MacWorld0411November2004

60 AWESOME LOW-COST (OR FREE!) UTILITIES Mi SOFTWARE BARGAINS: ORGANIZATIONAL fF The Mac Product Expert: APPS, CREATIVE TOOLS, AND MORE, p. 56 erts www.macworld.c jorid.com | November 2004 INSIDERS’ GUIDE Get the Skinny on Apple’s Faster, Slimmer All-in-One Mac ) Pt) >< KIMLER MAC ROBOTS 2 nee REVIEWS 7 DV CAMCORDERS | CREATE HOT PHOTOSHOP TIPS From the creatorsof iPod). ee iPod puts all your music in your pocket. The new iMac G5 puts ar entire computer in an ultra-slim 17- or 20-inch display. From $1,299. November 2004 www.macworld.com REVI EWS 24 Wireless networking 7 8 AirPort Express ’ = 25 Telephone messaging systems : $88 Phiink 1.4.2 $699; PhoneValet 2.0a OPINION 26 biog ans amie aa utility From the Editor’s Desk 28 MiniDV camcorders JASON SNELL / ; : $8983 Canon Optura 40 The iMac G5 is more than just an engineering marvel—and here's why. $$$} Canon 2R-90 10 Feedback $$3 Fisher FVD-C1 $643 JVC GR-DX97 Readers respond. $8$% Panasonic PV-GS200 MAC BEAT tae sonocrectos 14 The Apple-versus-Real row; Photoshop Elements 3; a Mac-built sci-fiDvD | 30 — Information- -management app set; the original Mac team’s Bill Atkinson; an introduction to HD video; the F9FH NoteBook 1.2 LoadPod CD-ripping service; and the hottest products from Siggraph. . 31 Video- -compositing software $686! After Effects 6.5 Professional 32 Audio-restoration software a a GENE SounnSoap Fie 1.0) 34 FTP package bili ts Interarchy 7.2 35 Audio-burning package #098 Toss with fm 60.2 | 35 Chat-encryption software Riis ChatBarrier X3 10.3.1 36 = Scanner utility $499 Vuescan 8.0.11 37 Children’s Web browser | $$ BumperCar 1.0 38 Consumer CAD software $668) MacDraft PE 5.5 40 Top Products 42 The Game Room PETER COHEN SOFTWARE Above or below ground, in ancient Egypt or in a BARGAINS galaxy far, far away, this month's Game Room is feally going places—with reviews of Homeworld 2, Gish, Rise of the Nile, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and MTX: Mototrax. Also, check out our review of the Razer Viper. The Virtual CD All readers now have free access to the contents of the CD-ROM that comes with some copies of Macworld. To view the contents of the CD, go to the following On the Cover URL (broadband Internet recommended): Photography by http://ed.macworld.com/2004/ Peter Belanger 11/mirror-bell 2 MACWORLD November 2004 woww.macworld.com COVER $ STORY ‘SECRETS _ iMac G5 ; | 68 WORKING MAC JONATHAN SEFF | The Keychain’s Hidden Powers We've got the inside scoop on Apple's all-new all-in-one. Greg "Joz" DAN FRAKES Joswiak takes us on a guided tour of the iMac G5. ; Keyche 0S X's Keychain ensures that passwords, account numbers, and top-secret business deals remain _secure yet easily accessible, 70 DIGITAL HUB Create CD Inserts in iTunes JIM HEID Do you miss the printed CD jackets that come with store-bought CDs? You can make your own without ever leaving iTunes. Even More Software Bargains You don’t need a lot of money to get great Mac software. We reveal 60 low-cost—and no-cost—applications that help you work more efficiently and have more fun. | 72 CREATE | Photoshop Top Tips DAVID BLATNER, KEVIN CONNOR, AND BEN WILLMORE | Our Photoshop experts share essential time- savers, reveal hidden features, and let you in on | top tricks of the trade, Plus, learn how to win a gorgeous limited-edition book from Adobe! 76 MOBILE MAC Laptop Battery Smarts JEFF CARLSON Get all that you can from your laptop's battery. We show you how to keep it healthy and fully charged, and then offer tips for determining whether you need a replacement. 78 GEEK FACTOR Killer Mac Robots JONATHAN KNUDSEN Program your own army of Lego robots. Whether you use them for good or evil is up to you. ® 80 HELP DESK Mac OS X Hints ROB GRIFFITHS | Compare fonts with Font Book, delete iTunes art- work from multiple songs at once, modify a clip's | speed in iMovie more drastically, change OS X's | crash-reporter behavior, make OS X move in slow = motion, and more. 28 MINIDV CAMCORDERS | > | 82 Mac 911 | CHRISTOPHER BREEN | 50 iMAC GS | Eliminate duplicate events on your Palm and Mac, put a Print button on Safari's Address Bar, create a volume equally at home on the Mac and a Win- l i | dows PC, and more. — \ BACK PAGE 112 ~——-Hot Stuff Check out our editors’ favorite developments of the month. wwrw.macworld.com November 2004 MACWORLD. 3 , Crusty’s For single users and workgroups. Need font management for your workgroup? Check out Extensis Font Reserve Server and Suitcase Server. (© 2004 Extensis, Inc. All rights reserved. Choose 68 at www.macworld.com/getinfo Envision it. Preview it. Deliver it. Suitcase”... for creative minds. www.extensis.com/x1 Extensis... a celartem company | | i y PORTRAIT BY PETER Be OM THE EDITOR’S DESK [E)A@N NS) SIN = The Once and Future iMac Ever since the iMac helped reverse Apple's slipping fortunes back in 1998, it has been viewed as a symbol of the company’s health. But | don’t think that’s the case anymore. For one thing, the iPod has usurped the iMac’s position as company star (the tag line of the new iMac ads is “From the creators of iPod”). And many former iMac users are now graduating to PowerBooks and Power Macs. The G5 Difference Still, the iMac G5—more powerful than the previous iMac but only slightly larger than the average flat-panel display—is an impressive bit of engineering. Consider the challenge Apple's hardware designers faced in try- ing to fit a G5 processor into such a small space. The G5 chip runs extremely hot, but it and all the other components had to be crammed inside a tiny, two-inch~ deep enclosure. The solution: a half-dozen indepen- dently controlled fans keeping three separate cooling zones at safe temperatures. Even the iMac’s L-shaped aluminum foot benefits from some typically clever Apple design touches. (For more on the new iMac, inside and out, see our cover story, page 50.) But the iMac G5 has taken some lumps for being a bit too predictable. After all, attaching a computer to a flat-panel screen isn’t exactly original. People were suggesting that design even before the iMac G4 was introduced. But I think those criticisms are unfair: With this new iMac, Apple has managed to get the computer completely out of a user's face. Unlike all-in-one computers from PC makers, the iMac doesn’t have a Quasimodo-like hump bulging from its back. Also, given the growth of wireless technologies and the continuing miniaturization of computer technol- ogy, it’s only a matter of time before that physical box we've called “the desktop computer” disappears from our lives, stashed away in a closet or embedded in a device like a flat-panel monitor. So I think the new iMac is a glimpse into the future. As someone who likes computers because of what I can do with them, not because I like to keep big metal boxes near my desk, I can’t wait for that tomorrow to arrive. Bargains and Gems I think the most interesting part of the Mac world right now is the software being generated by hun- § dreds of brilliant, independent programmers who | have embraced OS X. Few of these programs will appear in stores or advertisements. But they’re often excellent, professional-quality apps. Since these programs tend to rely on word of mouth for publicity, a lot of them fall through the wwew.macworld.com cracks. That's why we've been championing them in the pages of Macworld for the past couple of years. In this issue, you'll find our third “Software Bargains” roundup (page 56), featuring 60 very cool, low-cost (or free) Mac applications you'll want to check out for yourself. And every month, we present Mac Gems, a column in which Senior Writer Dan Frakes shines a spotlight on some excellent Mac products that might otherwise go unnoticed. Now Mac Gems will also appear online, in the form of a new Weblog at Macworld.com. Several times a week, Dan will review great new Mac software at www.macworld.com/weblogs/macgems. Even if you consider yourself a savvy Mac user, I think Dan will surprise you with a lot of excellent apps you've never heard about. About This Macworld Every month, we produce a companion CD-ROM full of extra stuff, including video tutorials from Christopher Breen, supplemental magazine material, and the latest Mac software. The problem: that CD-ROM is included only with selected copies of the magazine. The solution: every teader of Macworld can view the contents of that CD- ROM, in Web form. If you don’t have the CD-ROM (and, preferably, if you have @ broadband Internet con- nection), you can see the con- tents of this month's “virtual CD” at http://cd.macworld.com/2004/11/ mirror-bell. You can always find the Web address of your issue's CD-ROM content by looking at the magazine's table of contents. What do you think of the iMac G5? Got a favorite piece of Mac software ‘more people should know about? Drop me a line, at jason_snell@macworld .com, or visit the Macworld.com forums. November 2004 MACWORLD 5 Time to Get FontAgent.Pro! Rated Best by Design, Education and Prepress Professionals Automatic font optimization ° Unrivaled auto-activation * Rock-solid stability More ways to preview fonts Multiple font libraries © Detailed font diagnostics * Automatic library organization + Nested font sets © Intuitive ATM-like interface © Serverless font sharing “...Superior repair and organization functionality” Macworld $666 “With its ease of use and powerful feature set, FontAgent Pro is the Designer's font manager ... | rate it a perfect 5/5 for making font headaches go away for good.” Colin Smith, PhotoshopCAFE.com Perfect 5/5 (sider a www.insidersoftware.com/macworld For more information, contact us today (866) 216-1399 (US) +1 (760) 804-9900 red trademark ot 6 MACWORLD November 2004 Macworld President Rick LePage Editor in Chief Jason Snel Executive Editor Dan Mile Managing Editor Chases Purdy Senior How-to Editor Kelly Lunsford Senior News Editor Jonathan Sff Senior Reviews Editor Jenifer Berger Senior Editors Scholle Sawyer McFarland, Terri Stone Lab Director. James Galbraith ‘Associate Editor Jackie Dove Assistant Managing Editor Sue Voelkel Production Consultant Jennifer Werner Contributing Editors Christopher Breen, Adam C. Engst, Bruce Fraser, Ab Grits, Jim Heid, Andy Innatko, Ted Landau, David Pogue | Art Director Jennifer Steele Senior Designer Amy Helin Contributing Designers. John Farnsworth, Jackie Goodmen Contributing Photographer Peter Belanger Online Content Director. Philip Michaels Editor, Macworld.com ‘and MacCentral.com Jim Daiymple Senior Editor, MacCentral.com Peter Cohen Senior Writer, Online Dan Frakes Intemational Editors Matthew JC. Powell, Australi; Sebastian Misch, Germany; Enrico Lot tay: Yoshio Moriya, Japan; Krzysztof Pretrasik, Poland; Daniel de Blas, Spain; Valier Bengtsson, Sweden; Engin Gedik, | Turkey, Simon Jar, United Kingdom | VPIChief Operating Officer Stephen Daniels Director of Finance Eos de Femins Accounting Coordinator Ronda Biter VP of Human Resources Kate Coldwell Human Resources Manager Julie Mckie Human Resources Coordinator Jenny Steele IT Director Sean Greathouse Publisher Cynthia Ramsey (973/228-3074) National Acounts Manager aul Bonarigo (508/533-4020) Westem Advertising Director SaraCulley (831/438-8408) ‘Account Executive Franck Zamora (415/243-3628) Showcase Account Manager Niki Stranz (415/243-3664) Showcase Account Manager Catal Johnstone (415/243-3691) Director, Online Advertsing Doug Detesen (415/243-3598) Online Account Executive Rachel Desjardins (415/267-4562) Marketing Manager Kasey Galang (415/243-3642) AdmiistrativelMarketing Asst. Amanda Cartier (415/978-3380) Production Director Steve Spingola Prepress Manager Mark Fischman Booking and Billing Manager. Ricardo Sandoval Online Production Manager Ron Neal Ve Consumer Marketing Shawne Bue Pecar Associate Circulation Director David Cobb | Director Retention Marketing Lisa Rader | Senor Subscription Marketing Manager Lindo Tinh Subscription Marketing Manager Simon Tale Newsstand Consultant George Clark | November 200, volume 21, sve 11 ‘a pate of Mac big LC and mean! Dt Gran._| gender fal ated Wi oe | | regsteed ademas of Apple IDG ‘wwwemacworld.com mcm ULTIMATE @ a eplaylist DIGITAL MUSIC FOR PC & MAC On Newsstands Now! or online at playlistmag.com or by phone at 1.800.288.6848 & MACWORLD November 2004 HOW TO CONTACT MACWORLD ‘Access your subscription account online—24 hours a day, 7 days a week—at www.macworld.com/customer_service or http://service.macworld.com. 