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Video
Superguide
HOW TO:
Get Great Shots
Pick Your Perfect
Camcorder
PLUS
6
Video
Cameras
Reviewed
$6.99 U.S./$7.99 Canada
Mac Home Theater
Is the Mac Mini Ready for
Your Living Room?
September 2006 www.macworld.com OPINION
er
Us 7 From the Editor’s Desk
ac
M JASON SNELL
g
n Why I love the Internet:Wikipedia,YouTube,
ati
or e-books—and Ihnatko.
p
or
nc 12 Feedback
I
COVER STORY Readers respond.
REVIEW
40 Digital Video Essentials
RICHARD BAGULEY
Picking the perfect camcorder shouldn’t be a guessing game.Before you lay
down your money,see which features really matter and which are pure hype.If
you already have a camcorder,we’ll show you how to improve your movie-
making skills with ten rules the pros swear by.
FEATURES
59 Making the Grade
Summer break is coming to an end,and students are once again college-
bound.Here are our picks for the most dorm-friendly Mac gear for you or your
favorite scholar.
50 The Multimedia Mac Mini
24 MiniDV camcorders
CHRISTOPHER BREEN mmm Canon Elura 100
With its small size,powerful processor,and bevy of connections,the Intel mmh JVC GR-D396US
Mac mini has the potential to succeed where other Macs have failed—as mmmh JVC GR-X5US
the core of your multimedia center.How well does it work? How can you mmmm Panasonic PV-GS300
make it function better? What do you need to add? We answer these mmmm Panasonic PV-GS500
questions and more. mmm Sony DCR-HC36 MiniDV Handycam
31 Photoshop plug-ins
mmmmh Exposure
mmmmh FocalBlade 1.0
mmmm iCorrect EditLab Pro 5.0
mmmmh Noiseware Professional 4.0.1
mmmmh PhotoKit Color 2.0.2
32 More Reviews
34 Top Products
36 Mac Gems
DAN FRAKES
40 DIGITAL VIDEO ESSENTIALS
Transfer large files,keep abreast of your laptop’s
charging status,add hot keys to your contextual-
menu items,work more cleanly with Windows
volumes,and tag your videos for the iPod.Plus:
check out three cool menu-bar utilities.
34 TOP PRODUCTS
On the Cover 50 THE MULTIMEDIA MAC MINI
Photograph by Peter Belanger
www.macworld.com September 2006 MACWORLD 3
SECRETS
66 WORKING MAC
September 2006
Outwit PDF Annoyances
MAC BEAT CHRISTOPHER BREEN
Whether you’re trying to navigate a PDF form in
Safari or get rid of the buttons Adobe Acrobat
16 One year into the Intel transition,ten things we’d like to see in Leopard, Standard or Pro stuck in your Microsoft Office apps,
how GarageBand is changing music hardware,Apple technology and the you’ve probably had your share of PDF annoyances.
World Cup,and more. Here’s how to get the upper hand.
68 PLAYLIST
Printing from iTunes
KIRK MCELHEARN
iTunes is a great music player,but did you know
that you can also use it to print CD jewel-case
inserts,lyrics,and lists of your albums and songs?
70 DIGITAL PHOTO
Camera Phone Tips
DERRICK STORY
The pictures your cell phone’s built-in camera takes
may not be worthy of an 8-by-10-inch frame,but
your camera phone does let you capture impromptu
photo ops.Put it to good use with these tips.
16 MAC BEAT
72 MOBILEMAC
Get Online from Anywhere
GLENN FLEISHMANN
Get wireless coverage anywhere you can use your
cell phone,with a 3G cellular data connection.
72 MOBILE MAC
74 GEEKFACTOR
Extreme Mac Makeover
ANTON LINECKER
Why should your Mac look like everyone else’s?
With the help of inexpensive and free apps and
system hacks,you can give its interface a new look.
76 HELPDESK
Mac OS X Hints
ROB GRIFFITHS
Create disk images fast,hop through Spotlight
results with the keyboard,change iCal’s visible
hours on-the-fly,access your photo library
without launching iPhoto,turn your Mac into a
musical alarm clock,and more.
