MacWorld0211November2002

Be = The First Test: Macworld © Lab and the Dual-1.25GHz = Power Mac G4, page 74 E www.macworld.com The Mac Product Experts November 2002 acy AS . , GET THE MOST FROM OS X 1 - WITH OUR COMPREHENSIVE TPS n' ST aN | Expert Advice from David P Pogue > Christopher Breen’s Hidden Gems Great Productivity-Boosting Tips 4 Up-to-Date Troubleshooting Guide fe - ri ee =a & oe Plus | Dynamic Web Publishing | Digital-Video Cameras | FileMaker Pro 6 Reviewed APPLE'S LATEST Reviewed: New Dual-G4 Power Macs, the Xserve, and QuickTime 6 Pro loc Macs and PCs have never been so compatible. : Microsoft® Office v. X makes Macs and PCs more friendly. it lets Mac users effortlessly open, share, edit, and save any Office file, to make working with PCs a breeze. Complete with easy-to-use, exclusive Mac tools that simplify complex tasks. And it’s built specifically for Mac OS X, so it's the most reliable, stable, easygoing Office yet. www.officeformac.com to download a free 30-day trial of Office v. X today. % ae : Looking for the best digital photos? Follow the leader. YOU'VE GOT TO SEE IT IN COLOR.” Print your photos from memory cards* or any Direct-Connect-Compatible (DCC™) digital camera. Then save them directly to an external USB Zip drive ~ all without a computer. ‘View pictures, layouts and cropping options without a computer screen using the optional Color Preview Monitor ($79), Crop, resize and select from various BorderFree™ templates (4x6, 5x7, 8x10) using the control panel, Then, save your favorite settings and recall them with Epson's exclusive One Touch button feature. Leave the printer unattended while it prints and trims your photos automatically, using an exclusive built-in cutter and attachable roll paper holder. ) Get brighter colors, sharper detail and the most lifelike skin tones from a superior 6-color Photo Ink system with true black, 4-picoliter droplets and up to 5760 x 720 optimized dpi. Ensure the quality of your prints with Epson's PRINT Image Matching” (PLM) technology ~ which makes automatic color corrections and adjustments when used with any PLM-enabled digital camera. Why do so many digital camera owners look to Epson for all their printing needs? Because only Epson makes photo printers designed to work specifically with digital cameras. For images with more color and detail than ever before. Which means now the image quality that could only be found in a professional photo lab is yours to create - right at home. As you can see, when it comes to digital pictures, no other photo printer comes close to giving you 5299 the quality and convenience you get with this printer. For more info, call 1-800-GO-EPSON or visit epson.com. Epson Stylus Photo 925 Multivedia and Mcrocrve (optional Ze cara reader reed or Secure D ar of Besar Arena ine Ab thet Uademarks ate proper Muti Medh Egeon Epson Stylus and PRINT Image “Suports Compact Flash type | ard Memery Sick Svat Meda, ce 1 respective companies. © 2002 Epson Armeic, ne Matching ae wademarks/t DPMon From the Editor's Desk RICK LEPAGE The truth about Apple’s new dual-G4 Power Macs is somewhere between hype and hysteria, 17 Feedback Readers respond, 128 Ihnatko ANDY IHNATKO Steve Jobs for mayor? Sure, if iSync and Rendezvous are big hits. Vj November 2002 www.macworld.com oo STORY was BEAT Free-e-mail apocalypse, Photoshop plug-ins for OS X, iCal versus other calendaring and PIM products, the CoolMac keyboard, and an interview with Intuit's David Story on Quick- Books’ feturn to the Mac. oe Go Dynamic with GoLive GLENN FLEISHMAN Add dynamic content to your Web site— we'll show you how to connect Adobe GoLive 6 to a MySQL database server. 90 Mac 911 CHRISTOPHER BREEN Force-quit the Classic environment from the Dock, rename directories without confusing applications, command OS X's Terminal appli- cation, format with Unix File System, and decide whether you can live on OS X alone, On the Cover HUd | Proto courtesy of ‘Apple Computer. Tame Jaguar DAVID POGUE There are some things in life that are beyond your control, but your oper- ating system shouldn't be one of them. From little-known shortcuts to ___ hidden tools, we show you how to work the latest version of Mac OS X. FEATURES Apple's New Dual-G4 Macs JONATHAN SEFF Apple's latest Power Macs sport two processors and new architecture, We dissect them and rate the two shipping models, Serve It Up SCOT HACKER Mac users no longer have to take a backseat when it comes to designing and maintaining high-powered, database-backed Web sites. We'll step you through the process of installing an open-source server and database. {6 | MACWORLD | November 2002 | wwnwmacworld.com | wwwmacworld.com Network server $883 Apple Xserve Database software $999 FileMaker Pro 6 Multimedia application $886) QuickTime 6 Pro Relationship-finding software $88 Six Degrees DV camcorders $9498) Canon Optura 200MC $88 JVC GR-DVM96U $886 Sony DCR-PC120BT $868 Sony DCR-TRVSO Digital video recorder #84) EyeTV Video-editing software $6883 Avid Xpress DV 3.5 Music-sampling and -synthesis tool $888$ Reason 20 Network analyzer $G$ NetMinder Ethernet 5.0 Mathematics software $88: Mathematica 4.2 E-mail-filtering program $$$! Spamfire 1.2 3-D-animation software $683 Carrara Studio 2 iMovie plug-ins $889} Slick Transitions and Effects Volume 3 $88 Slick Transitions and Effects Volume 4 Virus-protection software $868 Norton AntiVirus 8.0 for Macintosh Music player $$$) Apple iPod 20GB Dock-replacement utility $8% WorkStrip x Reviews in Brief Bravo Effects and Echo Transitions, Kensington StudioMouse, Maclournal 2.1, Pantone Color Cue, WeatherPop Advance 1.5, and Who's There Firewall Advisor 1.2. The Game Room PETER COHEN From World War II battles to horror-movie monsters, we've got you covered. November 2002_| MACWORLD @ Y There’s a Xerox network printer that the page at a stunning 22 ppm. With Xerox color, details pop and get noticed. Th: Phaser’ 7700 tabloid color laser printer will sury countless white, but speeds out your first color page in just 13 seconds. It y prints up to 11x 17 full-bleed, with 1200 dpi for the photographic ys. IL not only prints 22 ppm, color or black & color quality you and your clients demand. And PhaserMatch™ PhasceMatcn™ are tadomares ot XEROX CORPORATION “Estimated US retail pico nlocated at www.xerox.com/officeprinting/ebute, This offor cannot ba combed with any 02, Ved where protvbtod by aw. US and Canaan customers only Xerex Rasellers are not delivers vivid color that leaps off There’s a new way to look at it. Bs. color management software ensures the colors you Pa want are what you get. It’s just what you'd expect from one of the full line of Xerox network printers. \ ‘To see what a difference detailed color can make, simply give us a call at 1-877-362-6567 ext. 1875 or visit us at xerox.com/officeprinting/frog1875, Xerox Bane 7700" THE DOCUMENT COMPANY S5: 999° Rosoller pres may vary'S1,000 of $1,500 CND. This rebate offer is val fer end users ther Xerox and user incentive. Xerox wil mathe eigile rebata cneck dractly to the end uso’ ‘elgible, Al caims subject to Xerox final review and approval Appcable tax, if any 1s the sole responsiblity ofthe end usor. ° Choose 101 at wawwzmacworld.com/getinfo Recordable DVD from the leader in digital media. Perfect for those who need their space. When it comes to data-intensive storage, two things come to mind: Memorex and DVD, Why Memorex DVD? Over the past two years, more people have trusted and purchased Memorex optical media than any other brand in the world. And with a complete line of DVD formats, each offering 4.7 GB of space, we can help you transfer or store anything off your hard drive—even full-length videos. So if mammoth capacity, quick access rates and bulletproof reliability sound like the solution to your storage problems, we suggest you log onto www.memorex.com. Because Memorex DVD is—you guessed it—BIG. | Heri VDFR— DVD-R dae Ee. i memorex’ Is it live or is it Memorex?” ©2002 Memorex Products, Inc. li FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK wasn’t any faster than the previous model (which also had twin 1GHz chips), despite the purported faster bus and subsystems, DDR RAM, and other enhance- ments to the new desktop computers’ architecture. The conclusion many people came to was that Apple was lying about any real advances in the new machines—which is a pretty serious allegation. But in fact, this is just an instance of marketing hype running up against users’ expectations; the ity, as always, lies somewhere in the middle. As you'll see in this month’s feature “Apple's New Dual-G4 Macs,” our test results corroborate the Web- site reports: in many of our standard tests, the new dual-1GHz Power Mac wasn’t any faster than the pre- vious dual-1GHz model. Of course, the new one now makes up the middle of the Power Mac line; the old one was at the top of the line (with twice as much speedy Level 3 cache RAM) and, when it debuted ear- lier this year, cost $500 more than the new system. The fact that the new model has two hard-drive buses and two optical-drive bays is also a plus, although this offset somewhat by the higher cost of DDR RAM. But in the end, I see these new systems as an improvement. The new high-end model, with two 1.25GHz PowerPC G4 processors, wasn’t shipping when we wrote our review, but Apple did let us run our bench- mark tests on a preproduction model so we could get a sense of the potential speed increases at the top of the Power Mac line. We were pretty impressed with | what we saw, and we think that Mac users who are always chasing after the fastest Mac system available will be, too. But understand that we were able to review and rate only the two lower-end Power Mac models this time around. We'll review and rate the dual-1.25GHz machine after it ships, which should be by the time you read this. Dealing with Changes Apple claims that these new Power Mac systems’ important architectural changes offer tangible bene- fits to end users—and in our look at the new systems, | Jonathan Seff thoroughly explains where and why users will see improvements. | Testing hardware is a tough task, and there are i plenty of problems you must confront if you want to | wewwmacwarld.com Getting to the Bottom of Apple's New Power Macs Testing Our Resolve THERE WAS QUITE A BUZZ ON THE INTERNET AFTER APPLE announced its new Power Mac G4s in August. A few Web sites published test results, claiming that the midrange model, with two 1GHz processors, do it right. Architectural changes, and software and operating-system updates, make it nearly impossible to amass a database of tested systems that can be com- pared with one another over time. What's even harder is determining which tests make sense, especially when systems change so dra matically. A test that was reasonable two years ago might now be superfluous, and a new test may be needed to demonstrate how system changes affect performance. We're constantly on the lookout for new tests (or modifications to old tests) that can add more pertinent information to a review. In our review and analysis of these important new systems, we've attempted to cut through the hype and clearly lay out the benefits of Apple's changes. If you're looking to purchase a new desktop Mac, we hope that you'll walk away understanding Apple's motives for the upgrade—and that this information will help you J Testing hardware is a decide whether now is the right time to buy. tough thing, and there Jaguar Unveiled If you're a Mac user, and as long as you don’t mind crowds, the place to be at midnight on August are plenty of problems you have to confront if you want to do it right. 