Macworld articles from January 2003

Macworld archives from January 2003

Sights and Sounds: is OS X music creation finally catching up? (From the Editor's Desk).
January 1, 2003... AS MAC OS X HAS EVOLVED, SO HAS THE PRODUCTIVITY OF most people using it. A lot of the business and creative applications we depend upon are now OS X native-the big exception being QuarkXPress, of course. And plenty of cool utilities and...

Feedback.
January 1, 2003... Jaguar: The Cat's Meow? It's not like Macworld readers to act as if the cat had their tongues. So when we ran a seven-page review of Jaguar in our October 2002 issue, we expected to hear from Mac users about the OS X 10.2 update. And sure...

Corrections.
January 1, 2003... In our review of Maclournal 2.1 (Reviews in Brief November 2002), we printed an incorrect mouse rating. The product's correct rating is ***1/2. In our review of FireWire CD-RW drives (December 2002), we printed an incorrect price for the...

One for the books: Gigahertz processor and SuperDrive take center stage in PowerBook update. (Mac Beat).
January 1, 2003... With each successive upgrade, Apple's PowerBooks move closer to narrowing the performance gap between portable Macs and their deskbound brethren. Just this spring, Apple fitted its professional laptops with a faster system bus and Level 3 (L3)...

More bang, less bucks: Apple cuts prices, adds features in updated iBook. (Mac Beat).
January 1, 2003... For years, Mac fans waited for the price of a Mac to drop below the psychological barrier of $1,000. That barrier was broken long ago, but with Apple's latest Book revision, Mac users can finally boast that an Apple laptop is available for the...

Coming attraction? IBM's PowerPC 970 seems ideal for the Mac--will Apple adopt it? (Mac Beat).
January 1, 2003... Pop open any Mac made in the past two years, and chances are you'll find a Power PC chip made by Motorola inside. But that could change, courtesy of a new processor--recently unveiled by IBM--that may soon make its way to a Mac near you. ...

What's next for Watson? Developer reveals plans for next version of Internet-services App. (Mac Beat).
January 1, 2003... A year ago, Dan Wood was on top of the world. The president of Karelia Software (www.karelia.com), he had a potential hit on his hands with Watson, an innovative OS X-only application. Designed as a companion to Apple's Sherlock, Watson helped...

Software. (Productivity Beat).
January 1, 2003... Programming Revolution 2.0, from Runtime Revolution (www.runrev.com): The latest version of the cross-platform development software, which runs on both the classic Mac OS and OS X, adds a Jaguar-friendly user interface, support for XML,...

Hardware. (Storage Beat).
January 1, 2003... External Drives USB flash-storage devices from Memorex (562/906-2800, www.memorex.com): The USB Thumb Drive is a portable flash-storage device that fits on a keychain and plugs in to a USB port. It comes in 64MB ($60) and 128MB ($100)...

Supersizing your storage: Internal hard drives now top 200GB--and work with your Mac. (Mac Beat).
January 1, 2003... If you spend a lot of time creating movies with Apple's authoring software--or performing any storage-intensive task, for that matter--you know that a hard drive can fill up faster than a theater on a summer blockbuster's opening weekend. If a...

Director takes action: Multimedia-authoring App gets macromedia's MX treatment. (Mac Beat).
January 1, 2003... Throughout 2002, Macromedia (800/470-7211, www.macromedia.com) rolled out updates to its Web-development tools--giving them a common interface and tighter integration--under the MX brand name. Now it's Macromedia Director's turn to assume the...

Netopia's eCare at your service: company's latest offering brings tech support to your browser. (Mac Beat).
January 1, 2003... Real-time collaboration via the Web may be cozily familiar on Windows, but Mac users can find themselves left out in the cold when browser clients don't work with the platform. Netopia (510/814-5100, www.netopia.com) wants to ensure that all...

Input-Device Beat.
January 1, 2003... Hubs Memo A USB hub from logear (866/946-4327, www.iogear.com): The MicroHub ($15) is a four-port hub that measures 0.7 inches tall, 1.8 inches wide, and 2.5 inches long. Keyboards A rack-mounting keyboard from Marathon...

