MacWorld0208August2002

Dp) Ltr r fT rT" | J This Wireless Technology | alia | = Ft | ( ==) Could Change the Mac Forever Win? Ea EF tw Ye i H & See Our Preview, page 72 www.macworld.com The Mac Product Experts August 2002 Inside uf OS X EVOLVES Plus | Photoshop 7 Review and Tips | New Digital Cameras | Stopping E-mail Spam [es mii 4 mani 2 | Sends other UNIX “My PowerBook G4 is now running every major UNIX app that we had on our Suns, AlphaStations and SGls—and running them faster.” —Mark 8. Cohen, Ph.D., Professor, UCLA Brain Mapping Center “This new OS has accomplished in a short period of time what others have struggled to do for years: bring a compelling, widely accepted GUI (called Aqua) to UNIX.” —Tim O'Reilly, O'Reilly Network “After two-and-a-half years of Linux, I’ve finally found joy in a UNIX operating system. And I found it when I purchased a Macintosh —thefirst one I've ever owned.” —John Hummel, Jr, The Gamers’ Press “Until Mac OS X came along, | had three machines on my desk, Now with Mac 0S X, I use one computer for writing, coding, research, everything.” —Dr; Michael Cherry, Associate Professor, Department of Genetics, Stanford University @ Terminal Shell Edit Control Font Window Help Juse/bin/login (typ 1) 4 Sal D-eamalng, AE shetplig.ss Ua aa 86 CPU usage user, 18. resident = 23.7M code, 1.69M data, MerRegions: nun = 382, resident = 101M + 7.18M private, PhysMem: 48.2M wired, 71.6M active, 229M inactive, 349M WM: 1.666 + 48.1M 20277(0) pogeins, 13699(0) pageouts PID COMMAND 984 top 980 iTunes 962 tesh 953 Microsoft 952 Netscope 6 53.0% 951 Adobe Phot 950 perl 946 apache 945 XDarwinsta 944 xinit 933 tesh 932 XDarwin 920 Terminal np ES fs 917 SystemuISe Next Song 124 916 Dock Previous Song 912 Finder = Shuffle bad v Repeat Off Repeat All Repeat One ‘Show In Finder v CiTunes Manel 2002 werd Sonne sftuuar file wot included. ple Conte. Al boxes to /dev/null. @ 4) GH Thu 9:40 AM | MyiPod g i Ag Tiner Dragon greece ZEEED 388 eeeyresé =) woSleasyee Suide 4 of 20 “OS X has all the power you expect from a UNIX box, but none of the hassle associated with basic UNIX system administration, You can expect things to work and they do.” —Jim Hourihan, Tweak Films “The keys to 0S X are that it’s UNIX inside and Mac outside. This combination of stability, support for industry standards, and wide developer support coupled with Apple's Aqua graphical user interface and emphasis on graphic performance makes this a truly great operating system.” —David Coursey, ZDNet AnchorDesk “We're old hardcore UNIX hackers, so a BSD-based system is mother’s milk. Everything you expect to be there is there, and it works right.” —Dave Weininger, President, Daylight Chemical Information Systems, Inc. It’s jam-packed with Mac tools. The robot arm, though, that’s just for show. SEON From the Editor's Desk JASON SNELL Mush! Mac geeks take to Alaska, and Apple rolls out the Xserve and Bluetooth. 16 Feedback -- Readers respond, — — | 136 Ihnatko ANDY IHNATKO Andy welcomes you to his eternal struggle: Which e-mail program is right for fort him? MAC BEAT The MacMania cruise, the Microsoft Office update, | FileMaker 6, USB 2.0 PCI cards, small FireWire enclosures, MSN Messenger 3.0, and an interview with Quark's Jiirgen <urz. ‘SECRETS _ Stop Spam! ADAM C. ENGST Macworld’s hands-on advice will help you keep unwanted e-mail from filling up your in-box. Design Accessible Web Sites JEFFREY ZELDMAN Create sites that accommodate people with disabilities and include images, table layouts, style sheets, and JavaScript. Fast-Track Tips SANDEE COHEN, AMY CONGER, AND BRUCE FRASER Become more of an expert with our tips on | QuarkXPress, Adobe Photoshop and InDesign, | and Macromedia FreeHand. Mac 911 CHRISTOPHER BREEN Learn how to solve a variety of visual conun- drums, from running multiple monitors in OS X to capturing pictures from a DVD. 86 88 90 On the Cover Photoshop artist, Kevin | =u | ‘Ashburn. Photograph SS errtesy of Aspe Computer August 2002 www.macworld.com Macwor COVER STORY _ OS X Evolves MACWORLD STAFF The upcoming version of Mac OS X—code-named Jaguar—is the next step in the OS's climb up the evolutionary ladder. We'll tell you what's in store (and whether ‘there have been any missteps steps along the way), FEATURES 68 Inside Xserve KRISTINA DE NIKE We're accustomed to Apple shaking up the desktop and laptop markets, and now the company has worked its magic on servers. We take you on a tour of what makes the Xserve so unique. Bluetooth Breaks Through HENRY BORTMAN Just as it did with USB in 1998, Apple is embracing an emerging tech- nology. This one is known as Bluetooth, and it's meant to replace the wires on everything from printers and PDAs to keyboards and mice. Here's a look at how it works and what you'll be able to do with it in the not- too-distant future. 72 78 Master Photoshop 7 BEN WILLMORE Veteran Photoshop educator and author Ben Willmore brings you tips that can increase your productivity and enhance your creativity in the latest version of Adobe's venerable graphics application. 4.| MACWORLD | August 2002 __wwenmmacworld.com | 32 32 34 36 38 39 39 40 www macworld.com REVIEWS 28 Image-editing application $889! Adobe Photoshop 7 DVD-authoring software $68: DVD Studio Pro 1.5 Database-oriented middleware $888 Lasso Professional 5 PIM software $868! Now Up-to-Date & Contact 4.2 Portable USB audio workstation 988! Digidesign Mbox Sequencing software $996 Live 15 6.3-megapixel SLR digital camera $898 Canon E0S DEO LCD graphics tablet $86$) Wacom Cintig 185X Reviews in Brief Apple 10GB iPod, Boswell 2.0, iPhoto 1.1.1, and lomega HDD Portable Hard Drive E-mail client $64! Mailsmith 1.5 Power-saving devices $686) PowerKey Pro USB 650 $886) KickOff 1.5 Network-management tool 4%! Apple Remote Desktop Chart-drawing application $68$ OmniGraffle 2.0.2 Pen scanner $888 IRISPen II Keller on Cameras JEFF KELLER This month, Jeff looks at the Fuji FinePix 2800 Zoom, the Minolta Dimage X, and the Nikon Coolpix 2500. The Game Room PETER COHEN Battle evil in Return to Castle Wolfenstein, find adventure with Geneforge and Moop & Dreadly in The Treasure on Bing Bong Island, be a pin- ball wizard with Jini Zeala, and strap yourself into the Battlechair. August 2002 | MACWORLD | $ EYE-PC There’s a Xerox network printer that the page at a stunning 22 ppm. With Xerox color, details pop and get noticed. The Xerox white, but speeds out your first color page in just 13 seconds. It Phaser* 7700 tabloid color laser printer will surp! you in prints up to 11x 17 full-bleed, with 1200 dpi for the photographic countless ways. It not only prints 22 ppm, color or black & color quality you and your clients demand. And PhaserMatch” EROX! Tho D soe pice may Vary 36USC220506 (0 3 now way 10 0Ok at ate registered odemares ana PhaserMatch” isa tadeere/k ot XEROX CORPORATION. To see what a difference detailed color can make, simply give us a call at 1-877-362-6567 ext. 1872 or visit us at xerox.com/officeprinting/frog1872 color management software ensures the colors you 4 want are what you get. It’s just what you’d expect from one of the full line of Xerox network printers. Q Xerox Phaser 7700 ‘THE DOCUMENT COMPANY $6999" Choose 101 at wwwmacworld.comigetino CRESCENDO’/PCI G4 Processor Upgrade Card for PCI Power Macintosh Computers The power to create a modem digital hub. The freedom to enjoy iPod, ‘iTunes, and iMovie without a hitch. The speed to handle OS X. With up to 1 GHz of power in a plug-and-play processor upgrade, Sonnet turns last year’s desktop into this year’s digital media center. No other upgrade even comes close. You'll experience such gratifying performance improvements it will feel like a new machine. Sonnet Technologies. Simply Faster. * Accelerates performance to new levels » Encore/ST compatible with AGP Graphics, Gigabit Ethernet and Digital Audio models ® Crescendo/PCI compatible with 7300-9600 and clone-equivalent machines ® Installs in minutes. Simply Fast. » No jumpers, no switches, no control panels. 0S X Ready: (ON NSS Visit us at Macworld Expo NY © July 17-19, 2002 * Booth 641 + PCLX installer available for additional fe. Encre/STGé is built fr 5 X. SIMPLY FAST Choose 133 at wwwemacworld.com/getinfo Accelerate Store _FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK Sailing into New Territory Can Be Scary—and Exciting Uncharted Waters AS ONE OF THE SPEAKERS ON THIS SPRING’S MACMANIA cruise to Alaska—a joint production of Macworld and GeekCruises.com— I was fortunate to spend a week with 15 top Mac experts and more than 100 hard-core Mac fans. I admit that none of my dreams about a one-week Alaskan cruise have included spending time talking about Web design, wireless networking, Microsoft Office, and e-mail programs. But MacMania turned out to be a fantastic mixture of travel, education, and camaraderie—and it taught me a lot about what's on Mac users’ minds. MacMania was an immersive experience that exposed me to just how exciting and terrifying OS X s to many of the Mac faithful. Most of the cruise par- ticipants I met had already made the move to OS X, at least part-time. And all of them were curious about it, which wasn’t surprising—these people are the Mac experts in their families, offices, and circles of friends. They need to be OS X experts, too—and they’re hun- gry for as much information as they can get. We at Macworld continue to devote ourselves to making sure that our readers become as expert in OS Xas they were in the classic Mac OS. This month, our cover story gives you an in-depth look at the next ver- sion of OS X, code-named Jaguar, which is due out in late summer. This story ist the beginning of what we have to say on the subject—expect more news and tips about the update in the months to come, The good news about Jaguar is that with this release, Apple has begun innovating in Mac OS again. OS X 10.1 was, quite rightly, a release designed to fix bugs, fine-tune features, rectify numerous key omis- sions, and dramatically improve the poky perfor- mance of version 10. It made OS X worthy of use by regular Mac users. The Jaguar release of OS X offers new and updated applications, as well as new system features such as a shared address book and dramati- cally improved file-finding tools. All of these additions are great to see because Apple, as the loyal opposition of the computer indus- try, can’t afford to stop innovating. But I hope that Apple hasn’t lost sight of the fact that OS X is still a brand-new operating system with many rough edges and quirks that need to be addressed. A system update that adds features while fixing bugs and improving performance is the sort of one-two punch everyone is Serve Yourself Also in this issue is an under-the-hood look at Apple’s Xserve (see “Inside Xserve”). Granted, many Mac users will never even consider buying the Xserve, a powerful Unix-style server meant to be mounted in an industry- standard equipment rack. But the Xserve stands out as an intriguing piece of hardware that may point the w: toward advances that could appear in future genera- tions of Power Macs. For that reason—and because this may be the only way many people can see an Xserve close up—we're laying it out Alien Autopsy-style, with large photos and captions (by former Macworld Lab Director Kristina De Nike) that explain exactly what makes it tick. The Bluetooth Revolution A few years ago, when Apple unveiled the first iMac, I edited a Macworld story, by Henry Bortman, that intro- duced everyone to an exciting new connection technol- ogy bound to change the Mac forever—USB (“The USB Connection,” October 1998). Back then, there were essentially no Mac-compatible USB devices in existence, although a few companies plans to create them once the iMac finally shipped. Fast forward to 2002. This month, Henry Bortman ing Mac users to a potentially revolutionary technology, one that Apple has announced support for—but one that’s not fully formed yet, at least on the Mac. This time, the technology is Bluetooth, a way to connect devices wirelessly over short distances (see “Bluetooth Breaks Through”). Bluetooth is still