Phaser 790 Tabold Color Laser $6199" XEROX PRINTERS MAKE IT HAPPEN. Photographic-quality color so realistic, it’s startling. Introducing the Xerox Phaser” 790 Tabloid Color Laser printer, the next generation in the award-winning Tektronix Phaser line. Built specifically for graphic designers, it has advanced color management tools and a broad range of colors for flawless continuous tones. Add auto duplexing, full color printing at 6 ppm, and paper handling up to 13 x 18, and you've got a printer as spectacular as its output. Xerox now has a full line of color and black and white printers for whatever your work demands. To see what a difference realistic color can make, call 1-877-362-6567 ext. 1788 or visit us at www.xerox.com/officeprinting/frog1788 THe DOCUMENT Company XEROX XEROX NETWORK PRINTERS ‘epi 0 201 XEROX CORPORATION. Ags eae eae The Doesnt ue ress ol XEROX CORPORATION Toe" a der elon, nk XEROK CORPORATION Conan’ and rae “Esoma US real srg pre, rel pen iBOoK VERSUS POWERBOOK installed RAM, a 10GB hard drive, FireWire support, and a DVD-ROM drive. The difference? The iBook SE packs a creater processing punch— a 466MHz CPU—at a lower price. It costs $1,799—$700 less than the $2,499 PowerBook. So it's the iBook in a walkover, right? Sure . . . if processors and price tags are your only criteria. The showdown is a closer contest than you might imagine. But those aren't the only things to look at when you're choosing between an iBook and a PowerBook. What you plan on doing with your laptop is just as important. After all, what good are 66 extra megahertz or 700 saved dollars if the machine you buy doesn't meet your needs? We had the iBook and Power- Book face off in eight categories, from the technical to the aesthetic. We looked at how fast each lap- t first glance, it looks like an top was, how much each machine obvious mismatch. Comparing weighed, and even how much Apple's professional-end screen real estate each had to PowerBook to the consumer-friendly offer—the sort of things Mac users iBook? That's like Mike Tyson step- should consider when choosing ping into the ring with TV's Urkel a portable machine But before you write off the Turns out the Iron Mike—Urkel News iBook's chances in a laptop show- showdown is a closer contest than 1 Views, and down, consider recent changes Apple you might imagine.—pHILip MICHAELS has made to its portable products. Chatter While new PowerBooks are rumored ane Info: from the to be in the works, the 400MHz G3 www.macworld.com/subject/portables World PowerBook currently shares many fea. _| Macworld.com has the latest information on Apple's portable products. of Macs tures with the iBook SE—64MB of 26 February 2001 www.macworld.com JLLUSTRATION BY BUD PEEN | Mac WatcH Behind the Books Here’s how the iBook SE and 400MHz PowerBook compare in key categories. | Read It Only CATEGORY | iBOOK SE 40OMHZ THE WINNER IS. POWERBOOK | 1 Price $1,799 $2,499 (Apple was The iBook is hard to | or e | 00 S offering « $200 rebate | beat if you're on a ‘online at press time). budget. It may not have been the first thing mag- Performance | A 466MHz G3 proces: | But this PowerBook’s | The iBook is faster but ’ ine i sor—only the SOOMHz | system bus is faster than | not by enough to really | ‘Szine:stand ‘patrons inoficed. cbout" the PowerBook sports a the iBook’s: J]OOMHz | make a difference. October 2000 issue of Playboy. But right | faster CPU. (versus 66MHz2) i 5 | Screen Size | A 12-inch aclive-matrix | A 14,1 -inch octive- The iBook hos a good there on the cover—next to the winsome | screen, surrounded by | matrix screen that goes | screen, but the | model, of course—is an iBook. Sure, the « lot of plostic. right to the cosing’s | PowerBook is better for E edge. video-intensive jobs. Apple logo is well covered, but that Graphics Say hello to @ new s the same Rage | Let's call this one unmistakable blueberry-and-white plastic ATI Rage Mobility 128 chipset you'll | a push. | x chipset. find in the PowerBook. casing helps the laptop stand out—unless Expandability | You can add memory | Want to swap out your | For travelers, the you're still looking at but not much else. That | DVD drive for o Zip PowerBook's ability to DVD drive stoys put. drive, a floppy drive, carry an extra battery the winsome model. And removing the bat- | or an extra battery? —_| gives it @ clear edge tery con bea chore, | You can. over the iBook. For Macworld Ports Along with its USB ‘Two USB ports, two The iBook’s new Fire readers without the connection, the iBook | FireWire ports, a slot | Wire port is a great now has ports for Fire- | for o PC card, S-Video | addition, but the Power- time or inclination to Wire and a composite | and VGA outputs, and | Book still beats the video out. 3 world of poss iBook for flexibility scour the pages of 5 4 Battery Life | Our tests say you con | PowerBook batt The iBook consumes g Playboy, | stepped in get more than three | lost about two hours. _| less battery power. The a a hourk ofure/ouffefars |l\Botidorfifarget hat | Powerlleak offers tore 3 ond—just for research single chorge. extra battery flexibility 8 pirpioeas;- mind you Weight To carry the iBook, | Itweighs just over 6 | Travelers who haul their : ; which weigh# neorly? | pounds, Remove the _| loplops.on the road, bought the magazine. Much io my dismay, pounds, you'll need its | DVD drive, and it drops | take note: the Power- | couldn't find a single picture of a Mac built-in handle. to 5.7 pounds. Book is narrower, too. inside the issue. Until | got to the Center- fold, that is. PHILIP MICHAELS PLAYMATE DATA SHEET vane: LROOK SE MEASUREMENTS Bolom GE MB - 10GB PLACE OF BIRTH: turn-ons: PAAR PANTING, MBC OS4.0.44, 3 a 8 5 8 qurnorrs: POR SURGES, INSUFA CIENT scene + | proces? worry: SOM@NMES | FEEL UKE b Wey Lime ibook teeeren in THe Rody OF bel IND\@o, —__ FIRST THING PEOPLE Norice aBour you: MMA | 2 2 Zz 3 5 a 3 8 2 www-macworld.com February 2001 27 Want to see more? Coo. Sturr Play On... And On... When it’s time to work out, you wouldn't don decades-old sneak- ers or use equipment left over from Jack LaLane’s boyhood gym So why keep bringing that bulky music player along? The Nike PSA/Play 120 weighs a scant 3 ounces. The rounded design slips easily into a pocket or attaches to an arm band (included). $3 (541/967-2450, www tiohome.com), makers of the Rio MP3 player, devel- oped the $300 PSA/Play 120 with Nike, which apparently is moving its quest for global domi- nation beyond athletic apparel and Tiger Woods ads. PSA/Play’s expand- able 64MB built-in mem- ory plays two hours’ worth of MP3 and Windows Media (WMA) files, enough to accompany the most grueling workout. The digital-display remote makes choosing a playlist easy, even on-the-go. After all, those 30 minutes on the StairMaster are hard enough without your MP3 player weighing you down.—ANTON LINECKER 28 February 2001 www.macworld.com QUICKTIME 5 Pay per Page View? Let's say that rock concert everyone's been raving about becomes available online. You go to the Web to watch it through your QuickTime Player. After a few minutes, the show stops. Pay a fee, and you can see the rest. Welcome to the world of on-demand QuickTime content, brought to you by SealedMedia (415/394- 9999, www.sealedmedia.com). The company makes downloadable digital-rights-management software that lets Web publishers sell their online content to credit card-carrying surfers. And its product will be available as a plug-in for QuickTime 5. “[Web sites will] run a movie for ten minutes and then they'll scramble it,” says Alan D. Mutter, president and CEO of SealedMedia. “If you like it and get hooked, you can buy it and watch it.” The plug-in lets you buy content on a view: only or a permanent basis. “You download it once, and it's permanently plugged into your QuickTime Player,” Mutter says.