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We are unfortunately unable to look up stories from past issues; recommend products; or diagnose your Mac problems by Phone, e-mail, of fax, ou can contact Apple tol-ree, at 800/538-9696, or visit the company’s Web site, at ww. apple.com, Our offices are located at 501 Second Street, Sth Floor, San Francisco, A 94107; phone, 415/243-0505; fax, 415/243-3545, Macworld staf «an be reached by e-mail at firstname lastnamed@macworid.com. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Send coments about any aspect of Macworld to letters@macworld «com, Due to the high volume of mail we receive, we can't respond to each eter We reserve the ight to edit al submissions. Letters published in Macworld ot Macworld com become te property of Mac Publishing, MAC 11 | ‘Send your questions or tps on using Mac computes, peripherals, or software to Macworld, Mac 911, 501 Second Steet, Sth Floo, San Fran: ‘sco, CA 94107; fax 415/243-3545; or e-mail macO1@macworld.com, Include your name, address, and phone number. To share tps and discuss ‘Mac problems with other Mac users, visit the Macwonld.com forums MACWORLD CONFERENCE & EXPO A the fagship sponsor of Macworld Conference & Expo, Macworld encourages all subscribers to attend ths exciting biannual industry | event, For information, please vst www.macworldexpa.com, | ‘Wea. | www.macworld.com . Our passion, Let the PC world come to you. eee ba VirtiGl PC for Mac” Batch Copy and paste. Drag'and drop. Switch between Mac and Windows® applications as easily as clicking between documents. The new, faster Microsoft® Virtual PC for Mac Version 7 lets you run PC programs on your Mac like a pro — sans the suit and tie. See it work at www.microsoft.com/mac How-to Help VINCENT GREEN eS I'ma little bothered by the instructions you gave, in “The Next Do-It-Yourself Mac” (August 2004), for removing the original drive from a PowerBook G4 and installing a SuperDrive. I'm an Apple-certified tech- nician; I make my living performing these kinds of repairs, and there are certain mea- sures that I must follow. The methods you listed do not provide any information con- cerning the protection of sensitive parts while working on the machine. I fear that some people may inadvertently damage their machines by following those instruc- tions. Whenever you need to remove the bottom case to work on something, you should put a soft cloth between the display and the top case. Regarding the actual removal of the drive, there is a little metal clip that hooks onto the inner frame right between the two orange flex cables. That clip could possibly shear the flex cable when you pull it out; it’s a good idea to remove that clip first. ANDREW SKINNER i= Inspired by the “Turn Your Mac into a Pic- ture Frame” how-to, I have begun making my own Mac digital picture frame. My Web site wwwulikelysoft.com/hacks details my project status and lists resources for people who want to start a similar project. STEVE MILLS B Regarding the “Accessorize Your iSight” project, that plastic tube is going to over- heat the iSight. Even when it’s not in use, the iSight is very hot. All that heat will make the tape’s adhesive all mushy and the lens could possibly fall off and crack. And the heat will also make the rubber band mushy, leaving goo all over the back of the iSight if it’s left on for a few weeks. 10 MACWORLD November 2004 FEEDBACK Do-It-Yourself Feedback Inspired by our August 2004 issue, we wanted to give you a step-by-step guide for assembling your own Feedback section. Step 1: Publish an issue packed with do-it-yourself tips, a challenge to build the ideal Mac-based home office, and an in-depth review of Microsoft Office 2004. Step 2: Put that issue in the hands of readers who are never at a loss when it comes to offering how-to tips of their own. It’s not as challenging as installing a SuperDrive in a PowerBook G4, but it’s every bit as rewarding. | The lens holder could be problematic if you always left it on your iSight. The easiest solu- tion is to pop your homemade accessory on only when you need to use it—Ed. JOHN D. BARNES {Es} Contrary to the reporting in your “Blur the Lines between Mac and TV” item, Elgato’s EyeTV connected to my cable provider does act as a channel selector. There is also fanctionality for searching a program guide through TitanTV, which makes for easy search, point, and click scheduling. While the resolution of the image isn’t superb, it's good enough to allow me to learn the secrets on the Food Channel. We meant to say that the EyeTV can't change the channels on a digital cable or satellite box; swe apologize for any confusion. As for Titan TV, we mentioned that programming guide in our July 2004 review of EyeTV 200.—Ea. A Six-Grand Old Time LARRY BARROWS I thought that “Macworld’s $6,000 Chal- lenge” (August 2004) was very useful and informative. I liked the counterpoint of the two types of systems and the two writers’ approaches to spending the same amount of money. I'd also like to know what they could do with about $15,000 for a video- editing and media-center system, or with the same amount for a home recording stu- dio. Please make this a recurring feature. TONY WARD ies] How did your Bargain Hunter manage to spend more on Microsoft Office 2004 than your Hassle-Free User? OK, so $9 isn’t a big deal. Bue if your Bargain Hunter had just shopped around, he could have picked up Office 2004 for $330 at Amazon.com or even less elsewhere. He also could have saved money on the .Mac subscription, which has been $75 at Amazon.com since as far back as May. Retrospect Desktop 6.0 is at least $10 cheaper at various online out- Jets including MacMall. I could have saved a couple hundred dollars just by shopping around online for a few minutes. The savings from ordering Office, Retrospect, and other products from multiple vendors would likely have been eaten up by tax and shipping charges. Bundling an order of multiple products ‘from one vendor often saves more money in the Jong run because you pay for shipping only once. Subscribing to.Mac through Amazon.com is a cool suggestion —Adam C, Engst DREW BOONE es} Iwasa bit confused by Christopher Breen’s hassle-free shopping list. Specifically, Icon- sider the purchase of a Windows PC, with Microsoft Office as the only productivity app, a waste—and a less than hassle-free one at that. I concede that compatibility problems can arise between Windows and Mac versions of Office. But would purchas- ing a PC really reduce hassles in these limited cases? You must maintain two computers, one of which is a Windows machine. In the end, it would be more eco- nomical and hassle-free to purchase a con version program such as MacLinkPlus Deluxe to address compatibility issues. It’s true that documents that don't translate correctly can be a nuisance—one that you wouldn't want to inflict on a client—but hav- ing a Windows PC when you're working in a multiplatform setting is about more than whether a PowerPoint slide works on a differ- ent platform. There are also the issues of tak- ing screenshots or exploring software or Web sites that may not work on a Mac. When you need the real thing, emulation just can’t cut it.—Christopher Breen www.nacworld.com Office Space STEVEN R. SCHMID iE) I obtained my copy of Microsoft Office 2004 after reading about the nice improvements in PowerPoint and Word (Reviews, August 2004). Unfortunately, there’s still a major feature missing from these programs: integration with PDF files. A PDF file pasted into Keynote, for example, is handled perfectly, butin Word or PowerPoint, the image clarity is lost. KDE OK? LISA FAHRMEYER LS I was excited about “Hasta La Vista, Aqua” (Geek Factor, August 2004). With a bit of fiddling, I got my newbie head around it and got KDE set up without a hitch. Well, except maybe one: Everything runs smoothly with the desktop icons off except the KOffice programs, which simply will not load. They show up in the Kicker, but the little hourglass spins for about 30 sec- onds and then the program fails to launch. Every other program, with the exception of AMOR, works fine. MARTIN DOYLE B Many thanks to Cyrus Farivar for the article on how to put KDE on my OS X box. It was very helpful, as I've been look- ing for a step-by-step process. But either more details or some troubleshooting information might also have been helpful. I followed the instructions and was playing around with a successfully installed KDE when I positioned the Dock on the left- hand side of the screen—and X11 crashed. And it continued to crash on startup until I was quick enough to move the Dock to a different position on the edge of the screen. I understand that open-source programs are continually evolving, but now that I’ve got it installed, I haven’t the faintest idea how to go about troubleshooting it, or even what to delete so that I can reinstall it. Some readers reported that the KDE installa- tion appeared to take more than SOGB of space. Benjamin Reed, one of the main devel- opers of the Fink project, says that this calcula- tion is a bug. If you run into installation difficulties, the best place to find help is the Fink developers and users list (go to find .macworld.com/0048)—Cyrus Farivar Blocked Off JEFF GRIFFIN Es) “Web Mail Supersizes” (Mac Beat, August 2004) lists free e-mail providers. But Mailblocks.com doesn’t seem to be free after all. On its Web site, Mailblocks.com advertises only for-pay service. Mailblocks.com stopped accepting registration ‘for new free accounts on July 19, in anticipa- tion of its acquisition by America Online. Free accounts are on hold indefinitely as Mail- blocks.com is integrated into AOL’ offer- ings.—Glenn Fleishman Nothing Lasts Forever JOHN M. LUCAS ics) I read “Offer of a Lifetime” (Mac Beat, August 2004) and can’t help but wonder how long Mariner Software’s offer of free upgrades for the rest of a program’s life- time will exist. Or how long a “lifetime” is. I once had lifetime virus updates promised to me for Norton’s Symantec Antivirus for Macintosh (SAM), up until continues intuos; Graphire* Have fun with your photos! Graphire starts at*99. AVAILABLE AT: Best Buy, CompUSA, and Circuit City S estimated Set pes. peste NEW! Wacom Intuos3 The professional pen tablet for serious photographers, designers, and artists Visit: www.i3today.com A er WACOA ~ Patented cordless, battery-free Grip Pen for pressure-sensitive control - ExpressKeys” for convenient keyboard shortcuts and modifier keys Touch Strips for quick scrolling, zooming, brush size control, and more -Five-button mouse that is cordless, battery-free, ballfree, and optics-free 1.800.922.2589 Cintiqr Work directly on screen! Cintiqi8sx - $3499" $2499 AVAILABLE AT: > B&H, Crywolcom, and WacomDiect.com Watch fr the Penabled logo to ensure you'r getting the natural feel and supetior performance of Wacom's patented cordless and batteryfee pen technology. (©2004 Wacom TeemaslogyCaroration. Wacon, Graph, tus, Cig and Peale are vader of Wacom Company Ud. Al ight teen. Ath ademars ar property of thet respective omnes, ‘Alpes ae 2 rested trademark of isan Industes, cand is sed wih permission. FEEDBACK version 4.5.1. Then, in 1999, national accounting rules that companies had to follow were cl —they had to start taking charges estimated future cost of fulfilling those lifetime upgrades. Norton’s SAM 5, which offered only one year of free updates; additional updates were available only by subscription. Norton claimed that SAM 5 was a new product and that the for the esponse was to release “lifetime” of version 4 was over. iPhoto Fan RANDY A. MAYNARD I'm not sure what fe Jer Jedediah Leachman expects from a “serious photo manager” (Feedback, August 2004), but I am sure that iPhoto 4 lets me easily and effectively organize my 2,457 family pho- tos. Maybe professional graphics people need more. But with Smart Albums, key- words, basic photo-editing features, batch naming and modifying, awesome slide shows, seamless integration with other i-apps, book creation, simple Web-page construction through .Mac, powerful printing options, and easy photo-sharing on my home network, I think that iPhoto 4 is awesome. Pocket Full of Troubles? JORAM SAWADY I was surprised by Andy Ihnatko’ rating of PocketMac Pro 3.3 (Reviews August 2004). Since installing the pro- gram more than a month ago, I’ve never gotten it to synchronize my Hewlett- Packard iPAQ 5555 and Microsoft Entourage on my G4 PowerBook. When ng to do so, the program simply ‘ashes and closes. Do-It-Yourself 3-D CHRIS SYRIA S I noticed that “Illustration in Three Dimensions” (Create, August 2004) didn’t mention that you can do what Rob Magiera does yourself. You can download the Per- sonal Learning Version of Maya Complete for free from wwwalias.com. It works just like the real thing, except for the fact that it watermarks your renderings. But for some people, this is a perfect way to play with the software. System requirements are not a problem; I’m running it on my 500MHz iMac, and it works fine. © Post comments on our forums (www .macworld.com); send them by mail to (=) Letters, Macworld, 501 Second Street, 5th 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 receive, 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, Our review of the iBook G4 (September 2004) listed the wrong price for the optional AirPort Extreme card. Apple has cut its price to $79. “Save Time with Shortcuts” (Working Mac, September 2004) included an incorrect key command. To open a selected folder, you press -down arrow (not option—down arrow). The Power (> of Two "om \ Your Mac. A Sonnet upgrade. The magnifying power of processors. Add Sonnet’s and meet the demands of your processor- hungry applications. Now isn't that something to smile about? os \a SIMPLY FAST Sagitron by Andrew JONES ‘“ tha Concept artist, Nintendo / Made by hand with Corel® Painter” The FASTEST Version of Painter. EVER. Download a FREE TRIALat www.corel.com/madw rid j ~~ ; A eo” Awitbleat ~— amazoncom Apple Store pw) ‘MacMall —MacConnection Bainter |x ==. 4 APPLE AND REALNETWORKS FACE OFF OVER THE iPOD Music Battle Gets Real When RealNetworks announced, in July, that the next version of its RealPlayer software would allow users to play music purchased from the company’s PC-only online music store—which employs its own digital rights manage- ment (DRM) system—on an iPod, Apple was less than thrilled. Apple’s protected AAC format, using Apple’s Fair- Play DRM, is the only rights-managed format authorized to play on the iPod. So Real’s news prompted Apple to release a statement saying that the iPod maker was “stunned that RealNetworks has adopted the tactics and ethics of a hacker to break into the iPod,” and that it was considering legal action. But without an immediate legal chal- lenge from Apple, Real went ahead and released RealPlayer 10.5, which incorporates the Harmony technol- ogy that allows playback of Real- Player Music Store files on the iPod. And to sweeten the deal, in August Real began selling songs for 49 cents each and, for a limited time, many albums for $4.99 each— half as much as the iTunes Music Store charges. Both of these fea- tures undoubtedly helped the company ~ to hit the million-songs-sold mile- stone by the end of August (Apple passed the 100-million mark at around the same time). The real question, however, is What will all of this mean to the consumer? The Good, the Bad, and the iPod Real is trying to paint its fight as one that will ulti- mately benefit users. Con- sumers, not Apple, Real says, should be the ones choosing what music goes on people’s iPods. To further | its cause, Real launched the Freedom of Musi¢Chgice Web site (www.freedomofmusicchoice .org), which included a petition that users could add comments to. The petition was quickly removed—appar- ently due to an overwhelming number of posts by Apple supporters—and replaced by a link to a stock petition that allows people only to “sign” with their e-mail addresses. But with so much money at stake, analysts are quick to point out that Real isn’t the white knight it wants consumers to believe it is. “Both Real and Apple are fighting to cloak themselves in the language of protecting consumers. But in reality, both of them are actively working hard to restrict consumer choices,” says Fred von Lohmann, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation industry group. Von Lohmann says that the bickering is about DRM and that each of these companies is eager to keep consumers locked into the digital-rights scheme it prefers, With Apple commanding an early lead with the iTunes Music Store, Real is desperately trying to catch up. “It has nothing to do with consumer freedom,” von Lohmann says. “If these companies cared about that, they would be recommending that consumers burn all the music they buy to CD and then re-rip those tracks into unrestricted formats like MP3, which works on all the portable digital-music players on the market.” “Apple’s got a good thing going and they don’t want to change it,” says For- rester Research analyst Josh Bernoff. Bernoff adds that selling music at half the price is a way to get attention, but it’s not a long-term strategy. The main effect of RealNetworks’ efforts is that people are realizing that the music they bought on iTunes will have to stay in an Apple system and can’t be moved onto any other device, he says. “That's a little bit of a concern for people who spend hundreds of dollars only to get locked into Apple technology.” Still, IDC analyst Roger Kay says that consumers clearly benefit, pricewise, when a platform is open and companies compete to sell compatible material. But he also says that Apple may have a motive other than money to keep its platform closed: “When Apple has total control of the experience, [it} can deliver a more uniform experience, which you don’t usu- ally get with an open platform.” | Fought the Law So what does the future hold? Attorney von Lohmann and analyst Bernoff say that Apple will likely disable Real’s workarounds in the next iPod update. Then, if Real continues to make its con- tent compatible, Apple may consider a lawsuit. But don’t expect a slam-dunk win for Apple in court. Although Apple has refused to license its FairPlay technology, Real is not actu- www.macworld.com ally breaking the encryption of iTunes files—which would be illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Rather, it’s creating its own encrypted file. But how does Real create a file that the iPod will play? The answer is unclear. “What we did was not reverse- engineering,” said Sean Ryan, Real- Networks’ vice president of Music Ser- vices, at the Jupiter Plug-IN Conference this year. “We looked at publicly avail- able data moving between the user and the iPod.” Bernoff says that Real’s technique is rel- atively well protected by law, adding, “Irs the same technique that Compaq used to make the first IBM-compatible computer.” But if Apple does pursue a legal challenge, it might have other options, according to Scott Culpepper, a partner at Atlanta-based law firm Thomas, Kayden, Horstemeyer & Risley who specializes in copyright, patent, and DMCA law. “I could see an argument that Apple could make that [it has} copyrights in the DRM itself,” says Culpepper. “And what RealNetworks? software is basically doing is making a copy of Apple's DRM software code.” The other potential avenue Culpepper sees for Apple is a contract claim that RealNetworks violated Apple's software license. “When you download iTunes from Apple's site, you're required to exe- cute a click license; as part of that license, you agree that you won't reverse-engineer the software,” says Culpepper. “Again, we don’t know what Real did, but it seems like they would have to reverse-engineer something, so Apple may have some con- tract cause of action.” For their part, Bernoff says that record companies—eager to have as many outlets as possible for their clients—are behind Real’s efforts. “They would like to have more competition,” he adds. Consumers, however, are mixed on the whole issue. Die-hard iPod fans believe that only Apple can consistently deliver quality products and content, and that other companies shouldn’t be allowed to encroach on its technology. Others see Real as riding on Apple’s coattails without offering any real bene- fit to consumers. Still others believe that Apple shouldn’t have a monopoly on content for the iPod.—ADELIA CELLINI (Jim Dalrymple contributed to this report.) Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 There's little doubt in the graphics world that Adobe Photoshop is the tool for photographers, Web designers, and graphics pros. But at $649, it’s a bit out of the price range of most hobbyists. For the past few years, Adobe Photoshop Elements has been an inexpensive alternative to the company’s flag- ship product. And with version 3.0, Adobe will offer a major upgrade to its consumer-level photo-editing application. The update adds several new features and enhancements that allow amateurs and pros alike to edit photos with a few mouse clicks. Elements 3.0 offers improvements to the Quick Fix feature—including sliders for precise adjust- ments, larger before-and-after previews, and one-click red-eye reduction—for correcting some of the most com- mon flaws in photos. And it adds a Smart Fix feature, which can detect and fix an image's lighting, color, and contrast problems for you all at ‘once (and includes the same slider control as the Quick Fix feature). Since lots of Mac users already use iPhoto to organize and store their photos, Elements is designed to complement iPhoto—Adobe says that the two apps can easily be used together. “People wanted an integrated solution, and iPhoto already had a lot of the functionality," says Tapan Bhat, director of product management, digital imaging, at Adobe. Elements 3.0 also adds many other improvements, such as editable and searchable metadata, Spot Healing and Healing brushes, cropping presets for common photo sizes, PDF slide shows, Web photo galleries, and Camera Raw file support. Some more good news: By selling sepa- rate Mac and Windows versions for the first time, Adobe has been able to drop the price of Photoshop Elements for the Mac to $90 (down from $100). Expect the new version to be available sometime in Octo- ber—JIM DALRYMPLE November 2004 MACWORLD 15 MAC BEAT _ FILEMAKER TURNS 20 Data for the Ages It's an Apple-owned product that revolutionized computing, It helped ordinary people perform complicated tasks usually reserved for the most sophisticated users, And it's celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. The Mac? Not this time— FileMaker is also celebrating the big “two-oh” this year. But when a group of former Wang Laborato- ties employees—Alan Albert, Dan Chadwick, Spec Bowers, and Jega Arulpragasam—started developing database software two decades ago, creating a program that would still be around 20 years later was the furthest we thing from their minds. y “The database we created had to be usable by regular people, not database experts,” says Albert. Albert and his colleagues—having founded Nashoba Systems—wanted to take an approach that was different from that of the hard-to-use database programs common at the time, Their database would allow for changeable field names, sizes, types, and display attributes; show multiple graphical layouts for displaying a single set of data; and avoid artificial limits. Although FileMaker wasn't originally devel- oped for the Mac, its creators immediately saw