in its infancy on the Mac, but it’s an exciting technology that could radically change how you connect devices to your Mac. New operating systems, strange Apple hardware, and intriguing-yet-foreign wireless technologies— yes, now is an exciting time to be a Mac user, even if it’s also a bit scary. Still, when I’m sailing into unknown waters, the people I want with me are those who love the Mac. { _ BY [JASON SNELL| Apple can't afford to stop innovating. Let us know what you think about Macworld or anything else related to the Mac. You can drop me an e-mail, at jason_snell@macwortd.com; send an e-mail to Editor in Chief Rick LePage, at tick_lepage@macworld.com; or join the discussions in our forums, at www.macworld.com. hoping for, and it will go a long way toward reward- ing the trust of Mac users who have made the big leap from the familiar into the unknown future. jOTOGRAPH BY wwvw.macworld.com | | August 2002 | MACWoRLO | 9 | I saw it. I want it. Now what? Come to the al source lor everything Mac. Visit Mac Warehouse in the Internet Cafe at Macworld Expo and log on to our Web site to get all the latest products! The Internet Cafe is presented to you by Mac Warehouse. house.com Supporting the Mac aficionado since 1987, and beginners starting now. MAC : ° meets WAREHOUSE 1-800-434-3036 a ° oe | projectiviny. VP of ContenvEditor in Chief Rick LePage Editor Jason Snell Managing Editor Jenni Executive Editor, Macworld.com Lisa Schmeiser Deputy Managing Editor Charles Purdy Senior Features Editor Senior News Editor Philip Michaels fet Stone Senior Reviews Editor Jennifer Berger Test Manager, Macworld Lab James G: ‘Associate Editors. Kelly Lunsford, Jil Roter, k Copy Editor Sue Voelie! Contributing Editors David Blatne; Henry B Breen, Adam C. Engst Bruce Fraser, .im Heid, Deke McCletand, Scholle Sawyer McFarland, To Stephan Somogy, Franklin N.Tessle rman, Christopher hnatho, Ted La : i Art Director Jennifer Steele Design Associate Alisa M Design Consultants Paul Carpenter, Jean Zamtetl Prepress Consultant. Stephen Sugg ‘News Director, MacCentral.com Jim Dalrymple Senior Editors, MacCentral.com Peter Cohen, Dennis Sellers International Editors. Matthew JC. Powell, Australia; Berratd Le Du, France; Sebastian Hirsch, Germany; Enrico Lott italy; Yoshio Moriya, Japan; Tomasz Binet, Poland; Danie de Blas, Spain; Nils Holml6y, Sweden; Engin Gedit Turkey; Simon Jay, United Kin President and CEO Colin Crawtord \VPIChie! Operating Otficer Director of Finance Eos de Feminis Accounting Coordinator Ronda Bittner hard Will en Daniels Senior VP, Human Resources Human Resources Director Kate Coldwell Human Resources Representative IT Director VP of Sales/Publisher Associate Publisher, East National Accounts Manager Paul Bonavtigo (508/533-4020) Account Executive Western Advertising Director Sara Culley Sales Assistant Franck Zamora (415/243-3628) Showcase Account Manager NikiStranz (415/243-3664 Showcase Account Manager Carol Johns 5/243-3691) Online Sales Manager Doug Detletsen 43-3598) Sales & Marketing Coordinator Kasey MacMullen (415/243-3642) ( | | | Seniot Marketing Manager Sharon L. Cordesse Be productive. Stay productive. Prodan Deer Stee Spagl Prepress Manager Introducing FastTrack Schedule 8. Redesigned for Mac OS X and packed Booking and Billing Manager Ad Coordinator Wesan Nate with new productivity features and a bold Aqua int | Schedule 8 has all the tools you need to ensure project success. For a Senior Web Producer Christina Gonzales | ape line Production Manager Ron Ne free demo version or to order, call us today at 800.450.1982 eR ee nee www. fasttrackschedule8.com Choose 84 at wawmacworld.comigetinfo 12 |_MAcWoRLD wwnwmacworld.com Shanan (and the rest of our team) would be happy to help you configure your Anthro Workstation. come up with a furnit modular and strong. Strong 14 | MACWORLD. 3D POWER. 2D PRECISION. ONE PROGRAM. Created by Dan Jon ) SOPHISTICATED 2D DRAFTING )» POWERFUL 3D MODELING )» HIGH-QUALITY PRESENTATION Introducing the advanced technology of 3D Power Pack, now shipping free with VectorWorks. This new modeling extension seamlessly plugs into VectorWorks, offering powerful new surface and solid modeling capability that can’t be found in programs like formeZ™. Why buy separate software for modeling, drafting, and presentation? Why waste time constantly moving files between programs to get the capabili- ties you are looking for? From conceptualization to presentation to production, VectorWorks has what you need to get the job done quickly and easily, and at a price even the smallest firm can afford. To learn more, call 888-646-4223 and find out for yourself why VectorWorks is the easiest, most cost- effective way to design. Come see us at Booth #1849 during the MacWorld Expo in July! mets North America Vectér works VectorWorks. Freedom to do more, 888.646.4223 | www.nemetschek.net August 2002_| Choose 126 at wrwmacworld.comigetinfo mS WwiAr wi awadn | HOW TO CONTACT MACWORLD ‘Subscription Information and Services Phone 800/288-6848 from the United States and Canada 515/243-3273 from all othe locations US. Mail Macworld Subscriptions Department P.O. Box 37781, Boone, A 50037-0781 (Include a mailing label with correspondence.) World Wide Web _http://service.macworld.com (or service) or httpzisubscribe:macworld.com (to order) E-mail subhelp@macworld.com (Send your full name and the a you subs at which Fax 5159/4 32-6994 SUBSCRIPTIONS The one-year (12-issue) subscription rate is $34.97; the two-year rate, 1559.97; and the three-year rate, $79.97. Foreign orders must be pre: Paid in U.S funds; add $10 per year for postage to Canada or $25 per year for ait freight to all other counties. 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DINOSAUR FOUND IN OFFICE Manager Eaten Alive ‘DAVE _ SAVED MY SANITY” “DAVE is, without any doubt, the best | solution for integrating your Mac into a PC environment. -Univers Macworld “Essential Tool Gives Macs Hassle-Free Access to Windows Networks... this product is a must-have.” helly Br in Write us and tell us your story of how DAVE solved yo The entries chosen for publication will be awarded a special Thursby attache’ Send en www. thursby. com THURSBY — Software Fight YS __ Lab Tested Layout Shoot-Out CRAIG HALL Ey) I found it very interesting that InDesign seemed to come out on top in the head-to- head battle for supremacy (“QuarkXPress versus InDesign,” May 2002). But even though InDesign may have several stronger features, it’s more important to me as a graphic designer that the people receiving my files support the program I use. The printers and film houses I work with say they rarely see an InDesign file. STEVE SHUB kj There was no mention of one of InDesign’s biggest claims to fame: that it opens Quark- XPress files. In my limited tests, the files open but are a mess. I opened a ten-page XPress file in InDesign and, after waiting several minutes, was horrified to see that the graphic elements of all the pages were everywhere but where they were supposed to be. All text had changed as well; any manual tracking I'd done to get rid of wid- ows and orphans was lost. In my opinion, the core question is, Are companies with huge installed bases of QuarkXPress going to switch to a program that, at best, only a few of their employees know? JON MARKEN LE In the “Who Wins the Features Race” chart, you list “add pages upon text import” as a feature offered only by XPress. InDesign will also add columns and pages when importing text; it simply won't add pages as you're typing. SALLY JACKSON [es] After reading your glowing review of InDesign 2, I thought I would give ita try. Lam a longtime QuarkXPress user, but the program has some annoying quirks. [16 | MACWORLD | August 2002 FEEDBACK Club The free, fully functional trial version of InDesign is very slow to load, but I can cope with that, Can I use it to open a JPEG created in Photoshop? No. What happens when I try to print something? My 400MHz Power Mac G4 slows down to a turtle-like crawl and finally freezes. Can I print those troublesome fonts and graphics from InDesign? Who knows? I think I'll stick with QuarkXPress. Missing Macs? NICK LANCASTER S Macworld readers love a good fight, particularly when Adobe and Quark are slugging it out. We provide an overview of Apple's latest hardware offerings; you nod and go back to debating the relative merits of InDesign and QuarkXPress—everything from color management to which program would triumph in a no-holds-barred steel-cage match. We're happy to offer in-depth reviews of the latest Mac products; how you use that information—whether to make buying decisions or to fuel speculation about a mythical battle royal between two Mac developers—is up to you. (1 appointing. It doesn’t tell you when send- ing a fax fails, and it stops trying after just one attempt. My phone rang just as I was about to send my first fax. The fax modem tried to send the fax, but it didn’t get a dial tone, and the attempt failed— without trying again and without warn- ing. On top of this, the software works only with the Mac’s built-in modem. I wanted an OS X-native faxing solution. This program is OS X native, but it’s not yet a solution. KENNY MINSTER Es} I'm wondering if anyone else noticed that “The Fast Crowd” (May 2002), which looked at all the current Mac models, left out the Titanium PowerBook G4, even though there’s a picture of it, along with the iBook, iMac, and Power Mac, on the front page of the article. CAMERON HILL ie For your 14-inch iBook review, couldn't you find a picture of one? The Titanium PowerBook G4 was, in fact, mentioned in the main story and in the product table on page 58. lt wasn't reviewed in that issue because the most recent version had been reviewed in our January 2002 issue (“Time to Desert Your Desktop?"). The updated Power- Book announced in late April was reviewed in our Fuly 2002 issue (Reviews). As for the iBook: picture, congratulations on spotting some- thing we missed. Rest assured, the iBook we reviewed was the 14.1-inch model—Ead. Just the Fax DAVID C. JONES James Bradbury's Faxstf X review (May 2002) was right on the mone version 1.0.3, the program is pret T agree with your review Faxstf X. Does anyone make a better fax program for the Mac? Or can I use my old Global Village software with OS 9? With all the advances we've made over the years, you'd think someone could create a substantial fax program for the Mac. We know of absolutely no easy-to-use, OS X— native fax software alternatives to Faxstf X. While you could try using your old GlobalFax software in OS 9, we can't vouch for the con- sequences, Unlike their successor, Faxstf 5 and Faxstf 6 are dandy programs that run in OS 9, although you may need to boot into OS 9 instead of using Classic. —Ed. QuickTime without Limits THERESA-MARIE RHYNE {Es} T was happy to read Shelly Brisbin’s “Macs without Limits” (Secrets, May 2002). I wanted to add some information about aired users with captioned text content in QuickTime movies on a Mac. Detailed instructions on creating text tracks, starting with tran- scription for QuickTime, are provided on Apple’s Web site (www.apple.com/quick time/products/tutorials/texttracks.huml). | rerumacwrortd.com | AUGUST 2002 | FEEDBACK Excel-lent Question MONTY LEE ics “Open Excel to the Web” (Secrets, May 2002) is excellent. One item not addressed that I sure would appreciate an answer to is how to edit a user-created query file (step 7) so that it automatically refreshes when the worksheet is opened. This works the same way that setting the Microsoft-supplied example files to refresh does. You click on the Refresh Data On File Open option in the External Data Range Properties dialog box, which you can open by clicking on the Properties button when you place your query on the worksheet.