23 was at an Apple Store (or one of the independent Mac retailers scattered about the country). At the Palo Alto Apple Store, the one near- est Apple's headquarters, there were reportedly 3,000 people queued up, ready to buy Mac OS X 10.2 (or Jaguar), along with new Macs, iPods, and assorted digital-hub goodies. If you've got Jaguar up and running, you'll defi- nitely want to check out this month’s feature on mas- tering the new OS (“Tame Jaguar”). Longtime Macworld contributors David Pogue and Christopher Breen have each come up with a boatload of tips and tricks that will help you maximize your productivity in OS X 10.2. Let me know what you think about the new Power Macs, Macworld in general, or anything else Macrelated, Drop me an e-mail (rck_lepage@macworld.com) or join in the discussions in our forums (werwemacworld .com). To sign up for our weekly e-mail newsletter, which includes exclusive commentary and tips on hot top- ics, as well as reports on key new products, click on the Newsletters tab on our home page, 2 DAVE v4 # NOW, MORE FEATURES | ass AON NOR CATS a DAVE SAVED MY SANITY” IT Analyst Timothy Hixon, Los Rios Community College System explained, “We didn't have time to leam another network operating system. The Macs needed to fit seamlessly and efficiently into our district's ‘computer network, which used Windows NT file servers. DAVE was the answer.” LL SHARE FILES AND PRINTERS - Mac/PC, PC/Mac DAVE is, without any doubt, the best solution for integrating your Mac into a PC environment.” -Univers Macworld KKKKK Choose 124 at www macworld.comigetinfo MACWORLD | November 2002 VP of Content/Editor in Chief Rick LePage Editor Jason Snell Managing Editor Executive Editor, Macworld.com | Deputy Managing Editor Charles Senior Features Editor Teri Stone Senior News Editor Philip Micha Senior Reviews Editor Jennifer Berge Test Manager, Macworld Lab Ja Associate Editors Kelly Lu 3s Garaith Copy Editor Sue V Editorial intem Zach Frechette uting Editors. David Bl Cleland, Scholle Sawyer McFat Bruce Fra Art Director Jenni Design Associate Al Design Consultant £ Prepress Consultant News Director, MacCentral.com lim Dalrymple Senior Editors, MacCentral.com Peter Cohen, Dennis Sellers International Editors Matthew JC. Powel, Australia; Bernard Le Dy, France; Sebastian Hinch, Germany; Enrico Lott italy; Yoshio Moriya, Japan; Tomasz Bitner, Poland; Daniel de Blas, Spain; Nils Holm, ‘Sweden; Engin Gedit Turkey; Simon Jay, United Kingdom President and CEO Colin Craword VPIChiel Operating Officer Stephen Daniel Director of Finance Eos de Feminis Accounting Coordinator Ronda Bitne Senior VP, Human Resources Richard Willoughby Human Resources Director Kate Coldwe Human Resources Representative IT Director Sean G VP of Sales/Publisher Associate Publisher, East National Accounts Manager Account Executive Western Advertising Director Sara Cul Sales Assistant. Franck Showcase Account Manager Showcase Account Manager Carol Johnstone Online Sales Manager Doug Det ie Stranz (sen Senior Marketing Manager Sharon |. Cor Sales & Marketing Coordinator Kasey Machtullen Marketing Intern Production Director Steve Spingola Prepress Manager Alan A Booking and Billing Manager Rica Ad Coordinator Senior Web Producer Christ Online Production Manager Ri November 2002, Volume 19, sve 11 wonwmacworld.com 57243-3691) 5/243-3598) The perfect combination of features. 1,600 Total Nozzles More nozzles equal {fast photo print speeds, Borderless Printing Prine borderless eage-to-ege photos quickly and easily Advanced MicroFine Droplet Technology™ Individual Ink Tanks Four individual ink tanks allow you to replace only the color that runs out. Can reduce ink waste and save money" Precision ink application system and consistent droplet size with tp 04800 x 1200 color dpi result in breathtaking detail Ultra-small Ink Droplets Fast Beautiful Color A conibination cfs pheilats droplets and ultra-small 2 picoliter droplets reduce visible graininess for beautiful photographs?*"t Speeds of up to22 ppm in black and 14 ppm in color. Print 47x 6” borderless photos in less than 48 seconds:"t The i850 Photo Printer. There’s a new printer from Canon that really has it all. Introducing the i850 Photo Printer. It prints beautiful, edge-to-edge, borderless 4"x 6” or 8-Y2'x 1" photos quickly and easily from your digital files. A brand new Canon printhead features 1,600 nozzles for exceptional speed. And, a combination of § picoliter and 2 picoliter droplerst reduces visible graininess for beautiful photographs. 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Choose 23 at www.macworld.comigetinfo Macworld SX BUYERS’ GUIDE ON NEWSSTANDS NOW Don't By ce YOU rote ena puGrtAL WUB aes EXTRAS, owen aacntot emer se PRODUCT speci SECTION REVIEWED sia 08 Seine ad aii WAG oes SPECIAL I (newsstand only) OS X BUYERS’ GUIDE * Expert Buying Advice * Comprehensive Coverage ° Easy Reference Format * Key Facts and Features * Extensive Product Rating Directory Peat 'D-ROMs Over 1.2 GB of the latest OS X software tryouts, the hottest games, essential tips, eighteen months of Macworld reviews, interactive product listings, and hundreds of OS X shareware programs and utilities. BONUS! MAC 911 BOOKLET OS X Troubleshooting Tips & Tricks °7°800.288.6848 for $7.95 plus $4 shipping and handling* 14 MACWORLD | November 2002 HOW TO CONTACT MACWORLD Subscription Information and Services| Phone 800/288-6848 fr and Canada 595/243-3273 fn the United States US. Mail iptions Department Boone, 1A 50037,0781 World Wide Web rhd.com (for service) or od com (to order) Email o.com (Seed your full name and the addiess at which you subscribe; do not send attachments) Fax 515/432-6994 SUBSCRIPTIONS The one-year (12-ssue) subscription rate is $34.97; the two year rate $59.97; and the thee-year rate, $79.97, Foreign atders must be pre paid in U.S. funds; add $10 per year for postage to Canada or $25 per yeat for air freight to 3s. Checks must be made payable in US. currency to Mi 3 to 6 weeks to receive your fist issue of for changes to be made to an existing subscription, BACK ISSUES OF MACWORLD (512 ouside the Uni world is requied Send a check on Bac ues, PO. Box 37731, Boone, !A 50037-0781; ot phone 800/288. {6848 (US. and Canada) or 515/243-3273 (all other locations) REPRINTS AND PERMISSIONS 5 available to mailes of ou. If you do not wish to receive rr, PO. Box 37781, Boone, 0781, Please include a copy of your mailing label MACWORLD EDITORIAL our tips, compliments, or complains. cated at ww ‘up stories from ‘or diagnose your Mac problems by ree at 800:538:9696 com, smacworld.com. past issues; recon phone, e-mail, o ‘or visit the company’s Web site at Our offices ae located at 501 S (CA94107; phone, 415/243:0508; fa, 415/243-354 can be reached by e-mail at firstname astramedoma nd Stet, Sth Flooy, San Francisco, cworldstaft ond.con, LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Send comments about any aspect of cor, Due to the hich letter, We reserve Macworld or Macworld. com become the prope ‘fae Publishing, MAC 911 Send your questions rips an wing Mac computers, pexiperal ot jald.com, nd discuss rid com ferums. MACWORLD CONFERENCE & EXPO As the flagship sponsor of Macworld Conference & Expo, M encourages all subs 4 this excting bana industry event, For informatin, pl dexpo.com. wwnw.macworld.com Karen (and the rest of our team) would be happy to help you configure your Anthro Workstation. The most evolved computers now have multi-functions and printers to match... COLOR LASER From $1499 See WorRKGROUP ——~ — scucpemne When it comes to imaging solutions that are pat Uy ak a — From $299 every bit as innovative as your Mac, we're the only name you need to know. That's because our award-winning line of Mac-compatible printers and Multi-Function salen Center® models are designed to deliver both FLATBED MFC — LASER PLATAED MFC maximum performance and value. From $299 p From $449 | From our full line of high-quality printers, to versatile all-in-one multi-function units which print, copy, scan and more, you'll find our products are every bit as evolved as our customers. A VARIETY OF MODELS AVAILABLE AT: MacWarehouse, MacMall, MacConnection, MacZone, CDW, CompUSA, Office Depot, LASER MFC COLOR MFC Staples, OfficeMax, Fry's, J&R Computer World From $299 From $169 At your side. (©2002 Brother International Corporation, Bridgewater, NJ. © Brother Industries, Ltd,, Nagoya, Japan For mote information please call the Brother Fax-Back System at 800-521-2846 or visit our web site at www brathercom + All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of ther respective owners. Choose 119 at wwwmacworld.com/getinfo | BLUETOOTHE==~ | Inside the New Update EVOLVES Spotting Jaguar RICHARD PRIESING B “Mac OS X Evolves” (August 2002) was interesting, but it overlooked the inclu- sion of CUPS in OS X 10.2. CUPS is important because it will finally solve all the problems caused by the lack of native PostScript PPDs for OS X. I’m the head of the prepress department for a com- mercial printer, and CUPS should pro- vide our workgroup with a solid Post- Script print server to replace the aging PrintCentral that we currently use. I have a copy of the CUPS handbook and hope that Apple has given CUPS a user inter- face or back end so that we can get the most out of the system without having to resort to using the Terminal application to input our commands. BRENT ANGLIN es} As one of the attendees of the MacMania cruise to Alaska (“Uncharted Waters,” From the Editor's Desk, August 2002), 1 have to tell you that it was the trip of a life- time. This trip gave me the knowledge and confidence to convert to OS X perma- nently, and I’m eagerly anticipating the release of Jaguar. I'm convinced that OS X is the best thing that has ever happened to the Mac. It’s not only the most elegant operating system I have ever seen but also the most powerful operating system I have ever used. Many features of OS X’s Unix underpinnings even turn the heads of my Linux supergeek friends. JOE GIUSTRA ies} Macworld reader Ross Bishop is too kind in characterizing OS X’s privilege para- noia as “a monumental pain” (“OS X Insecurity,” Feedback, August 2002). Ie’s evident that the Mac has abandoned Take Our Advice The August 2002 issue brought out our readers’ inner Dear Abby: Many had advice for Apple, on OS X's Jaguar update. Adam C. Engst's article on stopping spam filled our in-box with e-mail messages—most of it welcome advice, we're glad to say, not information about get-rich-quick schemes. But our readers saved their most strongly worded advice for other readers—August Feedback letters that praised QuarkXPress as better than Adobe InDesign had InDesign defenders suggesting which lake XPress partisans could go jump into. Don’t believe us? Our advice is to keep reading. 