the potential in Apple’s new computer. “We thought it was the perfect platform,” Chadwick says. FileMaker's capabilities have expanded dramatically since its debut. But its current makers have stuck to the principle that the database should be simple enough for anyone to use. “Our vision today is very similar to the vision of 20 years ago,” says FileMaker's president, Dominic Goupil. FileMaker cocreator Albert agrees: “Looking at the latest version of FileMaker,” Albert says, “you see our original design goals in full force.” —pHitip MICHAELS ORIGINAL MAC TEAM MEMBER TALKS ABOUT PAST AND PRESENT Photo Meister Bill Atkinson (wwwbillatkinson.com) was one of Apple’s original software superstars— respnniie for MacPaint, HyperCard, and much of QuickDraw and the fa rock intereged in socks chan in code An a¥id photeeeohes Askccspa vied visiting zona several years ago when the patterns and colors in local rock shops caught his eye. He started bringing cut and polished Ocean Jasper, dendritic opalite, Marra Mamba tigereye, and other exotic stones back to his Los Gatos, California, studio. There, he shot them in extreme close-up using Better Light's 48-megapixel, $13,995 Super6K-2 digital scanning back. The results can be seen in Atkinson’s new book, Within the Stone (Brown Trout Publishers, 2004). His goal: To help people see these stones not as raw material for jewelry, but as works of art themselves. After landing a job at Apple in 1978, Atkinson used photography y to balance out the pressures of his computer work. “It didn’t require the intense con- centration that programming did,” he says. Atkinson has long since donated his collection of early Macs, along with his original source binders for Quick- Draw and MacPaint, to the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley—but he still loves the machine he helped invent. “Back then, I thought the 128K Mac was pretty cool,” recalls Atkin- son. “But my main system now has 64,000 times the RAM and 20,000 times the processing power.” Even so, he’s maxing out his dual-processor Power Mac GS by running 300MB images through Adobe Photoshop and outputting them to a $4,995 Epson Stylus Pro 9600 wide-format printer. “For twelve years at Apple, I made tools to empower creative people. Now, I’m the one who’ being creative.”"—DAN MILLER 16 MACWORLD November 2004 STORAGE BEAT Boa FireWire 16x DVD+/-RW, from EZQuest (www.ezq.com): External optical drive writes to CDs and DVDs, including dual-layer DVDs, and comes in two ver- sions—one with Toast Lite and Dantz Retrospect, and one with Toast Titanium 6 and Dantz Retro- spect (Toast Lite version, $199; Toast Titanium version, $259). DRU-710UL, from Sony (www -sonyburners.com): External DVD burner is a 16 DVD+R record- able drive featuring USB 2.0 and FireWire interfaces, as well as dual-layer support ($280). Edge 9-in-1 Card Reader, from Edge Tech (wwwwedgememory com); Multiformat memory-card reader supports xD Picture Card, ‘SD Memory Card, MultiMedia Card, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, Memory Stick Duo, Smart- Media, CompactFlash | and tl, and IBM Microdrive media ($25), Store ‘n’ Go 2,1GB USB HD Drive, from Verbatim (www verbatim.com): Portable hard drive (about the size of a busi- ness card) weighs 1.8 ounces and features a 4,200-rpm hard drive ($249),—compiLeo ey pur ichaats MULTIMEDIA BEAT DrumCore, from Submersible Music (wwwudrumcore.com): Software collection helps com- posers and musicians who want to create drum tracks in many different styles ($249). inMotion iM3, from Altec Lans- ing Technologies (www.altec lansing.com): New version of portable sound system for iPods and iPod minis features per- forated aluminum grills over four 1-inch speakers and comes with a wireless remote control ($180). PipeStudio, from Aurora Video Systems (www.auroravideosys com): Video-capture and -editing system for OS X combines soft- ware, a PCI-based capture card, and a Break Out Box for capturing audio and video ($1,999)—com- PILED BY PHILIP MICHAELS vwrww.macworld.com BEAT ICONS BY PAUL HOWALT acai a _¥ vorld.comigetinfo MAC BEAT INDIE FILM RELIES ON POWERBOOK Beam Me Up Director Helmut Kobler had a hand in nearly every aspect of his science-fiction film Radius, which was released on the Internet a few years ago. But the release, earlier this year, of Radius on DVD—as well as the making of the movie itself—would have been impossible with- out the help of his Macs. “| needed something portable for working on Radius footage as we shot it,” says Kobler of the 500MHz PowerBook G3 he used while filming the 34-minute movie, “It was the right fit.” He later switched to a 1.2GHz Pow- erBook G4 for the DVD release. made sure that someone was on the set at all times. He ended up with nearly 20 hours of on- set footage, eight hours from preproduction, and six hours grabbed during postproduction. Some of the most dramatic footage shows the intense difficulty of shooting in California's Death Valley—which stands in for the desolate planet depicted in the film—where tempera- tures routinely reached 120 degrees. DVD extras also include footage on story devel- opment, casting, on-set friction, and raising the $60,000 needed to make the film—there’s even CREATIVE BEAT Cinema 4D Release 9, from Maxon Computer (www.maxon net): 3-D-animation tool adds more than 100 features, including a Heads-Up Display that shows modifiable information in the edi- tor (contact Maxon for pricing). form-Z 4.5, from autodessys (www.autodessys.com): 2-D- and. 3-D-modeling tool drops OS 9 support while adding plug-ins, scripts, and direct extensions (contact autodessys for pricing). Modeler 3.5, from Microspot (wwownmicrospot.co.uk): 3-D— modeling app features ten model- ing tools, a 3-D-text tool, basic rendering during creation, and 18 palettes ($129), Motionbuilder 6, from Kaydara In addition to the original a chapter that explains why (wwwkaydara.com); 3-D-anima- film, the two-DVD set contains two audio-com- —_Kobler chose a PowerBook over a PC notebook. tion er snd a simplified mentary tracks by the filmmakers and the actors, Kobler says that reaction has been positive, Use, eras Win ae ctor, as well as more than three hours of behind-the- ae Dee TOO ak pe scenes and making-of clips—what Kobler calls “guerrilla film school on a disc.” To capture as much raw video of the production as possible, he with more than 800 copies sold directly from his Web site ($20; www.radiusmovie.com), and he hopes to build enough buzz that Radius gets picked up for wider distribution.—erao cook well as enhanced keyframe-anima- tion capabilities ($995).—comeieo BY PHILIP MICHAELS Operate a Mac & PC Together + Enjoy Audio! Introducing the two port MiniView™ Micro USB PLUS KVM switch (GCS632U) from IOGEAR - the ‘simplest way to simultaneously run two multimedia computers with a single USB keyboard, monitor and USB mouse. LA Pertect for owners of Mac & PC laptops or desktops. ee USB PLUS KVM — Multimedia Console wich ceria Control 24 USB computer and ‘uitipte peripherals ~ A marriage made in heaven ees . - >» —— MAG + Pc SERIES CALL 949 453 8782 x2008 New Thinking, New Style 18 MACWORLD November 2004 worwmacworld.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! TechTool Pro 4 90. NEW FEATURE! eDrive (® Hardware ‘Pressing the Run button will execute the selected Hardware cests. You can change the ‘selections by using the Hardware 1 wubalow. INSTANT SAVINGS! The new eDrive feature allows you Cross-grade offer for owners to add a bootable emergency volume to an existing volume. This ov Msielv Mee sllansss, new eDrive volume is created TechToo! Lite, TechTool Pro 3, WITHOUT the need to initialize a Syetcunlibleutien or Nourse Cail 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. ) WMO Main Memory © Mathematics Buy Now! www.micromat.com © © ® The Power to Recover, Repair, and Optimize - Made Easy! Wifi Micromat Inc. 800-829-6227 707-566-3831 info@micromat.com www.micromat.com ©2004 Micromat, Inc. Alll rights reserved. TechTool is a registered trademark of Micromat, Inc. Norton Utilities and Norton SystemWorks are U.S. registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation. Mac and Macintosh are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. Choose 37 at www.macworld.comi/getinfo MAC BEAT HIGH DEFINITION VIDEO TAKES OFF Meeting HD Imagine being able to pick out indi- vidual fans in the crowd during a wide-screen baseball cast, or to see the intricate cross- hatching of Martin Sheen’s tie as he addresses the nation during an episode of The West Wing. High Definition (HD) video promis such things—a wider field of view and much more image detail. Whether you're interested in watch- ing, creating, or just learning more about HD, now is a good time to start paying attention—prices for the equipment necessary to watch and make HD content are falling. Here, we'll look at some of the technology behind HD; ina future issue, we'll explore HD creation on the Mac. me broad- Formats Face Off Standard NTSC (National Televi- sion System Committee) video has 720 horizontal pixels and 486 vertical s (480 vertical pixels for com- pressed formats such as DV and and has a frame rate of 30 (or, technically, 29.97) frames per second. NTSC video is also inter- laced—each video frame is made up of two distinct video fields. The first field contains the odd lines of an image; the second, the even line: ‘The aspect ratio of NTSC, or Stan- dard Definition (SD), TVs is 4:3. At the core of HD video is increased resolution. HD pushes the 20 MACWORLD November 2004 pixel count way up, most commonly to 1,280 by 720 pixels or 1,920 by 1,080 pixels. These HD types are usually referred to by vertical pixel count and whether frames are pro- gressive or interlaced—for example, 720P format or 1080i format. There are roughly 350,000 pixels available in SD video; HD displays more than 2 million—this is why the sharpness of HD video is startling. HD can have a variety of frame rates, but HD. broadcasting is usually 1080i at 30 fps or 720P at 60 fps. HD is also a wide-screen format, with a native aspect ratio of 16:9. Watching HD feels like a movie-theater experience. HD signals can also broadcast using Dolby 5.1-channel surround sound, the audio format used in most com- mercial DVDs. Keeping Watch HD content currently makes up a mall percentage of television broadcasts. But with HD network shows such as Alias and Law & Order, cable series such as Under, and sports broadcasts such as ESPN baseball and the Olympics from Athens, HDTVs are becoming more than expensive eye candy. You can receive HD signals, encoded as MPEG-2 streams, via satellite, digi- tal cable, or ATSC digital broadcasts (see “What It Means: HD” for a glossary of HD-related terms). Getting the Big(ger) Picture Comparing Formats High Definition (HD) video easily dwarfs tra- ditional Standard Defin- ition (SD) video. This chart compares relative visible frame sizes and aspect ratios (measured in pixels) between SD and common HD broad- cast formats, What It Means: HD The world of modern video is filled with confusing terms and unwieldy acronyms. Our glossary will help you sort it all out. ASPECT RATIO: The proportions (width:height) of the viewing area on a Monitor or a television screen, HD has a wide-screen, 16:9 ratio. SD has a narrower ratio—4:3. ATSC: A digital-broadcasting standard developed by the Advanced Television Sys- tem Committee (also refers to DTV and HDTV standards). DIGITAL TV (DTV): A television signal transmitted as digital information. HD video is digital, but not all digital broad- casts are HD. DOLBY DIGITAL: Six-channel digital- audio standard, also called AC-3 or Digi- tal 5.1. ENHANCED DEFINITION TV (EDTV): A progressive SD television that accepts the progressive output of some DVD players. Usually, these TVs also have a de- interlacer built-in. They are not HDTVs. HDMI: High Definition Multimedia Inter- face—a digital connector. HDTV-READY: ATV that can display HD video if a separate HD decoder box is attached. MPEG-2: Moving Picture Experts Group 2.A video-compression format used to condense HD and SD video, for smaller data rates in DVDs and broadcasting, TERRESTRIAL BROADCAST: Tradi- tional over-the-air broadcast. Elgato’s EyeTV 500 ($349; www.elgato com) lets you watch, record, and save A HD broadcasts, and the EyeTV. software lets you edit out commercials and unwanted material. You can also download John Dalgliesh’s free MMInputFamily driver (www.defyne.org/dvb), which allows Macs to work with DVICO’ $199 Fusion HDTV3 Gold PCI card (www.dvico.com) to display HD broadcasts. (At this time, there’ no way to view HD satellite or digital-cable signals on your Mac.) There are no HD DVDs yet, but the DVD Forum, which brought you today’s DVD, has adopted an HD DVD stan- dard, which can use H.264/AVC (Advanced Video Coding), Windows Media Video 9's VC-9 technology, and MPEG 2.