MacWorld9807July1998

Upgrades! Turn Your Old Mac into a G3 Speedster, p. 54 THE ESSENTIAL MACINTOSH® RESOURCE www.macworld.com Cool. Macworld’s Exclusive Look at Apple’s Revolutionary iMac, page 17A wwwilacie.com la Cie d2)™ and the La Cie logo are trademarks of La Cie, Lid. ©1998 La Cie, lid, All rights roserved SECURE. Keep your ideas safe from harm in a La Cie d2™ encased hard drive. Made with a rugged metal shell, it comes in a range of sizes and speeds to meet your specifications. LACIE | Mode for ideas. Choose 52 at www.macworld.com/getinfo 54 64 73 2 Features [LAB Quantum Leap BY CAMERON CROTTY Don’t trade in your old Mac just yer —transform that slow, tired workhorse into a wicked-fast thoroughbred. Photoshop Pumps Up BY DEKE McCLELLAND Get ready to rumble with Photoshop's most muscle-bound upgrade ever. Gain the upper hand on Photoshop 5s powerful new features with our Expert Guide. Web Design's New Dynamic Duo BY JASON SNett Graphics heroes Adobe and Macromedia come to the rescue of weary Web new all-in-one ——— Instant ink-jet printer networking, page 40. July 1998 MACWORLD 91 97 102 Create Graphics A Look at FreeHand Lenses BY OLAV MARTIN KVERN See the world differently through FreeHand 8°s lens fills. Web Quarkimmedia on the Web Frontier BY DAVID BLATNER Become fluent in Web-based multimedia without learning a new | age. Motion Ghostly Movie Effects Come to Life By CATHY Apes 1 n how to add spooky special effects to your li ~action foota | | 4 L Van =| Incorporating MacUser Looks like an old Mac... feels like a brand-new G3, page 54. ‘Master Photoshop 5's brawny features, such as spot-color tools, page 64. 21 22 22 23 24 13 17 152 Macintosh video hits the jackpot at NAB, page 23. 10 News Flash iMac Exclusive Get an insider's look at Apple's inventive new consumer Mac. News Apple Profit, Consumer Macs Signal Comeback The new iMac and a million second-quarter profit mark Apple’s upswing. Apple Mines QuickTime in License Deal Apple’s new licensing scheme 77 forces multimedia developers to help promote QuickTime Pro—or pay a price. Merger Mania Hits Mac Market 83 A wave of mergers and acquisitions hits the Mac market's top players. Video Painting Stars in Vegas Cool new video tools steal center stage at the NAB trade show. The Flash Is in the Floppy ‘Toshiba's FlashPath adapter unites SmartMedia cards with floppy- disk drives. Opinion The Vision Thing BY ANDREW Gore Apple of computing— changes the fa ain—with the innovative iMac. The Desktop Critic BY DAVID POGUE Steve scalpel sometimes Jobs’ magic nicks a few arteries. How to Contact Macworld At last—an LCD panel for less than $1,000, page 24. Secrets Getting Through Custom Installs BY TED LANDAU Avoid perilous pitfalls while navigating the road toa newer OS. Quick Tips sy Lon poote ‘Tips, tricks, and shortcuts. Don't fall prey to perils along the OS-upgrade path, page 77. Reviews 26 $$$ PowerBook G3/233; $84%% PowerBook G3/250; 88%%% PowerBook G3/292 High-end portable systems 28 $898% QuickTime 3.0 Pro Multimedia system software 29 $$$ ScanAce 1236s Low-cost scanner 30 $$$ Power Macintosh G3/300 Pro-level system 32 $496 DeEsser 1.0; $896% Fusion:Vinyl 1.0; $848 Fusion:Vocode 1.0; $880% MaxxBass 1.0 Audio plug-ins for Adobe Premiere 34 $9%% Funnel Web Professional 1.7; $4% LogDoor 2.0; 89% LogFM 1.0; 84% Serverstat 2.0.7 Log-analysis tools compared 36 $4¢% LabView 5.0 Instrumentation software 38 $4¢% OmniPage Pro 8.0 OCR software 38 $# Painter Classic 1.0 Natural-media painting software 39 $888 Dramatica Pro 3.0 Fiction/screenplay-writing tool 40 $948 ComLink 302 Printer-sharing device 40 $$$ Action Files Productivity utility 42 $4%% Painter 3D 3-D-model painting software 42 894% webAlias 1.1 Image-map editor 44 $#$% LetterRip Pro 3.0 List-server software 44 $$4% EndNote 3.0 Citation and bibliography software 46 $888 ShareWay IP Professional 1.1 AppleTalk/IP gateway software 46 $868% StatView 5.0 Statistical-analysis software 48 $$$%% MetaSynth 2.0 Image-to-sound conversion software 50 $$$ X-Men: The Ravages of Apocalypse Game conversion for Quake www.macworld.com july 1998 3 Introducing the New For Every Work Environment In Addition To The New Accel-a-Writer e , Designed For General Office Environments, XANTE® Also Offers... Accel-a-Writer 3N - Networking Cater to your workgroup printing needs with all the quality features of the Accel-a-Writer 3, plus... + Receive functionality across multiple network environments with standard Ethernet” (EtherTalk®, Novell® NetWare®, TCP/IP), as well as LocalTalk®, serial, and parallel. Maximize your paper handling for multi-user environments with an additional paper feeder and 500 sheet cassette, bringing standard input capacity to 1,150 sheets with capabilities of up to 3,150 sheets, saving you valuable time and energy. Print large volumes on this reliable, high-performance printer designed to handle the heaviest of work loads. Accel-a-Writer 3G - P Graphics & Prepress Professionals Get your graphics noticed! All the quality features of the Accel-a-Writer 3, plus... Experience greater halftone quality with up to 2400 x 2400 dpi and 150 Ipi. Gain flexibility with high-end graphics features including densitometer support, X-ACT™, Halftone Calibration Technology and much more! Output oversized pages up to 13" x 35.5" for quality posters, full bleed documents, and more, Receive functionality across multiple network environments with standard Ethernet® (EtherTalk®, Novell® NetWare®, TCP/IP), as well as LocalTalk”, serial, and parallel. Industry Standard “Agee! a-Writer> ¢ Up to 13"x 18.5" Output © 1200 x 1200 dpi - itor oia0 co ¢ High Volume/20 Pages - Minute ¢ Adobe’ PostScript’ 3” @ F or $ a) m A 3 For More Information Call: F 800-926-8839 Ext. 2148 Dealers Call: Ext. 2149 www.xante.com WYYXANTE Innovations in Printing Technology »macwor! Id.com/getinfo D AnthroCarts! Configure them the way you want! Lifetime Warranty ¢ Dozens of Shapes and Si Over 75 Accessories ¢ Tough as Nails ¢ Order Direc Call for a free Catalog: 800-325-3841 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM PST, M-F Anthro Corporation’ Technology Furniture* lalatin, OR § ANTHRO ‘ Since 1984. Prices from $299. GSA contract. Available for OEM applications. “’wTI?Y. NTs duWwUl Il Hauwul iu | a orton im ener Andrew Gore exscurive assistant Patricia Carberry-Harris 7 "EDITORIAL _ senior eorroninews Stephen Beale ston eorronsneviews Anita Epler Sstnion corronvoerantaents Nancy Peterson SENIOR ASSOCIATE CONTORS Cathy E. Abes, Linda Comer, Jason Snell, Katherine L. Ulrich ASSOCIATE KDITORS Scholle Sawyer, Brooke C, Wheeler sDITORIAL LAB COORDINATOR Shawn S.J. Sadler CONTRIBUTING EDITORS David Biedny, Henry Bortman, Christopher Breen, Bruce Fraser, Ted Landau, Deke McClelland, David Pogue, Lon Poole, Joseph Schorr, Franklin N, Tessler Lag us oittcron Jeff S, Pitelkau ASSISTANT LAD DIRECTOR Susan Silvius SENIOR LAB ANALYSTS Jefly K. Milstead, Kevin Mitchell | associate .as annurst Gill cory EDIT manacine to1t08 Claire H. Breen cory ewer Paul-Michae Semon cory cortons Elissa Rabelino, Jon Zobenica ART AND DESIGN orston inecron Eleanor Leishman ART DIRECTOR Sylvia Chevrier ASSOCIATE OSIGNERS Martha Katt, Michael Ractary DESIGN ASSOCIATES Jackie Goodman, Jonathan Woolson ONLINE MANAGING EOITOR James 5. Bradbury onuint corroR Philip W. Dyer CONTENT enciNteR Jeff Cheney ASSISTANT CONTENT ENGINEER Jessica Graves Introducing XANTE's Computer - To PlateMaker 3 - To Press! XANTES PlateMaker 3 and Myriad 2 plates give you the first polyester based plate with press characteristics more like traditional plates, but without hazardous chemicals and the extra time and expense associated with conventional processes. The PlateMaker 3 provides : NS + 1200 x 1200 DPI, Upgradeable To 2400 x 2400 DPI Myriad 2 Plates For Up to 150 LPI = man factured « Oversized Output, Up To 13” x 35.5” (330 mm x 901 mm) 3g lu Cl U ~ XANTE’s Accurate Calibration Technology (XACT) by AGFA, for precise dimensional accuracy for XANTE * Optional Negative Enhanced Imaging Technology (NEIT) for quality film negatives and positives * Densitometer Support Call XANTE Toll Free: + Halftone Calibration Technology 1-800-926-8839 Ext. 2150 ~ And Much More! Dealers Call Ext. 2151 Telephone 334-342-4840 - Fax 334-342-3345 NO CAMERA! NO DARKROOM! wovwexantecom AGFA 2 Ca V&XANTE siecsians isa paivisseiccalormeanre Adobe’ PostScript’ 3* Prepress Innovations vena Choose 112 at www.macworld.com/getinfo New PowerBook® G3 Accessories by VST VST Zip"100 Drive * fits into the expansion bay + rugged for mobile use - withstands up to 150. g's * bootable - right out of the box, with Mac OS 8 and lomega Too’s on a 100VB Zp disk ‘ Ightweight - weighs just 10 ounces + high speed - cisk-to-cisk data transfer + back-up data - use 100\VB Zp dsks to archive cttical data and documents tore critical data - protect your ask for addled security wih password protection ‘ful functionaity - same functionality as the lomega Zip ve made especialy for your atop Other Peripherals for your new G3: VST Utimate Mobity Bunde: VST Expansion Bay Hard = VST Auto Adapter VST G3 Charger, Apple® AC Drives in 2GB, 3GB and ‘Adapter and an Apple® Li-ton 4GB capacities The Portable Solutions Specialists VST products also available for the G3/3400, 1400 and 5300/190 VST visit our web site for more inforr 1 www.vsttech.com VST products are avallable through all major distributors, resellers and catalog mail houses [ERE Derren be, 29 a hs Caccey To 30 oe ay raoeracs ot ege o {Grips pues pec by brat axscanore peng ne US and coer cours hepa Macrian we Pow matior Choose 73 at www.macworld.com/getinfo Introducing a New Service to Readers... “66f (SEinio www.macworld.com/getinfo Macworld’s NEW Online Reader Service July 1998 MACWORLD Macworld PRESIDENT AND CKO Colin Crawiord ASSISTANT TO THE CEO. Sharon Sanderson CHIEE FINANCIAL OFFICER Stephen Daniels BUSINESS MANAGER Eos de Feminis ACCOUNTING COORDINATOR Ronda Bittner VICE PRESIDENT OF KUMAN RESOURCES Shelly Ginenthal HUMAN RESOURCES COORDINATOR Ada Yim da publeston of Mac Publating. LLC DISPLAY ADVERTISING SALES VICE PRESIDENT, SALES, & PUBLISHER Mart Sweeney NATIONAL SALES DIRECTOR Steve Plevin (415/243-3509) SALESIMARKETING COORDINATOR Nancy Galanty (415/243-3585) westean aovenrisinc omecron Karl Flken (415/243-3: ) Account extcurive Christine Wong (415/243-3576) NATIONAL ACCOUNTS MANAGER Liz Pabén (415/243-3584) Account excurse Jessica Ross (315/243-3583) aoumasteanve assistant Jesse Wadthams (415/243-3577) avionAt accounts manact Sara Culley (970/327-4499) Account execute Margaret Level Green (415/243-3582) tastenn apventisng piceron Cynthia Ramsey (973/243-1197) manionat accounts manactr Paul Bonarrigo (508/533-4020) | account sxccurne stare (516/277-4134) RESEARCH Stt10R RESEARCH ANALYST Phillip Hibbert MARKETING ice PRESIDENT, MARKETING Vickie Welch St8IOR TRADE SHOW AND EVENTS MANAGER Anna Noctzel encaTIVEStRvices MANAGER Kelvin Gee 7 PRODUCTION Vick PRESIOEN OF MANUFACTURING Anne Foley Paomucrion piatcron (Cynthia Neustade MANUFACTURING TECHNICAL DIRECTOR Clayton Haberman DIGITAL AB COOREINATOR Brian Mullin Ao SALts coonDNATOR Rick Sandoval — "ONLINE 7 rusushan Jeff Jutian NATIONAL ACCOUNTS