Macworld articles from December 2004

Macworld archives from December 2004

The search is on.(applications software, ranking)(Editorial)
December 1, 2004... A few months back, we polled a group of Macworld readers to find out which Mac programs they used on a regular basis. I was shocked at the results: while old standby Microsoft Word came in third, the top two spots were taken by Apple's iTunes...

Time for Tiger.(FEEDBACK)
December 1, 2004... It'll be a few more months (at least) before Mac OS X 10.4 is ready for prime time, but that's not stopping Macworld readers from grabbing Apple's Tiger by the tail. After reading the September 2004 preview of Tiger's announced features--and...

Tiger tales.(FEEDBACK)(Letter to the Editor)
December 1, 2004... GERRY DAVENPORT # Reading "10 Tiger Features We'd Like to See" ("10 Things to Know about Tiger," September 2004), I was quickly reminded of a piece of software I use. You wanted spring-loaded folders in the Dock; Workstrip, by Softchaos...

Time is on our side.(keyboard shortcuts)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... PHIL ZAMPINO # I picked up a few interesting tricks from "Save Time with Shortcuts" (Working Mac, September 2004). I'm a fast touch typist and prefer to keep my hands on the keyboard whenever possible. I've given up in many cases, and...

A discreet mention.(FEEDBACK)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... TODD JAQUITH # While Ben Long mostly hit the nail on the head with his review of Discreet's Combustion 3 (VERY GOOD; September 2004), he was wrong about some of the new features. The Grain Management tool has been in the product since...

Fonts of information.(FEEDBACK)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... THERESA MESA # With FontAgentPro 2.1 (VERY GOOD; September 2004), you don't have to add fonts to a set to compare them in Font Compare. Just press the [??] key as you click on the font in the left column--this trick works even with All...

Stifled voices.(FEEDBACK)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... SHAWN KING # In his review of iPod voice recorders (September 2004), Cyrus Farivar writes that "there are no options for recording in other formats" and lists this as a con for the Belkin Voice Recorder for iPod and the Griffin Technology...

Enjoying encoding.(FEEDBACK)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... GRANT GRUBB * I want to thank Jim Heid for "iTunes Encoding Strategies" (Digital Hub, September 2004). I recently added an AirPort Express to my living room, and I love listening to my computer in the afternoon. The "Rebuild Your Library"...

Much ado about bit rates.(FEEDBACK)
December 1, 2004... TREVOR COOK # Reader John Burt warns against using variable bit rate (VBR), saying that his files ended up with a rate between 164 and 184 Kbps (Feedback, September 2004). First, he may have been using average bit rate, which focuses on a...

Quark and Adobe battle for your bucks: publishing dustup.(MAC BEAT)
December 1, 2004... Quark and Adobe have been competing for the loyalty and dollars of graphic designers for years. But lately, the two companies have stepped up the pace, and that competition is good news for customers choosing between QuarkXPress 6 ($1,045;...

Virex bug forces pull of virus app: cure causes disease?(MAC BEAT)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... A few days after McAfee released the new version of its antivirus application Virex, in late August, reports started pouring in that the software's e-mail-scanning function deleted users' entire e-mail in-boxes when it found certain types of...

Imaging beat.(megapixel cameras from Nikon Corp.)(DxO Labs's image processing software DxO Optics Pro 2.0)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... C-7000, from Olympus (www.olympusamerica.com): Seven-megapixel camera features 5X optical zoom and 30X maximum zoom capacity ($600). DxO Optics Pro 2.0, from DxO Labs (www.dxo.com): Imagecorrection program uses a mathematical model of the...

Productivity beat.(MAC BEAT)(Headshack's Products)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... ChartConstructor 2.0, from Headshack (www.headshack.com): Project-charting application adds multiple resources per task and the ability to export to iCal. It also allows you to customize calendars and change the percentage of resource...

iMoviefest brings eyeballs to your iMovies: show and tell.(MAC BEAT)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... iMovie and a personal Web site make it easy to create and share home movies with your friends and family. But what if you want the whole world to see your masterpiece? That's the question Michelle Mendenhall answered a few years ago, when she...

Los Angeles musician uses Mac tools to create music: soundtrack Mac.(MAC BEAT)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Burton Paul wears many hats. On any given day, he may be a singer, a songwriter, a lyricist, a composer, a producer, or an engineer (and he's often a little of each). The Los Angeles--based Paul (www.burtonpaul.com) recently finished a...

Hardware beat.(MAC BEAT)(Pixma iP4000R, Pixma iP5000, and Pixma iP6000D,)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Apple HD Cinema Display Extension Kits, from Gefen (www.gefen.com): Kits with distances ranging from 10 to 330 feet enable users to separate computers from their HD Cinema Displays while retaining high-definition resolutions of up to 1,920 by...