—aNTON LINECKER wnew.macworld.com / Print, Copy, Scan, Fax...and you thought you couldn't get any more out of your Mac. If you're ready to get more out of your Mac*—not to mention your day—Brother coe ae s ponies Printer and Multi-Function Center* products are ready to help. With Brother ie laser printers, you'll be happy to know we have a full range of monochrome or. : color laser models. Whether your needs are for a simple desktop or a network-ready model, each one will give you fast output and quality to make your best work even better, Our Multi-Function Center® models deliver the ultimate in printing, copying, scanning, and faxing in one compact design. If you are looking for a color inkjet model, that can print from digital camera media at up to 6000 x 1200 dpi*, or a monochrome laser model with print speeds up to 21 ppm... Brother has it, —————— ‘ COLOR MFC So no matter what kind of Mac* is in front of you, make sure you have a Brother bre 2 ‘SOLUTIONS. printer or MFC at your side. ‘ NS Avariety of MODELS AVAILABLE AT: MacWarehouse, MacMall, acco Office Depot, Staples, OfficeMax, Fry’s, J&R Computer World, ane Anes Stores (or bit store.apple.« ah * Resolution Is listed us vertical by horizontal » All registered trace its tare Slog ta a r n please visit Gur Web site at waw.brother.com Choose 119 at wwnw.macworld,com/getinfo. MAC BEAT. NETWORKING BEAT SERVICE PUTS CDS ON YOUR iPOD Fill’er Up - Bill Palmer kept hearing the same thing from visitors to his iPod Garage Web site (www .ipodgarage.com). They loved the fact that they could store thousands of songs on Apple’s hard- drive-based music player. But they despised the time-consuming and mind-numbing proce: ADmit Mac 2.0, from Thursby Software (www.thursby.com): Upgraded software for integrat- ‘% ing Mac clients into a Windows Active Directory Network or a Windows NT Domain adds com- patibility with Apple's Workgroup Manager, and the ability to add computers running OS X Server to Active Directory domains ($119; upgrades start at $50), 2 ripping their entire CD collections—in some cases, hundreds of dises—into iTunes, for transfer to the iPod. ice he could recommend, Palmer came up with the After searching in vain for a se idea to start one of his own. Earlier this “T looked around, and all of the services ina box and send them ac Similar services such digital.com) will rip your ss the country,” Palmer says. Get Digital (www.getdigital. Ca and RipDigital (www.rip Ds into a digital format. But they require that you ship out , LoadPod (www.loadpod.com) was born. could find required you to pack up your CDs “That didn’t make sense to me.” your CD collection; in return, you receive data DVDs containing all your music, which you put on your Mac yourse In contrast, LoadPod representati pick up your CDs and your understand why some businesses only s in 41 states and parts of Canada arrange to Pod from your home or office. LoadPod adds the music 8 directly to your iPod as 128-Kbps AAC fil per audio CD with a 50-CD minimum, plus a send more than 100 CDs—takes no more than five days. Music can’t be easily added back to an iTunes library. But Palmer says, “We don’t nd back a DVD of music and che force the customer to sit down and load the music from a DVD into their iPod. I thought that’s what they were paying to avoid in the first place.” JONATHAN SEFF . The whole process—which costs $1.50 20 travel charge that’s waived if you MAC PRODUCTS MAKE BIG SPLASH AT SIGGRAPH SHOW Pro Product Power Siggraph’s mission is to promote information about computer graphics and interactive tech- niques—two concepts dear to Mac users’ hearts. ‘The group's annual conference and exhibition in July saw several noteworthy Mac product announcements.—PETER COHEN AND BRAD COOK modo Luxology's new, $895 3-D-modeling application for OS X and Windows incorporates real-time sub- division-surface and polygonal modeling capabili- ties; various falloff types, to help with precision modeling; and more (www.luxology.com). Apple Production Suite This $1,299 software package bun- dles video editor Final Cut Pro HD, motion-graphics app Motion, and DVD-authoring tool DVD Studio Pro 3. Final Cut Pro users can upgrade to the suite for $699—purchased separately, the three products cost nearly $1,800 (www.apple.com), MACWORLD November 2004 SketchUp 4 Film & Stage @Last Software showed off a new, $475 extension for its SketchUp 4 3-D design program. The exten- sion turns SketchUp 4—originally designed for architecture, engineering, and construction—into a previsualization tool for art directors, filmmakers, cinematographers, and others working in film and television (www.sketchup.com), MicroScribe Connections for Maya Immersion’s $495 plug-in (developed in conjunc- tion with Digital Element) enables Maya users to create 3-D models using one of the company's USB-connected MicroScribe G2 3-D digitizers (www.immersion.com), Au Naturel Buena Software released this $99 plug-in for Adobe After Effects, Apple’s Final Cut Pro, and Discreet’s Combustion; it lets you work on digital footage in linear RGB as you apply realistic lens blur, adjust f-stop exposures, scale, rotate, or otherwise trans- form and composite (www.buena.com) AirPlus Wireless Pocket Router/AP, from D-Link (www «dlink.com): Device allows travel- ers to access and share wireless Internet connections while on the road ($100). NetVault, from BakBone Soft- ware (www.bakbone.com): Data-protection offering for 0S X Server 10.3 offers data backup, and restore and disaster recovery functions. It also allows administrators to create and manage jobs from remote clients (contact BakBone for pricing), VPN Tracker 3.0, from Equinix (wwwequinix.com): Software for simplifying remote con- nections to secured networks adds Extended Authentica- tion, a redesigned user inter- face, and improved stability in the VPN tunnel for users with dynamic IP addresses (Profes- sional Edition, $160; upgrade, $31; Personal Edition, $72; upgrade, $24),—compieo ey PHILIP MICHAELS PRODUCTIVITY BEAT Britannica 2005 Ultimate Ref- erence Suite, from Encyclopedia Britannica (www.britannica .com): Software reference suite includes the 32-volume Ency- clopedia Britannica, Britannica Student Encyclopedia, and Britannica Elementary Encyclo- pedia ($70). BBEdit 8.0, from Bare Bones Software (www.barebones.com): HTML and text editor adds new features, including Documents Drawer, Navigation Bar, and Text Factories ($179; upgrade from BBEdit 7.0 and 7.1, $49; upgrade from BBEdit 6.5 and earlier, $59) —COMPILED BY PHILIP MICHAELS ‘www.macworld.com World’s smallest/lightest high-resolution camcorder and camera Combination! esti p “i. | | 7 | — at ‘ . } One Camera, Tice The Exjafmert.. 3 < Plus, it's easy editing with the Fisher 7 Se High-Resolution Digital Pocket CameraCorder™ “ Fs Take DVD-like quality digital video. quality video (30 frames/sec.). — Take 3.2 mega-pixel digital still pictures. The Fisher CameraCorder™, Or take both at once! The Fisher Which includes a 512-megabyte —_ CameraCorder™ is an all-in-one marvel card, can store 1/2 hour of DVD-like Gust 5.4 ounces) that has its own high- _ video or over 3,900 photos. performance movie making and still f picture software. Use the memory card Take it anywhere and be ready in your PC or Mac or through the for any video/photo opportunity. camera/docking station to Soe to the USB port for fast downloading. Edit x a z Video or sil material for transfer fo DVD, | The Revolutionary Fisher CameraCorder™ is video CD disc or email attachment. engineered by SANYO, one of the world’s New MPEG-4 technology optimizes foremost digital imaging R & D sources. the storage capacity for DVD-like \ G i | | www.fisherav.com | amazon.com The Apple Store ULTIMATE REVIE | OUTSTANDING: iii) | VERYGOOD: $66$9 | GOOD: ti FLAWED: $6 UNACCEPTABLE: § Reviews you can trust: Macworld rates only final shipping products, not prototypes. What we review is what you can actually buy. AirPort Express Compact Base Station Touches Down in the Living Room BY JEFF CARLSON. In Close Encount of the Third Kind, the alien the interstellar memo: the saucer-shaped AirPort Extreme Base Station has now been joined by the compact, rectangular AirPort Express. The Express packs almost as much thrust as its more expensive predecessor and adds an audio-out port and AirTunes soft- ware, so you can stream your music to any room within range. Galactic Traveler ‘The AirPort Express’s shape isn’t significant just because it’s in keeping with Apple’s recent rounded-rectangle aesthetic (see the iPod and the iMac G5). Rather, it’s signifi- cant because the box is compact enough to fit easily into a laptop bag. Measuring 3.6 by 2.9 by 1.1 inches and weighing 6.7 ounces, the AirPort Express is only slightly larger than the power adapter that ships with the PowerBook and the iBook, Its flip-out plug attaches to a stan- dard power outlet, so you don’t need to carry yet another cable or power brick. (That said, you can get a $39 kit that includes an exten- sion cord and two audio cables.) Though smaller, the AirPort Express is similar to the AirPort Extreme, with a few limitations. The Express can handle 10 simultaneous wireless connections, versus the Extreme’s 50, Unlike the Extreme, the Express doesn't include a built-in modem. Most noticeably, the Express sports only one 10/100BaseT Ethernet port; if the Express is your only wireless access point (connected to a DSL modem, for example), it can’t be used to extend access to wired machines on your network. The Express can also, however, act as a node in a Wireless Distribution System, stretching your existing AirPort network into areas just beyond your main base sta- tion’s coverage. The Express also features a USB port that will let you share a compat- ible printer. Thanks to Rendezvous net- working, all I had to do was plug my older Lexmark E312 USB laser printer into the 24 MACWORLD November 2004 device to print. In fact, to my surprise, that printer isn’t officially supported by Apple, and doesn’t print when connected to my Air- Port Extreme Base Station. One advantage of the Express over the Extreme: it can store five profiles in its built- in memory, so you could configure one pro- file for home use, one for office use, and one for use in hotels, without having to reenter the different settings each time. Scan the Skies Setting up the device for the first time requires installing the AirPort 4.0 software from the accompanying CD (not to be con- fused with version 3.4.2, which is what’s cur- rently available as a free download to any AirPort user). In the AirPort Express Assis~ tant, you can choose to use the Express as your main wireless gateway or as part of an existing network; the Assistant guides you through the options smoothly. However you do it, configuring the Express is straightforward and simple. Occa- sionally in my testing, the Express wouldn’t show up as an option. Sometimes connect- ing via the AirPort icon in the menu bar and then running AirPort Admin Utility did the trick. Other times I had to reset the unit. AirTunes, the Express Soundtrack In addition to its portability, what really sets