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Transcription

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Feb /March /April ‘06 Edition
Articles
•MacWorld Full of
Announcements
Cover
MacWorld Full of Apple
Announcements
by Monte
T
Ferguson
HESE DAYS MACWORLD SAN
FRANCISCO IS THE ONLY LARGE
scale domestic
venue that Apple
Page 2
attends. The last
couple years have
•Product Review
seen them really
iWork ‘06 (Part I)
pull off some
Pages
large announcePage 3
ments at the
show. This year
•Fixing Snaps in a Snap
was no excepPage 7
tion. In fact the
rate of the new
•P2P Takes a Licking but
announcements
Keeps on Ticking
would be enough
Page 9
for most companies to stretch out
•MacWorld Best of Show over the course of
‘06
an entire year.
Page 13
•GRAMUG Meeting
Highlights
•ShowMacster Improves
iChat Video
Page 14
• iCamShare &
ImageTricks Top Photo
Booth
Page 15
Get Info is a publication of
the Grand Rapids Area
Microcomputer Users
Group.
Intel Macs Steal the Show
The biggest buzz by far had to be about
the brand spanking new Intel Macs.
Unlike early expectations the Mac’s that
were released were not their entry level
models. Instead of the Mac Mini and
iBook receiving the first Intel chips Apple
chose to implement them in their iMac
and MacBook Pro. (The MacBook is the
renamed PowerBook.)These are the first
Macs that come with Intel processors
inside. Apple had said that they would be
transitioning in 2006 to the new machines.
At the time it was first announced, back at
World Wide Developers conference in 2005,
the inference was that the new machines
would be released
mid 2006. Imagine
the surprise when
Apple announced the
new machines almost
six months ahead of
schedule.
In true Steve
Jobs showmanship
there was a dramatic
MacWorld Keynote
to accompany this
announcement.
Somehow Jobs managed to convince
Intel’s CEO to appear
on stage, after a
dramatic plume of
smoke, in a chip-fabrication bunny.
Leading up to their release there had
been a lot of speculation about these new
Macs. Questions like: Will they have an
Intel Inside sticker on them? (NO). Will
Apple take Intel marketing money and
therefore run Intel Inside ads? (NO) Will
these new systems sport new cases? (NO,
not for now). Will they run the software
I already own? (Yes, if it was written for
MacOS X). Will I be able to run Classic?
(NO, well not officially.)
To my mind it was almost anti-climatic that these new
Continued on Page 4
GRAMUG Meeting Highlights
by Monte
Ferguson
Many folks think that user group meetings are for
computer wizards and geeks. That the conversation will
be way over their heads. While others have no idea what
such meetings have to offer. I have showcased several
recent gatherings below. As you can tell from these excerpts, a user group has something to offer nearly everyone no matter what their skill level.
June Meeting
Our June meeting was chocked full of information that’s
for sure. To start out with there was some carry over
from the last meeting. I had remembered something that
touched on a topic that had come up at the last meeting.
That topic being running MacOS X’s maintenance scripts.
The thing I remembered was a program called CronniX
that allows you to modify MacOS X’s schedule for running
those maintenance tasks. Another tip was that Apple has
released Automator actions so you can setup your own
workflow to run them whenever you feel like.
We then covered the blockbuster announcement that
Apple was moving to Intel processors. That generated a
lot of good discussion. For instance: Will classic run on
Intel based Macs? <No> Will Windows run on these Macs,
natively? <Yes, but Apple isn’t going to be officially supporting that.> Should I buy a Mac now or wait til later?
<If you need it now buy it. Macs last a long time so it will
have a long useful life. Also, with a large installed base of
PPC Macs Apple will be supporting your current purchase
for several years.> Will my old software run on these Intel
based Macs? <Yes and no. Classic apps, written for MacOS
9 and below, will not run. Apps written for MacOS X
should run just fine, thanks to a built in technology called
Rosetta, that allows apps written for the PPC based Macs
to run on Intel based Macs.>
We then took a break. After the break we jumped into
our featured presentation, Quicken 2005. Our Treasurer,
Duane Weller, conducted a very interesting trip through
the latest version of Quicken. Duane did a great job showing off the features of this personal financial organizer.
Finances are definitely not as “sexy” a topic as digitial
music, but it’s one of those things we all have to deal
with. Duane showed how quickly you can use Quicken to
organize your finances. Once you’ve got things organized
you can even check out reports to see where your money
is going. I personally use the program and find it indispensable. I can’t imagine going back to check registers. It
makes one of my most dreaded tasks, balancing the check
book, a breeze.
We concluded the meeting by announcing, for anyone
not in the know, the imminent opening of the new Apple
Retail Store in the Woodland Mall. Several folks indicated
that they were going to be up bright and early so they
could be one of the first ones in the store. (Yours truly prefers to sleep in on his day off.)
We concluded the meeting with a raffle. (I know I had the
names and prizes written down but I can’t find that darn
list. My apologies to the winners.)
July Meeting
Our July meeting was once again packed. We did get off
to a rough start. There were some tech glitches that had to
be overcome before we could get underway. It’s frustrating when those things happen but we managed to work
around them. We had some good questions at the meeting
like: Where is the best place to get a refurbished Mac? Is
there a place we can buy a Mac that GRAMUG gets points
or money back? Problem installing iLife ‘04.
We took a break and then jumped into the main event.
Our feature presentation was iLife 05 Part 1, which covered iTunes 4.9 and iPhoto 5. Katie Weller took over at the
last minute to present iTunes 4.9. Katie had a lot of ground
to cover with iTunes. She talked about organizing your
music collection. (Playlists, smart playlists, how to remove
a reference to a music file, how to remove a song from
your computer.) A good chunk of time was dedicated to a
new feature of iTunes, Podcast support. Here is what the
wikipedia has to say about podcasts:
“Podcasting is a method of publishing audio broadcasts
via the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a feed of
new files (usually MP3s). It became popular in late 2004,
largely due to automatic downloading audio onto portable
players or personal computers.”
Podcasting is distinct from other types of online media
delivery because of its subscription model, which uses
a feed (such as RSS or Atom) to deliver an enclosed file.
Podcasting enables independent producers to create selfpublished, syndicated “radio shows,” and gives broadcast
radio programs a new distribution method. Listeners may
subscribe to feeds using “podcatching” software (a type of
aggregator), which periodically checks for and downloads
new content automatically. Some podcatching software is
also able to synchronize (copy) podcasts to portable music
players. “
Other topics included import options, file sizes of digital
music, and file formats.
Continued on Page 18
GRAMUG meets monthly, throughout the school year,
at CompUSA. Meetings are held on the Thursday of the
fourth full week. Meetings begin at 7pm.
You can also learn more about the group by going to our
web site: http://www.gramug.org/
2
Review: iWork ’06
Pages 3
Templates for Every Occassion!
DAVID
KOLENDA
��
I
WAS HOPING TO BE
I was hoping to be absolutely
absolutely blown away by
blown away by Pages 2; hopPages 2; hoping that Mac
ing that Mac users could move
users could move away from
away from Microsoft Word.
Microsoft Word.
The
bad news:
The bad
news: ifif you’ve
you’ve been
been
using Word ever since it came
using Word ever since it came
on a single 3.5” floppy and
on a single 3.5” floppy and
you’ve learned all the tricks,
you’ve learned all the tricks,
than Pages won’t become
than Pages won’t become
you’re app of choice. Sure,
you’restill
applove
of choice.
Sure,
you’ll
it for it’s
slick
you’ll
still
love
it
for
it’s
slick
layout templates and easy draglayout templates
and easy
and-drop
capabilities,
but as a
drag-and-drop
capabilities,
standalone word processor, Ibut
as a standalone
word
procesfound
it to be only
adequate.
sor,The
I found
it
to
be
only
adegood news is: if you’re
quate.
not
aThe
Word
power-user,
Pages
good
news is: ifthan
you’re
not
is
a
great
little
word
processor/
a Word power-user, than
layout
Pages package.
is a great little word
So now you know what it’s
processor/layout package.
not. Let’s talk about what it is:
aSo
very
nice
layout
now
youdocument
know what
it’s
package.
I’ve
never
had
the
not. Let’s talk about what it is:
need
to nice
use adocument
layout package
a very
layout
like
InDesign
or
QuarkXpress,
package. I’ve never had the
but unless I was putting togethneed to use a layout package
er a complicated publication
like InDesign or QuarkXpress,
that needed to be transferred
but unless I was putting tobetween Macs and PCs and
gether a complicated publicawould be published in a dozen
tion that needed
be think
translanguages,
than I to
don’t
ferredneed
between
Macsmore
and than
PCs
you’d
anything
and
would
be
published
in
a
what Pages has to
dozen languages, than I don’t
offer.
think you’d need anything
Whether
you start
with
more
than what
Pages
has to
one
of
its
built-in
templates
offer.
or created your own, adding
text
and images
is aswith
simple
Whether
you start
oneas
of
drag-ndrop.
Multiple
columns
its built-in templates or created
of
flowing
readjust
your
own,text
adding
text themand
selves
as
you
change
their
size;
images is as simple as drag-ntext
flows
around
objectsof
with
drop.
Multiple
columns
ease;
andtext
tables
and charts
flowing
readjust
them-are
can even be fun!
selves as you change their
Just like Keynote, the basic docsize; text flows around objects
ument formatting is done via
with ease; and tables and
separate windows and drawers:
charts are can even be fun!
•The basic “Inspector” takes
Just like Keynote, the basic
care of general document fordocument formatting is done
viaContinued
separateonwindows
Page 5 and 3
drawers:
Cover Story Continued machines had the same chassis and form factors as
the previous G5 iMacs. But after further thought it
From Page 1
Firefox 1.5 Released
The Mozilla Corporation has released
Firefox 1.5, the latest version of the
popular open source Web browser for
Mac, Windows, and Linux. Important
new features include an automated
update capability, improved navigation
performance, drag-and-drop reordering of tabs, improved pop-up blocking, a
one-step method of clearing private data,
more-descriptive error pages, automatic RSS discovery, better accessibility,
a wizard for reporting broken Web
sites, enhanced support for Mac OS X
(including profile migration from Safari
and Internet Explorer), and numerous security enhancements. Firefox 1.5
requires Mac OS X 10.2 or later and is
a 9.4 MB download.
<http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/>
Ironically after my article about simplifying installation in TidBITS-807_, the
Firefox disk image provides only graphical
instruction that’s actively confusing. An
arrow leads from the Firefox icon itself to
a smaller, greyed-out version of the Firefox
icon that is presumably being dragged,
to judge from the non-Mac-like pointer
and + badge, and then to a greyed-out
icon that looks like the Applications folder.
Unfortunately, it’s all representational - the
Applications folder is just a picture, and
not a symbolic link, and there are no
textual instructions to clarify what to do.
I’ve already heard of people not realizing
they had to copy the Firefox package and
instead running it from the disk image.
Worse, the instructions on the Firefox
Web site say “double click the Firefox Disk
Image to open it in Finder, and then drag
the Firefox application onto your hard disk.
Drag the icon to your Dock if you want
it to appear there.” I’m sure there are
people who will promptly drag the Firefox
icon from the disk image to the Dock,
instead of copying it to the Applications
folder and then dragging the copied version’s icon to the Dock. Obviously, there’s
nothing all that hard here, but that’s no
reason not to make it easier yet.
Continued on Page 5
does make some sense. Apple is trying to reassure
the public that these new machines are Macs. Not some cobbled together PC.
When you start up these new machines you’re greeted by the familiar MacOS
X experience. It’s a smart move right now. It sends a calming message. It also
allows Apple to build customer awareness without incurring extra costs of a
new enclosure design.
One of the questions on everyone’s minds has been how fast, and which
chips, Apple would be using in these new Macs. Apple chose to go with Intels
Core Duo line. This means that shipping Macs will have two processor cores
inside, on one chip. This signals that Apple considers this well worth placing
into their flagship consumer machine. These processors are currently running
at 1.6, 1.83 and 2Ghz, the 2Ghz being reserved for the high end machines.
Everyone who has reported back about these new machines have been very
favorably impressed. Especially by their speed. They start up extremely fast.