70 DIGITAL PHOTO
80 Mac 911
CHRISTOPHER BREEN
ONLINE EXCLUSIVES Burn smart folders,set default paper sizes in
Pages,zoom in on Keynote presentations,check
IMAP messages before they download,delete
individual cache entries in Safari,and more.
> Richard Baguley takes you through some of Book,Mail,and iCal in this month’s Breen’s
the features of the camcorders we review in Bungalow. BACK PAGE
this issue (see page 24 for our review).
> And make sure you check out the best of
> Senior Editor Christopher Breen shows you Macworld.com.
how to get the most out of Apple’s Address
100 Hot Stuff
http://cd.macworld.com/2006/09/mouse-text
Check out our favorite new stuff.
4 MACWORLD September 2006 www.macworld.com
FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK BY JASON SNELL
Net Returns
It’s easy to take the Internet for granted. But once in a while, I’m
reminded of just how integral the Net’s become to my life—by mak-
ing me more productive at work, by making it easier to stay in touch
with family and friends, and most importantly, by making it simple to
find out who That Guy is.
Knowledge on Demand One of the questions that came up in Rob’s series:
When I’m watching a show or movie and just can’t How well would the new Mac mini perform as a
remember where I’ve seen That Guy before, I pull home entertainment center? We asked Christopher
over my MacBook and call up the Internet Movie Breen to spend some time with a Mac mini to answer
Database (imdb.com). Within moments, I’ve con- that question, and he wrote up his findings for Mac-
firmed that That Guy is really The Same Guy who world.com. But a funny thing happened on the way
played That Other Guy in That Other Movie. How to the Web: Chris’s story developed so nicely, we
did we ever live without this vital information? decided it’d make a really great magazine story, too
Wikipedia (wikipedia.org) is the other Net resource I (see page 50).
use all the time. The Internet encyclopedia has its
detractors. (Because anyone can edit a Wikipedia Pages without Paper
article, entries can fall victim to malicious revisionism.) Once upon a time, Andy Ihnatko wrote a monthly
Wikipedia is also a perfect example of the old saying column for Macworldmagazine. Much to our regret,
that you never want to see what happens inside a we had to drop his print column a few years back. But
sausage factory. Behind the scenes, Wikipedia can be a recently, when we launched our new MacUser
seething cauldron of debate and political maneuvering. Weblog, we went back to Andy and asked him if he’d
But the end result is a site that has harnessed the pure like to write for us again. And so, once again, you can
power of the Internet better than any other. read Andy’s monthly prose stylings at www.macuser
.com/ihnatko/.
Whose Tube? Likewise, we’ve been trying to determine how to
Another site that’s a perfect use of the Internet is give the stories we publish in the magazine a longer
YouTube (youtube.com). Last May, I posted a brief shelf life. Over the course of two years, we’ll publish
video there showing what was lurking underneath the thousands of words on digital photography, the iPod
MacBook’s battery bay (macworld.com/1436). Within a and iTunes, Mac OS X, iLife, and more. Again, thanks
few days, it had been viewed tens of thousands of to the Internet, we’ve found a way to collect all of
times. (As I write, the number is at nearly 200,000!) those stories in one, convenient thematic package.
As a magazine editor, I value the power of words. Last fall, we released our first Macworld Superguide,
But there are times when they just can’t do as good a a downloadable PDF e-book with 100 pages about
job as a photograph. And there are other times when digital photography. Now we’ve got a second title,
even a photo isn’t enough—only video can make the Macworld iPod and iTunes Superguide, which has 88
things really clear. Thanks to the Web, we can choose pages of tips and tricks for getting the most out of the
whatever medium works the best. iPod and iTunes (macworld.com/1371).
None of this is to say that we think print is dead—
To Web and Back far from it. Print still does some things that the
That’s not the only way the Internet has changed the Internet and PDFs can’t. When we released our first
way we work at Macworld.For example, when a new PDF superguide, we discovered that a lot of people
Apple product appears, our news and reviews now go would rather buy the book in paper form, not as a
online first; only then do we figure out when and digital file. So from now on, those superguides will
where they’ll be in print. also be available as good old-fashioned bound books
GER The Net also allows us to publish material that (available at macworld.com/1533). After all, even the
N
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ORTR magazine, but just fine online. online forums at macworld.com/forumsand let us know what you think.
