MacWorld0311November2003

a SWEET! EVERYTHING ADOBE IS NEW AGAIN FIRST LOOK: PHOTOSHOP, GOLIVE, ILLUSTRATOR, AND INDESIGN, P. 67 The Mac Product Experts www.macworld.com | November 2003 USE YOUR MAC ANYWHERE LAP | % GO WIRELESS THINK GLOBAL At Last, You Can Cut the Cords Your Mac’s Passport Is Inside SAFETY FIRST NEW POWERBOOKS Protect Your Laptop and Data Updated 12-Inch and 17-Inch Models iPOD ADAPTATION We Took a Pack of iPod Car-Stereo Adapters on a Road Trip to Las Vegas, p.80 FIRST G5 REVIEW 8 Pier ac cSstesed p26 PLUS SAFARI 1.0 | MULTIFUNCTION PRINTERS | MAILSMITH ‘TMand ©2003 Apple Computer, Inc Allrights reserved. "Actual SRP. Fade Out: The §50, 000 editing system. Fadeln: Final Cut Pro4. Introducing Fina foe Pro® 4, the new choice ‘of professional editors vel ere, from prime-time networks luding RT Extreme for real-time channel audio mixing and ee Cold Mountain \n Theaters Everywhere December 25. ill HNL full scalability from DV to SD, HD and film—Final Cut Pro 4 now offers unmatched capabilities. And with four complimentary applications included- Soundtrack for music, LiveType for animated @ titling, Cinema Tools= for film and Compressor for encoding - it still offers unmatched value at $999: OPINION From the Editor's Desk JASON SNELL We're living /a vida laptop and welcoming our new departments. 10 Feedback Readers respond. MAC BEAT 14 Adobe's integrated Creative Suite—and a new look for Adobe apps; new PowerBooks; Apple's wireless keyboard and mouse; iChat AV support sites; Canon's digital EOS Rebel; PGP Universal; Virtual PC’s G5 problem; and upgraded iMacs. Adobe Photoshop cs 67 ADOBE CHANGES EVERYTHING On the Cover Photograph courtesy of Apple Computer, digital retouching by Stephen Sugg 2 MACWORLD November 2003 November 2003 www.macworld.com : d CWO [ | 29 REVIEWS _ Desktop computers $$$} Apple Power Mac G5/1.66GHz $888 Apple Power Mac G5/1.8GHz $$6$! Apple Power Mac G5/2GHz DP Web-site-maintenance program $$$) Contribute 2.0 | 30 Grade-book software $688 Easy Grade Pro 3.6 $$$ Gradekeeper X 5.4 $$} Master Grade X 1.5 $88 MicroGrade 6.02 $86 Perfect Score 1.1.6 32 E-mail application $984 Mailsmith 2.0 32 Web browser = $4e Safari 1.0 34 This Month in Printers $945 Brother MFC-8420 $883 Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 3330mfp $494 Hewlett-Packard PSC 2175 $$$ Lexmark X5150 All-in-One Print Center 35 Custom soundtrack application $6998 Sonicfire Pro 3 36 ~~ Graphical lexicon $3 Visual Thesaurus 2.0 37. Songwriting software $496 MasterWriter 40 Reviews in Brief After Dark X + Fish, Cinemalift, CintiqPartner, EasyShare 3.0, Inspiration 7.5, KeyStrokes 3, Live 2.1, MacMaid 2.1, PDFshrink 3.0.1 43 The Game Room PETER COHEN Why bother with the real world when you can spend your days in Norrath? Yes, EverQuest— a highly addictive, online role-playing game— has at last arrived for the Mac. 49 Mac Gems DAN FRAKES Back up your data to DY, clip your iSight on various surfaces, control Internet helper apps, make your own CD labels, and create cross- word puzzles. woww.macworld.com COVER STORY Laptop Nation CHRISTOPHER BREEN i We love our Apple laptops for work and play, but that doesn’t mean they | always function flawlessly. Learn how to optimize your PowerBook or iBook, | and discover how OS X and the latest networking and wireless develop- | ‘ments can improve your laptop experience, | FEATURES \75 Adobe Changes Everything Get ready for new versions of GoLive, Illustrator, InDesign, and Photo- shop—all at once. Check out our exclusive look at Adobe Creative Suite’s big new features, application integration, and more, 52 Home Technology Put your Mac to work around the house! From turning out the lights to archiv- | ing your favorite TV shows, these useful gadgets and utilities let you do it all. i ae «© | 78 82 84 3 58 LAPTOP NATION 74 WORKING MAC) | | ‘ | 86 www.macworld.com _| SECRETS WORKING MAC 8 Ways to Speed Up Office KIRK McELHEARN Optimize Microsoft Office settings to speed up your work, even on an older Mac. DIGITAL HUB More Bang for Your Burn JIM HEID Master the subtleties of burning with iTunes, iPhoto, and iDVD. CREATE Powerhouse Plug-Ins JAY NELSON Four Photoshop plug-ins let you produce high- quality images in less time. MOBILE MAC Have iPod, Will Travel PHILIP MICHAELS AND LISA SCHMEISER A road trip to Vegas reveals ways to use your iPod in the car. GEEK FACTOR Scripting FileMaker and iCal SCOTT LOVE AND CHARLES ROSS Design FileMaker databases to interact with data in (Cal and other programs, HELP DESK Mac OS X Hints ROB GRIFFITHS Restore a lost iTunes playlist, build a quick HTML image gallery, silence Mail's junk-mail sound, translate Terminal’s calendar, install system updates remotely from the command line, and become more productive at work. Mac 911 CHRISTOPHER BREEN Get rid of stubborn menu-bar items and unwanted language files, play music on a bootable iPod, control which app opens when you connect a digital camera, customize Safari's Bookmarks, and Convert audio files for Final Cut Pro. |BACK PAGE _ | 120 Hot Stuff Check out our editors’ favorite developments of the month. November 2003 MACWORLD 3 Macs and PCs have never been so compatible. Microsoft® Office v. X lets Mac users effortlessly open, 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 for Mac OS X, so it's the most reliable, easygoing Office yet. www.officeformac.com to download a free 30-day trial of Office v. X today. PORTRAIT BY SVEN WIEDERHOLT FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK BY JASON SNELL Coping with Change IN THE WORLD OF COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY, CHANGE CAN occur at stunning speeds. For example, this January Steve Jobs announced that 2003 was the “Year of the Notebook,” a declaration that was partially an admission that Apple wouldn’t have any new Power Macs until late in the year at the earliest. Viewed less cynically, Jobs’s assertion reflected a dra- matic transition happening in the computer industry. As laptops gain power, and as the cost of building laptops drops, regular computer users are increas- ingly opting for portable computers instead of desk- tops. If you don’t need the speed of a Power Mac, the thinking goes, why not have the portability of a PowerBook? At work, I’ve got a 20-inch LCD screen, an Apple keyboard, and a Kensington Turbo Mouse attached to my 12-inch PowerBook. And when I’m ready to head home or to leave for a business trip, it’s easy to unplug and go. Since I started using a PowerBook as my primary Mac, I’ve never wanted to go back. I know that increasing numbers of Macworld editors are choosing laptops instead of desktops, and the same is true else- where in the Mac market. After all, Apple’s Power- Books are the talk of the computer industry in terms of design and features, and the iBook is a sturdy low- end laptop that’s a great value. PowerBooks and iBooks are great, but they’re very different from their desktop cousins. That's why we’ve rounded up numerous tips and tricks, from PowerBook experts, in “Laptop Nation” (page 58). I hope that after reading our story, all laptop- wielding Macworld readers will find new ways to use their portable Macs efficiently—at home, in the office, and on the go. Change on the Desktop Of course, The Year of the Notebook has also turned out to be the Year of the GS. Apple’s next-generation Power Macs have finally arrived, and we've got our first review, courtesy of former MacWeek editor Henry Norr (page 26). The G5s change the game for Mac users, and we'll be adapting to those changes in the months ahead. It’ll be interesting to discover just how USB 2.0, Serial ATA, and other new technologies incor- porated in the G5 will affect the way we work on our Macs. And then there’s the GS chip itself, whose 64-bit architecture is perhaps the most dra- matic change Apple has made to the Power Mac in quite a while. ‘www.macworld.com Change in the Magazine With this issue, there are also several changes to Macworld. Most dramatic is the change to our Secrets section, which now features a series of columns directed at different areas of interest among Mac users: Working Mac (general and business productiv- ity), Digital Hub (digital video, music, and photog- raphy), Create (graphics, publishing, and pro audio), Mobile Mac (PowerBooks, iBooks, iPods, and hand- helds), and Geek Factor (scripting, Unix, and nifty gadgets). We’ve also created a new section for help and tips: Help Desk features both Christopher Breen’s Mac 911 column and a new column of tips, Mac OS X Hints, from Rob Griffiths, of the www -macosxhints.com Web site. In addition to those changes, we've moved our Mac Gems column into our Reviews section, next to The Game Room. And we’ve added a new feature to the back page—Hor Stuff will give you the skinny on the best Mac products in key categories, as well as tips on other goings-on in the Mac world that deserve your attention. (| I THIS MACWORLD lance copy editor, Peter Belanger was our photographer. What happens when we need a group of laptop. users to pose for a Mac- world photo shoot? We put cout an all-company casting call. The result is the open- ing photograph for “Laptop. Nation.” Filling the roles of various types of PowerBook and iBook users were these Macworld staff members = (from left to right): Franck Zamora, account executive; Niki Stranz, Showcase account manager; Charles Purdy, managing editor; Megan Matteoni, production coordinator; and Robert Ordofia, free- Got a comment on changes to the Mac, changes to Macworld, or anything else? Send me an e-mail at jason_snell@macworld.com, or visit our online forums at www.macworld.com. November 2003 MACWORLD 5 SASS New computer NOTrequired. NEW! Cy 14GHz Think you can't use iMovie", iTunes, iPhoto” or an iPod” with your old Mac"? . ’ Think again. Just upgrade your not-so-old Mac to create your own digital hub! Sonnet Technologies makes it happen. Our variety of processor upgrades will boost your computer's speed up to 1.4 GHz, Sonnet's PCI adapters and storage devices will connect the latest drives and digital peripherals to your system. OS X support is also available for many systems. Best of all, these cost-effective solutions are simple to install, Upgrade your Mac today! Sonnet products and everything else you need are available now at mac <Swarehouse 1-800-255-6227 SONNET, SIMPLY FAST Choose 133 at wwnwmacworid.com/getinfo 6 MACWORLD November 2003 President | Editor in Chief | Executive Editor | Managing Editor | Senior How-to Editor Senior News Editor Senior Reviews Editor Test Manage, Macworld Lab Senior Associate Editors Assoclate Editor Copy Editor Contributing Features Editor Rick LePage Jason Snell Jennifer Weer Charles Purdy Teri Stone Philip Michaels Jennifer Berger James Galbraith Kelly Lunsford, Usa Schmeiser, Jonathan Seff Ail Roter Sue Voelkel Scholle Sawyer McFarland: |, Contibuting Editors Davi late Heny Borman Christopher Bee, | Adam C. Engst, Bruce Fase Jim Held, Andy thnatko Ted Landau, Deke McCleland, Tom Negino David Pogue, Stephan Somog, Franklin Tessler ‘Art Director Contributing Designers | Cover Consultant Prepress Consultant Editor, Online f, Macworld.com Senior Editors, MacCentral.com Senior Jennifer Steele John Farnsworth, Jean Zambeli ‘Susan Scandrett Stephen Sugg Jim Dalrymple David Leishman, Peter Cohen, Dennis Sellers International Editors. Matthew JC. Powell, Australia; Berard Le Du, Japan; Krzysztof Pietrask, Poland; Daniel de Blas, Spain; Nils Holmlév, Sweden; Engin Gedlk, Turkey Simon lary United Kingdom | | | ance: Sebastian Hisch, Germany: Enc Lot, tal: Yostio Morya, | | \PIChief Operating Officer Director of Finance ‘Accounting Coordinator VP of Human Resources Senior Human Resources Representative Human Resources Representative IT Director Production Director Prepress Manager Booking and Billing Manager Production Coordinator Online Production Manager