MacOS X and all of Apple’s applications have been converted to run on the
new Intel processors. This means that performance on these apps, like iMovie,
is quite astonishing compared to the G5 iMac’s. But what about other applications, those that have yet to be upgraded to Intel native, also known as universal, programs? Apple has incorporated a very impressive technology called
Rosetta to handle this issue. Rosetta is NOT an emulator. It’s a program that
converts code, on the fly, as you launch and run the app in question. It’s brilliant in concept, and seamless for the end user. The only downside to any such
technology is that it is going to be slower than running those same applications
natively. From what I’ve been able to determine the programs run about 1/2
the raw speed of the processor. If you’re moving up from a pretty recent G5
you’ll definitely feel a slow down with older apps. However, if you’re running
an older Mac (say a G3 or an older G4), you won’t notice the slow down.
The only folks who are going to feel left out are those who are still running
MacOS 9 apps. Officially MacOS 9 has been dead for several years. However,
with previous systems Apple provided a compatibility environment called
Classic to run those old programs in. Well MacOS 9 was never written to run
on Intel processors. And Apple isn’t about to rewrite it to run on the Intel processors. Apple’s official position is that Classic is dead. However, enterprising
users have discovered that there are a couple alternatives to Classic out there
that you can download. One of which is SheepShaver. These programs allow
you to run at least some of your old software. Of course Apple doesn’t support
this so you’re on your own if you choose to try to run MacOS 9 apps.
Additional Features
There are a few welcome improvements under the hood. The iMac’s sport a
new ATI Radeon X1600 graphics card. The card comes stock with 128mb of
memory. This new card, though not a speed demon that gamers would prize,
does well in day to day 3d and other graphics uses. It’s also powerful enough
to allow you to extend your desktop with a second monitor.
Continued on Page 6
4
Pages 2 Cont’d from Page 3
matting
Continued
In comparison, applications that deserve kudos
for using this installation technique include Jim
Matthews’s Fetch (of course!), James Thomson’s
PCalc, and Frank Reiff ’s A Better Finder Rename,
with extra points to Rainer Brockerhoff for using
the technique for his XRay utility since 2003.
Some disk images don’t force icon view if the
user has Open New Windows in Column View
set in the Finder preferences, which eliminates
any graphical or textual help that would otherwise appear. I’m not yet sure how to force icon
view in all situations. [ACE]
SETI@home Moves to BOINC Client
If you’re anything like me, you don’t pay much,
if any, attention to SETI@home clients you may
have running on machines with CPU cycles to
donate to the search for extraterrestrial life. But
Jim Carr, one of the top members of the TidBITS
SETI team, alerted me recently that the classic
SETI@home client is being turned off as of 15Dec-05, and everyone who wants to continue
donating spare CPU cycles must move to the
new BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for
Network Computing) client that supports not
just SETI@home, but a variety of other distributed computing projects. The SETI@home page
has the necessary instructions for downloading
the latest BOINC client and requesting your
account information. Unfortunately, it’s a slightly
obtuse process, and I wasn’t able to convince
BOINC to attach to the SETI@home project,
but the error message implied temporary server
problems (which the SETI@home folks have
mentioned on their news page). I recommend
waiting a bit before converting; either check
the SETI@home site every so often to see if
they’ve resolved their technical difficulties or
look for another note in TidBITS. If you’re new
to the SETI@home project and want to join the
TidBITS team, follow the third link below and
click Join once there. [ACE]
<http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/>
Firmware Update Solves Power Mac G5
1.8 GHz Freezes
Last week, a reader wrote in asking if we knew
anything more about the freezing problems he
was having with his single processor Power Mac
G5 1.8 GHz. Almost simultaneously, Apple
Continued on Page 6
•“Media Browser” will give
you direct access to your
Movies, iPhoto, and iTunes
folders (for easy access to
other folders, just drag them
into the folder window of the
Media inspector)
•“Adjust Image” allows you
to quickly take care of image
adjustments without opening
iPhoto or your image editor of choice
•“Colors” brings up the
standard Mac color picker
window.
•the Font Panel gives you
access to your fonts and
their attributes (paragraph
and alignment tools are in
the Inspector)
•the “Style Drawer” is a
WYSIWYG showcase of
your font, character and list
styles (very helpful if you’re
like me and quickly name
styles “body1” “body2”
“body3”!)
•and the Page Thumbnail
browser lets you bounce
around your document with
ease.
Once you get used to which
window formats what, it’s
relatively easy to write a
document and format at the
same time. I’ve tried to type
within a layout template and
it just became aggravating.
It’s much easier to create the
document first, then worry
about image manipulation
and text flow later.
Of course, if you keep all
of the formatting windows
open at the same time, you
start to lose the ability to
actually SEE your document!
Just like Keynote, Pages
now has a table feature that
also acts as a simple spreadsheet. (If you’re looking for a
standalone spreadsheet app
from Apple, you’ll have to
wait until iWork ’07!)
5
Cover Story Cont’d The
MacBook
from Page 4
Pro has
Continued
released a firmware update for that machine
that promises to address a number of freezes, enabling us to write back and tell him that
we’d looked into the problem, contacted
Apple, and that they had dropped everything
to release a firmware update for us. Every
now and then you just have to take credit
for utter coincidences! There are separate
updates for Mac OS X 10.3.9 and 10.4.3;
they’re about 1 MB in size. [ACE]
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.
html?artnum=302212>
SpamSieve 2.4 Released
Michael Tsai has updated his popular and
powerful spam detection utility SpamSieve to
version 2.4 (see “Tools We Use: SpamSieve”
in TidBITS-667_ for a full review). The update
features tweaks to the Bayesian email analysis
engine for improved accuracy, phishing detection, filing of spam into different mailboxes in
Apple Mail based on spam scores, support
for new Habeas headers, and a variety
of other minor changes. New copies of
SpamSieve 2.4 cost $25 (save $5 with the
coupon in “Take Control of What’s New in
Entourage 2004” or the soon-to-be- updated
“Take Control of Spam with Apple Mail”), but
the update is free to registered users. It’s a
3.1 MB download. [ACE]
<http://c-command.com/spamsieve/>
Mellel 2.0 Ships
The Israeli company RedleX has released
Mellel 2.0, a significant upgrade to their word
processor with a slew of new features aimed
largely at working with long and complex
documents. Mellel 2.0 now supports sections
and columns, includes extensive hyphenation
dictionaries, does a better job of importing and exporting RTF to and from Mellel’s
proprietary file format, controls widows and
orphans, and offers a Keep with Next option.
It also provides automatic table sizing, background colors, facing pages, more flexible
paragraph controls, and more, although revision tracking and commenting features aren’t
mentioned. Mellel 2.0 costs $50; upgrades
for registered users are free and a free trial
version is available as a 13.4 MB download.
[ACE]
Continued on Page 7
gained the most features under the
hood. It comes with an ATI Mobility
Radeon X1600, with either 128 or
256mb of GDDR3 memory. The
MacBook Pro also gains a built in
iSight, an infrared sensor (which
works with the included Apple
Remote and Front Row software), and a new patent-pending MagSafe power connector
that holds the power plug in
with magnets, eliminating the
fear that someone will trip over
your power cable and pull your
computer to the floor.
Now that Apple has
released these first Macs using
Intel chips only time will tell
if this move will bring more
people to the Macintosh platform. It’s a gutsy move. But
a processor alone isn’t going
to do the trick. Apple had
better have something else
up it’s sleeve to convince the
Windows using masses to switch to
a Mac.
That One Other Thing
It’s become an annual rite each year
for Apple to not only amaze us with
new hardware, but also dazzle us
with new software. This year was
certainly no disappointment. Apple
took the wraps off of two software
suites, iWork and iLife ‘06.
The iLife suite just keeps getting
better each year. This year it gains
another application. It still features
iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto (iTunes is on
it’s own development cycle but is
also included in the suite) as well as
Garage Band. New this year is a web
site creation program called iWeb.
iWeb
The web site creation program is, as
you might expect, drop dead easy to
use. If the thought of trying to come
up with a design from scratch intimidates you don’t worry. Apple ships
many gorgeous templates with the
program. Just replace the place holder text and pictures with your own
information. It makes creating a web
page about as easy as you can get.
It, of course, offers easy integration
with the rest of the iLife suite. You
can use a built in browser to add
pictures, music and video to your
site. It also has some more advanced
page templates which make it easy
to: share photos, a photocast Apple
calls it; create your own blog, including rss feeds; or make a podcast
page. Of course these advanced
features require a .Mac account. In
fact the easy publishing that Apple
touts for iWeb only applies if you
upload to a .Mac account. If you
want to host your site anywhere else
you need to save your creation to a
folder and then use an ftp program
to upload your files.
iPhoto 6 now supports up to
250,000 photos, ten times the amount
of photos iPhoto 5 can handle.
According to Steve Jobs iPhoto 6
“scrolls like butter”. Well it does
on a new machine but even on my
iMac G4 700mhz machine the speed
up in scrolling performance is welcome. Editing in this version can
now be done in full screen mode.
Very handy when you need to see
finer detail. There are new editing tools to choose photos and edit
them. iPhoto can now be set to show
a series of thumbnails which show
the different filters pre-applied. You
just click, or drag, the desired effect
and it’s applied to your photo. With
this version I can easily see someone
doing most of their basic editing
right in iPhoto itself. Previous versions editing tools were so basic
that they were nearly useless except
for the most entry level tasks. If
you like hard copies of your photos
you’ll love the fact that the books
and other printed materials you can
order from Apple sport even
6
Fixing Snaps in a Snap
Continued
by Charles
I
Maurer
ENJOY WORK. LIKE THE
narrator of “Three Men in a
Boat,” I can sit and watch it for
hours. Whenever I have something
that needs to be done, I work hard
to find a way to put it off. Nothing,
I have found, facilitates this job like
fixing photos. It’s easy and rewarding. It helps me to procrastinate for
hours.
My wife Daphne used to be less
skilled at procrastination than I, but
then she found a camera that she
could use (see “Picking a Point-andShoot Camera: Panasonic DMC-FX7”
in TidBITS-783_) and tried fixing
up some of the pictures she took.
Now her procrastination is coming
up to snuff. She finds that fixing her
photos provides an excuse to look
iTunes Music Store Sells Over 1 Million
at them again and, although she is a
Videos
beginner, the manipulations are still
Less than 20 days after unveiling new videoimmediately rewarding.
capable iPods and announcing Apple would
To help Daphne, I thought about
begin selling music videos, short films, and
what might be sensibly done from
selected ad-free ABC television episodes for
the perspective of a novice using
$1.99 apiece, Apple says it has already sold
a snapshot camera. I developed a
more than 1 million videos through its iTunesrecipe that has worked out well. It
Music Store. The most popular items include
is designed to improve snapshots as
music videos from Michael Jackson, Fatboy
much as is usually practical requirSlim, and Kanye West; Pixar’s shorts For the
ing the least amount of skill and
Birds and Boundin’; and episodes of Lost and
time. It will not extract the most
Desperate Housewives. Apple’s press release
that is possible, but it ought to be
quotes CEO Steve Jobs saying the sales indicate adequate for most people most of
a strong market for legal video downloads,
the time.
and pledging to expand iTMS’s video offerings. Is
Note that I worked out this methit too soon to hope for The Honeymooners or
od assuming the limitations of a typYour Show of Shows? [GD]
ical point-and-shoot camera, the lim<http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/oct/
itations that I explained last week.
31itms.html>
It is by no means ideal for pictures
from a digital SLR. Also, this method
Squeezebox Gets New Design, Software
cannot rescue bad exposures. Indeed,
Upgrade
nothing can rescue bad exposures
Slim Devices has released the third generation
from a digital point-and-shoot. A
of their Squeezebox network music player (see
digital SLR or film camera may still
“Squeezebox2: Long Live Rock” in TidBITS-782_). record extractable information from
The change is largely cosmetic, as the new playa bad exposure but with a digital
er’s design features the polished metal look that’s point-andshoot, what you see on
all the rage, and it stands upright like a picture
the LCD after you take the picture is
frame. (Personally, I like how the prior design
very close to what you will get.
nestles subtly inside my stereo rack.) Technical
improvements include two internal wireless
(Fortunately, there is no reason
Grokster Shuts Down
After June’s Supreme Court decision declaring
that Grokster (along with StreamCast Networks
and Sharman Networks) were responsible for
copyright infringements that occurred as a result
of using the companies’ peer-to-peer file sharing software, Grokster’s network has shut down.
