Macworld Middle East October 2010

Reviewed

MACBOOK PRO 15-INCH CANON EOS 1D MARK IV

HITACHI LIFESTYLE HD

OCTOBER 2010

iPhone review

We take a look at Apple’s latest iPhone and conclude it’s the best one yet

Speed up your Mac: Six easy ways to give your computer a boost

PLUS Mac 911

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CPI Consumer Technology

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COVER STORY

CONTENTS

18

Reviewed

MACBOOK PRO 15-INCH CANON EOS 1D MARK IV

HITACHI LIFESTYLE HD

iPhone 4: the best iPhone yet

Topping the success of the first three generations of iPhone is a tough job indeed. We put the latest iPhone to the test to see if they’ve pulled it off.

OCTOBER 2010

October 2010

iPhone review

We take a look at Apple’s latest iPhone and conclude it’s the best one yet

Speed up your Mac: Six easy ways to give your computer a boost

PLUS Mac 911

PUBLICATION LICENSED BY IMPZ SUPPLEMENT TO PCWORLD MIDDLE EAST

FEATURE

22

Speed Up Your Mac

If you feel like your Mac is not running as fast as it should, we give you six tips for what you can do to speed it up.

OPINION

07

From the Editor’s Desk

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MAC USER

08

The Cube at 10

Why Apple’s eye-catching desktop flopped.

11 Apple MacBook Pro Core i7 15-inch 13 G-Drive hits the spot 14 Classic Apple

WORKING MAC

28

Five reasons to partition a disk Divide and conquer, we say. Split up your hard drive and gain structure and performance.

29 Hitachi LifeStudio Mobile Plus 500GB

PLAY LIST

30

iTunes 10 goes social

Apple adds Ping social networking.

32 iPad: a playlist lover’s best friend

DIGITAL PHOTO

34

Canon PowerShot SX210 IS

40

What makes a great font?

A pocket megazoom for novices and advanced photographers.

36 Canon EOS 1D Mark IV

38 Joby: more than flexible tripod legs

CREATE Want good ideas about selecting a font? Read this.

42 The hidden talents of Preview

HELP DESK

43

4

October 2010

Mac 911

We answer some tricky questions from readers.

GET IN TOUCH!

How are we doing?

What do you think of the magazine, the web site, and everything else?

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6

September 2010

Apple’s iPod shuffle earns its name Apple looks to the past for the design of its music player IN what seem like a turn of events well suited for its name, the latest reincarnation of Apple’s tiny MP3 player iPod shuffle has regained much of the design it had two generations ago. In case you’ve not seen it yet, what Apple introduced on September 1st was the fourth generation of iPod shuffle and it looks very similar to the second generation.

If you recall, the third generation, out in early 2009, was really tiny. It had no buttons, and you had to rely on clicking controls on the earbud cord. This seemed like a really cool idea at the time and the device was amazingly small, but I think it just never caught on with users. I remember that I bought a few of them online from the US on the day they became available, engraved them and everything, but once they arrived and the initial excitement had settled down I hardly used one again.

So Apple retreated a bit and redesigned the second generation. It’s about the same size as the square third generation shuffle with a clickable control pad covering one side and a clip the other. I think it’s a good move as it makes the shuffle user-friendlier and with 2GB of space at $49 it’s cheap enough that anyone can pick one up as a secondary iPod. My personal favourite iPod shuffle is still the first generation model simply because it had a regular-sized USB port built in. I was working as a teacher when it was launched, and an iPod shuffle quickly became the only USB storage device I carried around with me to class and elsewhere. It was my music player as well as flash drive, all in one, and it was great. The 512MB storage capacity is puny looking at today’s devices with gigabytes of space but at the time it was not bad at all.

The second-generation shuffle came with that cute little dock, which was a disaster in usability because it was so easy to loose and you would never carry it with you. Of course there’s one laying around in one my drawers somewhere but I’ve hardly ever

Publisher Dominic De Sousa COO Nadeem Hood Commercial Director Richard Judd richard@cpidubai.com +971 (0) 4 440 9126 Group Editor Magnus Nystedt magnus@cpidubai.com +971 (0) 50 768 3435 Advertising Sales Director Raz Islam raz@cpidubai.com +971 (0) 50 451 8213 Circulation Database and Circulation Manager Rajeesh M rajeesh@cpidubai.com +971 (0) 4 440 9147

used it, partly because of the dock. The third generation required a special cable that was USB port in one end and 3.5-mm audio jack in the other. Both second and third generation shuffles were poor in usability because of how they connect to a computer and unfortunately that’s still present in the latest shuffle. With that tiny size it’s however hard to see what Apple should do to get around that issue.

It’s not often that we see Apple go backward in design, at least not in such an obvious way, as it has done with iPod shuffle. I think it’s refreshing that they apparently admit their mistakes, something they would do well with doing a bit more.

If there is a new iPod shuffle generation coming out in a year or so it’ll be interesting to see what it looks like. I very much doubt Apple will again take a step back in design. It’s just not a company that likes to look back much. Before this launch I was convinced that Apple would effectively kill off its smallest music player but instead it revamped it in a very unexpected way like Apple often does. Now I have more faith in the future of the shuffle line. That doesn’t mean I’ll run out and buy an iPod shuffle though despite the redesign.

