Text content (OCR)
APPLE’S MUSIC PLAYER NOW DOES DIGITAL
PHOTOGRAPHY—TAKE YOUR FIRST LOOK, p. 16
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www.macworld.com | January 2005 The Mac Product Experts
DIGITAL CAMERA
SUPERGUIDE
OW TO
‘ a Camera
That Will Last
Take Perfect
Pictures
Recover Lost
Photo Files
PIS; -
~~) New »——
Cameras:
Reviewea!
“So FROM TAPE 0 CD I
Two inches thin. But lots to love.
“Quite possibly the coolest personal computer yet created. Apple's
latest computer is as cool and sleek as its best-selling music player...”
- Chris Taylor, Time
"5-out-of-5 rating. Simple, stunning all-in-one design. With the iMac
G5, Apple has given Mac fans yet another reason to stay in the fold.
And its unparalleled execution should attract would-be Windows PC
buyers as well.” —Joel Santo Domingo, PC Magazine
“The new G5 iMac is the finest personal computer I’ve ever used,
hands down. Nothing comes close. If you have ever thought of
switching from a Windows-based PC to a Mac, this is the deal-
clincher. It is simply a stunning machine both to look at and to use.”
~ Mike Wendland, Detroit Free Press
“I'm writing these words on the most elegant desktop computer
I've ever used, a computer that is not only uncommonly beautiful
but fast and powerful, virus-free and surprisingly affordable.”
— Walt Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal
Th and ©2004 Appke Computer, Inc. For more int. cll 1-500: MY-APPLE or vist www apple.com
January 2005
OPINION
From the Editor’s Desk
JASON SNELL
The iPod photo—the right product at the right time.
Feedback
Readers fespond.
MAC BEAT
Is OS 9 development dead? Plus, Adobe Acrobat 7.0, the iPod photo and
the iPod U2 Special Edition, new Jam Packs, updated iBooks, a look at the
40th anniversary of the Mac, Microsoft Office 2004 Service Pack, Macs and
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and themes for DVD Studio Pro,
iDVD, and Keynote.
10
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
URL (broadband Internet recommended): On the Cover
http:licd.macworld.com/2005/ Photography by
O1/walt-spatula Peter Belanger
2 MACWORLD January 2005
www.macworld.com |
36
44
48
56
REVIEWS
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$868) Canon PowerShot G6
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Motion-graphics package
$8893 Motion 1.0
Network music players
$848 Roku SoundBridge M1000
$$$} Roku SoundBridge M2000
32 Windows-emulation program
$888 Virtual PC iM
Multimedia- -authoring software
mii MovieWorks Deluxe 6.0. =
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$648! Wacom Intuos3
Photo printer
$985 Epson Stylus Photo R800
Top Products
The Game Room
PETER COHEN
The fourth installment of Myst is here, and it’s gor-
geous. Read up on Myst IV: Revelation, Enemy
Engaged: RAH-66 Comanche Versus KA-52 Hokum,
and the Revolution 5.1 audio card. Also, check out
Macworld's 2004 Game Hall of Fame inductees.
50
Mac Gems
DAN FRAKES
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COVER STORY |SECRETS
Picture Your Perfect Camera ' WORKING MAC
DERRICK STORY j 7 FileMaker Power Moves
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FEATU R E ; 7 fteage: Editing beyond iPhoto
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70 From Tape to CD Beautify your photos. Using Adobe Photoshop
JIM HEID Elements 3, we've created a surefire editing rou-
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80 CREATE
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MIKE PASINI AND DERRICK STORY
Shoot! You accidentally erased your camera's
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photos. But they may not be lost for good,
16 iPOD PHOTO
MOBILE MAC
Extend Your Wireless Reach
GLENN FLEISHMAN
Suffering from a weak signal? Set your lap-
top free—follow our tips to boost your wire-
less range.
GEEK FACTOR
Find Anything with Grep
KIRK McELHEARN
30 ROKU SOUNDBRIDGE REVIEWED Forget the search box. For high-powered
searches, true geeks turn to grep.
HELP DESK
Mac OS X Hints
ROB GRIFFITHS
Check Web-page designs at various browser
widths, move the Dock to the top of the screen,
avoid a destructive Finder bug, scroll through
Cocoa application directories, disable quest
access, colorize the Finder's sidebar, and select
multiple desktop images in iPhoto.
Mac 911
CHRISTOPHER BREEN
Missing something? This month's column answers
questions regarding missing iTunes playlists, miss-
ing support for scroll wheels, the missing link
between iSync and a Bluetooth phone, missing
Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, and more.
BACK PAGE
120 Hot Stuff
Check out our editors’ favorite developments of
the month.
January 2005 MACWORLD 3
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ROM THE EDITOR Sg BY JASON SNELL
Ready or Not?
Steve Jobs once famously said that his life’s goal was to change the
world, not just to sell products. But changing the world with technol-
ogy is a tricky business: yes, you need the engineering know-how to
make a product so impressive that it alters people’s lives. But chang-
ing the world is not simply a matter of building a better mousetrap. It’s
about releasing the right product at exactly the right time.
Timing Is Everything
An obvious example of a good technol
the wrong time is the Newton. A few fter the
Newton’s demise, as the battle between the Palm and
the Pocket PC heated up, ity r that the Newton's
technology was excellent—but th ming stunk.
In contrast, the iPod’s timing was per! There
were plenty of digital music players out there before
the iPod, but they were consistently disappointing.
‘Time and technology advanced, and 2001 Apple
introduced its small, hard-drive-based player . . . and
changed the world.
Not long after the iPod arrived on the scene,
people began speculating about how Apple would fol-
low it up. Over the past couple of years, the buzz
about a video iPod has grown more intense, finally
culminating in Apple’s release of an iPod with a color
screen in late October.
There's just one catch. It’s the iPod photo, not the
iPod video. And it’s another example of Apple's excel-
lent timing.
rriving at
The Rise of the Digital Photo
For years, magazines like Macworld have been pro-
moting digital photography. And in the past few
years, the times have caught up with the technology.
Digital photography couldn’t be more mainstream.
Ss as a digital camera.
‘That's why Apple decided to release the iPod photo
(see page 16)—and why we decided to devote this
month’s cover story to digital cameras (se e 60).
y ga color screen and photo-display capa-
bilities to the iPod, Apple has cleverly combined the
two hottest technologies today: digital music and dig-
ital photography. I might quibble about some of the
iPod photo's specs (here’s hoping that Apple adds on-
the-fly photo albums, direct importing of digital
camera media, and support for direct printing);
3 however, I have no doubt that Apple has made the
right call in focusing on photos rather than video.
= — But when Steve Jobs introduced the iPod photo, he
had to explain first what it wasn’t—namely, a video
player. Jobs made lots of excuses about why Apple
hadn’t done a video player—video players were too
wevew.macworld.com,
big, and the screens weren't good enough. I don’t buy
that—I’m sure that Apple could come up with a per-
fectly nice iPod-size video player if it wanted to,
The iPod Video Problem
The big problem is something else Jobs mentioned—a
complete lack of content to put on such a video player.
You can fill your iPod with music downloaded from
online music stores or ripped from CDs you own, and
anyone with a digital camera has a ready supply of pho-
tos. But where do you get videos? You can’t legally
download them from the Internet or, under the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act, transfer the contents of a
DVD onto your Mac's hard drive.
I ran into this problem while I played with the
Archos Gmini 400, a small iPod-like device with a
bright color screen. It’s exactly the sort of product that
people have been demanding from Apple. But getting
video onto it was next to impossible. Even when I had
downloaded the software to illegally extract video files
from my DVDs, or downloaded TV shows from
underground file-sharing sites, it was nearly impossible
to encode them into a video format supported by the
Gmini. When I finally got it to work, it took me hours
to encode one 30-minute TV show. No thanks. (And
no, selling a video player and telling the people who
bought it to go find video files illegally on the Internet
is not an acceptable option.)
There will be a right time for handheld video play-
ers. But Apple has made the right call: that time isn’t
here yet. Until a company with credibility in both the
technology and entertainment industries can get
movie studios and TV networks to try the equivalent
of the iTunes Mi Store for video, there’s no point
in creating a video iPod.
What company will finally break through and
make video downloads popular? There's no way to
know, but with its iPod success and Steve Jobs's Hol-
lywood ties, I sure wouldn’t bet against Apple. But
only when the time is right.
What do you think? Is the iPod photo the right product atthe right time?
Should Apple do a portable video player? Let me know at jason_snell@
macworld.com or at www macworld.com/forums.
January 2005 MACWORLD S
Macworld
ernal eo President Rick LePage
s Swells » Editor in Chief Jason Snell
ellum T=... Executive Editor Dan Miller
im Thertiq Managing Editor Chats Purdy
Senior How-to Editor Kelly Lunsford
Senior News Editor Jonathan Self
e7adonna
Senior Reviews Editor Jennifer Berger
Senior Editors Scholle Sawyer McFa
Terri Stone
Lab Director James Galbraith
Associate Editor Jackie Dove
Assistant Managing Editor Sue Voelte!
Senior Writer Dan Frakes
Production Consultant Jennifer Werner
Contributing Editors Christopher Steen, Adam C. Engst, Bruce Fraser,
Rob Griffiths, im Heid, Andy thnatko, Ted Landau, David Pogue
[Ant Director Rob Schultz
Centributing Designers Jackie Goodman,
Alissa Mach
Jennifer Steele
Contributing Photographer Peter Belanger
Onine Content Director Philp Michaels
Editor, Macworld.com
and MacCentral.com_ Jim Dalrymple
| Senior Editor, MacCentral.com Peter Cohen
International Editors Matthew JC. Powell, Australia; Sebastian Hirsch,
| Getmany: Enrico Lotti, Italy; Yoshio Moriya, Japan; Kraysztof Pietrasik,
| Poland; Daniel de Blas, Spain; Valter Bengtsson, Sweden; Engin Gedik, |
Turkey; Simon Jary, United Kingdom
VPIchiet Operating OMficer stephen Danes
Director of Finance Eos de Feminis
Accounting Coordinator Ronda Bittner
VP of Human Resources Kate Coldwell
Humar Resources Manager Julie McKie
Human Resources Coordinator Jenny Steele
fa. IT Ditector_ Sean Greathouse
cry |
| Publisher Cynthia Ramsey (973/228-3074)
National Accounts Manager Paul Bonarigo (908/533-4020)
Sales Associate Kelly Gatlogly (415/243-3628)
‘Showcase Account Manager rant (415/243-3664)
Showcase Account Manager Catol Johnstone (415/243-3691)
Director, Online Advertising Doug Detletsen (415/243-3598)
Online Account Executive Rachel Desjardins (415/267-4562)
Online Sales Associate Sarah Rose (415/243-3575)
Online Sales Representative Scott Williams (415/243-3509)
Marketing Manager Kasey Galang (415/243-3642)
Administrative/Marketing Asst. Amanda Cartier (415/978-3380)
Production Ditector Steve Spingola
Prepress Manager Mark Fischman
Booking and Billing Manager
caido Sandoval
VP.Consumer Marketing Shawne Butke Pecar
Associate Circulation Director David Cobb
Ditector Retention Marketing Lisa Radler
Senior Subscription Marketing Manager Linda Tinh
‘Subscription Marketing Manager
Newsstand Consultant
January 2005, Volume 22, Issue 1
Copmight ©
feoa, Macuee
6 MACWORLD January 2005 www.macworld.com,
[Not to worry. The three husky guys are still around.
as a
Jeannie enthusiastically demonstrates
Elevate™, our new electric lift table.
q
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fal For 20 years we've been known as the “cart people.”
| | And we're okay with that. But now we also make furniture Bo q
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Warranty. So the next time you need a furniture solution for
your technology, contact us at anthro.com or 800.325.3841
HOW TO CONTACT MACWORLD
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eplaylist'
DIGITAL MUSIC FOR PC & MAC |
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
anuary 2005 wewcmacworld.com
Windowsand “Your potenti
ries. Apple, Mac, and Mac
Let the PC world come to you:
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
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Virtual PC for Mac
MAIL CALL! THE ULTIMATE E-Mi
Mail about E-mail
ANDREW LAURENCE Es]
The “E-mail Survival Guide” neglects to
mention a critical point in Eudora’s favor:
manual filters, executed by a key com-
mand. While automatic filters can cause
mail to slip your attention, manual filters
are perfect for quickly dealing with mes-
sages that must be read.