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www.macworld.com September 2006 MACWORLD 7
FEEDBACK
The Shock of the New
By now, you have to forgive Mac fans for being a bit punchy. Over the
past year, they’ve been through two tectonic shifts in the Mac land-
scape. First came the shock of hearing the words “Mac” and “Intel
chips” in the same sentence. Then came the astonishing news that—
with the debut of those Intel Macs and the release of Apple’s Boot
Camp software—it was now possible to run Windows on a Mac. Once
they’d recovered a bit from that last development, Macworld readers
went to their keyboards to let us know what they thought of it.
Boot Camp Recruits and that’s where the Mac loses in compar- Keynote overwhelmed PowerPoint with
ison with Dell, HP, and Lenovo. 2. Mac its capabilities and elegance, and each
TOM KIRKMAN l security has come a long way, but the Mac major update just makes the difference
Apple’s decision to allow the Mac to boot still doesn’t offer distributed security like more significant. The advent of Keynote
Windows is going to be a public relations Active Directory. 3. The number of appli- caused Microsoft to add some goodies to
nightmare. Windows is defective. It is cations available for the PC still dwarfs the PowerPoint, but it is still a pain to use
laden with bugs, glitches, and holes. Even choices on the Mac platform. The vast compared with Keynote.
when installed on a Mac, it will still freeze, majority of industry-specific applications
hang, and generally frustrate the user. But support Windows only. Boot Camp won’t RICK BLAINE l
how many Mac newcomers will blame change any of these factors. Macs make Of all the articles published so far about
the Mac for these problems instead of very expensive Windows machines. Apple’s 30th anniversary, I haven’t seen
Windows? Apple’s reputation for making one that mentioned OpenDoc. Today it
trouble-free products will take a huge hit. BRUCE POLKOWSKY l sounds like just another obscure technol-
Now that Apple has developed Mac OS X ogy that never really took off. But back in
DALE STEBBINS l for Intel chips and offered a way to run 1996 it was the hottest thing Apple had to
Boot Camp works great! After buying Windows on an Intel Mac, am I the only show. Apple executives at the time said
Windows XP from VioSoftware (www one thinking there should be a way to run that the two cornerstone technologies for
.viosoftware.com) for $133, I installed it on the Universal version of OS X on an Intel the company’s future were the PowerPC
my Mac mini with no problems. I now use PC? I hope someone figures that out so I and OpenDoc. We all know how that pre-
it to run QuickBooks and the occasional can liberate my work PC. diction turned out.
work application. My success may be
partly because I was working with a brand- BILL EGAN l BOB THOMAS l
new computer. For anyone thinking of While you’re talking about ways of run- Although it wasn’t an Apple product, I was
doing this, my best advice is this: follow ning two operating systems on a single surprised that you mentioned PageMaker
Apple’s Boot Camp directions exactly. computer, I think you should compare only in the LaserWriter section. Without
Don’t deviate from the step-by-step that to using a KVM switch to alternate PageMaker and the people who used it to
instructions, and you should succeed too. between two separate computers. I’m cur- jump-start the desktop publishing craze,
rently running a simulation on my Win- I’m not sure the Macintosh would have
ROBIN COWAN l dows XP machine while I write this on my been anything more than a historical
My first reaction to Boot Camp was Mac. I have only one monitor, but I can curiosity, like the Commodore or Osborn.
“Great, now everyone can join the Apple quickly switch between the two machines
camp.” However, I see a Trojan horse here, by pressing a hot-key combination on my There’s no doubt that PageMaker was hugely
insofar as Boot Camp removes the incen- only keyboard. I can import data from my influential in putting the Mac on the map.
tive for third-party developers to write XP machine via Ethernet or e-mail, and But there’s also no doubt that it wasn’t an
programs for the Mac. I predict that ulti- incorporate it into a spreadsheet on my Apple product and hence didn’t fit into a list of
mately we will boot up Mac OS to run Mac. There are some real advantages to the most important Apple products of all
Apple software only; sadly, we’ll be forced working this way. time.—Ed.
to use Windows for everything else.