November 2003, Volume 20, sue 11 Stephen Daniels os de Feminis Ronda Bittner Kate Coldwell Julie McKie Lisa Hess Sean Greathouse VP of Sales/Publisher Steve Plevin (415/243-3509) Associate Publisher, East Cynthia Ramsey (973/228-3074) National Accounts Manager Paul Bonarigo (508/533-4020) Western Advertising Director Sara Culley (831/438-8408) Account Executive Franck Zamora (415/243-3628) Showcase Account Manager Niki Stranz (415/243-3664) Showcase Account Manager Cato Johnstone (415/243-3691) Online Sales Manager Doug Detlefsen (415/243-3598) Marketing Manager Kasey MacMullen (415/243-3642) Sales and Marketing Assistant Rachel Desjardins (415/267-4562) Steve Spingola ‘Alan Anzalone Ricardo Sandoval ‘Megan Matteoni Ron Neal ation of Mac Publishing, LLC, and International Data Group, Ine. Macworld san independent journal not affiliated with Apple Computes, Ie Copyright © 2003, Mac Publishing, LLC. All rights reseed. Macworld, the acwordoge, Mac La, the means logo, MacCentalcom,Pcerabbet, and Mac Developer ural are registered rademarks of International Data Group, Inc, and used under license by Mac Publishing, LC. Apple, the Apple logo, Mac, and Macintosh are cegistered trademarks of Appie Computer, inc. Printed in the United States of Americ, www.macworld.com The New LaCie DVD+RW, Design by FA. Porsche = \ ey, Create. aa f a movie masterpiece. * LACIE) DESIGN BY F-APORSCHE see the complete new line at www.lacie.com Powered with 80 of our super fast DDR 400 ‘memory, this monkey would be more fun than a barrel full of his best friends. Maximize your Apple G5 Add up to 868 of our DDR 400 memory for the ultimate Mac experience. With Apple's new G5 you can now quadruple your memory and double your fun. TODAY. TOMORROW. NEXT MONTH. NEXT YEAR. Legacy memory modules are manufactured and tested to the latest standards using only the finest materials. We design, build and test ‘on site to ensure that the product you buy from us today will be the same high quality product you get tomorrow, next week, next month and year after year, LEGACY ELECTRONICS, INC. www.legacyelectronics.com For more information call toll free at 888-466-3853 Choose 38 at wwnwmacworld.comigetingo 8 MACWORLD November 2003 HOWTO CONTACT MACWORLD Subscription Information and Services Fone N28 fon elisa | and Canada | Sis 3272 Kon egal | US. Mail Macworld Subscriptions Department .O. 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Please | include a copy of your malling label or your full name and address, | | macworto eoiromia The editors of Macworld welcome you tp, compliments or complants._| Some stories and eviws om pst issues can be located at www | ‘macwatdcom, We are unfortunately unable to ook vp stoves fom | pas issues; recommend products; o diagnose your Mac problems by phone, email or fax You can contact Apple tole at 00538-9696, | ‘or visit the company’s Web site, at wwww.apple.com. | | | | Our offices ae located at 501 Second Stret, 5th Floot, San Francisco, CA94107; phone, 415/243-0505; fax, 415/243-3545, Macworld staff can be reached by e-mail at fistname_jstname@macwcrld.com, LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Send comments about any aspect of Macworld to letters@macworld com. 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Include your name, address, and phone number To share tips and discuss Mac problems with other Mac uses visit the Macworld.com forums MACWORLD CONFERENCE & EXPO As the flagship sponsor of Macworld Conference & Expo, Macworld encourages all subscribers to atend ths exciting biannual industry event For information, please vst wurw.macwoldexpe.com, wwnwmacworld.com aa OLYMPUS Your Vision, Our Future GET ANY CLOSER AND THERE WOULD BEA PENALTY FOR TOO MANY PLAYERS ON THE FIELD. 10x optical zoom gets you closer to the action than any other compact digital it’s combined with a 4-megapixel CCD camera can. Equivalent to a 380mm film I to give you sharp, colorful images every time. All in ac tylish metal body. To learn more about the official camera for NCAA Footbal to olympusamerica.com. The C-750, part of the Ultra Zoom family from Olympus. Designed to do more. ‘yds oun nanos Wy ovN ce ALD GVO | ee — | ca alrhigg Seet Pete : GETTHE skinny High Praise BOB SIMON esi Tes all your fault, really. My computer savvy is only middle-of-the-road, but when I read Christopher Breen’s “Soup Up Your PowerBook” (Secrets, January 2003) and learned how easy it would be to replace the 6GB hard drive in my PowerBook G3 with, say, a 40GB version, I worked up my courage—and did it! Then, my confidence hyped, I installed a second, 80GB drive in my two-year-old G4 tower. After that, I decided to get some use from the old PowerBook drive by putting it in an external FireWire housing. Finally, invincible, I saw in Jonathan Seff's “Install a SuperDrive” (“The Do-It-Yourself Mac,” August 2003) that I could create a SuperDrive setup in the G4 and get iDVD 3 to recognize it. Tt all works—I’m king of the Mac world. Thanks. What's the going rate for a lifetime subscription? Faint Praise BOB MARKETOS. i=) Every year, I think about not renewing my Macworld subscription because most issues are uninteresting to me, and because I can find most content on the Web. But as with my relationship to the game of golf, it’s that one shot that keeps me coming back, Your August issue was full of excellent advice and information, in almost every article. Even Andy Thnatko was enjoyable. So you have me for one more year. Working on Networking MARK LOOPER icy} I have one comment and one question about “The Do-It-Yourself Mac” (August 2003). First, under “Better Burning,” it 10 MACWORLD November 2003 | The Sound of One Hand Clapping Macworld's readers are a hands-on bunch when it comes to their favorite hard- ware—and response to August's "The Do-It-Yourself Mac” was generally a solid | two thumbs up. But other readers point fingers at Apple's Safari Web browser and our FreeHand MX review, while a Canadian Mac user sees the iTunes Music Store's United States—only policies as a slap in the face, Thanks to everyone who shared opinions—positive or negative. We take time to read all the letters you | send us—and we would never tell one of our readers to “talk to the hand.” reads: “Mac OS X doesn’t support DVD- RW.” But following a tip I read on the Web, I've found that I can use OS X’s built-in disc-burning capabilities to write data DVD-RWS, and I can use OS X's Disk Utility to erase them for rewriting. I also use DVD-RWs with Dantz’s Retrospect Express for backup chores. Second, con- cerning configuring the Linksys WET 11 wireless bridge, the article says that you can connect “any device you want to the WET11° Ethernet port,” and it will be on the network with any wireless devices that can recognize your AirPort Base Station. But can older Macs, printers, and so forth communicate via AppleTalk across the bridge for file sharing or printing purposes, or can they connect only via TCP/IP to the Internet? I thought the WET 11 didn’t sup- port AppleTalk packets on its wireless link. The WET11 is designed for TCPAP, so it won't support AppleTalk. You can indeed con- nect “any device you want” to it, but the net- working that's being relayed is TCP/IP. If you wanted to talk to an AppleTalk-only device across the WET11—for example, to use Printer Sharing on one Mac to share your AppleTalk printer with other Macs via TCP/AP—you'd need to attach the device to some other system that supports TCP/IP._—Ed. DR. FRANK MURPHY. Es} Tread with great interest your article on making a wireless bridge with a WET LIL. Thave a graphite AirPort network in my home. I just bought a ReplayTV 5040 unit with Ethernet. (Ithas a USB jack that hasn’t been activated yet, so it's useless at this point.) I bought the WAPI1 because it was cheaper than the WET, and I thought it might be possible to make a wireless bridge with the WAPI1 in the same way as with the WET11. Can I? If so, how? Definitely, via instructions very similar to those I gave for the WETLL. Look in your device's documentation and find its default IP address, The WAPI1's is 192.168.1.251. Next, set the WAPI to Wireless Bridge mode. Then connect your ReplayTV to the WAPII via an Ethernet cable, and you'll have wireless broad- band on your TV set—Jason Snell Free to Be Dissatisfied SHELLY RAMOUTAR e Your Macromedia FreeHand MX review (July 2003) left a lot to be desired. Free Hand is for the most part a print-produc- tion tool, and that area of the program was ignored completely. The Bezigon tool, which is touted as new, has been part of FreeHand since version 9 or earlier. Why is “No completely seamless import or export from Illustrator 9 and 10” a con? Adobe Illustrator has no similar importing and exporting capability for FreeHand—is that acon, too? Macworld reviews are skewed way too much toward Web publishing, to the detriment of print-publishing profes- sionals. For such a popular product, L found this review to be detached and incomplete, considering the kind of attention unpopular programs such as Adobe InDesign receive from Macworld. T've always preferred FreeHand to Illustrator; it lagged with version 10, but the MX update goes a long way toward repositioning FreeHand to its rightful place. | wish Macworld had run a more thorough and realistic review. We agree that FreeHand’s versatility and power cover both print and the Web, but the review’s focus was on FreeHand’s integration with the MX product family. Most of this ver- sion’s newer aspects involve Web publishing and integration with Flash, www macworld.com FreeHand designers don’t work in a vacu- um. While FreeHand bas its advantages, out- put for ads and other projects often requires Illustrator. It’s more efficient and cost-effective to give print shops the format they want, Free- Hand outputs to Illustrator 7 and earlier, but Ilustrator is at version 10, and many of Free- Hand’s transparency effects aren’t supported in Illustrator 7.—Andrew Shalat Left Behind on Safari PETER KEENE 2 Am I the only one who's somewhat bemused by the hurrahs surrounding the release of Apple’s Safari 1.0? Yes, it is pretty quick at downloading certain Web pages. Problem is, I then have to flash up Microsoft Internet Explorer to download pages I want to save to disk, because Safari saves only the text. That’s not the only bummer—the download manager doesn’t support resumable downloads. If you lose the connection, or even if you lose the signal, for a couple of seconds, Safari dumps the lot. I lost 20MB of a 21MB download a while back. Much as I NEW! ° graphire. THE RIGHT TOOL FOR ANY TASK Starting at $99, the Graphire pen tablet gives you the control you need to quickly and easily edit your digital photos, draw, paint, and annotate documents. Get the control of Graphire and join more than 2,000,000 satisfied Wacom® tablet users. PhotoFun Draw&Paint Annotate FREE CD OFFER! Ask for the Pen Power CD today. It's a quick Video introduction to using a pen, plus some great tutorials. visit call www.tabletphotofun.com | 800-922-2589 4 msstcnrma enya gyn aint pam is an pi Sp ma ng nen ac eaareana dua arena Cee ee ene pin try, I can’t seem to completely cut the Microsoft cord. Apples and Maple Leaves ROB GUTHRIE I was pretty excited when Apple started offering individual song purchases for 99 cents through the iTunes Music Store. Searching through the library, I found the songs I wanted to purchase, attempted to make a payment, and then received this message: “We're sorry, but song purchase is not available in your area at this time.” This sucks. When will Apple (and many other U.S. companies) learn that there is a world outside of the United States? While T'm on the subject, when will we see an Apple store here? If Best Buy can set up shop in Canada, surely Apple can. I'm sure Apple would be more than happy to take your 99 cents, but licensing and royalty issues are the culprits bere—as far as we know, the record labels have authorized Apple to sell content only within the United States.