BILL GANON (VICE PRESIDENT, EUDORA
PRODUCTS GROUP, QUALCOMM)
Your decision to exclude Eudora from your
list of alternative e-mail clients (“E-mail
Survival Guide,” October 2004), because
of what you saw as deficiencies, is trou-
bling—especially when you consider the
long history of favorable reviews Eudora
has earned from Macworld.
I'd like to respond to a few of your spe-
cific criticisms. In terms of displaying
HTML messages, we plan on giving users
much better HTML handling in Eudora
6.3 for Mac, scheduled for release in
spring 2005. As for Eudora’s “limited fil-
tering options,” we've found that the vast
majority of users create filters with only
one condition. And while AppleScript sup-
port is important to some, it is unknown to
the vast majority of Mac users.
Finally, you recommend Mailsmith for
power users, but I’d question that recom-
mendation, given that program’s lack of
IMAP or LDAP support—something our
power users have been demanding. To
that point, IMAP improvements have
already been made in Eudora 6.2, and
more are on the way.
PARRISH S. KNIGHT {es
T enjoyed your “E-mail Survival Guide.”
A comment about Apple Mail and spam:
Once you've got the Junk Mail filter well
trained, you may not have to turn off the
10 MACWORLD January 2005
“Display images and embedded objects in
HTML” messages. If a message is flagged
as spam, Mail refuses to load images in
that message unless you tell it to do so—
therefore, unless spam manages to get
past the filter, bugs are automatically
defeated. My false negatives are now low
enough that I leave “Display images” on.
K. THORNE ies]
For a variety of technical reasons, Apple's
Mail program doesn’t work for me.
Eudora does, but I find it unfriendly and
old-fashioned looking. In Canada, Micro-
soft Entourage is available only as part of
the Office suite, and I don’t need Word,
Excel, and so on. Finally, I found GyazMail
(www.gyazsquare.com/gyazmail/). It looks
like Mail, works with Apple’s Address Book,
solves my ISP compatibility issues, is infi-
nitely customizable and inexpensive ($18),
and seamlessly integrates with SpamSieve.
You also get fast, helpful responses from the
author; in fact, I e-mailed the author about
a couple of things I wanted to see in the
program, and he implemented some of
them in the next release. What other app
would offer that kind of service?
Konfabulations
SEAN ROSE ics]
In “Developer Two-Step” (Mac Beat, Octo-
ber 2004), the author points out—correctly,
I think—that many OS features (such as a
‘TCP/IP stack) are natural evolutions; they
become part of the OS out of necessity. But
the article failed to mention another impor-
tant issue: Why didn’t Apple just buy Kon-
fabulator? (Or Watson?) It could have
stopped the Windows port and would have
enjoyed a positive PR spin. Whatever the
cost would have been, I’m sure it would've
been less than the negative impact Dash-
board has had on OS X developers.
mht|-FEEDBACK >
Reply to All
We put two of Apple’s hottest new products—the AirPort Express and
the Click Wheel iPod—on the cover, and what do readers want to talk
about? E-mail clients, of course. Macworld readers exhibit the same loy-
alty to their e-mail clients (as well as their browsers, their word proces-
sors, and pretty much every other piece of hardware and software they
own) that other folks reserve for football teams and presidential candi-
dates—and woe betide the editor who questions that devotion.
ED FOCHLER S
Regarding the controversy about Konfab-
ulator: While I admit that Apple could be
a better citizen by either buying competing
technology or giving credit to those fine
developers for having the right idea, if
you're charging extra for what Apple gives
away for free, you aren’t benefiting users.
If you give your product away for free but
Apple decides to supersede you with a free
product of its own, then users benefit and
you don’t have to maintain your product.
In short, the cheese has moved. Move after
it. If you choose to whine after your cheese,
that’s up to you, but keep it to yourself.
Acrobat, Begone!
LYNN JENKINS {Es}
Thave one thing to say about your tip for
banishing Acrobat from Microsoft Office
(“7 PDF Power Moves,” Working Mac,
October 2004): Yahoo! I spent an hour one
day trying to figure out how to get rid of
that irritating (and useless) feature, without
success, Thank you for the answer.
ED VOLCHOK ei
In “7 PDF Power Moves,” your advice in
tip 5 (for removing the Acrobat PDF tool-
bar from Office apps) doesn’t work. I've
trashed PDFMaker.dot, PDFMaker.xla,
© 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.
www.macworld.com
and PDFMaker.ppa, and the toolbars dis-
appear. But when I reboot the computer
and launch Word, Excel, or PowerPoint,
the toolbars are back. How do you drive a
stake into the heart of these toolbars? I use
Office 2004 and OS X 10.3.5.
Unfortunately, this tip applies only to Office
v. X, not to Office 2004. You might try
renaming the Startup folder in your Micro-
soft Office: Office folder—but this isn’t an
ideal solution. Doing so will disable all Office
startup items, not just PDFMaker.—Ed.
Sharp-Eyed Readers
BILL WILCOX ex}
You did a nice job with the October cover
photo. There it is in all its glory, an Apple
iPod playing “Revolution” by the Beatles.
Given the litigious relationship between
Apple Computer and Apple Records, was
this your way of giving Apple Records a
digital poke in the eye? Who knows, maybe
one day Apple Records will get in touch
with digital reality and settle the “music
thing” with Apple Computer.
We intended no poke in the eye. “Revolution” is
simply an appropriately titled song by a well-
loved band.—Ea.
NADRELL EVANS. ES
I'd like to know where I can buy the
tables shown in “Macworld’s $6,000 Chal-
lenge” (August 2004), the ones holding
the products that Adam C. Engst and
Christopher Breen chose. Both tables
appear to be wall mounted, but the pic-
tures could be deceiving.
Youre right about one thing: pictures can be
deceiving. As realistic as those tables look, they're
illustrations (created by John Kocon).—Ed.
FileMaker’s Flaw
MICHAEL YOUNG
FileMaker Pro 7 ($6899; Reviews, October
2004) continues the long line of good File-
Maker Pro products, but it’s still missing
one simple feature that users have been
requesting for years, something William
Porter even mentions in his review: “File-
Maker Pro still can’t trigger a script auto-
matically when the user exits a field.” I
should not have to buy a third-party plug-
in to implement this feature, which com-
peting products have had for many years.
VIAL NS
In our review of Apple's Xserve RAID (October
2004), we incorrectly reported the drives it
uses. It uses high-capacity Ultra ATA drives.
In our review of digital camcorders (Novem
ber 2004), we incorrectly described a lighting
feature of the VC GR-DCX97. It uses a builtin
LED for low-light shooting. (Our rating stands.)
November 2004), we misstated Apple's laptop-
feplacenent policy. Apple replaces
batteries only if they fail because of defects,
Notif they fail because of normal use.
Our review of new Power Mac
ber 2004)
systems’ graphic GeForce
FX 5200 Ultra, ATI Radeon 9600 XT, and ATI
Radeon 9800 XT have an ADC port and a DVI
port. The Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL has
two DVI connectors and no ADC port.
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Creative
Advertising Supplement
ial FileMaker fires
on all cylinders 7"
'f VY for creative i FileMaker
professionals = & ~~" Pro?
sk creative professionals the one thing they'd like to have
more of, and the answer will likely be “more time to be
creative.” They want to be liberated from administra-
tive chores and overhead, like tracking their hours and
fussing with schedules. They want information
organized so they can get at it quickly and easily, and they want
to share that information with colleagues, because the creative
world is often a collaborative world.
For more than 100,000 creative professionals, the solution
of choice to accomplish all these invaluable tasks—and then
some—is FileMaker Pro. With its legendary ease of use and
with the power that enables the customization creative profes-
sionals want and need, FileMaker Pro is fast becoming a
de facto standard in the creative world. And the ability of this
flexible database solution to handle rich data sources—such as
video, audio, and images—makes it even more valuable to this
demanding user base.
Consider the case of EastWest Creative, whose clients include
food giants Kraft and Nabisco. The creative teams at EastWest
in New York have produced some of the most familiar advertis-
ing icons known, With a range of high-powered clients with
individual needs, EastWest must deliver world-class results
under tight deadlines, so managing the workflow of projects
is essential.
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Workflow wonder
At EastWest, maintaining a competitive edge in a hyper-
competitive market requires an unbeatable workflow strategy.
That strategy is built around FileMaker, which has been
deployed at EastWest for a decade now.
“We have evaluated other solutions from time to time, but we
find that FileMaker pretty much takes care of everything we
need,’ notes Linda Ziembko, Director of IT at EastWest for the
past five years. “It is our first choice. It's the easiest solution for
us, but it is also powerful when we need it to be powerful. We're
always looking for the best solution, and we always come
around to FileMaker.”
For the creative environment in particular, Ziembko says that
FileMaker offers many attributes, features, and functions that
dovetail perfectly with the pace and flow of work. EastWest is a
multi-service promotional agency where teams develop specific
ideas, followed by even more collaboration with other teams.
This means there is lots of data flowing from group to group.
Hours must be carefully tracked for billing and costing purpos-
es. And everyone associated with this creative value chain must
be able to access the data they need quickly and easily, without
dialing the help desk every ten minutes.
“The interface with FileMaker is very friendly, as is the total
ease of development,’ Ziembko says. “We listen to what the
users want and need, and then we can develop and deploy a
solution really quickly without any long lead times. FileMaker is
so flexible that we can deploy, listen for early feedback, make
tweaks and modifications, and do it all while people are busily
working and being productive using it.”