MANAGER Nicholas Harvey sAg014 COORDINATOR Jamila Johnson redraw, stress scrol , stress render, stress rasterize, stress model, stress filter, stress ... make all of the above happen faster than you've ever dreamed. thout the stress) From the makers of TwinTurbo® come the powerful, perfectly balanced graphics board solutions you've been hoping for. ix3D. boards oliminate those long, gut-wrenching moments spent waiting for your computer to execute the 2D, 3D and video functions on which your creativity depends. ix3D boards IXMICRO's new TwinTurbo 128-30 for never thought possibt check out our Web site for more details. And stop stressin; powered by w graphics power you . Look for us at your favorite retailer, or www.ixmicro.com ~ ix3D Ultimate Rez {or graphics expert who need ovo {oday's largest monitors at extreme fetolutions and color dapthe ~ Wve maintaining fast, ergonomic retresh rates, Ideal tor 20, 20 ‘rephics and CAD applications the ‘Adobe Photoshop, Quark Express, Lightwave 20, and Microstation ix3D Pro Rez for users who noed uneompromng ‘Graphics power und wo routinaly resolutions lke 1192 x 870, Video grade avaiable - a ix3D Mac Rocket provides home and oie ars wth a ‘at of pnw 12 20 ne 90 graphics dg spec et peormance 10 all common operations. Video vporade avaab. Choose 53 at www.macworld.com/getinfo ww | Oixmicro STEP UP TO Macwori Windows® Compatibility Virtual PC™or Apple® Card Upgrade to OrangePC: $399 OrangePC 620 Complete: Come ¥ $499" me OrangePC Windows Compati y Card Macworld 54 ws at jst usat 1438 n Boot! Our new OrangePC 620 is the best priced Macintosh Windows® 95/98 compatibility solution in history. Viral PC™ users can upgrade to OrangePC for only $399, experiencing a giant step up in performance, In fact, the OrangePC benchmarks** four to twenty times faster than sleepy software emulators. The OrangePC 620 answers the “price/performance” question by offering true hardware speed at a breakthrough price that every Mac user can afford! It actually has a Pentium® — compatible 200MHz processor (user upgradeable to + 300MHz) with 16MB of real RAM (user upgradeable to 128MB) on board. This means you can run any PC application on your Mac as fast as a real PC with the ultimate in compatibility. Now Available From: And the OrangePC’s Version 3 software has significant improvements as well. It sports 32- bit drivers facilitating CD-ROM long file names and NDIS3 networking. Our exclusive SnapShot™ feature allows a Windows screen to show the Mac environment inside a Win 95 window and conversely, the Mac screen to display the Windows environment. It’s like a “picture in picture” on your TV! et EIT rine Craus Fiacorm Conmaci (300) 615-3183 Orange Micrs inc. “18 Years of Innovation and Excellence” 1400 N. Lakeview Ave., Anaheim, CA 92807 (714) 779-2772 So take a step in the right direction - upgrade your software emulator to real hardware for only $399, or buy the OrangePC outright for $499, ires 7/31/98 www.orangemicro.com 10 July 1998 MACWORLD HOW TO CONTACT MACWORLD Subscription Questions Phone 303/665-8930 Fx 303/604-7455 Suleription Services PO. Box 58529, Boulder, CO 80322 World Wide Web www adnet com/adubs/macworld/service Reprints and Permissions rust have permision before reproducing any material from woe White to Macworld, Reprints and Permissions, 301 Howard St. 16th FL. San Francico, CA 98105; Indude a phone number To order reprints of your company’s editonal coverage, ca 800/825-4237 Back Issues of Macworld Back sues subject to avalabity) ave $7 persue for US. delivery ($12 overseas); prepayment in US. funds is required. Send check oF money crder to Back ives Department. Zif-Davs Inc, PO, Box $313. Boulder, CO 00322313). ‘Macworld in Microfilm Macworld is avaiable on microtim and microfiche from UMI, 300 N. Zeed Ra, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346; 313/761-4700, ‘Macworld Editorial ‘The editors af Mtacworld welcome you tps. compliments, or complaints \We are unfortunately unable to look up stories fom past issues, recom mend products: or dagnose yout Macintosh problems by phone, e-mal cr fax. Conzact Apple tol-tree at 800/538-9696, ext. 500, for Informa: ‘Son on usergroups in your area (Our offices ae located at 301 Howard St. 16th Fl, San Frans (918105; 415/243-0505, tax $157282-0766 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Dac all comments and suggestions regarding any aspect of the magazine to letters@macworld com. Due to the high vclume of mal received, we can't respond personally ta each letter. We reserve the right to edt. submissions, Al letters published in Macworld or Macworld Online become the property of Macworld Quick T1PS Send your questions or tips on how to use Mac comput rs, peripherals, or software to the attention of Macworld, Quick Tis, 307 Howard St, 16th Fl, San Francico, CA 94105; fax 415/482-0766; sGmacword com. Plate include your name, address, and ‘OH YEAR RIGHT! You want Go skip our vacation sO you can get a faster mac?” Sometimes Newer Is Smarter Than New. You do need a vacation. Or at least that's what your family keeps telling you. But, you also need a faster Mac. It's a tough decision, but maybe you don't have to make that choice, because there is another op' Technology MAXpowr"G3 processor upgrade card, They're easy to install and can potentially save you thousands of dollars compared to buying a whole new system. Newer Technology makes processor upgrade cards for almost every PowerMac”*and are adding more machines to the list with faster processor speeds as you read this. With a MAXpowr G3 card, you'll have a faster processor with a much faster cache. In fact, it can make your old Mac one of the fastest desktop computers available even compared to Apple's new screaming G3 machines. Thanks to Newer Technology, your older, slower PowerMac has new life, Which makes waiting for a brand new machine a lot less painful, not to mention taking a vacation right now feasible. And for those of you who just can't be pulled away, Newer Technology even has a G3, upgrade for your PowerBook, perfect while the rest of your family relaxes. n> newer C To find out how to make your old Mac newer visit www.newertech.com or call 1-316-943-0222 Choose 55 at www.macworld.com/getinfo Fol NeWer Technology, inc. All other names are trademarks of their respective holders. © Newer Technology: 1998 whole Arai at these ade fine rears. ee! + Creates great slide shows fast! + Adds instant special effect transitions! atts * Works great with digital cameras & scanners! fy EX cnc p> 900.846.0111... i WwW.metacreations.com COMPUES Home Photo and Business Presentation Player corw:zsion inion icine see wionns tetra tpn ines eten Choose 5 af www.macworld.com/getinfo Kai's Power JULY/1998 Mixed Feelings about Cross-Platform Coverage HY ARE YOU RUNNING ARTIC Ss about Windows and Intel machines? ‘This isn’t why I subscribed to Macworld. I'm not some Mi ing frea but I love my Mac and read Macworld to learn of news about the Macintosh plat- form. If I ever need info about a Wintel machine, I will buy one of those magazines, IAN WALTER Laguna, California UST READ THE ARTI ES ON living with Windows (April 1998)— great stuff ! I now work in an office with three PC users; my colleagues may be able to scroll a huge spreadsheet in milli onds, but they come to me if they want something scanned, rescaled, placed on a transparent background, or saved in a dif- ferent format. We have a network with a Windows NT server, and all share a Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 5, I also have SoftWindows 95, which is extremely slow even on a Power Mac 7300/200. Ithink Apple could strike a killer blow if it offered hardware integration via a PC-compatibility card in every new Mac. This will seem like heresy to hardened Mac addicts, but I'm one too! Bru Dapy Caterham, Surrey, England iy. OUR APRIL ISSUE WAS THOR- oughly depressing. I don’t need you to remind me of how pervasive those Windows 95 and NT platforms are by devoting a whole issue to how I may accommodate them in my computing life. Having to deal with these boring boxes every day at work is bad enough. What I want to hear is how we're all going to move the Mac platform back into the mainstream. And I want Macworld to be pushing toward this end, not pulling me over to the competition. I ean subseribe to ine for that. Bos Grireiri Mesa, Arizona REALLY APPRECIATE YOUR COVER- age of Mac-and-PC compatibility es in the April issue of Macworld. Ie’s good to see thatyou are on top of the most pressing issues facing Macintosh users in an increasingly PC-dominated world. Curis Soromavor Brooklyn, Yew York Save My Mac! RAVO ON TI Essentials” series of articles in your April 1998 issue! It’s very difficult to get accurate information that relates to real- world computer networks. I’d like to add to Henry Bortman’s information (“Save Your Mac!”): there és a built-in feature of Lellers Windows NT Server 4.0 that allows Mac- intosh creator codes with Windows pro- grams. This feature allows Windows clients to double-click on a Macintosh- created file and have it opened by the appropriate Windows application. However, Macintosh files still appear as generic file icons to Windows users. The way around that, of course, is to request that Macintosh users use DOS. extensions—not a pretty sight. Kent B.A WERWICK Berkeley, California HENRY BORTMAN'S ARTI- W cle gives good tips for coexisting in a corporate Windows world, many of us Mac users will never have this option. What we need are good Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) arguments that will enable us to keep our Macs in the first place. What are the support costs of a Windows NT popu- lation versus those of a Mac population? T's been a profound disappointment for those of us in mixed-platform envi- ronments that Macworld, the EvangeList mailing list, and Apple itself have not helped us with well-documented TCO ammunition over the last several year Tt would have been so much help if Macworld had taken up the TCO argument, rather than providing last-ditch advice about file swapping with Windows 95. ADELE FRAMER San Francisco, California Reconsider PC-Compatibility Cards READ YOUR ARTICLE SLAMMING [ PC-compatibility cards, and I think they are worth a second look (“Can the Mac Really Do Windows?” April 1998). PC cards are a good value if you consid- continues www.macworld.com July 1998 13 LETTERS OR c ON © Disks formatted with HFS+ can’t be selected as virtual-memory disks on 680N0 machines, but they can on any PowerPC-based machine (Secrets, April 1998). NetUSA’s Mac-in-DOS Plus 2.0 supports CD-ROMs and SCSI devices (“Mac Life: Preservers,” April 1998). er the cost of a new monitor, Ethernet card, file-sharing software, removable- storage drives, and other accessories needed to make that bargain PC a fully functional and productive workstation. This is especially true for graphic artist publishers, or anyone who has a signi- ficant investment in large monitors and peripherals. Having used PC-compatibility cards for many years, I find the ability to switch back and forth between the Mac and Windows on my main screen a great productivity booster. You can also switch