—James Bradbury OS X Insecurity ROSS BISHOP @ Dan Frakes wrote about the wonders of OS X security features (“Many Users, One Mac,” Secrets, May 2002). I totally disagree. As a sole user, these features are simply a monumental pain. Brother's printer drivers don’t work well in OS X, and before I realized that, an Apple tech- support representative had me change identities on my computer. Suddenly, I lost control of my entire system. Because I lacked privileges, I couldn’t empty the Trash, delete items, or, more important, edit certain data files. Getting control back was a real pain. This is a lack of fore- sight on Apple’s part (or perhaps a rush to get OS X out). I should be able to change the level of security on my machine, not have it rigidly decided by Apple or Unix. It often seems to me that Macworld puts itself in the position of defending and cheerleading Apple. I see this a lot around OS X, which, other than being pretty, has a hell of a long way to go toward achiev- ing real sophistication. URLs Not AWOL ADAM ABRAMS icy} I was overhauling my office not long ago when I came across a dusty issue of MacUser from March 1996—well before it was absorbed by Macworld. Following the rush of nostalgia I always get from old Mac magazines—ooh, Power Computing clones! PageMill 1.0!—I noticed one article, “Welcome to the Web!” which presented “101 must-see sites” and an irresistible “Where are they now?” chal- lenge. I checked every address, because I ‘was curious to see just how hot these 101 sites were after almost six years (and one dot-bomb meltdown). Forty-eight are still going strong—and 38 of these are at the same, sometimes obscure, address. Ten sites live at a new URL, which is linked from the old one. They may not all be in good repair—the Online Confes- sion Booth now hands out error codes instead of redemption—but they're there. Thirty-one sites have gone to that big Web server in the sky—either they’re not found at all, or their domain is under new, unrelated ownership. A moment of silence, please, for the late Mr. Showbiz and the dearly departed Captain James T. Kirk Sing-Along Page. Finally, ten sites are still plugging away, but they moved so long ago that there's no direct connection from the 1996 link. So in the end, 69 percent of the “must-see sites” are still alive and clicking. In a medium not known for permanence, that’s a very good showing indeed. Why, Andy, Why? JAMES SHOOP LS I was disappointed in Andy Thnatko’s “Open-Source Showdown” (Ibnatko, May 2002). What kind of geek can't build the GIMP? And if he really couldn’t figure it out, why not just use Fink? You can do that in two Cokes. MICHAEL V. POLSINELLI i=] Although I had no clue as to what Andy was writing about (except for the “24 12-ounce units” measurement), I found the article entertaining. In Focus BOB KASPER 2 I’m happy to see that you, like most photo magazines but unlike some computer pub- lications, are quoting focal lengths with their 35mm equivalent (“Keller on Cam- eras,” Reviews, May 2002). Without this, the actual focal length and zoom ratios are rather useless (an 8-24 zoom and 100-300 zoom are both 4:1, but the results are a bit different). One suggestion: tabulate cam- era specs (zoom, lens focal length, speed, image size, media type, warranty, and so forth) in a quick reference guide. Thoughts on Fees ERIK NEILSON SS I think that Apple is doing the right thing with QuickTime 6 (“Apple’s Fee Fight,” Mac Beat, May 2002). Apple’s concern is the 2-cent-per-hour royalty for commer- cial content streaming. MPEG LA may not fully understand what it would be doing to its popular protocol with this pay-by-usage royalty. When it comes down to it, the most popular use of cod- ing and decoding streaming video will hinge on cost, not quality. Most compa- nies spend money to stay on the Web. If MPEG LA goes through with the per- hour royalty, it will spend too much money keeping track of royalty charges and lose on revenue in the long run when MPEG-4 declines in popularity. So I stand by Apple, knowing that its inten- tion of coming to terms with licensing is positive for, and could even save, MPEG LA and MPEG-4, Myth Ili? Not for Me. BRIAN HOLBERT 2 I have to disagree with Peter Cohen about Myth II: The Wolf Age (“Myth, Magic, and Mutton,” The Game Room, May 2002). Either he didn’t play the first two games or he’s being nice to the remaining developers still making games for the Mac. Myth III made several mis- takes, the most devastating being the sac- rifice of game play for graphics. I played the first two Myths for more than three years and never cared how good the sprites looked. What made the games great was the ability to control a large force of men and execute maneuvers with them in the way you intended. The game play in Myth III makes doing this sort of thing impossible. © Post comments on our forums (www -macworld,com), or send them by mail to (2) Letters, Macworld, 501 Second Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94107; or electronically to tetters@macworld,com. Include a return address and daytime phone number. Due to the high volume of mail feceived, we can't respond personally to each letter. We reserve the right to edit all letters and posts, All published letters and forum comments become the property of Macworld, wermimacwortd.com | | August 2002 | macworto | 17 | WITH OFFICE UPDATE, MICROSOFT SQUASHES BUGS, EXPANDS SUITE'S BAG OF TRICKS _| Cleaning Up the Office >> The arrival of Office v. X late last |WHAT'S NEXT Apple typically has @ major presence at Seybold San Fran- cisco. The design and publishing year introduced a completely new interface and OS X compatibility for Microsoft’ flagship suite of produc- tivity apps. It also brought along a handful of unexpected and decidedly less welcome features—bugs. With the first significant update to the OS X-native version of Office, Microsoft has called in the exterminator. Microsoft Office v. X for Mac Service Release 1— or SRI, as it’s also known—aims to eradicate the most troublesome the jump to OS X. But the update, which is available as a free down- load from Microsoft's Mactopia Web site (www.microsoft.com/ mac), is more than just a quick fix for bugs—it also introduces a few new features in each of the four Office applications. Word X SRI’s improvements to Word are subtle; if you hadn’t a clue as to what they were, you might notice only that your work was flowing more smoothly. Specifically, SR1 substantially improves the management of mul- tiple Word documents. When you open an additional document, it no longer pops up behind the active document, thereby forcing you to tediously click around before you can begin working. Instead, docu- ments become active when opened. SRI also makes it easier to switch between several open documents— the Windows menu now lists ail open documents, even the ones minimized in OS X’s Dock. Long documents were sometimes tough to navigate in Word X: the scrolling buttons were sluggish, and the scroll bar caused sudden jumps in position. With SR1, even 100- page documents scroll smoothly. If you often use characters that require the option key (such as the ¢ on the end of sauté), you'll be happy to note that you don't have to press the option key combination twice to access them in the updated Word. Mac, Printing Word X documents no longer causes the Print Center's print queue to fail, so you should see fewer print errors. You can also drag: and drop items within tables—even large ones—without fear of crashing. Entourage X For Entourage X users, the most striking thing about SR1 may be what's missing. The update lacks any support for synchronizing a Palm PDA with Entourage X’s personal information management tools. Microsoft says that Palm compatibility is on the way with an upcoming free download—it's expected to be ready July 15. Still, the SR1 update does offer enhancements to Entourage— most of them under the hood. Entourage’s database isn't accessed as often, so your laptop’s hard drive will spin up less often. As a result, battery life should improve. The database is also larger, giving you more room for messages and other items. And the database now informs you when it’s getting full. Improvements to IMAP mail include the ability to synchronize folders for a more accurate indica- tion of what's on the mail server, The Entourage Database Daemon, which launches automatically when you start your Mac and always runs in the background, is not only faster but also stabler. SR1 also fixes a number of pesky Entourage X bugs, such as prob- lems with text encoding—for conference begins and persistent software glitches Most important, you'll spend less example, e-mail in which apostro- September 9. | that appeared when Office made _time restarting Word—and your phes turn into commas. 18 | MACWORLD | August 2002 — _ wevewmacworld.com Excel X You'll also find ral bug fixes for Excel X, including a solution to one particularly frustrat- | ing problem that made it impossible for Excel 98 | users to open some Excel X files. To get around the glitch, you had to copy and paste a workbook’s | contents into a new document. But with SR1, any workbook saved in Excel X will open properly in Excel 98, SR1 also expands some of Excel's features. Excel X let you import information from FileMaker data~ bases; you could even update imported information | to reflect modifications to a database. The only problem was that the database had to be on the same Mac as the Excel workbook, making the fea- ture awkward to use in workgroup situations. SRI solves this problem by letting you access a File- Maker database located on a server. PowerPoint X PowerPoint users will appreciate the much needed boost in performance provided by SRl1—particularly for presentations containing lots of imported graph- ics. Display accuracy is also noticeably better with animated transparent objects. The update fixes the most troubling glitches in PowerPoint X. When you use mirrored monitors for a presentation, slide shows no longer disap- pear from the second monitor or projector when you switch applications on the primary monitor. Also, PowerPoint no longer quits when you wake a laptop after disconnecting from a second moni- tor or projector. The Whole Package As a testament to the tight integration between the various Office v. X programs, several of the changes introduced in SRI cross program bound- aries to affect the entire Office suite. The most significant of these are speed and stability. From improved printing in Word to improved battery life in Entourage, every program has benefited in some way from this power boost. If you use the latest version of Apple's operating system, OS X 10.1.5, you may also notice clearer, more attractive text throughout the Office suite. Office now uses OS X’s Quartz drawing engine to smooth the edges of text. Quartz smoothing has no effect on the quality of printed text; you can turn it off through Preferences, And although you may not have missed him, Microsoft's Office Assistant—the equally beloved and despised animated character that offers sugges- tions and help topics as you work—no longer opens as an empty white box. With SRI, the Assis- tant appears immediately—assuming you don’t turn the feature off—TOM NEGRINO, NAN BARBER, AND TONYA ENGS1 | now encloses the company’s FireWire hard Macs Ahoy: Geek Cruise in Alaska | photography, and other Mac topics alternated with time spent in the scenic LACIE PERIPHERALS FEATURE NEW ENCLOSURE DESIGN | Case Closed | It’s easy to take the cases your peripherals come in for granted. But if you stare at them every day—especially if you’ve got a whole stack of them—their design can become more impor- tant than you might imagine. That's the concept behind the d2, LaCie’s latest case design, which drives, CD-R and DVD-R drives, and other peripherals (503/844-4500, www.lacie.com). The heat-dissipating aluminum and the enclo- sure’s lack of an internal power supply mean that most of these drives don’t need fans, mak- ing them ultraquiet. A blue LED on the front of the enclosure doubles as a power button, and the external power cord locks into place so you don’t risk an accidental blackout when you pull on the wrong plug. But perhaps the most intriguing thing about the d2—which measures | 6.3 by 6.8 by 1.7 inches, for 3.5-inch hard drives, or 10.5 by 6.8 by 1.7 inches, for 5.25-inch drives—is its versatility. You can lay it flat like any other external drive, and a slide-on base allows you to stand it upright. Even more interest- ing is its ability to fit into a standard equipment rack—similar to the way you would mount Apple’s Xserve server—or a single “minirack” (via optional stacking kits)—JASON SNELL SMOOTH SAILING FOR MACMANIA CRUISE; SECOND VOYAGE PLANNED | It was a Mac first—more than 100 Mac users and their families sailing to Alaska and joined by a boatload of Mac experts, including David Pogue, Adam C. Engst, and Bob LeVitus. The weeklong MacMania cruise, a joint production of GeekCruises.com (650/327-3692) and Macworld, offered par- ticipants a unique mixture of Mac tips and tricks and spectacular Alaskan scenery. Sessions on Office v. X, wireless networking, AppleScripr, digital Alaskan ports of Juneau, Skagway, and Ketchikan, as well as on deck watch- ing glaciers in Glacier Bay (pictured here). “This is the best conference I've ever been to, and I have more than 200 of them under my belt,” LeVitus told the assembled crowd on the cruise’s last night. Neil Bauman, captain of GeekCruises, said that the May 2002 MacMania cruise had the largest attendance of any similar outing thus far—topping previous events such as Java Jam and Linux Lunacy. The event was such a success that Bauman has announced that a second MacMania cruise is in the June 1-8, 2003, will also let Mac users mingle ship.