—ADELIA CELLINI Skipping Out Apple's upcoming QuickTime upgrade beefs up the multimedia system software's streaming capa- bilities. QuickTime 5 will ship with MPEG-1 streaming support, as well as support for MPEG-3 (MP3) streams from Shoutcast. More important, QuickTime 5—when used with QuickTime Streaming Server 3—will be better able to prevent transmission skips during playback of streaming audio and video. It will buffer streams and then fill in the blanks that occur with stream- ing packet losses—a process similar to the way a portable CD player reads ahead during a track and fills in the blanks when it's jostled. The result? QuickTime 5 can stream content virtually without interruption. And heaven knows, interruptions and skips are the last thing you need when you're watching Keanu Reeves emote in ' that movie trailer you downloaded.—marHEW HONAN eR 2 3 6 8 3 PHOTOGRAPH BY TOM GIBSON. MACs AT WORK WWF: Putting the Mac in Smackdown 3 The glitter-suited behemoths of the World Wrestling Fed- eration are out to choke-slam the Web. Clips of wrestlers tuling the ring have made FROM THE LAB Increasing Your Word Power Mac users still mutter under their breath about Microsoft Word 6, the memory-hogging word pro- cessing program that was slower than a Richard Marx ballad. Macworld Lab ran the software on a typical computer from the Word 6 era—a Power Mac 7600/132—and found, not surprisingly, that its performance lagged significantly behind Word WWEcom the Web's third- 2001's on a 400MHz iMac. But stick Word 6 on that largest streaming-video site, yo ‘ iMac, and you'll see speeds comparable to the ' ; DBP Webcast Track says. koe ‘Thee Rak get aks Hk latest version of Word. It looks as though Word 6 WWF's new-media department, The WWF's Stamford, was a fine application—all it needed to run prop- erly was a computer that wouldn't be invented for Connecticut, offices are pre- dominantly PC. But the six Macs in the new-media As does a basic computer question: If a wrestler were another six years. to smash a rival over the head vrearem | Sr Word count |rind with a Mac, would it be an | | as iMac or a G4? a | ee “An iMac," answers vera i # es L department created most of the WWF's Web pages. Using Macromedia Dreamweaver and Adobe Barstow. “It would be more Photoshop and Illustrator, the designers update pages to reflect the action in the ring. The greatest challenge, New- Media Creative Director Paul ‘All inves are in seconds, Test systems were @ Fewer Mac 7600/12 ond an iMoc DV 400MHz (2000). Both systems had 128MB of RAM, Mac 0S 9.0.4 installed, colorful.”—pavip FERRIS WEIRD STUFF Magliari says, isn't portraying wrestlers such as The Rock; it's making sure the WWF's female grapplers appeal to a male-dominated audience After all, how do you make Trish Stratus strong enough for a tough guy but tender enough for a lonely tough guy? WWF Vice President for New Media Lee Barstow hopes for a day when the WWF's Web sites supersede its TV presence. As broadband comes online, WWF wants to expand its global reach— currently 150 countries—with- out worrying about foreign broadcast rights. “The story iSmell? No, You Smell, Buddy! Strawberry. Grape. Tangerine. Old iMac colors? Nope—new Mac aromas. Treading the thin line between brilliant and bizarre is iSmell, a speaker-size device that adds a whole new dimension to your computing experience. Able to mix and match elements from a hundred- scent palette, the iSmell from DigiScents (510/208-4300, www.digiscents.com) can produce thousands of unique odors. Savor the aroma of the coffee beans you're about to order online. Smell the spent shotgun casings—and your opponent's fear—as you play a scent-enhanced first-person shooter game. Due lines and the good versus for release at the end of 2001, the Mac version of the peripheral should make its evil—it kind of translates into any language,” Barstow says. public debut at January's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. No matter how 7 g : i é F g S 3 § 5 fo 8 ‘ . : 3 @ 5 = . 8 5 4 2 Q Fa well it works, it’s sure to raise a stink.—GREG KNAUSS www.macworld.com February 2001 29 Pro FILE Dot-Comics Q8A with SCOTT McCLOUD Q: What was the “aha! A: I've got an old clone, a creaky moment” for you when it came _ little PowerCenter150. I’ve also to using computers in comics? got a PowerBook G3, but it’s time A: It was gradual for me. | to upgrade the desktop machine bought my first Mac, a Performa as well. 200, in late 1992, just as | fin- ished Understanding Comics. | wasn’t hostile to the idea of mak- Q: What differences are there between what you used then Scott McCloud made his mark in the comics world with his long-running and what you’re using now? ing comics [on a computer], but | ing [bra compote A: It’s a whole different world. | had a copy of [Adobe] Illustrator when it first came out, and it just series, Zot! But the two books he's writ- didn’t think computers were read ten—Understanding Comics (Harper- i t Perennial, 1994) and Reinventing Comics (HarperPerennial, 2000)—have given the for it. Then | fell in love. | got a Quadra not too long after that. “ i a i couldn't run on the Performa jave myselt license to pla’ M comic-book artist wider recognition. ‘Ive 9 : be ee eae 5 | think the biggest change is in around and not try immediate been on this crazy crusade since 1994 ie i Y Web-oriented tools. GiFmation, - to turn it into a moneymaking about comics and computers,” says ' I felt ol Fetch—those became very impor- venture. | felt play was ve McCloud, who now publishes Zot! online ee - tant to me. | also became a con- ah important—to have fun first, to at www.comicbookresources.com. “I'm vert to the idea that connected- : see what happened and not try ; forever evangelizing this stuff.” McCloud ness is a very important feature to bend the process to my will. sees a revolution coming in the comics, in computing. The window onto with computers—and the Mac—playing Q: What machine are you the world of my desktop is just so a leading role.—LisA SCHMEISER using now? radically different. More Info: www.macworld.com/2001/02/buzz/mccloud.html Find out about Scott McCloud’s experiences with publishing his comic series Zot! online. Cuiick HERE Radiskull Hate Buzz! He is the Radiskull. He will kill us one by one. Or so says this disembodied, toothsome skull. Radiskull and his sidekick, Devil Doll, are the animated stars of joesparks.com, the product of Flash artist Joe Sparks’s fertile imagination. Each episode of Radiskull and Devil Doll features the duo rapping to a heavy- metal beat and lamenting such evils as snow, fruit, and happy. Radiskull, in his own vernacular, “hate happy.” But Sparks offers more than a fun Flash car- toon land. He dedicates several pages to production notes, detailing the hows and whys of Radiskull, along with shots of his Mac workstations. Sparks also offers Flash tricks and tips, such as how to generate 3-D landscapes. Radiskull may not care for any of this—he "hate happy,” after all—but that doesn't mean you won't get a kick out of it—maTHEW HONAN arks.com \w ote AYN NN www-.joesp. 