between Windows 95, NT, or 3.1; DOS; or separate versions of the same OS quite easily by having separate volumes set up for cach. Keitn GRancer San Rafael, California Intergraph ExtremeZ MU ADMIT, | WAS SHOCKED ¥ Vieeees ee how competitively you ranked the Intergraph ExtremeZ 2D sys- tem when compared with the Macs your article “Publishing Power Play” (April 1998), My shock came because you seemingly neglected to make a point of the Intergraph's much-superior hardware. You made a glaring mistake in your analy sis by mentioning only in passing that the Intergraph is equipped with not one but vo 300MHz Pentium I CPUs. But the fact that all of the Mac tems were able to maintain a margin of performance close to that of the Inter- graph system, despite its dual processors, only serves to indicate the Mac's superi- ority in the field of publishing. And of course this is only in addition to the Mac’s ease of use and intuitive OS. Add this to the fact that comparably equipped, single-processor Mac systems cost about $2,000 less, and you are left with an unappealing, overpriced (oh, did 14 July 1998 MACWORLD Window: forget to mention ugl T-running doorstop. Joux ANGELINE Middteroxn, Conncerscat We compared the Intergraph system with the fastest Macs ze could find and matched the com- puters not only in terms of video and RAM but also the hard-disk subsystem. While we would've liked to barve tested the dual-processor Intergraph against a dual-processor’ G3 system from Apple, that beast doesn’t exist, and probably never will Fundamentally, though, the number of pro- cessors inside a box doesn't matter—ahat does is box fast the computer is and hue much it costs. As we showed, the Intergraph system is somewhat faster and more expensive. And although Inter- wuph did a heroic job of making it reasonably easy 10 integrate the ExtremeZ, 2D into a Mac emci- ronment, all that impressive hardizare doesn’t change tivo facts: the ExtremeZ. is expensive, and it doesn’t rua the Mac OS.—Bruce Fraser and Ea. REVIEWING THE INTERGRAPH N I xtremeZ workstation, the author missed a major drawback that clearly ben- efits the Mac: dual monitor setup. Ifa user wanted to hook up dual monitors to the ExtremeZ workstation, a minimum of $1,999 would be needed for Intergraph's “second monitor option.” Prices go up from there. Even then, how well would NT handle such a setup? On Macs, even cheap, $150 cards could do the trick. Dervis Comiskey Witton, Connecticut TaxCut Doesn't Cut It RECENTLY PURCHASED KIPLINGER TaxCut (about an hour before I received my copy of Macworld that said Macln'Tax was better) and got a rude sur- prise when I opened the box (Reviews pril 1998). ‘The box was labeled “For Win/Win 95 and Mac,” but inside there was a litle yellow card that said, “Atten- tion Macintosh Users! The Macintosh version of Kiplinger ‘laxCut for the 1997 tax year is not included on the enclosed CD-ROM. We apologize for any incon- venience this may cause. but we will release the Macintosh software as soon as possible. We expect to have it finished before January 1, 1998. Ican't believe Block Financial can get ! Imagine buying a plane ticket and getting a slip of paper that says, “Sorry for the inconvenience, but we don't actually have a plane. We'll let you know when we get around to buying one.” After a phone call, the “update” (that is, the product I already paid for) was in the mail. | wonder how many people opened their TaxCut on April 14 only to find out they couldn't file in time, Curis Swen Monterey, California 56 Kbps? Not So Fast. OUR APRIL 1998 ARTICLE “THE Modem Showdown,” regarding 56K modems, leaves out one important prob- Jem that, more than any other factor, lim= its the modems’ speed: the phone line to the central office and the central-office switching equipment. I have a Global Village K56flex modem, and the fastest 1 am able to access the phone line is 44 Kbps, and that is rare. Ninety percent of the time itallows me only 33.6 Kbps, and occasionally only 28.8 Kbps, even though Tam using a 56-Kbps phone number sup- plied by my ISP. Until the local phone companies clear the noise from their lines, 56K modems are a waste of money. FRANK NANKIN Miami, Florida Saving Money Online READ “THE CHEAPSK SG to the Web” and was surprised that David Pogue had not found the deal-mac Web site, www.deal-mac.com (The Desktop Critic, April 1998). I searched the Com- puterESP site for Te card, and the best price was $196; deal- mac’s price was $179. deal-mac is specifi- cally for Mac owners, which is another reason why I like it. R. Mou.or Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Letters should be sent to Letters, Macworld, 301 Howard St L6th FL, San Francisco, CA 94105; via 1766; or electronically via CompuServe . MCE Mail (294-80 (Macworld!), or the Internet (letters@macworld ). Appl scom). Include a return address and daytime phone number. Due to the high volume of mail received, ‘we can't respond personally to each letter. We reserve the to edit all letters. All published letters become the property of Macworld, Ze fs © |Get up to speed fast with the Canvas 5 Video Workshop Series (%53% SRP each). Discover the many uses of Canvas 5 with guided, in-depth instruction, ‘fa CANVAS 5,8) only complete graphics and publishing solution. TP in Photoshop”? f Industrial strength vector illustration in XPress® 4? r dreams, Web publishing out-of-the-box in any of these? It's simple; with Canvas 5, you get all the illustration, photo editing, page layout, and web publishing tools you need in one fully integrated, easy-to-use application. Vector and raster art — create both in Canvas 5. Text editing, Image editing in Illustrator”? page layout, and graphics production — Canvas 5 can handle it. Scan- ning and photo editing? You can do that, too. And web work? Use Colada™, our Java™ - based publishing tool, to instantly convert any document to a web page or an entire web site. Call 800.622-6827 (305.596.5644) www.deneba.com/macworld/ This ad was created using nothing but Canvas 5. Try that with any other single graphics program © Copyright 1998 Deneba Software. 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Joining + Next-Generation SmartCursor wll, ‘ih ———— Choose 46 at www.macworld.com/Getinfo MiniCad ss waco of Dh Al ther bran rd pron To learn more about MiniCAD’s extens feature set and why e the program has been called “the easiest, most cost-effective I way to des 1-888-MINICAD our Web site: www.dichlgraphsoft.com MiniCAD 7, which retails for a suggested price of $795, comes with 18 months of FREE Tech Support and a 30-Day Money- Back Guarantee! é Defying Gravity .. . Again The Vision Thing by Andrew Gore THE iMAC IS THE MOST CONCRETE PROOF YET THAT APPLE IS ACTUALLY THINKING DIFFERENT N TECHNOLOGY, ‘THERE ARE those seminal moments when things change—really change. The debut of the Macintosh on January 24, 1984, was one of those moments. Before that day, the computer world was all command lines and arcane abbreviations. After- ward, it was all icons and mice. Although few people really knew at the time just how big a change was coming, it was the original Macintosh more than any other product that fired the first shot of the per- sonal-computing revolution. Irs far too soon to say if the intro- duction of the iMac on May 6, 1998, will prove to be another of those seminal moments in computing, but it certainly marks a major change for Apple. After years of Apple’s panicked rushing to stay apace with an industry that was passing it by, the iMac puts Apple out ahead again. ‘The reasons are simple: the iMac is inno- vative, elegant, inexpensive . .. and e one’s going to want one. Hug It? Click It? When I first saw the iMac—with Steve Jobs himself lifting the veil to reveal the cmatiiAeamputes underneath—I couldn’t help but think of Volkswagen's new Beetle. ‘The parallels are striking. Just as the Beetle harkens back to its flower-powered ancestor, the iMac capi- talizes on nostalgia for the all-in-one lassie” Mac of 1984. But that’s where the similarities be- en old and new end: The new Beetle isa wonder of nineties engineering, offer- ing the latest bells and whistles with an incredibly functional, comfortable, and striking industrial design. The iMac is also a technological wonder. For starters, it’s the first Mac to sport the high-speed and to-use Universal Serial Bus (USB), It also offers IrDA-compliant infrared networking, 100BaseT Ethernet, surround sound, a bw built-in modem, fast SDRAM, and a G3 or. That's right—powering the : is a modern, speedy G3 processor (complete with backside cache), not some hobbled version of yesterday's chip tech- nology. Steve Jobs put it best: “iMac is next year’s computer for $1,299, not last year’s computer for $999.” nd technology aside, there’s that striking industrial design: translucent plastics; easily accessible (but well-dis- guised) ports; and a more clever use of curves, angles, and varied textures than even the new Beetle can match. (The iMac, however, does lack the Beetle’s built-in flower vase.) It’s a strangely pleas- ing fusion of functionality, nostalgia (it even hi ble” progenitor), and ed what if it looks a little like an alien chick- en egg? It’s one very coof alien chicken egg. Then there’s the way Apple is w ping up this stylish package as an Internet- access terminal for real people. The Mac is synonymous with ease of use, and the Internets not. With the iMac, Apple may finally be able to get consumers every where to make the connection between those two facts. As has been discussed at some length in this column before (see “The Vision Thing,” June 1998), one of the computer industry’s consistently frustrating prob- Jems is that most of the people in the world who can afford a computer and are com- fortable using one already own on That's not to say there aren't literally millions of potential new computer users out there, but computers will have to become significantly more compelling be- fore those people will pony up the cash for one. And as Windows-based PC man- ufacturers learned last Christmas, a small price tag alone isn’t compelling enough. With the iMac, Apple is attempting to combine the Mac’s greater ease of use, prepackaged Internet access, a relatively low price, and a unique design to make those new customers take the plunge. Truly Different Steve Jobs says the iMac proj- ect started exactly one day after his installment as interim CEO. last July. If so, then it can truly be said that the day Jobs stepped up to bat was the day Apple stopped following and started leading again. ‘The iMac proves thatall of Apple’s talk about “thinking different” wasn’t empty hype. ‘Today, Apple seems to be marching down a path different from the one its been treading the past few years. Ie the path taken by a company that realizes it must commit to innovation in order to succeed. And it’s right where Apple belongs. Will the iMac be as important as the original Mac? Only time will tell. But I will say this: As I sat in the Flint Center The- ater on May 6, 1998, and watched Steve do his thing, it sure felt like 1984 to me. m Send your feedback to visionthing @macworld.com, Andy promises to read his