—Ed. SOMETIMES TOOLS MAKE ACL THE DIFFERENCE NOVEMBER 2003 FEEDBACK © Post comments on our forums (www .macworld.com); send them by mail to Letters, Macworld, 501 Second Street, Sth Floor, San Francisco, CA 94107; or send them by e-mail to letters@macworld.com. Include a return address and daytime phone number, Due to the high volume of mail we feceive, 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, ORRECTIONS In our review of FontDoctor 5.5 (September 2003), we printed an incorrect telephone num- ber. The correct number is 800/583-2917, OmniGraffle 3.0.1 Professional (Reviews, Sep- tember 2003) is compatible only with OS X. In “Speaking of the Future” (Mac Beat, August 2003) we reported on the Record function found in third-generation iPods. iPod Software 2.0.1 Updater (released after our August issue went to press) removes the diagnostic test that provides. access to the Record function. PATENTED PEN Pressure-sensitive for contrl, with a built-in 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 tangle, no batteries to buy—ever. VALUABLE SOFTWARE Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 1.0, Painter” Classic by Corel”, and penPalette” LE by nik multimedia’, aa | Graphire Intuos from $99 from $199 WACO Cintig from $1899 ‘wwrw.macworld.com November 2003 MACWORLD 11 ‘plete Apple logo, Mac, Mac 0, Power Macinash and PowerBook ae registered tademarks of Apple Compute inc Air, Book, iMac iMovie and Power Mac are trademarks of Apple Computes, nc, Powe and the owePC lago™ ae trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation used under cee thee fom Foie" sa registered uademarkof Apple® Computer Corp ‘CUSTOMER UNDERSTANDS THAT COW IS NOTTHE MANUFACTURER OF THE PRODUCTS PURCHASED BY CUSTOMER HEREUNDER AND THE ONLY WARRANTIES OFFERED ARE THOSE OF THE MANUFACTURER HOT COW. ALL PRICING Is SUBJECT TO CHANGE. (CDW RESERVES THE RIGHT TO MAKE ADJUSTMENTS 70 PRICING, PRODUCTS AND SERVICE OFFERINGS FOR REASONS INCLUDING, BUT NOT UMITED TO, CHANGING MARKET CONDITIONS, PRODUCT DISCONTINUATION, PRODUCT UNAVAILABLTY, MANU: FACTURER PRICE CHANGES AND ERRORS IN ADVERTISEMENTS. ALL ORDERS ARE SUBJECT TO PRODUCT AVAILABIUTY. THEREFORE, CDW CANNOT GUARANTEE THAT IT WIL BE ABLE 10 FULFIL CUSTOMER'S ORDERS. THE TER AND CONDITIONS OF SALE ARE LIMITED TO THOSE CONTAINED HEREIN AND ON COW'S WES SITE AT CDW.COM. NOTICE OF OBJECTION TO AND REJECTION OF ANY ADDITIONAL OR DIFFERENT TERMS IN ANY FORM DELIVERED BY CUSTOMER Is HEREBY Given, (©2003 COW" Corporatio, 200 Mibaukee Avenue, Venon Hil 60061 NW 11083 AB 1.03 12 MACWORLD — November 2003 www.macworld.com ©) A © Apple® iMac? G4 > 800MHz Motorola PowerPC™ G4 processor > Memory: 256MB RAM > 60GB hard drive > CDRWIDVD Combo Drive > 56Kbps modem i ci $1295.00 Reseller cow 463744 Microsoft® Office X for Mac > New Aqua interface > Supports Mac OS X features and technologies. > Compatible with Office 2001 for Mac and Office 98 Macintosh Edition Microsoft’ $369.49 cow 34aa12 Apple® PowerBook® G4 > 867MHz PowerPC” G4 processor > Memory: 256MB DDR SDRAM > 40GB hard drive > 12.1" XGA active-matrix display sna $1595.00 ‘COW 454486 Belkin Omniview™ SOHO KVM DVI Switch > Control four DVIJUSB computers from one USB keyboard and mouse, and one DVI monitor > Convenient switching through either the press of a button or a simple keystroke > Innovative design offers built-in cable management Pecucing $209.84 COW 488112 Apple® iBook® > 900MHz PowerPC” G3 processor > 40GB hard drive > CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive > 56Kbps modem and 10/100 Ethernet . Authorined Reser rae money st, 121° day $44 295,00 cow ass 256M memory std. 14.1" dol $4 AQ) cow assess www.macworld.com Choose 2 at wivwmacworld.congetinfo November 2003 MACWORLD B NEW CREATIVE SUITE UNITES MULTIPLE APPS WITH IMPROVED INTEGRATION Adobe Puts It Together Artists and other creative professionals who rely on multiple applications from Adobe (800/833-6687, www.adobe.com) hould be interested in the software giant’s latest release. Adobe Creative Suite brings most of the company’s principal applica- tions—Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, GoLive, and Acrobat—under one roof. just don’t mistake this massive suite for a imple software bundle, 2 14 MACWORLD November 2003 ‘Traditionally, Adobe's bundles—which Adobe calls Collections—have been a hand- ful of programs combined in one package with a discounted price. With Creative Studio, Adobe is “taking a couple of steps beyond that,” says Jim Heeger, the com- pany’s senior vice president of creative professional products. The suite still includes multiple Adobe products; how- ever, this time all but one application in the suite have under- gone a major upgrade. (The exception, Acro- bat 6.0 Professional, hit the market a few months ago.) More impor- tant, the revised programs that make up Adobe Cre- ” ative Suite introduce ° an unprecedented level of integration for Adobe. Parts of the suite “will work together in a way that you don’t get from individual applications,” Heeger says. Adobe Creative Suite comes in two versions. The Premium Edition ($1,299; upgrade from Photoshop or the assorted Adobe Professional Col- lections, $749) features the updated programs, Acrobat 6.0 Professional, and the new Version Cue application. ‘The Standard Edi- tion ($999; upgrade, $549) ships without GoLive CS and Acro- bat. (For a more in- depth look at the individual applications that make up Adobe Creative Suite, see “Adobe Changes Everything,” page 67.) A Big Mental Shift Adobe executives decided to push for greater integration because they con- cluded that it was the best way to meet the needs of their customers, Heeger says. Because creative pros are responsible for content that appears in more than one medium, the company wanted to make its Web and print design products work together more smoothly. “If you're a cre- ative professional, we want to provide you with a suite of tools that makes you as productive as you can be,” Heeger says. Adobe has other reasons for bringing its applications together. The company’s research indicates that 60 percent of its installed base already uses two or more Adobe apps. What's more, rival software makers tout highly integrated suites of their own. Most notably, Mac- romedia just released Macromedia Studio MX 2004, which brings together Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks, Free- Hand, and ColdFusion, Having its programs work together more closely required more than chang- ing the applications; Adobe also had to make changes to the way it develops and releases prod- ucts. Histori- cally, updates to Photo- shop, Illustra- tor, and other apps came out at different n times during —— > Adobe Photoshop < ‘wwwmacworld.com the year, allowing Adobe to shift its focus and resources from one project to the next. By integrating features of different programs, however, Adobe had to schedule simultaneous product upgrades. “It was a big mental shift internally,” Heeger concedes. Can Adobe customers expect simul- taneous releases for future updates? Heeger won't rule out updates for lone products, but says that Adobe’s new suite-based approach to releases is “clearly where we’re headed.” Common Cause So what will greater integration mean for Adobe Creative Suite users? Start with the user interface—each part of the separate apps that make up the suite now shares common commands, tools, palettes, and keyboard shortcuts. “That makes it easier for people who know one of the applications to pick up the rest of them,” Heeger says. ‘The suite also boasts native file-format support between Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and GoLive. Users can export vector files from Illustrator CS into Photoshop CS and open them with lay- ers, text, slices, transparency, and image maps intact. Conversely, raster files from Photoshop can be opened or placed in Illustrator files. Users are also able to place native Photoshop files in InDesign CS layouts without having to flatten them first, eliminating the need for DCS- and separation-based workflows. An Edit Original Selection command in InDesign launches Photoshop or Illus- trator when users want to make changes to an image or file. Similarly, GoLive CS allows native, layered Photoshop and Illustrator files to be placed right in HTML layouts. Creative Suite supports a number of shared technologies to create a more predictable—and smoother—design process. These technologies include the Adobe Color Engine; the Flattener palette; the Separation Preview palette; Adobe GoLive wewwmacworld.com OpenType font support; and Extensible Metadata Platform, a standards-based enabling technology that adds intelli- gence to files to make them easier to find, share, and reuse. Right on Cue The most significant integration between the programs comes courtesy of Version Cue, the file-management application introduced with Creative Suite. Adobe bills Version Cue, which tracks changes and iterations of files for individual users and workgroups, as the glue that holds the suite together. Version Cue saves files in a workspace that can be accessed from within any Creative Suite app. Clicking on the My Projects button in the Open dialog box gives thumbnail previews of all project files, along with version com- ments, previous authors, and other file information. A Search tab also lets users find files using comment, date, author, or keyword data, The Save A Version command saves a file back to the work- space without users having to jump between applications. For workgroups, Version Cue lets users share projects from their desktops without any need for databases or file servers. Opening a file puts a working copy on your hard drive until you save a version back to the workspace; if other people try to open the same file, Version Cue warns them, minimizing the risk of conflicting versions. By allowing users to collaborate more efficiently, Heeger says, Version Cue moves Adobe beyond individual desktops and into workgroup settings. “Version Cue is a big step forward,” he adds. “But it’s the first of many steps.” Whether Adobe customers will be eager to take that step will become more apparent after Creative Suite ships later this year. But there’s no denying that from this point forward, Adobe’s design applications will have plenty in com- mon.