(See “P2P Takes a Licking but Keeps on Ticking”
in TidBITS-786_ for a look at the underlying
issues.) The Grokster Web site now provides
a brief (and quite funny) statement about the
situation, noting in part, “There are legal services
for downloading music and movies. This service
is not one of them.” The site also promises that
Grokster will return as a legal service - we’re not
holding our breath, not that it was ever relevant
to Mac users anyway. [ACE]
<http://www.grokster.com/>
Continued on Page 8
to have poorly exposed digital pic-
tures. As soon as you take a picture,
you can see the result. If you don’t
like it, you can modify the exposure
and take it again. With a point-andshoot camera, bad exposures usually
result from the sun’s being in front
of you, so that everything facing you
is in shadow. Since the camera measures the average brightness of the
scene, the bright sun fools the camera into exposing too little, leaving
the shadows to disappear into black.
This is so common that most pointand-shoot cameras provide a mode
that compensates for it, a mode
called something like backlight,
snow, or beach.
The Basic 12-Step Process
Later in this article I shall talk about
the software that’s needed to cook
my recipe, but first I want to explain
all of the steps. These may sound
involved, but they are simpler than
they sound. Daphne finds doing
them to be quick and easy; the only
hard part is remembering where the
commands are buried in the menus
and dialogs.
1. Most cameras save files in a
format called JPEG that is highly
compressed. This is convenient, but
the compression algorithm loses
information and every time you save
a file in JPEG format, you apply that
algorithm again, thereby losing still
more information. You will probably
want to save your work after each
step. If you move the picture to your
computer as a JPEG file and work
on it that way, the image will slowly
disintegrate. Instead, when you copy
the picture onto your computer,
convert it to a TIFF file and work on
that.
2. Outdoors, the difference in
brightness between the darkest shadows and the brightest details exceeds
1,000,000:1. On a printed photograph
Continued on Page 8
7
Fixing Snaps Cont’d
from Page 7
antennas, and a new power supply. The player is
available in black or white, with a matching remote
control.
<http://www.slimdevices.com/>
the range available is hardly more
than 100:1. Clearly, you want
to use all of the range that the
paper will allow. You want to set
the tonal levels within the photo
to run from dead black to pure
white. This step requires moving
two pointers.
SlimServer 6.2 adds support for automatic
volume adjustment; it reads settings stored by the
Volume Adjustment and Sound Check features of
iTunes, or mp3gain, aacgain, J.River Media Center,
or replaygain (in Ogg Vorbis or FLAC files). The
Windows Media Audio (WMA) format is now supported on all platforms, including files and streaming
radio stations. New firmware for the Squeezebox
2 and 3 adds Wake-on-LAN support, Unicode
characte display, and support for WPA2 security on
802.11g wireless networks. [ATL]
3. Once you adjust tonal levels,
the picture may look too dark or
too light overall. Another way
of saying this is that the average
tone of the picture is too dark or
too light. To correct for this, you
want to tell the computer exactly
how dark to make the average
tone. This step requires nudging a
pointer until the picture looks
the best.
OmniWeb 5.1.2 Released
The Omni Group has released OmniWeb 5.1.2, a
minor update aimed primarily at fixing bugs (see
“OmniWeb 5.0: The Powerful Web Browser” in
TidBITS-742_ for a full review). New features in
OmniWeb 5.1.2 include support for Fast User
Switching and the Flash Player 8 plug-in. JavaScript
alert() and prompt() dialogs now properly display
the domain that initiated them and bring the initiating page or tab to the front, a useful security measure. Most of the changes, however, are bug fixes,
ranging from the trivial, such as corrected tooltips,
to the significant, including a variety of crashing
bugs. See the release notes for a full list. OmniWeb
5.1.2 costs $30, and upgrades are free to registered
users as a 6.0 MB (English) or 10.3 MB (internationalized) disk image. [ACE]
<http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/>
4. Overall the picture should
look okay now, running from
black to white with most of the
detail appropriately dark or light.
However, most likely the shadows will be too dark. You will
probably want to lighten the
shadows - just the shadows, not
everything that’s dark. Again,
this step requires moving a slider
until the picture looks the best.
Continued
Apple Opens iTunes Music Store in
Australia
Much to the delight of some of our friends down
under, Apple has finally opened a version of the
iTunes Music Store in Australia. Reportedly, the delay
was due to at least one of the big music companies
holding out, and that may account for the lack of
artists from the Sony/BMG label. Despite this, Apple
claims over 1 million tracks, including a number of
exclusives from Australian musicians, and over 1,000
music videos; that’s about half the size of the U.S.
iTunes Music Store. Also currently missing are TV
shows, which undoubtedly require an entirely different licensing process. Prices are a bit higher than the
Continued on Page 9
5. It should be obvious from the
difference in range of brightness
(Step 1) that no picture can accurately reproduce what you see.
This holds for colour as well as
brightness. The colour of a picture
can never be accurate, it can only
be pleasing. Snapshot cameras
usually produce some form of
pleasing colour without intervention but often the overall hue
would be better slightly warmer
or slightly cooler. Changing the
hue requires nudging a slider and
looking for improvement.
6. Just as cameras compress
brightness, so they compress the
saturation of colours. However, to
allow for extremes, they usually
do this more than is necessary.
Photos usually look more pleasing with the saturation slightly
increased. You can increase saturation by nudging a slider. After
you have done this, you may
want to readjust the hue slightly.
7. Red-eye looks grotesque and
is easy to fix: point at or encircle
an eye and click.
8. Vertical lines ought to be
plumb. If they are not, rotate the
picture to make them plumb,
which involves grabbing one corner of the picture and dragging
it a few degrees around a circle.
Of course, if the vertical lines are
not all parallel, they cannot all be
plumb. In this case find the best
compromise.
9. If you tilt a camera upward to
photograph a building, the walls
will converge toward the top
so that it appears to be collapsing. Unless the camera is obviously pointed way up or down
- unless you are looking up at a
skyscraper or down at your shoes
- vertical lines ought to be vertical. Similarly, unless the camera
is obviously pointed sideways,
horizontal lines ought to be horizontal. Changing them involves
reshaping the picture by dragging
its four corners until it looks right
or by nudging some sliders that
drag the corners for you.
(People usually treat this as
an advanced manipulation, but
that’s a holdover from film, when
adjusting perspective required
spending a long time under a
black cloth behind a view camera.
In a computer these adjustments
are only a little bit fiddly and they
can make a stunning difference.)
10. Crop the picture to concentrate attention on what matters
and to remove whatever does not.
Don’t worry about the proportions of the picture, worry about
the content. Cropping requires
drawing a rectangle around what
you want to keep and clicking.
11. If the information in a photo
comes more from its lines
8
P2P Takes a Licking but Keeps
on Ticking
Continued
U.S. iTunes Music Store, with most songs costing
AU $1.69, which is equivalent to US $1.28 at the
moment, in comparison with the US $0.99 that U.S.
customers pay for most tracks. Nevertheless, it’s
nice to see Apple finally serving Australian Mac and
iPod users in this way. [ACE]
Apple Releases Pro Video Updates
Apple recently released a slew of updates to its
professional video software. Final Cut Express
HD 3.0.1 adds compatibility with the recently
announced Power Mac G5s equipped with PCI
Express graphics controllers; the update is a 948K
download. For Final Cut Pro 5 users, the Final
Cut Pro 5 Updates provide “improved reliability”
and bring Final Cut to version 5.0.3; the updater
is an 85 MB download. Apple also released Pro
Applications Update 2005-02, which updates the
Helium.framework and DesktopVideoOut.component used by Final Cut Studio, Apple Qmaster
2, and Final Cut Express HD 3; it’s available via
Software Update. Finally, Pro Application Support
3.1 improves general user interface reliability for
Final Cut Studio, Soundtrack, Logic Pro, and Logic
Express; separate versions for Mac OS X 10.3 and
10.4 are available as 6.1 MB downloads. [JLC]
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/finalcutexpresshd301.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/
finalcutpro5updates.html>
Encoding Video for iPod
Since the release of the new video enabled iPod, a
few noteworthy articles have appeared about getting video content onto the device. iLounge looks
at the options for encoding video for the new
video iPod: “iPod-Ready Videos? Not So Fast, and
Not So Clear.” QuickTime 7.0.3 adds an export
option to QuickTime (and therefore, to application such as iMovie) to encode video for iPod,
but you don’t get to customize its settings. Jeremy
Horowitz performed a bunch of tests to see how
long it takes to encode, and what the quality of
the results was. Also, Jonathan Seff at Playlist shares
his experiences encoding content, including ripping
DVDs using HandBrake. I watched a few movies
on a weekend train trip from Seattle to Portland
and back, and found the experience surprisingly
good. [JLC]
<http://ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/
ipod-ready-videos-not-so-fast-and-not-so-clear/>
by
O
Adam C. Engst
N 27-JUN-05, THE SUpreme Court of the United
States handed down a unanimous
decision in the MGM v. Grokster
case that dealt a blow to proponents of peer-to-peer (P2P) file
sharing technologies and gave
free rein to the lawyers of the
large media companies. Or did it?
The Case
The case was relatively simple.
MGM and 27 other large media
companies filed suit against
the P2P companies Grokster,
StreamCast Networks (makers
of the Morpheus program), and
Sharman Networks (makers of the
Kazaa software), alleging that the
three were responsible for copyright infringements that occurred
as a result of the use of the free
Grokster, Morpheus, and Kazaa
software (hereafter, I’ll refer to the
three as “Grokster” for simplicity;
in fact, Sharman’s part of the case
wasn’t even included what went
before the Supreme Court). The
Supreme Court heard the case on
appeal after two lower courts had
ruled in favor of the P2P companies.
Those rulings were based on
the well-known Sony Corporation
of America v. Universal City
Studios case from 1984 that
revolved around whether or not
Sony was liable for copyright
infringement because the Betamax
video recorder could be used to
infringe upon copyrighted works
without the permission of the
copyright holder. In that case,
Sony was held to be free of liability because the Betamax recorder
was “dual-use” in that it could be
used for both infringing and noninfringing purposes. The court’s
particular wording was that the
Betamax was “capable of substantial noninfringing uses.” In
the Sony case, the Supreme Court
held that although Sony knew
the Betamax could be used for
infringing purposes, time-shifting (recording a program for later
viewing) was a substantial noninfringing use.
<http://www.eff.org/legal/
cases/sony_v_universal_decision.
html>
The fact that Grokster and
Morpheus could be used for
substantial noninfringing uses
formed the core of the defense
case, and the lower courts interpreted the Sony case fairly literally in agreeing. In disagreeing with
the lower courts, the Supreme
Court found that Grokster and
StreamCast were potentially
liable for copyright infringement
because they actively promoted
the fact that their software could
be used to download copyrighted works without permission. In other words, intent is
important, and the companies
intended to create software that
would enable users to infringe
copyrights - they were inducing
users to infringe copyright law.
The Supreme Court based this
decision on internal documents
showing, for instance, that the
companies created advertising
aimed at picking up users from
the original Napster service after
it was shut down and that they
planned to flaunt illegal uses of
their software for PR purposes.
More telling was the advertisingbased business model used by
each, since success in such a business model requires increasing
the number of users and amount
of usage, and both companies
promoted the capability of their
software to provide popular copyrighted works as a way of increasing usage. It’s worth reading the
full text of the decision to understand the full reasoning:
9
Fixing Snaps Cont’d from
Page 8
Continued
eMac Fades Away
Sources have confirmed that the
eMac, Apple’s inexpensive all-in-one
Mac with a CRT-based screen, is no
longer available for individual sale,
although educational institutions can
still buy the model. It’s likely that
Apple felt little need to carry on with
the eMac line with the Mac mini taking over as the least expensive Mac
for individuals and the iMac G5 holding up the all-in-one end of the line.
Although it’s hard to see Apple keeping the eMac available to educational
institutions indefinitely, it does meet
a specific need there -schools are
less likely to want to use difficult-tosecure Mac minis in public labs, and
the iMac is quite a bit pricier than the
eMac. [ACE]
PCalc Adds! (A New Version,
That Is)
PCalc is a calculator utility by James
Thomson (who also writes DragThing,
my favorite launcher). Developing a
calculator is something of a thankless
task, because users feel that arithmetic is something computers should
just know how to do, and because
a free calculator utility is always
included by default. PCalc, however,
has had remarkable staying power;
it’s been around for a long time, and
has usually been the calculator that
Apple strives to emulate with each
successive version of its calculator.