the AirPort Express apart is AirTunes, which lets you stream music from iTunes (on a Mac or a Windows PC) to the Express and from there to your home entertainment hardware, via the unit’s mini audio jack. When an Air- Port Express is available, each copy of ‘Tunes on the network sprouts a pop-up menu that lets you choose where to send the music. Because iTunes and the Express use Apple Lossless compression to encode music (rather than native MP3 or AAC), you can stream audio to only one unit ata time; I'd like to see a future version of Air Tunes broadcast to mul- tiple AirPort Expresses (for playback in the living room and the kitchen, for example). Another limitation is the lack of remote control: if your tunes are on the Mac in your bedroom, you need to go there to change playlists or skip songs. Devices such as Slim Devices’ Squeezebox (§' April 2004; wired, $249; wireless, $299; www.slimdevices -com) and Roku’s SoundBridge (7-inch dis- play, $250; 12-inch display, $500; www -rokulabs.com) give you a local interface, but they don’t support AAC files you buy at the iTunes Music Store. a — I ran into sporadic ig my testing, I soon lem was due to the fact that my home network included both an AirPort Extreme Base Station and the Air- Port Express, resulting in a mix of 802.11a and 802.11g signals. Apple has released a software patch for AirPort cards (AirPort Driver Update 2004-08-31, available at www.apple.com) that seems to partially solve the problem. But I still experienced dropouts after installing the patch, More importan' playback gaps dui realized that the pr Macworld’s Buying Advice If you're in the market for an Apple-branded wireless base station, the $129 AirPort Express gives you almost everything the $299 AirPort Extreme offers. Apple has created a product that not only provides a highly functioning 802.1 1g base station in a portable shell, but also pushes into a new product cat~ egory. For many people, the AirTunes streaming capability will be a bigger draw than the portability or the price. (] RATING: $993 PROS: 802.119 base station in a small enclosure; easy setup; AirTunes music streaming. CONS: Audio dropouts in some network configura~ tions; configuring the device sometimes requires a reset to make it appear in AirPort Admin Utlity. PRICE: $129 COMPANY: Apple Computer, www.apple.com www.macworld.com 24 Wireless networking Canon 2R-90 Airport Express Fisher FVD-C1 25 Telephone messaging systems JVC GR-DX97 Phiink 1.4.2 Panasonic PV-G5200 PhoneValet 2.02 Samsung SC-D6040 26 Web-page-capture utility Sony DCR-PC109 Webstractor 1.0.1 28 MiniDV camcorders Canon Optura 40 NoteBook 1.2 30 Information-management app 31 Video-compositing software After Effects 6.5 Professional 32 Audio-restoration software SoundSoap Pro 1,0 34 FTP package Interarchy 7.2 35 Audio-burning package Toast with Jam 6.0.2 35 Chat-encryption software ChatBarrier X3 10.3.1 36 Scanner utility VueScan 8.0.11 37. Children’s Web browser BumperCar 1.0 38 Consumer CAD software MacDraft PE 5.5, 42. The Game Room Gish, Homeworld 2, MTX: Moto- trax, the Razer Viper, Rise of the Nile, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 40 Top Products Phone Answering and _ Automation Systems Phiink 1.4 and PhoneValet ‘Message Center 2.0 Can Answer Your Calls BY OWEN W. LINZMAYER Without a doubt, e-mail is an efficient and indispensable tool for doing business. But much communication is still conducted the old-fashioned way: by telephone. Two new products—Ovolab’s Phlink 1.4.2 and Par- liant’s PhoneValet Message Center 2.0a— attempt to combine the phone’s ubiquity with the power of OS X technologies such as voice recognition and speech synthesis, essentially turning your Mac into a digital answering machine. These devices can not only take messages but also take orders, allowing you (and others) to call in and remotely control your Mac. A cursory glance at their feature lists leaves the impression that these products are similar, but hands-on testing reveals some signifi- cant differences. Installation is easy. Both packages include an iPod-size hardware device paired with proprietary software. All you need is an available USB 1.1 or 2.0 port Polished Presentation PhoneValet Message Center sports a clean design with an integrated phone book and links to messages and recordings. and an analog phone line with touch-tone service (multiple phone lines require addi- tional devices). Caller ID is optional, but it’s necessary if you want to take advantage of many of the devices’ advanced features, such as announcing who’ calling and caller-specific phone-tree menus. PhoneValet requires OS X 10.1.5 or later, and Phlink requires OS X 10.2 wanwsmacworld.com or later (we conducted our tests using OS X 103.4). Phlink ships with a cursory seven-page, text-only PDF manual that provides an overview of the product's capabilities but lacks details on how to perform different functions. By contrast, PhoneValet’s 33-page printed user guide includes If you subscribe to Caller ID services, either program will pop up a translucent window displaying incoming-caller infor- mation, The ability of these devices to accu- rately identify incoming calls, however, is dependent on information provided by your phone company. PhoneValet’s integrated phone book makes it easy to add a missing name, so future calls from that number will be properly identified. Phlink requires that you create a matching entry in Apple's Address Book and use a lookup script. With both programs, incoming calls can be announced by a MacinTalk voice, avai able in the Speech preference pane. Incom- numerous screenshots that clearly explain how to imple- ment various features. Take a Message At its most basic, each prod- uct transforms your Mac into Rin nog a digital answering machine with personalized greetings (sound files, voice recordings, or an OS X MacinTalk voice reading text you select) and individual mailboxes. PhoneValet offers a general greeting, and each of its ten mail- boxes can be programmed to play a separate greeting after the caller presses the touch- tone phone key that corresponds to a mailbox num- ber. Phlink is more flexible than PhoneValet in that its caller-specific greetings can be customized, but the interface you must use to do this is unintuitive. PhoneValet has a user-friendly interface for reviewing the details of outgo- ing and incoming calls, and it manages callers’ messages. Phlink doesn’t track outgoing calls. Mes- sages recorded from incoming calls are indicated in the program’s cluttered log, but you must go to the Finder and manually open a file within a designated folder to play those messages. And Phlink doesn’t indicate which messages are old and which messages are new. ing calls will wake a sleeping Mac, but the Caller ID information can’t be captured as your Mac awakens. Both programs also have the useful ability to send incoming messages as e-mail attachments (they use 3GPP encoding, which can compress a 60-second recording to less than 100K)—an excellent way to stay in touch when you're on the road. Controlling Actions The real power of these devices is demon- strated by incoming callers’ ability to control functions on the Mac via telephone. PhoneValet allows you to assign Apple- Scripts to run when a caller presses desig: nated numeric codes on a touch-tone phone. PhoneValet also provides sample scripts for reading current iCal events, reporting local weather conditions, and playing sound files, and additional scripts are available online. Similarly, Phlink can respond to callers’ touch-tones by playing sound files, reading text files, and launching AppleScripts. You can designate voice messages to be played for specific callers and create scripts that restart troublesome servers. There are two significant differences between Phlink and PhoneValet when it comes to customizing how callers can control the Mac remotely via telephone. Phlink pro- vides caller-specific options, which are more versatile and secure than allowing all callers to continues November 2004 MACWORLD 25 REVIEWS access the same set of controls. For example, general callers are greeted by a phone tree, but when the system recognizes an incoming call from your cell phone, it can access a sepa~ rate set of server-administration options. ‘The one-size-fits-all approach of PhoneValet, on the other hand, leaves the door open to a security breach unless you include caller- validation checks within scripts. ‘The second substantive difference is in how you program the devices. PhoneValet has a polished interface for creating codes and assigning or testing scripts. With Phlink, you're on your own in the Finder. Phlink works by opening files that reside in a desig~ nated folder, and it relies on file names to determine what to open. For example, to play a personalized message for a specific caller, you create a sound file named “greeting” with the specified phone number for this greeting appended to the sound-file name (say, “greeting4155551234”). If you want to i ate a series of actions after a caller presses 2 on atouch-tone phone, the files must be in a sub- folder with the number 2 as its name, and so on. This is an interface only a programmer could love, but it provides great flexibility for remotely controlling your Mac and providing information over the phone. Enticing Extras Both Phlink and PhoneValet can deal with incoming faxes by routing them to a fax Webstractor 1.0 Research Tool Lets You Capture and Edit Web Pages BY JACKIE DOVE If you use the Web for any kind of research, you'll want to check out Softchaos’s Web- stractor 1.0.1, an outstanding utility that lets you collect whole Web. pages—including images, tables, and formatting —for viewing and editing, online or off. 26 MACWORLD November 2004 machine, a program such as SmileOnMy- Mac’s Page Sender, or Panther’s built-in fax feature. And both let you manually record conversations. PhoneValet gets the nod here because the log entry for the call contains a convenient link to the recorded conversation, and you can play it back from within the appli- cation. Phlink makes you open the sound file in the Finder. Unfortunately, neither device lets you replace a traditional telephone hand- set with the Mac's built-in microphone and 5] rs for hands-free conversations. Only PhoneValet tracks all incoming and outgoing calls in its log, and it can customize reports for client billing. PhoneValet also has features that facilitate outgoing calls: you can initiate calls by double-clicking on entries in the log or the phone book or by speaking the name of the party you want to call. If only PhoneValet integrated directly into existing contact databases in Address Book or Microsoft Entourage, it would eliminate the need to maintain multiple phone lists. Fortunately, it easily imports information from other sources into the PhoneValet phone book, unlike Phlink, which works only with Address Book. Macworld’s Buying Advice PhoneValet Message Center 2.0a and Phlink 1.4.2's differences are best summarized by their version numbers, While their hardware capabilities are almost identical, the more Webstractor has two modes: Browse and Edit. In Browse mode, it acts as a stand- alone browser, letting you view Web pages and perform searches with its built-in Google button, You can also drag URLs from other browsers into Webstractor. And the program adds a contextual menu item to Apple's Safari and The Omni Group's OmniWeb, so you can invoke Webstractor from within those browsers; I hope it will do the same for others, such as Mozilla and Internet Explorer, someda Once you've found the information you're looking for, Webstractor’s Edit mode lets you move, replace, and add content. You can change fonts and retain or remove graphics as you see fit. A handy links inspector lets you view and access all of a document’s links. You can even drag and drop your own text, RTF, Word, JPEG, or GIF files into the editable pages. No matter how Page Capture Webstractor lets you edit