Laptops make their stand: iCurve, Lapvantage offer style with comfort. (Mac Beat).
January 1, 2003... Thanks to increased processing power and easy portability; Apple's laptops may match the performance of a desktop machine, but they're still no match for the desk itself. Prolonged use of a laptop sitting flat on a desk can stir up a hornet's...

FontLab's X experiment: Updated font editor adds support for Jaguar, OpenType. (Mac Beat).
January 1, 2003... Graphics pros using Mac OS X have had to do without a native font editor for customizing existing fonts or designing new ones. But that's about to change. After releasing an updated Windows version of its flagship font editor this past fall,...

Pro file Q&A with Lorin Rivers: Back to Basics.
January 1, 2003... Longtime Mac developers who've opted to come out with Windows versions of their products can usually count on some howls of protest from users who accuse the company of abandoning the Mac platform. That hasn't happened to Real Software, which...

Software. (Publishing Beat).
January 1, 2003... Plug-Ins SkinnyEPS 2.0, from Ultimate Technographics (800/363-3590, www.ultimate-tech.com): The Photoshop plug-in produces CMYK images that are an average of 15 times smaller than normal EPS files, It requires OS X and Adobe Photoshop 6.0...

Hardware. (Networking Beat).
January 1, 2003... A dual-band wireless access point from Linksys (800/546-5797, www.linksys.com): The Instant wireless Dual-Band Wireless Access Point ($299) supports as many as 64 users, providing an advanced user-authentication feature and encryption of up to...

Year of the Jaguar? The readers speak: OS X adoption should continue info New York. (Mac Beat).
January 1, 2003... Apple hoped to enter 2003 with more than five million active OS X users. If the plans of participants in the Macworld Reader Panel pan out, you can expect that number to rise throughout the year. The survey of 937 Macworld readers, selected...

Hardware. (Multimedia Beat).
January 1, 2003... A USB MIDI keyboard from M-Audio (800/969-6434, www.m-audio.com): The Radium Midiman Keystation ($299) is a controller with eight MIDI-assignable knobs and eight MIDI-assignable sliders on a 61-note keyboard. It's compatible with both OS 9 and...

Software. (Multimedia Beat).
January 1, 2003... Audio Cubase SX, from Steinberg (818/678-5100, www.us.steinberg.net): This version of the audio-MIDI sequencer is the first from Steinberg to run natively in OS X. Features include unlimited undos and redos, offline process history, and a...

Announced. (Multimedia Beat).
January 1, 2003... The discontinuation of Mac support by Musicmatch (www.musicmatch.com): The maker of Musicmatch Jukebox will discontinue its Mac Radio MX service and cease support of Macintosh software altogether. Musicmatch, which makes the software included...

The Ol' Switcheroo: Parodies of Apple ads abound online. (Mac Beat).
January 1, 2003... It's too early to tell whether Apple's "Switch" ads--those ubiquitous TV spots in which recent converts sing the Mac's praises--will inspire others to jump to the Mac platform. But the TV commercials have been a source of inspiration to at...

Searching beyond Google: Javascript bookmarks can speed up web searches. (Mac Beat).
January 1, 2003... Google reigns as the king of search engines. Still, if you think that repeatedly loading the home page is a royal pain, there are a couple of ways to perform quicker Google searches. One of the best search-engine add-ons involves nothing...

What's Hot. (Mac Beat).
January 1, 2003... A Quick Look at the World of Macs 1. Embarrassed Microsoft executives admit a Mac-to-Windows switcher's testimonial ad is a fake. Sheepish Microsoft officials also confess that Steve Ballmer is little more than a collection of stock...

Mac OS X updates.
January 1, 2003... 4D Webstar V 5.2.2 Server-software suite Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.1 PDF navigator and viewer Aladdin iClean 5.0.1 Adds Jaguar compatibility Apple iMac SuperDrive Update 1.0 Fixed 4xDVD-R and 2xDVD-RW media...

All hail the lizard king: Charismac looks to rule desktop with firedino hub. (Mac Beat).
January 1, 2003... The adjective ferocious is seldom used to describe computer peripherals. Charismac Engineering (530/885-4420, www.charismac.com) aims to change that, with FireDino, a four-port FireWire hub grafted into the back of an eight-inch-tall beast...