Flexibility and ease of use
By contrast, Ziembko notes that other solutions she has looked
at are far more rigid, requiring the IT team to “get it right the
first time” By deploying user-driven solutions more quickly
than with any other solution, FileMaker helps EastWest better
manage the time of its creative staff. “FileMaker lets us build
Creative professionals appreciate the tremendous ease of use that
FileMaker brings to the important task of tracking time spent on
various projects, actually freeing up time for their creative pursuits.
Advertising Supplement
truly organic systems and solutions that conform to our busi-
ness, rather than making our business conform to the solu-
tions,’ Ziembko says. “It helps us corral people's work habits
because it automates so many mundane tasks, such as doing
time sheets. And then it integrates really well with other appli-
cations and systems, such as back-office accounting systems.”
Ziembko also applauds FileMaker’s scripting capabilities, in
particular her department's ability to run Apple scripts from
FileMaker. This advance scripting capability helps EastWest in
the general workflow process, where it automates mundane
administrative tasks, and also in the creative process itself, by
automatically generating design templates and layouts in stan-
dard formats. This allows new workers or freelance people to
become productive much more quickly than if they had to gen-
erate such things on their own.
“We find FileMaker to be as flexible as we want, and users
don't need the help of programmers to get what they need from
it! Ziembko states. “I think we push it to the limits here and it
responds well every time."
Unique solutions for unique clients
As with EastWest Creative, the client list at Lowe Worldwide
includes some of the biggest brands in the world—Johnson &
Johnson, Saab, and GMC, among others. Each client is unique,
and servicing them all means developing flexible, unique work-
flows to manage costs, smooth bumps in the creative process,
and facilitate collaboration so that everyone gets the data and
information they need when they need it.
To make sure the creative minds are focused on hot ideas
and concepts and not burdened by administrative overhead,
Kevin Brucato, Director of Creative Services, works with
FileMaker. He's been doing this since 1995; the first application
he pressed into service involved eliminating a hand-written
project logbook and replacing it with a FileMaker application
for project tracking and management.
“Since then, we've evolved to higher and higher levels of
functionality and use with FileMaker, mainly because it is so
customizable for our needs and the unique needs of each
client,’ Brucato says. “We looked at other solutions, but they just
aren't user-friendly like FileMaker, and they don’t give us the
customization that our clients demand”
Saves on training costs
Brucato also cites FileMaker’s ease of use as a major attribute in
creative environments such as the 50-person team he heads.“A
new employee with little or no knowledge of database technolo-
gy can come in and almost immediately be generating custom
reports, design layouts, and other important work,’ he says.
“This saves us training costs and IT involvement, and generally
means our creative people are more productive.”
Brucato also lauds the cross-platform personality of
FileMaker, which makes it easy, for example, to move data back
and forth from FileMaker to back-end accounting systems. He
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With FileMaker, creative professionals can track any type of infor-
mation, including text, numbers, pictures, movies, sounds, and
more, and with a database that is virtually unlimited in size.
and his staff also appreciate that FileMaker is fully Web-
enabled, allowing them to publish designs and sketches to the
Web for review with a simple click of the mouse.
“Don't think that because it is so easy to use, FileMaker isn't
powerful,” Brucato adds, “It is simple when we need it to be
simple, and it is easy to use, but it can perform look-ups and
replacements and a wide variety of complex tasks if we want it
to. We get all the level of detail we need from FileMaker. With
built-in scripting, we can move data around very easily, com-
press it, and then write it to a CD.
It’s a great tool for us.”
To help creative professionals,
FileMaker has recently released
the FileMaker Creative Pro Starter
Kit, which is a free download
when you download a 30-day
trial of FileMaker Pro 7. This
ready-to-use kit comes with
pre-programmed, customizable
solutions designed specifically for
the creative market—help with
managing contact details for
clients and vendors, tracking job
status from proposal through
delivery, creating digital libraries that store images, sounds, and
video clips, printing invoices, labels, and reports, and more.
To download the free FileMaker Creative Pro Starter Kit,
and to find out more about what FileMaker can do to drive
productivity for creative professionals, click now on
www.filemakertrial.com/macworld/.
Starter Kit
Creative Pro
overt
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)
COMPANIES SWITCHING TO OS X-ONLY DEVELOPMENT
So Long, OS 9
With the release of Mac OS X 10.4—the fifth major incarnation of Apple’s Unix-based OS—on the horizon, it’s safe
to say that OS X’s time has long since arrived. But despite Apple’s best efforts to move users to its modern operat-
ing system, hard-core OS 9 loyalists have held on strong. (To be fair, early users were hesitant to jump to a new
operating system while it was still finding its legs and while high-profile OS X-native software was scarce.) Now
that all major apps have made the transition to OS X, and now that no new Mac can boot into OS 9 (Apple phased
out the last dual-boot Macs with little fanfare in the middle of 2004), new development for OS 9 may be a thing of
the past. For most developers, dropping OS 9 is a good thing—and that’s good news for you.
Bare Bones Software (wwwbarebones “At accertain point the platforms —_and resources to write features that
com) released the first commercially do diverge, and the considerations degrade gracefully on Mac OS 9, and
available OS X application, BBEdit run far beyond soft- to test products on multiple versions
are enginecring,” of Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X.”
says Rich Siegel, In addition, providing technical
the president of support and
company decided to drop OS 9 sup-
port with the introduction of version
8 in August 2004, because supporting \\| Bare Bones Soft _ feature set for the two widely diver-
two platforms simultaneously means QQ bw
a big increase in workload. 1)
6.1, which also ran in OS 9. The
ping a consistent
“Te requires gent versions of the OS was a chal-
ional effort lenge for the company.
|
wwmacworld.com
ILUSTRATION 8Y
“When we chose to develop exclu-
sively for Mac OS X, our customers
immediately reaped the benefits of
shorter product-development cycles,
more-focused and less-complicated
products, and the resulting increase in
product quality,” says Siegel.
This is a view echoed by Glen Turpin,
Quark’s director of communications
(www.quark.com). “Every time you add
a platform for development, it adds a
tremendous amount of time to the devel-
opment cycle,” says Turpin. “You have to
do quality control at each step for each
platform.” When Quark released version
6 of its flagship product in June 2003—
the first version to run in OS X—it was
only for OS X.
“OS 9 has been on the back burner for
a while with most key applications in OS
X,” says Forrester Research principal ana-
lyst Frank E. Gillett. “The issue has been
overspecialized applications for mostly the
publishing and education industries. Usu-
ally, these two industries take their sweet
time to upgrade hardware and eventually
sofiware. Now it seems even these last
Mt htrewe oe
holdouts have finally started tumbling.”
Quark took a lot of heat for showing up so
late to the OS X party, but Turpin says the
timing was appropriate. It was a direct
result of increasing customer demand and
Apple’s phasing out OS 9 bootable com-
puters. “There are longer production
cycles in publishing,” says Turpin. “We
eventually got an overwhelming demand
from users to move to OS X.”
In the education sector, too, econom-
ics played a big part. Schools often use
custom software that, until recently, was
available only in OS 9. And hardware at
schools is usually years out of date and
unable to run newer operating systems
as soon as they are rolled out. So when
schools buy new computers, they usually
purchase those that run on the existing
OS. As a result of these factors, the
education arena was not an early
adopter of OS X.
wwwumacworld.com
But the benefits of OS X are clear
after the changeover. Turpin says that
Quark’s adoption on OS X gives users
access to features not available in OS 9:
“The stability of the OS is great and the
user interface is marvelous. We also get
access to the lower levels of the s;
which enables us to provide a quicker
application.”
Similarly, Qualcomm’s Eudora 6.2
e-mail software (www.qualcomm.com),
released in November 2004, runs exclu-
sively on OS X, Eudora project manager
Matt Dudziak says that the timing is
based on the fact that the new
version of Eudora is better inte-
grated with OS X’s Address
Book, and even supports the
Spotlight feature of Apple’s
upcoming Tiger OS.
“Most of our customer base
now uses OS X,” Dudziak says.
“At some point, we had to
move on.”
At Bare Bones, Siegel says
that consumers have benefited from a
number of impro'
company began de’
for OS X. There are certainly
. feavures in the OS
that were never
available in OS 9,
and the com-
pany has been able
to take advantage of those
capabilities to build a richer
product experience for customers:
for example, live previews in BBEdit
using Web Kit technology, and run-
ning Unix scripts and filters directly
from within BBEdit. Also available
are some of the leading-edge new fea-
tures in BBEdit 8.0, such as the Docu-
ments Drawer, support for previewing
through the built-in Apache server,
solid multiprocessing support to accel-
erate searching multiple files, and
‘Text Factories.
Siegel says that Bare Bones surveyed
the marker to test the waters. “We've
always paid close attention to our cus-
tomers’ needs, and when we observed
that roughly 98 percent of a represen-
tative sampling of our customer ba:
was using Mac OS X,” says Siegel, “we
knew that the time was right to stop
investing in development for Mac
OS 9."—ADELIA CELLINI
Adobe Acrobat 7.
Over the past several years, Adobe's
Portable Document Format—also
known as PDF—has taken off on the
Web, in professional printing, and in
business. PDF has even become the
native file format of OS X. Although
there are other applications for
creating and viewing PDF files,
Adobe Acrobat (www.adobe.com)
is still the gold standard, With the
announcement of version 7.0 of its
Acrobat software family—Reader,
Standard, and Professional—Adobe
has added features that help cre-
ative professionals and companies
who rely on Acrobat share informa-
tion and comment on documents.
Acrobat Professional has
several changes in its pre-
flight tools. A redesigned
interface gives you the
power to convert colors
from RGB to CMYK and
alter stroke weights; other
improvements include the
ability to flatten trans-
parency, add printer marks,
and change page sizes.
Taking its cue from Adobe Photoshop's
File Browser, Acrobat Professional adds an
Organizer you can use to find and sort
PDFs and the metadata embedded in files.
You can sort by terms such as file name,
keywords, and number of pages.
Since PDF files preserve the look of a
document, users often rely on PDFs for
circulating information more complicated
than a basic word processing document.
With this in mind, Acrobat made the com-
munication two-way by including com-
menting and reviews tools in version 4.0.
However, only Windows users could take
advantage of simultaneous Web-based
reviews. With version 7.0, Mac users can
finally join in (only using Safari, however).
In fact, now even Reader users can make
comments on POF files (previously you had
to own Professional or Standard to do so).
One major complaint about earlier
versions of Acrobat was its slow perfor-
mance. Adobe says that users of all ver-
sion 7.0 apps should find launching and
opening files noticeably quicker (our expe-
rience with the prerelease software con-
firms that).
The new versions of Acrobat Profes-
sional ($449), Acrobat Standard ($299),
and Adobe Reader (free) should be avail-
able before the end of 2004.—terai stone
Adobe Acrobat 20%rs'esvona!