The Tiger version of Apple’s calculator
threatened to catch up at last, adding
reverse Polish notation and hexadecimal/binary mode. Now PCalc strikes
back with version 3, adding extensible
unit conversions and user functions,
plus a superior interface (you can do
just about everything without the
mouse, plus it looks really slick with
all three drawers showing - RPN
stack, Unicode, and paper tape). PCalc
requires Tiger 10.4.2 (and includes a
calculator Dashboard widget); it costs
$20 and is a free upgrade for current
PCalc users. [MAN]
than from its colour, then colour may
distract the eye, thereby subtracting
more than it adds. In this case, converting the picture to black-and-white may
be beneficial. You can see an example of
this at the link below. If a photo doesn’t
seem as good as it ought to be in colour,
try it in black-and-white, or “greyscale”
in computerese. A single mouse-click
will convert the picture and you can
always undo the change. If you like the
results, save it under another name and
try steps 3 and 4 again.
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/784/kangaroos.jpg>
12. If you exaggerate edges, the picture will look sharper - up to a point. If
you exaggerate them too much, edges
will become distorted. You can play
with this by adjusting a slider or choosing a menu command. Since pointand-shoots already sharpen the image,
this will often not be useful on enlargements but it is likely to be for small
pictures on the Web. Always perform
sharpening on copies because it is not
reversible and the appropriate amount
varies with the picture’s purpose.
When I first explained all of this to
Daphne, she thought I was mad. “This
is quick and easy? And are sumo wrestlers skinny?” But then I walked her
through a photo and she was hooked.
She started out wanting to save every
picture and fix up just the bad ones
but now that she has seen what happens, she fixes up the better ones and
throws the others away. She no longer
is willing to accept a tree growing out
of Hedy’s head. Of course it might be
possible to remove that tree - images
can be retouched so much that nothing
is left of the original - but that is for
another level of photographer.
Choosing Your Tools
Although I cooked up this recipe for
novices, my taste buds seem to differ
from the folks who design programs for
editing photos. Neither iPhoto nor any
other program aimed at novices can
handle the job completely. Below the
professional level, only two packages can. The more expensive is
GraphicConverter ($30) combined with
two third-party plug-ins, ShadowFixer
($17) and Perspective ($40). (Plug-ins
are small programs that add functionality to another program. Other plug-ins
will do the job of Perspective but they
cost more.) The cheaper, more powerful, and quicker alternative is Adobe
Photoshop Elements ($80), which can
do everything all by itself. Photoshop
Elements also comes with better documentation.
<http://www.lemkesoft.com/en/
graphcon.htm>
<http://www.fixerlabs.com/pages/
shadowfixer.html>
<http://www.theimagingfactory.
com/>
<http://www.adobe.com/products/
photoshopelmac/main.html>
(To install ShadowFixer and
Perspective, copy them to
/Library/Application Support/
GraphicConverter/Plug-ins. The
Library folder can be either the one in
the computer’s root directory or the
one in your home directory. The former
location will provide access to all the
users of your computer, the latter to
you alone.)
Photoshop Elements is the better
value, but it’s even more confusing than GraphicConverter, which
is saying something. On top of that,
Photoshop Elements violates a number
of Macintosh norms and conventions
and does not integrate particularly well
with other programs. For example,
its “attach to email” function will
not recognize the email client I use,
PowerMail.
When I looked at the two
for Daphne, I concluded that
GraphicConverter would be simpler
but it offers a host of preferences that
must be set appropriately to avoid
frustration, and its documentation is
not for the novice. Without a help desk
in the house, I suspect that Photoshop
Elements would be easier to learn.
In both programs, some of the steps
call for moving a slider until the pictures looks the best. No matter how
experienced you are, manipulations
like these never feel certain because it is
10
P2P Takes a Licking Cont’d
from Page 9
<http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/MGM_
v_Grokster/04-480.pdf>
Continued
Apple Loosens up on “Mac”
Trademark Use
The email has been coming fast and
furious as Macintosh developers, consultants, and resellers have been contacting
me after reading “Apple Cracks Down
on Google AdWords” in TidBITS-799_.
A number of people forwarded their
entire discussions with Google AdWords
Support, which has been amusing for just
how similarly each interaction unfolded.
Google did start to provide additional
information to people who pushed
hard last week, even acknowledging that
the request had come from Apple and
was specifically related to ads running
in the European Union. Randy Murray
of Now Software was even told that
the ban applied only to ads running in
Switzerland and Eastern Europe, and
when he tweaked the geographic distribution of his ads to eliminate those
countries, the ads were approved again.
The best news, however, came from
Craig Isaacs and Kerry MacInnes of Neon
Software, who, after going through exactly the sam rigmarole that everyone else
did, were finally told by Google AdWords
Support that, “At this time we are no
longer monitoring the term ‘Mac’ per the
trademark owner’s request.” Intrigued, I
immediately created a new ad in Google
AdWords that used every one of the
Apple trademarks I listed previously, and
in fact, it appears to be true: “Mac” and
“Macintosh” no longer trigger the trademark warning from Google. The other
Apple trademarks I listed - Apple, iPod,
shuffle, Mac mini, iMac, iBook, PowerBook,
Power Mac, iTunes, and iTMS - all still
trigger Google’s warning, although you
may be able to work around that problem by setting your geographic distribution appropriately and requesting an
exception from Google. I’ve queried
Google PR and Apple PR to see if they’ll
admit to this change officially, but as usual,
neither has deigned to offer a statement.
[ACE]
With this decision, the lawsuit
returns to lower courts, where the
question of whether or not these P2P
companies were in fact responsible for
contributory copyright infringement
will be examined. Given that Grokster
and StreamCast did not dispute the
fact that their programs were heavily
used for downloading copyrighted
works (between 75 percent and 90
percent of the total works available,
according to an MGM survey given
as evidence in the case), it seems
unlikely to me that either will survive
these subsequent cases unless they
can somehow show that the Supreme
Court’s finding of inducement to
infringe was incorrect. Sharman
Networks claims in a press release
that they never encouraged or assisted
Kazaa users to download copyrighted
works; we’ll see what the court finds.
<http://www.sharmannetworks.
com/content/view/full/310>
The Subtext
As with many cases that reach the
Supreme Court, this one isn’t really
about the specific fate of a few rather
unappealing companies. The bigger
picture is the battle between the rights
of copyright holders as set down in
the Constitution and radically extended by Congress many times under
lobbying, and the chilling effect on
technological innovation that the protection of copyright could engender.
Put another way, if a potential technology could be used to infringe copyright, will technologists still invest the
time and money into development
given the likelihood of facing expensive lawsuits?
On the face of it, of course, it
looks bad for technologists. But the
Supreme Court was fairly careful not
to reinterpret or modify the decision
of the Sony case, thus failing to clarify
the situation further. Justice Ruth
Bader Ginsburg touched on the topic
slightly, by arguing in a concurring
opinion that the P2P software made
by the defendants was used overwhelmingly to download copyrighted
works, thus implying that the Sony
decision might not apply if the technology in question were overwhelmingly used to infringe, even if substantial noninfringing uses were possible.
But Justice Stephen Breyer, in an
opinion that concurred with the overall decision, disagreed with Justice
Ginsburg, arguing that the noninfringing uses in the Grokster case were
equivalent to those in the Sony case.
He also pointed out that a key phrase
in the Sony case was “capable of substantial noninfringing uses,” and that
the “capable of” part of that phrase
was intentionally forward-looking,
allowing for the possibility that there
might be other noninfringing uses
that would appear over time. That’s
tremendously important, because it
underscores the entire argument - that
the freedom to innovate must be protected because of future capabilities
that are as yet unrealized. He summed
up:
“Of course, Grokster itself may
not want to develop these other noninfringing uses. But Sony’s standard
seeks to protect not the Groksters of
this world (which in any event may
well be liable under today’s holding),
but the development of technology
more generally.”
Again, I encourage anyone interested in this topic to read the full
decision, which apart from some bits
referencing prior cases in an abbreviated fashion, is in fact highly readable
and truly fascinating.
Where to Go from Here
Although I’m pleased to see the
Supreme Court upholding the Sony
decision even while ruling against
Grokster, I remain troubled about the
entire situation. My fear is that the
Content Cartel - the large media companies that collectively control a vast
quantity of our society’s cultural products - will see this victory as license
to file ever more lawsuits against
any company or individual seen as
infringing copyrights. We are talking
about a particularly litigious industry:
according to Cary Sherman, president
of the RIAA, his organization has
already filed about 10,000 lawsuits
against individuals, with the average settlement being about $3,000. (If
you were wondering, no, none of the
settlement money ever goes to the
artists who were in theory harmed.
Cary Sherman told me that the RIAA
applies all the money to legal fees,
given that it loses a lot of money on
every lawsuit.)
On the other side of the fence, I
expect we’ll see many provid-
11
Page 10
never possible to see when an image
looks the best. All you can do is see
that it has stopped getting better and
is getting worse again. You need to
overshoot in both directions, note in
each direction when you first see that
the picture is getting worse again,
and split the difference. After a few
overshoots in each direction, either
you will be reasonably sure where
the centre point is or you will have
learned that the changes are ambiguous enough that the exact setting does
not matter.
Finally, before you start, calibrate
your monitor. This is a trivial job.
Open the Displays pane of System
Preferences, click the Color tab, and
then click the Calibrate button. In the
window that comes up, make sure
that Expert Options is checked, then
click Continue, and follow the instructions. When you are asked to set the
gamma, set it for the PC standard, 2.2.
This has become part of a universal
standard (sRGB). The old Mac standard of 1.8 is no longer appropriate
for general use.
GraphicConverter
Instructions
To learn more about using
GraphicConverter, a $10 PDF manual
by Hagen Henke is indispensable. The
Help menu points to it. Here are the
step-by-step instructions for using
GraphicConverter 5.6 to perform the
process outlined above. [Note that
you may be able to use older versions
of GraphicConverter, albeit with slight
interface differences, but I couldn’t
get version 4.4 to recognize plug-ins.
-Adam]
1. Save as TIFF. Choose Save As from
the File menu and in the Save dialog,
choose TIFF from the Format pop-up
menu.
2 & 3. The levels adjustment is under
Picture > Levels. The histogram on
the left shows each tone in the picture.
The triangles show the end points and
the middle. Move the outer triangles
inward to the farthest edges of the
curve then adjust the middle triangle
so that the picture looks best overall.
4. Choose Filter > Fixerlabs Filters
> ShadowFixer. Fiddle with the two
sliders until the shadows look best,
starting with the Amount slider at 50
percent. Afterwards check steps 2 and
3 again, in case there was an interaction. Note that you can enlarge the
little windows in the ShadowFixer
plug-in by clicking the + sign.
5 & 6. Hue and Saturation sliders
are in Picture > Brightness/Contrast.
Before you touch them, be sure that
the Link Sliders and Full Screen
Preview checkboxes are selected.
Avoid the Brightness and Contrast
sliders.
7. To fix red-eye, click the elliptical
selection tool, select the pupil, select
Effect > Red Eye. The elliptical selection tool is the second from the top in
the left-hand column of the toolbox,
which you open by choosing Window
> Show Toolbox (or Picture >Toolbox
in older versions).
8 & 9. To rotate the photo and correct
perspective, choose Filter> theImagingFactory > Perspective. Choose the
length of your lens (not critical and
sometimes the wrong length looks
best) then fiddle with the sliders.
Rotation interacts with the other two
but you can always set rotation first,
click OK, and then open the window again and do the others. This
isn’t good in principle, because each
manipulation here loses a mite of
sharpness, but the difference would
never be noticeable in a snapshot, not
even when it’s enlarged.
10. Crop by selecting what you want
with the rectangular selection tool
(first or second tool on the right side
of the toolbox, depending upon your
version of the program) then selecting
Edit > Trim Selection.
11. Convert to black-and-white using
Picture > Mode > Grayscale then try
steps 2, 3, and 4 again.
12. Play with sharpening (on a copy)
by adjusting the slider in Effect >
Sharpen Edges.
Photoshop Elements 3.0
Instructions
You will need to work in Standard
mode. To select this, click on the
Standard Edit button, not the Quick
Fix button. Both of these are in the
horizontal toolbar on the upper
right. (Note that the button looks like
a button, a button that is enabled
and ready to be clicked - that won’t
work, for it is actually the disabled
button, the button that has already
been selected. The user interface in
Photoshop Elements is frustratingly
inconsistent. Fortunately, the help files
are good.)