—MACWORLD STAFF works. That weeklong = cruise, which is set to oe sail to four Hawaiian es islands from Honolulu as <i ae = with Unix geeks—the Perl Whirl GeekCruise | will take place simulta- neously on the very same www macworld.com MACWORLD ‘August 2002 9 FILEMAKER PRO 6 LOOKS TO SAVE TIME, STEPS WITH NEW FEATURES, XML SUPPORT | New Tricks, Fewer Clicks generation operating bilities, while mainta 6 4 FileMaker The Sharper Image You'll notice a change as soon as you launch FileMaker Pro 6. The appli- | cation has 21 new templates, now | organized by category. A drop-down menu lets you choose between tem- plates filed under Home, Education, and Busine: The new version of FileM: | features batch-import capabi that let you import any folder of files into a FileMaker database with one click. Importing down- | loaded digital images has also b streamlined; version 6 imports everything ina single step, instead of one image ata time. If you're using OS X, you can import images and data, such a aperture, exposure length, and flash setting, directly into a database from your camera, ina single step. Version 6 recognizes cameras sup- ported by O! sno need for any driver software. n irnage Catalog fp5 | Baseball Cards | + x a |e Carton Fisk 6/11/2002 | 0 1H0.9 | Kirby Puckett 6/11/2002 | Nolan Ryan 6/11/2002 | 1600 Qa 1800 | 200 180.0 5.906 4 a | Picture This OS X users can import images directly from digital cameras. FileMaker (800/325-2747, www. for OS X, coming out with the nati tem. Its upcoming rel ining support for OS 8.1 program sports a number of productivi abases in fewer steps. It also includes fully integrated XML support, m and integrate with other application FileMaker users can upgrade for $149.—PHILIP MICHAELS ilema leMa r Pro . FileMaker Pro 6, a A Real Find FileMaker’s find-and-replace tool is now more like a word proces- sing program’s, capable of finding and replacing text throughout a database. You can use the tool to change a specific text string, which is all or just part of a field's con- tents. It can also replace field labels and text that appear in multiple layouts and fields, respectively. FileMaker’s Find tool performs OR and AND finds more easily. The application also lets you choose a sort criterion with one click in a field’s context menu. A new Format Painter tool lets copy text-block and object attri- butes such as color, font, and si and apply them to other objects and text in a matter of cli ec As Easy As X, M, L Version 6' major addition—fully integrated support of Extensible ailable in mid-July, will ship for $299. .com) was among the first major Mac developers to offer support less than two months after Apple shipped its next- FileMaker Pro 6—continues to refine its OS X capa- nd higher. But more important, the updated version of the y boosters that should allow you to emble and maintain sier to exchange d ing it kup Language, or XML—isn’t as immediately visible as digital- image capture and new productiv- ity tools. But it’s just as important when it comes to allowing File- Maker users to share data with colleagues and other applications. ‘The lingua franca of data orga- nization, XML provides the means for communicating exactly how a data set should be org: nized. And thanks to FileMaker 6's new XML capabilities, any program that can accept XML- supported data can share informa- tion with FileMaker. Version 6 is capable of export- ing XML data to any text-based format. It can also import XML data from the Web, corporate data sources, XML-aware applications, and other FileMaker databas ‘That makes it easier to share reports and data, even with users who aren’t running FileMaker. Replace with: “ABC Family Oveetion’ Forward BR | Search acroms———Seareh within: (Replace Al) | match ease @airecords QAI helds Ei Match whole words onty current record Ceuneet eld (a 20 MACWORLD | August 2002 Find Replaced FileMaker's revamped find-and-replace tool has a familiar feel. _Wwwwmacworld.com _ The missing piece of the Mac OS X puzzle Introducing Drive 10 version 1.1. Optimizes and defragments your Mac OS X drives and much more. For Apple's next-generation operating system, you'll need a next- generation disk utility. That's why Micromat has introduced Drive 10, the first and final disk utility for Mac OS X. Problems with your drive? Drive 10 can repair almost any drive problem with one simple click of your mouse, All within Mac OS X's native environment. And with the introduction of version 1.1, you can now optimize and defragment your Mac OS X drive from within Mac OS X. Plus, we've added a whole host of new repair routines that allows you to find and correct drives problems that other utilities would simply abandon. Drive 10 is a world-class diagnostic and repair utility. Using time-tested routines developed exclusively for Mac OS X, Drive 10 offers many tools for checking and repairing any drive on your system. The included Drive 10 CD-ROM will boot your machine to repair hard drives thatwe won't even appear on the desktop. <> DRive : 710 oS — Don’t entrust your Mac OS X drive to ancient and outdated utilities. Protect your data and drive safely with Drive 10. From the makers of TECHTOOL PRO See us at the MacWorld N.Y. Expo., July 17-19, Booth #1346 Wifi Micromat Inc. 800-829-6227 707-566-3831 info@micromat.com www.micromat.com ©2002 Micromat, Inc. All rights reserved. TechTool is a registered trademark of Micromat, Inc. Drive 10 is a trademark of Micromat, Inc. Macintosh and AppleCare are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. Choose 37 at www.macworld.comigetinfo OLYMPUS Is your digital camera giving you the most realistic images? With up to 10x optical zoom, the Olympus CAMEDIA C-700 and The C-700 and C-720 feature C-720 Ultra m cameras create picture quality so real, your The C-720, a powerful optical zoom lens 's come to life. Faraway subjects are brought in close for with 3 and ultra-compact body, And tailed pictures, even in 8x10 prints. Combine this with up to 3 megapixels Auto Connect USB to easily and 8x download and share the most optical zoom. realistic digital images yet. Nothing's impossible. megapixels and an advanced Color Management System for te colors, plus a lens designed specifically for digital ne result is crisper, more realistic images. Choose 7 at wwvwmacworld.comigetinto PRO FILE_| Q&AWITH JURGEN KURZ USB 2.0 MEANS FASTER THROUGHPUT—BUT CAN IT TOP FIREWIRE? _| X FOR XPRESS While a number of critical Mac applications have added Mac OS X compatibility, QuarkXPress is not among them. In an interview with Macworld, Jiirgen Kurz, Quark's vice president of product management, reaffirmed his company’s commitment to producing an OS X-savwy product and explained the decision to release the latest version of the popular page-layout program without OS X support—aNnoREW SHALAT AT A GLANCE ) JORGEN KURZ Vice President of Product Management, Quark MAC: 500MHz Titanium PowerBook G4 SOFTWARE: Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Outlook Express } Was the decision to release QuarkXPress 5.0 without OS X compatibility a conscious one, or was it a production issue? Basically, when we started out doing the final release cycles, we had a significant beta-test program. The OS X platform was not actually ready at that time. It had just started shipping. So we decided to get [version 5.0] out the door. We started building a parallel OS X build, and we did a lot early on. But from a pro- duction perspective, for our customer base, [and because of] some of the significant changes in the [OS X] print engines, we had to get a 5.0 release out and work full speed on a native release. And we feel that with [the upcoming Jaguar update], which has a lot of changes that start making it look like a very professional printing engine, [OS X] is getting ready for prime time, and we're getting ready for prime time, too. When is the OS X version of XPress going to be released? We're going to have something out to the print shops rela- tively soon, If we get the print stuff to work well, the other stuff is obviously just as important from the user and interface perspective. But I can’t make a prediction. So the OS X version of your product won't be taken to the marketplace until it’s bulletproof? We have to do that. You can expect that from us. Again, one of the most important things for Quark is producing quality soft- ware and protecting our customers’ workflows, helping them be productive. We've been in professional publishing for well over a decade, and we'll continue to be absolutely dedicated to the creative community. We're not goofing off into all kinds of dif- ferent directions. Of course, there are new challenges we need to face, media-independent publishing being one of the foremost, and making that a reality from a cost and quality perspective. I think the publishing community will be very fond, as we are, of the product we'll release in OS X and very proud of the quality of QuarkXPress 5.0. MoreInfor = eee www.macworld.com/2002/08/macbeatkurz.html | 1s Quark worried about increased competition from Adobe InDesign? | Find out in Macworld's online interview with Jirgen Kurz. Faster USB? It’s in the Cards Think of USB as a two-lane country road—it can manage a little traffic, but a steady flow results in bumper-to-bumper congestion. In the same way, USB 1.1's 12-Mbps throughput is fine for a mouse and key- board but woefully inadequate for a CD-R or hard drive. Intel hopes to change that with USB 2.0. Rated at 480 Mbps, the new connectivity standard is better able to handle high-speed peripherals than its slower predecessor. But the faster throughput is lost on most Mac users—since Apple has eschewed USB 2.0 in favor of FireWire, your Mac will treat USB 2.0 devices as if they were USB 1.1 peripherals. If you're an OS X user who's eager to enjoy the benefits of USB 2.0, a growing number of vendors offer cards you can install in a PCI slot. In our burning and copying tests, USB 2.0 was markedly faster than USB 1.1. (OS 9 users won't see any benefit, USB 2.0 card or no.) Although FireWire is rated only for 400 Mbps, it still tops or matches USB 2.0 in every one of our tests. The reason is that USB relies on a computer's processor, while the FireWire chip can do more of the pro- cessing itself{—so USB 2.0 is faster on faster computers. Butas the drivers and ATA- to-USB bridge chips improve, we could see USB 2.0 move closer to its theoretical maxi- mums. That will be good news for offices that want to share peripherals between Macs and FireWire-less PCs without feeling like they’re stuck in traffic. KRISTINA DE NIKE | Winning Combination of Speed and Capacity _ Burn 700MB