Production and Design Production Manager James P Tharian james@cpidubai.com +971 (0) 4 440 9146 Digital www.cpilive.net www.broadcastprome.com www.cpidubai.com Webmaster Tristan Troy Maagma troy@cpidubai.com +971 (0) 4 440 9141 Web Designer Jerus King Bation jerus@cpidubai.com +971 (0) 4 440 9143 Web Developer Elizabeth Reyes eliz@cpidubai.com Published by 1013 Centre Road, New Castle County, Wilmington, Delaware, USA Head Office PO Box 13700 Dubai, UAE Tel: +971 (0) 4 440 9100 Fax: +971 (0) 4 447 2409

© Copyright 2010 CPI. All rights reserved. While the publishers have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of all information in this magazine, they will not be held responsible for any errors therein.

FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK

Printed by Printwell Printing Press LLC

BY MAGNUS NYSTEDT 2010 October

7

MACUSER

News and Analysis about Macs, OS X, and Apple

The Cube at 10: Why Apple’s Eye-Catching Desktop Flopped

High price, lack of expandability contributed to G4 Cube’s demise a decade ago

BY BENJ EDWARDS

W

hen it comes to love-it-or-hate-it products out of Cupertino, few offerings can match the Power Mac G4 Cube for getting people to choose sides. Even a decade after its debut (Steve Jobs unveiled the Cube at the July 2000 Macworld Expo in New York and it shipped a month later) the Cube still stirs passionate debate between its detractors and defenders.

To the anti-Cube crowd, the machine represented the pinnacle of what Apple detractors at the time decried as the company’s greatest fault: putting form over function and style over power. Fans of the Cube were equally as adamant that the machine was brilliant and its design beautiful. Even today, a healthy segment of Mac users consider the Cube to be a cult classic that was simply ahead of its time.

What isn’t a matter of a debate is the Cube’s commercial success—or more accurately, its lack thereof.

The G4 Cube was a flop at the cash register. In January 2001, Apple conceded that it had sold only one third as many Cubes as it had expected. It sold 29,000

8

October 2010

Cubes between October and December 2000, compared to 308,000 Macs during that same quarter.

And in the very next quarter, Cube sales fell to 12,000 units. Apple ceased production of the Cube in July 2001, one year after its introduction.

Why didn’t people buy the G4 Cube? With 10 years’ worth of perspective at our disposal, I can think of four key reasons the Cube never took off.

Eye of the Beholder How do you sell a computer that doesn’t look like a computer? Who do you target? That was the biggest problem Apple faced when launching the Cube—a computer so far out there in a land of generic beige boxes that it might as well have been an alien monolith perched on a crystal throne.

Outsiders looked at the Cube and saw different things: an underpowered, over-expensive toy or, in contrast with the anthropomorphized everyman’s iMac, an emotionally inaccessible, ultra-geometric gray box suspended in an untouchable glass prison. There are the

open-minded who can look past conventional design and appreciate something truly unique. A computer doesn’t need a grinning face to be beautiful. But those people are few and far between—they’re not only a minuscule subset of the population at large, but also a subset of the Mac customer base itself. The Cube’s odd design limited

its potential market from the outset.

Even if you opted for a Cube and brought it home, you’d have to treat it gingerly to maintain its perfect appearance. The problem with making something intentionally perfect is that it won’t stay that way with use. Apple has a habit of making devices that are beautiful only as long as

you never touch them, and the Cube is high on that list. Unfortunately for Apple, many consumers chose never to touch a G4 Cube at all.

The Price of Beauty Even if you wanted to get your hands on a Cube, the lowest-priced model cost $1,799 in July 2000 (about $2,279 in 2010 when adjusted for inflation).

That model shipped with a 450MHz G4 processor, 64MB of RAM, a 20GB hard drive, a DVD-ROM drive, and an internal 56 kbps modem. It was fan less and small. Meanwhile, a Power Mac G4 tower with almost identical specs but a 400MHz processor cost $200 less. It was obvious from the beginning that potential customers would have to pay a premium for the Cube’s unique design, not for its performance.

Apple intended the G4 Cube for a mid-range market, one step up from the iMac and one below the most powerful Power Mac G4s. But it didn’t turn out that way. Only a few months after launch, industry analysts revealed that high-end Mac users were usually the ones springing for the Cube. It seems that more affluent Mac fans were most willing to take a risk on an expensive, unconventional machine with limited configuration and

upgrade options. If people wanted a low-cost G4, the practical customers among them without money to burn could simply buy the $200-lower G4 tower and configure it however they wanted without limitations.

And forget wooing switchers. At the time, common Windows PCs were capable of 1GHz CPU clock speeds and sold for far less. Apple fought an

press latched onto the story and amplified it into a PR nightmare for Apple, which found itself trying to sell a computer whose appeal largely hinged on aesthetics that was now being portrayed as aesthetically flawed. Apple’s official response at the time was that the apparent hairline cracks were just “mold lines”—normal artefacts of the manufacturing process,

With the Cube, Apple fought an uphill battle in consumer perception uphill battle in consumer perception to show that its lower-clocked G4 processors could perform just as well for a premium price.

The Cube also launched in the pre-OS X and pre-iPod era, and we know now that both were essential products that made PC users reconsider the Mac platform in later years.

Complaints about Cracks Shortly after the Cube’s launch, reports of cosmetic flaws in the Cube’s transparent polycarbonate shell began to appear on the Internet from disgruntled customers. Some people brought home their shiny new Macs only to find what they called “cracks” on the corners and the top of the Cube’s case. Naturally, the

but customers balked, and it never became clear in the press if there were actually any defects or not.

We’ll never know how many customers might have been spooked by the negatively publicity. But it probably didn’t add to the appeal of a $1,799 machine. And the controversy certainly served as a latch point for critics eager to highlight reasons why Apple’s unusual computer was a frivolous waste of money.