Before you start, set Photoshop
Elements > Color Settings to Limited
Color Management. This is appropriate not just for the Web, as the dialog
states, but also for snapshot printers
and any photo-printing service that
you are likely to use.
1. Save as TIFF, selecting the option
to embed an sRGB profile in the Save
As dialog. (You don’t need to worry
about the color profile, but note for
the record that Photoshop Elements
will embed a profile generated for
Windows, a profile that works inconsistently on Macs.)
2 & 3. The levels adjustment is under
Enhance > Adjust Lighting >Levels.
The histogram shows each tone in
the picture. The triangles show the
end points and the middle. Move the
outer triangles inward to the farthest
edges of the curve then adjust the
middle one so that the picture looks
best overall.
4. Lighten shadows in Enhance
> Adjust Lighting >Shadows/
Highlights. Afterwards check steps
2 and 3 again, in case there was an
interaction.
5 & 6. Hue and saturation are in
Enhance > Adjust Color >Adjust
Hue/Saturation.
7. To remove red-eye, click the redeye tool (about halfway down the vertical toolbar on the left) then click on
each red eye.
12
Page 12
Sliders in the horizontal toolbar at the
top let you fine-tune the area blackened and the tone.
8 & 9. To rotate the photo, choose
Image > Rotate > Free Rotate Layer,
allow Photoshop Elements to create a
new layer, then grab one of the black
“handles” on the edges of the photo
and rotate it. (Be sure no part of the
picture is selected when you start this,
else the command will rotate only the
selection. To deselect something in
Photoshop Elements, choose Select >
Deselect.) Alternatively, if you need to
correct perspective, you can skew the
photo in every direction and thereby
correct the rotation at the same time.
First enlarge the canvas an inch or two
(Image > Resize > Canvas Size), and
then choose Image > Image Transform
>Skew and move the handles.
10. To crop, first click the cropping
tool (about halfway down the vertical toolbar on the left), then drag out
a rectangle. To crop that rectangle
or deselect it, click the cropping tool
again or Control-click the image and
choose Crop from the contextual
menu.
11. Convert to black-and-white using
Image > Mode > Grayscale then try
steps 2, 3, and 4 again.
12. Play with sharpening (on a copy)
using the top three menu commands
in Filter > Sharpen.
This article orginally appeared in
Tidbits Magazine issue #784, published 6/20/05. It is reprinted with
the permission of the Author.
MacWorld Best of Show ‘06
by
E
Monte Ferguson
VERY YEAR THE EDITORS OF
MacWorld canvas the show floor
to find the most innovative products at MacWorld Expo. All products mentioned had to debut or be
announced at the show. Which sometimes means products are announced
but ship months later. This year is a
bit different. With the exception of
Adobe’s Lightroom, all of the products mentioned below are shipping.
This years round up includes 14
items.
This year’s winners cove a wide
range of products for the Mac. There
is almost certainly something for
every Mac user. To keep things organized we’ve grouped the winners by
Hardware and Software categories.
Hardware
This year’s selections continue a
trend seen in recent years. Apple
tends to announce major products
at MacWorld and thus dominates
the press headlines. But, there were
several other hardware products that
caught the eyes of Expo goers. This
years winners also show that even at
MacWorld the power of the iPod is
evident. Two of this years hardware
winners are iPod accessories.
MacBook Pro
The Mac laptop has been stuck using
a G4 processor for over 5 years.
Although Apple says it wanted to
move up to a more powerful processor, they said that IBM just couldn’t
get the job done. So Apple switched to
Intel for it’s processors. At MacWorld
we were treated to the first portable
sporting an Intel cpu. Make that two
cpu’s. Yes, a dual processor laptop
became a realty this year for Mac
fans. The new laptop comes with a
new name, MacBook Pro. These new
laptops are getting rave reviews.
And they should. They’re screaming
fast. And their battery life is on par
with the G4 PowerBooks. Currently
they come in two speeds, 1.83Ghz or
2.16Ghz. Though there is one limitation: screen size. Currently Apple is
only producing MacBook Pro’s with
15” screens. Though this will change
over the course of the coming year
as Apple clears out inventory of it’s
other PowerBook models. The new
MacBook takes a cue from the iMac
and adds a built in iSight camera. (It’s
just above the screen in the bezel.)
Prices remain reasonable($1,999 for
the the 1.83GHz model; $2,499 for the
2.16GHz version). Don’t expect any
new case designs. Apparently Apple
is looking to reassure buyers that it’s
still a Mac, regardless of processor,
therefore the new models retain the
same look as the previous generation
of PowerBooks. The only downside
for the MacBook Pro is the wait for
Universal Binary’s, or native applications, which truly allow the new processors to shine.
JBL On Time
Have you ever wanted to turn your
iPod into a clock radio? Then this
product is for you. JBL, known for
making high quality speaker systems for the iPod has come out with
a funky new iPod accessory. The
speaker is in the form of a loop, in
other words circular. It also includes
dual alarms, a clock radio, and ambient light sensors. (Which means it
reacts automatically to changing light
conditions.) It looks cool. I’m sure it
sounds great too. At $299 it’s a tad on
the pricey side. But you do get to dock
your iPod to the On Time so you can
charge and listen to your tunes as you
wake up in the morning.
iSee 360i
Our second iPod accessory adds
features for those wishing they had
waited for a 5G iPod. The iSee
13
ShowMacster Improves iChat Video
by Jeff Carlson
C
HATTING VIA VIDEO IN
iChat is cool, but I didn’t realize I was missing something
until recently when a client introduced me to ShowMacster, a utility
that enables me to display more than
just my ugly mug during a video chat.
<http://www.showmacster.com/>
The notion behind ShowMacster
is simple: why limit your outgoing
video signal to what’s in front of your
webcam, when you can also interject
other digital imagery such as photos
or movies? Say you’re video chatting
with your mother and want to show
her your latest digital photos. What
then?
Using iChat by itself, only a few
options are available. You can open a
new text chat window and drag the
photos, one at a time, to the text field;
it takes a minute or so (depending on
the speed of your connection) for the
image to appear on the other person’s
computer. Or, you could use iChat’s
Send File command (in the Buddies
menu) to transfer the image files,
which requires Mom to open them in
a separate application such as iPhoto
or Preview. You could also take a
more traditional, roundabout route
and send the image files via email or
upload them to a .Mac HomePage.
In each case, it ends up being a fair
bit of work and, at least in my experience, sometimes the files won’t successfully go through.
With ShowMacster installed, by
contrast, you drag the image files
(either singly or in a group) to a drawer attached to the video chat window.
The images occupy a new slot that
contains a small preview and a Play/
Pause button. When you click the button, the images appear instead of your
camera’s video; you see the images
in iChat’s small reference window and
the other person views them in their
full iChat window until you click the
Play/Pause button again, at which
point the video from your camera
takes over.
When you drop a group of photos
onto an optional Quickdrop field,
they play back as a slideshow. While
ShowMacster’s feed is enabled, your
audio is still activated, so you can continue to talk while showing off your
pictures.
Similarly, you can share movies (QuickTime, AVI, MPEG-4, 3GP,
and 3G2 format) by dropping them
onto the ShowMacster drawer and
using the controls to play them. I can
imagine this feature being valuable
to video editors and graphic designers who want to review footage with
clients over the Internet. Better yet,
some rudimentary video controls are
available, such as jog and shuttle control for navigating quickly to specific
points in a clip, as well as a timecode
display.
Another collaborative visual editing tool is the sketchboard, a separate
window with basic drawing tools that
acts as an iChat whiteboard. Dragging
a photo to the sketchboard makes it
possible to mark up the image as if
you were huddled around a conference table.
Audio files are supported, too,
enabling you to play music for someone without sending an audio file,
but I wasn’t able to get this feature to
work.
ShowMacster is also a useful training tool, enabling you to send live
captures of your screen to the other
person. Want to show an inexperienced Mac user where to find a program’s preferences file that’s buried in
the Library folder? Instead of narrating the steps, jump into screen capture
mode and have them follow your
movements. You can specify an area
of the screen to send, enabling you to
zoom in on that section; a preference
dictates whether the active capture
area follows the mouse or not.
Media files that you place into the
drawer stay there for use in the future
and can be grouped into categories for
faster access. If you want to send an
original file to your iChat buddy
(for example, Mom wants digital copies of a few of the photos), simply
drag them from the ShowMacster
drawer onto the buddy’s icon in the
Buddy List.
Since ShowMacster is simply
inserting audio and video into
the existing data stream, the program works in multi-person chats
under Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. Also,
ShowMacster operates one-way; your
recipients don’t need to own a copy of
the software for it to work.
A trial version of ShowMacster,
which stops working after 15 minutes
until the next time you launch iChat,
is a 1.4 MB download. A license costs
$20, which covers one iChat identity.
It works with iChat under Mac OS X
10.3 Panther or Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
(a separate installer is available for
each), and requires a native FireWire
webcam (such as an iSight or attached
digital camcorder).
“The first thing you notice
about Apple’s new iMac — running the Intel Core Duo chipset
rather than an older PowerPC
chip — is that it’s almost identical to the iMac that the company introduced in October. The
second thing you notice, though,
is that it is noticeably faster. It
only takes around 30 seconds to
restart the entire system.
”
Wilson Rothman
Time
Gadget of the Week
14
iCamShare & ImageTricks Top Photo Booth
by Adam C. Engst
O
NE OF THE HIGHLIGHTS
of the just-released iMac G5
models is Photo Booth, a fun
little application that works with the
built-in iSight camera in the iMac.
With it, you can see through the lens
of the built-in iSight, apply one of a
number of image effects in real time,
and with a click, take the picture,
complete with the screen flashing
white to help illuminate the subject
(likely you, but hey, I suppose you
could get all sorts of things into the
view). Once you’ve taken the photo,
you can import it into iPhoto, save it
as your iChat buddy picture, or email
it to your friends. Cool, eh?
<http://www.imac.com/imac/isight.
html>
But what if you don’t have a new
iMac? Apple has said nothing about
making Photo Booth more widely
available, although it’s possible that
it could be included in a future iSight
update. Luckily, if you’ve been lusting after Photo Booth but don’t have
(or want) a new iMac G5 right now,
you have an alternative, and one that
in some ways outshines Photo Booth
- iCamShare.
iCamShare
Developed by Arbor Bits, a small
software development firm staffed by
some well-known Mac developers,
iCamShare is an elegantly easy application that enables you to take either
still photos or video (with sound)
using an iSight or other webcam; you
can then share the results via email,
by publishing to your .Mac account,
or by saving the file to your hard disk.
Using iCamShare is dead simple,
thanks to an assistant-like interface
that walks you through each step,
providing concise instructions directly
within the interface. To create a photo
of yourself, you select the Picture
radio button on the first screen, and
on the second screen, arrange your
face into an appropriate grimace
before clicking the Snap Picture button (you can also use digital zoom
to make your face more fully fill the
frame). If you dislike the result, click
Try Again and, well, try again. Once
you have the picture you want, the
third screen offers buttons you can
click to send your photo in email
(supporting Apple Mail, Eudora,
Entourage, and Mailsmith), copy your
photo to the Pictures folder on your
iDisk (from which you can easily add
it to a HomePage album), or save the
photo as a JPEG file on your hard
disk. iCamShare also reminds you that
you can drag the photo from iCamShare to any other application that
accepts dragged images. (iPhoto is not
among those applications; it accepts
only dragged files, so you must save
your photo as a JPEG file first, then
drag it into iPhoto. However, given
that iSight photos are only 640 by
480 pixels, you probably won’t want
to save too many.) Recording video
works similarly, with the addition
of two more screens in the middle.
After you record a video clip that you
think you like, the third screen lets
you replay the video and trim bits
from the beginning and end, which is
helpful, since it can be difficult to get
the video started and stopped cleanly.
On the fourth screen, you choose a
type of compression, compress your
video, and preview the compressed
result. A set of controls let you choose
the type of Internet connection your
recipient has, estimating download
time at the compressed size. If either
the download time is too long, or the
quality of the compressed video isn’t
acceptable, you can move a slider to
various positions between Receive
Quicker and Better Image and then recompress the video. The fifth and final
screen again enables you to send your
movie via email, upload it to your
iDisk’s Movies folder and publish it as
a movie, or save it to your hard disk.