—PHILIP MICHAELS __ NOVEMBER 2003 MAC BEAT New Suite, New Look ly Adobe's updated apps have changed quite a bit under the hood, but they're also radically different on the outside, Old, familiar images such as the Photoshop eye logo and Illustra- tor’s take on Botticelli's The Birth of Venus— as familiar to some Adobe users as the fea- tures of the programs themselves—have been dropped from the packaging for Adobe prod- ucts, Instead, the company plans to mark the launch of its Adobe Creative Suite with the first major overhaul of its packaging in five years, turning to vibrant, multicolored natural elements to replace the familiar imagery. Venus's exit comes as Adobe looks to rethink the way it serves its customers, says Jane Willis, senior director of product market- ing for creative professional products, The new packaging for the revamped suite of creative products is part of that effort. "We wanted the packaging to reflect that this was a different way of designing the products and a different way of thinking about the products,” she says, MetaDesign, the San Francisco-based design firm that worked with Adobe to create the new look, wanted to get across three points with the redesigned packaging: preci- sion, beauty, and inspiration. “A nature theme satisfied all those attributes,” says MetaDesign executive creative director Brett Wickens, “Nature became the lens through which we looked to define the images of each product,” That approach led to a finished product that, in some cases, will be a major departure from past designs. Photoshop's eye makes way for brightly colored feathers, while an array of flowers takes Venus's place on the Illustrator box, Other changes are less dra~ matic—Golive, which used to sport a plane- tary design, now features only stars, while InDesign adopts a more abstract version of its butterfly icon. Adding to the normal pressure of replacing established designs with brand new looks was the fact that Adobe and Meta Design were overhauling the box art for products aimed at illustrators, graphic artists, and other folks who know a thing or two about effective designs. “You're talking about probably one of the Most cynical and critical markets on earth,” Wickens says. “So it's tough.” —PHILIP MICHAELS Adobe Photoshop November 2003 MACWORLD 15 NOVEMBER 2003 MAC BEAT APPLE GIVES 15-INCH POWERBOOK AN ALUMINUM LOOK, UPDATES OTHER MODELS PowerBooks Show Their Metal The Power Mac G5 may have just arrived (see Reviews, page 26), but Apple isn’t ready to declare the Year of the Notebook over just yet, And it’s no wonder—con- sumers have snapped up Apple laptops. For the three-month period that ended on June 30, PowerBooks and iBooks made up 42 percent of Apple’s sales, up from 34 percent at the start of 2003. ‘To keep the portable party going, Apple has refreshed the oldest part of its professional laptop line—the 15-inch Titanium PowerBook G4, which first hit the market more than two years ago. The other PowerBook models have undergone updates of their own, bolster- ing a product line that Apple considers an essential part of its future. “We're going to continue to push innovation,” says Apple vice president of hardware product marketing Greg Joswiak. “And there will be a time in the not-too-distant future when we’re selling more laptops than desktops.” What's New for 15 Apple figures the redesigned 15-inch PowerBook will help lead that charge. While the most noticeable change is the shift to the aluminum alloy that houses the other PowerBooks, Apple stresses that the update involved more than just transplanting the old 15-inch compo- nents to a new enclosure. The 15-inch model uses either a 1GHz or a 1.25GHz G4 chip; the Tita- nium topped out at 1GHz. Storage capacity has also increased to a maxi- mum of 80GB, up from 60GB in the Titanium model. Gone is the ATI Aluminum Five-Pack MODEL PROCESSOR —_ MEMORY/SPEED “1inch Power 1GHzG4 —_256MB/266MH2 “1GHz64 ——256MB/266MH2 HG ~—256MB333MH2 1.25GH2 G4 512MB/333MHz 1.33GHz G4 16 MACWORLD November 2003 512MB/333MH2_ Mobility Radeon 9000 graphics card, replaced by an ATT Mobility Radeon 9600 graphics processor with 64MB of video memory, System memory remains at either 256MB or 512MB, but you can max out RAM to 2GB, double the old maximum. And the memory you install in the new PowerBook is 333MHz PC2700 DDR Ram, rather than the ‘Titanium G4’s PC133 SDRAM. In terms of optical drives, you can choose a DVD-ROM/CD-RW Combo drive or a DVD-burning SuperDrive that burns DVDs at 2x instead of Lx. The new 15-inch laptop supports USB 2.0 (as do all PowerBooks); it has one port on each side. And like its 12- and 17-inch siblings, the 15-inch PowerBook has improved AirPort reception, thanks to antennas installed in its display. The 15-inch model follows the 17-inch PowerBook’s lead in another respect— it sports an illuminated keyboard that glows whenever the ambient light dims. (That feature is standard on the $2,599, 1.25GHz model and a $69 add-on to the $1,999, 1GHz configuration.) HARD OPTICAL GRAPHICS DRIVE DRIVE CARD/MEMORY PRICE 40GB Combo drive Nvidia GeForce FX 1,5 7 : a _G05200/32MB os 40GB SuperDrive Nvidia GeForce FX 1,7 ee 60GB Combodrive ATI Mobility $1,999 = Radeon 9600/64MB 80GB SuperDrive ATI Mobility Radeon 9600/64MB 80GB SuperDrive ATI Mobility $2.9 fuseonsenicins Ports, Power, and Prices ‘The changes to the 12- and 17-inch mod- els are less dramatic than the revisions to the 15-inch PowerBook, but laptop enthu- siasts will certainly welcome them. One of the more requested changes is in the 12- inch PowerBook, which now has a mini- DVI port instead ofa mini-VGA port. ‘The change lets users connect a 12-inch PowerBook to any digital or analog dis- play, via included mini-DVI-to-DVI and mini-DVI-to-VGA adapters. Other changes to the 12-inch Power- Book include a faster processor (IGHz, instead of 867MHz) and more L2 cache (512K, up from 256K), as well as a new graphics card (the Nvidia GeForce FX Go5200 with 32MB of video memory). Maximum RAM doubles, to 1.25GB. The 17-inch PowerBook still comes in only one configuration. But it should run faster than the old version, thanks to a bump in processor speed, to 1.33GHz from 1GHz. Like the 15-inch model, the 17-inch PowerBook uses an ATI Mobil- ity Radeon 9600 with 64MB of video memory as its graphics processor. The 17-inch laptop can hold a maximum of 2GB of RAM. The biggest change to the 17-inch PowerBook is its price tag—the cost has dropped $300, to $2,999. The price cut means Apple is selling its top-of-the-line PowerBook for less than $3,000—with the entire range of available PowerBooks starting at $1,599, With that mixture of price and power, Apple could very well extend its Year of the Notebook into the foreseeable future.—PHILIP MICHAELS ‘wwewmacworld.com The most evolved computers now have multi-functions and printers to match... COLOR LASER From $1499 When it comes to imaging solutions that are LASER WORKGROUP hess PRINTING — LASER PRINTING every bit as innovative as your Mac, we're From $199 From $449 the only name you need to know. That's because our award-winning line of Mac-compatible printers and Multi-Function / Center® models are designed to deliver COLOR ) both maximum performance and value. FLATBED MFC— LASER FLATBED MFC From $179 From $349 | From our full line of high-quality printers (including the HL-5070N, the first —_ ” printer to support Rendezvous"), to versatile Pray 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. ‘ Ca : tS A VARIETY OF MODELS AVAILABLE AT: MacWarehouse, MacMall, —— COLOR MFC MacConnection, MacZone, Microcenter, CDW, Office Depot, From $129 Staples, OfficeMax, Fry's, J&R Computer World, and Apple Stores (or www.store.apple.com). LASER MFC From $249 At your sidé. {© 2002-2003 Brother International Corporation, Bridgewater, NJ. + Brother International Corporation, Nagoya, Japan For more information please visit our Web site at wwwcbrothercom + All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property oftheir respective owmers. Choose 119 at wowmacworld.com/getinfor ICONS: WWWWANDYMARTIN.UK.COM OVEMBER 2003 MACBEAT "HARDWARE. BEAT Displays Three flat-panel monitors from Planar Systems (866/475-2627, wwwoplanar.com): The PQ150 ($339) is a 15-inch display with a 1,024-by-768-pixel native resolution, The PQ170 ($509) is a 17-inch model with 1,280-by-1,024-pixel resolution. The 19-inch Q191 ($739) also features a 1,280-by-1,024-pixel resolution, Printers Four ink-jet multifunction printers from Brother (408/704-1700, www.brother.com): The MFC-3220¢ (6130), MEC-3420c ($180), MFC-3320en ($180), and MFC-3820en ($230) print, fax, and scan. All four feature a 4,800-by-1,200-dpi resolution and print speeds of 14 black-and-white and 12 color pages pet minute, The 3220¢ and 3320cn feature 8MB of mem- ory; the 3420c and 3820cn have 16MB, The 3320cn and 3820cn are flatbed models. ‘Two printers from Xerox (877/362-6567, www .xerox.com); The Xerox Phaser 6250 ($1,999 to $3,899, depending on model) is a network color laser printer with a 2,400-dpi resolution and print speeds of 26 pages per minute in color or black- and-white, The Xerox Phaser 3450 ($549 to $899, | depending on model) is a black-and-white printer with a 1,200-dpi resolution and print speeds of 25 pages per minute, | An ink-jet printer from Epson (800/463-7766, www.epson.com): The Epson Stylus C84 ($99) can print at 5,760-by-1,400 dpi. It prints 22 black-and- white pages per minute and 12 color pages per minute.—cOMPILED BY PHILIP MICHAELS WEB SITES HELP iCHAT AV USERS ADD TO THEIR BUDDY LISTS Strangers with iChat When Apple introduced iChat AV, you were among the first to download the beta software and shell out $149 for the iSight camera. Now, you've got everything you need to enjoy the new video-chatting capabilities in Apple's messaging app— everything, that is, except for friends with their own FireWire Webcams and the necessary system requirements. The only thing you've experienced so far is the sound—and sights—of silence. Jeffrey Glover knows your pain. “When I first heard about iChat AV and downloaded it on the day [Steve] Jobs unveiled it, I thought, ‘Cool! I want to try this out,’ but I didn’t have anyone to connect to,” says Glover, a San Francisco Web developer. But instead of suffering in silence, Glover created a Web site, iChatters.com, to solve his dilemma. iChatters.com is one of several Web sites that sprung up in the wake of iChat AV’s debut; iChatFinder (www.ichatfinder .com), Seeser (www.seeser.org), and iChattin.com have also gone online to help would-be iChatters meet face-to- face. All four sites operate under the same basic idea—they act as free services that list iChat AV users waiting on a friend. Some, such as iChattin.com, offer basic lists of registered users; others feature more complex, searchable databases that display information such as a user's inter- ests, occupation, and online status, Both iChatters.com and iChatFinder even let members upload photos of themselves. Of course, listing yourself on one of the sites might lead to a problem very different from the one you had before—too many “friends.” “Many new members, particu- larly females, were overwhelmed by the volume of other members trying to make contact,” says iChatFinder developer Bob Payne. But necessity—and one too many video-chat invitations—is the mother of invention. Payne developed filters that can block other iChatFinder users that meet various criteria, Even with filters, iChatFinder and similar sites mean that your next conver- sation may be just a video-chat button away. After all, just because you're lone- some doesn’t mean you have to be alone,—MATHEW HONAN BLUETOOTH-BASED MOUSE AND KEYBOARD CONNECT TO MACS WIRELESSLY, REDUCING CABLE CLUTTER The Apple Wireless Mouse and Apple Wireless Keyboard Apple Cuts the Cord The way Apple sees it, AirPort and Bluetooth wireless tech- nologies are complements, not competitors. The former is for wirelessly connecting your Mac to a network; the latter wire- lessly connects your peripherals to your Mac. And just as Apple turned to AirPort wireless connectivity as an alternative to Ethernet cables, the company is now letting users drop USB-based input devices in favor of a mouse and keyboard that connect to a Mac via Bluetooth. TELLIEL Eit LE TT JLT Td 18 MACWORLD November 2003 each cost $69 and work as far as 30 feet from your Mac, The snow-colored input devices feature 128-bit over-the-air encryp- tion, for secure data-transfer, and adaptive frequency hopping, which eliminates interference from other wireless and electronic devices such as cordless phones. Apple plans to offer both the mouse and the keyboard as stand-alone options, continuing to bundle wired mice and keyboards with its hardware products. Both wireless devices use AA batteries—two for the mouse, four for the keyboard. That should provide three months of battery life for the mouse and nine months for the keyboard, Apple says. However, the company also equipped its mouse and keyboard with on-off switches for conserving battery power. Apple’s Wireless Mouse and Wireless Keyboard will work with any Mac that comes with built-in Bluetooth support. In addition, the input devices connect with most Macs via a Blue- tooth USB adapter.