Limited Upgrade Potential Sure, opening a Cube was easy. Flip it open, pop out a handle in the bottom, and pull the core of the machine out of the case. From there, one could easily access the three RAM slots and add an Airport card. There was

only so much one could do to upgrade the system beyond that, however. While designing a compact computer, Apple naturally had to sacrifice some upgradability to squeeze everything into an 8 by 8 by 8-inch cube.

Gone were the PCI slots of the Power Mac G4 tower line that helped those machines handle everything from professional audio production to movie editing via plug-in hardware. Furthermore, the Cube’s video card (nestled in a single AGP slot) had to be shrunken down to fit into tight quarters. As a result, few upgrade-worthy video cards fit into the machine’s small chassis.

The Cube’s interior offered room for only one hard drive, so any extra storage you needed would have to be external. And the external drive market wasn’t anything like it is today— user options for USB and FireWire drives were limited in 2000.

Ironically, the challenge of upgrading Apple’s strange machine is what drives the Cube’s fans today. For years, they’ve been squeezing in impressive CPU upgrades, adding fans, and even slipping the Cube’s inner chassis into larger cuboid cases to accommodate better graphics cards. That’s the spirit of a diehard Cube fan for you.

After all, those few people who actually did buy Cubes during that one-year period

2010 October

9

MAC USER

Microsoft sets October 26 launch of Mac Office 2011 Microsoft has announced that Office for Mac 2011 will launch October 26, the date previously leaked by Amazon.com. The revamped suite – Microsoft’s first for the Mac since January 2008 – features a new look that resembles Windows’ Office 2010, includes a renamed e-mail client and boasts the return of Visual Basic-based macros, a tool often-requested by veteran users.

Microsoft has also revealed a pair of previously-undisclosed features – the company has been dribbling out tidbits for months – including a full-screen view in Word that’s optimised for either reading or writing, and something the company dubbed Dynamic Reorder that lets users visually shuffle the layers of a presentation or document.

The suite’s applications are also considerably snappier, especially at startup, claimed Kurt Schmucker, an evangelist on the Mac Office team, in a video posted to the company’s site. “I think what users will notice right away is the launch speed of each of the apps,” said Schmucker.

Users have long complained about Office for Mac’s startup sluggishness, especially when launching Word.

Home and Student includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint; Home and Business adds the Outlook e-mail client, which replaced the discontinued Entourage.

Microsoft had earlier set the prices of the two versions it will ship next month: Home and Student and Home and Business. Today, Amazon listed the former at $119.99 and $149.99 for one- and three-license editions, respectively, and priced Home and Business at $199.99 and $279.99 in one- and twolicense versions.

10

October 2010

Microsoft will not sell discounted “upgrades” of Office 2011, as it has for the suite’s predecessors, a copycat of the move earlier this year when the Redmond, Wash., software maker dropped upgrade editions and pricing for Office 2010 for Windows.

Customers can save money by buying the current version, Office

2011 to college students, faculty and staff. The discounted version will include the same applications as Home and Business, but will not be sold at general retail.

Middle East pricing has not yet been announced. According to several reports from around the Net, Office 2011 for Mac can open and edit documents that contain Arabic

Microsoft: “There will not be full right-to-left support for languages such as Arabic and Hebrew.” for Mac 2008, and then taking advantage of a free upgrade offer that Microsoft launched in August.

People who purchase Office for Mac Home and Student 2008 — listed Tuesday for $130 on Amazon, $5 more than just a few weeks ago — are eligible for the three-license download of the 2011 suite, a $20 savings. Microsoft will also sell a $99 academic edition of Office for Mac

but new documents with Arabic cannot be created. Eric Paquin, International Project Manager for Office at Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit said in a post on the Mac Mojo web site, the Office for Mac Team Blog, that “there will not be full rightto-left support for languages such as Arabic and Hebrew.” At time of press we were still waiting for our review copy of the new Office to arrive.

MAC USER

Apple delivers more portable power Apple MacBook Pro Core i7 15-inch

BY MAGNUS NYSTEDT

REVIEW Just looking at the latest MacBook Pro 15inch model you couldn’t tell it apart from the one it replaces. Once you start it up you will however see substantial increases in speed, coming from faster processor as well as graphics card. There are three base models of the 15inch MacBook Pro, two with Core i5 processor and one with Core i7. All models have 4GB DDR3 RAM, two graphics processor, and 15.4-inch LED display. We reviewed the model with a 2.66GHz Core i7 processor and 500GB hard drive.

Using Intel’s Core i7 processor brings a number of interesting improvements to Apple’s portable lineup. Hyper Threading means that enables two threads, or tasks if you like, to run at one time on each core. To the operating system and applications, it looks like the processor has double the cores of what it really has, meaning more tasks can be accomplished at the same time. Through Turbo Boost, the processor can for short periods of time increase the clock speed above the rated speed to

take care of demanding tasks. Turbo Boost also shuts down cores when they’re not needed. The two technologies together means a more dynamic processor that adapts to needs as you use the Mac and optimizes power usage as well.

Standard across the middle segment of Apple’s pro notebooks is now both integrated and discreet graphics. In most situations, to save power, running the integrated Intel HD graphics gives enough performance. It shares 256MB main RAM with the rest of the system. When

better graphics performance is needed, the discrete Nvidia GeForce GT330M graphics with 256MB of dedicated VRAM is used.

Boost in graphics Previously the user of the Mac had to manually decide which mode the MacBook Pro should run in and log out whenever they switched. Now the Mac takes care of that decision itself and no log out is required. Mac OS X looks at what graphics routines an application or game is using and then decides which graphics option should be 2010 October

11

used. Either Intel HD to save power or Nvidia to boost performance. I found graphics performance excellent for a notebook and playing some demanding games showed high frame rates and good quality.