Apple’s Top 30 CORRECTIONS GER
CHRIS HOFFLIN l AN
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AP
Corporations are not looking for coolness, 30 Apple products of all time (Mac Beat, the iMac Core Duo,were incorrect. GR
they’re looking at performance per dollar, June 2006). Even in its first version, HOTO
P
12 MACWORLD September 2006 www.macworld.com
Pros and Cams No Accounting for Taste reviewers publish such favorable reviews of
inferior products. Please hold the develop-
KENNETH REITHER l GARY STEIN l ers to the fire and make them publish busi-
I found Richard Baguley’s roundup of I followed your advice (which is usually ness software for the Mac that is acceptable.
point-and-shoot digital cameras to be pretty good) and purchased MYOB’s First
superficial and grossly in error. For Edge (More Reviews,June 2006). Big mis- Which Way Up?
example, I seriously doubt that the Nikon take! It comes with no customer support—
Coolpix P2’s image quality is “mediocre.” I none, zero, nada. There isn’t even e-mail CLYDE MUELLER l
have a similar lens on a different Nikon support! If you have a question, you have In “New Life for Old Photos” (June
point-and-shoot, and the image quality is to buycustomer support, which costs $50 2006), author Derrick Story referred to
excellent. Also, I’m sure some of the or more. I’m sure FirstEdge is a good the film’s emulsion as “the shinier side.”
reviewed cameras have better battery life product, but that’s not enough to overcome The emulsion side is actually the duller,
than others, but to say that four of the cam- the poor customer support. I wish I’d matte side. It’s important to know which
eras are “flawed” in that respect is ridicu- bought Intuit’s QuickBooks—it offers bet- side is which, or else all your scans come
lous. A battery that lasts 200 images ter support, plus compatibility with out flopped.
between recharges is hardly flawed. Quicken and TurboTax. If QuickBooks
had an entry-level Mac product, I’d throw s Post comments on our forums (www
TRACY POPENHAGEN l FirstEdge out. .macworld.com);send them by mail to
I love your reviews of digital cameras, but l Letters,Macworld,501 Second Street,
I have one big complaint: the pictures. DEAN OLSEN l 5th Floor,San Francisco,CA 94107;or send
Why, oh why, do you show the fronts of About your review of QuickBooks Pro them by e-mail to [email protected].
cameras? How often do digital camera (More Reviews,June 2006): I am an accoun- Include a return address and daytime phone
users look at the front? I want to see the tant and run an almost all-Mac office, and I number.Due to the high volume of mail we
back. How big is the display? What kind think QuickBooks is simply unacceptable as receive,we can’t respond personally to each
of controls do I get? How big is the view- a business accounting package. (It does letter.We reserve the right to edit all letters
finder? I know it’s traditional to show bring me a lot of customers, though, and posts.All published letters and forum
products in a face-on shot, but in this case because of how badly it can screw up a comments become the property of Macworld.
it does the reader no good. business’s books.) I get very upset when
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| |
WHAT’S NEW WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE WHAT’S HOT
Crossing Over to Intel
A Year into the Switch, Analysts and Developers See Move Going Well
BY JIM DALRYMPLE Technology Business Research analyst So after one year, Apple has successfully
In June 2005, Steve Jobs announced that Tim Deal agrees. “The transition has moved its consumer desktop line and its
Apple would start using Intel processors occurred faster than I thought it would, entire portable line to the new chips. All
as the brains inside Macs. The change and with fewer problems than I had that remains are servers and high-end
wasn’t going to happen overnight, but anticipated.” desktop machines—and analysts expect
one year later, Apple has already transi- Apple kicked off 2006 with an Intel- we won’t have long to wait for those.
tioned most of its hardware to the new based iMac and a 15-inch MacBook “I think the servers and desktops are
architecture. All major developers for the Pro. The new machines came a full held up because Apple is waiting for Intel
platform have committed to making their six months earlier than most people to give them better performance with
applications run natively on the new expected to see Intel Macs, signaling a some new chips,” says Baker. “Those chips
chips, and analysts believe the transition good start to the transition for Apple. should be coming along very shortly now.”