January 2005 MACWORLD 15
MAC BEAT
PRODUCTIVITY
BEAT
APPLE INTRODUCES NEW COLOR, U2 iPODS
MouseAnywhere, from Mac-
Splashy Sound ~ eoliapepsied
nition software lets users control
Apple took the wraps off of its color-screen iPod photo at a many Mac functions with verbal
special music event featuring U2’s Bono and Edge. What was commands ($20).
half of U2 doing there? Apple also introduced the iPod U2 AccountEdge 2005, from
MYOB (wwwimyob.com/us):
Special Edition, a version of Apple’s 20GB player clad in Smad usin wccuailbagsoti
black plastic and equipped with a red Click Wheel.
— ware adds MYOB Payroll Forms
of % : z pens, ‘il Service for printing and e-filing
The iPod photo, which comes in 40GB Apple has extended support for iTunes forms, Process Payroll Assistant
and 60GB models, looks nearly identical Auto-Syne technology, which syncs for preparing payroll runs, and
to the previous generation of full-size music on the iPod and on your Mac, to the ability to create and schedule
iPods. The big difference is its iPhoto (photo syncing requires iTunes Fecurring transactions froma
176-pixel screen, capable of display 4.7 or higher). poe EAL Logade,
photos in 65,536 colors. The new The iPod U2 Special Edition ey. Wee $299
model can display 25 color photo
thumbnails at a time, as well as
celebrates Apple’s promotional
partnership with the legendary
Irish rock band. The 20GB
Print It 2.0, from MacEase (www
5 é ,macease,com): Printing utility
slide shows set to your music, and
adds autoscaling guide and the
it lets you scroll through your iPod U2 stands out with its ability to create keyboard short-
photos the same way you scroll black and red case, and it has cuts ($30),
through music playlists. (Apple signatures of all four band QuickBooks: Pro 2005, from
promises battery life of up to 15 members laser-engraved on Intuit (http://quickbooks.intuit
hours for music, or 5 hours of the back. And Apple will offer -com): Small-business accounting
software adds iCal and .Mac
continuous slide shows.) The iPod 3
integration, improved file-sharing
a digital box set—a first in the
online music industry. The
photo can also display the album
art thar embedded in each song pur- Complete U2 will feature every U2 album epity trad POF bec
chased from the iTunes Music Store (or in (including the new How to Dismantle grounds to forms ($300; upgrade,
tracks to which you've added art yourself). a Atomic Bomb), plus more than 25 rare $200 after $100 rebate) —com-
An included AV cable lets you connect the and unreleased tracks (more than 400 PILED BY PHIUP MICHAELS
iPod photo to a TV or a video projector tracks in all), for $149, People who buy
for display, either directly or via the dock. the iPod U2 Special Edition will get
an iTunes Music Store coupon for $50 EDUCATION
HALF A DOZEN off the box set. Both the iPod and the BE AT
box set should be available by the time
TTT a
Ml PRICE | CA ] E ATION you read this.
Apple also announce
eReference, from Houghton Mif-
flin (www.houghtonmifflinbooks
J that it would
Pos $399 | | find, macwe 1015 open the doors of new iTunes Music com): Interactive dictionary and
| odmini | 5249 | 568 | findmacvorcomtse | Stores to users in Canada, as well as thesaurus features fulltext ofthe
) $499 40GB find.macworld.com/0i75 | those in the EU nations of Austria, Bel- American Heritage Dictionary of
gium, Finland, Greece, Italy, Luxem- - ae php po edi-
bourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, and ny BC GES EDEN.
Spa :R COHEN Tresor (35).
Kurzweil 3000 Version 3, from
Kurzweil Education Systems
(ww.kurzweiledu,com): Reading
j and writing software adds a new
New Jam Packs Hit the Shelves ea Serica a
At the same time Apple released GarageBand as part of iLife ’04, the company came out tent across a local area network 3
with Jam Pack, which provided additional loops, instruments, presets, and guitar amps for (contact Kurzweil for pricing).
use with GarageBand. Nowy, a year later, Apple has added two new collections, Jam Pack ‘Sysquake 3, from Calerga
2: Remix Tools and Jam Pack 3: Rhythm Section. (veww.calerga,com): Scientific
Jam Pack 2: Remix Tools offers more than 2,000 loops, 20 new beat kits (including Computational software features
a rewritten interface for running
applications and developing them
with a new Applications Builder
Techno, R&B, House, and Trance), new instruments, and classic drum machines from
Roland such as the TR-909 and the CR-78.
1 MOWA
Jam Pack 3: Rhythm Section also has more than 2,000 loops, as well as more than 50 new instruments— (single license, $2,028; educa- :
including new drums (such as Jazz Brushes and Indie Rock), basses (such as Motown, Liverpool, and tional license, $811).—comrnen
Unplugged), and guitars (such as Bluegrass Banjo, Bluesy Acoustic, and Heavy Metal Electric).—perer COHEN BY PHILIP MICHAELS
16 MACWORLD January 2005 wow macworld.com
Spend more time on your ideas
and less time bringing them to life.
Apple” Power Mac’ G5 with 23" Cinema Display”
© Dual 1.8GHz 64-bit PowerPC G5 processors
* AGP 8X Pro graphics interface
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© Offers a complete design environment for print and
Web publishing
Wacom Intuos3 6 x 8 Pen Tablet
* Patented pen, mouse and tablet
* Quickly and professionally edit photos and create digital
artwork by turing on the power af Adobe Photoshop”
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When creativity is your business, you shouldn't spend your time
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In Canada, call 800.268, 7805 + CDW.ca macwarehouse.com * 800.ALL.MACS
MAC BEAT.
CREATIVE
BEAT
Carrara 4, from Eovia (www.
-eovia.com): 3-D-rendering,
modeling, and —animation tool
features new terrain and sky
modules, texture and lighting
controls, and improved rendering
(Standard, $299; upgrade, $199;
Pro, $579; upgrade, $189).
Instant PDF 3, from Enfocus
(wewenfocus.com); PDF tool now
lets you create certified PDFs in
Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress
($199; upgrades, free for users
who bought version 2 after May
6, 2004, and $49 for all others).
PDF2Office 2.0, from Recosoft
(www.recosoft.com); PDF conver-
sion tool adds the ability to open
PDFs in Microsoft Word, a forms-
processing mode, and support for
Adobe Acrobat 6 documents
($129; upgrade, $59).
Portraits & Prints 2.0, from
LOOKING BACK ON THE MAC IN 2024
20 More Years
The Mac has come a long way, baby. In 20 years, we’ve seen speeds soar from
8MHz to 2.5GHz, the invention of FireWire, the transition to OS X, and much more.
But what does the future hold? Let’s look ahead 20 years and see what we might
a be reflecting on when the 40th anniversary is upon us.—JOHN MOLTZ
‘* The Mac’s market share soared to 35
percent in 2010, when OS X 12.0 allowed pets
(via their own user accounts) to communicate
with their owners. As Mac users learned that
cats do indeed think they're superior to all
other living creatures, Microsoft announced
that Longhorn would ship “very soon.”
* 2019's 420-inch iMac sported a series of fly-
ing buttresses to keep the unit from tipping over
and crushing family members.
© The Power Mac G20, released in 2023, was an
impenetrable black obelisk that fascinated pri-
mates and aided in humanity's evolution. It also
came with really cool speakers.
© Critics bemoaned the Anti-Gravity Mac,
released in 2012, which floated six inches above
the user's desk. It might have proved successful
if it had come with more than a paltry 256
® Steve Jobs, still CEO of Apple and Pixar in
2024, was also named to the top posts at Dis-
ney in 2008 and Sony in 2019. Jobs now has
petabytes of RAM and four outdated 2.5 tera- quite a busy schedule for a 69-year-old man, Econ Technologies (www.econtech
hertz G15 processors—fine for e-mail and Web especially when you consider that he personally nologies.com): Photo-studio soft-
browsing, but nowhere near enough for teleki- listens to each of the 7 billion songs available ware enables photo printing away
from your Mac, and a new pro-
fessional version lets you create
custom templates, rotate images,
netic gaming or robot-assisted graphics. from the iTunes Music Store.
SERVICE PACK SQUASHES SOME BUGS, CREATES OTHERS
alter opacity and color, and add
a shadows or masks to pictures
f 4 (S30; uparede, fre; pro version
| ce ‘$50)—COMPILED BY PHILIP MICHAELS
Moves Ahead? a
In October, Microsoft released an update to the Office 2004 suite. This update
addressed many glitches, and it has earned positive feedback from most users.
Unfortunately, it also seems to have introduced a few problems, and it doesn’t
address PowerPoint’s primary flaw. Here’s what to look out for.—Ro8 GRIFFITHS
INTERNET
BEA
Captain FTP 3.5, from Xnet
Communications (http://captainftp
-xdsnet.de): File Transfer Protocol
PowerPoint’s Acrobat The update causes a problem that oe estas itis Saat
Mixed Bag Problem affects Office users who have Adobe bias eee ste os:
Acrobat Professional. When they quit upgrade, free from version 3.X).
This update specifically tar-
gets two PowerPoint issues: a
problem that caused
dragged objects
to jump to
seemingly
arbitrary loca-
tions, and perfor-
mance trouble when.
playing embedded Quick-
Time movies. Microsoft has
fixed the first issue,
Movie playback, on the
other hand, is better but
still unacceptably poor,
18 MACWORLD January 2005
Appear: S an office app, they see the message
“Compile error in hidden module: AutoExec.” This problem
stems from Adobe's PDFMaker files. The error isn’t fatal,
but if the message bothers you, you can remove PDFMaker
(for instructions and more details on the Service Pack
update, go to find. macworld.com/0137).
Comment Conundrum
Anew glitch has cropped up in Word's Page Layout view
when you're adding comments to a document with a wide
tight margin. If you're viewing the comments
in balloons, they may appear very far to the
right of the text area.
eyeBeam, from Xten (www.
.xten,com): Session Initiation Pro-
tocol (SIP) application lets users
communicate with voice and
video over IP-based networks
(contact Xten for pricing).
Lasso Professional 8, from
OmniPilot Software (www.omni
pilot.com): Web-application server
software adds multisite features
that allow each site on a server
to be isolated, on-demand tag
loading, and POP e-mail support,
and improves SMTP support
($649; upgrade, $349) —comrue>
BY PHILIP MICHAELS
wwwwmacworld.com
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the current volume, keeping all
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The eDrive is then available if
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Choose 37 at wvwvzmacworld.com/getinfo
MAC BEAT
UPDATED PORTABLES SEE SPEED BUMPS, OTHER IMPROVEMENTS
Apple Introduces"
New iBooks
While Mac users anxiously await news
pple made some
improvements to its other line of por-
tables. The consumer-level iBooks got
faster processors and built-in
Extreme wireless networking, as
well a price drop at the entry
level (see “iBooks March On” ~
for details on the new models).