Although it doesn’t offer the same gaming power as you can find on the PC side, the new MacBook Pro is a nice boost in graphics for Mac users.

One interesting detail with the updated model is that Apple has introduced what’s called inertial scrolling on the glass trackpad. The trackpad feels the same as before, but when you swipe with your fingers, the scrolling action continues and eventually slows down, just like on iPhone and iPad. Something that didn’t change with the update is the display. It’s the same 1,440 x 900 pixel LCD 12

October 2010

with LED backlight. The standard display has the same glossy surface that annoys many users and you can get a matte, anti-glare display with a higher 1,680 x 1,050 resolution.

Better battery life Other things that stay the same are the physical design, the keyboard and SuperDrive. On the left side you find two USB 2.0 ports, ethernet port, FireWire 800, SD card slot, MagSafe power port, as well as audio in and out. On the right side there’s only the slot for the SuperDrive.

Apple claims they’ve tweaked the battery in the new MacBook Pro and it does deliver a bit longer use than the previous model.

It’s the same built-in battery as before, but now, when watching a movie, we got almost five hours of use out of one charge. In regular

use, like browsing, writing etc. you can expect even more use than that, which for a 15-inch notebook is good.

In benchmarking the new MacBook Pro we compared it to a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro with 4GB RAM and Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT from a couple of years ago. In CPUdependent tasks the new model outscored the old one with around 15-20%.

When it came to graphics the difference was even

greater with some 30-35% higher scores for the new system.

Summing up, the performance of the new model is very noticeable, both in everyday use as well as in benchmarking.

Physically nothing has changed, even the display is the same, but it does offer a bit battery life. Presumably the two lower-end Core i5 systems offer better value for money, but the Core i7 model sure takes the top stop in performance.

Apple MacBook Pro Core i7 15-inch Pros: Faster graphics; automatic switching between graphics options; significantly better performance; longer battery life.

Cons: Anti-glare option only with higher resolution screen; no video adapters or remote included; no ExpressCard slot.

Info: www.apple.com/macbookpro Price: From Dhs 10,299

G-Drive hits the spot

G-Technology G-Drive 1TB has style and substance

BY MAGNUS NYSTEDT

REVIEW Selecting which external hard drive to buy for backup or other storage is not easy. There’s so much to choose from, and much of what’s available in the market is, to be perfectly honest about it, not that different from the rest. G-Technology makes drives that stand out in various ways. The most obvious one is in design. If you have a Mac, perhaps especially if it’s a Mac Pro, this drive will fit right in with your collection of gear. Its enclosure is made of the same aluminum material that graces the Mac Pro. This also makes it rather heavy, so this is not a drive you’ll want to move around much. For that there’s the G-Drive mini, which looks the same, but is in a notebook drive

format so you can slip it into a back or pocket. Besides the design, the G-Drive stands out in terms of interfaces. Turn it around and look at the back of it and you can find connections for FireWire 400 and 800, USB 2.0, as well as eSATA. That’s about every way we can think of that you may want to connect to an external hard drive today. In our testing we connected the G-Drive to a MacBook Pro using FireWire 400 as well as 800 and performance was very good with either interface.

G-Technology is also nice enough to include cables for all interfaces, so you’re ready to go straight out of the box.

Summing up, this hard drive will be a great addition to anyone’s gear,

especially sitting next to your Mac. In terms of performance it’s also a good choice, and the variety of interfaces certainly help to make it even more attractive. My only little niggle is that all this comes at a high price.

G-Technology G-Drive 1TB Pros: Quad interface; attractive and sturdy design; great performance; all cables are included; quiet (no fan) Cons: Slightly more expensive than other hard drives Info: bit.ly/92q76W Price: $190 (from Apple.com)

CPI Consumer Technology

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2010 October

13

MAC USER

Classic Apple Despite the name, it was hardly portable

BY MAGNUS NYSTEDT

I

t’s a far cry from today’s mobile Apple products but the Macintosh Portable, introduced in 1989, made quite a splash back then. It was the first really portable and batteryoperated computer from Apple even though the first Mac, introduced in 1984, was transportable and Apple even sold a special bag for toting it around.

Running the same 16MHz 68000 processor from Motorola, the hardware 14

October 2010

specs are very similar to the all-in-one Mac models of the day. The Portable had 1MB RAM, 1.44MB floppy drive and 40MB hard drive.

It’s 9.8-inch display was black and white with 640 x 480 pixels. Beside the full-size keyboard you can find a small trackball and the mechanism that locks the display to the body when it’s closed doubles as a carrying handled. The Macintosh Portable sold for $6,500 when it launched.

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2010 September

15

iPhonecentral

The Latest on the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, and App Store

News

Apple’s iPhone 4 went on sale in countries across the Middle East starting with the UAE on September 25. Quickly it was discovered that FaceTime was disabled on all the official iPhone 4 devices.

FaceTime disabled on official iPhones in Middle East like the update of iOS to 4.1 was causing FaceTime to be disabled. Users on the EmiratesMac.com Web site, home of the only Apple Users Group in the UAE, reported that they had tried FaceTime between iPhones bought from the official carriers and after updating to iOS 4.1 FaceTime was not available as a function anymore. Other users reported that it was the local Carrier Settings update which disabled FaceTime.

looking forward to was FaceTime.