to «Copy 680MB from Duplicate 100MB File External CD-R External Drive ‘on External Drive - use 2.0 a "a FireWire 07 USB 1.1 402 < Better < Better < Better BEST RESULTS IN BOLD. REFERENCE SYSTEMS IN ITALICS. Scores in minutes:seconds. All tests vere run in OS X 10.1.4 on a dual-1GHz Power Mac G4 with an OrangeUS8 2.0 PCI card, from Orange Micro, and 512MB of RAM. We connected a LaCie U&l 40x12%48 CD/RW dive and used the bundled Roxio Toast Lite 5.1.3 for our CO-buming tests, For extemal hard-drive tests, we used an 80GB WiebeTech Desktop GB drive —iacwOR. LAB TESTING BY JAMES GABRATTH Shrink Wrap _ COMPANY PRODUCT Adaptec CONTACT 800/442-7274, wwrwadaptec.com PORTS PRICE 512/302-0012, wwvwefirewiredirect.com 888/999-2836, FirewireDirect F logear Keyspan 7141779-2772, wovworangemicro.com Orange Micro ¢ | www.macworld.com_| August 2002 | macwoRiD | 23 | FIREWIRE CASES LOSE SIZE, ADD PORTABILITY _| | ‘Smallville | The makers of FireWire-drive enclosures are pushing the enve- lope by shrinking it. With users clamoring for portability, the cases for enclosing hard drives are now small enough to fit in the | palm of your hand—and the smallest fits on a key chain. ‘ger than the found in most fee . Some enclosures house 1.8- inch hard drives, such as those found in iPods. No matter what their size, these enclosures can do with- out an AC adapter, as they draw power from the FireWire bus. Some, like FireWire Depot's Cutie, don’t even come with power adapters (though they're available as an option). These enclosures offer portability but suffer a little in performance. The small drives they encase have slower rotation speeds; 2.5-inch drives top out at 5,400 rpm, with the majority running at 4,200 rpm—the bare minimum for editing digital video and a far cry from the 7,200-rpm speeds full- size hard drives offer. To offset this performance hit, these newer enclosures sport Oxford 911 chip sets to improve transfer rates. One of the smallest FireWire enclosures in the 2.5-inch drive line is the 6.75-ounce Cutie. Also | available for USB 2.0, it accepts only 9.5mm-thick drives, giving ita maximum capacity of 40GB with an IBM Travelstar 40GN or a Toshiba Super Slimline 40GB drive. FirewireDirect’s Spark IT EmPowered Enclosure is a 9.5mm enclosure that adds an integrated Lilon battery for portable use | without an AC outlet—important for laptops that lack a powered FireWire bus, such as Wall Street and Bronze PowerBooks. Other enclosures can accept both 9.5mm- and 12mm-thick drives, upping capacity to 60GB. Add a hard drive to one of these, and you truly cn take your | DV show on the road.—ANTON LINECKER | The FireWire Depot Cutie PRODUCT et he AUGUST 2002) AT’ “. Messenger Service As Microsoft (800/426-9400, www.microsoft.com) releases an update to MSN Messenger, it’s getting so that you need a score- card to identify the players in the increasingly crowded market for instant-messaging applications. More than half a dozen such pro- grams run in OS X—and now Apple is about to leap into the fray. COMPANY. FireWire Depot PRICE CONTACT 707/251-9228, www. fwdepot com 512/302-0012, wwwfirewiredirect.com FirewireDirect Other World Computing "800/275-4576, vwveotherworldcomputing.com 714/634-1583, wwaw.transintl.com 316/744-8722, Transintl.com WiebeTech | __wawwwiebetech.com iChat, Apples spin on AOL's instant-messaging client, is sched- uled to appear in a future OS X update. Microsoft hopes that MSN Messenger 3.0—which runs only in OS X—will stand out from the crowd, It includes improve- ments to the communication and contact-management features, as well as an overhauled interface. On the communications front, MSN Messenger adds file-transfer capabilities, Users will be able to transfer digital photos, MP3 files, and other documents to anyone on their Buddy Lists. Since file transferring is interoperable, Mac users will be able to send files to anyone using the Windows ver- sion of Messenger. The updated Messenger lets users organize their contacts into groups, matching a feature avail- able in AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo Messenger, Version 3.0 also lets users import and export their contact lists, The most visible change in MSN Messenger 3.0 is the appli- cation's new interface. The pro- gram has adopted OS X's look- and-feel, even using the OS's Quartz drawing engine to improve the readability of on- screen text. A new contextual menu lets you sign out of Mes- senger, change your status, transfer files, and view your con- tact list directly from the Dock. The toolbar and icons are now dynamically resizable, And the latest version adds a drop-down list of emoticons for easy refer- @NCe.—PHILIP MICHAELS: Displays Four displays from View Sonic (B00/888-8583, wwewiewsonic.com): The asf ($345) isa 19-inch CCRT monitor with a maximum resolution of 1,920 by 1,440 pixels. The P75f+ ($235) isa 17-inch CRT display with a 1,792-by-1,344- pixel resolution, The 15-inch VE510+ ($499) is an LCD monitor with a 1,024-by-768 opti- mum resolution, 300 nits of brightness, and a 450:1 contrast ratio. The VXS00+ ($539) is also a 15-inch LCD monitor, with an optimum resolution of 1,024 by 768, 330 nits of bright- ness, and a $50:1 contrast rat Printers ‘Two color printer lines from Xerox (800 835-6100, wwwwxerox.com): The Phaser 8200 solid-ink colo printer uses single-pass technology to deposit all colors on the paper in one pass. It comes in four models that vary in resolution, network connectivity, paper input capability, and other features: the 8200/8 ($1,499), 8200/N (51,899), 8200/0P ($2,199), and 8200/Dx ($3,499). The Phaser 6200 color laser printer also uses single-pass technology and comes in four models: the 6200/8 ($1,999), 6200/N ($2,399), 6200/DP. ( and 6200/DX ($3,999). Scanners ‘network-capable scanner from Microtek (810/687-5940, wwwwumicrotek.com): The ‘ScanMaker 6700 ($400) offers 48-bit color depth and a 4,800-by-2,400-dpi optical reso lution, it has FireWire and USB connections. = Kaydara (888/842-6842, wawwekaydara.com): The 3-D-animation software, Hit known as FilmBox Animation, has a redesigned drag-and-drop interface, auto- matic character rigging, lip-sync and facial- 24 | MACWORLD | August 2002 | | | APC introduces the best protection available for your Mac 10 million computer users can’t be wrong about APC power protection Don't let a lightning storm destroy your Mac system in the blink of an eye. Your hard drive, modem and RAM are all at risk, not to mention peripherals like your zip drive, scanner, monitor and printer. Rely on an APC Back-UPS Pro” to save your invest- ments from high voltage surges. APC power protection also provides clean, continuous power that lets you function without frustrating interrup- tions, unlike cheap power strips that don’t prevent any of the power problems that can cause keyboard lock- ups, systems crashes, and lost Internet connections. And if your system is ever damaged by a surge, even lightning, APC’s Lifetime Equipment Protection Policy* will pay up to $25,000 to replace your equipment. * (see policy for details) Discover why 10,000,000 customers trust in APC’s Legendary Reliability” and protect your Mac system with an APC power protection unit today. APC Back-UPS Pro” 500 USB BPS5OOCLR PS Pro 500 USB provides: * Emergency battery power for contin- * iMac-colored, configurable speaker uous uptime to help save your data guards to match your computing through brief power outages environment Auto-shutdown software that saves Mac your files and data, even when you're APC Back-UPS Pro® 500: “APCs latest plugs into a USB port, making awey'fram your computer it completely painless to protect your PC © Audi isi from powar snafus and electrical spikes.” Audible and visible alarms alert you a-106 Blader ; : e to power events as they occur = ’ $25,000 Equipment Protection guarantee ‘| * 2 year comprehensive warranty rvs 8 Legendary Reliability ‘a Enter to win a clear APC Back-UPS Pro’500 for your Mac! Enter to win APC’s legendary power protection for your Mac, 2 $179.99 value! All entrants will also receive an “Are You at Risk” Kit. (See APC’s Website for complete promotion details) Enter now: Visit http://promo.apc.com Key Code f740y - Call 888-289-APCC x4103 - Fax 401-788-2797 LUSa © PowerFax: GC0I347-FAXX « E-ral: osupport@apce com © 132 Fargrounds Ra, Wast Kingston, Rl 02892 USA ©2002 Amorean Power Conversion. All Tradamaths ate the propery of the ovimars. APC Choose 73 at wawmmacworld.comigetinfo | Wayne Newton. | array of fruity flavors. {PRODUCT WATCHT AUGUST 2002 )— A Quick Look at the World of Tech ‘1. Macromedia and Adobe win patent-infringement lawsuits against one another. The separate rul- ings will certainly prove to be ‘an obstacle in the upcoming releases of Adobe FireFlash and Macromedia FotoShoppe. 2. Apple rolls out the Xserve, a rack-mounted server for the enterprise market. Next up: the iServ, consumer friendly rack- ‘mounted server available in an 3. Apple is slated to open 2 retail outlet in Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Apple Store will feature the latest hardware and software, tech support from helpful Mac Geniuses, a two-drink minimum, and two nightly performances by A. Steve Jobs kicks off Macworld Conference & Expo New York with a keynote address. in lieu of product announcements, the Apple CEO spends his entire two-hour speech reenacting his favorite scenes from the latest Star Wars movie. animation tools, and real-time display. Avail- able in August, it runs in OS X ($3,495). Development Software ports MathML 2.0 and the DXF and STL 3-0 file formas (5295; vad $9) Utility Software RealBasic 4.5, from Real Software (512/ 328-7325, www.realsoftware.com): The application-development tool adds vector graphics suppor, lighting improvements, and collision detection for the 3-D engine, as well as an enhanced database engine, including MySQL suppor. (Pricing varies BoxtT, from SysteMacs (650/968-0549, ‘wwwwisystemacs.com): The program allows network administrators to install system software and applications on multiple Macs from a remote computer by creating a disk image of a Mac and deploying it across a network. BoxiT also offers backup and restore functionality (Prices vary, starting at $5,500 for a single computer) Productivity Software Eudora 5.1.1, from Qualcomm (800/ 238-3672, wwrw.eudora.com): The e-mail client software adds OS X compatibility, a Secure Sockets Layer, and enhancements to the Mood Watch ($40; upgrade, free if you've bought Eudora in the past year, $30 otherwise; sponsored and light ver- sions, free). Meeting Maker 7.1, from Meeting Maker (781/487-3538, www.meetingmaker,com): The latest version of the calendaring and group scheduling system adds OS X com- patibility and Palm Sync conduits ($95 per seat; uparade, check with company). Science/Engineering Software CalculationCenter 2, from Wolfram. Research (800/965-3726, www.wolfram com): The calculation application adds new statistics capabilities and enhanced error-correction technology. It also sup- Spring Cleaning 5.0, from Aladdin Sys- tems (800/732-8881, wwwaladdinsys com): The uninstaller utility, which runs (on 0S 8.6 and higher, including OS X, adds drag-and-drop capabilities, customizable searches, and an enhanced Cookie Editor, The 0S X version features a System menu, QuickCompare optimization, and Root ‘Access allowances ($50; upgrade, $30). ‘Workstrip X, from SoftChaos (44 (0 0775, vwwwesoftchaos.com): The productivity utility adds OS X compatibility to offer an alternative to 05 X's Dock. The utility also retums Trash tothe desktop ($39). ‘wwimacromedia.com) Court Ruling . @ Alegal victory by Macro- a ‘media (800/470-7211, in a patent-infringement ‘countersuit against Adobe (800/833-6687, wwwadobe.com): Macromedia claims that ‘Adobe infinged on patents fora draw-based editor for Web pages and a hierarchical structure editor for Web sites. It was awarded $49 million. Macromedia's victory follows 3 ‘court ruling in favor of Adobe that found that ‘Macromedia had violated two of its patents (see “Product Watch,” Mac Beat, July 2002). Mac OS X Updates jowered by => i ae ‘Aladdin iClean 5.0 Too! for deleting cookies and caching files Boris Calligraphy X 1.1 Final Cut Pro plug-in that controls fonts CADintosh X 4.2 2.0 CAD rogram for techicaland architec wins ‘Canon $520 1.3 Canon $520 printer driver i} Chimera 0.2.8 Mle browser based on Fila Connectix Virtual PC 5.0.3 Update for Windows-emulation program Dantz Retrospect VXA driver update 2.6 Updater Retospect 5 ses with XA dives DropSite Courier 2.0 | Acaend Wet ay Font Explorer 1.0 X Font browser that finds specific characters in a font Griffin iMate X 1.5.1 Adopter commecsADB devices to USB ports iBot 1.0.1b3 FireWire desktop video-camera driver Investor/RT 5.6.3 Real-time charting and analysis tools for stocks | Apple Moves A QuickTime 6 preview, from Apple (800/ 692-7753, wwweapple.com): Along with the free multimedia player, Apple released a preview of QuickTime Broadcaster, which encodes content in MPEG-4 for live Web streaming. Apple's eMac desktop sys~ tem, formerly sold only to education cus- ‘tomers, is now available to consumers for $1,099.