e-mail as soon as he gets back from the Volks- wagen dealership. www.macworld.com July 1998 17 Macworld Exclusive The iMac Cometh Apple Trades on Nostalgia with a Groundbreaking New Consumer Mac By Andrew Gore and Anita Epler 17A July 1998 MACWORLD RETRO IS IN, AND STEVE JOBS KNOWS IT. HE'S REACHED INTO APPLE'S past in hopes of blazing a trail back into the hearts of consumers, with a daring new entry-level Macintosh: the iMac. Two years ago, Apple quietly exited the low- cost computing market, citing an inability to compete with manufacturers of V dows-based PCs on price and time-to-market issues. Since that time, the com- pany downsized and, according to interim CEO Jobs, became much more efficient and able to deliver new products faster. As a result, Jobs says, Apple is ready to reenter the consumer market with a dramatic new Macintosh that relies as much on nostalgia as it does on bold technology and design. At $1,299, the iMac offers leading-edge capabilities, a breathtaking design, and a bargain price. For years, Apple relied on pedestrian designs for its desktop computers, leaving visual innovation to PowerBook designers. The iMac is different: it demands to be noticed, sporting a fresh, ultramodern design that is at the same time very familiar. It’s hard not to recognize the iMac’s lineage: the all-in-one case, the tiny foot print, even the integrated handle—all sug- gest the original Macintosh. But this is where the similarities end. Using translu- CLEARLY STYLISH The round mouse's translucent case lets you watch its two-color cent plastics of “ice” and “Bondi blue” (in ball rotate and spin as you drag your cursor—a hypnotic effect. Like those of the G3 homage to the Australian beach), Apple’s PowerBooks, the iMac's keyboard sports function keys and inverted-T cursor keys. Like industrial-design group created a comput- all things iMac, the key caps are transparent, too. The keyboard offers two USB ports er without a single straight line—even the (one is used to connect the mouse) and a USB hub, to allow daisy-chained devices. A keyboard components are curved. The hardwired cable connects the keyboard to the iMac, leaving the second port free. c allows through just enough light to suggest the outlines of the iMac's internal - 7 This RJ-45 jack looks works without revealing too much. : like a standard Ether- Every piece of this system—from pr ene net port, but it com- cables to key caps—uses translucence, Sao eae : bines 10BaseT and and light to great effect. The @ high-speed 100BaseT round mouse reveals a tracking ball that’s : ; : capabilities in a sin- half white and half blue-green—watching : = 4 gle, autonegotiating the mouse while it’s in motion can be mes- a t connector. merizing. Adding to the space-age effect, Apple will use holographic stickers for port identifiers, FCC tags, and other labels. A translucent white flip-down foot props up the keyboard, coordinating nic ly with the iMac’s aquamarine appendage. If the iMac’s built-in Twin hot-pluggable 12-Mbps Universal A33.6-Kbps software SRS speakers don’t Serial Bus (USB) ports are the iMac’s only modem lets you surf Slightly Ahead of Its Time move you, you can connection to the outside world, in lieu the Net at moderate Breakthrough design doesn’t stop on the attach external speak- _of the familiar SCSI, serial, and ADB ports. speeds. The iMac iMac's surface: a cutting-edge logic board ers here. An audio-in The keyboard uses one plug, leaving the supports faster con- hides behind the futuristic plastics. A jackis located nearby. _ other free for a scanner, external modem, nections via external 233MHz PowerPC processor com- printer, removable-media drive, or other USB modems. plete with a 512K backside cache—a com- extemal device. bination that should yield respectable per- formance—lies at the heart of the newly designed board. Like the new G3 Power- Books (see Reviews, in this issue), the iMac . Z 7 uses SODIMM RAM, a common memory CHRP-Like Simplicity Reborn standard on Wintel PCs. This design choice should make it easy and inexpen- USING WIDELY AVAILABLE TECHNOLOGY TO REDUCE COSTS WAS ONE OF THE KEY sive to expand the iMac beyond its stan- dard 3 ie of RAM, up to its 128MB concepts behind IBM, Motorola, and Apple's now-abandoned Common Hard- maximum. A daughtercard houses the ware Reference Platform (CHRP) specification. The iMac isn't CHRP-based, but CPU, two RAM slots, and a new Open- it's darn close, featuring PC-standard RAM, USB ports for connectivity, and— Firmware ee aad ‘CHRP most surprising—an OpenFirmware ROM. mplicity Reborn”). : The CPU daughtercard connects to Those who followed the CHRP saga will recall that an OpenFirmware ROM the main logic board via a speedy, 66MH contains only minimal hardware-addressing instructions, unlike current Mac PCI system bus. The iMac comes with the ROMs that carry complex, machine-specific instruction sets. With Open- ATI Rage Ic 2-D/3-D accelerated-graph- Firmware, most instructions are instead loaded into RAM. ics chip set and 2MB of SGRAM for video, As a result, the Mac OS takes up more RAM on the iMac, but future ROM Connectivity features include 10/100BaseT Z : , Ethernet via an autonegotiating RJ-45 jack, updates will be much easier to make, shortening the production times for new a 4-Mbps IrDA infrared port, a 3. Macs dramatically. As the iMac’s marketing manager told us: “The work we did on = modem, and two 12-Mbps Universal Seri- CHRP is the main reason why we could develop the iMac in just ten months." www.macworld.com July 1998 178 Built-in stereo speakers offer simulated surround sound (SRS). USB: Ready for Prime Time? PERHAPS THE BIGGEST VARIABLE IN THE IMAC’S EQUATION IS Apple's renunciation of its old connectivity standbys—SCSI, ADB, and traditional Macintosh serial ports—in favor of the Universal Serial Bus (USB). The bad news is that no current Mac peripherals support USB. Unless printer, scanner, or other external-device manu- facturers take the time to write special drivers and provide adapter cables, chances are that iMac owners won't be able to use any devices they already own—or those released before the iMac's debut. It's physically possible to connect non-USB peripherals to the iMac with an adapter, but peripherals vendors must write USB drivers before their devices can communicate with the iMac. Apple claims that hardware vendors will offer a wide vari- ety of USB devices for the iMac, although the company was unwilling to reveal names at press time. Surprisingly, Apple itself has no plans to offer critical devices such as floppy and 17 july 1998 MACWORLD ‘The iMac's integrated microphone is si ilar to those found on Apple's AV moni- tors and all-in-one systems. The 15-inch (with 13.8-inch viewable area) shadow-mask monitor features high refresh rates—117MHz at standard reso- lution, down to 75MHz at maximum res- olution—to reduce flicker, and a 0.28 dot pitch for enhanced readal A full-speed (4-Mbps) IrDA-compliant infrared port lets you beam data to other IrDA devices such as PDAs, PowerBooks, and printers. Gone are the days of loading software from floppies—at least Apple hopes so. You'll use this 24x ATAPI CD-ROM drive to install all your programs, unless you download them from the Web. The CPU sports its own power button. A green light indicates power is on; amber denotes the iMac is asleep. Twin headphone jacks let two users use a single iMac—a feature that's especially welcome in classrooms. Like its keyboard, the iMac has a flip- down foot that tilts and raises the system. Zip drives and instead will rely on third parties. Although USB offers an inexpensive and speedy alterna- tive to traditional serial and ADB, it's a poor substitute for SCSI because the speeds of USB devices are interdependent: the more active devices on the bus, the slower each USB peripher- al is likely to perform—a major issue for storage products. But the good news is that a machine equipped with USB can support up to 127 logical devices, including disk drives, keyboards, mice, modems, scanners, cameras, printers, and even monitors. Still, the iMac's two ports might seem rather skimpy, considering that every peripheral device has to have its own connection. However, because USB uses a hub topology (like Ethernet), adding more ports is simply a mat- ter of connecting a powered USB hub, a feature built into many USB devices. The keyboard that comes with the iMac acts as such a hub: both the mouse and another USB device can be plugged into it. al Bus (USB) connections. Rounding out the package, the iMac comes with audio-in/out ports on the side of the unit, two headphone jacks on the front of the case, and a low-noise digital- audio chip that supports simulated sur- round sound (SRS) on the iMac’s two inte rated speakers. A rear door offers access to a slid out chassis that houses the logic board and media bays, making it easy to upgrade both RAM and storage devices; a 4GB EIDE hard drive and a 24x ATAPI CD- ROM drive are standard equipment. Like the original Macintosh, the iMac sports a built-in display. The shad- ow-mask 15-inch monitor offers a 13.8- inch viewable area with a 0.28 dot pitch; it supports 24-bit color at 640 by 480 and 800 by 600 pixels, and 16-bit color at 1,024-by-768-pixel resolution. Beefing ;RAM to 4MB provides 24-bit color at the highest resolution. up the $ The Missing Links Considering all these amenit , the most shocking part of the iMac isn’t what it offers, but what it lacks. The iMac has no floppy drive, which might be for able if there were a Zip drive or other remov- able-media option, but there isn’t And most dramatically, this new con- sumer offering has no SCSI port, no stan- dard serial ports, and no ADB ports. Apple has opted to replace these familiar con- nections with USB, a high-speed serial architecture that has suffered from slow adoption on the Wintel platform despite its technical advantages (see the sidebar “USB: Ready for Prime Time?”). Cur- rently, no USB devices exist for the Mac The Once and Future Macintosh ets peripheral issues ironed Once Apple out—and Apple assures us that it will in time for an August launch—it seems the iMac is destined to be a hit among the Form follows function on the iMac's back: these arcs and dots aren't just decorative, they're actually ventilation holes. Like the original Mac, the iMac is totable. An integrated handle lets the 40-pound unit be easily moved and offers a place to thread a security cable. As with Apple's recent all-in-one educa- tion Macs, a handy rear door allows access to a slide-out chassis housing both the main logic board (and its RAM-and-pro- cessor daughtercard) and storage devices. You'll find the iMac's ports behind this stylized door. Underneath, a raceway keeps peripherals’ cords and cables from cluttering the iMac’s clean lines, All iMac components—yes, even the power cord—are translucent. installed base of Mac users, hungry for a machine they can be excited about. The real question is whether Apple will be current Mac users—or even non-computer users—to buy an iMac able to convince non. Here, like so many vendors, Apple is relying on the popularity of the Internet. It’s hoping that the Mac OS's legendary ease of use, combined with the iMac’s multitude of built-in networking options (100BaseT is a natural for DSL and cable-modem connections, for example), will help bring more users into the Mac- intosh fold. Apple has set its sights high for the iMac; although they declined to state how many units will be manufac- tured, marketing managers told us that the iMac launch would be “probably the biggest in Apple history.” Will this tosh saga be Apple's success story at last Only time will tell. m atest chapter in the Macin- www.macworld.com July 1998 17D FIVE POWERFUL PRINTERS. 