Software. (Internet Beat).
January 1, 2003... Internet Telephony Mac2Phone Basic and Mac2Phone Pro, from Nikotel (888/249-1010, www.nikotel.com): The two Internet telephony products use voice-over-IP to let users of OS X Macs place phone calls over the Internet to other people running...

Logic Platinum 5.3: Veteran program brings professional music production to a Mac OS X world. (Reviews).
January 1, 2003... Almost two years to the day after Apple released the beta of its Unix-based operating system, Emagic (now owned by Apple) introduced Logic Platinum 5.3 for Mac OS X, the first professional digital-audio-production application to work in the new...

Maya complete 4.5: 3-D System's second release for Mac gets real, offers subdivision surface modeling. (Reviews).
January 1, 2003... The combination of tightly integrated and completely scriptable modeling, character animation, physics-based dynamic and particle simulation, and remarkably flexible rendering in Alias \ Wavefront's Maya is unmatched by most other 3-D-effects...

Sony Artisan Color Reference System: New CRT provides accurate, one-button Calibration in a sleek, 21st-century package. (Reviews).
January 1, 2003... For Apple, the CRT may be dead, but for those of us who need accurate, stable, predictable color, the CRT not only is alive and well but also continues to improve. The Sony Artisan Color Reference System is a case in point. This $1,729 21-inch...

This month in digital cameras. (Reviews).
January 1, 2003... At the top of this month's list is Canon's 4-megapixel PowerShot G3, an updated version of the successful PowerShot G2--with a longer 4x zoom lens, better image-processing performance, a built-in neutral-density filter (for reducing the shutter...

Stuffit Deluxe 7: Compression program adds new file format, better encryption. (Reviews).
January 1, 2003... StuffIt Deluxe has been shrinking and expanding files on the Mac for more than a decade, which makes it ancient by most digital standards. And as with many old structures, sometimes it's better to start from scratch than to build on an existing...

ABSplus: "No Excuses" hard drive backup package helps you start to prevent data loss. (Reviews).
January 1, 2003... If you're like most Mac users, you know backups are important, but you've never been able to determine the best backup program and media for your needs. Backing up to CD-R feels wasteful, tape drives are too expensive, and backup programs seem...

iListen 1.5: New speech-recognition software for OS X lacks polish but offers transcription support. (Reviews).
January 1, 2003... McFarland, Scholle Sawyer It's a happy day when Mac users have two full-featured speech-recognition programs to choose from--programs that let you dictate using natural speech and control your Mac by voice. This technology is critical to...

Endnote 6: citation-making software adds Mac OS X support and new productivity features. (Reviews).
January 1, 2003... For more than a decade, ISI ResearchSoft's EndNote has made life easier for authors who need to include citations and bibliographies in their work. Last year, we chided ISI for releasing EndNote 5 without support for OS X or Microsoft Word X...

M-Audio Sonica: expand your Mac's sound horizons. (Reviews).
January 1, 2003... Looking to get high-quality stereo sound from your Mac? If you don't have access to a surround-sound system but still want to increase your Mac's sound fidelity by hooking it up to your receiver, M-Audio's cool blue Sonica will let you do just...

Nikon D100: Digital SLR adds strong choice to semipro camera market. (Reviews).
January 1, 2003... In the low end of the digital single-lens reflex (SLR) camera market, one company's absence has been conspicuous: Nikon. But now-two years after the release of Canon's highly successful 3.1-megapixel EOS D30 and months after Canon's...

LANsurveyor 7.0: application bridges gap between troubleshooting and network management. (Reviews).
January 1, 2003... Network managers looking to lighten their load will get a helping hand from Neon Software's LANsurveyor 7.0.1. The $495 package, which aims to bridge the gap between troubleshooting tools (such as Neon's NetMinder Ethernet network analyzer) and...

Zip 750MB FireWire External Drive: fast, Versatile drive requires expensive media. (Reviews).
January 1, 2003... When the Zip drive first arrived on the scene, the storage market was itching for affordable, easy-to-use, and higher-capacity removable media. Iomega's latest offering, the Zip 750MB Fire-Wire External Drive, still scores on these counts, but...