—cownat sy rrr micnaes PAINT COVERS LAPTOP SCRATCHES _| Brush Up Your TiBook Like all Titanium PowerBook G4 owners, Ian Sanderson appreciates the sleek design and appearance of Apple's high-end laptop. What he’s not so keen on is how easily nicks and scratches can cause the PowerBook’s pristine paint to flake off. After one too many chips appeared on his laptop's outer bezel, Sanderson spent a week mix- ing enamel paints until he found a match for the Power- | Book's distinctive shade of light silver. “Then I thought, ‘Why not make a business of it?” says Sanderson, the 19-year-old Southern Californian who started TiPaint.com. For 26 | MACWORLD _ August 2002 $13, you get a vial containing enough paint to cover about a third of the laptop's bezel, as well as an applicator—a wooden toothpick. It’s a low-tech approach, Sanderson con- cedes, but the toothpick’s small, sharp point dabs on enough paint to cover scratches without causing unsightly splotches. If blemishes have found their way onto your Power- Book’s casing, don’t fre-—TiPaint also sells Titanium-colored touch-up paint for $13. A combo pack including both shades is available for $20. Sanderson is no art critic, but he knows what he likes. “You have to look pretty close to tell that it’s patched,” he says. “It’s certainly better than seeing the black flecks underneath the paint.”—PHILIP MICHAELS iTunes Remote 1.5.1 | Controls iTunes from any application and across networks Linksys wireless cable/DSL 4 port router 1.42.7 BEFW11S4 firmware MegaPEG QT 1.5.9 Plug-in exports QuickTime movies to MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 | | | Moo 1.0 Optimizes machines and helps load apps faster —_ MP3 Rage 5.0 MP3 1D3 tag editor, player, and cataloger Netscape X 7.0pr1 Preview release of Web bro Nikon Scan X 3.1.3 Coolscan/ts film scanner driver ‘Nisus Email 1. ‘Adds 0S X compatibility ‘OmniWeb 4.1b7 es browser | Procreate KnockOut 2.0 update ‘Addresses issues with Photoshop 7 compatibility | Snapz Pro X 1.0.3 Bug fix for screen-capture tool Time Cache X 5.0.1 Time and expense project tracking app Vindigo x 2.0 | Mac conduit for Palm OS city guide | WueScan 7.5.30 Scanner software for flatbed and film scanners | For these and other current updates, visit: www.macworld.com/subjectlupdates i |_wwnamacworid.com | www-:shop.kingston.com/mac fast secure | value | 100% compatible | lifetime warranty EQ TUE on A sf ~ Give Your Mac Super Powers. S % S ? 3 : ¥ Add up to 512MB of muscle with a single module! NEXT DAY For super pricing and more information on our FREE shipping offer, visit SHIPPING* www.shop.kingston.com/mac. RB Kingston OLOGY REVIEW | Reviews you can trust: Macworld rates only final shipping products, not prototypes. ‘What we review is is what you can actually buy, ADOBE PHOTOSHOP 7 Image Editor Emerges for Mac OS X, Provides Handy New Features for Every User BY BRUCE FRASER AND BEN LONG Adobe Photoshop is now 12 years old—in software years, that makes it at least an octoge~ narian. It has a depth and matu- rity that few other applications can match, and its latest itera | tion, Photoshop 7, not only offers Mac OS X support but also makes the program even more helpful for OS 9 and OS X users alike. Digital photog phers and fine artists wil be pleased with Photoshop 7's orga- nizing and painting features, and longtime Photoshop users will find this upgrade essential. The OS X Question Photoshop 7's most significant attribute is that it runs natively in | OS X, Given this, you may guess that the interface has changed greatly, but it hasn’t—you'll find the familiar palettes, toolbar, menus, and shortcuts. However, a welcome addition in Photoshop. 7 is the ability to rename a layer or channel simply by clicking on its name in its respective palette and then typing—much easier than the option-double-click routine required in previous ver- sions. And even though it may take you a while to get used to looking for the Preferences option in the Photoshop applica- tion menu rather than in the Edit menu, Photoshop 7 looks and feels like the Photoshop you've come to know and love. Photoshop 7 runs almost as fast under OS X as it does under OS 9, and in our quantitative tests, we found that actual speed differences were slight. If you're in a high-volume production sit- uation where you're running automated batch operations, you may be better off sticking with OS 9, to reap the accumulated speed benefits. Bur if you're working interactively and using Fine Art Photoshop 7's painting engine provides very fine contral over brush shape, texture, color, and many other characteristics. A preview based on your selec. tions appears at the bottom of the Brushes palette so you know what to expect. WORLD August 2002 any Mac upward of a 933MHz or dual-500MHz Power Mac G4, the speed difference will likely be tri We performed tan= Blur, rotating, and re ing ona 100MB image, and the differ- ence in elapsed time between OS 9 and OS X was generally only a couple of seconds. Of course, there are other rea- sons, besides speed, to choose OS X; among them are improved system stability and the ability to run other applications concur- rently with almost no negative impact on performance. When we compared Photo- shop 7 with Photoshop 6.0.1, both running in OS 9, we found that version 7 runs as fast as, and in some cases faster than, its predecessor. Mode changes, for example, are dramatically faster in Photoshop 7, mainly because they have been optimized for AltiVec acceleration, which was left out of Photoshop 6. But for the most part, when running in OS 9, Photoshop 7 doesn’t offer any major speed advantages over Photoshop 6. Photoshop Productivity Even given negligible speed dif- ferences, you can still work faster in Photoshop 7 than you could in Photoshop 6, especially using two new features in Photoshop 7 that have an enormous positive impact on productivity: Work- spa ind Tool Presets. Unless you're lucky enough to have a dual-monitor setup, you probably spend a good deal of time rearranging palettes in Photoshop. The new Workspace feature helps reduce the amount of time wasted on this activity; it uu name and save different arrangements of palettes, includ- ing the current configuration of the Info palette. Saved worl spaces appear on the Workspa submenu of the Window menu, so you can recall them quickly and easily. For example, when you're working on text layers, you usually need access to the Char- acter and Paragraph palettes, but the rest of the time those palettes just take up valuable screen real estate, But if you save a work- space, you can bring up the Char- acter and Paragraph palettes while hiding, say, the Actions and History palettes with a single menu command, Equally valuable is the new Tool Presets palette, which lets you name and save settings for any tool and then recall the set- tings with a single click. For example, you can make presets for the Crop tool that crop an image to 4 by 5 inches or 8 by 10 inches at 360 pixels per inch for ink-jet prints, and 4 by 5 inches or 8 by 10 inches at 266 pixels per inch for offset printing. This is much faster than typing num- bers into the Options bar every time you use the Crop tool. Find What You Need Photoshop 7 also offers a new feature, the File Browser, that lets you find and organize your files much better than OS X°s limiting Open dialog box. Photoshop's new File Browser means that you may never have to visit the Open log box again (see “Browse with Abandon”). Like digital-asset_ managers Canto Cumulus and Exte: Portfolio, the File Browser shows you your volumes, fold- ers, and subfolders, and it dis- plays previews of the ima contained therein. You can one or more thumbnail previews and then double-click to open the actual images. But there's more to the File Browser. You can move files by dragging them to a different folder or volume in the hierar- chical-folder panel at the left of the Browser window, delete them by selecting them and pressing the delete key (which _|_warwmacwort "28 Image-editing application = ‘Adobe Photoshop 7 32 DVD-authoring software DvD Studio Pro 1.5 32. Database-oriented middleware {asso Professional 5 34 PIM software Now Up-to-Date & Contact 4.2 36 Portable USB audio workstation Digidesign Mbox 38 Sequencing software We 15 OUTSTANDING: $88%$ VERY GOOD: 8$$% GOOD: $8 FLAWED: $% UNACCEPTABLE: 8 6.3-megapixel SLR Genon £05 060 39 LCD graphics tablet Wacom Cinig 185% 40 Reviews in Brief ‘Apple 1068 iod, Boswell 2.0, lamega HOD Portable Hard Drive, and iPhoto 1.1.1 42 Email client Masmith 1.5 44 Powersaving devices NickOt 5, Powertey Pro USB 650 — ~ co Hit | conte dy Cows Browse with Abandon The new File Browser not only lets you see your images and open them by double-clicking, but also lets you move, delete, organize, and rename them, At the lower left is the metadata for the currently selected image. moves them to the Trash), or rename them by clicking on the file name and typing a new name. For those pesky digital-camera files with obscure default names, you can use the File Browsers Batch Rename feature to change the names “DCS00710.TIF” through “DCS00950.TIF” to something more descriptive, such as “Dahlias 001” through “Dablias 024." The File Browser also lets you mark images for rotation, and Photoshop will apply that rota- tion when you open the image. You can sort images by file name, resolution, width, height, file size, copyright information, color profile, or creation and modification dates, You can also rank them from A to E, either by selecting a single image and typ- ing the desired ranking in the Rank field or by selecting one or more images and choosing the desired ranking from the con- text-sensitive menu. This can be convenient if you want to see RATING: 6990) PROS: Healing brush, File Browser, and Auto Color are huge time-savers; powerful new painting engine; numer- us small interface improvements. CONS: Lack of text import makes Check Spelling command less useful; changes to TIFF and PSD support may ‘ause confusion, PRICE: $609; upgrade from previous versions, $149 OS COMPATIBILITY: Mac 0S 9, MacOSX COMPANY: Adobe Systems, www.adobe.com, 800/833-6687 46 Network-management tool 49° Pen scanner warwmacworld.com | 47 Keller on Cameras | This month, Jeff weighs in on three unique 2-megapixel point-and-shoot cameras: the Fuji FinePix 2800 Zoom, the Minolta Dimage X, and the Nikon Coolpix 2500. Apple Remote Desktop IRSFen CChart-drawing application OnniGrafie 2.0 | The Game Room Return to Castle Wolfensten, Geneforge, oop & Dread in The ease on Bing Bong ‘sand, Jn Zeal, Batechair | | As with previous versions of Photoshop, Adobe has chosen to place many of its Web-authoring features in ImageReady, a separate, bundled applica- tion that has also been upgraded for this release. (Users of the last release might be a bit surprised to see that ImageReady is now at version 7. Don’t worry—you didn’t miss out on versions 4, 5, and 6. Adobe has simply opted to match ImageReady's version number to Photoshop's.) Because ImageReady