has been a success so far—all told, it has A month later, the consumer-level Mac Many people expect Apple to release at
been a good year for a company in the mini was the next piece of hardware to least one of those pieces during August’s
N
O
midst of a major shift in its business. make the jump to Intel chips. Rounding Worldwide Developers Conference. MPS
“The transition is most impressive out Apple’s Intel hardware releases was HO
because of the complete lack of disrup- one of the most anticipated of all—the Adobe, Microsoft, and Quark ARREN T
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16 MACWORLD September 2006 www.macworld.com
concern were Adobe Photoshop, Micro- opers grief over the last few months, but While Apple has said publicly that a
soft Office, and QuarkXPress—staples of Casasanta says that the transition is not final version of Boot Camp would be part
business and professional users on the that bad. Currently developing the next of OS X 10.5 (Leopard), what isn’t clear
platform. While all the companies were version of iClip, Inventive Software plans is whether it will remain the same—that
quick to pledge support, details on when to release an Intel-native version in Sep- is, requiring a reboot, or letting users run
users could expect to see the Universal tember, after beta testing is complete. Windows applications alongside their
applications have been scarce. Splasm Software cofounder Keith Mac applications (much like Virtual PC
Adobe plans to update its Creative Gugliotto says that he’s had pretty much did for PowerPC-based Macs).
Suite, which includes Photoshop, Illustra- the same experience with his Viddy Up Whatever Apple decides to do, how-
tor, InDesign, GoLive, and Acrobat, and (formerly Podner) video-encoding soft- ever, its software won’t be the only option.
says that it’s currently working on or eval- ware. While there were a few problems, Shortly after the release of Boot Camp,
uating transition plans for After Effects only a few hours were required to port Parallels released Parallels Desktop for
and InCopy, among other applications. the application to an Intel-native version. Mac, software that lets users run other
Adobe CEO Bruce “There really weren’t operating systems (many flavors of Win-
Chizen has said publi- that many bad things dows and Linux) at the same time as Mac
cally that Adobe expects about it—Apple had OS X. Unlike PC-emulation software
to ship Intel-native ver- already done all the work,” (Virtual PC, for example), Parallels Desk-
sions of its apps in the says Gugliotto. “[Apple] top takes advantage of the virtualization
spring of 2007. kept up OS X on Intel hardware on the Intel chip to run pro-
Microsoft is also hardware and a system was grams faster than they’d run under emula-
working on an Intel- devised to send out transi- tion. The developer characterizes
native version of Office, tion kits to developers.” performance as “near native” speeds.
and the company signed This early planning by The opportunity to run Windows on
a new technology agree- Apple is seen as a positive the Mac is exciting to many Mac users,
ment with Apple that sign by analysts. “The fact and analysts don’t believe there is much
will last for the next five years. Microsoft that [Apple] ran OS X on Intel proces- fear of companies stopping the creation
will not be making the existing version of sors for four years before [the company] of Mac software because Macs can now
Office Universal, but will instead focus ever brought it out shows the amount of run Windows. Besides the fact that it
that effort on the next version of Office. energy that [Apple] invested in the tran- doesn’t make economic sense to buy a
And Quark recently released Quark- sition,” says Gartner’s Baker. Mac just to run Windows (you still need
XPress 7 as a PowerPC-only application, Inventive Software’s Casasanta says to buy a copy of Windows), they believe
but the company said that an Intel ver- that Apple has been doing a lot of things OS X is ahead of Windows as an operat-
sion would be available this year. right lately. From making Xcode (Apple’s ing system.
Even though some of the biggest developer tools) free to making Intel “OS X is fast and stable,” says Gart-
applications for Intel Macs may still be machines available to developers to test ner’s Baker. “Most of the features we are
about a year away, analysts don’t believe their software, the process of porting to going to see in [Windows] Vista have
that will stall the transition for Apple. Intel has been pretty seamless. been in OS X for quite some time.”