—PHILIP MICHAELS wewwmacworld.com rc 7 seethelightography L 4 The soft sunlight, the soulful color, the sudden epiphany, it all matters. So does everything inside the Nikon D100° Digital SLR Camera. Take this shot captured on the outskirts of Oaxaca, Mexico. Total Image Quality is the driving force behind the 0100 and its 6.1 effective megapixels. As your eye for great pictures Da a5 grows, the D100 SLR System expands with you. And at a price of under $1700, you've entered (or simply moved up to) the unparalleled world of Nikon’s Total Imaging System. It’s the system that includes over 60 compatible AF Nikkor® lenses, an expansive Speedlight System and the choice of Nikon Capture” software. See the power. See the potential. See the story. Go behind the shot and learn more at nikonsir.com. Because seeing the light matters. 2003 Nikon Inc If the picture matters the camera matters” Nikon. Choose 59 at www.macworld.comigetinfo NOVEMBER 2003 MAC BEAT BEAT Hardware Cameras ‘A 4-megapixel camera from Canon (800/652-2666, — www.usa.canon.com): The PowerShot Ad ($499) features a 3x optical zoom and supports PictBridge, a multivendor standard for direct printing, Three digital cameras from Eastman Kodak (800/235- 6325, www.kodak.com): The EasyShare DX4530 ($399) is a 5-megapixel camera with a 3x optical, all-glass aspherical lens and a 3.3x advanced digital | zoom. The EasyShare CX6230 ($199) is a 2-mega- pixel camera with a 3x optical, all-glass aspherical 200m lens and a 3.3x continuous digital zoom, The EasyShare DX6490 ($499) is a 4-megapixel camera that Kodak claims is the first to unite a professional- | quality Schneider-Kreuznach Variogon 10x optical zoom lens (38mm-380mm equivalent) with an {2.8-13.7 maximum aperture, Two digital cameras from Sony (877/865-7669, wwwsony.com): The Cyber-shot DSC-FB28 ($1,200) is an 8-megapixel camera with a maximum image size of 3,360 by 2,460 pixels, The Cyber-shot DSC-U50 ($250) is a 2-megapixel camera with a 180 degree rotating lens, | Asset Management iView MediaPro 2.0, from iView Multimedia (www Jiview-multimedia.com): This asset manager can now store as many as 128,000 media items in one catalog While reducing catalog size ($160; upgrade from ver- sion 1.5, $70). PhotoReviewer 1.0, from Stick Software (www .Sticksoftware,com): This photo-management share- ware lets OS X users review photos imported to their Macs and keep the ones they like. The software was designed to be a go-between for digital cameras and iPhoto. It weeds out photos before they're imported into Apple's free digital-image manager ($10). Image Editing Photolmpression 5, from ArcSoft (510/440-9901, wwwarcsoft.com): This updated image-manipulation program for OS 8.6 and later (including OS X) sports a new interface in which various functions and options | are segregated into projects, while enhancement tools |. PHILIP MICHAELS AND TERRI STONE are grouped together, separate from printing com- mands ($50; upgrade, $30), Plug-in Texture Anarchy, from Digital Anarchy (415/621- 0991, wwwzcigitalanarchy.com): Tis suite of Photo- shop plug-ins—Texture Anarchy Explorer, Tiler Texture Anarchy, and Edge Anarchy—creates procedural textures and borders ($129). It's compatible with OS 9 | and X, and Photoshop 3.0 and later—coweiteo ay 20 MACWORLD November 2003 ENCRYPTION SOFTWARE GETS MORE POWERFUL, LESS OBTRUSIVE PGP Makes Privacy Universal For years, computer users concerned about keeping communication private have used Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP ($6893; April 2003), to encrypt their e-mail messages. But despite PGP’s inte- gration with e-mail programs, most users don’t have PGP, and many of those who do have PGP rarely use it, For encryption to take off—and for e-mail to stop being about as private as the writing on the back of a posteard— it needs to be everywhere while remain- ing invisible to users, That's the goal of PGP Corporation and its new generation of PGP software (877/228-9747, www -pgp.com), which lifts the burden of encrypting messages off of the backs of individual users. The new PGP Universal Server (which is based on Linux) runs on Intel-based PCs and encrypts e-mail while it’s in transit. The messages you send and receive are completely unencrypted; PGP Universal handles all public and private keys and all message encrypting on-the-fly. A PGP Universal server can sit between you and your e-mail server, encrypting messages before they reach the e-mail server, or it can sit between your e-mail server and the outside world, acting as a gatekeeper and encrypting or decrypting everything leaving or entering your network. If your e-mail recipients don’t have a PGP key to decrypt your message, an e-mail directs them to a secure Web site that displays the mes- sage’s content. For Mace users, the most interesting aspect of PGP Universal is the PGP Uni- versal Satellite software, which runs on Mac OS X. If you use Universal Satellite, all the e-mail entering or leaving your Mac is decrypted or encrypted on-the-fly. Currently, Universal Satellite works only as a part of PGP Universal, but it seems reasonable to guess that, in the future, PGP might offer a single-user version— a product that would unobtrusively ensure that everyone's e-mail became a little more private.—JASON SNELL POPULAR EOS REBEL GOES DIGITAL—AND ARRIVES FOR LESS THAN $1,000 | | Canon's Canon's Rebel Yell ‘That old saying about weather in the Midwest—if you don’t like it, just wait a few minutes, and it'll change— might as well apply to the digital-camera market. Don't care for the current selection? Just wait a few months, and things are bound to change. The latest shift comes cout tesy of Canon (800/652-2666, www.usa.canon.com)—the September release of the EOS Digital Rebel, a digital version of the company’s popular film SLR camera. It’s a change that should drastically alter the digital-camera landscape. Offering the same 6.3-megapixel CMOS sensor and DIGIC Canon’s $1,499 EOS 10D ($$#$!; September 2003), the Digital Rebel supports II line of EF-series lenses (but not the high-end L-series), The camera's most impressive feature, though, may be its price tag—$899, making the Rebel the first digital SLR with interchangeable lenses that costs less than $1,500. Most sub-$1,000 digital cameras use one lens for exposing and another as With an SLR camera, you look through the same lens that the camera uses for exposing the image sensor, for a much more accurate view of what the final image will look like. Though other digital SLRs are available for le: lenses or the larger image sensor size of the Digital Rebel. Serious hobbyists will appreci- ate the Digital Rebel’s multiple lenses, Plus, the lenses have longer focal lengths than the typical sub-$1,000 digital cameras, for greater control and variety of depth of field. ‘Three years ago, Canon took its competition by surprise with its $3,000 D30, the lowest-priced digital SLR available at that time. Competitors have scrambled to match that price. With the Rebel, expect to see them again trying to catch up.—BEN LONG image processor as viewfinder. than $1,000, none offers interchangeable wwwsmacworld.com NEW FEATURE! eDrive The new eDrive feature allows you to add a bootable emergency volume to an existing volume. This new eDrive volume is created WITHOUT the need to initialize the current volume, keeping all data intact on the current volume. The eDrive is then available if something should go wrong with your normal startup volume. Buy Now! www.micromat.com THE POWER IS NOW YOURS! INTRODUCING... TECHTOOL PRO VERSION 4 TechTool Pro includes S.M.A.R.T. testing, hardware tests, scheduling and alerts, performance tools, and more... even scavenges for files when all else fails! (©) Hardware Pressing the Run button will execute the selected Hardware tests. You can change the by using the Hardware Tests disclosure arrow below. KO) )) © MVOVOMO® Cache Clock FireWire ._ i te) Main Memory = Mathematics o% The Power to Recover, Repair, and Optimize - Made Easy! fi Micromat Inc. 800-829-6227 707-566-3831 info@micromat.com www.micromat.com ©2003 Micromat, Inc. All rights reserved. TechTool is a registered trademark of Micromat, Inc. Choose 37 at www.macworld.comigetinfo NOVEMBER 2003 MAC BEAT _ EMULATION OPTIONS DWINDLE VPC DOA? The Power Mac G5 may feature a more powerful processor and faster overall performance than previous Apple desktops did, but that won’t help Virtual PC run any faster on the new machines. The emulation software from Microsoft (800/642- 7676, www.microsoft.com/mac) is incompatible with the newly released desktops. The problem lies in the hardware, according to Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit product manager Jessica Sommer. Virtual PC for Mac 6.1 relies on a feature of the Power- PC G3 and G4 chips, called pseudo little-endian mode, for increased per- formance when emulating a Pen- tium processor. However, the GS chip doesn’t support this feature, so Microsoft had to rewrite Virtual PC. The company won’t say when we can expect to see a new version. ‘That leaves Mac users without very many options. Utility maker FWB has discontinued work on its RealPC emulation software (650/ 637-8500, www.fwb.com). However, OpenOSX (www.openosx.com) released WinTel 1.0.1, a $25 open- source emulator. OpenOSX says that WinTel is optimized for the G5.—PHILIP MICHAELS WHAT'S |. Blaster and Sobig viruses cause hassles, havoc for Windows users. Mac users respond to the out- break by yawning and then buying themselves another track off the iTunes Music Store. 2. AOL Time Warner decides to drop the AOL from its name. The companys also debating Whether to stop referring to its board of directors as My Buddy List A Quick Look at the World of Macs 3, Adobe unveils revamped packaging for its | updated Creative Suite products. The ultimate | decision to use colorful images of nature on the pack- | ages barely beat out plans to produce completely blank boxes with “Doodle Here” space. 4. Due to incompatibility issues, Virtual PC won't run on Power Mac GSs. Frustrating compatibility issues? Wow-it like you really are running a Win- dows machine, Hardware Audio Armobile audio interface from M-Audio (800/969- 6434, www.m-audio.com): The Transit ($130) is a pocket-size device that provides analog and digital audio input and output, including support for AC3 and DTS passthrough. Compatible with OS 9 and OS X and aimed at laptop users, Transit’s digital /O transfers audio between a USB-equipped computer and other devices, such as MiniDisc and DAT players, MP3 Players Three Mac-compatible MP3 players from Rio Audio (800/468-5846, www.rioaudio.com): The Rio Chiba ($199 for the 256MB model; $169 for 128MB) and Rio Fuse ($149) are flash-based MP3 players with backlit LCDs, onboard memory, and more than 18 hours of continuous playback with a AAA battery. The Chiba features an FM tuner, a five-band adjustable equalizer, and onboard memory that can expand to 768MB. The Fuse is a 128MB MP3 player with an adjustable equalizer, The Rio Cali is a sport MP3 player that comes in 128MB ($170) and 256MB ($199) capacities; it can also be expanded to 768MB, It features 18 hours of battery life, USB connectivi an FM tuner, and a five-band adjustable equalizer. Software Burning Dragon Burn 3.0, from NewTech Infosystems (949/ 421-0720, www.ntius.com): This updated CD- and DVD-burning software for 0S X features Dynamic Drive Support for resolving hardware and software compatibility issues, Other additions include Live Update (for optimizing software compatibility), vol- ume balancing across all tracks of an audio CD, sup- | port for iTunes playlist importing, and integrated Discus label-making software ($50). Music Finale 2004, from MakeMusic (800/843-2066, www.makemusic.com): This music-notation software adds OS X suppor, including support for Aqua and CoreMIDI, the native OS X MIDI interface. Other improvements include a Human Playback feature and simplified note entry ($600; upgrade from Finale 2003, $90; upgrade from earlier versions, $140). Plug-in Automatic Duck Pro Import 2.0, from Automatic Duck (www.automaticduck.com): This software, which supports OS X and Windows, enables editors to import edited sequences from Avid systems or Final Cut Pro into Adobe After Effects or Boris Red 3GL. The update features translation of more Avid effects, as well as audio levels and keyframes from Avid and Final Cut ($495; upgrade, $195).