4 being the computer for the rest of us and remains the computer of the corporate world. As a sole user, Iam constantly stiff- armed by the privilege lockout of my files, Apple must give us the option of switch- ing off the sufficient-privilege lock. Otherwise, it should present itself as a manufacturer of network servers, not of personal computers. There is nothing “personal” about a computer that seems to control the user and acts like a termi- nal computer. DAVID SHORT B While Jason Snell cruises the Inside Pas- sage (“Uncharted Waters”), many of us are feeling increasingly alienated by Apple. After 15 years as a Mac enthusiast (converting my office along the way), I now find myself betrayed by OS X. Any system as non-user-friendly as OS X deserves to lose customer loyalty. It’s ridiculous that Mac users now have to learn lines of command code. It’s not a step forward; it’s a step backward, to the bad old days of FORTRAN and COBOL. Windows looks more and more attractive. Someone needs to apply this command to OS X: sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash/. EDWARD JANNE 1 am sick and tired of all these OS 9 throwbacks who have dug their hooves in against change. Way back when OS X apps were few and far between, I might have understood why people would have complained if Apple had put pressure on to switch to OS X. But now that most old-time favorite apps have stepped up to OS X, and many new and innovative apps have appeared, to com- plain that OS X’s security features are cumbersome is to just nitpick. Unless you've used Windows, you don’t know NOVEMBER 2002 | what cumbersome is. Anyone who knows anything about computers at all knows that attaching a user interface to Unix is no easy task, That Apple has managed to do this and still retain such incredible ease of use is amazing. A sole user may not appreciate all the multiuser features under the pretty face, but I wouldn’t trade memory protection and true preemptive multitasking for marginal convenience. I've been using OS X since version 10.0, and now I can’t even look at an OS 9 desktop without feeling confined. Putting Spam on Ice WERNER J. SEVERIN & Perhaps “Stop Spam!” (Secrets, August 2002) should have noted that the Federal ‘Trade Commission is interested in hav- ing unsolicited spam forwarded to uce@ fte.gov. Apparently, they go after the most-egregious violators. LUKE PACHOLSKI. ies} While filters may shield users a bit from spam, filters don’t do anything to stop it. Spam will be reduced or stopped only if people fight back. That means reporting spam to the ISP it comes from, either manually or automatically via a service such as SpamCop. AARON SHEPARD. Es} Here’s another spam-stopping tip to go along with those in your article: Stay off of EarthLink. I recently got an EarthLink account, and within two days I was receiving spam at that address—despite the fact that I had not yet used that address, given it to any- one, or even entered it in my browser or Internet preferences. yownnmacwarld.com, ___| November 2002 | MACWORLD | 17 FEEDBACK | the new File NOVEMBER 2002 Retrospect Perspective STEVE SULLIVAN. Thave no doubt Retrospect Backup 5.0 is an excellent program (Reviews, July 2002), but I went to Dantz’s Web site to confirm that my LaCie CD-RW drive was compat- ible with it, and I didn’t find it listed € then, I’ve e-mailed Dantz, asking for confirmation that my drive will work with the program, but I haven't received a reply from any department I've tried to con- tact—from tech support to sales to cus- tomer service. I consider this to be extraordinarily poor customer service, which gives me misgivings about buying the product. It’s just not acceptable to completely ignore a customer who wants to give you money. 3 Frustrating FileMaker STEVE NOBLE e Ican’t tell you how disappointed I am in laker Pro 6 (“New Tricks, .” Mac Beat, August 2002). excellent program, but it HAVE FUN WITH YOUR DIGITAL PHOTOS For just $99%, the Graphire2” gives you the control you need to quickly and easily edit your digital photos, Have fun with Graphire2 and join more than 2,000,000 satisfied Wacom? tablet users, HOW TO FIX BLINKS Use the control of your Wacom pen to seamlessly fix the blink by bringing in a pair of open eyes from another digital photo, Then have some fun turning that awkward sign in the background into something special. FREE PHOTO FUN CD! Visit our website to see a short video of this fun tion. And while you're there, request your FREE Photo Fun CD. Fewer Cl FileMaker www.tabletphotofun.com call 800-922-2589 LET pean ade pia 1B MACWORLD | November 2002 lacks many features, such as multiple tables in a single file, event-triggered scripts, customizable menus, and more. Some of these items are available through plug-ins, but purchasing these means pay- ing twice for the software. Every upgrade since version 3 has added important new features, but only a few at a time. File- Maker 5 had a new marketing look, but it was basically the same program. I know many of us out there feel this way. Our only hope is that if enough of us politely complain, FileMaker will finally listen. You've Got Mail, Andy ROGER BARTHELSON ies} I was a little surprised that Andy [hnatko didn’t mention Nisus Email in “E-mail Options Aplenty” (Jbnarko, August 2002). I don’t use it as my main e-mail applica~ tion, but I find it pretty useful if I want to send a clipping from another application. I find it invaluable if I need to send out several e-mail messages to a list of recipi- ents and want to use a database to cus- tomize the messages (for example, when SHE’LL LOVE HOW YOU CAPTURED THE MOMENT. Choose 85 at www.macworld.com/getinfo I’m sending a general cover letter to a number of prospective employers but want to use the information in a simple AppleWorks database to customize each letter). IT was disappointed to find that AppleWorks 6 left out the ability to e-mail directly from within the program— thereby preventing me from contacting a number of employers at once. Nisus Email allows me to do that fairly easily. TIM LAPIN ies} While I share Andy’s complaint that no single package seems to “have it all,” I would like to add one more package to his list: PowerMail. I have been using version 3.X and eagerly await the 4.X upgrade. PowerMail is perhaps the only e-mail app for which I am willing to spend money. I don’t know if T would go back to amber- on-black command-line sessions, but I should point out that I chose PowerMail bee it was the closest program to is Emailer I could find at the time. Like many Mac users who also care about how their e-mail is handled, I was sad- dened by the loss of Emailer and simply PATENTED PEN Pressure-sensitive for control, with a bu eraser for easy fixes. There's no cord to tangle, no batteries to buy — ever. And it works with any software a mouse will. CORDLESS MOUSE No ball to clean, no cord to 7 tangle. And no_ batteries to buy — ever, FREE SOFTWARE Comes with Painter Classic and Adobe Photoshop LE. graphire2 WACOM + ip Fit rt Graphinca® Se only S995 at SIS arena Air abet ger fn wunw.macworld.com refused to use any of the free clients, they are all horrid in some way. I will probably spend more money on the latest PowerMail, although | am intrigued by the upcoming Jaguar release of Apple's Mail program. In either case, it sure beats spending $400 or so for Entourage. Macworld's Familiar Quotations JIM WIGLER David Blatner’s “Save XPress Styles” (Secrets, July 2002) misquotes Dorothy Parker. In the screenshot showing format- ted XPress files, we see “Life is a sonnet, life is a song / A garden of extemporania / And Jove is a thing that never goes wrong.” The real quote is “Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, / A medley of extemporanea; / And love is a thing that can never go wrong; / And Tam Marie of Roumania.” Play Myth Ill for Me MICHAEL R. BAGNALL G5 Regarding Brian Holbert’s letter about Myth IIT (“Myth IL? Not for Me.” Feed- back, August 2002): I am the head of MythDevelopers, a group of volunteer pro- grammers and artists who are fanatic about the Myth game series. To of our pro- gtammers were recently given permission by the game’s owners to make changes to the Myth III code and support it in terms of improving game play and providing a better multiplayer environment. These changes are in development. We currently support online game play for Myth II: Soulblighter and will support Myth I by the end of summer, We plan to have a Myth Il service ready sometime this fall. More information is available at PlayMyth.net. Fax Attacks JOSEPH SLATER oS Film versus Digital HARRISON JUDD iE} L object to the use of the term “film-camera quality” in your review of the Canon EOS D60 (Reviews, August 2002), Compare a JPEG file from any digital camera with a 35mm scan from even a 2,700-dpi scanner, and the scanned image is preferable, for resolution alone. And film can capture subtle shadows and difficult highlights that no current digital camera can. Digital cam- eras continue to evolve, but they simply don’t match the quality of standard 35mm film in resolution or dynamic range of color fidelity. Digital-camera shutters are also much slower to respond than tradi- tional SLRs. Your reviews are generally accurate and informative, but digital cam- eras are a long way from being able to boast film-camera quality, even at the high end of the equipment spectrum. In Praise of InDesign ADAM ROGERS ex Amazing—after boldly exposing the quirks in QuarkXPress and giving some ink to InDesign, the new kid on the block, you run three letters, out of a total of four on the subject, in favor of XPress (“Layout Shoot-Out,” Feedback, August 2002). I thought I'd never leave XPress, but since giving the InDesign trial version a test- drive in designing a 200-page publication, T've never looked back. At first | felt funny, but after leaving XPress for InDesign, I'm happier, more creative, and less dependent i jure, most printshops have yet , but with InDesign I can cre- ‘oof PDFs that rip straight to is much easier than sending a ¢ and praying that all my tables and fonts will come outas J intend them to. BRAD CATHEY =] After reading your editor's note stating that you knew of no OS X-native alternative to Smith Micro's Faxstf fax software (“Just the Fax,” Feedback, August 2002), I went to VersionTracker.com and found that, indeed, Cocoa eFax is listed. Why wasn’t Cocoa eFax included? When we wrote our note—and the May 2002 review of fax softvare—Cocoa eFax was a beta release. It's our policy to review software only after a shipping version has been released.—Ed. As ten-year veterans of QuarkXPress, we switched wholesale to InDesign after ver- sion 1.5 came out. We've been running it on everything from beige G3s to multi- processor G4s, printing on a variety of printers and sending files to printshops around the country without incident. Granted, InDesign doesn’t do everything, bur it does a lot more than QuarkXPress, especially in the area of productivity. What used to take an hour now takes 60 seconds. ies GARY STOLZ Es] ‘To Mr. Hall: My vendors support InDesign because I told them I'd be using it, and they want to keep me as a customer. One vendor in particular worked closely with me when InDesign 2.0 came out, We've had no trou- bles, from one-color solid to four-color process printing. To Mr. Shub: Conversion from QuarkXPress isn’t perfect, but trust me, you want InDesign to reflow your text with its own type engines. ‘To Ms. Jackson: You have no business putting a JPEG file into a print piece. Convert the file to TIFF in Photoshop before you resize the photo and apply the unsharp mask. The only place InDesign doesn’t compete with Quark- XPress is in customer service—Quark's is still the rudest in the solar system. Keller on Batteries MARK TANK Ly) Jeff Keller says that its a bad thing Fuji doesn’t have a rechargeable battery (“Keller on Cameras,” Reviews, August 2002). There is a debate among digital photographers about this. I believe that not having a spe- cific rechargeable battery is a good thing. A camera that uses AA batteries lets the user choose from hundreds of good-quality rechargeable AAs. If you leave your charger at home, you can buy AAs to get you by. © Post comments on our forums (www smacworld.com); send them by mail to {= Letters, Macworld, 501 Second Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94107; or send them electronically to letters@macworld.com, Include a return address and daytime phone number. Due to the high volume of mail received, 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, CORRECTIONS. The correct Web address for 21st Century Media, the makers of cast'stream ("Macworld Confer- ence & Expo Best of Show,” Mac Beat, September 2002), is www.2Istcenturymedia.com. The chart accompanying “Power Mac: Twice ‘As Nice” (Mac Beat, October 2002) listed the incorrect graphics processor for the dual-1GHz and dual-1.25GHz Power Macs. The video card in these models is ATI's Radeon 9000, _wewmmacworld.com Hioverster 2002 | MacwoRLD | 19 | Supporting the Mac aficionado since 1987 We know Mac! Rely on Mac Warehouse for: © Our Experience 15 years, 34 million orders fulfilled ¢ Our Knowledge You have a question, we have the answer ¢ Our Service We're open for business whenever you call Oh, and our 24/7 Tech Support is FREE New! Apple iMac* G4 5 * with 17-inch Display for the lifetime of your product. é Authorized Reseller epson A VN menag sony. New! HP DeskJet 5550 Printer stunning Photo-quality results with crisp resolution and fast speeds smar Automatically detects paper type and adjusts print settings for best quality Print single or 2-sided color or black and white pages Sony Cyber-shot® lomega HDD Adobe® Premiere® 256MB PC133 DSC-F707 Portable Hard Drive 6.5 SODIMM for iMac* G4 . | =~ ‘ > 1 » > Canon 1-800-434-3035 LACIE) macromedi Choose 19 at wwnmacworld.comigetinfo } >> | | |WHAT'S. NEXT | Comdex isn’t a big Mac event, but | many of the cam- eras, printers, and storage devices the November 18 trade show will feature are aimed | at Mac and Win- | dows users alike, 22 | MACWORLD | November 2002 WHAT'S NEW ~ WHAT'S INTHE PIPELINE | WHAT'S HOT PHOTOSHOP HAS BEEN OS X NATIVE SINCE SPRING—NOW PLUG-INS ARE FOLLOWING SUIT The Plug-in Puzzle For design professionals, switching to Mac OS X without a native ver- sion of Adobe Photoshop would be like buying a new car without an engine. The car's exterior may look nice, but it really won't take you where you want to go. OS X-compatible Photoshop 7 has been available since April, but design pros haven’t necessarily been driving happily into the sun- set with Apple’s new operating system. A native version of Photo- shop fills a major gap for design- ers, but smaller, crucial pieces of the puzzle remain absent: OS X— savvy plug-ins. Applications rely on plug-ins to add specific capabilities for niche users. Programs such as Photoshop, QuarkXPress, Adobe Illustrator, and FileMaker are already rich in features and hefty in file size; by supplying features needed by a select segment of users, plug-ins keep those apps from bulking up further. You may not want to create 3-D broadcast-quality titles in Photoshop, but that may be just the functionality a digital-video pro needs to save hours of work. OS X Unplugged Photoshop has hundreds of plug- ins—probably thousands if you include freeware floating around the Internet—almost all of which were written before OS X. And if there’s a particular Photoshop plug-in you're fond of using that isn’t OS X com- patible, you'll have to do your work in OS 9 or OS X’°s Classic mode. If you're wondering about the demand for OS X-compatible plug-ins among Photoshop users, consider the case of Reindeer Graphics. Shortly after Photoshop 7 was announced, the developer released three free plug-ins it had ported to OS X. Chris Russ, Rein- deer Graphics’ president, says that in the first week, the company saw 8,000 downloads per plug-in. “This gave us an idea of the pent-up demand,” says Russ, whose company has since released the OS X-native Optipix plug-in and is working on a native version of its Fovea Pro application that it hopes to release by year’s end. How successful have third-party developers been in porting exist- ing plug-ins to OS X? Adobe doesn’t have hard numbers, says Tom Ruark, who works in the company’s Partner Technologies department and interacts with many plug-in creators. But Adobe believes that many developers are working on the conversion to OS X now. Head Start Indeed, all the plug-in developers Macworld spoke to either have OS X native versions available now or have them in the works. A handful of software makers were able to put out their products at the same time Adobe released Photoshop— or, in some cases, before Adobe released Photoshop. The explanation for this space- time continuum sleight of hand? Many of the programs are Photo- shop-compatible plug-ins that also happen to work with other applications. So developers were able to charge ahead with OS X wewrwemacworld.com versions even before Photoshop 7's release. “We were OS X native before Photoshop,” says Mike Fotheringham, Auto FX’s vice president of research and development. Mac users running OS X would launch Photoshop 6 in Classic, but if they activated an Auto FX plug-in such as DreamSuite, it launched as a separate application in OS X’s Aqua interface. Auto FX was ahead of the curve because the company was eager to take advantage of OS X’s power. “We're processor and memory intensive, so we knew OS X would benefit us a lot,” Fotheringham says. Corel’s Procreate division also released OS X plug-ins before Photoshop 7 arrived. Among those early releases were Photoshop-compatible plug-ins Knock- Out 2 and KPT Effects. Greg Wood, Procreate’s communica- tions manager, says the company’s sched- ule did pose a bit of a challenge, but “we worked with Adobe on prerelease versions of Photoshop.” Procreate engi- neers were also able to learn from their first OS X release, the 3-D-landscaping and ~animation tool Bryce. “We took what we'd learned from Bryce, and within a few days, we'd converted KPT Effects,” Wood says. Ready or Not? While some native programs have heen available for a while, others are still in development (see “Pluggin’ Away”). “For some plug-ins, it could be that cus- tomers aren’t requesting OS X versions yet,” Adobe's Ruark says. “It might also be companies’ development cycles—they could be working on other projects and just haven't gotten to the conversions yet.” ‘That's been the case at Andromeda Software, which has 14 Photoshop- compatible plug-ins. Engineers have converted two of them, ScatterLight Lenses and LensDoc Filters, to OS X. The remaining products are on a waiting list. Product Manager Louann Barbeau says that competition for engi- neering time is the main cause. “We're trying to give the plug-ins the impor- tance they deserve, yet still handle other demands on our engineering consul- tants,” she says. Overall, engineers haven’t reported many problems during conversion, Pluggin' Away Adobe Photoshop users can choose from among hundreds of plug-ins when they need to bolster the Capabilities of the image-editing program. Here’s a sampling of popular plug-ins that provide a wide array of capabilities—and the progress they're making toward Mac OS X compatibility, CONTACT 888/921-7546, wwwalienskin.com COMPANY Alien Skin MAC OS X WHATITOOES COMPATIBILITY 3-D bevels, drop shadows, available now and other effects ee image correction ___—_availablenow ____frame, resurfacing, stamping available now natural phenomena and end of 2002 (a hand-engraved special no date announced _ effects ation and scene no date announced lecive no date announced 205/980-0056, color and detail rebuilding available now wevvautofx.com : visual effects available now = visual effects available now "edge effects available now 800/796-9798, image enhancement and early 2003 vneiextensis.com color correction 408/399-0057, color correction available now weewchumansoftware.com es text effects fall 2002 } 619/725-3150, ‘image sharpening available now nik multi- media 800/772-6735, cee seikmaltindiacom ‘masking available now image transformation available now - - and other effects ene 828/252-7515, image analysis end of 2002 vevrwuteindeergraphics.com == image enhancement available now 510/525-5465, paint effects ‘no date announced wwewxaostools com 2 type conversion _no date announced Ruark says. For his part, Auto FX’s Fotheringham found the conversion process “amazingly smooth,” with one notable advantage: “When I develop in OS X, I don’t crash,” he says. Finley Lee, a software engineer at Alien Skin Software, also describes the process as “pretty simple and straight- forward. The folks with problems have older code for their user interfaces.” Eye Candy 4000, Splat, and Image Doctor are among the Alien Skin plug- ins that already feature OS X compatibil- ity. An OS X-native version of Xenofex will be available at year’s end. “In some ways, doing an OS X version is like sup- porting a new platform,” Lee says. “But except for some little bugs, [the process has] been smooth. Apple did a fine job with Carbon. It’ a pleasure to program for, compared to Classic.” The Last Word ‘Time will tell whether working in OS X will be as pleasurable for design pros as programming in it was for Lee. If you need specific Photoshop plug-ins to work efficiently, you'd be wise to check on the status of your favorites before switching to OS X. But for the lucky designers who rely on Photoshop and on core plug-ins that are already available in native ver- sions, the OS X puzzle may finally be complete.—TERRI STONE, | vawwimacworld.com | | tovernter 2002 | macwoR | 23 | BEAT Digital Cameras = ‘Two cameras from Canon (800/652-2666, www.usa.canon .com): The PowerShot $230 Digital Elph ($399) is a 3- megapixel camera with a 2x optical 200m lens—the first 3-megapixel Digital Elph camera. Designed for maximum portability it replaces the PowerShot $200, now priced at $299, at the top of the Digital Elph line. The PowerShot G3 (S799), which replaces the PowerShot G2, is a 4-mega- pixel camera with a fast f2.0-3.0, 4x optical zoom lens; ‘ew metering modes (including spot metering); and an improved connector for attaching add-on wide-angle and telephoto lenses, The G3 provides extensive flexibility for digital photographers, with 12 preset shooting modes and ‘complete manual controls. Both the G3 and the $230 have improved movie modes, which are capable of recording as much as 3 minutes of video at 15 fps. They also sport a new imaging processor that Canon claims offers better image ‘quality and faster overall processing. Each camera comes with a 16MB CompactFlash media card, a USB cable, and Canon's ImageBrowser app; they work with OS 9 and OSX. Two EasyShare cameras from Kodak (800/242-2426, wwwkodak:com): The DX4330 ($350) is a 3-megapixel camera that features the debut of Kodak's 1.8-inch Indoor! Outdoor LCD display. it has a 10x zoom with a Kodak Reti- nar aspheric all-glass 3x optical zoom lens. The CX4200 ($180) is a -megapixel camera with a 2x digital zoom. A digital-camera recall by Nikon (800/645-6687, www .nikonusa.com): A limited number of Coolpix 2000 digi- tal cameras have a battery-circuit problem that could cause excessive heat in the camera. As a result, Nikon has issued recall orders for all cameras with serial numbers between 3010001 and 3060980 and between 3510001 and 3561916, If you have an affected camera, call Nikon Customer Service at the provided number for detailed instructions on returning the camera, Three cameras from Olympus (800/645-8160, www .olympusamerica,com): Similar in size to Canon's Digital Elph line, the C-50 Zoom ($600) is a 5-megapixel camera with a 3x optical zoom. It uses the new xD-Picture card format jointly developed by Olympus and Fuji, and it ‘comes with a 32MB xD card, The C-5050 Zoom ($900) is ‘a 5-megapixel camera with an f1.8, 3x zoom lens; magne- sium body; hot-shoe for extemal flash; and support for xD, ‘SmartMedia, and CompactFlash cards, It includes a 32MB xD card. The C-730 Ultra Zoom ($700) is a 3.2-mega- pixel camera for people who want a telephoto lens. Its 10x optical zoom lens has the equivalent of a 38mm~ 380mm lens on a 35mm film camera, Projectors = A projector from Sharp Electronics (888/467-4277, www _sharpelectronics.com):The Notevision C50 projector ($6,195) features 3,000 ANSI lumens of brightness and native XGA resolution. It operates at a sound level of 36 dB, and it offers S-Video and composite inputs and two sepa- rate RGB inputs.