Input-device beat.(MAC BEAT)(IRIS Business Card Reader II)
December 1, 2004... Intuos3, from Wacom Technology (www.wacom.com): Pen tablet adds ExpressKeys for quick access to modifiers and keystrokes, and finger-sensitive Touch Strips for zooming and scrolling (4-by-5-inch model, $200; 6-by-8-inch, $330; 9-by-12-inch,...

New formats make Mac HD editing a reality: your high-def Mac.(high definition)
December 1, 2004... High Definition (HD) video--once limited to people with very deep pockets--is catching on as financially viable for even the most modest budgets. By renaming its professional video-editing software Final Cut Pro HD, Apple has also acknowledged...

What's happening in the digital music world: listen to the music.(MAC BEAT)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Apple continues to chug along as the leader in both digital music players and digital music downloads, but there are other goings-on in the realm of digital music to pay attention to. MICROSOFT LAUNCHES MUSIC STORE Microsoft opened its...

iTunes affiliate program offers commissions on sales: insert link here.(MAC BEAT)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... When Amazon.com first started, it offered Webmasters a deal: mention a book on your site and put a link to the book on Amazon.com's site, and the company would pay a commission on any resulting sales. The program helped Amazon.com become...

Storage beat.(MAC BEAT)
December 1, 2004... CompactFlash Elite Pro cards, from Kingston Technology (www.kingston.com): 2GB and 4GB cards feature transfer rates of 8MB per second and read-write speeds of 10MB per second (2GB, $129; 4GB, $500). d2 Hard Drive Extreme with Triple...

Utility beat.(MAC BEAT)(Stufflt Deluxe 9.0)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Keyboard Maestro 2.0, from Stairways Software (www.keyboardmaestro.com): Updated utility features a rewritten internal engine, support for multiple macro triggers, and new actions ($20; upgrade, $10). MacLinkPlus 15, from DataViz...

iMac G5s: Apple's consumer desktop strikes a new pose.(REVIEWS)
December 1, 2004... Cross an iPod and an eMac and what do you get? The new iMac G5, the third generation of Apple's trendsetting desktop design for the home and school. The latest iMacs are the slimmest and slickest models yet. But stylistically, they're the...

Power Mac G5s: Apple's hot new systems push the high end even higher.(REVIEWS)(Product/Service Evaluation)
December 1, 2004... Back in June 2003, when Apple announced its first Power Mac G5 models, performance-hungry pro users heaved a sigh of relief. The new machines offered an elegant enclosure, a sophisticated cooling system that didn't make a racket, and lots of...

LANsurveyor 8.1: network mapper gets additional advanced features.(REVIEWS)
December 1, 2004... If you administer a network, Neon Software's LANsurveyor 8.1 is a useful tool for mapping, monitoring, and tracking inventory. The program probes the network and gathers information to help you anticipate, diagnose, and fix network problems....

Maya Complete 6: industry-standard visual-effects application upgrades tools, adds Photoshop support.(REVIEWS)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Maya Complete 6, the latest version of Alias's do-everything 3-D-animation and-effects system, doesn't offer bucketfuls of flashy new features. But it has enough of them, as well as enough welcome improvements in usability and performance, to...

Ulysses 1.1: an outstanding writing environment.(REVIEWS)
December 1, 2004... The Blue Technologies Group's Ulysses 1.1 is not a word processor, an outliner, or a text editor, but it incorporates aspects of each of these into its streamlined writing environment. While Blue Technologies describes Ulysses as a tool for...

SketchBook Pro 1.1: combination painting and drawing tool debuts on the Mac.(REVIEWS)
December 1, 2004... SketchBook Pro 1.1, the first version of Alias's painting and drawing app available for the Mac, is a simple tool designed to work with graphics tablets such as the Wacom Intuos2 (VERY GOOD 1/2; February 2002). Its clean, unfussy whiteboard...

Final Draft 7.0.0.52.(REVIEWS)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... In the August 2004 Macworld, our review of Final Draft 7 (FLAWED) stated that the program didn't live up to its predecessors' good reputation. We noted problems with screen redraw, instant crashes when trying to print, textediting goofs,...

MailSteward 2.2: mail-archiving program improves searching but needs work.(REVIEWS)(John Seward's)
December 1, 2004... Searching through thousands of stored e-mail messages in Apple's Mail can be time-consuming and frustrating. The Spotlight feature in the upcoming OS X 10.4 (Tiger) will eventually facilitate this task--until then, John Seward's MailSteward...

Diskology Disk Jockey: hard-drive cloner is a Mac consultant's best friend.(REVIEWS)
December 1, 2004... Seasoned IT veterans have the battle scars: scraped knuckles from frequent plugging and unplugging of drives within the sharp metal confines of an open Mac chassis. While Diskology's Disk Jockey won't dull those razor-sharp edges, it will...