30 February 2001 www.macworld.com edicine For Your Nothing can ruin your day faster than a sick and ailing computer, And while Macintosh is one of the most reliable computers in the world, sometimes things can go wrong. That's why we invented TechTool Pro. TechTool Pro is the super-utility that can find and isolate almost any problem on your computer. No other utility in the world comes even close to covering as many aspects of your Macintosh as does TechTool Pro. But diagnosing computer maladies is only half the battle. Besides repairing drives, recovering data and checking the health of your Macintosh components, TechTool Pro can now help protect you against virus problems and software conflicts. TechTool Pro can also keep your Mac running at its peak between problems. The program optimizes your disk drive to make your computer run faster and more efficiently. Our RAM panel even allows 6666 MacWorld Aug, 1999 ac you to see the inner configuration of your memory without needing to open the case. Do all these features make TechTool Pro complicated to use? Not at all. The MultiTester feature allows you to give your computer a full checkup with one click of your mouse, TechTool Pro even creates graphic, easy-to-read and understand reports. Now you can know the state of your computer without having a degree in computer science. Every day, more and more Macintosh professionals are choosing TechTool over other system utilities. In fact, even Apple Computer includes TechTool Deluxe with every copy of their AppleCare™ Protection Plan. Simply put, TechTool Pro 3 is the most complete and powerful troubleshooting and repair utility available for your computer, Why would you settle for anything less? Micromat Inc. 800-829-6227 707-566-3831 FAX: 707-566-3871 info@micromat.com www.micromat.com (©2000 Micromat, Inc.All rights reserved. Tech'Tool is a registered trademark of Micromat, Inc. Macintosh and AppleCare are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. Circle 37 on card or go to www.macworld.com/getinfo eVhat’s HOT A QUICK LOOK AT THE WORLD OF TECH 1. Napster releases a Mac version of its MP3- sharing software. Expect the subsequent lawsuit to lag six months behind its Windows counterpart. 2. Steve Jobs vows to have speedier CPUs in 2001. “510MHz or bust!” the cocky CEO declares. 3. Hackers break into Microsoft's corporate net- work, After poking around the company's secret files, the hackers added insult to injury by fixing dozens of bugs in the Windows 2000 source code. 4. The G4 Cube gets nominated for a design award from PC Magazine. It faces stiff competition— the Beige Box from Dell, the Beige Box from Gateway, and the Off-White Box from Compaq. 5, Despite U.S. woes, Apple’s German division has its best year ever. The reason? Key lime iBooks are now called “Hasselhoff green.” y €&> ANNOUNCED @ Tox-preparation soft- @ The departure of wore by Intuit (800/446- 8848, www.urbotax.com): TurboTax Deluxe—Intuit has dropped the Macin- company founder and chairman Tim Gill from Quork (800/676-4575, www quark.com): In October, Gill sold his 50-percent stake in the Tox name—adds auto- mated fax-return features that let users automati- cally download tox infor- Product WATCH design and desktop publishing software company he founded in 1981. He plans to devote his time to philanthropic efforts. @ Certification of Macs for E-Business Suite, from Oracle (800/672- 2531, www.oracle.com): Macs with Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mac OS 9.0.4, and Mac- intosh Runtime for Java mation from participat- ing companies and financial institutions. TurboTax Deluxe sells for $50. @ Adobe Premiere (800/- 833-6687, www.cdobe com): Premiere 6.0 adds extended digital- video support and one- step Web-output tools. The DV-editing applica- tion sells for $349; exist- can now access Oracle's Web-based business applications. ing users can upgrade for $149. The software will ship in the first quorter of 2001 32 February 2001 www.macworld.com (@ New handhelds from Handspring (888/565- 9393, www.handspring com): The $449 Visor Prism features a full-color display and recharge- able battery. The $299 Visor Platinum is o faster version of Handspring’s handheld PDAs. @ An analog-to-DV converter from Formac Electronic (925/251- 0100, www.formac.com); Formac Studio is a video digitizer that converts captured video ond DV to DV streams, and tronsfers QuickTime movies to VHS. At press time, pricing hadn’t been set for the product, which was scheduled for a December release. @ A FireWire tope drive from Imation (888/466- 3456, www.imation .com): The Travan 20GB FireWire Drive comes with Retrospect Desktop Backup soft- ware from Dantz and sells for $499.—Compiled by PHILIP MICHAELS LIGHTS...CAMERA...MP3? Not Just for Pictures Anymore You're vacationing on a remote desert island. You snap a couple of cool shots with your digital camera. But there’s no printer in sight. If you want prints of your photos, you'll have to wait until you're back on the mainland—right? Wrong—if you have a C211 digital camera, from Olympus (800/645-8130, www.olympus.com). The $899 digital camera includes a built-in Polaroid printer. The C211 is just one of several new digital cameras that do more than take snazzy snapshots. “They'll probably stop calling them cameras at some point,” says Ed Lee, director of Lyra Research's digital-photography advisory service. Take the $699 Fujifilm FinePix 401 (800/800-3854, www.fujifilm.com), which lets you listen to your favorite tunes via an MP3 player while you're taking photos. “The goal is to try to go after young consumers who are into MP3 players and are looking for some- thing fun and different,” Lee says. With the RDC-i700, Ricoh (888/ 742-6410, www.ricoh-usa.com) has added interconnectivity to its cameras; the RDC-i700 lets you snap pictures, check e-mail, send faxes, and track stocks. It’s currently available in Japan for $1,500. A U.S. version should debut in early 2001. What's next? Keep an eye out for digital camera-cell- phone combos, which are already available in Japan. “It may take a while to see these in the U.S. because there is a lot of infra- structure involved,” Lee says.—ADELIA CELLINI ICON ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARK MATCHO; PHOTOGRAPH BY SUZANNE ROADY Pristine image quality. Adva functionality. Future-ready. P ne | ui n k PanelLink Digital powers today AL DIGIT vext-generation PCs, projectors and DRIVING DIGITAL s. k And digital is better 2 bated 7 , Explofelth@yfull fange of PanelLink-powered digital products at digital =better.com = Circle 149 on card or go to www.macworld.com/getinfo Ne. pride Gk apie For 1,000,000 Web developers, it's The Word. MACROMEDIA’ DREAMWEAVER’ may not be the standard for hotel rooms, but it is the standard for 70% of professional Web developers who use visual tools. And the new Dreamweaver 4 Fireworks’4 Studio allows both beginners and professionals to create the most amazing sites on the Web. Not only does it tightly integrate text and visual elements, it generates code so clean you could eat off of it. Add to that over a million developers sharing and exchanging extensions and, well, you see the light. macromedia.com/go/studio macromedia’ what the web can be." (ered trademarks of Macromedia, tn shamed loge, Dreamwegver, Fireworks, and “whet th YOUR WAY YOUR MAC, Customize Your Mac and Applications for a Completely | Personal Experience t BY CHRISTOPHER BREEN AN YOU IMAGINE A PLACE WHERE AUTOMOBILES come only in black, ice-cream shops carry nothing but jamocha almond fudge, and all the Village People dressed as construction workers? Who would want to live in such a drab land? Thankfully, our world offers myriad choices. Just look at the wide variety of Macs available to us—an indigo iMac for Ivan the librarian, marine-biologist Molly's Power Mac G4 Dual Processor, and young Lauren's key lime iBook. We