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On April 15, the company reported a $55 million pW profit for the second quarter of fiscal 1998, much higher than the $21 mil- lion analysts had predicted Since Apple also posted a $47 million profit for the first quar- ter, it has now a ed its first back-to-back profitable quar- esting that Steve Jobs's cost- ters since 1995, st interim cutting efforts—as well as brisk sales of G3 Macs—are bearing fruit. Adding to the momen- tum was Apple's announcement on May 6 that the company’ consumer machine, the iMac, will ship in August. Internet-Age Mac Being billed as “the Interne Mac,” the iMac will feature a 233MHz G3 processor, 32MB RAM (expandable to 128MB), 10/100BaseT Ether- net, a built-in 15-inch backlit display, an internal 33.6-Kbps modem, and USB and infrared ports—all for $1,299. But as hopeful as this news is, Apple is not out of the woods yet. While this is the second Consecutive quarter in. which s picked up, the number is still a far cry from the 932,000 Macs sold in the fall of 1996. Apple shipped 650,000 units in the quarter—about half of them G3s—up from 635,000 in the first quarter. At the same time, though, second-quarter revenues declined to $1.4 bil- lion after holding steady at $1.6 billion or more the previous four quarters. Chief Financial Officer Fred Anderson blamed this in part on an industry trend toward lower system prices, as well as declining sales of PowerBooks and imaging hardware—printers, scanners, displays, and digital came However, he expects higher sales in the fourth quarter as Apple ships new G3 Power- Books (see Rei in this issue) and rolls out the iMac. The results confirmed that Apple’ first-quarter profit was not a fluke and reinforced a www.macworld.com owing per Street tha ption on Wall Jobs has at least temporarily reversed the com- pany’s decline. Since taking t July, Jobs has ruthle ly cut R&D and administrative costs, pared down Apple's product line, and boosted the company’s advertising efforts. Before Jobs came aboard, conventional wisdom held that Apple’ survival depended on continues july 1998 24 increased market share. Jobs's strategy, in contrast, has been to maximize revenue from existing customers in the graphics and education mar- kets. In announcing the most- recent results, Anderson made it clear that Apple still sees fer- tile ground in its installed base. “That's our first priority,” he said, noting that many users have yet to upgrade to the est generation of speedy Jobs's strategy seems to be working—one reason why the search for a permanent CEO | News package Quicken. Shortly after Apple’s quarterly carnings were announced, Intuit declared that poor sales were forcing it to phase out the Mac version of Quicken—an especially dis- turbing sign of waning confi- dence, since Intuit CEO Bill Campbell sits on Apple's board. However, at Apple's annual shareholders meeting April 22, Jobs hinted that Intuit might reconsider and told sharehold- ers to expect a joint announce- ment from the two companies Q4 Qi Q2 Qa a4 "95 1996 Profit/Loss in Millions Q1 a2 Q3 a4 Qi a2 1997 1998 For the first time since 1995, Apple scored back-to-back profitable quarters. has been put “on the back burner,” says Anderson. Quicken for Mac Is Back Another victory for Apple has come courtesy of Intuit, maker of the popular personal-finance May 5, Apple and Intuit an- nounced not only that they will jointly promote Quicken 98 but also that Intuit plans to ship a new version of Quicken for Macintosh in 1999, Apple Mines QuickTime in License Deal DEVELOPERS MUST PAY FEE OR RUN PROMO. by Stephen Beale pple’s QuickTime software is widely regarded as one of the major enabling technologies for pro- ducing multimedia and digital video. But until recently, QuickTime provided no direct benefit to Apple’s bot- tom line. Now, with the release of QuickTime 3.0, Apple has come up with a new licensing scheme that forces: multimedia developers to make a choice: either pay licensing fees or distribute a movie promoting the benefits of Apple's $30 QuickTime Pro authoring software. Going Pro When you download QuickTime 3.0 from Apple’s Web site, you also get an encrypted copy of QuickTime Pro, which offers several enhancements to the Merger Mania Hits Mac Market AS APPLE FIGHTS ITS WAY BACK TO PROFIT- + On March 5, La Cie, a vendor of displays, ability, a wave of mergers and acquisitions has hit some of the best-known vendors in the Mac market: * On April 5, Electric Image, developer of the Mac-based Electricimage Animation System, an- nounced that it will merge with Play, a vendor of Windows-based digital-video software. * On March 31, Global Village announced that it would sell its modem business—and Global Village brand name—to Boca Research. Reborn as One- World Systems, Global Village will refocus on devel- oping Windows NT-based network servers. * At Seybold New York in March, Wamnet, a high-speed digital-transmission service for graphics professionals, announced that it had acquired 4-Sight, a developer of ISDN prepress software. scanners, and storage devices, announced that it would purchase the assets of mail-order disk-drive vendor Alliance Peripheral Systems (APS Technolo- gies). Mac-clone vendor APS had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January. * Quark, after acquiring Mfactory last year, said in March that it would discontinue the company's Mtropolis multimedia-authoring program. So what are Mac users to think? Eric Lewis, manager of personal systems research for Interna- tional Data Corporation, cites two main factors be- hind the merger mania: the shrinking Mac market and ongoing consolidation in the PC industry. Glob- al Village in particular, he says, was unable to succeed as a Mac-only modem vendor.—MACWORLD STAFF base software, including the ability to run movies full- screen and cut and paste one movie into another. To run QuickTime Pro, you call Apple and pay $30 to obtain a decryption code. Prior to QuickTime 3.0, developers of multimedia- authoring software and CD- ROM titles could distribute QuickTime with their prod- ucts at no charge. Under the new program, developers must pay Apple SI for each copy of QuickTime they dis- tribute, or include a short movie urging users to up- grade to QuickTime Pro. The movie plays when you in- stall QuickTime and remains thereafter on your desktop. If you delete the movie, it plays again when you run the multi- media software. Save Your Movies For the most part, QuickTime Pro adds new features not avail- able in previous versions of QuickTime. But there’s one big ception: the ability to QuickTime movies to your hard disk. In QuickTime 2.5, Apple’s MoviePlayer soft- ware let you save QuickTime movies downloaded from the Web. However, to save movies under QuickTime 3.0, you'll need QuickTime Pro— at least officially. Soon after Apple released QuickTime 3.0, users who installed the software found that they could save movies in MoviePlayer 2.5.1, which is part of QuickTime 2.5. but Iso works with the new ver- n. If you want to save QuickTime movies but don’t want to fork out $30 for QuickTime Pro, be sure you keep a copy of MoviePlayer in a location where it won't be overwritten by the new software. Developer Reaction Mul- timedia developers appear to be divided about the new licensing terms. Some have ned that the deal bur- dens them with new financial and bookkeeping responsibili- ties if they want to avoid being promotional vehicles for QuickTime Pro. Others say they can understand Apple’s desire to make money from the software. “Apple has provided real enabling technology and they rve to get paid for it,” s Scott Bowman, director of research and development for Insyne Media, a Los Angeles— based multimedia producer. However, he thinks Apple should reduce the $1-per- copy charge for high-volume projects. He also believes that some developers will leave it to their customers to down- load QuickTime, bypassing the licensing process entirely. Video Painting Stars in Vegas POST, PUFFIN, AND DISCREET LOGIC SQUARE OFF AT NAB SHOW by Brooke C. Wheeler ew video-painting programs are making it easier than ever to create frame-by- frame video effects on your Mac. With prices rang- ing from $895 to $2,495, these programs offer sophisti- cated tools that were once the province of elite film-produc- tion houses. At the recent National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show in Las Vegas, several vendors demonstrated new or upgraded video-paint- ing products for the Mac. Natural Media Roto, a $995 program from Post Digital (408/469-7678, www _postdigital.com), combines natural-media painting tools Canon, Epson Join Megapixel Parade DIGITAL-CAMERA. MANUFACTURERS ARE PACKING IN _ the pixels with a new neration of high-resolution cameras. The new PhotoPC 700 from Epson. America (310/782-0770, www.epson.« com) sports a 1.3-megapixel CCD, producing a total resolution of 1,280 by pixels. The $800 camera fea- ‘tures 4MB of internal sto storage and can also store images on CompactFlash media. . Canon (800/652-2666, www.c ;¢csi.canon.com) has intro- duced a pair of new Saker ‘the PowerShot Ad and Power- Shot Pro 70. The $700 PowerShot AS (pictured) features 1,024-by- 768-pixel resolution—just shy of megapixel capa- bility—and stores images on an 8MB CompactFlash card — included in the pack- age. It's scheduled to ARNOLD T1080 ship in July. The PowerShot Pr Pro 70, , scheduled to ship in the third quarter for less than | '$1,500, features 1,536-by~ -1,024- pixel resolution, a 25x Flash cards, MACWORLD ST ni seb a two ores with real-time video playback and rotoscoping capabilities; the latter let you create com- include keyframe animation, a Bézier tool for drawing cus- tom shapes, and a_particle- painting tool that lets you c ate dynamic sparks and light ning effects. The software was featured in Apple CEO Steve Jobs’s NAB keynote as an example of QuickTime 3.0 capabilities. More Commotion Chal- lenging Roto is Commotion, a $2,495 video-painting program from Puffin Designs (415/ 331-4560, www.puffindesigns com), developed by a spe- cial-effects supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic. Puffin recently announced Commotion 1.5, which fea- tures a motion-tracking tool that lets you add an unlimited number of points to track object movement over mul- tiple frames. Video Vectors Meanwhile, Discreet Logic (514/393-1616, www.discreet.com) announced a new version of the video- painting tool formerly known as Iluminaire Paint. Paint 2.0 uses vector-based drawing tools to add special effects to video