Consensus at this time seems to be that Apple has done something to the models of iPhone shipped to the Middle East. A confidential source at one regional telecommunications operator that sells official iPhones told Macworld Middle East that they had reported this issue to Apple as soon as they found out, which was

FaceTime is a major factor in customers’ decision to buy

Apple’s iPhone 4 went on sale across the Middle East starting September 25 in the UAE. About a week before the start of sales it was noted on several Web sites, including SaudiMac. com that Apple had removed the FaceTime feature from all their Web pages concerning iPhone 16

October 2010

in the Middle East as well as edited out FaceTime from the graphic on the sites. A number of tweets posted on the Twitter account of du, one of the two official iPhone suppliers in the UAE, confirmed this.

At the end of the first day of iPhone 4 officially going on sale in the UAE it seemed

When we talked to customers as well as personnel in several stores around Dubai that started selling iPhone 4 on September 25 we were told that FaceTime was a major factor in potential customers’ decision to spend money on the latest Apple smartphone. Team Leader Erwin Rivera in the Fono store in Arabian Center near Mirdif, Dubai, said that it had received a lot of enquiries about iPhone 4 and that something customers were

just a day or two before September 25. The source also said that this was a pre-emptive action on Apple’s part and that telcos had nothing to do with it. Apple apparently had gone ahead and disabled FaceTime because they thought the ban on Voice over Internet Protocol, VoIP, in effect in many countries in the region, would apply to FaceTime as well. At the time of press neither Apple nor any telcos had issued any public statement on this matter.

IPHONE CENTRAL

iPhone 4: the best iPhone yet

Apple has again produced a smartphone that everyone else will try to copy

BY MAGNUS NYSTEDT

REVIEW Apple may not think as other companies when it comes to design of their products and iPhone 4 is another good example of that. They’ve pushed the envelope in terms of physical design, creating a very thin smartphone. But despite design it doesn’t compromise in terms of functionality, giving users a faster device with better screen, better camera and better operating system.

They may not have got it right in all aspects though as the issues with reception are testament to.

Glorious hardware Although Apple has changed the physical design of iPhone quite a bit compared to 3GS it’s still unmistakably an iPhone. In principle it has the same characteristics as the previous models with the front covered by a big screen and some buttons around the sides. But I’m not sure it’s fair to say the design updates are only in details because even though Apple’s followed the same template, the changes make for a much improved look and feel.

On iPhone 3G and 3GS there was a chrome rim around the edges of the all-glass front. That rim has been replaced by a metal band that in effect is the sides of the iPhone 4. This band also works as the antennas for the mobile 18

October 2010

connection as well as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. This of course leads us to “antennagate.” I’m not a mobile phone engineer nor do I know much about mobile phone design in terms of reception, antennas etc. but in my simple testing around Dubai I did not experience any dropped calls, like what’s been widely reported on the Internet. We’ve seen the bars drop when holding the iPhone in the “death grip” but it didn’t seem to totally kill all communications and with a case, most of the time the bars don’t drop at all with the same grip.

I’m not saying that there is not a problem. It seems like enough users have reported some sort of

problem but I couldn’t seem to see make it happen.

Of course we expect Apple to address the “antennagate” issue one way or another, probably via some software fix and changes in future hardware.

Overall the iPhone 4 feels very solid and like a well-built smartphone. In contrast to some devices from competitors that feel “plasticy,” iPhone 4 feels almost like a solid slab of glass or metal, which I absolutely love. This also means that iPhone 4 feels classy in best Apple tradition.

Tour the outside Although the physical design of iPhone 4 is different than 3GS the ports

and buttons around the outside are similar between the two. You will find the now-standard 30-pin iPhone/iPod connector at the bottom, sitting pretty in between the speaker and the microphone. You will find the hold switch and volume control on the left side, just like before, but the design is different. The volume control is no longer a rocker, instead it’s two discrete buttons labeled minus and plus. On the top you find the same sleep/ wake button and 3.5mm headphone jack as well as a new addition, a second microphone.

Packing pixels If I had to pick one thing that impresses the most

about iPhone 4 it has to be the display. Apple calls it “retina display” in reference to the fact that it packs enough pixels so the human eye is not supposed to even be able to make out individual pixels. Other smartphone manufacturers have created devices with

display are much smaller than the ones on 3GS. In fact, the resolution has increased from 163 ppi (pixels per inch) to 326 ppi.

That is supposedly more than we can see with our human eyes, something I can’t really dispute based on my experience.

The Retina Display on iPhone 4 is simply spectacular larger displays but Apple decided to keep the display the same physical size as the one on iPhone 3GS and instead pack more pixels in the same space.

This means that the 960 x 640 pixels on iPhone 4’s

I must say the result is really spectacular. The display not only has more pixels resulting in better detail, it’s also brighter and has better contrast.

Photographs look very crisp and clear, as does

video. The iOS 4 interface is also amazingly detailed.

Something else that may seem like a small thing but in fact means a lot for you as an iPhone 4 user is that the actual display sits much closer to the top of the glass.

I think Apple explained it as the screen is attached to, or bonded to, the glass layer, which sits immediately on top of it, so the two are closer now. This means it feels much more like you work directly with the screen compared to iPhone 3GS.

Snappy happy The camera is clearly one of the main attractions of iPhone 4 and I think Apple’s pretty much silenced the critics who have previously belittled iPhone models for

not having autofocus, not enough megapixels, etc.If we start with the video, iPhone 4 records HD video, 720p at 30 frames per second. The video quality produced by iPhone 3GS was already very good but obviously limited to 640 x480, good enough for a short clip to put online but not for anything else. With iPhone 4’s HD quality the smartphone is now good enough at capturing video that there’s no need for something like the Flip anymore. That’s unfortunate for Cisco as they reportedly plan to launch the Flip-series of cameras in the Middle East in the coming months. Although the quality is much improved don’t ditch your dedicated HD camcorder yet, it will still produce much better quality than even iPhone 4.