‘The new 12-inch model comes with a
1.2GHz G4 processor; 256MB of DDR
SDRAM; a 30GB Ultra ATA hard drive;
built-in AirPort Extreme wireless net-
working (this is the first time Apple has
included it across the entire iBook line);
two USB 2.0 ports; one FireWire 400
port; support for VGA, S-Video, and
composite video out (for mirroring the
display); a 100BaseT’ Ethernet port; a
56-Kbps v.92 modem; a headphone jack;
a built-in microphone; and a slot-loading,
CD-burning, and DVD-reading Combo
drive. The $999 12-inch iBook replaces
the AirPort-optional $1,099 IGHz model
(all other specs remain the same).
The low-end 14-inch model offers a
1.33GHz G+ processor, a 60GB Ultra
ATA hard drive, and built-in AirPort
Extreme (all other specs are the same as
for the 12-inch model) for $1,299;
replaces its predecessor at the same price
point but boosts the processor from
1.2GHz and the hard drive from 40GB,
and adds the AirPort Extreme card. The
high-end 14-inch model gets a bump in
processor speed, from 1.2GHz to
1.33GHz, and adds a 4x CD- and DVD-
burning SuperDrive. It retains the 60GB
hard drive, built-in AirPort Extreme, and
$1,499 price of the previous edition.
_iBOOKS MARCH oN
All the iBooks still have a 133 MHz
system bus, 512K of L2 cache, an ATI
Mobility Radeon 9200 graphics chip with
32MB of DDR RAM, 1,024-by-768-
pixel native resolution, and 256MB of
DDR266 SDRAM with mum of
1.25GB. The SuperDriv Ml a buile-
to-order option for the low-end 14-inch
model, and Bluetooth remains a $49
option for all models. IM DALRYMPLE
Apple Bulks Up
Xserve RAID
Apple also made several announcements
regarding its high-speed Xserve RAID
storage system. The company increased
the maximum capacity from 3,5TB to
5.618, received certification for the Xserve
RAID from Cisco and SUSE Linux, and
optimized the RAID system to work with
Apple's own Xsan Storage Area Network
(SAN) file system.
The Xserve RAID is now available in
1TB ($5,999), 2.8TB ($8,499), and 5.6TB
($12,999) configurations. The 5.6TB con-
figuration costs $2,000 more than the pre-
vious top-of-the-line model but includes
2.178 of additional storage.—rerer ConEN
—_
Single-
Processor
Power Mac
G5 Returns
In an interesting turn, Apple
added a single-processor
1.8GHz Power Mac G5 back
into its desktop computer
arsenal, The company is offer-
ing the $1,499 system in an
otherwise dual-processor
lineup of 1.8GHz, 2GHz, and
2.5GHz systems,
Like the dual-1.8GHz
model, Apple’s new single-
processor 1.8GHz Power Mac
features an Nvidia GeForce FX
5200 Ultra graphics card in an
8x AGP slot, 256MB of
DDR400 SDRAM (with a 4GB
maximum), an 8x SuperDrive,
an 80GB Serial ATA (SATA)
hard drive, three 33MHz 64-bit
PCI slots, an AirPort Extreme
slot, two FireWire 400 ports,
one FireWire 800 port, and
three USB 2.0 ports. The big
difference is that the single-
processor computer features
a slower frontside bus than
the dual-processor—clocking
in at 600MHz instead of
900MHz. The original Power
Mac GS lineup (announced in
June 2003) included a $2,399
single-processor 1.8GHz sys-
tem with twice the amount
of included RAM (512MB),
twice the hard-drive space
(160GB), a faster 90OMHz
system bus, and a slower 4x
SuperDrive.—PeTeR COHEN
12-inch 1.2GHz G4 S6MB DDR266 Atl My Radeon 9200 | 30GB 1,024 768 Combo | find.macworld.conv0178
1.2568) with 32MB DDR RAM
find.macwor
‘V4-inch | $1,499 | 1.33GH2z G4
‘256MB DDR266 | 133MHz
Atl wines Radeon 9200 | 60GB
with 32MB DDR RAM
i find, macworld.com/0180
20° MACWORLD January 2005
wwr.macworld.com
Don’t Just Take Our Word For It.
When we first introduced Companion” 3 speakers, we believed they would enable “pve }
a whole new level of sound quality from your PC. Now the reviews are in, and others ates Te
2004
agree. You can expect newfound instrumental and vocal darity from »_ delivers surprisingly ful, dean sound for
tiny satellite speakers. Resounding low notes from a hideaway ‘music, movies and games.”
Acoustimass® module. Spacious sound from TrueSpace” —Laptop
. stereo signal processing circuitry. Plus convenience and “The Bose Companion 3 multimedia speaker
= eo. elegance: the satellites can sit on your desktop or system Sunset fen its.
. easily attach to the sides of your monitor. And “Tha Compaen Seno
an elegant control pod puts speaker volume control, headphone jack and a second deliver sound that doesn’t play around.”
input - for a portable MP3 player, for example — all at your fingertips. -MacHome
Ready to experience more pleasure from music, movies and gaming worth every penny.”
soundtracks while at your computer? Upgrade to Bose” Companion 3 "...the sound! ally UY, magnificent.”
Bose Multimedia
multimedia speakers. ..and give them a review of your own.
call 1-877-696-BOSE, Ext. P81. Or v’
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Better sound through research»
MAC BEAT
2
MACWORLD
MACS HELP SKY CAPTAIN SAVE THE DAY
World of Today
When visual-effects artist Darin Hollings—a vet-
eran in the film industry with over a decade of
experience using Unix-based SGI and Linux-
based PC workstations—first met director Kerry
Conran, Hollings says, “he handed me a 15-inch
PowerBook as soon as | walked in the door and
told me, ‘You're going to learn OS X.""
After spending several years using nothing but
a Mac to painstakingly create a six-minute short,
Hollings had the beginnings of Paramount Pic-
tures’ Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
Then, PowerBook in hand, Hollings assisted as the
actors worked on a bluescreen set. The entire envi-
ronment would be added later, so Hollings was
there to ensure that every shot lined up the way it
was supposed to.
The shots were recorded to HD tape and digi-
tized on a Power Mac equipped with a Kona card.
On the postproduction end, Hollings’s team started
with Power Mac G4s but moved to Power Mac
G5s as soon as they became available. Three
Xserves fed the digital artists their footage as they
worked on it in Adobe After Effects, replacing blue-
screens with shots of New York and the Himalayas.
The compositing team worked on more than
1,100 shots, using the same workstation to render
completed shots and work on new ones. “That's
when | realized the Mac could be a pretty hard-
core production machine,” says Hollings.
Now that production is completed, Hollings
admits his Mac and PC sit side-by-side in his
office. “And | don’t go anywhere without my
PowerBook,” he adds.—arao cook
ADDITIONAL THEMES MAKE PROJECTS LOOK BETTER
Why Do It All Yourself?
Apple’s DVD Studio Pro, iDVD, and Keynote come with templates—or themes—
that make assembling a professional-looking movie or presentation much easier.
But if you use those themes all the time, all your work will start looking the
same—boring, and just like everybody else’s. So a bunch of third-party vendors
have popped up with themes of their own. Here’s a sample.—pan MILLER
VARIATIONS ON A THEME
COMPANY | PRODUCT PRICE | CONTACT PROVIDES COMPATIBILITY
PY Theme Paks 1-6 | $29-$49 | wwnudvdthemepak.com | 6 motion and 2 still | iDVD 3 and 4
PAK | per pack themes, or 4 motion
| and 4 still themes
Button Paks 1-2 | $49 per _ | wwwdudthemepak.com | 21 buttons iDVD 3 and 4
| pack ($39
| download)
Theme Paks 1-6 | $79-$89 | wwwdudthemepak.com | 19-29 templates, DVD Studio Pro 2
per pack 8-15 backgrounds, | and 3
20-38 shapes
iDVD Themes AIEEE $25 | wwwidvdthemes.com | 12 themes iDVD 2 and 3
Holiday Volume | $13 | wwwidvdthemes.com | 4 themes | iDvD 2 and 3
Jumsoft Keynote Themes 3.5) $35 www jumsoft.com | 22 themes Keynote
CGUOGsemme Art History, Duet, | $20 each, | www.keynotepro.com main theme, Keynote
com Field Journal, Met- | $50 three- supplemental slides
roBlue, and more | pack
PhotoGrafik Pro, | $29 each | wwwkeynotepro.com | main theme, Keynote
PitchBoards: Pro supplemental slides,
additional masters
Proof (+) and(-) | $20 wwewkeynotepro.com | 8 themes ipvo 4
for iDVD
MULTIMEDIA
BEAT
Digital Performer 4.5, from
MOTU (wwnwmotu.com); Upgrade
to audio-editing software features
Beat Detection engine, plug-in
latency compensation, and the
MasterWorks EQ plug-in (contact
MOTU for pricing; upgrades start
at $149),
MegaSeg 3.0, from Fidelity
Media (www.megaseg.com): DJ
and radio automation software
features an updated live-mixing
interface, improved iTunes and
iPod integration, and a new search
engine ($199; upgrade, $59).
02, from M-Audio (www.m-audio
com): MIDI USB keyboard fea-
tures 25 full-size, half-action,
velocity-sensitive keys; eight
assignable knobs; eight assign-
able buttons; and mod and pitch
bend ($179).
Slick 7 and Slick 8, from Gee-
Three.com (www.geethree.com):
iMovie plug-in packs offer 70
OpenGL-based 3-D transitions
and 11 editing tools, respectively
(Slick 7, $50; Slick 8, $70)—com-
PILED BY PHILIP MICHAELS
STORAGE
BEA
Fast DVD Copy 3, from Velan
Software (www.fastdvdcopy
.com): Archival software for
copying DVD videos to blank
DVD-RW discs adds support
for PlayStation 2 discs ($100;
upgrade, free).
LaCie Ethernet Disk, from
LaCie (wwwlacie.com): Web-
administrable Network Attached
Storage system uses Windows.
XP Embedded operating system
to provide network-based file
storage for Mac, Windows,
Linux, and Unix computers
in 160GB, 250GB, 500GB, and
‘800GB capacities ($599 to
$1,499, depending on storage
capacity).
P-2000 Multimedia Storage
Viewer, from Epson (www
epson.com): Portable 40GB
device for storing and displaying
digital photos features a 3.8-inch
color LCD screen and a memory-
card slot ($499).—compiteo By
PHILIP MICHAELS
www.macworld.com
LONGER.
Energizer e? Lithium AA and AAA batteries are the only batteries built with
advanced lithium technology so they last up to seven times longer
in your power-hungry digital camera* Energizer» e? AA and AAA Lithium
batteries provide exceptional life in digital cameras, are lightweight
and operate well in extreme temperatures.
"Vs, ordinary alkaline. Results vary by device.
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Keep Going” 7
Conference & Expo’
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, me anuary 11 ~ 14, 2005
Register online by December 10, 2004
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As the world’s most comprehensive Macintosh OS event,
Macworld Conference & Expo’ provides introductory, intermediate and
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programs. The Exhibit Hall is the only place where you can evaluate,
test drive and purchase the newest products and coolest technologies.