frames. You can get the entry-level version for $895, or an enhanced version that offers motion-tracking and real-time video-playback ca- pabilities for $1,995. Eat Your Fibre In other NAB news, several vendors introduced products that sup- port the high-speed Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL) networking protocol. Transoft Technology 50, www.transoft iled the FibreNet Storage Area Network, a cross- platform networking system that includes FC-AL PCI cards, switches, and server soft- ware. Prices range from $1,995 for a 4-user package to $4,995 for 200 users. Hammer Storage Solutions (510/608-4000, www -hammerstorage.com) an- nounced the SledgeHammer Pro FC array, a 12-bay FC-AL disk art tosh, Silicon Graphics, and Windows NT systems; prices range from $13,000 to $50,000, sMac Engineering (530/ 885-4420, www.charismac .com) demonstrated Fibre- Share, its $1,500-per-seat soft- ware package that provides the ability to manage shared stor- age networks. Atto Technology (716/691-1999, www.attotech com) showed FibreBridge, a $3,49. re Channel~to- Ultra SCSI converter, A number of companies introduced new digital-video products. Videonics (408/866- 8300, www.videonics.com) previewed the Effetto Pronto, a $5,000 package that com- bines compositing, titling, and 3-D_ video-effects software with a PCI accelerator board. Scitex Digital Video (650/ 369-5111, www.scitexdv.com) and Radius (408/541-6100, www.radius.com) introduced new versions of their digital- video-editing pa Macromedia (415/25 www.macromed demonstrated its lon, Final Cut video-e ware but said the package will not ship until this summer. ProMax ‘Technology (714/ -3977, www,promax.com) introduced Movie Tweaker, which provides color-correc- tion tools for video. NewTek continues www.macworld.com july 1998 23 (210/370-8000, www.newtek .com) introduced LightWave 5.6, an update to its 3-D mod- ling, rendering, and anima- tion package. The Flash Is in the Floppy FLASHPATH LETS YOU USE SMARTMEDIA IN YOUR MAC'S FLOPPY DRIVE by Kevin Mitchell martMedia cards— stamp-size media also known as solid-state floppy-disk cards— offer a cost-effective means of storing images in digital cameras. But until now, you needed a PC Card adapr- er and PC Card der to copy the pictures directly to your Mac. Toshiba, which invented SmartMedia, has stepped into the breach with an adapter that lets you use the cards in a standard floppy- disk drive. Like a Floppy ‘Toshib: FlashPath consists of an adapter that resembles a 3.5- inch floppy disk, along with software that allows use of the adapter in most floppy drives. ‘Toshiba released a Windows version of the software in March and planned to ship a Macintosh version by the end of May. Instead of the thin, rotat- ing platter in conventional diskettes, FlashPath uses a fixed magnetic strip to trans- fer data from the SmartMedia card to the drive heads. You still hear the chunk-chunk sound as the heads move from track to track, but no more si + sound from spin- ning floppies. Toshiba says it has tested the adapter with a wide range of disk drives, 24 July 1998 MACWORLD ‘apa June and 32MB t News including the drives used in Apple-branded Macintoshes and Mae clones. Extra Capacity The ad- apter, which sells for $99, can handle the current 3.3-volt SMB SmartMedia cards, which sell for $89, as well as 2MB (S25) and 4MB (S39) ards, which operate at 3.3V or 5V. Toshiba expects the SmartMedia ‘ds to reach ties of 12MB_ before In addition to transferring images from digital : the adapter can be used as a high-capacity diskette, al- though cost per megaby is higher than with other media, such as Zip disks. Olympus plans to sell the adapter as an option for its digital cameras. XML Drives Web Graphics Proposal ADOBE SUBMITS XML VECTOR FORMAT TO W3C by Stephen Beale he eXtensible Markup Language (XML), a new Web authoring standard that offers greater flexibility than HTML, has become the launching pad for a vector- graphic Adobe Systems. format proposed by In April, ViewSonic Slashes LCD Prices THE PRICE GAP BETWEEN LCD MONITORS AND THEIR CRT counterparts keeps shrinking. In April, ViewSonic (909/ 869-7976, www.viewsonic.com) broke the $1,000 barrier by announcing a 34 percent price reduction in its ViewPanel display line. The 13.8-inch VPA138, formerly $1,366, now sells for an estimated street price of $995. Also reduced: the 14-inch VP140, from $1,459 to $1,145; the 14.5-inch VPA145, from $1,595 to $1,195; and the 15-inch VPA150, from $2,195 to $1,445.—MACWORLD STAFF Adobe submitted a proposal for the XML-based Precision Graphics Markup Language (PGML) to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the industry body that governs Web standards. Based on the software that underlies Adobe's Post- Script as well as its Portable Document Format, PGML will support features such as clipping paths, progressive rendering, font embedding, and the ability to include vec- tor graphics in HTML text streams. The language will also provide simple animation functions, such as motion paths for objects. PGMLs scripting capability—to be implemented in ript or some other scripting lan- guage—will let you produce sophisticated animations not directly supported by the language. PGML poses a challenge to Macromedia's Flas rently the most popula tor format for the Web, and also provides an alternative to the animation track in QuickTime 3.0, But before it can b acknowledged as a standard, PGML must work its way through the W3C accredita- tion process, and some key aspects of the technology have yet to be addressed. For example, Adobe's submission notes that PGML verbose syntax will require file com pression, but does not sp which compression scheme should be used. PGML provides a hint of XML potential for extend- ing the Web's graphical capa- bility. Its ability to let Web authors and software devel- opers define their own mark- makes it highly cus- able. And because XML. support will be built into future versions of leading Web browsers, you won't need special plug-ins to view the content. rome Two years running. #1 maker of digital copiers in America. Ahead of Canon, Xerox and everyone. And our lead is increasing. Ricoh Group's #1 position in digital copiers increased to a 36% market share - a growth rate of 298%. Why? Unsurpassed image quality. The friendliest digital technology. Ricoh reliability. An amazingly wide range of solutions with improved productivity at surprisingly affordable prices. Check out our full line of digital office technology. Call us at 800 63 RICOH. Meet us online at www.ricoh-usa.com Market information - Dataqu Report. = Ricoh Corporation is ed trademark of Canon, Inc. Xeroxis a registered trademark of Xerox Image Communication Choose 4 at www.macworld.com/getinfo PowerBook G3 NEW PORTABLES DELIVER BREAKTHROUGH DESIGN, FEATURES, AND SPEED i » IN ITS HEYDAY, THE |) PowerBook epitomized the best of ) all things Macintosh: ease of use, J} innovation, and that certain je ne S is quoi not found anywhere e! But over time, poor design and reliability issues caused the once-mighty mobile Mac to fall from its lofty height: Ir’s been a long climb back from ignominy, but with the latest PowerBook generation, Apple once again leads the market in design, performance, features, and—something no previous PowerBook has been able to claim—value. Heavenly Design With the new PowerBook G3 line, tinctive design is once again a hallmark of the mobile Mac. The sleek black chassis i appropriately Batcave-esque, since this curvy case incorporates an array of clever gadgets and hidden tricks. For example, a combination of smooth and textured case surfaces ensures a solid grip. Among the other design enhancements are quick-release handles for removing expansion modules—including dual batter- ies—from the PowerBook’s two bays, a pop-up keyboard to ease access to internal slots, labels on the inside of the port door to help you navigate, and a modem port intuitively located next to the PC Card slots. The keyboard alone sports a half dozen improvements: scissor switches for quieter, firmer typing; inverted-T cursor keys; access to alternate key functions (for numeric or PC-standard commands); and brightness, mute, and volume buttons. The new PowerBook’s built-in speakers deliver sound quality and stereo separa- tion far superior to those of previous models. The batteries even sport button- tivated LED power gauges. No-Compromise Performance The new PowerBook G3—confusingly in name to the original $5,700 identic: PowerBook G3 (see Review: which was. pril 1998), ssentially an upgraded Power- Book 3400—is based on the same logic- board architecture as Apple's Pentium- trouncing Power Mac G3 systems, so it’s no surprise that these new models are the fastest portables Apple has ever built. But what might come as a shock is that these portables are only nominally slower than their desktop counterparts. You can configure your new Power- Book G3 with one of three processor-and- bus combinations. At the low end, Apple offers a 233 MHz processor with a 66MHz REAL RATINGS OUTSTANDING: Reviews you can trust: Macworld rates only final shipping products, not prototypes. What we review is what you can actually buy. VERY GOOD: $96 Goon: $48 FLAWED: $$ _ UNACCEPTABLE: § 26 July 1998 MACWORLD system bus and no backside cache. Next up, a 250MHz G3 pairs with an 83MHz system bus anda IMB backside cache run- ning ata 2:1 cache-to-bus-speed ratio; the top-of-the-line 292MHz G3 comes equipped with the same cache and bus as its 250MHz sibling. The new PowerBooks don’t just sport wicked-fast processors, though; they also contain the fastest graphics subsystems ever in a PowerBook, based on the ATI 3D Rage LT chip set. Featured Player ‘The list of standard features on Apple's new portables is long: built-in 10BaseT Ethernet, a VGA-out port, full-speed IrDA infrared networking, ewo high- speed CardBus PC Card slots, and a 20x CD-ROM drive. A floppy drive isn’t stan- dard on the low-end configuration, but it’s on the list of add-ons that help the new PowerBooks really shine. Remember when buying Mac meant living with limited options? No 13.3-inch and 14.1-inch active-matrix sereens with a resolution of 1,024 by 768 pixels. The two larger screens come stan- dard with S-Video out, which is optional with the smaller screen. PowerBook mod- els with a 12-inch screen ship with 2MB of VRAM and displ of col- ors on the internal screen and millions on an external monitor. Those with a 13- or 14-inch screen come with 4MB of VRAM and provide millions on both displa: You can equip your new PowerBook with a 2GB, 4GB, or 8GB internal drive. You can also trade the CD-ROM drive for a DVD-ROM drive for $200 through Apple’s build-to-order Web site, or $ through a dealer. You can get fast SDRAM preinstalled in 16MB, 32MB, 64MB, 128MB, or 192MB configura- tions. And you can add an optional K56flex internal modem. For evaluation purposes, we tested representative low-, middle-, and high- end configurations. Our low-end system sports a 233MHz processor, a 12.1-inch display, 32MB of RAM, 2MB of VRAM, and a 2GB hard drive and sells for $2,299. In the midrange, we looked ata 250MHz system with a 13.3-inch