—comPiteD BY RICK LEPAGE AND PHILIP MICHAELS APPLE'S .MAC STRATEGY COULD BEA SIGN OF THINGS TO COME ON THE WEB Some of us may disagree with Apple's decision to turn its Tools suite of free Web-based applications into the f¢ ased .Mac, but there’s no denying an increasingly common trend on the Web formerly free services appear- th a price tag attached. Several factors are behind the Wel shift from free to fee; among them i the money needed to offset a Web sit operating expenses. “Right now, when you run a service on a Web server, you b's 066 ‘Tp ac Wako BLS 2 Pay to Play—Here to Stay? One key difference between Apple and many other fee-based sites is the com- pany’s main busin personal comput- ing. As other rivals look to fully integrate their software with the Internet, Apple has to keep up. “Apple probably needs to extend its reach to servers and the Inter- net if they want to compete against Microsoft as a platform vendor,” Travers said. “More and more people see the net- work as an extension of their computer, so it would probably be very risky for Apple not to do some- thing like this.” Consider the Costs |- But will that risk pay off? Right after Apple announced .Mac in July, HomePay iPhoto wo. disgruntled Tools users [| flocked to message boards, circulated pet- | itions, and sought out | | free alternatives for e-mail and online stor- age. Using no-cost Web br services is certainly eas- free online services are rapidly disappearing. bear all the costs in hardware, software, and bandwidth,” says Oliver Travers, a marketing consultant and editor at The End of the Free (www.theendoffree .com), a Web site that tracks the emer- gence of fee-based services on the Web. “The more your free service grows, the more you lose money.” | Changing Times, Shifting Strategies Although swallowing all the administra- tive costs may have been the thing to do a few years ago, leaner economic times have forced many Web sites to review their free offerings and look for ways to offset expenses. While some sites known for free Web tools—notably, | Yahoo and MSN Hotmail—have gone | with a mix of free and premium services, | others—such as mail-forwarding service | Mail.com and search engine Northern / Light—have done what Apple did with -Mac and begun charging consumers for access to their services. Farewell to Free Some Mac users may balk at paying for .Mac, but ier on the budget and lets users create multiple accounts for handling both personal and professional business online. But there can be drawbacks to relying on such services, Complaints about free e-mail services deleting old mail or being difficult to access aren't new, but with more companies push- ing users toward premium fee-based ser- vices, restrictions on what a free e-mail account can and can't do are likely to grow tighter. Then there's the lack of account- ability if business offering free services goes belly-up. This summer, TalkCity, a free Web-site-hosting company, abruptly shut down its servers as its bankruptcy pro- ccedings began—making it impossible for the people who had created the 2.5 million Web pages hosted there to retrieve their files, As of press time, TalkCity’s company officers said there were no plans to revive the servers. The bottom line is that users currently have little legal recourse when they lose their files or e-mail. And that’s a cost to consider, even when the services are 24 | MACWORLD | November 2002 advertised as free — HIMEISER __ wesw macworld.com CAMCORDER FEATURES FILMLIKE VIDEO CAPTURE, LOW PRICE Low-Budget Blockbuster When it came out seven years ago, Sony's VX1000 MiniDV camera changed inde- pendent film production by offering high- quality digital video at an impossibly low price. Now, it’s Panasonic's turn to revo- lutionize digital cinema, with its AG- DVX100 camcorder (800/528-8601, www. -panasonic.com)—the first video camera to boast true cinema-style, 24-fps progressive video capture. This frame rate helps the AG-DVX100 produce video tha ional camcorders that capture images at 30 fps. In addition, like than the output of tradi 5 more film- the AG-DVX100 can easily switch between 24-frame progressive, 30-frame progres- sive, and 60-field interlaced (normal video) capture modes. The 4.4-pound camera comes with several touches aimed to please video pros: a precision lens with manual zoom, focus, and iris controls, and two built-in XLR audio inputs. Those capabilities and features come in a camera priced at $3,495—a fraction of what the AJ-PD900WA ($40,000), the AG-DVX100's high-end older sibling, costs. Panasonic figures that the AG-DVX100 will appeal to Mac-using filmmakers, and not just because of the camera's FireWire interface—Apple has already publicly committed to native support of Pana- sonic’s new 24-frame mode in future versions of Final Cut Pro.—ANTON LINECKER MACS AT WORK Small Megahertz, Big Output Pick up any full-color glossy magazine from the newsstand, and chances are it was put together by an army of computers running off enough processing power to light up a city block—but not Delaware Beach Life. Four times a year, editor and publisher Terry Plowman assembles his 100- page magazine on an iMac whose G3 chip boasts a clock speed that hasn’t been consid- ered fast since the Clinton administration. Nevertheless, Plowman has published four issues of Delaware Beach Life since the magazine’s June 2002 debut, using nothing more than a 400MHz G3 iMac with 192MB of RAM and Mac OS 9. Not that Plowman is complaining: “When the iMac came out, it seemed like a per- fect model for my home office,” he says. “I like that it’s self-contained, and it fit my budget of about $1,500. I considered buy- ing a more powerful Mac, but I was unsure about ad revenues with a start-up, so I decided to give this model a try The mighty but modest iMac tackles every ses at the magazine, from page wowrwmacworld.com | Beach Life layout to subscription management. And while the graphics programs can test its processing limits, the machine holds its own with demanding applications such as QuarkXPress and Adobe Acrobat and Photoshop. The quality of the full-color glossy magazine is so con- vincing that even the printers don’t know the difference. “They're none the wiser,” Plowman says. “Every month, they receive perfectly crafted PDFs, which they use to print the magazine. They're delighted I’m on a Mac, since most publications they work with are done on the Mac platform.” Although Plo will soon add an 800MHz G4 iMae with a 17-inch flar- panel display to meet the growing maga- zine’s needs, his three-year-old iMac won't be forced into retirement. Plowman plans to use the original machine to handle sub- scriptions, accounting, and e-mail. One thing is for certain, however. “I’m too familiar with Macs to even consider a PC,” he says. “[It] just strikes me as an inelegant version of a Mac.”—LISA BAGGERMAN PRODUCTIV my BEAT Software Utilities DragStrip 4.0, from Aladdin Systems (800/732-8881, \wwwaladdinsys.com): The launcher application, which lets users organize and access frequently used files and applications, adds OS X support. It also includes a new Strip assistant for customizing strips ($20; upgrade, free). Speech Recognition iListen 1.5, from MacSpeech (603/626: S111, wowace speech.com): The update to the speech-recognition pro- gram runs in both OS 9 and OS X. It features improved recognition performance, transcription support, and voice playback in correction mode. It also adds shared prefer- ences between OS 9 and OS X, as well as an iListen Dock menu for OS X ($99; upgrade, $40, or free for people who purchased ilisten after June 1, 2002). Word Processing Documents To Go 5.0, from DataViz (800/733-0030, www .dataviz.com): The productivity app that lets you read and edit Word and Excel files on your Palm OS-based PDA is now OS X native. The premium edition includes the ability to create and edit word-processing and spreadsheet files ‘on the handheld (premium, $70; standard, $50; upgrade Pricing varies)—comPueD By PHIUP MICHAELS | ) INPUT DEVICE | BEAT Two corded keyboards and four cordless keyboard- mouse combinations from Logitech (800/231-7717, wwwewslogitech.com): The Internet Navigator Keyboard (S30) and Elite Keyboard ($50) feature an integrated ‘navigation tool that allows users to scroll, zoom, access hard-drive files, and browse Web bookmarks. The | Cordless Access Duo ($60) features a mouse and an Access keyboard with a zero-degree-tilt design, while the Cordless Navigator Duo ($80) includes a Cordless Navigator keyboard and Cordless Optical Mouse. The Cordless Comfort Duo ($100) bundles a keyboard and Cordless MouseMan Optical, while the Cordless Elite Duo ($100) pairs Logitech's Elite Keyboard with the Cordless MouseMan Optical. Mice ‘A wireless mouse for presentations, from Powr Marketing (866/800-7697, wew.powrmarketing.com): The Powr Pointer ($100) is a fully functional mouse with a laser pointer that uses a 900MHz RF signal to connect to a Mac as far as 30 feet away. It comes with a USB receiver that plugs into the computer—compnen BY PHILIP MICHAELS | November 2002 | MACWORLD | 25 {WAC BEAT [NOVEMBER 2002 MICROSOFT TO MAC USERS: WHERE DO YOU WANT TO GO NEXT YEAR? MSN Coming to Mac in 2003 Starting next year, Mac users looking for online services, such as | PROFILE | Q&AWITH DAVID STORY MONEY TALKS e-mailing, calendaring, and instant messaging, will have another option to consider—and it will be from a source long off-limits to the Mac platform. Microsoft (800/426-9400, www.microsoft.com) plans to release a Mac client of its MSN online services in early 2003. In keep- ing with Microsoft's pledge to focus all Mac development on Intuit caused a stir among Mac users this summer when it announced | plans to release a new version of QuickBooks, the long-dormant small- | business finance program that hadn't been updated in four years. As | Intuit prepares to ship the OS 9- and OS X-compatible update in early 2003, Macworld speaks with David Story, chief technology officer for Intuit’s small-business and personal-finance division, about the deci- Apple's new operating system, the Mac MSN client will be avail- | sion to revive QuickBooks.—PHiuP MICHAELS able only for Mac OS Phe move comes as other Internet service providers spruce up their Mac offerings—particularly AT A GLANCE America Online, with its release in August of an OS X-only cli- | | DAVID STORY ent for its AOL service. Intuit CTO, Intuit’s small-business and “We saw a need,” says Tim McDonough, director of market- | | personal-finance division ing for the Microsoft Mac Business Unit, which will work | MAC: PowerBook G4. SOFTWARE: with MSN to develop the client software. To that end, the Mac | Photoshop Elements, Microsoft Word Business Unit will draw on its experience in developing Internet| . 3 Explorer and Entourage specifically for the Mac. Look for core technologies from those applications to be integrated into MSN's Mac client, which will be built from the ground up in OS X. Microsoft also plans to provide free Mac-specific customer sup- port when the MSN for Mac client ships in early 2003. Monthly subscription prices vary, depending on how you receive MSN services. Dial-up service costs $22 a month, while broadband | service is available for a $40 a month.—PHILIP MICHAELS Why is Intuit putting out a new Mac version of QuickBooks? In looking at QuickBooks and its history, the key thing about | our decision to bring it back has just been listening to cus- | tomers. A lot of people don’t know that we survey thousands of customers every year. And recently, we've seen an uptick in interest in the re-release of a version. They really wanted us to do a version that worked with OS X, and they wanted to see an ongoing commitment to the platform. That's what we're talking about here—a long-term commitment, a multiple-year commitment to develop QuickBooks for the Macintosh. SILICONE-CAST KEYBOARD FLEXES ITS MUSCLE Bend, Don't Break Why did development of the Mac version stop? The essential reason was that we knew we could continue to If superheroes ever find themselves in need of a keyboard, they'd ___ offer support for QuickBooks for the Mac, We'd been looking do well to consider the CoolMac Keyboard from CoolMacStuff | at other products and saying, “We can go to not-annual releases -com, the online store for the Mac specialist Crywolf Consulting _ | of these.” And when we looked at customer demand, they were (866/266-5622, www.crywolfstore.com/cool), in San Diego. Like pretty satisfied with that product. That product has just outsold the Man of Steel himself, the CoolMac Keyboard is nearly imper- | everything else. Its been a fantastic product for us. So what vious to whatever hazards life can throw at it. Crumbs, stray ink we decided to do was keep very active and keep track of what marks, beverage spills—the kind of mishaps that can fell an ordi- | new things customers wanted. When that hit critical mass, we nary keyboard—roll decided to reinstitute our Macintosh business and set up a sepa- off the CoolMac Key- | rate Macintosh business specifically focused on that to make board's silicone-cast sure we were able to take advantage of OS X and meet a back- body without a fuss. log of customer needs. Crywolf drew on a similar PC product | So you wouldn’t say that the perception among some Mac for inspiration, but it | &eFs that QuickBooks abandoned the Mac is accurate? added enough Mac- specific touches—such as the 3 keys on either side of the spacebar—to make its $59 key- | ard appeal to