SwordfishExpress 2.0: new version brings postage printing back to the Mac.(REVIEWS)
December 1, 2004... For some time now, Mac users haven't had a good way to print labels that include United States Postal Service (USPS) postage, but buyolympia.com, the maker of SwordfishExpress (VERY GOOD; "More Mac Software Bargains," May 2003), has teamed up...

Missing Sync for Palm OS 4.0: HotSync Manager alternative offers more options, faster syncing.(REVIEWS)
December 1, 2004... For years, Palm's HotSync Manager, an application that synchronizes content between a Palm handheld and a desktop computer, has been problematic. An alternative, Mark/Space's Missing Sync for Palm OS 4.0, offers more features, a better user...

Iomega Rev 35GB 1394/FireWire external drive: removable hard disks offer big storage in small package.(REVIEWS)
December 1, 2004... It takes 123 CD-ROMs to back up the average 80GB hard drive. If your backup needs are overwhelming your CD drive--or even your DVD drive--an Iomega Rev 35GB drive could be the solution. It's faster than a tape drive, and its removable disks are...

Audio converters: Lynx Studio Technology L22, Metric Halo ULN-2.(REVIEWS)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Want to improve the sound quality of your recordings without spending $1,500 or more on a FireWire digital-audio device (see Reviews, October 2004)? You might want to consider upgrading your current audio-conversion gear. We tested two...

SANcube800: flexible, shareable FireWire 800 storage hub for small workgroups is in a niche of its own.(REVIEWS)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... MicroNet's SANcube800 -- designed to be a centralized storage hub for as many as four users--is a huge step up from the original SANcube. Significant performance enhancements make the SANcube800 far more robust and reliable than its...

Midrange flatbed scanner.(Scanners)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... VERY GOOD CanoScan 9900F ($400), from Canon (www.canon.com) Inexpensive for its class, this flatbed scanner has a 3,200-ppi optical resolution, produces all-around good image quality, and includes hassle-free software (August 2004)....

8-megapixel digital camera.(Digital Cameras)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... VERY GOOD C-8080 Wide Zoom ($999), from Olympus (www.olympusamerica.com) Good photo quality, durable design, and in-camera image editing, among other nice traits, make this camera an excellent choice if you need to make very large prints...

Color laser printer, $1,000 range.(Printers)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... VERY GOOD 1/2 C510n ($1,019), from Lexmark (www.lexmark.com) The C510n provides very good image quality at a low cost per page. Generous RAM and preinstalled toner just add to the package (June 2004). find.macworld.com/0084 ...

Portable for general consumers.(Macs)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... VERY GOOD 1/2 12-inch iBook G4/1GHz ($1,099), from Apple Computer (www.apple.com) This diminutive Mac's combination of performance, features, and affordability makes it a winner. You can pack it with up to 1.25GB of RAM and add an AirPort...

Portable Mac for pros.(Macs)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... VERY GOOD 1/2 12-inch PowerBook G4/1.33GHz with SuperDrive ($1,799), from Apple Computer (www.apple.com) Our favorite out of the four we reviewed, the 12-inch PowerBook G4 packs a lot of power into a compact and elegant case (July 2004)....

Desktop Mac for general consumers.(Macs)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... VERY GOOD 1/2 1.25GHz eMac ($999), from Apple Computer (www.apple.com) This eMac may have received only a tiny speed increase, but its performance is impressive, due to a better graphics card and a fast SuperDrive. At this price, it's...

Minidv camcorder.(NEW: CAMCORDERS)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... VERY GOOD 1/2 Optura 40 ($999), from Canon (www.canon.com) The Optura 40 produces excellent video and respectable stills, sports professional features such as a true 16:9 mode, and is easy to use (November 2004). find.macworld.com/0130 ...

Stylus Color CX4600.(Hardware Products We Tested This Month)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... VERY GOOD Stylus Color CX4600 ($149), from Epson (www.epson.com) An inexpensive general-purpose all-in-one that combines four-color, fade- and water-resistant printing with a 600-dpi scanner, the Stylus Color CX4600 can be used as a...

SDM-HS74P.(Hardware Products We Tested This Month)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... VERY GOOD SDM-HS74P ($599), from Sony (www.sony.com) This shiny black 17-inch digital LCD is nicely bright and offers rich, accurate, saturated colors, as well as legible text. Its wide picture-frame bezel actually makes it larger than many...

SDM-HS94P.(Hardware Products We Tested This Month)(Liquid crystal displays from Sony corp.)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... GOOD 1/2 SDM-HS94P ($849), from Sony (www.sony.com) Here's an inexpensive 19-inch digital LCD that offers a very good viewing angle with no pronounced color shifts. And it displays very legible text even at small point sizes. It produces...