display, 32MB of RAM, 4+MB of VRAM, a 4GB hard drive, and a 56K modem, which costs $3,899. Our $5,599 high-end 292MHz model ships with a 14.1-inch display, 64MB of RAM, 4MB of VRAM, an 8GB hard drive, and a 56K modem. Although these model systems Apple has produced in years— desktop or portable—a few minor com- plaints remain. You can no longer run the PowerBook with the lid closed, due to thermal considerations. Overall, it’s still too big and heavy, weighing in at about 7.5 pounds and measuring 12.7 by 10.4 by 2.0 inches, re the best Macworld's Buying Advice If you've been thinking about purchas- ing a PowerBook, now’s the time. Other than a couple of minor shortcomings, Apple hasn’t missed a trick with this new line of portables. If you can swing it, foot the bill for the 14-inch display. It’s bright, sharp, and offers almost as much viewable space as a 15-inch desktop monitor. You'll also want to opt for the 250MHz or 292MHz G3; stay away from the 233MHz if possible. For a few hundred bucks more, you can have a PowerBook with significantly more speed. Of the configurations we tested, our favorite was the high-end system. Com- pared with similarly equipped Windows notebooks, it turns out to be a good deal—despite the $5,599 price—offering the best of everything. For those with slightly less expansive budgets, our idrange system came close to matching es of the high-end Power- Book, for $1,700 | ‘ANDREW GORE PowerBook 63/233 RATING: $§§ PROS: Least-expensive G3 PowerBook; excellent features, CONS: Large size for its relatively tiny screen; lack of backside cache; no floppy drive, COMPANY: Apple Computer (408/996-1010, www.powerbook.apple.com). DIRECT PRICE: $2,299 as tested. PowerBook 63/250 RATING: $999%: PROS: Great mix of features and performance; top value, CONS: None signif- icant. COMPANY: Apple Computer (408/996- 1010, www.powerbook.apple.com). DIRECT PRICE: $3,899 as tested. PowerBook 63/292 RATING: @$98¥: PROS: Excellent feature set with no compromises; good value. CONS: None significant. COMPANY: Apple Computer (408/996-1010, www.powerbook.apple.com) DIRECT PRICE: $5,599 as tested. No Compromises: G3 PowerBooks Close In on Desktops tam est overall performance, Longer bars and higher numbers are better. Bold indicates the best result in a subsystem test. » New system. ‘SpeedMark scores are relative to that of a Power Macintosh 7100/80, which Is assigned a score of 1.0. MacBench 4.0 scores are relative to that of a Power Macintosh 6100/60, which is assigned a score of 100. > Apple PowerBook G3/292 Apple Power Macintosh 3/266 > Apple PowerBook G3/250 > Apple PowerBook G3/233 ‘Apple PowerBook 3400c/240 ‘Apple PowerBook 1400/16 —— "The PowerBook G3/250 and G3/292 have a fixed 1,024-by-768-pixel display. As a result of longer scroll times for larger displays, their SpeedMark scores are slightly understated. SPEEDMARK MACBENCH Processor | Disk Graphics | FS 27 342 | 67s | i cen a 286 Cl P25 407 37 226 22 [ ce aE 123 | Behind Our Tests —Maoworld Lab testing supervised by Gil Loyola For detaled information on our benchmark suite, see “DayStar Millennium G3/307," Reviews, June 1998, or www.macworld.com/tests/, www.macworld.com July 1998 27 | Reviews QuickTime 3 Pro APPLE'S MU Ss MULTIMEDIA SOFTWARE GOES CROSS- PLATFORM PPLE’S IMAGE MAY HAVE become a bit tarnished, but the company’s crown jewel, Quick Time, shines brighter than ever with the latest release; the multi- media system software that revolutionized video and audio production and spawned new virtual-reality technologies is now making waves on the Web. QuickTime 3 offers codecs for better- quality Web audio and video, built-in spy cial effects and filters, and support for both a broader array of file formats and low-bandwidth vector animation. Besides forming a superior foundation for pro- fessional video editing, version 3. en- hances QuickTime VR, Apple’s virtual- reality technology, and is feature-identical on Mae and Windows platforms. (For details, see News, April 1998.) But while multimedia developers knew what QuickTime 3 would bring to the sereen, they didn't know they'd have to sit through a commercial to enjoy these benefits, Until you pony up $30 for the Pro version, you're treated to an annoy- ing “upgrade to QuickTime 3 Pro” bs once ad. nd if you got Quic 3 as part of a CD-ROM title, youn the message every time you start that title). When you upgrade to Quick’Time 3 Pro, you geta billboard-free desktop. You also get rudimentary video-editing capa- versatile file-importing and -exporting features, and the ability to save movies that are embedded in Web pages. MoviePlayer Turns Pro Among the enhancements in the Pro vei sion are better authoring and playback in MoviePlayer, a simple utility that accom- panies QuickTime 3. MoviePlayer Pro is no Adobe Premiere, but it does let you assemble movies by dragging and drop- ping selections. You can also extract audio tracks, convert audio files into Quick- ‘Time movies, export movie frames as image files, and more. And when you export a movie, you can apply special effects and filters (see “Making Movies”). With MoviePlayer Pro’s Get Info command, you can examine many of a movie's attributes—to determine, for example, the duration, compression 28 July 1998 MACWORLD scheme, and sound formats. You can make modifications, such as adding copyright information and specifying alternate-lan- guage audio tracks, and you can resi S. ze and rotate Mo’ What you don’t get with MoviePlayer Pro is documentation, For that, you have Making Movies QuickTime 3 Pro's MoviePlayer Pro lets you apply effects and filters to clips when you export them. The Film Noise filter, shown here, sim- ulates scratched, faded movie film to cither go to Apple's Web site or down- load PDF versions from www.bmug.org/ quicktime/mp3docs/. If you're willing to endure the daily nagging, you don’t have to upgrade to QuickTime Pro to take advantage of its best features. Third-party apps such as Premiere and ‘Terran Interactives Medi: ner Pro can use QuickTime 3's new codecs; so can MoviePlayer 2.5, when used with Movi Player authoring extensions. (Apple has removed MoviePlayer 2.5 and the exten- sions from its site, but they're still availa ) able from shareware and freeware vendors.) Think Windows—to a Point One of the most remarkable things about both versions of QuickTime 3 is that all of the preceding applies to Windows 95 and NT as well as to the Mac OS (previ- ous versions of QuickTime for Windows were limited to playback functions). In tests on Pentium-based machine, QuickTime 3 Pro for Windows was on a par with the Mac OS version in terms of performance and interface. Apple h done an exquisite job of moving its crown jewel over to The Other Side. At the moment, however, several of Apple's export extensions and utilities aren't yet available for Windows. The list includes several QuickTime VR-related extensions as well as a tool that creates reference movi t’s more, some Windows applications—ineluding Pre- miere 4.2—don't support QuickTime 3. Until these applications are updated and QuickTime for Windows utilities appear, the Mae will remain the preferred plat- form for making QuickTime movies. Browse and Buy QuickTime 3 new browser plug-in enhances Web-based QuickTime by giv- ing youa Settings dialog box in which you can specify your connection speed. ‘The plug-in can then work with QuickTime 3 reference (multiple data-rate) movies to download the clip most appropriate for your connection speed. The new plug-in also greatly enhances QuickTime VR by supporting low-resolution streaming pre- views and URL hot spots in VR movies. If you want to save movies that ha been embedded in Web pages for later viewing, you must upgrade to QuickTime Pro; Apple removed that feature from the plug-in’s hase version. You can’t buy QuickTime 3 Pro ina box; the upgrade is sold only via Apple’s Web site. After you download and install the standard version of QuickTime 3— all 7MB of it—go to the QuickTime Web, site's upgrade page and enter your credit card information. You'll then get a serial number to plug into the QuickTime Set- tings control panel. (My virtual shopping trip went smoothly: I had a serial number within one minute and an e-mail confir- mation within ten minutes.) Macworld's Buying Advice Because Apple is letting software devel- opers license and distribute QuickTime 3 Pro with their wares, you may not h to pay the $30 fee to go Pro. But if you aren't willing to wait, fire up that brows- erand buy it; there are more than enough goodies in the upgrade to make it worth the modest price.—sia He10 RATING: §899% PROS: Broad array of enhancements; superb cross-platform compatibil- ity. CONS: No bundled documentation; some authoring tools not yet available for Windows: incompatible with some Windows applications, COMPANY: Apple Computer (408/996-1010, www.apple.com). LIST PRICE: $30 ScanAce 1236s BUDGET SCANNER DELIVERS MORE BITS FOR FEWER BUCKS HE SCANACE 12368, FROM Pacific Image Electronics (PIE), brings the cost of 600-dpi, 36-bit color scanners to a new low. Al- though it’s no serious threat to costlier scanners with comparable specs, its respectable performance and $180 street price make ita solid contender for entry-level users. Its software, however, places considerable demands on both the Mac and its user. PIL’s stripped-down ScanAce lacks some basics, including a power switch. Plugging itin turns it on; after 15 minutes idle, it shifts into a power-saving mode. An external power adapter keeps the sean- ner light and small but power strip= unfriendly. Built-in active SC tion is nice; hiding the SCSI ID selector 31 termina on the scanners base isn’t, The bundled Presto ImageFolio ap- plication is similarly spartan. In contrast, the remarkably full-featured Jetsoft Art- Scan Pro plug-in offers levels of control from fully automated operation to low= level manual tweaking. It’s even well doc- Preview Umax Astra 6005* —— Microtek ScanMaker V300 > PIE ScanAce 12365 ———— 2a *Editors' Choice, November 1997. i 7 =, umented. Notable f include batch scanning, drag-and-drop operation, atures ColorSync-based calibration, art scanning mode that converts scanned images to EPS files for draw programs. By default, Art-Sean auto- matically performs cropping | setting, producing yy and easily. ‘These the vibrant colors anda vector line: and le scans quick scans lac and sharp details of mid scanners, but match anything range we've scen at the sub-$200 price point. You can get truly impressive results with a hands-on approach to Art-S as you're patient. an, so long ntext-sensitive help Sean’s many f tures, but the tools themselves straightforward, The powerful color-correction dia- log box is too small and cramped to make precise adjustments easily; the curves and mncisely defines Ar ren't so levels endpoints are also confusingly reversed from those in Adobe Photoshop flect the final sean. The sharpening dialog box is better and don’t accurately designed, but Photoshop crashed when the preview feature was used. Clicking the zoom tool on an already-zoomed imag unintuitively produces high-resolution previews in the main window—and this, too, caused crashes, Allocating more memory makes Art- Scan more stable, but even at default lev- cls, its RAM appetite seems voracious for an entry-level scanner plug-in. The Sean- 's box incorrectly says the software works with an 8MB Mac Hj; in reality, Art- Scan is Power Mac-only, and works slug- gishly on a 32MB system. The Si slow anAce 1236s also logged the st times of any scanner in Macworld Lab’s recent t You ¢: minute off the color-scan time by using n shave nearly A Slice of PIE ScanAce (left) can't approach our reference drum scanner’s colors and clarity (right), but its price is hard to beat Art-Scan’s Speed Quality mode, but you'll spend more time compensating for the reduction in image quality in postscan edit ng than you'd save with this choi Macworld's Buying Advice If you're one of the rare folks who have a Power Mae with at least 64MB of RAM but modest finances and scanning needs, the ScanAce 1236s is hard to beat, Art an’s excellent features and quality are big pluses, but its rough edges are likely to frustrate many users.