Mac users. (Look for a keypad-equipped version and one for PDAs sometime this fall.) Flexible enough to roll up | into a bundle, the CoolMac Keyboard is ideal for tr: demand portability but don't want to sacrifice durabil design also eliminates negative-angle wrist stress. Like any super- hero, the CoolMac Keyboard has one vulnerability—don’t slice | through the silicone with a knife or a pair of scissors and expect it | to remain functional. There’s no word yet on how well the key- board withstands kryptoni PHILIP MICHAELS If, you look at it from Intuit’s perspective as a whole company, we've continued to release Turbo Tax and Quicken and really be dedicated to the Mac platform. It was simply on the QuickBooks | side [that] customer demand was appropriate to keep the cur- rent version running. So that’s why we focused on maintenance | releases and patches and updates for QuickBooks, and now it’s | time to come back and really focus in on [a new version]. | More Info: & | www Raoecans com/2002/1 ‘imacbeat/quickbooks| html intuit explains how QuickBooks fits into its Right for My Business | strategy in Mecwvard's online interview. ia i= | | | 36 | MACWORLD | November 2002 _vewewemacworld.com | ssh, Te OLYMPUS Is your digital camera giving you the most realistic images? With up to 10x optical zoom, the Olympus C-720 and C-730 Ultra Zoom cameras create picture quality so real, your The C7 images come to life. Faraway subjects are brought in close for with 3.2 detailed pictures, even in 8 x10 prints. Combine this with 3 megapixels advanced Color N ement Sys m for negapixels and accurate colors, plus a lens designed specifically for digital photography, and the result is crisper, more realistic images. elympusamerica com/uttran Choose 7 at wivwmacworld.com/getinfo 1 200m, The C-720 and C-730 feature a powerful optical zoom lens and ultra-compact body. And Auto Connect USB to easily download and share the most realistic digital images yet. Nothing’s impossible. 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 tha won't even appear on the desktop. 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 WfiMicromat 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 wwav.macworld.com/getinfo iCALAND OTHER FREE APPS—GREAT FOR CONSUMERS BUT CHALLENGING FOR COMPETITORS A New Day for Apple’s i-apps have gone a long way toward justifying the price Mac users pay for their machines. After all, free applica- tions such as iMovie, iTunes, and iPhoto transform Macs from mere computer ter- minals into management centers for digi- tal devices. The September releases of iCal and iSync figure to further extend those capabilities by providing users with a calendaring application and a way to coordinate information across all their digital devices. Developers? such a good deal for Mac developers. Just as makers of MP3-playing, CD- burning, and DVD-authoring products had to contend with the release of iTunes and iDVD last year (see “Toasting the Competition,” Buzz, June 2001), iCal could mean increased competition for established calendaring programs—such as Power On Software's Now Up-to- Date & Contact and Chronos’s Personal Organizer and Group Organizer—not to mention a slew of shareware and free- ware options (see “Daily Reminders”). “This is not really a new sit uation in the personal-infor- mation-manager market,” says Robert McCullough, Chronos'’s vice president of product development. “The Palm Desktop software is also free and has been for several years. The reason that Per- sonal Organizer continues to oe=o=—o= 7 ig id sell well is that it offers many features that just aren’t avail- able in the Palm software— One Day at a Time ‘Cal's release means more competition for established programs, such as Chronos’s Organizer (pictured here). or in iCal.” Apple declined to com- “We wanted to centralize the move- ment and syncing of data,” says Christian Thomas, product manager for iCal and iSync. “One application manages all of your PIM data.” Indeed, by hamessing the Bluetooth wireless-connectivity standard, iCal will let you synchronize the calendar | on your computer with a Palm handheld, a cell phone, and even an iPod, publishing the calendar, live, to the Web (provided that you subscribe to Apple’s .Mac services). But while the price of free i-apps may be right for Mac users, it’s not always Daily Reminders _ ment on the effect that free programs such as iCal might have on its relationship with developers. As for the developers themselves, McCullough says that he supports Apple’s drive to increase market share through the i-apps, but notes that the company is walking a fine line. “We at Chronos have been developing Macintosh software since 1993,” he says. “We stuck with the platform through the lean years because we like Macs and we like developing for them. However, its not easy to compete with companies like Microsoft, Palm, and now Apple.”—MATHEW HONAN COMPANY | Apple Chronos PRODUCT ial Palm Powe On oare * Sold a5 part of Microsoft Office. PRICE CONTACT - free 9 werwapple.com 435/615-7335, wwnw.chronosnet.com wawwuchronosnetcom 800/426-9400, wwwwmicrosoft.com (MAC BEAT|NOVEMBER 2002 4 HARDWARE ee BEAT Four printers from Epson (800/873-7766, www.epson.com): The Stylus Photo 925 (5299) and Stylus Photo 825 ($199) are six-color photo printers with built-in Flash media readers. The four-color Stylus C82 ($149) offers new Dura- Brite water- and fade-resistant inks and prints as many as 22 black-and-white and 11 color pages per minute. The ‘Stylus C62 ($99) prints as many as 14 black-and-white and 10 color pages per minute. The Photo 925, Photo 825, and Stylus C62 ell offer a maximum resolution of 5,760 by 720 dpi. The Stylus C82 offers a maximum resolution of 5,760 by 1,440 dpi. Three four-color photo printers from Canon (800/385-2155, ‘www.usa.canon.com): The i320 ($79) prints as many as 10 black-and-white and six color pages per minute with a maximum resolution of 2,400 by 1,200 dpi. The i550 ($149) | prints as many as 18 black-and-white and 11 color pages per minute, while the i850 ($199) prints as many as 22 black-and-white and 14 color pages per minute. Those two printers have a maximum resolution of 4,800 by 1,200 dpi. A monochrome laser printer from Xerox (800/835-6100, wwaw.xerox.com): The Phaser 4400 ($999) offers a reso- lution of 1,200 by 1,200 dpi and prints as many as 26 pages per minute—comPuED BY KELY LUNSFORD NETWORKING AB BEAT LANSurveyor 7.0, from Neon Software (800/334-6366, \wwvw.neon.com): The network-management software now runs in OS X and the classic Mac OS. It features Backup Profile, for determining data security on Mac and Windows machines, and new map topologies; it includes 20 Neon for Mac 0S and Windows ($495; upgrade, $129, or free ifthe program was bought after July 1, 2002). Hardware A wireless broadband router from D-Link (800/326-1688, wwwdlink.com): The D-Link AirPro DI-764 Dual Band Wireless Broadband Router ($499) features a built-in 4-port 10/100 Fast Ethernet switch and advanced fire- wall functionality. t simultaneously serves IEEE 802.114 wireless connectivity at 4 Mbps, IEEE 802.11b wireless connectivity at 11Mbps, and enhanced IEEE 802.11b con- nectivity at 22 Mbps. ‘An electrical-wiring-Ethemet bridge from PhonexBroad- band (800/437-0101, wwwphonex.com): The HomePlug 1.0-compliant NeverWire 14 QX-201 device ($129 per node) takes unused bandwidth in standard electrical wiring | to create a 14MB Ethernet network—conneD By su ROTER L wrwmacworld.com_| November 2002 | MACWORLD | 29 | ~{ MAC BEAT | NOVEMBER 2002 ) InstallAnywhere Standard Edition WHAT’ AT'S ) Mac OS X pdates. 5.0.4 WHAT 5 Deployment solution and installer H OT powered by (PPET __intego NetBarrier x 10.0.8 versiontracker’ 05 X 10.2 compatibility for software A Quick Look at | saiveuen few the World of Macs ine InterView X 2.2.2 | Relational-database system USB video-in capture product +. Apple's newest Power Address Offic iTunes Publisher 2.0 Mac Gés are now shipping, | Adress book and PIM forsmalbafice and 0% Tuner lays o various fomats home-office users |. Therevamped machinesship- || omecllice tees an = with dual optical-drive bays, Apple iPod Updater 1.2 Pcie THE? Color atprtntas allowing users to not steal Restore and update features for SX. binterchiver ‘music faster than ever before. | Barcode Toolbox 2.0.2 mn] | 2 Mac users packed Apple Adobe Acrobat and Mustrater plug-in for et serving, monitoring and failure recovery Stores across the country |S inner 4.1 on August 23, for midnight | BIAS Peak 3.1 Web-authoring tool adds Quartz Text ‘Adds QuickTime 6 support for audio-editing and -mastering application ClearDock 1.1 ‘Changes Dock background color in 05 X 10.2 Jaguar release. Thankfully, trained handlers kept maul- ings to a minimum, 5, Intuit will update its Mac Smoothing, Jaguar support Prosoft NetWare Client 1.0.2 08 X connectivity for Novell networks Return to Castle Wolfenstein 1.3.3 version of QuickBooks for | Cocoa Fortune 1.3 first-person shooter game beta the first time since 1998, Port of Unix utility Fortune = Gnesi — Intuit executives say the move | Dantz Retrospect client 5.0.536 isthe result of pent-up con- (05X 10.2 client for the backup software Scanner software for most scanners sumer demand and the sud- | Discus 2.65 Slick Transitions & Effects 4 den realization that the Mac | CD/DVD-labeling software —Es platform wasn'ta figmentof | Font pilot 1,0 | someone's imagination, | Font manager and previewer Game Ranger 3.0 Online service for playing and discussing Tri-Backup 3.12 Automatic backup and synchronization & Microsoft plans to release an 0S X-compat- ible version of its MSN network games tility | online service, System Granite10. SSB Overdrive X10.0.0b5 requirements for the MSN Font previewing ullty Une US8 mone trackball driver for client include a small, low cost PC that runs alongside | your Mac. | For these and other current updates, visit Macworld.com, | L www.macworld.com/subject/updates has the latest from VersionTTracker.com, | | HAIRSTYLE SIMULATOR LETS YOU TRY OUT A NEW ‘DO Hair-Raising Application ‘The realization that purple hair looked terrible with your complexion used to be imme- diately followed by the realization that your first realization had come too late. With Change My Image, a hairstyle-simulation program from Japan’s Infinisys (www.infini sys.co.jp/), attacks of postmakeover remorse may be avoidable. The $15 program (which runs on Mac OS 8.6 and later, including OS X) lets you virtually try on different styles—more than 100 of them—and colors. Just load a photograph into the program, choose a hairstyle, and line up both the photo and the hairstyle image. Then, using a color wheel with a brightness slider, you pick a color—everything from tangerine to aqua. But be warned: although Change My Image’s color wheel contains all the hues of the rainbow, a lovely dishwater blond is difficult to approximate. The outlandish colors and a “cell-phone size” image-export option are clues as to this program's target audi- ence: HRSG obsessed teenagers (and adults who think like them), rather than hair- care professionals. Even so, i iste grows only about half an inch per month, and that $15 might be money well spent if you're able to con- vince your teenager (or your- self) before it’s too late that purple hair is hard to acces- sorize.