As the #1 event for the Mac community, we are excited to return to
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N immerse yourself in all that is
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6- and 7-Megapixel
Digital Cameras
Big Pictures Emerge from Small Packages !
BY ROBERT ELLIS
Between the burgeoning field of sub-
5-megapixel pocket cameras and the ranks of
8-megapixel-plus prosumer models is a
growing group of 6- and 7-megapixel cam-
eras that don’t seem to know what they want
compact point-and-
digital SLRs.
the
-P600, the Fujifilm Fine-
2550 and FinePix $7000, the Kodak
hare DX7630, the Konica Minolta
Dimage G600, and the Olympus Camedia
C-60. We also looked at three 7-megapixel
cameras: two from Canon, the PowerShot
G6 and PowerShot $70, and one from Sony,
compacts
with little more to offer than a million or
two extra pixels that most users won't appre-
but a couple of them offer excellent
nd picture quality. The Canons and
value
the Sony are the standouts of the bunch.
Some Big Shots
Some of these cameras—the Sony, for
instance—are so small that they can sit
comfortably on your palm. But despite
their small size, the 7-megapixel models
take pictures as large as 3,072 by 2,304
pi Fujifilm. cla that the 6.3-
megapixel FinePix E550 and FinePi
can record 12.3. million
a 4,048-by-3,040-pixel image,
found that these images looked no better
than enlargements achieved by upsampling
in Photoshop.
A panel of Macworld experts judged a test
photo (on screen and printed out) from each
camera, rating the im: color and clarity
(see the benchmark chart).
‘The Canon G6 and the Casio captured the
‘curate color. The
film $7000 captured reds that looked almost
‘The Kodak's images had a similar
problem and appeared undersaturated.
‘The Canon G6 also captured the sharpest
pictures, with very little noise. The Fujifilm
26 MACWORLD January 2005
cameras’ images had
noticeable noise and
purple fringing (a purple
glow that can appear
around high-contrast
edges in a picture). Images
from the Canon $70, the
Kodak, and the Konica \~
also showed a small amount
of purple fringing. ‘The Casio’s
pictures seemed slightly soft throughout.
When we used automatic white-balance
settings and our tungsten lights, the Casio,
the Canon $70, and the Konica produced
images with an orange cast (the Casio was
the worst offender).
These cameras fe:
video quality. The
tasio, Kodak, Konica,
The Lineup Clockwise from top left: Canon’s Power-
Shot $70, Fujiflm’s FinePix E550, Sony's Cyber-shot
DSC-P150, Kodak’s EasyShare DX7630, Fujifilm’s Fine?ix
$7000, Konica Minolta’s Dimage G600, Casio's Exilim
£X-P600, and Olympus’s Camedia C-60; pictured above:
Canon's PowerShot G6.
ure a wide range of
q bait only ata ‘d p>
pointing 10 fps (frames per second), and
clips are limited to 30 seconds.
The Fujifilms and the Sony capture video
continuously at 640 by 480 and 30 fps (dura-
tion is limited only by memory capacity).
The quality of the video captured by the
Fujifilm cameras was good, but the audio
had some distracting static. ‘The Sony's
video was a bit grainy and dark, but the
audio was stronger. The Sony requires a
Memory Stick Pro (not included) to capture
video at 30 fps (it captures at 16 fps with the
provided standard Memory Stick).
Your Best Shot
Of these cameras, the Fujifilm $7000 has
the longest optical zoom, at 6x—equi
to a 35mm-210mm lens on a 35mm cam-
era, The Canon $70 has the widest lens;
a 3.6x zoom with a 28mm-100mm fo
range. The Canon G6, Casio, and Fuji-
film E550 offer 4x optical zooms; the
remaining cameras have 3x.
$7000 can focus to 0.4 inches in its Super
Macro mode. The Ol fc
1.6 inches. The Casio has
range in macro mode: 3.94 inches. For
ty, optional lens converters
, and the Olympus. The Fi
$7000 has a focus/zoom ring on its lens,
which gives you more control than the but-
tons or levers that control zooming on the
other models.
With a maximum aperture of f2.0, the
Canon G6 has the fastest lens (the max
PHOTOGRAPHY BY FE
werw.macworld.com_
26 Point-and-shoot digital
cameras Motion 1.0 Silo 13
Canon PowerShot G6 30 Network music players 36 3-D-storyboard software
Canon PowerShot $70 Roku ScundBridge M1000 Frameforge 3D Studio
Casio Exilim EX-P600 Roku SoundBridge M2000 38 Backup utility
Fujifilm FinePix £550 32 Windows-emulation BounceBack Professional
Fujifilm FinePix $7000 program 40 Audio package
Kodak EasyShare DX7630 Virtual PC 7 live 4
Konica Minolta Dimage G600 34 Multimedia software 42 Business-card scanner
Olympus Camedia C-60 MovieWorks Deluxe 6.0.2 IRIS Business Card Reader It
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P150
mum for the others is £2.8), which is impor-
tant for shallow depth of field. The Fujifilm
$7000 has shutter speeds of up to “10,000 of
a second—ideal for freezing action—but
most people probably won't need more
than the ¥i,000 or 2,00 of a second offered by
the others.
Most of the cameras are light sensitive to
400 ISO. The Fujifilms are the most sens
tive, with ISO equivalents of 80 to 640 (the
E550) and 160 to 800 (the $7000) in auto-
matic mode (in manual mode, the E550 can
go as low as 80, while the $7000’ lowest ISO
is 200). If you take many low-light pictures,
thar'll sound reassuring, but a higher IS
means more noise, and an ISO of 200 in
manual mode is high. Also, an ISO of 800 is
available only at up to 3 megapixels. The
Canons, the Casio, and the Konica can go as
low as 50 ISO in manual mode.
All offer automatic white balance, sev-
eral presets, and custom modes, except for
the Kodak, the Konica, and the Sony, which
29 Motion-graphics package
36 3-D modeler
lack manual white balance, And all of these
cameras have built-in flash and red-eye-
reduction modes, The Canon G6 and the
Fujifilm $7000 e hot-shoes for attach-
ing an external flash.
The Olympus, the Casio, and the Canon
G6 include wireless remotes, but the Olym-
pus remote lets you control only the shutter.
‘The Casio and Canon G6 remotes let you
release the shutter, control the zoom, and
‘operate menus.
Both the Canons and the Fujifilms offer
RAW capability, letting you save uncom-
pressed images without any processing in
the camera. Serious photographers will
ince adjusting an image in
you more control than
ing.
in-camera proc
On the Menu
We found that the information disp!
menus on most of these cameras were easy
te and decipher. The Olympus and
43 Graphics tablet
Wacom Intuos3
44 Photo printer
Epson Stylus Photo R800
48 Top Products
50 The Game Room
Enemy Engaged: Comanche Versus
Hokum, Myst IV: Revelation, the
Revolution 5.1 audio card, and The
2004 Game Hall of Fame inductees
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Backdrop, DownloadComment,
Mactracker, PhotoReviewer
Konica menus are the least intuitive. The
best is the Casio menu, which offers the
unique Ex Finder, an information overlay
heads-up display.
s help you align your shot;
that looks like a fighter jet’s
Crossh:
quickly adjust them. Manual Assist menus
show you the effect of manual adjustments,
making it easier to set aperture and shutter
settings. There's also a live histogram, which
displays tonal range and warns you of lost
detail in shadows or highlights as you com-
pose your shot.
The Canons, the Fujifilm $7000, the
Olympus, and the Sony also offer live his-
tograms, and the Canon G6 displays an over-
exposure warning for clipped areas, but only
in preview mode. The Fujifilm E550 can dis-
playa histogram in preview mode. The Kodak
and the Konica have no histogram display
The Kodak has the largest LCD mo
tor, at 2.2 inches. The Canon G6 and the
continues
RESOLU- 200M (35MM
COMPANY MODEL RATING | PRICE CONTACT _TION* EQUIVALENT) APERTURE PROS ’ cons
Canon PowerShot $8863 $699 wenucanon.com 7.1 4.0 (35mm- (2.0-f3.0 Best pictures; RAW format; easy Video only at 10 fps and limited to 30
G6* 140mm) menus; live histogram; audio notes; seconds; flimsy lens cap.
flip-out LCD; hot-shoe; overexposure
Canon PowerShot $##% $599 wwwcanon.com 7.1 36x (28mm- 2.8-{5.3 Very good color quality; sharp pic- Video only at 10 fps and limited to 30
s70 100mm) tures RAW fort ea mens; secon; no optional enss.
ve :
Casio Exilim $888 $599 wenvcasiocom 6.0 40x (3mm— {2.8-f4,0 Built-in ee p innovative Ex Pictures are soft; poor video quality;
EX-P600 132mm) FR nGe ese NE Netrare) paltry SB flash memory no printed
a | remote. manual.
Fujifilm FinePix $88 $449 wernutujfilmcom 6.3 4.0% (32.5mm- {2.8-f5.6 RAW format; easy menus; good Pictures had slight green tint, noise, and
£550 : 130mm) e video quality “_pupple fringing.
Fujifilm — FinePix $961 $699 wnwwfujfilmcom 63 6.0x(@5mm- 128 Super Macro mode; fastest shut- Reds looked almost orange;
$7000 210mm) ter; RAW format; electronic were noisy
viewfinder; hot-shoe: live histo-
‘gram; easy menus; good video
quality.
Kodak EasyShare $69 $399 www.kodak.com 6.1 3.0x (39mm- £2.8-f4.8 —2.2-inch LCD; 32MB built-in flash Reds looked almost orange; colors
DX7630 117 mm) memory; easy menus; lowest price appeared understaturated; no custom
in the group. white balance; no histogram; no audio
notes; flimsy lens cap; poor video quality.
Konica Dimage #86 $429 wwwnukonica «6.0 «3.0 (39mm= (2.8-{4.9 Very good image quality; reasonable Poor video quality; smallest LCD (1.5-
Minolta* G60 minalta,com 117 mm) price. inches); confusing menus; no custom
white balance; no histogram; no optional
: ~ ‘a : lenses; n0 AV cable.
Olympus Camedia $983 S449 wrmolympus 6.1 «3.0 (38mm- 2.8-f4.8 Live histogram; remote; very good Poor video quality; confusing menus;
4 60 ee america.com 114mm) image quality no optional lenses.
Sony® Cybershot $886 $499 wwwisony 72 30x (38mm- 12.8-15.4 Fast startup; very responsive; easy No custom white balance; no audio
DSC-P150 stylecom 114mm) menus; live histogram; AC adapter; _ notes.
least-expensive 7-megapixel camera
in the group; most compact.