and save entire Web pages and then navi- gate through them, via its collapsible thumbnail drawer, mature PhoneValet offers a refined interface that will appeal to people who seek an easy-to- use voice-mail system enhanced with dialing features. Phlink is in an awkward phase, but it shows promise and offers plenty of power and flexibility for programming types who enjoy tinkering with scripts. PHLINK 1.4.2. RATING: $64 PROS: Intemational Caler 1D support; caller-specific greetings and options; scriptable; manages incoming faxes; records conversations, CONS: Poorly documented; no outgoing-call features; cluttered log lacks ties to voice mail; phone trees must be created in the Finder; integrates only with Address Book. PRICE: $150 COMPANY: Ovolab, wwnw.ovolab.com PHONEVALET MESSAGE CENTER 2.0A RATING: $989) PROS: User-friendly interface; tracks incoming and outgoing calls; integrated phone book aids in identifying and placing calls; scriptable; clean log links incoming faxes, recorded conversations, and voice mail; good printed documentation, CONS: North American Caller ID support only; requires maintaining a separate phone book. PRICE: 5200 COMPANY: Pariant, swww.parliant.com much you edit, the original page stays the same in Browse mode—a great backup. While pages don’t automatically update in Browse mode, you can click on the Reload button to see a new version of the page. You can save any page to the program's collapsible thumbnail drawer (see “Page Capture”), which you can then search. Webstractor can be slow when ma Web pages editable: it took 15 to 20 seconds to complete that process on a single-processor G4 Mac. The longer and more complex a page is, the longer you have to stare at the progress bar. Also, be sure to install the Webstractor Extras package along with the main program; if you don’t, the contextual-menu feature will not work. Macworld’s Buying Advice Webstractor 1.0.1 is a handy and flexible research tool for anyone who needs to archive and edit information found online, RATING: $969 PROS: Archives whole Web pages; built-in browser; neat thumbnail organization; can import Word and other text and image documents. CONS: A bit sluggish in making a page editable; contextual-menu feature works in only two Mac browsers. PRICE: $89 COMPANY: Softchaos, www.softchaas.com ‘www.macworld.com Colorful ideas are priceless. Expressing them doesn’t have to be. Expressing your creativity has never been easier—or more affordable! The new HP Designjet 130 printer series lets you create professional, fade-resistant, photo-quality proofs and prints with stunning results. And from now until December 31, 2004, when you trade in your old wide-format printers for an HP Designjet 130 printer, you'll get up to a $700 rebate during the Extreme Exchange promotion! Trade up today, and express your creativity in a colorful way! For details on this great offer, visit www.hp.com/go/extreme24. The first 100 qualified claims received on printers purchased by October 31, 2004 will receive a free HP Photosmart R707 digital camera. ® Printers for creatives. What you print is your business. How you print is ours. | @ | CLICK www.hp.com/go/extreme24 invent ‘Allimages are simulated. For full promotion tems and conditions, go to wwwhp.congo/estreme, The information contained herein is subject to change without nati (© 2004 Hewiet-Packard Development Company, L REVIEWS adevice~ ~~ ey or wide-seree Zoom and Focus a Macworld panel of The Canon ZR-90 has the most powerful rue COl'Saccuracy and bright- optical zoom of the lot, at 22 (with a sepa- "Yo assess “Sharpness and detail). rate wide-angle attachment included), fol- experts JU! ness) #9 The Camcorder Lineup We reviewed (from left to right) the Canon Optura 40, Canon ZR-90, JVC GR-DX97, Panasonic PV-GS200, Samsung SC- 6040, and Sony DCR-PC109. Canon JVC Panasonic Samsung www.canon.com waww-panasonic.com www.samsungusa.com vwonw.sonystyle.com Best video quality; good still quality; color night mode; true 7 focus ring on lens; manual audio control; headphone hoe; 22x optical zoom; wide- angle attachment; menus easy to navigat Thee-nch LCD. Focus ring on lens; head- phone and mike jacks; hot- shoe; narration mike. 4.1-megapixel stills, Best image stabilization; spot focus; headphone and mike jacks; hot-shoe; easy- to-use touch-screen menu. wwwisherav.com ditors’ Choice. Sin inches. #in pixels. In inches (width x height x depth). Sharp and colorful stil; lightweight; easy-to-use menus; 512MB memory 28 MACWORLD November 2004 and the Sony did a good job of smoothing the effects of a shaky grip. The Sony was the steadiest of the group. ‘Most camcorders perform well in bright light, but you need one with a night mode to shoot candlelit dinners or sleeping babies, While many camcorders use infrared technol- ogy to capture video in low-light or no-light conditions (resulting in the telltale “military night vision” green tint), some newer cameras use slower shutter speeds and built-in LEDs to provide enough light to capture color. We tested these camcorders in total dark- ness. The Samsung and the Sony, which use infrared technology, captured video with the predictable green tint. We saw colorful, albeit ghostly, images with the other models. The Canons, which rely on built-in LEDs duced the best results. The JVC uses light from the LCD screen to illuminate the sub- ject at close range, but you have to flip the screen over to illuminate your subject, so you have to squint through the viewfinder to see. If you have a wide-screen TV or just want the filmic letterboxed effect, you'll need a camcorder that can shoot in 16:9 mode. All these camcorders, with the exception of the Samsung, offer a wide-screen option. The Sony and the Canon ZR-90 achieve the effect by manipulating the image electronically, with some loss of quality. The JVC and the Pana- sonic insert black bars on the top and bottom of your image, cropping the image. The Canon Optura 40 is the only one with true wide-screen capability, using the entire width of the CCD for high quality. Two Cameras in One All of these models let you capture still images to storage media. And one camera that could capture great DV and still photographs would be a winner. Do any of these make the grade? ‘The Samsung calls itself the DuoCam, takes pictures at a whopping 4.1 megapixels, and has two lenses—one for video and one for stills, Sadly, while the still pictures are impres- sive, the video quality doesn’t measure up. ‘The Canon Optura 40 comes closest to being the best of both worlds, taking 2.2-megapixel photographs whose quality equals that of comparable digital cameras, ing the best-quality video. The other in this roundup might be fine for an o¥ sional snapshot destined for a Web page or e-mail mi ital camera for any important s ooting, The Talkies Unless you're shooting a silent movie, a cam- corder’s audio quality i: important as its video quality. All camcorders have a degree of audio noise; for the best audio, you should use an external microphone and then monitor the sound with headphones. Only the Canon Optura 40, the Panasonic, and the Sony let you plug in a headphone and a microphone simultaneously (the Canon Optura 40 also lets you manually adjust audio weww.macworld.com CLARITY Canon Optura 40 Canon ZR-90 JVC GR-DX97 Panasonic PV-GS200 Samsung SC-D6040 Sony DCR-PC109 ry BEST RESULTS IN BOLD, VIDEO TESTS Each camcorder was tested at its default automatic settings. The digital zoom was disabled when any image-stability features were turned on, Still pictures were taken at each camera's best-quality setting. A panel of experts evaluated a variety of indoor and out- door video and stil for their image quality in terms of color, clarity, and stabilization. Each camera was given a rating of Excellent, Very Good, Good, Flawed, or Unacceptable.—WacwORLO LAR TESTING BY ROBE CIS ANO JAMES GALA DIGITAL STILLS CLARITY Very Good Flawed Unacceptable Good |_| ood levels), narrowing the field for serious audio- philes. Each of these models also has a hot- shoe, which allows you to power attached microphones (and lights) with the camcorder. ‘The Panasonic also includes an extern: narration microphone. You can toggle recording, add a voice-over, zoom, or take a still picture. The three-foot cable is enough to eliminate noise. Hollywood in Your Hand All of these camcorders will fit comfortably in the palm of your hand. The Sony is the light- est, at 13 ounces, but even the Canon Optura 40, at 1.3 pounds, felt nimble. The Sony achieves its compact form by putting the USB and FireWire ports in a docking station, but having another piece of equipment to keep track of hardly seems worth the savings in weight. And we found that the Sony was a bit awkward to hold: its zoom button is toward its front; holding it properly for zooming with your trigger finger takes some getting used to. Squinting through a tiny viewfinder may be fine for taking snapshots, or for shooting when the sun is too bright, but doing so re ularly is tiresome, All these models have LC ens, which make monitoring your shots and navigating option menus more bearable. With the exception of the JVC, which has a 3-inch monitor, all have 2.5-inch LCD screens. All are bright and easy to read, and we managed to use them even when shooting test video on a very sunny afternoon (we found the Sony the most difficult to view). Ci ’s menus were the easiest to read gate. We liked Sony’s touch screen with scrolling menus that magnify the cur- rent selection. It displays fewer options at one time, but italso creates shortcuts to your most frequently used settings, which can be a time-saver. The Samsung was the most awkward to navigate. Macworld’s Buying Advice The Canon Optura 40 is the standout among these contenders, with excellent video qual- ity, respectable stills, and professional fea tures (such as true 16:9 mode). The Sony and the Panasonic are also good choices, but for the difference in price, we'd splurge on the Optura. If you're on a shoestring budget, the Canon ZR-90 offers good video quality for its price. In spite of its 4.1-megapixel stills, we can't recommend the Samsung because of inadequate video quality. — Fisher FVD-C1: Going Tapeless The Fisher FVD-C1 is one of a new generation of MPEG-4 video camcorders that eschew tape and record directly to storage media, Like a shapely silver iPod, the lightweight, compact Fisher comes with a docking station, fits contentedly in the palm of your hand, and begs you to play, Flip open the bright, 1.5-inch LCD screen, and a cheerful female voice chimes faintly, “Camera mode.” Though not much bigger than a postage stamp, the menus are easy to navigate with a beadlike joystick that you control with your thumb. In spite of its small size, the Fisher takes big pictures: still images at 3.2 megapixels, and Video at 640 by 480 pixels and 30 frames per second, At the highest-quality settings, you can fit as many as 491 pictures, or about 21 minutes of video, on the sup- plied 512MB memory card, The still pictures are sharp and vibrant, but video quality is disappointing, with soft edges, banding (blocks of muddy pixels), and pixel artifacts. Lightweight camcorders like this one are difficult to hold steady, and it has no image stabilization, While the audio is sufficiently loud, we heard a whine and occasional clicking as the autofocus tried to keep up, and you can't use an external microphone. We'd recommend any of the DV camcorders in our test group over the Fisher for video quality, even if it means hauling around a few extra ounces. And if you're looking for excellent photographs, you can buy a good 3,2-megapixel camera and a 512MB memory card for about half its price. November 2004 MACWORLD 29 REVIEWS NoteBook 1.2 . poor Powerful Information Manager in a Virtual Spiral Notebook BY ROBERT ELLIS ‘There are many applications designed to help you cope with a flood of information, from simple notepads to sophisticated personal information managers. Most are either too lightweight