—CHARLES PURDY How Do | Look? Start with a picture (left); then preview a new you. | Hardware | (408/433-3899, wwrw.addonics.com): The Pocket Ultra | DigiDrive can read PC Card hard drives, ATA Flash cards, {_05X($100; upgrade, $40)—conren y es cana STORAGE | BEAT External Drives ‘An external Zip drive from lomega (888/446-6342, ww lomega.com); The Zip 750MB Drive comes with a Fire- Wire interface ($200); a USB 2.0 version ($179) is also available, The drive will read and write to the new 750MB Zip disks (available for $15) and older 250MB Zip disks. | The new drives can read 100MB Zip disks. Media Readers A flash media storage reader from Addonics Technologies and CompactFlash | and It cards. An optional four-in-one Digi Adapter also supports Smart Media, Memory Stick, Secure Digital Card, MultiMedia Card, and MicroDrive. The DigiDrive comes with either a FireWire ($119) or a USB 2.0 ($89) interface. The version bundled with the DigiAdapteris | also available for FireWire ($179) and USB 2,0($149). | Software RAID Toolbox for Mac OS X, from CharisMac Engineering (530/885-4420, wwwcharismac.com): The RAID tool and single formatter has been revvrtten from the ground up in EDUCATION | BEAT Science and Math Software Matlab 6.5, from The Mathworks (508/647-7000, www .themathworks.com): The technical computing program ‘adds OS X support and includes the new JIT-Accelerator technology for increased computational speed, Version 6.5 also includes new programming and development features, ‘an enhanced interface, and improved Web integration | (51,900). Also, Simulink 5 ($2,800), for modeling, simula- tion, and dynamic-systems analysis is OS X compatible, New features include multidomain modeling for mechani- cal, electrical-power, and wireless systems; production code generation for microcontrollers; and major improvements in DSP code generation. A New Kind of Science Explorer, from Wolfram Research (800/965-3726, wavw.wolfram.com):The companion soft- ware to A New Kind of Science, by Stephen Wolfram, lets you replicate the book's simple computer-program experi- ments, which explore areas including physics, mathematic, computer science, and biology. The more than 450 exper- ments offer an array of inputs and parameters, and they require no programming. The program runs in OS 8.6, 059, | and OS X's Classic mode, and it should ship by the time you \_ ead this ($65) —conruem ay mu aoe } 30.| MACWORLD | November 2002 wawew.macworld.com Keeping black & white on the run! 16 ppm color the speed you need to survive magicolor’ 3100 “Cheetah” 16 ppm full-color output. Precise, beautiful prints. All the result of an innovative print method called PRISMLASER Technology™. One printer ready to attack all your office needs. Watch out black and white! The fastest magicolor laser printer has just been unleashed—only $1,999*. For more information call 800-523-2696. @ Built-in automatic duplexing ™ Standard 10/100Base TX Ethernet 1200 dpi M350 MHz RISC processor The essentials of imaging www.minolfa-qms.com id.com/getinfo 11x17/1200 dpi Laser! Only $1195 \ xanTe CLEARLY™ . Adobe > a | | IMAGING a aser printing solutions. The new XANTE AW1200 excels in output up to 11" x 17", printing at 1200 x 1200 dpi, while maintaining the physical qualities and size perfect for the office environment. All for the low price of $1195. You won't break the bank or your back when you get the latest in high performance office printing from XANTE. Durable, small, quiet, and very affordable, the AW1200 will satisfy all of your office printing needs. Innovations in Printing Technology PETE More Printing Solutions From XANTE: PlateMaker : | *Compuler-to-Plate printing Quality plates ready press | sResoluutions up to 2400 dpi Computer-to-film printing © Resolutions up to 2400 dpi i u ‘Eliminates expensive oulsourcing costs ccel-a Outstanding graphics printer | HAccel-a-Writer 3N/DN | Top quality office/network inting 0 pages-per-minute ColourLaser Serie Photo Quality Color Resolutions up to 1200 dpi )) eXANZE's color management § ee ee Mbiditbdbetiai: ColourLaser 21 Series °21 Pages Per Minule | High-quality film positives | Resolutions up to 1200 dpi } +Oulput up to 13° x 35.5" | tL | Output up to 13°x 19° | Color proofing, labels, morel TTI Resolidtions up to 2400 api | | + © Duplexing capabilities XANTE introduces the latest high volume and most dynamic digital printing solution. Along with the precision color performance and consistency you've come to expect from XANTE, you get a high speed, high quality digital print solution. The XANTE ColourLaser 21 is the ultimate digital color workhorse combining XANTE's color management expertise, product versatility, and an affordable price. Its quality is unsurpassed, ¢ High volume, high performance * Oversized printing up to 12” x 35.5” * XANTE's color management * Low cost-per-page ¢ And much more! Lease prices starting at**......$257 per month **$0 down, 3 year lease with no payments for 90 days! $1 buy-out available after lease expiration. 23 i lan i ni e.com/ Hig (©2002 XANTE CORPORATION. XANTE and XANIE ColouiLaser are trademarks or regstered trademarks of XANTE CORPORATION, ‘Adobe, PostScript, PostScript 3 and the PostScript logo are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated. PANTONE* and other Pantone, Inc. ‘trademarks ate the property of Pantone, Inc. Other brands and atoduct names ate trademerks or registered trademarks of thee respective holders. XANTE CORPORATION. Post Office Box 16526, Mobile, AL 36616-0526, USA. Phone: 251-473-6502, Fax: 251-473-6503, vevwxantecom Choose 113 at www.macworld.com/gatinfo REVIEWS» Reviews you can trust: Macworld rates only final shipping products, not prototypes. What we review is what you can actually buy. APPLE XSERVE Server Provides Impressive Processing Power and Smooth Looks but Lacks Good RAID Implementation BY SEAN GREATHOUSE ‘The Mac OS is now OS X; OSX is Unix; and Unix is the fastest, stablest server platform around. With Mac OS X Server, Apple has made the benefits of a Unix server OS available via point and click, The only thing missing from this picture has been true server hardware on which to properly run this operating sys- tem—until Xserve, We gave the $3,999, dual-1GHz Xserve con- figuration a working-over and found that, while it lacks redun- dancy and has some design flaws, the advantages of so much G4 power in such a compact machine may make it worth your while. |s the Xserve for You? ‘The Xserve is for anyone who wants to fita lot of Mac in a litde rack space—from small shops that want one powerful server tucked away in a phone closet, to video-effects houses that would benefit from putting 40 Xserves in a single cabinet. Depending on the configuration you choose, the Xserve packs as many as two 1GHz G4 processors, as much as 2GB of RAM, and as many as four 60GB or 120GB hard drives in an industry-standard 1U rack case (1.75 inches of ver- tical server-rack space—so you can fit more than 40 Xserves ina six-foot-tall rack). The Xserve can also serve as a workstation in environments where equipment is often rack mounted, but keep in mind that the wo 5,000-rpm blowers that cool the internal components make the Xserve much noisier than a G4 rower. Also note that it’s intended only for rack mounting: at 19 inches wide and 28 inches deep, it uses too much real estate on a counter or desk, and it’s not designed to support monitors or other components set on top of its case. Out of the Box Don't be fooled by Apple’s pho- tos of the slender Xserve, which are taken from the front of the unit. Viewed from above, it looks huge; its slight height is le thanks to its generous 28-inch depth. The 26-pound Xserve's dimensions are stan- dard for a 1U server but still surprising the first time you see the unit. The Xserve’ finish is similar to that of the ‘Titanium Power- Book G4, with a solid look-and- feel. The case is rigid, so you can handle the server without twisting (and possibly unseating) cards and other internal components. The back of the server fea- tures two FireWire, two USB, and two 10BaseT/100BaseT/ 1000BaseT (Gigabit) Ethernet é sunaniit| ports, as well as a single video port. The power connection has a clever retainer clip designed to spare you the shame of a sudden inadvertent shutdown. The final touch is standard fare for Unix servers but new to the Mac: a console-redirection port that gives you command-line access over a serial cable. Beneath a slim CD-ROM drive, four removable drive bays dominate the front panel. Press- ing on the front of a drive bay causes it to pop open, spinning down the drive and revealing a handle with which to pull the module out. Lights indicating Ethernet link, processor activity, and drive status provide both valuable information and techie- gizmo appeal. An additional front-panel FireWire port gives the digital-media crowd a place to plug in without hiking to the back of the rack. The system-identifier button is a brilliant feature for anyone with multiple Xserves in a stack. Press- ing this button turns on amber LEDs on the front and back of the case, allowing you to tag a server from the front and then easily find it again from the back. A twist of a key activates the locking system that prevents the case from being opened, secures the drive modules, and disables the CD-ROM drive. If a FireWire hard drive was mounted before the system was locked, it remains mounted while newly attached devices are ignored. Likewise, USB con- nections to an uninterruptible power supply remain, but key- The Apple Xserve Shown here is the Xserve’s front (top) and back (bottom). its slight height belies its 28-inch depth. board and mouse connections are blocked. Unfortunately, the key is only an Allen wrench with a fancy knurled handle—the standard locked-door approach to physical security is still your best bet. Into the Rack The Xserve comes with hardware and instructions for mounting in four-post and two-post racks. In a two-post installation, it can’t be mounted flush against the front of the rack, so it must extend both in front of and behind the rack posts. The top and sides of the case form a light shell that you can slide off the server and mount in the rack. You then slide the server into the secured shell and lock it in with two thumbscrews. Mounting the 26-pound Xserve is a two-person job, and its flex- ible shell doesn’t properly pre- vent it from falling through the bottom until it is halfway in the shell. Furthermore, we recom- mend thatyou remove the Xserve completely from the rack to ser- vice internal components. While mounting our test unit, we discovered a serious design flaw. When you're han- dling or working around the Xserve, it’s very easy to bump the front of a drive bay, popping the handle out and disabling the hard drive. If you do this to the boot disk on a running Xserve, you get an instant system crash and possible data loss. The sys- tem lock doesn’t currently pre- vent this, but Apple is working on solving the problem. Uptime Is Everything If your desktop is down for an hour, you lose an hour of work. But if a server is offline for an hour, your entire company loses an hour of work. ‘Io provide maximum uptime, servers use monitoring and redundancy— the Xserve excels at the former and all but omits the latter. 