Britannica 2003 Ultimate Reference Suite: comprehensive DVD puts all the information you need on your desktop. (Reviews).
January 1, 2003... Whether you're struggling with a last-minute term paper or casually researching the life cycle of the fruit bat, the Internet offers a wealth of free information. Alas, you can't always trust what you read online. For one-stop fact-finding, you...

Panasonic PV-VM202: small DV Camcorder offers unique modular design. (Reviews).
January 1, 2003... Jumping into the compact-DV-camcorder fray, Panasonic's PV-VM202 offers features similar to that of its competitors (see Reviews, November 2002)--it's tiny, it provides good video quality, and it has removable storage for still images--but the...

A New Kind of Science Explorer. (Reviews).
January 1, 2003... Very Good; Wolfram Research, 800/965-3726 www.wolfram.com; $65 Wolfram Research's A New Kind of Science Explorer software kit provides an easy, animated introduction to the book A New Kind of Science, by company founder Stephen...

Consistency 1.0. (Reviews).
January 1, 2003... Very Good; Sciral, www.sciral.com; $20 If you're a chronic maker of to-do lists who isn't satisfied with the time-management help that either pen and paper or calendaring features provide, you should make time to checkout Sciral's...

Macworld's 2002 Game Hall of Fame: warm up your Game pads! We've got 11 of the year's hottest, most addictive games.
January 1, 2003... IT'S HARD TO BELIEVE THAT ANOTHER YEAR HAS COME and gone since took over stewardship of the great Macworld Game Hall of Fame in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. It takes a lot of elbow grease to keep the brass and marble of this noble institution...

PC to Mac: a switcher's guide to putting Windows in the rearview mirror. (Now Leaving Windows).
January 1, 2003... MAY BE YOU'VE COME TO THE MAC because you love its look. Maybe friends, family, or Apple's "Switch" ads have persuaded you to give the Mac a try. But if you're a former Windows user finding your way onto the Mac for the first time--or a Mac...

Os X in Tune: Apple's updates could change the way you make music.
January 1, 2003... Apple's traditional musical role has always been that of interested sideman rather than baton-ready conductor. With the release of Mac OS X 10.2, however, that has begun to change. By incorporating new audio, MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital...

Soup up your PowerBook. (Hardware).
January 1, 2003... An inescapable truth in a technological world is that in order to keep up, one must trade up. Who, for example, would have imagined that the massively expansive 2GB hard drive in 1998's PowerBook G3 would be considered inadequate for today's...

Dreamweaver templates. (Web Publishing).
January 1, 2003... A well-designed navigation system greatly improves a Web site's usability. But customizing navigation bars for each section of a site can be time-consuming--and when your boss later decides to remove a section from the site or add a new one to...

Presentation Power tips. (Productivity).
January 1, 2003... You've spent weeks in Microsoft PowerPoint polishing a critical sales pitch. But when you load the presentation onto the Windows machine in the conference room, video clips vanish, text bleeds off the edge of the screen, and pictures are...

Recycle Old Macs. (Hardware).
January 1, 2003... Some people are very good at finding uses for an old computer--whether as a file server, a recipe archive, or even an aquarium (for ideas, see our "Old Mac" series, at www.macworld.com/subject/oldmac). But if you have no need for your retired...

Outwit printing problems. (Graphics).
January 1, 2003... When you want to print, you can usually just hit **-P and head out for coffee. But things don't always go according to plan. In Adobe Illustrator 10 ($399; 800/833-6687, www.adobe.com), you'll occasionally have to spend some time massaging your...

Get with the program. (Mac 911).
January 1, 2003... Early in Mac OS X's gestation, it became clear that Apple desired a cozier relationship between its operating system and its applications. And with each OS X update, that bond has grown stronger--but a few rough edges remain. In this month's...

Welcome to Macintosh: there's no such thing as a stupid question.
January 1, 2003... HOWDY! I SEE A LOT OF NEW FACES OUT THERE THIS month. Now that Apple's advertising people have finally decided that preemptively conceptualizing the operational modality of the Macintosh with its target demographic was just too much work, and...