Few Developer Problems After a year, Apple has moved
Many developers were left wondering
how their applications would work most Macs to Intel chips.
under the new Intel architecture—and
just as importantly, they wondered how
much work it would take to update their A Mac developer for the last 20 years, Regardless of how Boot Camp is
applications to run natively on Intel- Casasanta knows about transitions. He implemented in Leopard, developers like
based Macs. has been around for the PowerPC, OS X, Inventive’s John Casasanta aren’t going
“I was really surprised how easy it and Intel transitions. This one was the anywhere. He says that he believes the
was,” says John Casasanta, president of easiest, he says. transition was good for Apple and him-
Inventive Software (makers of the clip- self, as a developer on the platform.
board utility iClip). “When Steve [Jobs] Boot Camp and Virtualization “We are Mac-only and that’s it,” says
said it was just a matter of clicking the Shortly after Apple brought its Intel sys- Casasanta. “There is plenty of business
check box, that’s pretty much what it was tems to market, enterprising people in the to be had in this market. From a busi-
for iClip Lite. iClip has been a bit more community began working on ways to get ness point of view and from the point
of a transition for us because it is a Car- Microsoft Windows running on the hard- of view of what I love doing, there are a
bon application and we rely on some ware. Apple significantly helped that cause lot of avenues to prosper as a Macintosh
third-party dependencies.” with the beta release of Boot Camp, a new developer.” (cid:2)
It is the issue of dependencies on other application that allows users to easily turn
applications that has caused some devel- their Intel Macs into dual-boot systems. JIM DALRYMPLE is Macworld.com’s news director.
www.macworld.com September 2006 MACWORLD 17
MAC BEAT
WHAT WE HOPE MAC OS X 10.5 INCLUDES
10 Wishes for Leopard
When Steve Jobs takes the stage in San Francisco at this year’s Worldwide Devel- your computer to points where it was
opers Conference (WWDC), he’ll offer attendees a glimpse of the next major happy and stable. Should your data
release of OS X, code-named Leopard. Because Apple has been typically tight- become corrupt, you could restore the
lipped about what to expect from Leopard, we have no idea what awaits us that Mac to a backed-up stage.—CB
day. But we can suggest a number of changes we’d like to see.
7. Expand Disk Utility’s Powers
1. Smart Locations launch applications, open documents, While Disk Utility is capable of repair-
My MacBook can intuit where it is, and do other file-related tasks. Spotlight ing disks, it can really fix only simple
based mostly on the name of the wire- canbe used as a rudimentary launcher, errors. It’d be great if Apple added
less base station it’s connected to. It just but it’s slow and gives you too many more power to Disk Utility. You’d still
can’t do anything with that information. search results. Apple should create a need to reboot from another drive (or
If my MacBook knows it’s at home, it new launcher shortcut key, and have it the installer CD), but that’s better than
should be able to set my home printer access a restricted version of the Spot- relying on a third-party application.
as the default, update my iChat status to light index that looks only for file This is especially important as both OS
“At Home,” mount my local file server, names. A preference pane could let you X and the hardware that we use to run it
run an AppleScript or four, keeps changing—Apple would
and even change my default have a much easier time staying
mail server.—JASONSNELL current. I’d also like to see Disk
Utility gain the ability to create
2. Better Media Center and resize partitions on-the-
Capabilities fly.—RG
A true media center should
record television the way TiVo 8. More from Mail
does, with a guide that is avail- Apple’s Mail gets better with
able in countries outside of the each iteration, and I’d like the
United States; stream video and next version to offer more
audio wirelessly from multiple extensive rules—both condi-
computers; and play DVDs, tions and actions—so power
music, slide shows, and videos users can better filter and sort
with ease. You should also be their mail. Adding a Change
able to buy songs, videos, and Subject action would allow you
movies directly within the to automatically tag, file, and
interface.—JIMDALRYMPLE forward incoming messages.