34 MACWORLD | November 2002 worwmacworld.com | 34 Network server Apple Xserve 35. Database software FileMaker Pro 6 36 Multimedia application QuickTime 6 Pro 37. Relationship-finding software Six Degrees 38 DV camcorders Canon Optura 200MC, 1VC GR-DVM96U, Sony DCR-PC 12081, Sony DCR-TRVSO 40 Digital video recorder Ryelv 41 Video-editing software Avid Xpress DV 3.5 42. Music-sampling and -synthesis too! Reason 2.0 44 Network analyzer Nethlinder Ethernet 5.0 45. Mathematics software Mathematica 4.2 46 Email-filtering program Spamfte 1.2 47 3-D-animation software Camara Studio 2 48 iMovie plug-ins ‘Slick Transitions and Effects Volume 3, Stick Tanstions and Effects Volume 4 49. Virus-protection software ‘Norton AntiVirus 8.0 50 Music player Apple iPod 2068 50 Dock-replacement utility WorkStrip X. 53. Reviews in Brief Baavo Efiects and Echo Transitions, Kensington ‘StudioMouse, Maclournal 2.1, Pantane Color ‘Cae, WeatherPop Advance 1.5, Who's There Firewall Advisor 1.2 55 The Game Room op-pop, Medal of Honor: Aled Assault, Beach Head 2002, Clive Barker's Undying OUTSTANDING: $$6$$ VERY GOOD: $#$% GOOD: $%$ FLAWED: $% UNACCEPTABLE: $ By sensing and reporting hardware status, a server can warn a network administrator of potential problems, and the Xserve is full of sensors. It knows whether (and how fast) the fans are running. [t knows how much power it’s using and how hot it is. It takes advantage of diagnostic chips on the hard drives to predict drive failures, and it monitors its network- connection status. All of this vital information is reported via the well-designed Server Monitor, a remote-man- agement application that works only with the Xserve. Server Monitor can be set up to notify you of problems via e-mail, so warnings will also reach your e-mail-enabled cell phone or pager. Remote management is enabled via an extensive suite of graphical, command-line, and SNMP remote-management tools, In addition, if you can’t respond to a temperature warn- ing, the Xserve should shut itself off before overheating causes it to fail. Unfortunately, the Xserve lacks redundant fans or power supplies, and it lets you create redundant hard drives only via the feature-poor and unreliable software-RAID implementa- tion included in Apple's Disk Utility. When we tested our Xserve with two 60GB drives formatted as a mirrored array, Disk Utility didn’t let us mirror a drive on which we already had data, forcing us to erase all drives in the RAID set and start over, (Our advice is to decide on your setup before you begin to configure your server.) ‘When we removed a drive can- ister to simulate a failure, the Xserve ran without interruption, although it failed to alert us that a drive had been removed or that the RAID set was broken. We also experienced serious difliculty in rebuilding the mirrored drive. As with any system you rely on in a crisis, you should test failure and recovery behavior yourself, before the server is in production. For now, if you need the data- loss insurance provided by redun- dant hard drives, we recom- mend that you use an external hardware RAID. If a component does fail, the Xserve can be quickly serviced with the optional spare-parts kit, but at $1,549 to $2,509, it’s best suited for installations with multiple Xserves. Apple also offers AppleCare Premium Sup- port for both the Xserve hard- ware and your OS X Server software, at $950 for three years of around-the-clock phone and e-mail support with 4-hour or next-day on-site service. Macworld’s Buying Advice The Xserve packs intense G+ processing power in a small form factor, so if your setup demands server-side processing, the Xserve is for you. As a storage server, the Xserve delivers mixed results. With as much as 480GB of drive space, there’s plenty of capacity, but the currentlack of reliable on- board RAID limits the Xserve's use to applications where uptime and data-loss protection aren’t of primary importance, or environ ments that utilize external redun- dant storage. 2 RATING: $963 PROS: Excellent status-reporting and remote-management tools; huge stor- age capacity; rack-dense design puts ‘enormous power in a small space. CONS: Lack of hardware RAID and decent software RAID limits use for some applications; insecure drive-bay latches can bring your server down. PRICE: 1GHz and 256MB RAM, ‘$2,999; dual-1GHz and 512MB RAM, $3,999 OS COMPATIBILITY: Mac 05 X COMPANY: Apple Computer, ‘800/538-9696, www.apple.com FILEMAKER PRO 6 Database Software Enhances Ease of Use and Adds XML Support—without Rocking the Boat BY SCOTT LOVE If you're a Mac user, chances are you're well acquainted with File- Maker Pro. It has been part of the Mac‘ history since 1985, and version 6 retains the program's legendary ease of use. Users will appreciate what may likely prove to be this release’s best fea- ture: extending and constraining found sets. FileMaker Pro 6 also offers XML import and export capabilities; however, this ver- sion may leave you wanting more when it comes to security enhancements, multithreading, and innovation. Day-to-Day Use One of FileMaker’s strengths is its ability to perform complex searches, In the past, though, it always replaced one found set with the results from the next. Ir’s now possible in Find mode to refine a set of records further by performing subsequent requests with the Constrain Found Set option, which lets you apply a second search to only those records within the current group. Likewise, Extend Found Set allows you to add records to the overall group. These func- tions are fully scriptable and should help you better manage data sets. Another small but welcome change is that you no longer have to go through the Sort dia- log box or create a script for basic sorting requests. Instead, you can pull up a contextual menu with a single click of the mouse and perform simple sorts on any field of a given layout. When you need to make global changes, a new Find/Replace fea ture lets you search across fields and records and change data within them. You could, for example, universally change a misspelling of San Francisco wherever it occurred in your database. Developers will value this handy way to avoid writing et In the Driver's Seat FileMaker Pro 6's Custom Dialog boxes let developers cre- ate customized information requests and make sure that end users fulfill them. wwewumacworld.com | Noveriber 2002 | MACWORLD | 35 | REVIEWS» some parsing functions, but be warned: the fields you wish to modify must be on the current layout for this function to be effective, and it applies only toa current found set. Diving into Development For developers, the big news is Custom Dialog boxes. While not as flexible as the popular Troi Dialog plug-in, they do let you use calculation fields to display specific dialog messages to spe- cific users—for example, “Chris, ‘someday’ isn’t a valid deadline.” Developers can also ensure that end users fulfill data requests by allowing them to modify as many as three fields from within these boxes. This lets developers do things such as highlight data problems in a dialog box, where a.user won't be able to miss them, or to have the user enter an inter- nal password for special access to certain layouts or scripts. These Custom Dialogs are great, but the lack of menus, check boxes, or other niceties lim- its the options you can exploit to get the information you need. Getting FileMaker to Talk FileMaker has rightly boasted of version 6 XML integration as a key feature, and the world of seri- ous data management dictates that all modern apy i work with XML. FileMaker Pro 6 XML features finally offer developers an alternative to the trials of dealing with ODBC drivers, kludged systems built with merge files, exports, Apple- Script, and so forth. But XML isn’t for the faint of heart, and good luck finding any mention of it in FileMaker's manual. ‘Id the company’s credit, it offers decent XML resources at www.filemaker.com/xml/. Showing Potential Overall, FileMaker Pro 6 has some welcome additions; where it falls down is in its omissions. Security is increasingly important to database developers these days, and it’s a shame that FileMaker’s obscure security dialog boxes haven't changed much since ver- sion 3. It’s impossible to apply security settings globally across a united group of files, you can’t | easily maintain more than a hand- | ful of login and password combi- nations, and the group screen's user interface is still incompre~ hensible and counterintuitive. Te would be nice if FileMaker | had some common program- ming elements as well, mainly for power users. For example, many developers would love to be able to copy and paste a selection of | script steps from place to place (rather than using only the lim- ited import function), or better yet, to have the option of working. in a text editor. FileMaker is still | missing any sort of arrays— which would finally make it pos- sible to control, say, repeating fields—and there's no way to build functions within elaborate calculations or scripts. Finally, the FileMaker client is still single-threaded, so it can | perform only one task at a time—an issue for Web-hosted databases and other systems that use the Web Companion plug- in. Moreover, you can have only 50 files open at once, and File- Maker's client-server model still depends on high traffic, making it difficult to deploy across the Internet or a WAN. Macworld’s Buying Advice All told, FileMaker Pro 6 is a | strong upgrade—the addition of XML is a must if you need to | have FileMaker interact with another system. While we may wonder whether version 6 can | justifiably be called a major release, the new features it contains are quite helpful, and | FileMaker remains the easiest database to use or develop for on any platform. © RATING: $996 PROS: Handy Custom Dialogs; | significantly enhanced XML import and expor; flexible extending and constraining of found sets. CONS: Security stil largely dates back to version 3; single-threaded client. PRICE: $299; upgrade, $149 OS COMPATIBILITY: Mac 0S 9, Mac 05 X COMPANY: Filetlaker, 800/725- 2747, wawwfilemaker.com QUICKTIME 6 PRO- Apple's Multimedia Technology Adds Welcome Compression Features and Instant-On Streaming BY CHRISTOPHER BREEN After months of delay due to MPEG-4 licensing issues, Apple has finally released QuickTime 6. Available in two versions— the free Standard version and the $30 QuickTime Pro—the latest iteration of this venerable multimedia technology is worth the wait. Both versions allows you to play MPEG-4-encoded movies and more easily navi- gate streaming Web content. In addition, QuickTime 6 Pro (the version we review here) lets you create audio files smaller— and of higher quality—than those encoded in the ubiqui- tous MP3 format, and it offers MPEG-’4 video encoding. Big Sound, Small Files QuickTime’ significant improve- ments lie beneath the surface. Likely to pique the interest of audio enthusiasts is the inclusion of Dolby Laboratories’ Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) codec— the audio arm of QuickTime’s | MPEG-4 encoder. ‘This codec can create audio files nearly indis- tinguishable from the uncom- pressed original, at around 7 percent of the original file’s size. We encoded a 4-minute, 40.4MB AIFF file with QuickTime 6’ AAC codec (at the default resolu- tion of 96 Kbps) to produce a 2.8MB file. This file sounded dis- tinctly clearer than a 4.4MB file produced with iTunes’ MP3 encoder (at the default resolution of 160 Kbps). Regrettably, AAC encoding is absent in most QuickTime- related applications. Although iTunes can play MPEG-4 audio files, for example, it can’t encode files in this format. Likewise, you can't export MPEG-4 audio from iMovie. Screen Test Although video compressed with the included MPEG-4 video codec lacks the clarity of video encoded with Sorenson Media's Sorenson Video 3 Pro codec ($299; 801/287-9400, www .sorenson.com), the Sorenson codec can't match MPEG-4's encoding speed. On a 933MHz Power Mac G4 running Mac OS X 10.1.5, we encoded a 78.1MB, 1-minute, 32 240-pixel QuickTime movie at best quality with the MPEG-4 video codec, the Sorenson Video 3 Pro codec, and the standard (free) version of the Sorenson Video 2 codec. Sorenson Video 3 took 2 minutes and 7 seconds to compress the file to 48.4MB, Sorenson 2 spent 4 minutes and 3 seconds encoding AWord from Our Sponsors in QuickTime Player 6, Apple has abandoned more- heloful TV-channel links in favor of those with a more commercial nature. {36 | MACWORLD | November 2002 | wowwmacworld.com | the movie to 33.2MB, and Quick- ‘Time 6's MPEG-4 encoding took a speedy 40 seconds to compress the file to 45,2MB. ‘The file w Sorenson Video 3 Pro codec most closely matched the origi- nal movie in detail and color accuracy, In comparison, the MPEG-4-encoded version looked slightly washed out, and its edges weren't as crisp. How= ever, the MPEG-# version was clearer than the file encoded with the free Sorenson 2 codec. In fact, the 33.2MB Sorenson 2-encoded file looked only as good as the MPEG-4 version of the movie encoded at medium quality—which was a very small file at 16MB. encoded with the | SIX DEGREES Innovative Software Watches Helps You Retrace Your Steps BY JENNIFER BERGER If you sometimes spend far too much time looking for things you just know are on your Mac, Creo's inventive software for grouping and presenting infor- mation, Six Degrees, may be right up your alley. You could use a combination of Mac OS's built-in search utility, Micro- soft Entourage’s Find function, and your own intuition to locate your stuff, but Six Degrees saves you that trouble, The OS X- only application lets you pin- Your Every Move and most recent version in its usual place