to keep up or so complex that they make the task even more overwhelming. Circus Ponies’ NoteBook 1.2 competitor AquaMinds’ NoteTaker, us piral-notebook metaphor for captur- ing your notes and outline: intui- tive and easy to use. NoteBook’s fea- tures—unlimited annotation, automatic (and extensive) indexing, and a Super-Find function—make it an outstanding informa- tion manager. Flexible Outliner A NoteBook document (called a Notebook) can contain any number of pages divided by tabs into sections. You create as many s tions and subsections as you like. As you enter notes, NoteBook arranges them into a hier- archical outline of individual cells containing attributes such as a due date, an action-item check box, a priority level, or highlighting. NoteBook automatically records some attri- butes, such as the creation date. While Note- ‘Taker limits annotations to one category for each entry, NoteBook lets you annotate entries with as many keywords and Stickers (icons) as you like. A Clipping Services feature makes it easy to harvest information from other applications. Add a Clipping Service to one or more pages in a Notebook, and the pages appear in the Services and contextual menus throughout OS X. A Clip And Annotate item is also added to the contextual menu. Selecting it opens a dialog sheet where you can give the clipping a title, edit its content, or convert it to plain text. NoteBook isn’t just for text notes, You can add clippings, images, Web links, movies, audio, documents, and folders to a cell. Note- Book can record voice annotations and import files directly from a digital camera, Using OS X’s Inkwell feature, you can write or sketch just as you would in a paper notebook. Super-Find It’s easy to find your way around NoteBook. Control-clicking on any tab brings up a short- cut menu to all the pages in that section, NoteBook automatically creates an index of all cell attributes and adds it to the back of your Notebook. There’s even a Discarded Attachments Index, a kind of Trash for your Notebook (your file can grow to an unwieldy ize if you don’t empty this periodically). The index makes finding things a snap, but it can 30 MACWORLD November 2004 = ame Sree ‘me e Keyword Scere | Robert Fischer c | | | Cpae | | Black to Sin | move and | mate In 1. | & Wighiohaing e 'Y The Game of the Century Y Great Masters Alexander Alekhine This famous game butwoon 13-year old Bobby Fischer ‘Adolph Anderssen ‘and Donald Byrne, one of the top players of his time, was Joseph Henry Blackburne immediately hailed as “The Game of hie Century” for its Mikhail Botvinnike | brilliance. Jose Raul Capablanca Robert Fischer F1NES NIG Gary Kasparov ve 2.0496 Emanuel Lasker | 3. Ned Bg? Paul Morphy 4.040-0 Tigran Petrosian | FAD. Philldor Take Note NoteBook has powerful search capabilities through Petersen Super-Find (top right). Tabbed menus make navigation easy. | Mikhail Tal also append a ream of extra pages, so select only the pages you really want when you print. In case the index isn’t enough, NoteBook also has a Super-Find feature, which lets you search for combinations of attributes. For example, you can find all of a keyword’s entries that are highlighted in purple, or only the high-priority action items with empty check boxes. Super-Find is impressive, but it overlooks items on the Contents and Divider pages (Circus Ponies says it will address this in the next major release), Keeping Up Appearances What fun is a notebook if you can’t person- alize it? NoteBook is completely customiz- able, Hide the spiral, hole punches, or page curl, Add a metallic appearance. Change the cover image, page background, or high- lighter colors. Resize divider tabs, assign col- ors or images to them, or adjust their transparency. Assign styles to different levels in the outline. Multimedia items can have a Media Frame, which allows you to add bor- ders, drop shadows, and photo corners, as well as scale and rotate images, Sharing Notes You can share Notebooks, or parts of Note- books, with other NoteBook users, Just save individual pages or sections as a Page Bundle, a special kind of NoteBook file. You can open a Page Bundle as a new Notebook or drop it into an existing one. ‘There's no viewer application for sharing Notebooks with people who don’thave Note- Book. However, you can export your Note- books to HTML with a few clicks. An exported Web page looks and functions much like a Notebook, and you can turn off the spi- ral, hole punches, page curl, and tabs if you want a less noteboo! appearance. Note~ Book won't export index pages to HTML; that’ fine for a small site, but not for a larger one, where an index (or even better, some- thing like Super-Find) would aid navigation. NoteBook can also export pages to text, RTE, and OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language, a standard outline format). Unfor- tunately, it can export only one page ata time. You can also share your Notebooks by printing them. NoteBook adds an entry to the Print dialog box, where you can adjust settings and turn off the spiral, for example (oddly, you can't opt to print the cover). You can also password-protect your Note- book to secure it from prying eyes, but this stops snoops only from opening it in Note- Book. A Notebook document is actually a bundle (a folder containing multiple program and password protection won't prevent people from peeking inside. You can encrypt individual pages, but this secures only the text, not embedded files. Macworld’s Buying Advice NoteBook 1.2 has a friendly, flexible inter- face, Its unlimited annotations, extensive indexing, and Super-Find feature are efficient ways to manage a glut of information. RATING: #999) PROS: Extensive annotation and indexing features; powerful searching; refined, customizable interface, CONS: No viewer for sharing Notebooks; limited export options; weak security. PRICE: $50; academic version, $30 COMPANY: Circus Ponies Software, www.circusponies.com wwewmacworld.com After Effects 65 Professional Adobe Packs a Punch in Upgrade BY BEN LONG It has been a year since Adobe last revised After Effects, the market-leading composit- ing application, And although the latest release is not a full-version upgrade, Adobe has packed a lot of value into the package. After Effects remains at the head of the com- positing and motion-graphies pack, despite the program's need for a fundamental inter- face overhaul. Animation in a Can fo facilitate the replication of complex effects, Adobe has added an Animation Pre- set palette to After Effects. Unlike the pre- vious version’s Favorites palette, Animation Preset lets you save any keyframable opera- tion—from geometric transformations, to mask animations, to expressions. You apply an animation preset by dragging it from the Animation Preset palette to any layer in a composition. The preset creates any neces- sary keyframes in that layer. Animation presets are a long-overdue addition for easing workflow and creating uniform animations and looks. Adobe has sweetened the feature by including 250 ani- mated text presets, While canned content often looks tacky, these professionally designed effects are of very high quality. Though it’s simple to use, the animation presets’ drag-and-drop interface feels a bit like a hack, You can't, for example, remove a preset without manually altering or elimi- ing each keyframe associated with it. Unfortunately, because After Effects lacks any broader project-level view of a compo- ion, there’s no other sensible way of implementing this feature. Under the Hood Some effective under-the-hood tweaks noticeably improve After Effects’ perfor- mance. In addition to better OpenGL sup- port (which can greatly speed up previews of projects with 3-D layers and effects), the program now includes improved playback performance and better options for con- trolling which windows and comps will be mirrored for NTSC playback. The program’s motion tracker can now track both scale and position, and it offers one- dimensional tracking, which is ideal for stabilizing one axis of a layer. Also, the motion tracker now generates a user- editable motion path, so you can edit its output by moving individual keyframes. Painting and cloning tools also have some welcome improvements: version 6.5’s paint- ing tools more closely follow Photoshop's keyboard equivalents, and Adobe has added a Photoshop-style color picker. wwwmacworld.com ‘The Clone Stamp tool’s new controls make it much easier to select source and offset points for clone operations. You can now choose to have the source layer displayed as an overlay, which lets you see exactly what you're cloning from and makes it easier co clone quickly and precisely in just one area of your original frame. This is such a cool clone option, we'd like to see itadded to Photoshop. Edited Text After Effects 6 introduced a new text engine, which, in addition to offering text creation and editing _ within the app, offered text-animation Version 6.5 improves upon this engine with several enhancements. The new Randomize Order option lets you randomize text anima- tions so letters appear in a random order, rather than sequentially. When combined with other text-animation This bundle is not only a tremendous deal from a price viewpoint but also a great pro- ductivity enhancer. You'll soon find yourself relying on these useful plug-ins. Now the Bad News Though version 6.5 includes some cool interface tweaks (such as the ability to change the interface’s brightness—handy for accurate color correction), After Effects sorely needs a major overhaul. With ver- sion 6.5, the program has become even more palette-heavy than before. And although the palettes are dockable, the interface strains under the weight of the additional features. After Effects has long had one of the best timeline interfaces of any compositing or animation program, but Adobe is trying to Aa “Ta WR Tae ST = = 1 properties, this lets you create very complex animations, Other text impr ments include the ability to specify one of the standard transfer modes (add, subtract, and multi- ply) for overlapping char- rs. So when characters overlap, instead of one simply covering the other, they can blend together to create intermediate shades. Version 6.5 also includes a much more icated scripting engine. Rather than ing you to simple render control, as in version 6, the new scripting engine lets you script actual animation chores. Bundle of Joy After Effects 6.5 is bundled with an aston- ishing number of excellent plug-ins and assistants. The most exciting of these is the new X-Factor plug-in, ftom GridIron soft- ware, which lets you use other computers on your network to process preview renderings. Offering speed improvements of roughly 50 percent per each additional machine, X-Factor is a tremendous productivity booster for complex renderings. The package also includes Synthetic Aperture’s Color Finesse, an exceptional color-correction tool, and Cycore FX, an update to the classic Final Effects (pre- viously sold by MetaCreations). Sophisticated Animations After Effects 6.5's animation presets let you quickly apply complex keyframe animations to any layer. The package ships with more than 250 high-quality effects. do too much with it. At the same time, Adobe still hasn’t added the ability to create true folders and groups of layers within the timeline—something that users have been requesting for years. Macworld’s Buying Advice After Effects 6.5 Professional is a great value, whether you're upgrading or buying the pro- gram new, Its accelerated performance, built-in animation effects, and generous soft- ware bundle continue to make it a market leader. But its overburdened interface keeps it from being truly exceptional. 7) RATING: $9441 PROS: Convenient animation presets and preset library; improved performance; greatly improved text, scripting, cloning, and painting tools; fantastic collection of bundled plug-ins. CONS: Palette-heavy interface is really showing 999; u