specify the types of things you want the And the Accounts preference could also
3. Windows Compatibility and ability to launch, be they applications, use some work.—CB
Integration documents, iTunes, or Address Book
Apple should be commended for Boot contacts.—ROBGRIFFITHS 9. Tabbed Terminal
Camp. That said, it’s just a Band-Aid, and Even on a large screen, keeping multiple
having to completely shut down one oper- 5. Finder Fixes Terminal windows straight can be prob-
ating system to use another is far from The Finder is the last bit of legacy code in lematic, especially when they have identi-
elegant. If Leopard is going to welcome the OS, and it’s showing its age. I’d like to cal backgrounds and font colors. I’d love
Windows to the Mac, make it quicker to see a number of improvements—a sortable OS X 10.5’s Terminal to offer the option
move between OSes with a feature similar column-view window, easily customizable for tabbed Terminal windows.—RG
to OS X’s fast user switching. Let users contextual menus, selectable colors for
easily move files between the two operat- column-view window backgrounds, a way 10. Expand iChat
ing systems. Make it possible for applica- to browse Spotlight metadata directly in iChat needs some serious usability
tions in each OS to share data (such as the Finder, and more powerful smart fold- improvements. I’d like the ability to dis-
items copied to the Clipboard). And make ers (to name a few).—RG play multiple chats in one window via a
Disk Utility support Windows-compati- tabbed interface. I’d also like iChat to
ble formats.—CHRISTOPHERBREEN 6. Restore More be able to save audio- and video-chat
It’s not often that I wish for Windows files. Most importantly, iChat needs to
4. Built-In Launcher features on my Mac, but I would like to connect to other chat services while
Programs such as Butler, LaunchBar, see Apple implement a system restore maintaining its strong links with AOL’s
and Quicksilver make it very easy to feature in OS X. This would “rewind” Instant Messenger network.—JS
18 MACWORLD September 2006 www.macworld.com
MAC BEAT
NEWS IN BRIEF
Apple Adds
GOOGLE WOWS GEEKS AT CONFERENCE
Education iMac
Mac Map Makers
Replacing the eMac—
the only CRT-based Mac
left in Apple’s lineup—
Apple has begun offer- In June,more than 700 cartographers,developers, Hanke showed off some of Google Earth’s
ing educational insti- and entrepreneurs flocked to San Jose for Where main new features,which include updated
tutions an $899 17-inch iMac.This version 2.0,a conference by publisher O’Reilly on “the satellite data and much more detail for places in
of the Core Duo iMac loses Bluetooth con- future of mapping and local search.”I spent a day the world that didn’t have close-up information
nectivity,a DVD-burning SuperDrive,and at the conference checking before.He said that Google Earth
the Apple Remote.Also,it uses Intel’s GMA out the latest technology and now covers 20 percent of the sur-
950 integrated graphics set instead of an was pleased by the strong face of the earth and includes a
ATI Radeon graphics processor,and has an importance paid to the Mac. third of the world’s population.
80GB,instead of a 160GB,hard drive. First,John Hanke,director Presenting alongside Hanke was
of Google Earth and Google Brad Schell,the founder of AtLast
Microsoft Buys Maps,showed off the latest Software.His company created the
iView features in Google Earth 3-D–modeling program SketchUp,
Software giant Microsoft (earth.google.com).At last which was acquired by Google in
announced that it has year’s conference,Google March of 2006.Soon after,Google
purchased iView Multi- debuted the program and released a free version for Windows,
media,makers of the said that Mac users would John Hanke but at the conference,Schell showed
MediaPro digital-asset–management appli- have to wait to enjoy it.This off the newly released free Mac ver-
cation for OS X and Windows.An FAQ on year,Hanke said that Google Earth “screams” sion of Google SketchUp (sketchup.google.com).
the iView Web site notes that Microsoft will on a MacBook. By that point,I was wowed with the sheer
continue to support and sell current versions As someone who loves maps,I enjoy seeing ability and simplicity of Google Earth and
of the iView Mac products but is vague new features in programs that push the limits Google SketchUp.When I got home,I immedi-
about the fate of those products,indicating of digital mapping,and Google is at the fore- ately started working on a 3-D model of my
that Microsoft “will offer upgrade pricing to front of this technology. house.—CYRUSFARIVAR DIA
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20 MACWORLD September 2006 www.macworld.com