You can drag it out of iCamShare to
another application too.
iCamShare costs $15 and is a mere
759K download. Although $15 isn’t
much, you can still try it before buying. It requires either Mac OS X 10.2.8
or Mac OS X 10.3.4 or later; it works
fine with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger in my
testing.
<http://www.arborbits.com/>
ImageTricks
So iCamShare outdoes Photo Booth by
being able to capture both still photos
and video, and by making it easy to
upload to .Mac as well as email. But
where iCamShare doesn’t compete
- on its own, anyway - with Photo
Booth is in terms of the image effects
that Photo Booth can apply. To beat
Photo Booth at that game, you’ll need
to add another program to the mix
BeLight Software’s free ImageTricks,
which can apply the Core Image
effects and filters built into Mac OS X
10.4 Tiger to any image you throw at
it.
ImageTricks provides a large pane
that contains the picture on which
you’re working, a scrolling list of
effects you can apply to that image, a
few sliders for modifying some of the
effects, and a few buttons for opening and saving pictures, copying and
pasting them, opening iPhoto, and
rotating left and right. Another slider
lets you zoom the picture in the main
pane, and an Apply button lets you
fix your changes in stone. You can
apply only a single effect at a time, so
you must apply your changes after
one effect to be able to add another. A
drawer contains a large collection of
masks that show and hide different
parts of the picture.
Integrating iCamShare and
ImageTricks is easy, but not complete.
You can drag a picture from iCamShare into ImageTricks and manipulate it to your heart’s content - well
beyond what’s possible in Photo
Booth - but there’s no way to send the
manipulated image back to iCamShare. Depending on your email
program, it might be possible to have
iCamShare create an email message
with the attached photo and then edit
the image attachment before sending.
ImageTricks didn’t want to accept a
dragged JPEG attachment from within
Eudora, but using Eudora’s super-
Cont’d on Page 17
15
Cover Story
Continued from Page 6
Continued
DD Tournament Poker 2.0p2 Released
In “Trying My Hand at Poker: DD Tournament Poker”
in TidBITS-784_, I wrote about DD Tournament
Poker, a Java-based poker game that plays the Texas
Hold ‘Em variant, and mentioned that the next version would be released soon. Version 2 was recently
released, and Donohoe Digital has just made a 2.0p2
update available.
<http://www.ddpoker.com/>
The new version adds online play, so you can play
against other live opponents running DD Tournament
Poker 2 (without ponying up actual cash, as with
many other online poker sites). The skills of the
computer players are now customizable, and several hand- analyzing features have been added. One
drawback is that the sound effects, which were done
so well in version 1, are worse in version 2: shuffling
cards sounds like flatulence, and actions such as calling
or raising elicit beeps that could be found in a mid1980s PC running DOS; fortunately, there’s an option
to play with audio turned off. Otherwise, this is a
strong upgrade that improves on a solid poker-playing
program. DD Tournament Poker 2 costs $30, or $25
if you’re upgrading from version 1; the 16 MB download also serves as a limited demo until you enter a
license number. [JLC]
Apple Addresses Flaws in Some iPod nanos
Shortly after writing about the iPod nano (see “New
iPod nano Replaces iPod mini” in TidBITS-796_), a
reader wrote to me asking, “What about the issue
of reports of the easy breaking of the screen when
there has been no obvious / excessive / accidental
misuse of the iPod nano?” As the device had only
been out a few days, I had no idea what he was talking about. Soon, though, I began to see report on the
Web about people having problems with iPod nano
screens cracking without being mishandled, as well as
scratched screens. At that point, I didn’t pay it much
attention: when dealing with hundreds of thousands
of consumer hardware devices, some flawed ones are
bound to appear.
<http://www.apple.com/ipodnano/>
Last week, however, Apple’s Senior Vice President
of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller addressed the
problem in an interview with Macworld Magazine. He
said that less than one-tenth of one percent of the
iPod nano units suffer from a manufacturing defect,
and that owners with the problem can call
higher quality reproduction than they did
before. You can now make and order greeting
cards, postcards, and calendars.
Garage Band 3 gains a handy new feature. It is a simple three track
task for creating podcasts. Talk into one track. (Then use the new
voice enhancing/noise reducing filters to improve your spoken
audio.) Use a second track for your music, or choose from 200 royalty-free clips or 100 jingles. (GarageBand automatically “ducks” or
fades the volume so the music doesn’t overwhelm the voice.) Then
add graphics to a third track,”podcast artwork” track, so that they
sync up with the appropriate spots in the other two tracks. Click a
button and the podcast is exported, and encoded. Ready to be shared
with the world. Garage Band also supports remote interview recording from iChat, as well as a video track for bringing movies in from
iMovie to create video podcasts or soundtracks.
iMovie HD 6
adds animated themes, like the themes in iDVD. You can add movie
clips and photos to a moving template. A travel movie, for example,
could include a scene resembling a collection of media overlaid onto
a map. Also new are: real time effects and titles; the ability to have
multiple projects open at the same time; an Export to iPod feature;
and the ability to create video podcasts. iMovie improves on it’s audio
handling as well. It adds new audio effects, such as a pitch changer
and a noise reducer, and a 10-slider equalizer for more precise sound
adjustments.
iDVD 6 offers Magic iDVD, which takes last year’s One-Step DVD
and greatly improves on it. You can now choose a theme; select movies, photos, and music from the Media browser pane, then push a
button. iDVD creates a project and burns the resulting disk. The map
view, sort of an index of your project, has been beefed up. You can
now rearrange menu pages by dragging them around. Slideshows
have been improved as well. You can now have as many as 9801 photos in a slideshow, up from 99 in the previous version of iDVD. Lastly,
this version finally supports burning iDVD projects directly to third
party DVD burners. You no longer have to have a Mac with a DVD
burner, aka SuperDrive, installed.
iWork ‘06
Now that Apple is touting it’s own productivity suite it is apparently
releasing new versions in tandem with iLife. The new version of
the iWork suite isn’t a block buster release in terms of “gottahaveit”
features. However there are
some welcome additions and
a few key improvements.
As a whole the iWork
suite gains new 3D charts,
advanced image editing
using what appears to be
the same Adjust panel found
in iPhoto, new themes and
templates, the capability to
add image reflections below
objects (Apple’s design element du jour), and freeform
shapes with image masking.
Tables can also now perform
calculations, and you can
incorporate reviewers’ comments.
Cont’d on Page 26
16
How to Buy Cont’d
from Page 15
Continued
AppleCare to have the iPod replaced. As
for the scratches, Schiller noted that the
screens use the same materials found on
the current iPod color line, which have not
generated complaints. (One enterprising
owner documented his success at using a
$4 can of Brasso to bring his black iPod
nano back to like-new condition.) [JLC]
<http://www.macworld.com/
news/2005/09/27/nanoscreen/index.php>
Retrospect 6.1 Gains Full Tiger
Compatibility
Although Retrospect 6.0 has worked
fine with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger in general,
it doesn’t support two of Tiger’s new
features: access control lists (ACLs) that
enable administrators to control who
can access and modify files stored on a
Mac OS X 10.4 server and extended
attributes that will be used by future
Mac applications. EMC Dantz has now
released Retrospect 6.1 to add support
ACLs and extended attributes. Needless
to say, most people didn’t even notice this
omission in Retrospect 6.0, but it’s nice to
see the update anyway. A similar update
for Retrospect Express 6.1 will be available in the future (Retrospect Express
users running Tiger should be sure to
update to Retrospect Express 6.0.212).
The Retrospect 6.1 update is free for
Retrospect 6.0 owners; it’s a 24 MB download. [ACE]
<http://www.dantz.com/updates>
Office 2004 SP2 Enhances
Entourage, Fixes Bugs
Microsoft has released Office for Mac 2004
Service Pack 2 (SP2), which fixes bugs
in all the Office programs and provides
notable enhancements to Entourage, the
email, calendaring, and contact management part of the software suite. Entourage
2004 SP2 features enhanced support for
Microsoft Exchange Server, making it easier
for Mac users to coexist in a predominantly Windows and Outlook environment.
Specific improvements include better email
and calendar management, enhanced
public folder support, faster client-server
synchronization, improved access (with full
Cont’d on Page 20
secret Control-Option-double-clickan-attachment-icon trick to reveal
the original file, I was able to find
the actual JPEG attachment and drag
that onto the ImageTricks icon in
the Dock to open it, edit it, and save
changes.
ImageTricks is surprisingly addictive; each time I dropped a new
photo into it, I had to tear myself
away from trying all the different effects. Its collection of effects
doesn’t match Photo Booth’s entirely.
ImageTricks provides 43 effects (it’s
a long list; just let it wash over you):
Crop, Color Controls, Exposure
Adjust, Gamma Adjust, Hue
Adjust, White Point Adjust, Color
Monochrome, Color Posterize, Color
Invert, Unsharp Mask, Gaussian Blur,
Motion Blur, Sharpen Luminance,
Zoom Blur, Bump Distortion,
Circular Splash, Circular Wrap, Hole
Distortion, Pinch Distortion, Twirl
Distortion, Vortex Distortion, Glass
Distortion, Bloom, Gloom,
Crystallize, Pointillize, Pixelate, Edge
Work, Edges, Checkerboard, Random
Generator, Circular Screen, Dot
Screen, Hatched Screen, Line Screen,
Kaleidoscope, Op Tile, Parallelogram
Tile, Triangle Tile, Lenticular Halo,
Starshine Generator, and Sunbeams.
Photo Booth includes 16 effects:
Sepia, Black & White, Glow, Comic
Book, Colored Pencil, Thermal
Camera, X-Ray, Pop Art, Bulge, Dent,
Twirl, Squeeze, Mirror, Light Tunnel,
Fisheye, and Stretch. It’s hard to say
which program provides the better
set, since although ImageTricks has
many more effects, some of them are
relatively silly. Of course, so are a
number of the effects in Photo Booth
too, so I’d give the nod to
ImageTricks.
BeLight Software gives
ImageTricks away for free; it’s a 1.5
MB download and requires Mac OS
X 10.4 or later.
<http://www.belightsoft.com/products/imagetricks/overview.php>
All Together Now
Sure, Photo Booth is clever, and
I’m sure lots of people who buy an
iSight-equipped iMac G5 will enjoy
using it. But for the rest of us, iCamShare and ImageTricks go well
beyond what Photo Booth does, both
in terms of offering video support
and by providing many more special
effects. The only place they fall down
is in the integration, so perhaps
future versions of the two can work
together more tightly to provide an
even better user experience than they
do separately now.
This article orginally appeared
in Tidbits Magazine issue #804,
published 11/7/05. It is reprinted
with the permission of the Author.
“After testing two of the
new Intel Core Duo--based
Macs--the 15-inch MacBook
Pro portable and the 20-inch
iMac desktop--it is clear to
me that in many ways Apple
(Research) has improved on
what were already two of
the best computers on the
planet and has built a better
foundation for the future.
”
Peter Lewis
Fortune
“We are thrilled to have
the world’s most innovative
personal computer company
as a customer. Apple helped
found the PC industry and
throughout the years has
been known for fresh ideas
and new approaches. We
look forward to providing
advanced chip technologies, and to collaborating on
new initiatives, to help Apple
continue to deliver innovative products for years to
come.
”
Paul Otellini
President and CEO of Intel
17
GRAMUG News Continued
from Page 2
iPhoto
After the lengthy discussion of iTunes there
was only about 20 min left to cover iPhoto. We
did discuss new features like the new image
enhancement and correction tools, the updated
Photo books, improved slideshows, Smart
Albums, organizing photos by film roll, and
being able to view pictures taken in a certain
month or year. Other handy features we talked
about were the ability to save your iPhoto
library to disk, RAW support, and the ability to
convert even RAW photos to other formats.
Personally I felt that there was more that
could have been said and done with iPhoto. I
apologize for my rushed presentation of iPhoto.
With the time we had available that’s all we
could fit in. In the future we’re going to showcase one iLife application per meeting so we can
spend as much time as needed to fully cover the
topic.
We concluded the meeting by having a
drawing. The lucky winners were: Katie Weller who won
Photoshop Elements 2.0; Paul Roese who won Jim Heid’s
the Macintosh iLife ‘05 book; and our grand prize winner
was Juliet Kauffman who took home iLife ‘05.