The Game Room.(computer games)(Freeverse)
December 1, 2004... Railroad Tycoon 3, an expansive new strategy game by MacSoft, puts you in the shoes of a fledgling railroad entrepreneur. Your job is to become profitable by laying track, building stations, buying locomotives, and doing whatever you can to add...

Mac gems.(REVIEWS)(BitPal)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... If you ever lug around a laptop or a PDA just in case you need contact or schedule information, the $16 BitPal 2.5 (GOOD 1/2; www.bitpal.com), from the company of the same name, may allow you to leave your portable computing devices at home....

Untangle the Web: can't find what you want? Fed up with your browser? Here's how to surf smarter and faster.
December 1, 2004... WHETHER IT'S TO FIGURE OUT Britney Spears's current marital status or find the latest security update from Apple, these days most of us turn first to the Web. But once you're there, it's easy to get tangled up. Weaving your way around the...

Macworld's gear guide: choose the perfect gift--or a cool new toy for yourself--from 37 of our favorite gotta-have-it gadgets.(Buyers Guide)(Cover Story)
December 1, 2004... The Mac is famously "lickable"--and today's Mac-compatible gadgets are enough to make you drool. This selection of our favorites--a feast for the Mac lover's senses--includes products that have universal appeal and products designed for a...

14 office problems solved.(WORKING MAC)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Microsoft Office 2004 is, in nearly every way, a great step forward for the productivity suite. But that doesn't mean all is perfect. There are a few areas where Office doesn't behave as you'd expect. In this article we'll show you how to work...

Fix GarageBand glitches.(DIGITAL HUB)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... GarageBand has been a breakthrough for aspiring Mac musicians. Thanks to its simplified interface and hard-to-beat price ($49 with Apple's iLife '04 suite), even novices can start recording digital masterpieces. But things can go wrong in...

Survive the switch to InDesign.(desktop publishing software)
December 1, 2004... Moving to a new place can be hard. Comfortable habits must be left behind. You haven't learned the quickest route to work, you don't know which newspaper has your favorite comic strip, and the local coffee shop even uses different terminology....

Make yourself presentable.
December 1, 2004... You've spent weeks polishing your presentation. You've honed your timing to Olympic perfection. But when it's finally time to deliver your magnum opus, your first slide is barely legible, and then, a few minutes later, the screen goes...

Cool geek tricks.(GEEK FACTOR)
December 1, 2004... Geeks are the magicians of the Mac community. Like Houdini, we use our knowledge to get out of bad situations. And like David Copperfield, we use sleight of hand to dazzle the uninformed. With these three tricks, you can conjure up some magic...

Mac OS X Hints.(HELP DESK)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Open the Sound and Displays preference panes with your keyboard, make Terminal listings flow numerically, move files between volumes, use speech recognition without wasting screen space, take advantage of the Inspector window, and dig into OS X...

Mac 911.(HELP DESK)
December 1, 2004... You're here for the inside dope, yes? You've come to the right place. This month's Mac 911 is all about insights on the inside--including changing icons hidden inside Mac OS, using Terminal to get inside the NetInfo directory, removing artwork...

PhotoStamps.(The Month's Coolest Developments)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Gone are the days when you had to be a president, an endangered waterfowl, or Elvis to get your face on a stamp. Thanks to PhotoStamps (a service of Stamps.com), you can personalize your postage with pictures of your kids, your dog, or even...

Sonos digital music system.(The Month's Coolest Developments)(Sonos ZonePlayers )(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Sure, the AirPort Express lets you stream music to a stereo in your home--but you can control it only from your Mac, and listen to the music in only one room at a time. For Bang & Olufsen--esque design--and price--combine one or more $499 Sonos...

Logitech MX1000 laser cordless mouse.(The Month's Coolest Developments)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Optical mice offer more-precise tracking than moving-parts models--until it's time to mouse over high-gloss surfaces such as lacquered tabletops and photo paper. Logitech's $80 cordless MX1000 with Fast RF for wireless connectivity swaps...

iSync's Bluetooth support.(The Month's Coolest Developments)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... When it comes to convenience, there's nothing like setting your cell phone or PDA on your desk, launching an app on your Mac, and having the two wirelessly exchange contact, calendar, and to-do information. The hassle of adding numbers to your...

Painter IX's new oil brushes.(The Month's Coolest Developments)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... Thanks to a new feature in Corel's Painter IX, digital art truly does imitate life. The next version of the $299 natural-media painting software includes jaw-droppingly realistic Artists' Oil brushes that closely mimic the look and behavior of...

What's hot: a quick look at the world of Macs.(The Month's Coolest Developments)(Brief Article)
December 1, 2004... 1 A Business Week survey of 500 business executives names Apple the most innovative company of the last 75 years. "In your face, General Electric," exults a triumphant Steve Jobs. 2 Sony reluctantly adds MP3 support to some of its music...