are fortunate to have a great many remarkably colorful and configurable Macintosh options. But those options don't end with the hue of the case or the amount of installed RAM. No com- puter—PC, Palm, or Psion—is more customiz- able than the Mac, whether you'd like it to conform to the way you work or simply want your desktop pattern to match your mood. Granted, the forthcoming OS X will provide the greatest face-lift the Mac has seen in over a decade. But while you're waiting for its final telease,why not take matters into your own hands? With the help of a pocketful of share- ware utilities, a smattering of commercial appli- cations, and some system and application tweaks, you can make your Mac your own. Make It Work Your Way You may be perfectly content to dig through your Mac's hard drive to launch applications; rummage through volumes and folders in Open and Save dialog boxes; traipse to the menu bar every time you want your Mac to execute some trifling task; and repeat a series of clicks and drags to perform the same operation many times. But we're here to tell you there's a better way. These customizations are guaranteed to make your Mac more productive. Everything at Hand Why wait for OS X's Dock? Files, folders, and applications you routinely misplace can be easily found—and launched—with the help of some classic Mac OS utilities. (See "17 Mac Makeovers" for details about the programs dis- cussed in this article.) Outto Launch Included with Mac OS is Launcher, a program you can use to open applications, files, documents, and URLs with a single click. It doesn't do much more than that, though. And while you can create up to continues www.macworld.com February 2001 37 eight separate cate- gories of Launcher THERE IS items (arranged as A only ies 10781 PR Frsticy DQ He Laser tara in NO COMPUTER— | tabs), the process is | hardly intuitive, and | is], 1 pentnns —— KIDS " G Kaleidoscope Schemes Action GeMac™ Q Rescate 213 2000, 309 981 2000, 9508 25,2000, 1209 PH a 2000, 939 9H PC, PALM, OR Launcher takes up a 3 ian se 20m fair chunk of desktop | [FRM | Gswmowereta eet PSION—MORE real estate. show(7uroriceDocol_@ Desktop folder 4 Glover) If you're looking ms CUSTOMIZABLE for more-powerful a Comet) Carer) and less-obtrusive Lunch into Action Power On Software's Action Files 1.5.4 THAN THE MAC. launchers, you'll find plenty of third- party utilities that let adds more-exten: you easily organize your favorite applications and documents into tidy, movable docks, James Thomson's DragThing 2.9 ($#$¥2) and Aladdin Systems’ like-priced DragStrip 3.7.1 (##$¥2; both reviews at www.macworld,com/2000/09/ 22/reviews.dragthing.html) allow you to place all of your favorite goodies including applications, documents, control panels, disks and servers, folders, and URLs: in floating docks. In addition, both provide docks that, as Apple's Application Switcher palette does, display all currently running applications. Of the two, DragThing is the more refined, featuring attractive palettes, sound, hot-key support, and a number of helpful AppleScript commands for controlling the program's docks. (See “Control Tabs.") Sig Software's DropDrawers 1.2.6 is another useful Space Savers launching utility. Instead of employing docks, DropDrawers lets you place your favorite items, including clip- pings files, in floating “drawers” that open and close when you click on their handles. You can also try Power On Software's powerful Action GoMac 2.0.3 ($448; Reviews, February 2000). Like Windows’ Start menu sive navigation controls to Open and Save diclog boxes than Apple’s Navigation Services does. and Task Bar, Action GoMac displays running applications and lets you launch your favorite applications and files from a palette that runs along the bottom of your Mac's screen. A unique feature allows you to quit running applications without switching to each one. Just select Quit and then the application's name from a pop-up menu, and that application quits in the background Let Your Fingers Do the Working Some of us dislike reaching for the mouse, either because we think it wastes time or because the ergonom- ics fairy has warned us against it. ‘Two launching utilities that rely on the keyboard rather than the mouse are MindVision’s MindControl 1.1 ($884; Reviews, January 2000) and Stefano Ghielmi's SpeedApp 1.0.2. With MindControl installed on your Mac, you press %£-" to reveal a window that contains your favorite applications, documents, URLs, e-mail addresses, recent applica- tions, documents, and servers. You'll also find common commands such as sleep, shut down, and restart. Use the mouse or the Mac's arrow keys to access these items. MindControl also places a com- mand line at the bottom of your screen where you can enter text. To launch an item on your Mac’s hard drive, begin typing the name of the item you'd like to open—or the abbre- viation you've assigned to it. Mind- Control fills in its name; just press the retum key to launch that item. SpeedApp offers the same com- mand-line feature in a more intuitive way. Unless you configure Mind- Control in the Command window, the program requires that you type the complete name of the item you wish to open, beginning with the first let- ters of the application. For example, Adobe Photoshop is the default name to type for Photoshop. SpeedApp— which is limited to opening applica- tions—allows you to type any portion of the application's name. Better Dialog Boxes Your desktop isn't the only place you can enhance navigation. Most of us spend a fair amount of time shuffling through Open and Save dialog boxes, wishing for a more efficient way, for example, to put files in the folders where we always put them. Many Mac users hoped that Navigation Services—introduced with Mac OS 8.5 as a new way to view and move through Open and Save dialog boxes—would offer a greatly expanded set of navigation options. Dialog boxes that take advantage of Navigation Services do provide quicker access to mounted volumes and often-used documents and folders, but they don't provide the wealth of navigation options found in the Finder, such as the ability to produce a file's Get Info window. Fast Filing St. Clair Software's Default Folder 3.0.7 and Power On Software's Action Files 1.5.4 (#946; Reviews, February 2000) provide some solutions. Default Folder places additional commands in Open and Save dialog boxes—commands for producing a file's Get Info window, as well as for renaming and trashing files. It will also display a default folder you've designated when an Open or Save dialog box appears for the first time after an application launches. This is a real time-saver if, for example, you plan to save all your Microsoft Word documents in a particular folder. Action Files offers even greater enhancements. (See “Launch into Action.”) In addition to the same features as Default Folder, it gives you the ability to sort files by name, size, kind, and date; change file and folder labels; create an alias of a file or folder; and even resize these previously nonscal- able dialog boxes. More from Your Menus Menus provide another way to easily launch applications and locate favorite files on your Mac. Each new version of Mac OS has made menus more powerful by increasing the number of keyboard equivalents for common tasks—for example, creat- ing an alias or moving items to the Trash. But menus can be made to do more, with utilities such as Jerry Du's FinderMenuTuner 1.2.2, Connectix’s CopyAgent 1.0 (###%; Reviews, December 2000), and Power On's Action Menus 1.0.2 ($###; Reviews, February 2000). "Your Mac, Your