includes all of the same exporting and Save For Web features as Photoshop, the new version has been upgraded with all of Photoshop 7’s image-exporting enhancements (see "Photoshop on the Web”). Unfortunately, though, it lacks a notable new feature introduced in Photoshop 7: implementing the File Browser in ImageReady, too, would have made sense. The biggest addition to ImageReady 7 is the improved Rollovers palette, which works in concert with the Layers palette to create JavaScript rollovers and is now much easier to navigate. You can use the Rollovers palette to automatically slice your document and create rollover states for each slice. Say, for example, that you have a Web page with a tabbed menu, and as you roll over each tab, you want a graphic on another part of the page to change. In Photoshop, you create each tab and each separate graphic on its own layer, Then, using ImageReady, select each tab layer and click on the Create Layer-Based Rollover button in the Rollovers palette, ImageReady will | create a slice for each layer and allow you to create a separate state for every | user action—mousing over, down, up, and so on. Then, to see each state, you can use the helpful, expandable drop-down menus. As in ImageReady 3, you can click on a state in the Rollovers palette and then configure your Layers palette to define the settings for that state. Adobe has done a good job with the Rollovers palette, but it can take a while to remember that the Rollovers palette affects the state of your Layers palette. If you realize that the opacity on several of your layers has suddenly changed, it might be that you've clicked your document over to a different rollover state. It would be nice if Adobe could devise some kind of visual cue to remind the user that the Layers and Rollovers palettes are tied together. ImageReady 7 also provides support for data-driven graphics, using the same approach that was introduced in Illustrator 10 (#¢88; Reviews, March 2002). Using the Layers palette, you can configure graphic elements as variables and then replace those elements with data grabbed from an ODBC-compliant server. As with previous versions, Adobe has engineered good integration between Photoshop and ImageReady. In Photoshop, you can simply click on the Jump To ImageReady button at the bottom of the main tool palette to open your document in ImageReady, The file stays open in Photoshop, and any changes that you make in ImageReady are automatically reflected in Photoshop. Adobe's division of labor among separate applications may seem a little bulky when compared with a product such as Macromedia Fireworks, which offers vector and bitmapped painting, as well as animation and JavaScript- authoring tools, However, when you factor in Photoshop's superior interface and its raw image-processing power, Adobe's approach, though much more | expensive, makes sense, and ImageReady 7 is a valuable upgrade for users | who regularly use Photoshop for Web development. ‘August 2002 MACWORLD | 29 | —s Auto Color Me Beautiful Auto Color provides a quick but precise means of setting basic tone and color The initial image (lft) would require considerable work with levels and individual channel curves before you saw anything close to reasonable tone and colar. Using its default settings, Auto Color improves the image (center), but the contrast is stil too high, and the color balance is too cold. With three very quick tweaks, we set highlight clipping to 0.01 percent, set shadow clipping to 0.00 percent (shadows were already dark enough), and adjusted the midtone target color until the clouds appeared neutral, which required increasing the red and decreasing the blue (right) The image updates in realtime as you change the settings, and you can check the numbers on the Info palette while the various dialog boxes are open. only your best or favorite images, to which you might assign an “A” rank, for example. ‘The File Browser doesn’t let you perform the kinds of sophisti- cated searches you can perform in a dedicated digital-asset man- ager, but it has all the features most users are likely to need. Last but not least, the File Browser displays metadata—lit- erally, data about data—that’s embedded in the images, includ- ing Photoshop's File Info, EXIF (Exchangeable Image Format) data embedded by many digital cameras, and information that Photoshop extracts, such as file format, resolution, width and height, color mode, bit depth, and color profile, We encountered only one problem when using the File Browsers metadata support. We've yet to see a camera that captures sRGB, but many cam- eras that embed EXIF metadata incorrectly tag photos as sRGB. Photoshop honors this tag and opens the image as sRGB. If the camera software also embeds an ICC profile, Photoshop honors the profile over the EXIF tag, but What about My Pl in the case of at least one camera, the Nikon D1X, it embeds the correct profile in TIFF files but fails to do so in JPEG files. As a result, even if you've set the cam- era's software to convert images to Adobe RGB, if you save them as JPEG files, they'll get the sRGB tag. This isn't Photoshop's fault—it' a problem for the cam- era vendors to solve—but it’s something to watch for. Heal It, Patch It Retouching an imag ting out defects such scratches, or digital-camera arti- facts, or removing moles, scars, and wrinkles—has always been a tedious process. With the Clone Stamp tool, which remains in Photoshop 7, it’s easy to move pixels from another area to cover a blemish, but it’s also easy to produce an unnatural-looking result when the textures don’t match, particularly around the edge of the repair. One hard-won solution is to be very careful with your selection of source points, brush hardness, opacity, and use of the blending mode, but the new Healing brush produces Third-party plug-ins that work with Photoshop 6 should also work with Photoshop 7 when it’s running in OS 9 or in OS X's Classic mode, But when you run Photoshop 7 in OS X, you need plug-ins that have been updated specifically for OS X—non-native plug-ins won't even appear in the menus. A good number of OS X-native plug-ins are already available, including Alien Skin Software's EyeCandy 4000 (###81; Reviews, February 2001) and Auto FX Software's DreamSuite (6666; Reviews, March 2002), and plenty more are on the way. But if your work relies on a particular plug-in that hasn't yet been updated, you'll need to stick with running Photoshop in OS 9 for a little longer. 30 seamless repairs with a minimum of fuss in much less time. ‘The Healing brush works by first making a Clone Stamp tool edit and then taking the result of that edit and blending it seam- lessly into the surrounding tex- ture in a way that’s simply impossible to replicate using the older tools. Using hard brushes seems to work somewhat better than using soft ones, but you can be much more casual about selecting the source point when you're using the Healing brush than you ever could with the Clone Stamp tool. For quick fixes on larger areas, Photoshop 7 offers the Patch tool, which shares a slot in the ‘Tool palette with the Healing brush, ‘To use it, just select the area you want to correct, choose the Patch tool, drag the selection to an area that has the approxi- mate color and texture you want in the repair, and presto, you're done. If you spend a lot of time doing retouching work, the Healing brush and Patch tools alone are worth the price of the upgrade. (For more on the Heal- ing brush, see “The Wait Is Auto Color In the past, Photoshop's various autocorrections have not been very accurate or finely controlled, but the new Auto Color option has real potential for making ini- tial corrections for tone and color, We say potential because if you use it with its default settings, you'll likely wind up with rather harsh, contrasty results (see “Auto Color Me Beautiful”), The beauty of Auto Color is that you an tweak the settings interac- tively and very quickly obtain good tone and color balance without fiddling with individual channels’ levels and curves (for tips, see “Master Photoshop 7,” elsewhere in this issue). Just Like the Real Thing Removing the Brushes palette was one of the few unpopular moves Adobe made with Photo- shop 6. Many users clamored to get it back, and the Photoshop team reinstated it as a much- enhanced feature. A boon for fine artists, the new painting engine doesn't provide the wealth of natural-media brushes offered by Procreate’s Painter 7 (9694; Reviews, December 2001), but it offers most of the tools you'd need to build those brushes, and it comes with a healthy collection of presets for various brush types both natural and unnatural. ‘The variety of brush options may be bewildering at first, but as you adjust each brush stroke, the preview area at the bottom of the lette shows you the result (see Graphics-tabler support has also been beefed up: Photoshop's brushes now respond not only to stylus pres- sure but also, with suitably equipped styluses, to tilt and thumbwheel control, each of which you can set to control a large variety of brush parameters. The More Things Change .. . Photoshop 7° lack of new color- management features could be wowrezmacworld.com called a feature in itself. Photo- shop 5 and 6 both introduced sweeping changes in the way the application handled color, and the general consensus was that Photoshop 6 got color manage- ment right, so Photoshop 7 leaves well enough alone. The one major fix is largely invisible to the user—the Adobe Color Engine has been revamped to address a problematic situation that occurred with some CMYK pro- files, where using dithering on 8- bit-per-channel images resulted ina “scum dot” (1 percent ink in one or more channels) instead of paper white. Photoshop on the Web ‘Though Photoshop’ new tools and interface improvements will ease the graphics chores of all Photoshop users, version 7 builds on Photoshop 6's export facilities for Web-graphics creation. The first of these improve- ments is the ability to define one or more colors in a GIF or PNG- 8 graphic as transparent. In the Save For Web dialog box, you can now tag any color as transparent simply by clicking on its color swatch and then clicking on the new Transparency button. This is a very simple mechanism that allows you to make any color transparent (and later remove that transparency) without affect- ing the colors in your original file. GIF files don’t support partial transparency, but Adobe has come up with a clever work- around that lets you create the effect of partial transparency. If you select Transparency Dither in the Save For Web dialog box, Photoshop will render transpar- ent colors in your graphic as a dithered pattern of color and transparent pixels. If you select a matte color—say, the back- ground color of your target Web page—Photoshop will mix some of that color into the dither pat- tern to better blend your graphic into the background. Though this is a clever idea, the chunky, bitmapped-looking results leave a lot to be desired. Photoshop 7 retains its prede- cessor’s facility for remapping color values when exporting a GIF image, but it improves on Fu File ats If you're used to thinking of PSD files as including layers and TIFF files as flattened, Photoshop 7’s changes to the these file formats could cause you grief. In Photoshop 6, Adobe introduced the ability to save layers and vector data in TIFF files, but it hid the options behind a Prefer- ences setting. In Photoshop 7, all the TIFF options are enabled by default, so anything you can save in a PSD file—layers, vectors, spot channels, alpha channels, transparency, and annotations—you can save in a TIFF. You can also choose several different compression options for a TIFF, including LZW, ZIP, and JPEG. But just because you can save all those elements in a TIFF doesn’t mean that applications other than Photo- shop can understand them. Layers included in TIFFs don't seem to present a problem, because other applications ignore the layers and read the flattened composite that is always saved in a