Videos from iPhone 4 are clear, have a lot of detail and colors and contrast come out surprisingly well for a smartphone. It struggles a bit with fast movements but so does much more expensive cameras so I can’t blame iPhone 4 for that. I predict that we’ll see much more video on sites like YouTube now that smartphones, including iPhone 4, can produce high-quality HD video. This is probably much to the dismay of telecommunications operators as the pressure on mobile networks from increased data will just keep going up.

2010 October

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IPHONE CENTRAL

In the Camera app on iPhone 4, you also get a simple control to set the new LED flash. Although it’s nice to have the flash don’t expect any miracles as it only gives enough light to the very near subjects in front of it. Mind you, that’s no different from most other smartphones with flash.

One good thing is the flash works for both still photos as well as when you shoot video as a light.

With the introduction of iMovie for iPhone ($4.99), serious video editing also arrives on Apple’s mobile platform. The camera app could previously do a quick edit of the beginning and end of a movie but with iMovie you can do more advanced editing. For example, you can simply add clips, stills, audio, transitions, and effects to projects. Now Apple, please bring iPhoto to iOS as well, and I’ll be happy.

So HD video recording is a good addition to iPhone 4 but you shouldn’t underestimate how much improved still photography is. Now there’s a 5-megapixel sensor, which may not sound like a lot, especially with other smartphones with eight or more megapixels, but the quality from iPhone 4 is simply amazing. I don’t quite understand what Apple does to the photos but for a 5-megapixel camera they look very good, in fact as good as dedicated point-and-shoot cameras from just years ago, and that’s a very good verdict.

The iPhone 4 still struggles, like all other smartphones, 20

October 2010

user on iChat on a Mac is also out of the question, something that puzzles me.

But let’s remember that FaceTime is in its first iteration and hope that support for devices and services will grow in the future.

Faster, a lot faster

with high contrast scenes, so there are clear limitations but overall I’m very impressed. In addition to the 5MP camera on the back there’s a new camera on the front. That one only shoots 640 x 480 pixel though and it’s mainly used for FaceTime, the new video calling feature for iPhone 4, more on that next.

FaceTime: great but not ready for prime time yet As we discovered after iPhone 4 was officially introduced in the region, FaceTime is disabled and we still don’t know whether or if it’ll be enabled again.

That’s sad because FaceTime is something that has the potential to revolutionize the way we use smartphones. I had the opportunity to try out FaceTime (on an imported iPhone 4) only with a few other users so I reserve

the right to report back at a later date with more extensive experience. For now I can tell you that FaceTime works very well most of the time; the quality obviously depends on your connection but it was generally very good, sound was also more than adequate.

FaceTime requires a Wi-Fi connection and all communication goes over the Internet. That’s a pretty big limitation and I sure look forward to the day when I can use FaceTime over a 3G connection. Then we’ll really start feeling, and perhaps also acting, like the Jetsons.

It’s also limiting that for now you can only FaceTime with other iPhone 4 users.

You can’t do a video call with someone on another smartphone, even if that smartphone has video calling capabilities. A

Apple is rarely interested in featuring hardware specifications but they’ve disclosed that the iPhone 4 runs a custom-built A4 processor, just like the iPad. This, combined with an increased amount of RAM, in fact 512MB, twice as much as in 3GS, makes iPhone 4 a very fast smartphone.

It seems especially when it comes to multitasking, the increased RAM place a major role in making the iPhone 4 snappier.

In fact, I would say that apart from the display, the speed is what really sets iPhone 4 apart from the previous generation. Sure, the better camera is nice as is FaceTime but they are more peripheral to the functionality of the device.

It’s such a treat when apps start up in the blink of an eye, when switching between apps doesn’t cause any delay, and when playing HD movies- what would Steve Jobs say- is as smooth as butter.

All the new and improved hardware features should consume more battery, you’d expect, and it probably does.

However, Apple has put a larger battery in iPhone 4 and the A4 processor is supposed to consume less

power compared to the one in 3GS. During my time with iPhone 4 I got about 1.5 working days of practical use out of it per charge. Compare this to my iPhone 3GS, which regularly doesn’t make it through one full day doing the same things: push-email, regular web browsing and Twitter, some phone calls and frequent SMSing.

Battery life in iPhone 4 is better than any other comparable smartphone I’ve tried recently.

Master media player Ever since the first model was introduced in 2007, one critical piece of iPhone has been that it’s also an iPod in every way imaginable. If Apple had left out all the iPod features from iPhone, do you think it would have been as successful? I think not.

With iPhone 4, Apple reaffirms the position of iPhone as being the best media player available

when you consider the partnership with iTunes and iTunes Store. Sure, we don’t have music, TV and movies in our local iTunes Stores, which is a crying shame, but there are wellknown ways to get access to all that media by having an account in the US, UK or other supported country.

Given a choice between iPad and iPhone 4 to watch movies, I’ll pick the iPad simply because of the larger screen. That doesn’t mean the iPhone 4 is a poor video-consuming device though, in fact I’d say it’s pretty spectacular. For watching video as well as looking at photos the extra pixels means added detail and quality that is hard to describe and you just have to see to believe.

Should you buy it?

Some of you may see the iPhone as a small version of iPad or the other way around but that’s an unfair view and you do yourself an injustice if you cling to

iPhone 4 is the best media player available right now. right now. I certainly use my iPhone for a lot of things, like listening to podcasts and music, watching TV and movies, storing collections of pictures and much more.

Having tried most of the latest smartphones to enter the market I can tell you no other device is as good an all-round media player as iPhone 4, especially

it. They two may be similar in some ways but they clearly cater to different users and uses and having one doesn’t exclude having the other as well.