—comiteo BY PHILP MICHAELS ‘Software INPUT-DEVICE | eal A Bluetooth-enabled mouse from Belkin (800/223- 5546, www-belkin.com): The Bluetooth Wireless Optical Mouse ($80) is a four-button scroll-wheel mouse that works with Macs running OS X 10.2.6 and later. It comes with a Bluetooth USB adapter for wireless connectivity; the adapter lets you connect as many as seven other Bluetooth devices. Three mice from Logitech (800/231-7717, www Jogitech.com); Both the blue-and-silver Click Optical ‘Mouse ($25) and the silver-and-gray Cordless Click Optical Mouse ($40) are designed for use with either hand; the cordless mouse combines optical sensing with RF technology. The Cordless Click Plus Optical ‘Mouse ($50) is designed for the right hand; it features RF technology, optical sensing, and forward and back buttons for browsing Internet pages. Tablets Anew pen tablet from Wacom Technology (800/922- 6613, www.wacom.com): The Graphire3 tablet comes in two sizes: 6 by 8 inches ($200) and the traditional 3 by 4 inches ($100). The Graphire3 pen supports OS X's Inkwell handwriting-recognition technology. The tablet comes bundled with Adobe Photoshop Elements 1.0, Corel Painter Classic, and nik multimedia’s pen- Palette LE-—coMPiLeD BY PHILIP MICHAELS PRODUCTIVITY BEAT Presentation IntelliPrompter 1.0, from intelli Innovations (919) 468-0340, www.intellisw.com): This teleprompting software displays text automatically on a screen or projector, IntelliPrompter Personal ($80) features text-styling support, text-color controls, embedded graphics, and a control toolbar, IntelliPrompter Pre- senter ($400) adds USB-controller support, text- spacing controls, and full-screen prompting. Intel- liPrompter Pro ($700) supports multiple monitors and AppleScript. Word Processing Mariner Write 3.5, from Mariner Software (612/529- 3770, wwwmarinersoftware.com): This updated word- processing application, which runs on OS 9 and OS X, adds Japanese, Dutch, and Swedish language support (670; upgrade, fee for version 3.0 users, $25 for users of earlier versions) —comPIteo ay PHILIP MICHAELS 22 MACWORLD November 2003 wawwmacworld.com ‘Apple Computer, Inc., registered io the U.S. and other countries. Microsoft, Windows, and the Windows logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft ‘Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. The Designed for Windows XP logo refers to the digital cameotder and its driver only. Viewscreen and laptop images ate simulated. ‘©2003 Canon U.S.A., Inc. Canon and Canon Know How are registered trademarks and DIGIC DV Is 3 trademark of Canon Inc, Mac and the Mac logo are trademarks of anor C0. ler DIGIC DV “apy Which decision is no longer necessary? July or August? Beach or mountains? Camera or camcorder? The rather obvious answer: camera and camcorder. Specifically, the Canon Optura 300: a state-of-the-art camcorder that also functions as a 2.0 Megapixel digital camera. It’s small enough to fit in your pocket, yet it houses big things like our Genuine Canon 10x Optical Zoom lens and DIGIC DV Image Processor. sa ct There’s also a pro-like RGB Color Filter, for more oh rere accurate color and finer gradations. All of which | results in legendary Canon image quality. Mus We even threw in manual audio control. So, happy trails. Here’s to shooting well. And traveling light. www.canondy.com Canon KNOW HOW’ NOVEMBER 2003 MAC BEAT __ | STORAGE BEAT Hardware Hard Drives USB-FireWire external drives from Akumen (512/467- 2808, www.akumen.com): The Ascent XHD 800 fea- tures FireWire 800, FireWire 400, and USB 2.0 con- nectivity. It’s available with an 80GB ($229), 120GB ($249), 200GB ($369), 250GB ($439), or 320GB ($549) capacity. It’s also available as an enclosure kit ($139). A line of external hard drives from Maxtor (800/ 262-9867, www.maxtor.com): The Maxtor One- Touch features a one-button backup-and-restore system bundled with Dantz Retrospect Express, The drives come in the following configurations: a 120GB, 7,200-rpm drive with USB 2.0 ($200); a 200GB, 7,200-rpm drive with USB 2.0 and FireWire ($300); a 250GB, 7,200-rpm drive with USB 2.0 and FireWire ($350); and a 300GB, 5,400-rpm drive with USB 2.0 and FireWire ($400). Maxtor also offers a 250GB, 7,200-rpm drive ($350) formatted for the Mac—comPiLen By PHILIP MICHAELS APPLE BOOSTS iMAC'S PROCESSOR SPEED TO 1.25GHZ, iPOD'S CAPACITY TO 40GB. Faster iMacs, Bigger iPods While most of the buzz around Macs these days involves the Power Mac G5, Apple (800/692-7753, www.apple.com) is making sure the other end of its desktop line stays up-to-speed. It has updated its flat-panel iMacs to include faster processors, memory, graphics cards, and USB connections. The 17-inch flat-panel iMac now runs on a 1.25GHz G4 processor, up from 1GHz. ‘The updated computer—which keeps its $1,799 price tag—also swaps its Nvidia GeForce4 MX graphics processor for the faster GeForce FX 5200 Ultra graphics card with 64MB of DDR video memory. Apple bumped the $1,299, 15-inch flat-panel iMac’s processor speed to 1GHz, from 800MH, and replaced the GeForce? MX card with a GeForce4 MX graphics proces- sor that has 32MB of video memory. Like the 17-inch iMac, the $1,299, 15-inch model now offers an 80GB hard drive and support for both Bluetooth and AirPort Extreme wireless networking. Both flat-panel iMacs come with 256MB of DDR system memory that runs faster, at 333MHz (up from 266MHz in the 17-inch iMac and 100MHz in the 15-inch ver- sion). The two models have three USB 2.0 ports (much faster than USB 1.1) anda pair of FireWire 400 ports, but no FireWire 800 support; Apple considers the faster connectivity standard to be a pro feature. In addition to bolstering the speed of its iMacs, Apple has increased the capacity of its iPods. Joining the $299, 10GB portable music player are a $399, 20GB model and a $499, 40GB model, which replace 15GB and 30GB iPods at the same prices.—JIM DALRYMPLE CO-PRODUCED BY: THE MAC PRODUCT EXPERTS pal TEUCATION THAT TAKES YOU PLACES To learn more see us online at www.geekcru 24 MACWORLD November 2003 com/home/mm3_home.html ‘www.anacworld.com Industrial strength protection for industrial strength Mac users init) 2 Apple Xserve Apple Xserve RAID APC Smart-UPS 1000 AM 10 Every product carrying this mark has heen tested and certified for use with Robust applications demand robust power protection... eft pci avai tanned you buy, check for the X to guarantee product compatibility, APC Smart-UPS® and Smart-UPS® XL protect your data by supplying reliable, network-grade power in either traditional tower Because | Pretact your or rack-optimized form factors for space constrained one great E density-optimized business-critical applications. 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SUZAIEF-US » PowerFax: (900) 247-FAXX + Ema apcinfo@apeecom * 192 Faigrounds Road, West Kingston, Rl 02892 USA, Choose 73 at www.macworld.com/getinfo OUTSTANDING: §§$$§ VERY GOOD: $668 GOOD: $48 FLAWED: $3 UNACCEPTABLE: $ Reviews you can trust: Macworld rates only final shipping products not prototypes. What we we review is what you can actually buy. Power Mac G5s As Promised, G5s Leave Their Predecessors in the Dust BY HENRY NORR. The long wait for the Power Mac GSs is finally over, and the verdict is in: just as Steve Jobs promised, the next-genera- tion desktops deliver the big performance boost that professional Mac users have hungered for, with growing impatience, for several years, ‘The new machines take their name from the powerful new processor they're built around—the IBM PowerPC 970, which Apple classifies as the fifth generation of PowerPC technology (for more details on the new G5s, see “The Next Generation,” September 2003), But the three models that make up the new Power Mac line offer more than just a new CPU: with a brand-new case design, a revamped internal architecture, and a slew of cutting-edge technologies, they represent the biggest makeover for Apple’s pro line since the introduction of the first G4s four years ago. Great Big Boxes Visually, the G5s borrow from the design of the popular G4 PowerBooks: instead of shiny plastic, the machines’ elegant exterior is made of brushed aluminum, and the rounded contours of the older models have given way to a more conservative—not to say square—shape. Unlike with Apple’s laptops, however, no one would call the new desktops compact, Speedmark 3.2 OVERALL SCORE RE Measuring 20.1 inches high, 8.1 inches wide, and 18.7 inches deep, the new models tower over their predecessors (see “Big Brother”). Despite their size, the G5s have less room for internal expansion than their predeces- sors: there’s only one empty bay for an extra hard drive, none for a second optical drive to complement the standard SuperDrive, and three PCI (in the 1.6GHz model) or PCI-X (in the two faster models) card slots. In con- trast, recent G4s have had bays for three extra hard drives and a second optical drive, plus four PCT slots. The Sounds of Silence—Almost So what goes on inside the G5 case? Much of it is occupied by fans (eight of them in the single-CPU models, nine in the dual-CPU version), plastic air deflectors, and giant pro- cessor heat sinks—all required to manage the heat generated by the _high- powered GS chip. A network of temperature sensors and software work together to control the fans, ensuring that they operate only when and where necessary. The beauty of all this elaborate engineering is that it keeps the heat under control without making a racket. In fact, in Macworld’s offices—a fairly typical work environment—we could hardly tell when the 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz models were running, The dual-2GHz model’s noise was more noticeable but hardly oppressive—nothing like that of the infamous “wind-tunnel” G4s. Of course, the G5s—like any computer this side of the Cube—will be more notice- able in quieter environments, such as many home offices. But considering the power of the GS, Apple's engineers deserve a tip of Quake tit v1.32 iMovie 3.0.3 iTunes 4.0.1 MP3 ENCODE ee =o. the hat for keeping the noise to a minimum this time, Technology Playland The GS processor, with its increased clock speeds and 64-bit capabilities, is definitely the star of the show. But to take full advantage of it, Apple had to develop a whole new set of supporting actors, including a high-speed system controller and a frontside bus that connects the controller to the processor. This Adobe Cinema 4D XL Photoshop 7.0.1 7.303 MPEG-2 SUITE. RENDER ENCODE ‘Apple Power Mac G5/dual-2GHz ‘a 258 r a! 018 Mt ‘Apple Power Mac G5/1.8GHz 22 el 028 3:08 Apple Power Mac G5/1,6GHz 1 207 0:33 2 i = = 03] Apple PowerMac Ga/dval-1.42GHe (DDR/FW 600) 196 0:28 M023 1359 030 Apple Power Mac G4/1GHz (ODR/FW 800) az >Better BEST RESULTS IN BOLD. REFERENCE SYSTEMS IN /TALICS. a 0. a 0 <Better <Better Better 1) =. <Better <Better <Better Speedmark 3.2 scores ae relative to those ofa 7OOMH2 eMac, which is assigned a score of 100, Movi, iTunes, Photoshop, Cinema 40 Xt, and MPEG-2 scores are in minutes'seconds. Quake scores are in frames per Sec- cond, We tested the Power Mac GS systems with Mac OS X 10.2.7 (G5) installed and Energy Savers Processor Performance set to Highest. The dual-2GH2 model we tested had ATI's 12BMB Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card, Which is available as a build-to-order option, We tested the baseline systems with Mac OS X 10.2.6. Al systems had 512MB of RAM, We set displays to 1,024-by-768-pixel resolution and 24-bit color. We tested MP3 encod- ing with an audio-CO track that was 9 minutes and 25 seconds long, converting it from the hard drive using iTunes’ Better Quality setting, We tested Quake Il ata resolution of 1,024 by 768 pire with graphics set to High Quality. The Photoshop Suite testis a set of ten scripted tasks using @ SOMB fil, Photoshop's memory was set to 100 percent and History was Set to Minimum. We encoded a 6 minute and 46 second DV file using the MPEG-2 60min Fast Encode preset in Apple's Compressor application For more information on Speedmark 3.2, visit wavw.macworld.convspeedmark—MACWORLD LAB TESTING a JAMES GALBRATH 26 MACWORLD November 2003, ‘wwenmacworld.com MicroGrade 6.02 Perfect Score 1.1.6 26 Desktop computers ‘Apple Power Mac G5/1.66GH 36 Graphical lexicon Visual Thesaurus 2.0 43 The ‘America’s Army: Operations; Game Room 34 This Month Apple Power Mac G5/1.8GHz 32 E-mail application ‘ EverQuest; Pyramat PM300; Sim- in Printers i 37 Songwriting software x Apple Power Mac G5/2GHz DP Mailsmith 2.0 piper ath iy ect The Fen Brother MFC-8420, 29 Web-site-maintenance app Antes 4 Contribute 20 Bh bone 40 Reviews in Brief din biszthen Hewlett-Packard Laserlet ; After Dark X + Fish, Cinema, Cintiq- Crossword master, dsclahel, DV 3330mfp, Hewlett- 30 Grads-boek software. 