Way Navigate with Ease Finder- MenuTuner is a simple control panel that allows you to assign additional keyboard commands to Finder menus—a boon for those who've longed to press 86-T to empty the Trash. CopyAgent, though primarily a tool for enhancing Finder copying, also makes menu navigation easier with its Keyboard Power component. Using Keyboard Power, you can access Finder and application menus in the Mac’s menu bar with keyboard shortcuts: for example, just hold down control-shift-F to select the File menu. Once you select a menu, you can use another keyboard short- cut to choose a command within continues Control Tabs From James Thomson's DragThing 2.9, you can launch nearly any file on your Mac’s hard drive. www.maeworld.com February 2001 39 WITH A LITTLE EFFORT—AND A COUPLE OF UTILITIES— YOUR MAC CAN BE FUN AND FUNCTIONAL. that menu—such as control-shift-O to select Cnctade in Quickeys Open—or the arrow fae AY Oese Ba keys to move from one menu item to another. Action Menus is the be-all and end-all of menu customization utili- ties. It not only allows you to assign keyboard commands to menu 45 2) Gerwt ove 16. ton 10 FA items, but also creates ste adctionsl Step tare additional menus that Record Hore.) [Invert Keyateat.. cooeet) | display applications, files, folders, and servers Macro-Made you've recently accessed—complete with hierarchical submenus. And you can place items in the Apple or Applications menu by dragging them there from the desktop. Mega-Macro Programs If you repeat some tasks frequently on your Mac—copying blocks of text from your word processor and past- ing them into different fields in your database program, for example—you may long for a way to alleviate this drudgery. A macro program can auto- mate many of these tasks. You can use applications such as CE Software's QuicKeys 5.0 ($94; Reviews, October 2000), Westcode Software's OneClick 2.0 ($8%; www.macworld.com/2000/ 12/13/oneclick.html), and Binary Software's KeyQuencer 2.5.5 for simple chores (launching applica- tions or creating keyboard equiva- lents for menu commands), but the forte of these macro programs is exe- cuting a series of actions at the click of a button or the press of a key. Automate Your Actions QuicKeys is the easiest macro program to use, thanks to its icon-oriented interface and ability to accurately record the Why repeat o series of keystrokes and clicks, when you can record these actions one time and trigger them all with a macro utility such as CE Software's QuicKeys 5.0? actions you perform on your Mac. Just click on QuicKey’s Record but- ton, run through the task you'd like to turn into a macro, and click on the Stop button when you're done. Your actions are recorded and ready to be played back when you press the key- board command or on-screen button you've assigned to trigger the macro. (See "Macro-Made.") Still, QuicKeys lacks some of the power found in script-based programs OneClick and KeyQuencer, which offer better control over actions that include a series of variables—when the appearance of a dialog box trig- gers another action, for example. OneClick gets its name from the palette-driven interface that represents macros as clickable buttons. Beneath the simple interface is a scripting lan- guage called EasyScript that allows you to manipulate your Mac in many powerful ways. For example, you can create a OneClick macro that auto- matically closes browser pop-up win- dows—not possible with QuicKeys. KeyQuencer lacks the action- recording features of QuicKeys and OneClick, but its scripting capabilities allow intrepid users to create some potent macros. The Tricked-out Mac You've changed your hairstyle, diet, and taste in music dozens of times in the past five years. So why stick with the same-old-same-old Mac experience when you can customize it in these exciting ways? ® Action Menus Action Menus adds a number of new menus to the Mac's menu bar for tasks such as opening recent applications, documents, and servers. © Kaleidoscope The combination of Kaleidoscope and Hideaki Kamada’s NotePaper scheme lend a spiral-notebook feel to the Mac’s windows, scroll bars, icons, and menus. @ Action GoMac Action GoMac’s Task Bar feature provides an area for launching favorite applications and for switching between active applications. The Clock Tray includes a clock, a calendar, and a place where you add control- strip modules. © DragThing DragThing gives you easy access to all your favorite items. And Mac OS 9's Application Switcher never looked as good as DragThing’s Process Dock. @ IconFactory IconFactory is a rich resource for beautiful and whimsical icons. "Your Mac, Your Way Stick to the Script Of course Apple includes its own free automa- tion utility, AppleScript, with every copy of Mac OS. AppleScript is daunting to many Mac users, but using it to create simple scripts isn't difficult. You don't need to be a power user to benefit from this excellent tool. Using the Script Editor, found inside the AppleScript folder within the Apple Extras folder, you can record many of the actions you take on your Mac. For example, you can create a script that will clear up the clutter on your Mac’s desktop and display files in alphabetical order. First open Script Editor and click on the Record button; then switch to the Finder, hold down the option key, click on the Close box in the active window to close all windows, and select By Name from the View menu's Arrange submenu, You can then save this script to the Apple Menu or your desktop as a classic applet. You can also create simple AppleScripts to move items into the Trash, copy files from one buried folder to another, and tum the Appearance control panel's window- shade feature on and off. (To learn more about AppleScript, see “Apple- Script for the Programming-Shy,” Secrets, November 1999.) Make It Look Your Way Having a more productive Mac may placate the persnickety office man- ager within us all, but a computer can be competent without being compelling. With a little effort—and the help of a couple of utilities—your Mac can be fun and functional. Lovely to Look At With the Appearance control panel, you can change the visual elements of your Mac's interface, selecting continues www.macworld.com February 2001 41 OLYMPUS Focus On Life The Olympus P-400 Dye-Sublimation Photo Printer has arrived! You won't find a more versatile, more It’s a 26-pound Digital Darkroom convenient printer than the Olympus P-400. Its parallel and USB interfaces The O| P- -sublima- fe Olympus P-400 uses dye-sublima let you print from your favorite PC or tion technology t duce t - By Ie Poe er Mac photoediting application. tinuous-tone images, just like traditional photographs. Inkjet printers, on the other Even without a computer, you can hand, can only create the illusion of con- =. tinuous tones = print images directly from your dig- ital camera’s removable media by using a — including SmartMedia," Type | matrix of and II CompactFlash® and Mem- dots, That's ory Stick® thanks to the P-400’s why even built-in SmartMedia and PC Card the best ink- slots. Print on the spot, choosing from numerous built-in print functions—such as sepia-tone or match for the P-400 when it comes black-and-white conversion, to image detail and color vibrancy. crop and enlarge, borders and vignettes, Unlike typical inkjet printers, the P-400 delivers fade-resistant images with archival qualities comparable to traditional photo- graphs. And while inkjet printers will test your patience, the P-400 (Olympus P-400 Dye-Sublimation Photo Printer Finally, you should know the Olympus P-400 can be