Although the physical design of iPhone 4 is one major factor that will appeal to buyers, undoubtedly the display is the real attractor. If you count number of pixels

on the two devices the difference is not that much but obviously on the iPhone the smaller physical size means focus is on detail and readability.

I think in pretty much every way possible iPhone 4 is the best iPhone ever produced by Apple. It works faster thanks to a faster processor and more memory, the screen is better, it has a much better main camera and a second one for video calling, and more. Both in terms of consuming media like photos and video as well as producing it, iPhone 4 excels with HD video recording and editing with iMovie.

Apple has also made a real change in design with iPhone 4. The flatter and more square design, with some rounded corners and the metal band around it is just plain gorgeous.

Holding and using it, it just exudes quality but there’s the worry about the glass back, whether it’ll really hold up in long term use.

With iPhone 4 officially launched by telcos in many countries in the Middle East a range of options for plans and contracts are

available to customers.

Official prices are actually lower than gray market and you get locally valid Apple warranty and service too, which may be important to you if you’re unlucky.

To put it simply, if you have an original iPhone or a 3G model, you should upgrade to iPhone 4there’s simply no reason not to unless you’re just sentimental or can’t afford it. The features, the speed as well as full iOS 4 support are more than enough reasons to spend the money. If you’re a user of the iPhone 3GS, though, this new model is less of an improvement. Sure, you won’t have the camera for FaceTime and the amazing screen but the 3GS is still a good smartphone and you have full range of iOS 4.

iPhone 4 Pros: Great display; slim and elegant high-quality design; fast operations; iOS 4; great camera - HD video recording and amazing 5MP photos; muchimproved battery life Cons: Some users experience dropped calls and other reception issues Information: www.apple.com/iphone Price: About Dhs 2,500 for 16GB model and Dhs 2,800 for 32GB model. Telcos offer different plans, contracts and options.

2010 October

21

p U d SpYoeureMac

Nobody likes to wait. Waiting for your Mac to complete a task is especially galling. Whether you’re applying a complex special effect in Adobe Photoshop, loading a particularly elaborate Website, or simply waiting for the thing to boot, it can produce the computer equivalent of road rage. But you don’t have to sit around tapping your fingers (or beating your fists); you can speed up your Mac in different ways and this article shows you how.

So what are you waiting for?

22

October 2010

UPGRADE YOUR RAM The complete guide to adding more memory by kyle wiens

If you’re running the latest, memory-hungriest applications, your onceblistering Mac may be feeling a bit sluggish.

But there’s a simple way to fix that problem: Add more RAM. It’s the easiest and least expensive way to speed up your Mac. With most systems, you can dive into the project and come out unscathed in less than ten minutes,

provided you’re handy with a screwdriver. To get an idea of just how easy it is, find your model in the text (not the table) that follows. There, you’ll find a difficulty rating for each upgrade and a brief description of how to install the RAM. Then look up your Mac model in the appropriate table to find out which kind of RAM it uses and how much it can accommodate. Note that Apple’s official maximum RAM specifications aren’t

separate them. Once you open the case, you remove the internal frame to get at the RAM.

Mac Pro Rating: Very easy Remove the side cover and slide out the memory riser cards (earlier generations) or the processor tray (early 2009 models) to gain access to the RAM modules.

Depending on your model, you may need to install RAM in matched pairs and in a certain configuration. Apple’s Mac Pro manuals page (support.apple.com/ manuals) has more information.

MacBook Pro Rating: Easy

always realistic; that’s why we’ve also included each model’s actual max.

If you need some help identifying what type of RAM and how much of it your Mac takes, we recommend using the guide at crucial.com (that doesn’t mean you have to buy the RAM from them though). For instructions on how to change the RAM yourself, which is easy with most current Mac models, check out ifixit.com or macworldme.com.

iMac Rating: Easy Remove either one or three screws, take off the access door, and either flip a lever or pull a tab to remove the old RAM.

Mac Mini Rating: Moderate Opening the Mac mini is the trickiest part. You must insert a sharpened putty knife (you can buy one especially made for Mac mini surgery or sharpen one yourself) between the upper and lower cases to

Getting at the RAM is similar on all unibody MacBook Pros: Remove the bottom cover, disconnect the battery, and release the RAM locking tabs.

MacBook Rating: Easy The RAM is next to the battery in the early MacBook models. Just remove the battery, followed by the memory access door, and pull on the levers to access the old RAM.

MacBook Air Rating: Impossible Unfortunately, you can’t upgrade the MacBook Air’s RAM: It is soldered onto the logic board.

SHOULD YOU INSTALL AN SSD? How much faster could a solid-state drive make your Mac?

by James Galbraith

Seven years ago, SanDisk announced its first 1GB flash memory SD card; it had an estimated street price of $330. These days, for the same money, you could buy a 128GB solidstate drive (SSD), based on NAND flash. The drop in price means that it’s become reasonable to consider an SSD as an extra drive for your Mac, or even as a replacement for the built-in hard drive.

Most mainstream solid-state drives top out at 256GB. (Some vendors have announced 400GB SSDs, but at presstime those drives were not yet shipping.) That’s bigger than the internal drives found in entry-level MacBooks, but smaller than the multiterabyte standard drives currently available.

That same money could buy you six 250GB 5400rpm drives, or three 500GB drives with a faster 7200-rpm rotational speed.

So why would you want to spend more money for less storage capacity?

There are several reasons, including durability, noise, and energy consumption.

But for most people considering an SSD, the most compelling reason is speed: SSDs can have read and write times that are four to five times faster than a standard spinning hard drive.