35 Custom soundtrack app ‘Partner EasyShare 3.0 Inspiration 7.5, Backup, Moe internet, SightClps Packard PSC 2175, Easy Grade Pro 3.6 fone Pos Keystrokes 3, live 21, MacMaid 2.1, , Gradekeeper X 5.4 POFshrink 3.0.1 Lexmark X5150 All-in- Master Grade X 1. One Print Center Power Mac G5s Compared MOUSE 0s COMPAT- COMPANY PRODUCT RATING PRICE BILITY CONTACT PROS _ CONS Apple P 18 9 x 800/692-7763, Outperforms fastest previous Power Large case size; limited space Computer wwwapple.com Mac; quiet; many cutting-edge for internal storage; hobbled technologies. compared with other G5s. Apple one x 800/692-7763, Superb performance; quiet; huge Large case size limited Computer www.apple,com memory capacity; packed with space for internal storage. cutting-edge technologies, Apple 990g) x 800/692-7763, Excellent performance; quiet; huge Large ca case size; limited Computer wwwwwapple.com memory capacity; packed with space fr intemal storage, cutting-edge technologies, bus runs as fast as 1GHz—six times the speed of the equivalent channel in the latest G4s. Complementing these new data-crunch- ing capabilities are big, fast hard drives: a standard 80GB in the low-end GS, and a 160GB in the other two models, all spinning at 7,200 rpm and supported by 8MB of cache memory. (When it was accessed, the 80GB drive in the 1.6GHz G5 we tested was distinctly noisier than the drive in its higher-capacity siblings, even though both drives were Seagate units with identical acoustical specifications.) The drives are connected to the system via a new industry- standard interface called serial ATA, which offers two big benefits: it can transfer data at 150 MBps, making it 50 percent faster than the Ultra ATA/100 interface in the latest G4s, and it uses tiny, easy-to-connect cables, instead of the big gray ribbon cables and balky power plugs of previous ATA genera- tions. However, no drives on the market can take advantage of the increased speed—this is a technology that hard drives will have to grow into. With an AGP 8x Pro slot for graphics cards, the G5s also move Apple up a notch in display technology. A speedy Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 Ultra video card is stan- dard in the single-processor models, while the still faster ATI Radeon 9600 Pro comes in the dual-processor model (the model we tested had the $300 ATI Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card). Both cards have two connec- tors (ADC and DVI, with an adapter that converts DVI to VGA) and can drive two displays simultaneously, in either extended- desktop or mirror mode, Since each con- nector supports digital resolutions as high as 1,920 by 1,200 pixels (1,600 by 1,200 for analog displays), you can enjoy astounding amounts of screen real estate if you hook up two displays. It’s hard to think of an up-to-date stan- dard Apple doesn’t support for moving data wwnwimacworld.com in and out of the GSs. The 1.8GHz and dual-2GHz models introduce PCI-X tech- nology to the Mac: while the expansion slots in the G4s (and in the 1.6GHz G5) were based on the 33MHz PCI standard, one of the PCLX slots in the high-end GSs runs at 133MHz and the other nwo at 100MHz. Although there aren’t yet many PCI-X cards for the Mac, look for video, audio, and stor- age developers to take advantage of all that extra bandwidth in the coming months. In addition to the usual 56 Kbps modem and an Ethernet port that handles speeds as nds On with Photo For Adobe Photoshop pros, the new dual-2GHz G5 is a dream machine. After you work on one for a couple of hours, it becomes very clear that the machine changes all Photoshop's traditional pain points, This makes many old workarounds unnecessary, but it will probably require new ‘ones as we learn where the new bottlenecks are, Right from the start, this machine feels fast while running Photoshop. Menus don't so much drop down as fly in your face, and you may need to slow down mouse tracking, at least until you get used to the speed. However, while the new machine does wonders for Photoshop, don't expect miracles, The biggest bottleneck in Photoshop has long been getting data from RAM (or worse, from the scratch disk) to the CPUs. The memory band- width in the G5 is about an order of magnitude wider than in any previous hardware generation, which makes a huge difference in features such as the Healing Brush, or in redraws of layered files with complex blending. But until Panther has been out long enough for Adobe to perform rigorous tests, Photoshop wil still be limited to using 2GB of RAM. Once you exceed that limit, you're back to having Photoshop read the scratch disk, and high as Gigabit Ethernet (1,000 Mbps), the GSs have internal slots for optional Air- Port Extreme and Bluetooth wireless cards. ‘There's a FireWire 800 port, as well as two of the old FireWire 400 variety (for speed tests on FireWire 800, see “250GB FireWire 800 Drives,” Reviews, September 2003). And the three USB ports have been upgraded to USB 2.0, which can handle data as much as 40 times faster than the previous version, (Warn- ing; don’t hook up a USB 2.0 drive, scanner, or printer to the free port on the keyboard continues, while Photoshop's caching of the scratch volume is very sophisticated, you'll still see significant slowdowns. (Even though the dual-2GHz machine | tested had 4GB of RAM, it wouldn't let me dedicate a full 2GB to Photoshop—if you're considering maxing out your RAM for Photoshop se, 4.5GB seems like a good amount for now.) Reading from and writing to disks is quite speedy using the stack 250GB serial ATA drive, but serious Photoshop users will almost certainly want something faster. Finding out just what that something should be will require more research, as drive vendors won't quite say whether it will be possible to attach an Ultra SCSI RAID O array, or even a FireWire 800 RAID 0 array. We look for- ward to numerous online debates about the rela- tive merits of each, but even a second serial ATA drive with a dedicated Photoshop scratch parti- tion would undoubtedly lessen some of the pain. ‘Any way you look at it, the dual-2GHz G5 is an extremely fast machine that will delight Photo- shop geeks. But it's more than a little scary to contemplate just what the Photoshop engineers will do with all that power in the future. Mean- while, having ordered my dual-2GHz G5 approxi- mately 16 hours after Apple started taking orders, | want it now!—BRUCE FRASER November 2003 MACWORLD 27 REVIEWS that comes with the GSs—though the sleek, white keyboard design is new, the USB hub inside is still limited to USB 1.1 speeds.) Happily, Apple has finally bowed to pop- ular demand and put some of these ports (FireWire 400 and USB 2.0, plus a head- phone jack) on the front panel of the machines—hugely convenient for plugging ina camera or an iPod, especially if the sys tem resides under a desk. Apple has also continued to beef up the Power Macs’ audio capabilities. Besides the headphone jack, the new models have no fewer than four connectors dedicated to audio: analog line-in and -out ports, and optical digital audio-in and -out connectors. Pro audio and video editors will appreciate being able to monitor multichannel audio production and connect directly to digital hardware, such as DAT players, without the need for third-party devices. By the Numbers Beyond all the geeky goodies, the real ques- tion about the Power Mac Gs was whether they would actually get real work done appreciably faster, Our tests leave no doubt about it: on almost every task we threw at them, the new machines left their predeces- sors in the dust, In fact, even the humblest G5—the 1.6GHz model—outperformed the fastest Sys ining Y e One little-noted feature of the G5s is some- thing called “processor and bus slewing.” When it's enabled—as it is when you take a new Power Mac out of the box—the system doesn’t run at its rated speed all the time. To keep power consumption and the result- ing heat and fan noise to a minimum, the machines operate at reduced voltage and speed when they're idle or performing light work, Only when they face heavy lifting do the processor and bus kick into high gear, According to the technical documentation about the new series that Apple supplied to developers, shifting processor and bus speeds does not impact system or application per- formance," But we, like other benchmark testers, discovered that this isn’t quite accu- fate. When we went to System Preferences, opened the Energy Saver preference pane, clicked on the Options tab, and switched the Processor Performance setting from Auto- matic to Highest, the scores on many of our benchmark tests improved by 3 to 7 percent, and we noticed no significant increase in fan Noise, (We used the Highest setting for all the tests reported in our benchmark chart.) In this mode, the G5 consumes more elec- tricity, which isn't exactly friendly to the environment or to your wallet. But when you need maximum performance, you might decide the costs are worth the candle. 