yours for under $1,000'—about one-fifth the cost of competitive dye-sub- limation printers of comparable CAMEDIA Digitally Inspired can output an 8" x 10" print! in output size. You can learn more \ about 90 seconds? at P400.olympus.com. \ <a Olympus America Inc. * 2 Corporate Center Drive * Melville, NY 11747-3157 * Call 888-55DIGITAL for more information. + ©2000 Olympus America Inc. ‘actual image area: 7.68 x 10/in. 2Approximate time alter acquisition of data to final output. SMSRP: $999. All rademarks and registered trademarks are the properties of their respective holders. Circle 7 on card or go to www.macwerld.com/getinfo "Your Mac, Your Way elements. Here, the NextStep scheme gives our desktop that retro look (bottom). desktop pictures and patterns, alter- nate system fonts, and hues for high- lighting and menus. But if you want to alter your Mac in more profound ways, you need greater assistance: download Greg Landweber and Arlo Rose's Kaleidoscope 2.2.4. Total Makeover Kaleidoscope is a control panel that allows you to load schemes that radically distort the appearance of windows, menus, buttons, icons, and progress bars. (See “Interface-lift.") Be advised: it may impede the performance of your computer or make it more prone to crashes. But with so many enter- taining scheme options available, many users will be tempted to install it regardless of the consequences. Many authors have created schemes that transform the Mac's 44 February 2001 www.macworld.com Interface-lift With Greg Landweber and Arlo Rose's Kaleid- oscope 2.2.4, you can change many of your Mac's interface interface into something resembling Windows 98, the Be OS, Next- Step, a Palm Pilot, or even Mac OS X. (Apple's legal depart- ment has warmed against replicating OS X's Aqua theme.) Hundreds of schemes are available from the Kaleidoscope Web site (www.kaleidoscope.net) and others. To locate these additional schemes and others, use Sherlock or a Web search engine. Accessorize, Accessorize Some Kaleidoscope scheme authors toss in icons to replace Apple's drab hard drive icons, but many do not. If you're looking for more inter- esting icons—whether or not you plan to use them in conjunction with Kaleido- scope—you can point your browser to IconFactory (www.iconfactory.com), the finest collection of free icons on the Web. If you're aiming for an OS X-like look, consider one more visual enhancement: Greg Landweber's Power Windows 2.4.2. With this pro- gram installed, when you drag a win- dow across the screen, the entire window and its contents remain vis- ible, not just the dotted outline. Plus, it can make windows translucent. Custom-Crafted Applications If you enjoy playing MP3 files on your Mac, you know that MP3 players include a variety of “skins” that change a player's appearance. But MP3 players aren't the only applica- tions that support customization. Beautify Your Browser In the latest releases of Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, Microsoft and Netscape supply the means to make their browsers reflect Apple's recent designs. To style Internet Explorer 5 more like your Mac, just select Browser Color from the View menu and choose from colors such as Bondi blue, lime, PowerBook bronze, and graphite. To change the way icons and text are displayed in the tool bar, control-click on the tool bar and select Icon & Text, Icon Only, or Text Only from the contextual menu. Then choose from the listed colors. Netscape 6 includes a variety of themes that allow you to change the look of this venerable browser. Preview Release 3 includes the Modern and Classic themes: Modern has a rounded look reminiscent of OS X, and Classic’s appearance resembles the traditional Netscape interface. To apply a new theme, you simply select Apple Theme from the View menu and choose from the list in the submenu. This submenu also con- tains a Get New Themes command that prompts Netscape to connect to the Web and download any addition- al themes that become available. Office Remodeling You can't radically change Microsoft Office 2001's color or icons, but some Mac users have found that the suite’s Formatting palette lets you dispense with many of the program's tool bars. To change the appearance of this palette in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, select Customize from the Tools menu, click on the Appearance tab, and choose either the Office 2001 Appearance option (which bears a slight resemblance to OS X) or the Mac OS Theme Compliant continues Our family has expanded! We just added several innovative ways to upgrade your Macintosh®; even more are on the way! Try our Tempo” Ultra ATA66 PCI host adapter card, our new Tempo RAID66 ATA hardware RAID controller card and our Tango FireWire®/USB combo card. Don’t miss our latest additions — the Crescendo”/7200 G3 and G4 processor upgrades. Depend on Sonnet for simply fast Macintosh enhancement products. To learn more, call 1-800-786-6260 or visit our website at: www.sonnettech.com/mwus Visit us at MacWorld San Francisco January 9-12, Booth #535 Circle 133 on card or go to www.macworld.com/gelin tao ieee Now available! | Crescendol7200 G3 & G4 (eNNES SIMPLY FAST SONY S€€ IN ULTRA-VIVID, PIXEL BY PIXEL DETAIL JUST HOW CRAZY YOU'RE DRIVING YOURSELF. I's not easy being obsessive, But most good designers are, and the last thing you need is a distorted image. Fortunately, Sony's FD Trinitron? displays feature o virtually flat screen, high-contrast coating and an ultratight aperture grille. Which produces enhanced image definition and astonishing detail And now, with the Multiscan® FW900 and its 16:10 double page display, you have even atest Sppettunity to obsess. You can thank us later. (©2000 Sony Electonics In. Alright reserved. Reproduction in wi vy. he Sony og eras f Sony. Seven image i simulated, DSPMOOAEO iscan ond Tinton ove te permission is prohibit FD Trinitron \wwwsony.com obsessed four Mac, Your Way 17 Mac Makeovers COMPANY PRODUCT PRICE CONTACT DESCRIPTION. ‘Aladdin Systems Dragstrip 3.7.1 $20 888/245-1723, www.claddinsys.com _| Poletie-bosed launcher utility Binary Software KeyQuencer 2.5.5 $50 800/824-6279, www.binarysoft.com | Macro uilily CE Software Quickeys 5.0 $100; online, $90 | 800/523-7638, www.cesofticom Macro uility Connectix CopyAgent 1.0 $40 800/950-5880, www.connectix.com | Menu-navigation tool CrossRoads Solutions Soundz 1.0 donationware ‘wowwnetioni.com/citizens/shashwat | Custom-sounds ulilty Greg Landweber Power Windows 2.4.2 | $10/shareware | wwy.kaleidoscope.net/greg/ Window-appearance-changing utility Greg Landweber and Arlo Rose | Kaleidoscope 2.2.4 $25/shareware | _wwwwkoleidoscope.net ‘Appearance-changing utility James Thomson Drogthing 2.9 $20/shareware | _www.dragihing.com Poletie-based launcher utility Jerry Du FinderMenuTuner 1.2.2 | $15/shareware | www.dragonone.com Menu cusiomizer MindVision MindControl 1.1 $20 888/477-3269, www.mindvision.com _| Command-line launcher Power On Software ‘Action Files 1.5.4 $30 ‘800/344-9160, www.poweronsw.com | Dialog box enhancement Action GoMac 2.0.3 $30 800/344-9160, www.poweronsw.com Task-bor launcher utility ‘Action Menus 1.0.2 $30 800/344-9160, www.poweronsw.com | Menu customizer, navigation fool Sig Software DropDrawers 1.2.6 $15/shoreware | _www.sigsofiware.com Pop-up launcher ulility St, Clair Software Default Folder 3.0.7 $25/shareware | _wwwsicloirsoft.com Dialog-box enhancement Stefano Ghielmi ‘SpeedApp 1.0.2 $15/shareware | htip://web.infinito.i/uienti/s/sghielmi | Command-line launcher utility Wosicode Software ‘OneClick 2.0 $70 800/448-4250, www.westcodesoft.com | Macro uiility (tt — - ——-—. —! option (similar to the classic Mac OS). In the same window, you can choose to increase the size of icons in tool bars and in the Formatting palette. Now Hear This Before color displays, Mac users had few ways to tart up their com- puters. After all, you could create only so many interesting desktop patterns out of black and white pixels. However, one advan- tage the Mac had over its PC counterparts was its ability to play sounds (PCs were nearly mute back then). Mac folk took this advan- tage and ran with it, cre- ating custom sound effects and—with the help of utilities such as Bruce Tomlin's SoundMaster— linking them to events as varied as ejecting disks, emptying the Trash, and restarting the Mac. Starting with Mac OS 8.5, Apple included the Appearance control panel, which contained a single collection of sounds tied to system www.maeworld.com February 2001 events: Platinum Sounds. But Cross- Roads Solutions offers us Soundz 1.0, a utility that substitutes custom sounds such as popping corks and belching for the staid set Apple includes with its OS. If you don't care for the Crazy Sounds collection included with Soundz, you can to add your own; read the documentation to learn how. The Last Word There are plenty of good reasons to change the ways your Mac looks and works: you can't wait for the cool new functions of OS X, you'd like a better launcher than the one supplied by Apple, or you want your Mac's desk- top to match your new earrings. Ultimately, it doesn't make a bit of difference why you want to customize your Mac. What really matters is that you can alter the look and feel of your Mac simply because you have the power and desire to do so. m Contributing Editor CHRISTOPHER BREEN pens Macworld’s Mac 911 column and appears with alarming frequency on the compucentric cable network TechTV. 47 R/RW one DVD solution VIDEO PLAYER pvp-v7400 100-DISC LIBRARY DRM-1006 720-DISC DVD/CD ‘DRM-7000 3.95 & 4.7GB DVD Recordable Media RECORDABLE DRIVE pvn-sz01 HIGH SPEED SINGLE DRIVE 16X DVD/40X CD Drive ‘CO/R/RW & DVD/RVRW DRIVE DvR-A0s f1oneer PIONEER NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES, INC. Industry professionals around the world rely on Pioneer when they record to DVD. Like CD-R and CD-RW, the write once DVD-R and rewritable DVD-RW formats allow you to record > with confidence. Jim Harrington for more information, call 1 -800-444-6 7F7B4 Pioneer's DVD recordable drives and media are available through local resellers nationwide. Circle 138 on card or go to www.macworld.com/get info IT WAS LOVE AT FIRST SPLICE. From the moment you first fired up your iMac DV, you and iMovie 2 (Reviews, October 2000) made beautiful movies together. But now, well, maybe it's just the seven-month itch, but you think you've noticed a few imperfections. That cute little Titles Speed slider seems a tad imprecise; those effects don’t seem so special anymore; and when it comes to video, the timeline definitely has a one-track mind, Face it: iMovie is stifling your artistic freedom. You need something more. e So you jump on the Web to check out Apple's professional option, Final Cut Pro. Its feature set looks great, but then you see its price: $999! Does artistic freedom have to come at such a G®@® BEYOND Three applications take your digital IM@VIE videos to the next level. BY GALEN rorT 50 February 2001 www.macworld.com high cost? © Don't despair. There are several attractive DV-editing programs that let you move beyond iMovie, without paying twenty times its price. I'll take a feature- by-feature look at three of these packages—Adobe’s $549 Premiere 5.1c, Digital Origin's $499 EditDV 2.0, and Strata's $249 VideoShop 4.5.1—so you can deter- mine which is best for your needs. Digital Origin also has a free, scaled-down program called EditDV Unplugged 1.6.1 not included in my comparison (see “Making the Cut" for details on this and the other pro- grams in the story). ILLUSTRATIONS BY OLAF HAJEK G eB B E Y Facing the Interface Nowhere is Apple's knack for ele- gant, efficient design more evident than in iMovie's Aqua interface. And although none of the three applications | examined can match iMovie in the looks department, their ease of use can make up for a host of physical imperfections. Working with VideoShop's Storyboard and Time views should make iMovie users feel The Screen Test right at home, since they function almost exactly like the Clip and Timeline viewers in Apple's program. Unfortunately, there's not much else that will remind you of iMovie's ele- gance. VideoShop's tiny buttons are tiresome to work with, and there are even a couple of misspellings in the interface. And unlike iMovie, Video- Shop doesn't offer device control, so you have to operate your cam- corder manually. Premiere’s interface is no raving beauty, but at least it functions effi- ciently (see "Coming Attractions” for a sneak peak at Premiere 6.0). Tools are neatly organized, and the Monitor window defaults to a professional two- view setup—with a screen on the left for working with individual clips and ascreen on the right for viewing your masterpiece-in-progress. ° N D When VideoShop and Premiere display DV footage on your computer monitor, the picture is “stretched,” making all your actors look slightly fatter. Only EditDV is able to give you an undistorted view of your footage on screen. It also has by far the most professional-feeling interface of the bunch (see "iSaver"), with the overall deep gray color reducing glare from the screen. The Final Reel Of these three appli- cations, EditDV is the most pleasant to spend long hours interface-to-face with, A good software tutorial is like a map—it gives you a feel for the lay of the land and doesn’t com- M °o v 1 E Options from the View menu” and there is no View menu, you know you're in for a perilous journey. VideoShop and Premiere go a step further by giv- ing you on-screen tool tips that tell you the name of the tool you're about to select. But only Premiere gives you online help in the Help menu, which is great when you need easy access to additional information, The Final Reel iMovie may not need a manual, but Pre- miere’s complexity is matched by Adobe's efforts to help you learn the program. pletely abandon Help Is on the Way A good software tuto- rial is like a map—it gives you a feel for the lay of the land and doesn't completely abandon you to unknown terrain. A software company can terrain, do a lot to help first-time users get oriented, and that help becomes more important as a program gets more complicated. All ve SS eS a The Screen Test three of these applica- tions come with tutorials and printed manuals, but EditDV’s instruction betrays its roots in Windows. When the tutorial begins “Choose [aes oc Track Team In Premiere, the A and B video tracks can share basic cutting duties. 