> = Editors’ Choice, “in megapixels. *The Konica Minolta and the Sony had to be retested with replacement units after anomalies were found in the images.
wwemmacworld.com
January 2005 MACWORLD 27
REVIEWS
Casio have 2-inch LCDs; the
others’ LCDs are 1.8 inches
REN aR CE COLOR QUALITY
except for the Konica’s, which i Ge aS
the smallest at 1.5 inches. Bigger _ | Canon Powershot G6
is better, and 1.8 inches is about — | Canon PowerShot $70
the minimum for good visibility. | Casio Exilim €X-P600
T a nn bee s the only one He Fujifilm FinePix E550
an adjustable, fip-our AD, whic em 7
fe vou ieee Fujifilm FinePix $7000
jets you fine-tune your viewing
position (handy for shooting at | Kodak EasyShare 0X7630
odd angles, such as over your | Konica Minolta Dimage G600
head). The Fujifilm $7000 has an | olympus Camedia C-60
ates pewnadess hee is ve Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P150
sunny days when LCDs ean be dif-
Gaile toes eo BEST RESULIS IN BOLD.
jeult ta se; We took a photo of a standard test th each wder controlled condi
siaess ‘ fe took a photo of a standard test scene with each camera under contiolled cond
All digital cameras capture with the flash turned off ani withthe white-ooint setting at tungsten. All other
(Exchangeable Image File "were at automatic. A panel of experts looked at our test image, both on screen and printed
data such as aperture settings and | by an Epson Stylus Photo 2200, and rated color quality and clarity as Excellent, Very Good,
shutter speed. In this group, all but | 600d, Flawed, or Unaceprable—ascworia ia 1s By Rom Cs
iS GALBRAITH
With the exception of the
Kodak, the Canon G6, and the Fuji-
film $7000, all of these cameras
have built-in sliding lens barriers to
protect the lenses. The lens cap on
the Fujifilm $7000 is to be expected;
this camera has a larger lens, in
keeping with its faux-SLR form
lens cap clips on, while the Canon
G6 lens cap merely fits snugly. Both
he putting the lensi
vrs | In the Box
In these cameras’ boxes, you'll find
everything you need to get started
with shooting.
the Kodak and the Sony also let
you attach audio notes (such as a subject's
name or a shor’ location) to a picture; max-
imum lengths range from a few seconds to
one minute. The Canons let you add the
st audio notes, and the quality is sur-
good.
Out of the Box
All of these cameras are quick to start up, so
you won't be likely to miss a shot. Most
menu operations feel responsive. The
and the Olympus felt a bit sluggish whi
mages to memory and during play-
‘The Sony felt the most responsive in
ypical use.
All the cameras feel solid. The Canon G6
and the Fujifilm $7000 are too bulky to call
compact. The Fujifilm $7000, at 17.6
ounces, is heftier, and it looks and feels
more like an SLR than a compact. At 5.4
ounces, the Sony is the lightest. It’s also the
smallest—you can even call ita pocket cam-
era. It’s a bit weighty for a shirt pocket, but
it does fit comfortably in a jeans pocket, as
does the 6.9-ounce Konica. The Olympus is
a bit bulkier but still compact.
www.InsideMacRadio.com
2B MACWORLD January 2005
include
to your
All. of these came:
interface cables for transferring
, and all but the Konica include AV
so you can plug your camera into a TV
for easy viewing. All but the Fujifilm $7000
include rechargeable batteries and chargers
(it takes + AA alkaline batteries or optional
rechargeable AA NiMH. batteries). The
Casio doesn’t come with a printed manual,
even though it’s tricked out with a multitude
of impressive features (it does come with a
247-page PDF manual).
None of these cameras come with a rea-
sonably sized memory card, considering their
resolutions. he Canons, the Olympus, and
the Sony come with 32MB memory cards,
while the Fujifilms and the Konica come with
16MB cards. The Casio and the Kodak come
with built-in flash memory, but the Casio’s is
a paltry 9MB (not enough to take even one
TIFF at the highest resolution). The Kodak
offers a more generous 32MB (both also take
SD and MMC memory cards).
You'll also find software in the boxes,
although no bundled application is lik
¢ iPhoto, and Casio's works only
9—Casio recommends iPhoto for all
rs. The Canon and Olympus
tions offer more capabilities than
the others do. You'll need the software
included with the Canons and the Fuji
films for converting RAW files if you
don’t have Photoshop or another RAW-
capable application.
Macworld’s Buying Advice
actor, the Sony Cyber-shot
DSC-P150—with its compact form, light
weight, and 7-megapixel pictures—should
fit your needs the best. We really liked
the C: lim EX-P600's striking and
innova der, but for the same
price, we prefer the Canon PowerShot
$70’ pictures and RAW capabi
6x zoom, but its pictures don’t compare
with those of the Canon PowerShot G6,
Ultimately, image quality counts, and the
PowerShot G6 is a winner.
wew.macworld.com,
Motion 1.0
Long-Awaited Newcomer Combines
Simple Interface with Nearly Real-
Time Performance
BY BEN LONG
With its promise of real-time compositing,
color correction, and a drag-and-drop inter-
face—not to mention its $299 price—few
programs have been as eagerly anticipated
as Apple’s Motion 1.0. Video editors and
motion-graphics pros wondered if Apple's
new product would provide an alternative to
their current compositing application, be it
Adobe After Effects 6.5 (#$$%3; November
2004), Discreet’s Combustion 3 ($9¢; Sep-
tember 2004), or Apple’s own Shake. The
answer is no—the program is not an outright
replacement for those far more expensive
tools. But after using Motion for just a
few days, you may be surprised at how
much of your compositing
setting separate start and end points on the
timeline, you can simply drop a Throw
behavior onto the object from the Behavior
library. A semiopaque pop-up Dashboard
lets you control the Throw behavior’s direc-
tion and speed.
Behaviors are not a replacement for tradi
tional keyframe-based animation; they're
simply a very powerful shortcut. Atany time,
you can transform an applied behavior into
a set of keyframes that you can easily edit
and customize using Motion’s timeline.
Motion includes a robust set of behaviors,
including physics-based behaviors such as
Gravity, Collision Detection, and Wind
effects. Most behaviors include dozens of
editable parameters that allow you to cus-
tomize, combine, and transform simple
behaviors into complex actions.
Compositing in Real Time
The big attraction of Motion’s interface is
that you perform all your operations while
your video is playing. You can adjust the
and graphics workload you
will choose to move to this
excellent new contender.
While Motion doesn’t
provide any features that the
competition doesn’t already
handle, its combination of
nearly real-time perfor-
mance and a simple interface
will cause animators, title
and compositors to take a
serious look at its capabili-
ties. The program is so
tightly integrated with Final
Cut Pro HD that video edi-
tors who have been looking
for a more powerful titling
tool than the one built into
Final Cut will find an excel-
lent solution in Motion.
Interface in Motion
Motion’s interface derives
elements from many differ-
ent Apple apps, but with
its tabbed file browser and
pop-up menu s, it most
closely resembles DVD Studio Pro 3. It offers
several ways to perform most operations: you
can drag and drop items to windows or
terface elements, click on toolbar buttons,
select menu options, or weak parameters in
Motion’s comprehensive Inspector window.
You can perform the same complex masking
operations in Motion with a simple drag and
drop that would require a lot of configuration
in other compositing applications.
Though Motion provides a typical time-
line-based interface for layering a and animat-
ing elements in a composite, its interfa
more compelling because of the addition of
behaviors. Say you want to animate an object
to make it fly across the screen. Instead of
www.macworld.com,
Good Behavior Motion pris a conventional timeline interface, but its feat power
comes from complex drag-and-drop behaviors and an advanced particle system.
response of a behavior, tweak the settings of
a filter, or change any parameter of any
layer—or any operation at all—and the
video playback will immediately update to
show your new result. Motion’s workflow
is completely smooth and interactive in
comparison with the traditional, tedio
motion-graphics workflow. The combina-
tion of real-time performance and a behay
ior-based interface lets you have a lot more
fun experimenting in Motion than in any
other compositing app.
Motion can’t always muster a full 30
frames per second, but even if playback
drops to half that speed, it’s still good
enough to judge the overall impact of an
effect, to synchronize settings on multiple
layers, or to adjust your composite to fit a
voice-over.
Motion includes a sophisticated particle
system that allows you to create smoke and
fire effects, rain, or simple cascades of visual
elements. Motion’s particles are easier to use
than those of any other competing particle
system. The added advantage is that you can
configure them in real time.
Dollars in Motion
If the prospect of real-time motion graphics
for $299 has you drooling, bear in mind that
it requires a certain level of hardware. We
tested Motion on both dual-2GHz and dual-
2.5GHz Power Mac G5s, with varying RAM
configurations and video cards. Though
RAM and processor speed did make a differ-
ence, our tests showed that the video card
had more to do with Motion’s performance
than any other factor.
With an Nvidia GeForce FX 5200, play-
back stuttered frustratingly on a complex
composite. Upgrading to an
ATT Radeon 9800X'T smoothed
out playback right away. So
Motion’s price might be a little
higher when you factor in the
need for a fast video card.
Though Motion has just
about everything you need for
most compositing tasks, it still
lacks some key elements. It
provides only 2-D composi
ing and it has no painting
capabilities, so you won't want
to use it for serious rotoscop-
ing. And because it lacks a
motion tracker, you won't be
able to perform any image
stabilization. In addition,
though its color-correction
filters are very good, Motion
uses only 8-bit color, so it’s
not appropriate for high-end
color correction.
Macworld’s
Buying Advice
Apple's Motion 1.0 is going
to improve a lot of motion-
graphics workflows. It not only offers an
excellent interface with nearly real-time,
interactive playback; it’s also fun to use.
Give ita try. If you do lots of motion graph-
ics or compositing, you'll probably find
yourself moving toward Motion.
RATING: $886!
PROS: Excellent interface; interactive playback;
great particle system; extremely powerful behavior
mechanism; great price.
CONS: No motion tracker; no painting tools; only
8-bit color support; 2-D only.
PRICE: $299
COMPANY: Apple Computer, wwww.apple.com
January 2005 MACWORLD 29
REVIEWS __
Roku SoundBridge M1000
and M2000
Stylish Digital Music Players, Large and Small
BY JASON SNELL
Music fans who've converted an audio library
into digital files for use on an iPod or a com-
puter may also be searching for a way to
replace the CD player in their home stereo
systems. Bridging the gap between a hard
drive and a stereo, music players such as
Roku'’s SoundBridge give you iPod-like con-
trol over your music
from the comfort of
your easy chair.
The SoundBridge
doesn’t offer music
storage. Instead, it
streams music data
over your home net- |
work from Macs or PCs g iTunes
Just select the Share My Music option in
iTunes’ Sharing preference pane.
There are two SoundBridge models: the
$500 M2000 is 17 inches wide and features
a 512-by-32-pixel dot matrix display; the
$200 (or $250 with a Wi-Fi card) M1000 is
10 inches wide and has a 280-by-16-pixel
dot matrix display. The M1000’s display is
identical to the display on Slim Devices’
upgraded Squeezebox ($464; April 2004—
see “Squeezebox versus SoundBridge”). The
dot matrix screen lets the SoundBridge dis-
play waveform graphics while it’s playing
music, It also has a simple remote control.