28 MACWORLD November 2003 Got a G4 loaded with cards, drives, and mem- ory? Don't assume you can move all those goodies to your new G5. In fact, forget about moving RAM or internal drives. Because the Power Mac G5s are based on the latest memory standards—1 28-bit Double Data Rate Synchronous DRAM (DDR SDRAM), running at 333MHz (PC2700) in the 1.6GHz G5 and 400MHz (PC3200) in the other ‘two models—no memory from any older Mac will work in the new machines. (If you're buying third-party RAM for a G5, don't just rely on the specifications—check with the supplier to make sure the memory has been tested for compatibility with the new architecture. ‘And remember that you can't install DIMMs one by one in the GS, even if they meet all Apple's requirements—the new machines require matched pairs, just like in the old SIMM era.) As for internal hard drives, leave them where they are, too, The G5s use a new interface called serial ATA for the built-in hard drive and the one free drive bay. Previous Macs relied on various generations of the older, parallel ATA standard, cor in some cases on the completely different SCSI standard, and those drives aren't compat- ible with serial ATA, External storage devices—hard drives, CD burners, Zip drives, and so on—should work fine, though, via the G5s' FireWire or USB 2.0 ports. (USB 1.1 storage devices, however, will be as slow as evel—you get USB 2.0's extra speed only when it’s built into the peripheral and the host,) As to existing PCI cards, most but not all will tun in the G5s’ three free expansion slots. They just have to support “universal,” or 3.3V, signal ing, rather than SV signaling. In the 1.6GHz GS model, the card also has to be capable of running at 33MHz; if you install a card that functions only at 66MHz, “damage to your equipment could result,” the G5 manual warns. (Not certain about your cards? Check with the manufacturer.) The 1.8GHz and dual-2GHz G5s are a bit more forgiving: although the 3.3V requirement still applies, the PCI-X slots in the higher-speed mod- els are backward-compatible with PCI cards run- ning at either 33MHz or 66MHz, That's a good thing, because at press time only one PCI-X card (a Fibre Channel adapter from Astera) was listed in Apple's online Macintosh Product Guide. Mac we'd ever tested before, the discontin- ued dual-1.42GHz Power Mac G4, on our Speedmark 3.2 benchmark, which mea- sures overall performance in a variety of everyday applications. Because most of the Speedmark test results don’t benefit from dual processors, the results show only a modest incremental improvement in performance for the dual-CPU G5, compared with the single- processor models. But if you look at the results for computation-intensive tasks in media-oriented programs optimized for multiprocessor systems—for example, Adobe Photoshop (with the new GS plug-in), Maxon’s Cinema 4D, and Apple’s own Compressor utility— you'll see that the top- of-the-line model delivers another huge speed boost over and above what you get with the single-Gs models (see “Hands On with Photoshop” for more on Photoshop and the G5). For the cus- tomers Apple is targeting with the G5 line, results like these are money in the bank. Macworld’s Buying Advice Of the two single-proces- sor G5s, we'd recom- mend the 1.8GHz model ($2,399) over its 1.6GHz sibling ($1,999). The perfor- mance difference is barely noticeable, but the extra $400 will buy you twice the hard- drive space, twice as much capacity for memory expansion, and PCI-X instead of PCI expansion slots. You might not need those capabilities now, but there’s a good chance you'll care about them in a year or two. But for graphics pros, media produc- ers, and anyone else whose productivity is truly limited by processor performance, we recommend saving up for the dual-2GHz Power Mac G5. If your time is money, the performance boost this amazing piece of engineering delivers will pay for itself. Ci g Big Brother The Power Mac G5's 9 percent larger volume makes it seem much larger than its G4 sibling, \wwewamacworld.com Contribute 2.0 Web-Page Editor Balances Simplicity and Sophisticated Controls BY DAVID SAWYER McFARLAND Keeping a Web site fresh and its content up- to-date can be a Sisyphean task. While creat- ing and editing Web pages isn’t rocket science, it’s just difficult enough that many people have to turn to experts—a company Webmaster, for example—to make even simple changes to a Web page, Consequently, users who want to update their sites often can’t, and those who can may find their schedules overbooked with routine content updates. Enter Contribute 2.0 for the Mac. This OS X-only product s cessfully combines ease of use with sophisti- cated administrative controls, to simplify the process of updating a Web site. Keep It Simple, Stupid Contribute’s greatest virtue is its simplicity. Tf you have a passing familiarity with a word processor and a Web browser, Contribute will have you editing your site in a matter of minutes. Its streamlined interface is divided into four panes: a Web-browser and page- editing area, a basic application toolbar, a list of current drafts (pages being edited), and a helpful Task panel full of specific and straightforward how-to information (see “What Do I Do?”). With its built-in FTP client (and support for the more secure encrypted SFTP), Con- tribute lets you update a live site on the Internet, Initial setup requires just a few technical details about the Web server— details you can skip over if an administrator provides an easy-to-use key via e-mail. Contribute can edit any page on a site, regardless of what program was originally used to create the site, The process is simple: browse to a page on your site (using the built-in Web browser), click on the Edit button to switch to edit mode, make your changes, and click on the Publish button to update the page on your Web site. Step-by-step instructions are available from the Task panel, while helpful and friendly messages—“Congratulations! Your ‘thanges have been published to the Web site”—escort you through each step of the editing process. Thanks to its built-in support for .Mac, Contribute automatically connects to your .Mac account, so you can edit your -Mac site without any complicated setup. Not a Design Tool Contribute is not a tool for designing or build- ing Web sites from scratch. It provides basic text-formatting options, alignment options, and bulleted and numbered lists. The built-in spelling checker is a great bonus. And while Contribute doesn’t have tools for creating styles, as most word processors do, you can ‘www macworld.com eat sated Gorinowie tutors Cooneceto abs agate to pages 10 on ry mee Smt “Add comant 94 woh page ‘id anne inv ate ‘Meroe orice donut Moditya web pane | oat tate What Do | Do? Contribute’s Task panel (the How Do | area on the left side of the screen) provides all the answers you need to update your Web site, apply Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) that the site designer created and applied to a page. When you import information from Microsoft Word or Excel into your Web pages, Contribute retains some of the origi- nal document’ formatting. Excel spread- sheets become HTML tables when pasted into Contribute, for example. There are some hitches: Contribute uses only the basic fonts available in the program when formatting pasted text. This might cause some confusion when you paste a paragraph of text formatted in ITC Kabel, say, and it turns into Times New Roman. In addition, Word graphics and complex Excel spreadsheets don’t paste into Contribute correctly, and bulleted and num- bered lists aren't formatted with their HTML equivalents—problems you can overcome by inserting the images and formatting the lists within Contribute. Contribute isn’t just a text editor, however. It lets you add graphics, HTML, and Flash movies (but not QuickTime movies) to your pages. Contribute even includes e-commerce tools for adding basic shopping-cart features, such as Buy Now buttons. ‘The program also lets you add new pages to your site, as long as they're based on a pre- designed template that ships with the pro- gram, a page that’s already on the site, or any Dreamweaver template used on the site. An Administrator's Dream Overworked Web designers and harried Webmasters may become Contribute’s most fervid evangelists. The program's ease of use will allow them to pass on many routine site updates to less-technical users. A Webmas- ter at a school, for example, can have teach- ers use Contribute to update class Web sites. Because even a simple tool can be misused, Contribute also supports a variety of admin- Reporters for The National Exasperater have ‘discovered that aliens Irom anather planet -~ metal [dad robots, with the words "Space Man" emblazoned crass thelr chests — wake among Us. €} mont > istrative tools for controlling how other Con- tribute users edit a Web site. Each site has one administrator who can prevent users from inadvertently deleting a graphic or changing the design, for example. The administrator can also create user groups with different sets of permissions. This is the kind of feature that helps busy Webmas- ters spread out responsibility without sacrific~ ing peace of mind. And to simplify setup, an administrator can create a connection key—a password-protected, encrypted file containing the information users need in order to con- nect Contribute to a Web site and start edit- ing—and then send it to users via e-mail, To prevent mistakes, Contribute lets you create e-mail review pages so others can look over and approve a page after you commit to changes, And ifa mistake does get made, Con- tribute can roll back to 99 previous versions of a Web page; this is a great feature when you realize that you've accidentally deleted most of the home page before publishing it back to the Web server. Macworld's Buying Advice Contribute couldn’t be easier to use. If you already have a Web site and are intimidated or overwhelmed by the process of updating it, this program just might be the ans RATING: $66) PROS: Quick setup; very easy to Use; supports .Mac; allows SFTP transfer; integrates seamlessly with Dreamweaver templates. CONS: No OS 9 version, PRICE: Single user, $99; five-pack, $399; ten-pack, $749; volume licenses available OS COMPATIBILITY: Mac OS X COMPANY: Macromedia, 800/470-7211, www.macromedia.com November 2003 MACWORLD TAU SY Eisen teteemratoeneeee terse Grade-Book eeeareniramricaet Software _ [amisioe Five OS X-Ready Programs for Teachers Get Assorted Marks BY SCHOLLE SAWYER McFARLAND. If you’re a teacher who’s wanted to throw away a paper grade book, now is a good time. Once you switch to a grade-book application, you won't have to do the math to determine your students’ grades, and you can generate reports and class statistics in an instant. In other words, you save time. I test-drove five grade-book programs designed for OS X: Chariot Software Group's MicroGrade 6.02, Daniel Ethier’s Grade- keeper X 5.4, Matt Fahrenbacher’s Perfect Score 1.1.6, Maxium Developments’ Master Grade X 1.5, and Orbis Software's Easy Grade Pro 3.6. (All except Perfect Score also run on OS 9 and Windows.) ‘The ideal grading program should be easy to use, since teachers rarely have spare time for learning software programs. It should also offer a variety of ways for recording scores. It should be able to determine a final grade by using total points or by weighting customized assignment categories. It should help you take class attendance. And finally, it should be able to generate reports quickly. Given these criteria, Easy Grade Pro is the clear overall winner, due to its highly pol- ished interface, time-saving features, and reasonable price. First Day of Class Most of these programs take their cue from the paper grade book and employ a spread- sheetlike interface. The simple Gradekeeper has only two views, Gradebook and Atten- dance. Perfect Score and Easy Grade Pro have tabs for viewing additional information, such as student profiles and seating charts. The Grade-Book Software Compared MOUSE COMPANY RATING PRICE Chariot Software Group Daniel Ethier PRODUCT Matt Fahrenbacher Maxium Developments Orbis Software addtional $995 pet yea 30 MACWORLD November 2003, "Shareware, Site license pice i fr Mac 05 X lcese a site li alee 2 E | e| 9] Time: Saver “Easy Grade Pro overflows with time-: saving touches, such as the ability to access all your color coded oded grade sheets from t! the Tool palette’s Pop-up menu. oddball is MicroGrade, which confronts you with three or four jarring windows at once. All the programs let you import student information from tab- or comma-delimited text files, and both Master Grade and Micro- Grade can also import data in specific admin- istrative software formats, such as CIMS IIT Canada School Administration System files. ‘Adding assignments is a good way to test a program’ ease of use, and doing so isa snap in all the programs but MicroGrade and—to a lesser extent—Master Grade. Those pro- grams require more clicking of the mouse and hunting through menus. MicroGrade expects you to create categories and add all your assignments to them at the same time. Master Grade requires that you do a lot of tedious mouse-clicking and dragging to create assign- ment cate