52 February 2001 www.macworld.com you to unknown Clips Galore As you've slowly pieced together your own Citizen Kane, you've watched iMovie's Clip Shelf grow into an organizational nightmare. Editing software should help you put your hands on just the clip you need when you need it, and each of these programs offers improvements in that area Within Video- Shop's Bin window, you can organize The Screen Test clips into folders. The Bin window also boasts a nifty feature called Micons, tiny animated previews of your clips. It's nice that you can rename clips inside the Bin win- dow—but it would be nicer still if the program remembered those names the next time you opened the project. In Premiere, clips are stored in the Project window and sorted into bins. Double-click on a bin, and it opens in its own window. If you want to use a set of clips from your current movie project to construct a trailer ina new timeline, Premiere offers project- independent bins called Libraries. EditDV's approach is almost iden- tical to Premiere’s, but its implemen- tation is a little tidier. Clicking on a bin from the list on the left side of EditDV's Project window reveals a list of contents on the right. The handy Clean Up Bin command can free up precious disc space by deleting all the clips you wind up not using. EditDV doesn't offer a library feature, but a far better solution for all three programs would be to allow for mul- tiple timelines within one project. The Final Reel EditDV offers the neatest solutions for calming the chaos of your creative process. Tweaking the Timeline If you thought using iMovie's Paste Over command was sophis- ticated editing, wait until you leam about slipping, sliding, rip- pling, and rolling. These may sound like activities in a water park, but they're actu- ally invaluable tech- niques for adjusting clips in a timeline to help synchronize them with your audio track. The Screen Test VideoShop offers rolling edits, but working in the program can otherwise be very Think using the Paste Over com- mand in iMovie is sophisticated editing? Wait until you learn about slipping, sliding, rippling, and rolling. awkward. If you want simply to drag through the timeline to review your work, you have to either hold down the option key or move the scroll box in the bot- tom navigation bar of the Timeline window, Premiere offers an intuitive approach to basic editing that makes strong visual sense (see “Track Team"). Transitions go in the Transition track, snapping to fill the amount of overlap between the clips in the A and B video tracks (to transition between clips, they must be in opposite tracks). EditDV also has a dual view— similar to a method used in analog iSaver editing—but most editing in the program is done in one track, as in iMovie, You can also collapse Premiere’s A and B tracks and work with them combined. The Final Reel It's hard to choose between Premiere and EditDV when it comes to basic editing. Premiere has a tool for every conceivable purpose, but EditDV's more streamlined approach works quite well without them. EditDV has more options for speedily rendering previews, but Premiere’s mul- tiple-undo capability gives you greater flexibility. EditDV's subdued interface is easy on the eyes. Sweet Sound Although every picture tells a story, good sound can make that story flow better. With two audio tracks (in addition to the one stored in the video track) for aurally embellishing your movies, iMovie is surprisingly capable in the sound department. Still, adding more tracks can give you even greater opportunities for rich, multi- layered audio. The Screen Test VideoShop offers an unlimited number of audio tracks, as well as a nifty program called TuneBuilder that can create generic musical soundtracks in vari- ous styles. Audio fades are controlled in VideoShop by dragging points to stretch a horizontal line that repre- sents the clip’s volume. Unfortu- nately, VideoShop’s implementation of this rubber banding technique needs a lot of work; the points lurch suddenly when you try to drag them, and you can adjust volume only in 20-percent increments EditDV gives you as many as 20 audio tracks, and like many features in the program, audio control is effect- based. Only after applying the Sound Fade filter do you get access to the program's precise rubber banding. But both VideoShop and EditDV continues www-macworld.com February 2001 53 o@ stand in the long shadow of Pre- miere’s audio capabilities. Premiere lets you rubber band both volume and stereo panning, and it gives you strong control over the quality of your audio with excellent filters for equalization and reverb. The Final Reel capabilities are top-notch, and that's important when you consider that sound usually makes up half of your movie. Premiere's audio Lots of Layers Just as multiple audio tracks let you hear more than one sound at a time, multiple video tracks make it possible to see more than one clip at once. This technique of layering images simultaneously on screen is known as compositing. You see a form of compositing when your local news broadcast uses a blue screen to place the weather forecaster in front of a weather map. Multiple video tracks open up a world of creative opportunities for you to explore The Screen Test Creating a pic- ture-in-picture effect with VideoShop couldn't be more intuitive: just grab a clip by the comer in the Canvas win- dow to resize it. If you want to animate ¥. ° N D your clip to move across the screen, you can draw a motion path in the Canvas window. Unfortunately, super- imposing isn't nearly as well implemented, since changes in opacity are controlled with Video- Shop's cantankerous rubber bands. Premiere’s Motion dialog box is uncharac- teristically clunky. When you apply the Motion settings, you automatically animate the layer, even if you wanted only to shrink it down for a stationary picture-in-picture. You have to cancel this animation each time you apply Motion settings—not a one-click process—before you can proceed. EditDV's filter-based approach to compositing gives you terrific control. The Picture-in-Picture filter lets you adjust opacity with a simple slider, and the Pan-Zoom-Rotate filter makes it easy to tilt your clips at extreme angles, with built-in drop shadows for realistic depth. The best thing about EditDV's compositing is that it allows you to set animation keyframes directly AFine Mesh VideoShop's Mesh Warp filter lets you put a cruel twist on reality. in the timeline, so syn- chronizing the timing of your various video elements is a snap. The Final Reel Compositing abil- ities are the best reason to move beyond iMovie, and EditDV is the clear winner in this arena. Just for Effect If you downloaded the free Plug-in Pack for iMovie 2, you probably filled your family-vacation footage with every fade, wash, and dissolve in your palette, making your final cut a visual mess. Having more options to choose from brings a chance for more variety, but with it comes the responsibility to use those effects with discretion (see “Tempting Text" continues Making the Cut MOUSE | LIST VIDEO |AUDIO | VIDEO ‘AUDIO | PRINTED company |Propuct RATING| PRICE CONTACT UNDOS | TRACKS |TRACKS | EFFECTS | TRANSITIONS | FILTERS| MANUAL Apple iMovie 2 $899 | S49 800/692-7753 10 1 3 12" 13°" r) No weww.apple.com ‘Adobe Premiere 5.1c | #898 [$549 888/724-4508 32 99 99 82 89 2 Yes www.adobe.com ‘Adobe Premiere 6.0 | N/A* | $549 800/724-4508 9 9 9 66 75 2 No (beta version) www.adobe.com Digitol Origin | EdiDV 2.0 t99e [S499 ‘800/572-3487 1 Unlimited |20 29 24 4 Yes woww.digitalorigin.com Digital Origin | EditDV 0980 [Free 800/572-3487 1 1 2 9 13 2 No Unplugged 1.6.1 wenw.digitolorigin.com Strato VideoShop 4.5.1/ #88 | $249; ‘800/787-28231 1 Unlimited | Unlimited | 51 63 2 Yes; with with XLR8’s | www.strata.com InterView, no InterView, $99 ‘N/A = not applicable. **With free Plug-in Pack. 54 February 2001 www.macworld.com SOUS WAELNE, ING. FICMON, UA S990 AU MaGeMarns and registered trademarks are of their respective owners Capture, Edit & Share Your Analog Video Tapes. Introducing Hollywood DV-Bridge—the only system that lets you capture analog video and convert it to DV for just $299.99. With Hollywood DV-Bridge you can edit your videos in iMovie” or Final Cut Pro: And when you're finished, you can share them with family and friends by outputting them