Shown above is Paul Roese holding his
prize, Jim Heid’s the Macintosh iLife ‘05
book. (July winner)
Shown abovie is Juliet Kauffman holding her
prize, iLife ‘05. (July winner)
Shown above is Katie Weller holding her prize,
Photoshop Elements 2. (July winner)
18
MW Best Cont’d from Page 13
JBL On Time shown
above
360i is an add-on
device, as in you
slide the iPod into it,
which allows your
fourth generation iPod
device to play videos
and view photos. This
device attaches to the
docking port of a 4G
or 5G iPod, including
an iPod nano or Mini.
It includes it’s own
color screen, which is
about an inch larger
than the 5G iPod’s
screen. If that’s all you
got for your $249 you would have a
right to be dubious as to it’s practicality. But this accessory also allows
you to record video from a variety of
different sources, including TV, cable,
satellite, DVR or any other analog
source, as well as play it back on a
TV.
Micromat Techtool Protégé
If you’ve ever had to go over and
help someone with an ailing Mac, you
know that it can be a pain to assemble
all of your diagnostic and repair
tools. It usually means you’re lugging
around several cd’s. Sure you could
save time and use a USB flash drive
but those things are relatively slow
and only the latest Macs using Intel
cpu’s can boot off of USB devices.
Micromat has stepped in and made
a FireWire flash drive, 1GB in size,
that comes pre loaded with a bootable
copy of MacOS X. It
also includes their
diagnostic and repair
software, Tech Tool Pro
as well as Disk Studio.
With the remaining
drive space you can
either add more repair
tools or use it for file
storage in case you
need to rescue damaged files. Being a
FireWire device it will
boot any Mac allowing you to diagnose
and fix the problem.
And it’s small enough
to fit on a keychain or
tuck in your pocket.
(Price$229)
iSee 360i shown above.
Micromat TechTool Protoge’
shown above
Software
The big software companies, which
this year are Apple and Adobe, got
most of the press attention. But that
doesn’t mean smaller firms weren’t
cranking out some quality software.
This years winners in the software category cover the full spectrum. From
pragmatic to whimsical.
Adobe Lightroom, which Adobe
released on Monday as a public beta
for the Mac, takes a new approach
to working with your photos—and
offers some interesting competition
for Apple’s recently released Aperture
1.0. As competition is something that’s
been sorely lacking in the professional
photo-editing market lately, this clash
of the titans can only mean good news
for digital photographers. Lightroom
lets you take control of your photos—
sorting, rating,
editing, and
publishing—in
a nondestructive way. The
program is
designed to
complement,
not replace,
Photoshop;
while it offers
an impressive
collection of
tools for the
most essential
editing tasks,
it also makes it
easy to switch
to Photoshop
for compositing, masking, and similar needs. Best
of all, it doesn’t require the latest and
greatest Mac hardware to run smoothly. Mac
users can
download
it free from
Adobe’s
site.
Apple’s
iLife ‘06
It’s becoming an
annual ritual to see a
new version
of the iLife
suite at each
MacWorld. Apple manages to make
each release well worth the money.
This year Apple added a new
Cont’d on Page 22
19
News Cont’d from Page 17
browsing) to the Global Address List, and
enhanced delegate access that makes new
setup possible entirely through Entourage
without needing to use Outlook on a PC.
Entourage 2004 SP2 requires Exchange
2000 or later, and some organizations may
need updates to Exchange.
Although Entourage was the only program with significant new features, all the
other Office programs received numerous
bug fixes and security improvements. You
can read the full list at the link below, but
we’re happiest about the promised performance improvements in Word 2004 SP2
and the fix for the bug that crashed Word
when you updated Table of Contents fields
contained in a table cell, the two of which
had been forcing us to rely primarily on
Word X for our Take Control ebooks.
Many of the bugs fixed resolve crashes,
so if you’ve had trouble with Office 2004
applications crashing, be sure to install SP2.
You can download Office for Mac 2004
SP2 via the Microsoft AutoUpdate utility,
or from Microsoft’s Mactopia Web site; it’s
a 57 MB download. [ACE]
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/autoupdate/description/AUOffice20041120EN.
htm>
Opera Now Free
Perhaps acknowledging the difficulty of
selling a Web browser in today’s Internet,
Opera has freed its Web browser. While
you can still choose to pay for Opera 8.5,
which also features chat, contact, email, and
other related features, that fee now covers
support, not the software.
Opera is offering one year of 24hour-turnaround email support for $29;
otherwise, the browser is free. Opera’s
browser is a bit quirky in how it renders
CSS and handles JavaScript, but some folks
swear by its fast rendering and certain
subtle features. The company has increasingly moved into mobile and embedded
browser development, in which revenue
comes from licensees who pay a per
phone, per customer, or per copy of
software sold license. Adobe, for instance,
embedded Opera’s technology into Adobe
GoLive CS2 product for better previewing
of pages. Discussion on TidBITS Talk also
points toward Opera earning sufficient
money from ads shown along with search
results from Google. [GF]
<http://opera.com/>
Macworld Boston Cancelled
Our friends at MacCentral reported news
that comes as no surprise: IDG World
Expo has cancelled Macworld Expo Boston
and will be concentrating efforts on
Macworld Expo San Francisco in January.
As we’ve noted in our coverage of recent
Macworld Expo events in both Boston and
New York, the attendance simply wasn’t
there to qualify the show as a Macworld
Expo. The demise of the Boston show was
the result of a domino effect starting with
IDG World Expo’s decision several years
back to move Macworld Expo from New
York City back to Boston. That decision
caused a highly publicized spat with Apple,
which then refused to attend Macworld
Boston and also pulled out
of the quickly cancelled Macworld Expo
Tokyo. To this day, it’s unknown if Apple
would have continued to exhibit had
Macworld Expo remained in New York,
since the company prefers to schedule and
control its own product announcements,
rather than have them set in stone a year
in advance. Without Apple and expected
product announcements, both individuals
and members of the media chose not to
attend, which in turn caused many exhibitors to rethink the value of a booth, given
the still-high costs of exhibiting. Despite
IDG World Expo’s efforts to keep the
show relevant with plenty of conference
sessions and special booths, the feedback
loop of an ever-shrinking show put the
final nail in Macworld Boston’s coffin. At
least we still have San Francisco.
<http://www.macworld.com/
news/2005/09/16/boston/>
That’s not to say that small trade shows
don’t still have a place. On 01-Oct-05, the
North Coast Macintosh Users Group
will be hosting the one-day Macintosh
Computer Expo 2005, complete with 24
exhibitors, a slate of talks by the same
experts who speak at other industry
events, and an anticipated attendance of
more than 1,000. It runs from 9:30 AM
through 3:30 PM at the Santa Rosa Junior
College in Santa Rosa, CA, and although
it’s free, you’ll have to pay $3 to park. Not
bad for a day of Macintosh fun and education. And then there’s the Central Valley
MacFair on 22-Oct-05 in Fresno, CA, put
on by the Fresno Macintosh Users Group.
It’s likely to be smaller, but with many of
the same kinds of events and classes. Small
shows like these are of course primarily of interest to local Mac users (which
is why we don’t usually publicize them
in TidBITS, given that almost none of our
readers would be unable to attend), but
they serve a useful role for those people
who can make it so I hope we see additional regional shows appearing around the
world. We’re always happy to help support
such user group-oriented shows with copies of the full Take Control Library to raffle
off, as we’re doing for these two events.
[ACE]
<http://www.ncmug.org/mce.html>
<http://www.fresnomug.com/macfair.html>
Exclusive Coldplay EP at iTMS to
Benefit Hurricane Katrina Victims
In “Net Responds to Hurricane Katrina
Aftermath” in TidBITS-796_, Jeff Carlson
reported on how the Internet community
has come together in countless ways to
help the victims displaced or otherwise
affected by Hurricane Katrina, which
struck the Gulf Coast of the southern
United States a little over two weeks ago.
To raise funds for the relief effort, Apple
announced last week the release of a
new EP by alternative rock band Coldplay,
available exclusively at the iTunes Music
Store. Apple, Coldplay, BMG Publishing, and
Capitol Records/EMI will donate 100 percent of their shares of the proceeds from
U.S. sales.
<http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/
sep/14coldplay.html>
The “Fix You” EP (longer than a single,
but shorter than an album) includes two
songs previously unreleased in the U.S.
(“Pour Me” and “The World Turned Upside
Down”) and two versions of “Fix You,” the
band’s new single from their double platinum album X&Y. The four-song EP costs $3
and is available immediately. [MHA]
<http://www.apple.com/itunes/>
XPostFacto 4.0 Adds Tiger to More
Legacy Macs
Other World Computing has released
its latest version of XPostFacto, a tool
designed to help owners of Macintosh
models not supported by Apple for specific Mac OS X releases to install and use
those operating system versions. The latest
version adds support for Mac OS X 10.4
Tiger. XPostFacto 4.0 enables the installation of the stripped-down Darwin Unix
base of Mac OS X, as well as Mac OS X
(client version) and Mac OS X Server. It
can install Mac OS X 10.2 through
Cont’d on Page 21
20
News Cont’d from Page 20
10.4. The operating system must be purchased separately.
<http://eshop.macsales.com/NewsRoom/
Framework.cfm?page=PR/
owc_xpost_facto4.html>
The company noted in a press release
that this version handles computers as old
as the Power Mac 7300, which shipped
in 1997. Many computers that lost Apple’s
support with the Tiger release can accept
a Tiger upgrade, although without Apple’s
testing, it’s entirely possible that additional
quirks and problems may appear. The software, developed by Ryan Rempel, is free
for use, but the company suggests a $25
donation to help continue supporting the
software’s development. [GF]
Nisus Writer Express 2.5 Released
Nisus Software has updated its Mac OS
X-native word processor to version 2.5,
adding core features and fixing bugs. Rightto-left input, a key feature in Nisus Writer
Classic used by languages such as Arabic
and Hebrew, now appears in Express. Also
added are bullets and numbering features,
LinkBack support, hyperlink support, and
performance improvements. Nisus Writer
Express 2.5 costs $70 for new users; owners of version 2.0 can upgrade
to 2.5 for free. The upgrade is a 19.6 MB
download. [JLC]
<http://www.nisus.com/Express/>
Default Folder X 2.0.2 Now
Available
St. Clair Software has released version
2.0.2 of their essential Mac OS X utility,
Default Folder X.
The new version improves compatibility
with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, fixing potentially
crashing problems with
Safari, System Preferences, and other
Cocoa applications. Support for QuicKeys,
Trans Lucy, and iClock has also been added.
We’ve written about Default Folder several times in TidBITS, because it still improves
basic Mac OS X Finder behavior (see
“Tools We Use: Default Folder” in TidBITS475_ and “Default Folder X Improves
Mac OS X Open/Save Dialogs” in TidBITS617_). Default Folder X 2.0.2 is a 4.1 MB
download, and is free for registered users;
a full license costs $35. [JLC]
<http://www.stclairsoft.com/
DefaultFolderX/>
iKey 2.1 Moves to iApp-like
Interface
Script Software has updated their
Macintosh automation utility iKey to version 2.1, adding a few features but mostly
streamlining the interface to make it easier
to create and edit shortcuts, menus, and
palettes that automate repetitive actions.
iKey 2.1 now features an iApp-like interface, with a left-hand pane that displays
the applications in which particular shortcuts, menus, or palettes are active, making
it easy to see which items are available
for editing in the main pane. Also new
is a Library window that contains all the
commands (the basic functions iKey can
perform for you), launchers (the ways
you invoke shortcuts, most commonly
by pressing a hotkey), and contexts (the
applications in which shortcuts are active)
that you’ve defined. The Library window
simplifies the task of reusing already
defined commands, and it also lets you
see and delete commands, launchers, and
contexts that aren’t currently in use. iKey’s
programmer, Philippe Hupe, also added
some new commands and options to
existing commands, enabling iKey 2.1 to
wake a sleeping Mac after a delay or at a
specific date and time, to repeat the last or
next-to-last shortcut executed, to choose
items from hierarchical menus more flexibly, and more. Last but not least, iKey 2.1
resolves a few compatibility problems with
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. In the interests of
disclosure, note that I use iKey daily, that I
make design suggestions during development, and that the update contains the
1.1 update to my “Take Control of iKey
2” ebook, which documents the entire
program and covers all the changes. The
iKey 2.1 update is free to those who have
registered the $30 iKey 2.0; it’s a 3.7 MB
download. [ACE]
<http://www.scriptsoftware.com/ ikey/>
Tiger Still Resists Showing Preferred
Networks
Last week, I explained how to force a Mac
OS X system upgraded from Panther to
Tiger to display a list of preferred AirPort
networks in the Network preferences
pane that you could edit, remove, add
to, or rearrange by preferred order of
connections (see “Adding Tiger’s AirPort
Preferred Network List” in TidBITS-794_).