TIFF. But vector data will get rasterized, and we don’t know of any application other than Photo- shop that understands ZIP- or JPEG-compressed TIFFs, or spot colors in TIFFs. You need to be aware of the capabili- ties of the application that will next open the file, and plan accordingly. The reason for the changes is commendable—Adobe's goal is a single-file workflow, where one file will contain all the Photoshop information in editable form, yet can be placed in page-layout or illustration applications, so you don't have to save both a flat file and a layered one. But it’s going to take a while for other applications to rev up their TIFF support. Photoshop 7 also makes it quite difficult to save PSD files without including a flattened composite, so if your image is just a background with adjustment layers, adding the flattened composite doubles the file size. There are two reasons that Adobe tries to force you to save a composite in a PSD. One is to let appli- cations that claim to read Photoshop files (such as InDesign) interpret the image correctly, because they actually read only the flattened composite. The other is to guard against future changes in Photoshop's layer-blending logic—the idea is to make sure that future versions of Photoshop can retrieve the correct appearance from the composite. If neither of these applies to you, it's perfectly safe to turn off the Always Maximize Compatibility For Photoshop (PSD) Files option (in the File Handling section of the Preferences dialog box) and ignore the scary warning that Photo- shop insists on showing you every time you save a PSD. without a composite, these features by letting you automatically favor the colors of text layers or vector graphics lay- ers. For example, if you tell Photoshop to weight its color reduction in favor of any text lay- ers, then the colors of those lay- ers will be more accurate. For ensuring color fidelity in logos and other corporate imagery, this is a great feature. You can also choose to favor a particular channel, such as an alpha channel. For example, if you want to prioritize the colors of a specific element in your image, you can create an alpha- channel mask of that area and tell Photoshop to weight its color reduction in favor of the colors within that mask. Before, doing these sorts of optimiza- tions required maniacal adjust- ment of individual colors within a graphic’s palette. Photoshop 6 added some handy Web features that let designers do many basic Web- authoring tasks—slicing, assign- ing URLs, naming files, and so ‘on—within Photoshop, while a graphic was being created. Photoshop 7 enhancements, along with the upgraded Image- Ready (see “ImageReady 7”), provide a practical set of Web tools. But these features are no replacement for a full-fledged Web-authoring tool. They pro- vide exactly the utilities you need to create Web-ready images. Sundry Improvements Adobe threw in a few other minor features to improve the already efficient workflow. Photoshop 7 is scriptable, using either Apple- Script or, for cross-platform applications, JavaScript. Scripting support is relevant even to users whose eyes glaze over at the mere mention of scripts or macros— besides creating your own scripts, you can expect to see plenty of useful scripts developed by the scripting-inclined among us. The new Check Spelling command does a credible job of checking spelling on words you type in Photoshop 7. The Find And Replace Text feature also performs as claimed, but we'd find both features a lot more useful if Photoshop let us import text through a better mechanism than copy and paste. Other enhancements include significant. reworking of the Liquify and Picture Package features, support for PDF secu- rity, a new PatternMaker plug-in, and support for Adobe's XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform) schema, which may one day do for workflow automation what PostScript did for page layout. Documentation and Support Photoshop 7 comes with a printed manual and HTML- based online help. The printed manual is considerably better than the one that accompanied Photoshop 6, with improved ref- erence information. The online help has more detailed informa- tion, but it’s not very deep. Free (but not toll-free) tele- phone technical support is avail- able for 90 days from the date of your first call, for new pur- chases (30 days for upgrades). After that, you pay for support (through Adobe, from selected third-party help providers)—you pay a $25 fee, but only after the issue is resolved to your satisfac- tion. Adobe's Web site also offers a searchable help database, and a wonderful resource in the form of the User-to-User forum. Macworld’s Buying Advice Photoshop 7 is quite simply the best version of Photoshop ever. With the File Browser, the Heal- ing brush, and the Painting Engine, Photoshop 7 provides something new and useful for just about every user, and the $149 upgrade price is less than the cost of many third-party plug-ins. If you use Photoshop more than a few hours a we you must have Photoshop 7. worn macworld.com | | August 2002 | MacWoRLD | 31 | EWS DVD STUDIO PRO 1.5 DVD-Authoring Program Adds OS X Compatibility and Final Cut Pro 3 Integration BY JIM HEID While Apple's entry-level iDVD (#463; Reviews, March 2002) is good for publishing movies and photographs on DVDs, it's not a professional authoring program; Apple's DVD Studio Pro picks up where iDVD leaves off. What DVD Studio Pro lacks in iDVD’ drag-and-drop simplicity Studio Pro will import them when you import your video. This will eliminate hours of tedium for developers who use markers extensively, and it will provide more control than DVD Studio Pro alone. You can also import compres- sion markers created in Final Cut Pro 3. These give you increased command Pro Authoring Arrowed lines indicate relationships between menu items and other assets. Also visible: the menu editor, which lets you create buttons. it makes up for with full support for all of the DVD-Video specifi- cation’ capabilities. DVD Studio Pro lets video pros create Holly- wood-quality DVDs, complete with alternate audio. tracks, menus in multiple languages, par- allel video angles, subtitles, Web links, and anything else DVD- Video can do. Though Apple’s lates DVD Studio Pro 1.5, major upgrade, it does add time- saving integration with Final Cut Pro 3.0.2 and support for Mac OS X, so you no longer have to boot into OS 9 to do your authoring. However, the pro- gram still has some user-interface flaws and poor documentation. Easier Markers and More DVD Studio Pro 1.5's most exciting new features are its enhanced ties to Final Cut Pro 3. You can create chapter mark- ers in Final Cut Pro, and DVD 32 | MACWORLO August 2002 over how Appl MPEG-2_ compre sor crunches a video stream; careful appli- cation of these mark- ers can improve the quality of your video, especially in scenes involving a good deal of motion. DVD Studio Pro 1.5% integration with Final Cut Pro 3 is generally well imple- mented, although the program's poor documentation may be misleading. ‘The PDF file that addresses DVD Studio Pro 1.5's new features con- tains incorrect instructions on exporting chapter and compres- sion markers. But once we figured out the correct steps, we were able to export both types of mark- ers without difficulty. This export ability alone makes version 1.5 3 must-have upgrade for producers who also use Final Cut Pro 3. > continues on page 36 8) PROS: Supports all DVD-Video capa- bilities; improved ties to Final Cut Pro 3; more reliable Preview Mode. CONS: Interface needs usability improvements; poo: documentation; complicated bit-budgeting process. PRICE: $1,000; upgrade from previ ‘ous versions, $200 OS COMPATIBILITY: Mac OS 9, Mac 05 X COMPANY: Apple Computer, 800/692-7753, vwew.apple.com LASSO PROFESSIONAL 5 Powerful Database Middleware Brings New Features and Strong Performance to Mac OS X Web Servers BY GEOFF DUNCAN Blue World Communications’ Lasso began as a simple way to Web-enable FileMaker Pro d: bases, but the company has restructured Lasso to offer greater performance and flexibil- ity, integrate other database plat- forms, and respond to. the increasing needs of today’s Web sites. Lasso now supports new technologies such as XML and wireless devices, session manage- ment, and more-powerful pro- gramming techniques. Lasso’s latest iteration, Lasso Professional 5, comes in two editions: for production servers, a Standard Edition, which handles an unlimited number of users and connections on a single machine, and a single-user Devel oper Edition that has the same capabilities but is geared for pro- gramming and testing. With ver- sion 5, Lasso is getting more complicated to learn, use, and administer; but its new features compensate for its complexity. The program not only embraces OS X but also includes a Lasso- specific version of the popular MySQL database and an updated version of Lasso Dynamic | Markup Language (LDML 5), and it continues to support many Lasso 3 solutions. Lasso Professional 5 operates with OS X’s built-in Apache Web server and with 4D's WebStar V. (Version 5 doesn’t support OS 9 and carlier:) And while some expertise always helps in config- uring a site and handling security, you don’t have to be an authority on cither server to get Lasso up and running, Dexterous Databases Lasso Professional 5 ships with its own database software, Lasso MySQL, a version of the popular MySQL open-source database. Lasso MySQL stores Lasso’ set- tings and options, and it can act as a local data source. For some sites, accessing local databases this way may be a complete solu- tion—Lasso MySQL is fast, multithreaded, and reliable, and it supports temporary tables, which stick around until you restart it. You can also connect the application to separate MySQL databases, keep them on differ- ent computers, and upgrade them independently from Lasso itself; or you can connect Lasso to FileMaker Pro 4 and 5 data- bases using FileMaker’s Web Companion. MySQL and File- Maker databases are either stored on the same machine Lasso is middleware, which means that it moderates communication between other programs—in Lasso’s case, between a Web server and a database. A Web-site visitor requests something by following a link or filling out a form, and the Web server then recognizes that Lasso should handle the request and passes it along. Lasso acts on the request and returns a result—usually an HTML page—to the Web server, which passes it back to the user, Lasso’s power lies in processing the request. Typically, Lasso will retrieve data from a database, perhaps on a separate computer; integrate it into an HTML file; and send it back to the Web server. But Lasso might also send e-mail; trigger another process; communicate with yet another application, such as a credit card-processing system; or modify items in other databases, The Web developer uses format files written in LDML (Lasso Dynamic Markup Language) to specify the action(s) Lasso should take and to customize Lasso’s response. LDML files contain the programming logic for Lasso, often inter- mingled with standard HTML or XML. wwnumacworld.com, as Lasso or distributed on sepa- rate hosts; the latter is a great way to improve performance and enhance security. (At press time, third-party database connectors had also been announced for 4D, FrontBase, and PrimeBase; they were not yet available.) New and Improved In addition to a built-in version of MySQL, Lasso Professional 5 introduces LDML 5, a new version of Lasso’s markup lan- guage. LDML 5 is generally compatible with Lasso 3, and it provides several major new fea- tures, such as inline math and string expressions, session man- agement, data typing, array sup- port, and commands for man- aging SQL databases. These LDML enhancements offer developers creating Lasso sites more direct control of values and program logic, as well as mechanisms for maintaining and creating databases and tables on-the-fly. Version 5 also supports LassoSeript, an alter. native way of expressing LDML as embedded scripts within a page; thi