Sound Design
Both SoundBridge models have the same
interesting design—they’re anodized metal-
lic tubes with black plastic caps on each end.
You pop off the right-hand cap to attach the
SoundBridge’s power cord and RCA, coax-
SoundBridge
ial, or optical audio cables. Behind the left
cap are networking options: an Ethernet
port and a CompactFlash slot.
‘Those plastic caps make it inconvenient to
attach or detach a cable, but once you plug
everything in, the SoundBridge has an unde-
niably clean design. (A small rubber stand
keeps it from rolling away; Roku sells a wall-
mounting kit for $30.
hard to read the text on the
smaller model from a dis-
tance, but the M2000's
play is readable from across a room
Limited Server Software
The SoundBridge can play only a few music
formats natively: MP3, unprotected AAC, and
uncompressed AIFF and WAV. (iTunes Music
Store files won’t play on the SoundBridge, just
as they won't play on any hardware device
other than the iPod and the AirPort Express;
a forthcoming software update will bring
support for WMA files and Windows-based
music servers from Microsoft and Music-
match.) However, the SoundBridge can play
additional formats when it uses its competi-
tor’s software. The SoundBridge can connect
to a computer running Slim Devices’ free
SlimServer. Once the SoundBridge connects
Squeezebox versus
to SlimServer, its menu system changes to
match the menu on the Squeezebox and its
predecessor, the SIiMP3. SlimServer can
translate file formats such as FLAC, Apple
Li , and Ogg Vorbis into a format the
SoundBridge can understand. And it provides
| other good features, including a
b-browser interface, a clock, and support
for browsing for Internet radio streams.
(Natively, the SoundBridge can play Internet
radio stations only if they have been added to
an iTunes playlist.) The SoundBridge’s soft-
ware also doesn’t properly order songs or
artists whose names begin with the—our
Beatles tracks were filed under T (Roku says
this will be fixed in its forthcoming update).
Although its onboard software may lack
polish today, the SoundBridge is a network-
connected device, so it can connect to the
mothership at Roku and download software
updates. This feature works well.
Macworld’s Buying Advice
If you want to listen to your digital music in a
computer-free location, you should seriously
consider a networked music player. With a
uniquely clean design and built-in {Tunes sup-
port, a readable display, a simple infrared
remote control, and a reasonable price, Roku's
SoundBridge M1000 will fit well in your
home stereo system. [)
PROS: Suppo for compressed and uncompressed
audio; digital and analog ports; easy to set up;
reasonably priced.
CONS: Software has some rough edges; text is not
When Roku announced the SoundBridge last January, the
music player had one feature that Slim Devices' new
Squeezebox couldn't match: a 280-by-16-pixel dot matrix
screen. Hampered by an old-style character-based screen,
the Squeezebox couldn't display graphical visualizers, offer
multiple fonts, or generate truly readable large type. But just before the
first SoundBridges shipped, Slim Devices updated the Squeezebox ($199; with
built-in wireless networking, $279; www.slimdevices.com) with a 280-by-16-pixel dot
matrix display. The Squeezebox is now much easier to read than either its previous iteration or the
SoundBridges because the Squeezebox software supports a variety of easily readable display typefaces,
(Users of the character-based Squeezebox can swap out the old display for $69.)
readable from a distance; no support for encrypted
iTunes Music Store files.
PRICE: $200; with Wi-Fi card, $250
COMPANY: Roku, www.rokulabs.com
RATING: $$}
PROS: Support for compressed and uncompressed
audio; digital and analog ports; easy to set up; text is
very readable,
So which player is better? It all depends on your priorities. | lean toward the Squeezebox, which has CONS: Expensive; software has some rough edges; =
the superior SlimServer software and more file-format options. But the SoundBridge has several unique No support for encrypted iTunes Music Store files. 5
traits, including direct Tunes support and that distinctive metallic-tube design. Still can't decide? Both PRICE: $500 3
companies offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can try both devices out. COMPANY: Roku, wiw.rokulabs.com 2
30 MACWORLD January 2005 www.macworld.com
Catamaran Harbor by Ryan Church
Concept Design Supervisor, Industrial Light and Magic
Made by hand with Corel° Painter”
i i
The FASTEST Version of Painter. EVER.
Download a FREE TRIAL at www. corel. com/macworld Bainter 1x |
Available at: = amazon.com Apple Store ¢ow)|mac<Swarehouse MacMall \MacConnection
REVIEWS
Virtual PC 7
Underwhelming Upgrade Is Perkier
and Friendlier
BY ROBERT ELLIS
When Microsoft took over development
of Virtual PC, after buying Connectix at
the beginning of 2003, it promised Mac
sers a reason to celebrate. With Micro-
soft’s intimate knowledge of Windows, the
company suggested, we could expect a bet-
ter, faster Windows emulator. After several
delays, version 7 with Windows XP Profes-
sional—the first full Microsoft release—
is here. Unlike version 6, it'll run on your
G5, and it includes some improvements.
But we're not ready to pop the cham-
pagne corks.
Alter Ego or Evil Twin?
Virtual PC creates a virtual Windows
machine inside your Mac. You can copy and
paste—and even drag and drop—files from
Windows to your Mac, and vice versa. You
can display a Windows Start menu, as well as
the icons of your running Windows applica-
tions, in your OS X Dock.
Ifyou need to run Windows programs on
your Mac, Virtual PC is a godsend. But
once you get past Windows XP's garish,
mess
Ready to Play Virtual PC 7 doesn’t have 3-D support, but that won't keep you from playing 2-D games such
as Fritz, a popular Windows-only chess program
Dr. Seuss-like colors, you have to adjust
to the sleepy pace. Microsoft describes Vir-
tual PC as your Mac’s alter ego, but some-
times it can feel like the Mac’s evil twin
Microsoft hasn't eliminated the main com-
plaint that has dogged Virtual PC since
it was first introduced seven years ago—
slow performance.
Virtual Performance
Is Virtual PC 7 faster than previous vei
he answer is an unequivocal yes—
maybe.
performance, I ran a battery of
's using two popular Windows utiliti
Fresh Diagnose and Dr. Hardware—after
continues on page 47
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REVIEWS
MovieWorks Deluxe 6.0
Multifaceted Multimedia-Authoring Pa
kage Makes You an Interactive
Auteur—without Blowing Away Your Budget
BY GALEN FOTT
Thomas Edison gazes stoically from the
front of Interactive Solutions’ MovieWorks
Deluxe 6.0.2 software box. Although the
great inventor wasn’t known for writing
code, he would probably have approved of
this multimedia-authoring package. Movie-
Works is a powerful, versatile tool for creat-
ing Web movies, slide shows, and interactive
presentations. Factor in its attractive price,
and MovieWorks is worthy of
DV digitizing and editing in iMovie and
then import the result into MovieWorks.
Animator is the least impressive of the
bunch. The program is useful mainly for
assembling existing frames so that you can
import them as a whole animation into
MovieWorks. A robust application that cre-
ates animated GIFs, such as Adobe Photo-
shop Elements 2.0 ($¢$69; December 2002),
is a necessary adjunct to Animator (and Ele-
automatically fill the gaps between markers
with video clips, creating a sequence of excit-
ing, rhythmic jump cuts.
For animating elements on screen, Author
offers a fairly sophisticated path-based
system complete with naturalistic eases in
and out of motion. It’s even possible to
animate the stacking order of elements, let-
ting an object appear first in front of and
then behind another object. Unfortunately,
Author's white-keying system usually leaves
a white fringe around the edges of irregularly
shaped objects; something like a tolerance
slider or alpha-channel support would be a
welcome improvement. The scrolling-text
feature makes it easy to animate rolling cred-
its, and you can either type your text into
Author or import it from an
om < Won Help
a hearty “Eureka!” from cre- ‘= partes
ative beginners who want to
release their inner Edison.
Supporting Cast
The MovieWorks Deluxe
package can import most
graphic, audio, animation, and
video file formats. It encom-
passes six separate applications;
four of these—Paint, Sound,
Video, and Animator—help
you prepare media for use in
Author, the master application.
The sixth application, Player,
lets you view MovieWorks’
interactive projects; it’s freely
distributed for the Mac and
Windows.
The most full-featured of
the helper applications, Paint
gives you a variety of tools
for creating graphics. Its large
coos?
fale
048.00
[i4| ian) > |}
Main Menu, Sequencer
Scone: Man Mens arent Tene: 00:03.87 |
intone puppetbutt.. Start Te: 00.01.47
iM) nd Teme: 00:45.00
toolbox can be daunting, but
the helpful Tool Tips palette
identifies each tool as you
pass your cursor over it and
No Programming Required You can use Author's easy menu system to create click-
able navigation buttons for your interactive presentation.
outside document; it stays
editable either way.
You can distribute interac-
tive projects viewable with
Player on CD, on DVD (data
or DVD-ROM), or online,
while you can export linear
scenes to QuickTime and AVI
formats or out to your DV
camcorder.
MovieWorks comes with a
printed tutorial booklet to
get you started. While this is
helpful, the thorough and
well-written 80-page PDF ref-
erence guide included on the
e CD is required reading if you
0 really want to master the pro-
gram. A printed version of this
PDF would be nice.
Macworld’s
Buying Advice
Despite the lackluster perfor-
mance of its supporting appli-
cations, MovieWorks Deluxe
is an excellent tool for creat-
gives you usage suggestions.
Strangely, painting is Paint’s weakest func-
tion; brushstrokes made with its Brush tool
aren't anti J, resulting in blocky edges,
and there's no easy way to make small adjust-
ments in brush size. Paint would also benefit
from tools for enhancing imported photos,
such as sharpening and gamma control.
‘The Sound application can record audio
from your computer's built-in microphone
or audio-input port, and it can import tracks
from CDs. You can apply effects such as
Echo and Flange, shift pitch, and adjust
overall volume. There's also a waveform edi-
tor that lets you zoom in to make minute
edits to the audio waveform; unfortunately,
you can’t resize the small application wi
dow horizontally, so you can't see much of
the waveform at any one time.
The Video application can capture video
from a DV camcorder. While the capturing
function works fine, its editing capability is
very crude; you'll be better off if you do your
34 MACWORLD January 2005
ments’ excellent image-enhancing and paint-
ing tools could give Paint a boost, too; a
review of Elements 3 will appear in a forth-
coming issuc).
Leading Player
While the supporting cast may have limited
talents, the Author application is a 080.
‘The interface consists of a project window,
where you visually position graphic elements
in space, and the Sequencer window, a time-
line for working out the duration and
sequence of your media clips. This interface
makes creating a slide show of photos a
painless process: just drag and drop a folder
of pictures into the project window, select all
of them, click on the Auto-Sequence button
in the Sequencer, and choose a transition
style, and you're done. Even niftier, Author
offers a slick editing trick: you can lay down
markers from the keyboard in real time as
you listen to an audio track, and then you can
ing interactive audiovisual
presentations on a limited budget. At $100,
the main application's powerful, easy-to-
use animation and interactivity features
woul
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