Several readers wrote in to say that their
upgraded Tiger systems still wouldn’t provide a preferred list.
These notes make it increasingly clear
that we’re encountering a larger bug than
I originally suspected, one that suppresses
this option of seeing which network your
computer “prefers” based on whether
you agreed to remember the network in
the future when connecting to it. Another
way to work around this bug is to create
an entirely new location setting and set
up AirPort from scratch within that location, but even this workaround isn’t always
effective.
One reader with an otherwise perfectly functional Tiger system sees a blank
list of networks. Clicking the plus (+) sign
doesn’t bring up a dialog. Creating a new
location setting didn’t fix the problem
either. At a loss, I suggested reinstalling Mac
OS X, which is such a Windows thing to
do, but I can’t see how he might otherwise
be able to resolve the fundamental networking issues. [GF]
Safari Updates for Panther & Tiger
Apple has released updates to its Safari
Web browser, which the company says
improve support for third-party Web
applications, make Safari more stable, and
improve Web site compatibility. We’d love
to offer more specific information, but
Apple’s release notes (as usual) are woefully terse. However, the company has
released the Safari update in two forms:
Safari Update 2.0.1 for users running Mac
OS X 10.4.2 Tiger (4.5 MB), and Safari
Update 1.3.1 (3.8 MB) for users running
Mac OS X 10.3.9 Panther. (The appropriate software should also be available via
Software Update.) Despite the paucity
of detail, it’s nice to see Apple making
good on its intention to provide important updates for the Safari engine under
Panther as well as Tiger, at least for a time.
[GD]
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/safariupdate131.html>
21
program to the package,
iWeb. iWeb is stylistically related to Keynote
and Pages. Like both
programs it
features an
easy to use
interface and
plenty of
professionally designed
templates to
make creating
a web site or a
blog a breeze.
The other
programs
in the suite
also receive
updates and
new features.
iPhoto can
now: store up
to 250,000 photos; do full screen editing; apply one-click
effects; and sports higher quality prints (now including
calendars and greeting cards. Oh, and it’s much faster than
iPhoto 5. iMovie HD also received some major enhancements. They include: real time effects; real time titling;
iMovie themes; enhanced audio tools; the ability to export
to video podcasts and blogs ; and the ability to have multiple projects open at once. iDVD’s enhancements are less
dramatic but still welcome. Some of it’s new features are:
Magic DVD-basically pick a theme and select your content
then sit back while iDVD builds your DVD for you; widescreen DVD’s can now be authored in the program; an
enhanced map view makes navigating your project easier
than ever, and slideshows have been majorly beefed up
with support for thousands of pictures, RAW files, presentations from Keynote. It also works with third party DVD
burners. The changes in GarageBand make it an all around
great tool for the burgeoning podcasting movement. You
can now easily create your audio podcasts, including intro
music and sound effects. This version of GarageBand also
MW Best of Show Cont’d
from Page 19
Shown below is EyeTV2 from Elgato
includes an iChat interview recording feature.
Browseback, from Smile on My Mac, takes on a common
complaint of web surfing. Trying to find, or remember a
site you visited lately but didn’t take the time to make a
bookmark. Browseback allows you to search your browser
Shown above is Browsebak from Smile on my Mac
history in a graphical representation. It shows you thumbnails, mini pictures, of every page you’ve looked at. You
can search these previously viewed sites visually, by keywords, or have it show you which ones have changed
since you last looked at them. You can view a history of
pages that you visited weeks ago.
Docktopus takes an existing concept in MacOS X and
expands upon it. If you’ve ever used Mail, MacOS X’s
built in email program, then you know it will display a
red badge, with numbers, that indicates how many unread
messages you have. This is called a badge. Docktopus lets
you add descriptive status or informational badges to your
Dock icons. For example: your Trash can can tell you how
many files are in it; iCal’s icon will sprout a mini-calendar
of events; and any application can gain a processor icon
that indicates how hard it’s working. You can have up to
four badges per Dock icon turned on at any time.
Elgato’s EyeTV 2 is a software PVR,
personal video recorder. (Think Tivo).
This new version of the software sports
a radically redesigned interface that
takes its cues from iTunes and iPhoto.
Like iPhoto or iTunes you can create
playlists of video recordings and favorite channel lists. An integrated program
guide saves you from having to open
your browser to find out what’s on
tonight, especially if you want to schedule a recording. You can, of course, play
back your recorded video on your Mac.
But you can also export it to your iPod
or, if you have Roxio’s Toast 7, burn it
to a disk. EyeTV2 works with all existing EyeTV-compatible hardware.
22
MW Best of Show Cont’d
from Page 22
crafting a unique, and powerful product. Project X is project management
software that is easy for anyone to
photo was taken. The program uses
this info to build connections between
photos so you can, with time, trace
Google Earth, from
those clever folks at
Google finally makes
its debut on the Mac.
If you love maps, or
geography, this program will be a lot of
fun. It’s a gorgeous
fly over program,
meaning aerial view,
with very detailed
satellite photos of
some areas (Europe,
North America priShown above is Docktupus by Startly
marily) . If
Technologies
you’re like
me you’ll be
the movements of the single person
trying to find
(or multiple people) through time and
a detailed
around the world, and explore shared
satellite view
links between people. All of this data
of your resican then be published on the Web for
dence as soon
others to explore. It takes some real
as you install
effort up front to catalog all of your
it. It also has
pics, you can also scan in pictures and
options for
add them to the project. But if you’re
boundary,
the family historian or a genealogy
building and
buff this would allow you to share
even comyour passion with others in your fammuter rail
ily, or the web for that matter.
overlays, as
well as finding
Suitcase Fusion from Extensis is the
other amenifirst release culminating from the
ties in the area.
If you have ever Shown above is Google Earth
used google maps
online you’ll love the extra power and understand, but is still powerful enough for those users
features that Google Earth provides.
that want and need high-end
features. Project X takes a true
LightZone 1.0 from Light Crafts is
Apple approach to interface
a photo editing application, targeted
design, providing an elegant
to professional and advanced phoand easy to use workspace.
tographers. It provides an alternative
way to view, manage, edit, and corMemoryMiner by
rect digital photographs according
GroupSmarts takes a new
to light values. LightZone is based
approach to organizing all of
on the Zone System, a photographic
those photos on your Mac. It’s
technique popularized by landscape
purpose is to develop relaphotographer Ansel Adams, that lets
tionships. This lets you create
photographers visualize and control
Shown above is Memory Miner by
personal
the tonal range of
history’s. GroupSmarts
their images. How
The prowell this new
gram has
recent merger with Font Reserve. The
program will fare
you identify interface takes its cues from Suitcase,
against Adobe and
the people
but under the hood it behaves more
Apple only time
and places
like Font Reserve. Fusion can find
will tell.
in your
and automatically activate versions
pics, and
of fonts in documents, even if those
Marware’s
when the
documents are EPS or PDF file fonts.
Project X is an
The Font Vault,
example of findShown left is Project X by
long a prized
ing an under
feature of
served niche and
Marware
23
The table and chart features act exactly like those in Keynote, which brings a nice consistency to the
whole iWork package.
Charts work the same as well.
Also new to Pages, Comments! Comments are great if you need to leave notes for yourself, or better yet, if you are collaborating with another Pages user.
24
For the creative publishers, Apple has also added the ability to make custom shapes for image
masks.
Original Image
Free form shape
Masked image with greyed out background
Final image with mask
And Address Book integration for mail merge is drag-n-drop!
25
P2P Takes a Licking Continued
from Page 11
ers of file sharing programs removing their products from distribution,
and those that remain being more
careful about how they promote and
target their products so as not to run
afoul of this recent Supreme Court
decision. We’ll also undoubtedly see
many more such products go completely anonymous. Given that the
existing P2P networks can be used,
totally legitimately, to distribute new
software, there’s no reason developers need identify themselves in any
way if they’re not interested in earning money from their work. In other
words, I think we’ll see an escalation
in the arms race between file sharing
proponents and the Content Cartel.
In the long run, I like the EFF’s
suggestion of a voluntary collective
licensing scheme. You can read the
full details at the page linked below,
but in essence, everyone would voluntarily pay (or have it bundled in ISP or
other charges) some small fee, say $5
per month. A non-profit, transparent
collecting agency roughly along the
lines of ASCAP and BMI would then
collect the money, determine how to
distribute it, and send it to the artists.
I say “roughly” modeled on ASCAP
and BMI, which perform the collection
Cover Story Continued from
Page 16
and distribution function for songs
played on the radio and in public venues, because there are plenty of criticisms leveled against them, including
the fact that it’s not unheard-of for
artists whose work is played on air
never to receive a dime. But voluntary
collective licensing would generate
significant revenue for artists while
allowing individuals to listen to or
view whatever they wanted, all while
participating in the distribution of
their favorite works via P2P networks.
<http://www.eff.org/share/collective_lic_wp.php>
More generally, I remain troubled
that an act as simple and basic as
sharing is slowly but surely being
turned into a bad thing. The 1980s
may have started it all with the “Me
Generation,” but I think we’re seeing the 21st century starting off with
far too much power in the hands of
corporate behemoths driven only
by quarterly revenues. The news we
read, the entertainment we enjoy, the
food we eat, the clothes we wear...
for many of us, it all comes from
companies for whom we’re nothing
more than easily manipulated, salary-earning lemmings. The Internet is
the greatest opportunity we’ve seen
for diversity to flourish, whether it be
Pages 2 adds auto-correction, a page thumbnails view for
easier document navigation, and
a mail merge feature that works with Apple’s Address Book
application. Keynote 3 improves the build functions by
enabling you to intersperse images and bullet points within
a sequence, and adds a Light Table view for reviewing and
organizing slides. When you’re practicing your presentation,
you can use the Rehearsal View (which shows the current and
next slides, time elapsed, and other information) without having to connect a second display; also, new QuickTime controls
provide interactivity with movies, and a password lock can be
enabled for letting a presentation run in kiosk mode.
As is usual these days Apple steals the show with a bunch
of announcements. And that is a good thing. It shows Apple
is continuing to improve. They’re crafting not only new hardware but new software toys to entice us to buy, or upgrade. All
of the iLife and iWork programs are Universal Binaries which
means they run amazingly fast on those new Mac Intels. And
they come free with those new machines, $80 for each suite if
you buy it separately. I think these updates, both in hardware
and in software make for a very tempting upgrade. Of course
they just might make the difference in switching some PC folks
to the Mac camp. I’m eagerly waiting to see how this plays out
with the buying public. I think Apple has a winner here.
in providing alternative news from
abroad, music and video from independent artists, access to a vast collection of gourmet foods, or just the
opportunity to find unusual clothes to
wear.
The Internet will never be a utopia
where goodness and light are all that
one experiences, but it’s our last best
hope to escape a future where our
culture is spoon-fed to us by Sales &
Marketing. Culture, by definition, is
shared, and we should be investigating every imaginable possibility to
help people come together around
commonalities without everything
devolving to a commercial transaction.
I may not agree with them on
every point, but I think the Electronic
Frontier Foundation is doing some of
the best work in protecting our ability
to create technological innovations,
and I encourage you to support them
as I’ve done in the past and will continue to do.
<http://secure.eff.org/saveinnovation>
MacWorld Best of Show
Continued from Page 23
Font Reserve, is available in this release. It allows you
more control over fonts to eliminate unnecessary font
conflicts. It also aids in preventing font corruption.
Additionally the program advanced search capabilities
based on keywords, foundries, and font classifications.
Every year MacWorld’s Best of Show Winners are a
grab bag. This year is no different. There are some
fun items, like Docktopus, and some serious items,
like Adobe’s Lightroom. They all showcase the range
of Mac market and the excellent developers building
apps for Mac Users.
26
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