—veren m4 stoLLER RATING: $48 PROS: Inexpensive; good scan quality; feature-rich scanning plug-in. CONS: Slow; software bugs and interface quirks; for Power Mac only, COMPANY: Pacific Image Elec- tronics (310/618-8100, www.scanace.com). LIST PRICE: $219. Value-Priced Scanner's No Speed Champ mr Best result in test. All times are in seconds, Shorter bars are better, Products listed in order of overall performance. > New product. GRAY SCALE COLOR = = i 3 = 1 Sean Preview Scan 2 23.8 7 = 27 = 360 = = —- 1 id Our Tests For detailed information on our scanning benchmarks, see “Sean It," November 197.—Macworld Lab testing supervised by Suzanne Courteau www.macworld.com july 1998 29 | Reviews Power Macintosh 63/300 MORE SPEED SPEED, BUT EXPANSION. REMAINS LIMITED OU'D THINK THAT APPLE would have gotten the mes age by now: high-end users, particu- larly digital-video producers, need slots. Lots of them. But slots, alas, are the one thing the new Power Mac G3/300—the fastest Mac that Apple ver shipped—ain’t got. With Apple’s new custom-system program (see “The Build-to-Order Dilemma,” May 1998), Power Maes be pure! gazillions of different configurations. The system we looked sported a 300MHz PowerPC G3 proces- sor with a IMB backside cache and 128MB of RAM. The processor bus clocked at 66MIIz; the cache bus at 150MHz. Our test system contained two 4GB ultrawide Quantum Viking drives connected to an Atto Ultra/Wide SCSI controller card. In addition to built-in graphics RAM, the system contained an IXMicro ‘Twin Turbo 128 graphics acce erator. For networking, it included 3 10/100Base’T’ network adapter card in addition to its built-in LOBaseT port. Overall, this new 300MHz Power Mac G3 outperformed Apple’s previous top-of-the-line model (the 266MHz G3 by a whopping 20 percent, due to major speed improvements in both processing and graphics speed—though MacWorks’ DayStar Millennium G3/307 (see Rev June 1998) is still the speed champ. And options abound. You can choose twin RAID-formatted 4+GB or 9GB drives, for example. If your Mac doubles s your home entertainment center, you sed in can request a DVD-ROM drive in pl ofa CD-ROM drive. Systems can be pre- configured with anywhere from 32MB to 384MB of RAM, and by the time you read this, there should be a PCL-based Apple FireWire card option. And yes, you can opt for a 56-Kbps internal modem. But despite this panoply of options, the Power Mac G3 falls short when it comes to the most important aspect of flexibility: expandability. In case you lost count, our test system shipped with all three of its PCI slots already filled. A user who, for example, wanted to install Apple's FireWire would have to forgo high-speed newwork- ing, high-speed disk access, or graphics Moreover, the Power Mac 33 systems offer only three RAM slots, so if you need more than 384MB of RAM— and many of this system's target users card in this system acceleration. Power Macintosh 6100/60, which is assigned a score of 100. ‘MacWorks DayStar Millennium G3/307 > Apple Power Macintosh G3/300 Apple Power Macintosh G3/266 ‘Apple Power Macintosh G3/233 ‘Apple Power Macintosh 9600/300 *RAID disabled. SPEEDMARK do—you're out of luck. If you need addi- tional RAM or PCl-card expansion, you'll want to turn to the DayStar Millennium or the Umax SuperMac S900Base (see Reviews, March 1998)—at least while they’re still around. And how does Apple stack up in price? It’ difficult to compare the Power Mac G3/300 with the MacWorks and Umax offerings, because these companies don’t offer configurations similar to that of the Power Mac we evaluated. But we did check out Dell’s Web site to see how Mac and PC pricing compares, and the picture isn’t pretty. For $3,643, you can buy a Dell Dimension XPS R400 config- ured almost identically to our $4,779 Power Mac G3/300 (except for the Dimension’s 400MHz Pentium II proce less! Ouch, en if you concede that the PowerPC G3 isa faster processor than the Pentium I, tha’s gotta raise some eyebrows. Macworld's Buying Advice If you're in the market for a high-end Mac, Apple's put you ina bit ofa quandary. For the moment, Umax and MacWo offer more-expandable systems, but it’s unclear how long either vendor will remain in the Mac market. Speedy as the Power Mac G3/300 is, it fails to addr the needs of many creative professio Apple badly needs a tower model at the top of its line, with both PCI and RAM. slots to spare.—venay voRTian Is. RATING: 94% PROS: Fastest Apple system yet; RAID option. CONS: Limited RAM and PCI expansion. COMPANY: Apple Computer (408/ 996-1010, www.apple.com). DIRECT PRICE: $4,779 (as tested). Apple High-End System Still Not the Fastest Mac ‘mam Best overall performance. Longer bars and higher numbers are better. > New system. Bold indicates the best result in a subsystem test. scores are relative to that of a Power Macintosh 7100/80, which is assigned a score of 1. ‘MacSench 4.0 scores are relative to that of a MACBENCH Disk Graphics aoe C— Behind Our Tests Lab testing supervised by Gil Loyola 30 July 1998 MACWORLD For detailed information on our benchmark suite, see “DayStar Millennium G3/307," Reviews, june 1998, or www.macworld com/tests/, This EPS image was printed on an inkjet without StyleScript This EPS image was printed on an inkjet with StyleScript See? StyleScript turns your inkjet into a genuine Adobe PostScript printer Ka Adobe PostScript Call now: 888-842-5307 or visit: www.infowave.net tur owave 73.3600 FAK: 604,873.36 If you've been using your inkjet to print EPS clip art and graphics, you've probably seen the “jaggies”. StyleScript is a software solution that eliminates jaggies by turning your printer into a genuine Adobe PostScript printer. For only $99, you can print: * crisp clean EPS images @ sharp PostScript fonts at any size # improved screen/dither patterns # more accurate color StyleScript supports inkjets from Apple, Canon, Epson, and HP including the HP DeskJet 1120C. StyleScript. Choose 32 at www.macworld.com/getinfo [Reviews Audio Plug-ins for Adobe Premiere — AND ENHANCE AUDIO QUALITY TOOLS CREATE COOL EFFECTS HETHER YOU WANT TOADD weird sound effects to your digital-audio files or make your tracks cleaner and richer, four new audio plug-ins you these capabilitie: miere. Opcode Systems’ Fusion: Vinyl 1.0 and Fusion:Vocode 1.0 plug-ins make clean digital audio sound like a warped, ve within Adobe Pre- scratched record and make instruments sound as if they're talking; MaxxBass 1.0 and DeEsser 1.0, from Waves, enhance the bass and tonal qualities of music and recorded voices, Pick and choose to amend your plain-vanilla audio tracks. Funky Effects Opcode’s Fusion:Vinyl 1.0. essentially dirties up clean digital audio with the real- world sounds of abused vinyl records. The controls include Record Surface ffects such as Dirt, Static, Hiss, Wear, ched, and Warp; Turntable/System Nostalgic for Damage Opcade's Fusion:Viny! plug-in scruffs up clean digital-audio sound with adjustable warp, scratch, and tumtable-rumble effects to mimic a damaged vinyl record. rumble of 33 tables; and a variety of fun presets such as Left In Trunk, which faithfully mimic how a record would sound after being left in the back ofa Pinto for a week. Fusion: Vinyl works its son with physical modeling sampled the plug-in uses custom algorithms to replicate the process of audio-quality degradation. Fusion: Vinyl is easy to use, produces incredibly realistic vinyl arti- facts, and is simply a cool audio toy. usion:Vocode 1.0 is a bit more eso- 45-, and 78-rpm turn- magic of using sounds of dirt and noise on vinyl, 32 July 1998 MACWORLD teric than Vinyl. Vocoding involves using one sound to modulate another. a human voic lator, you could process a sample of piano sounds; the result would be piano notes that sound as if they’re spoken by a voice. Fusion: Vocode lets you use any sound as a modulator, and the CD-ROM includes a decent variety of sampled sounds to start For s a modu- ew: nple, using your experimentation. Ittakes a little more work to get useful, pleasing results with Fusion:Vocode than with Vinyl, but the former does an admirable job of making the power of audio vocoding accessible. Gimme Some Bass Music that lacks punch often suffers from To add some tracks, MaxxBass 1.0 bass-enhaneement plug-in. weak bass. “whomp” to bass-weak Waves created the MaxxBass not only increases the vol- ume of bass frequencies, but it also adds low-frequency harmonies to reinforce existing bass sounds. It’s powerful and easy to control, and its variable audio fil- ter and dynamic audio-compression con- trols let you remove very low frequencies to improve power without the audio’s becoming “boomy” or muddy. Most important, as you change its parameters, MaxxBass generates real-time-preview audio loops. MaxxBass is really superb for beefing up underpowered audio clips. Ssssay That Again? High-frequency sounds have their own problems—especially in recordings of the human voice. One such audio gremlin is sibilance—the high-pitched “ess” and “shh” sounds people produce when they talk or sing—which can create a jump in volume. Moderating these sounds without mufiling every other frequency is a crucial post- production process called de-essing, and Waves’ simple and robust DeEsser 1.0 plug-in cures sibilant tracks. DeEsser, like MaxxBass, delivers both case of use and powerful features—albeit in a strangely half-empty interface. Its parameters include a variable volume threshold, a compression mode that deter- mines whether de-essing is applied to the entire audio spectrum or just a portion of it, and an adjustable frequency slider to target the sibilance p isser also enerates real-time-preview audio loops, and it has a visual feedback meter that shows the amount of sibilance attenua- tion (volume reduction). Macworld's Buying Advice Whether you want to enhance digital- audio files or mar gle them beyond recog- nition, these four easy to-use plug-ins deliver the goods. Waves’ MayxBass and DeEsser bring important audio-sweeten- ing tools to the consumer level, while Opeode’s Fusion: Vinyl and Fusion: Vocode provide a virtual galaxy struction and distortion.—pavio sieony AND of aud