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Your choice is limited in your local electronics showroom in the Middle East but you should be able to find brands like Buffalo, Kingston and others. The list price for a 128GB SSD is around AED1,000 although you should expect to pay quite a bit less in actual retail.

The Bottom Line There’s no doubt that SSDs are faster than traditional 2.5-inch rotating hard disks.

But are they fast enough to compensate for their higher prices and lower capacities?

Only if you’re really rich or if your job demands the absolute fastest performance possible.

THE WI-FI TROUBLESHOOTER Find—and-fix the leading cause of Wi-Fi slowdowns by glenn fleishman

If your Wi-Fi network isn’t delivering the speeds you expect (you shouldn’t be getting less than 20 Mbps over 802.11n), the leading suspect is interference— when competing wireless signals disrupt the transmission of your data; that data then has to be resent or sent at a slower speed. Diagnosing and eliminating interference is one of the best fixes for slow Wi-Fi.

You pay a premium for SSD but in return you get higher performance and better battery life in portables.

routers as well, but the details will obviously change.) Click on Manual Setup and then on the Advanced view icon.

Select Logs and Statistics at the bottom of the screen and then the Wireless Clients tab.

There, you’ll see which devices are connected to your base station and measurements of those connections. Look at the numbers for signal and noise. Both are measured on a negative scale;

Measure the Problem The first thing to do is launch AirPort Utility (/ Applications/Utilities) and select your base station.

(For the purposes of this story, I’ll assume you’re using an AirPort base station; many of the tips apply to other wireless 24

October 2010

Keep an eye on your Wi-Fi to keep it working well.

the further a number is below zero, the weaker the signal or noise. You want a strong signal and a weak noise reading.

requested; www.istumbler .net). This utility provides a list of all the networks that your Wi-Fi adapter can sense, and the channel

If your Wi-Fi isn’t delivering the speeds you expect, the leading suspect is interference.

Signal should be closer to zero than noise, with –25 being far better than –50. You’d rather have noise down at –90 (very weak) than at –50.

(The measurement is logarithmic; every 10 units represents a tenfold change.)

Poor signal or noise numbers (or a lowerthan-expected rate reading) could be a sign of interference. If that’s what you find, the next step is to identify the culprit. Download and install iStumbler (payment

each one is using. If one of them is using the same channel you are, it could be the cause of your problem.

Change Channels, Bands If that’s the case, try changing the channel you’re using. The easiest way to do that is to restart your router. When it starts back up, it will automatically pick the channel that’s least used.

Unfortunately, the channel it picks isn’t always the best choice; also, the longer your router stays

Current Mac models Computer model MacBook MacBook Pro (all sizes) MacBook Air Mac mini iMac Mac Pro (single-processor 2.8 and 3.2GHz) Mac Pro (single-processor 3.3GHz) Mac Pro (dual-processor 2.4GHz) Mac Pro (dual-processor 2.66 and 2.93GHz)

on, what was once the least used channel may become the most crowded. To make sure you’re using the best channel, switch manually.

In the 2.4GHz band, you want to pick among 1, 6, and 11, whichever is being used by the fewest neighboring networks; if performance stays poor, try another. In the 5GHz band, choose any of the eight channels Apple makes available. The four lowernumbered ones (36, 40, 44, and 48) have less reach Second, talk to your neighbours. It’s possible they’re having the same trouble. Perhaps you can agree to coordinate channel usage. Help them if they don’t know how to make changes. (While you’re at it, turn on network security for them, if they haven’t done so already.)

Find Other Causes If AirPort Utility or iStumbler has ruled out other nearby networks as culprits, investigate other causes. Are you using any older wireless hardware, such as a baby monitor, old Bluetooth equipment (more than three or four years old), or a nonstandard wireless keyboard with a

RAM type DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 ECC SDRAM DDR3 ECC SDRAM DDR3 ECC SDRAM DDR3 ECC SDRAM

Memory speed 1066MHz 1066MHz 1066MHz 1066MHz 1333MHz 1066Hz 1333MHz 1066MHz 333MHz

Slots 2 2 n/a 2 4 4 4 8 8

iStumbler: This utility can tell you which neighboring networks are interfering with yours and what channels they’re using.

USB dongle? Do you have a 2.4GHz cordless phone?

Is your base station near a microwave oven? Those circumstances could all cause interference problems with your mac.

Turn off every non–WiFi wireless device you have. If the problems go away, start adding each device back one at a time until you find the one that produces the problem, then get rid of it.

If the problems persist, you could have a problem with your Wi-Fi radio itself. Look into warranty repair; document all the

THE SPINNING PINBEACH BALL OF DOOM: Why it appears and how to get rid of it by gregory e. swain

Officially, it’s the “spinning wait cursor” or the “spinning disc pointer.”

Colloquially, it goes by many names, including the Spinning Beach Ball.

Whatever you call it, the colorful pinwheel is not a welcome sight. According to Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines, “the spinning wait cursor is displayed automatically... when an application cannot handle

Max RAM 4GB 8GB 2GB 8GB 16GB 16GB 6GB 32GB 2GB

cursor appears.” Which is to say, the beach ball is there to tell you that your Mac is too busy with a task to respond normally. Usually, the pinwheel quickly reverts to the regular mouse pointer.

When it doesn’t go away, it becomes what some call the Spinning Beach Ball of Death (also known as the Marble of Doom). At those times, it helps to know why the thing appears and what you can do to make it go away.

Hardware Causes It’s not unusual to see the beach ball when your Mac is performing complex computing tasks. Even everyday activities—such as syncing large files with iTunes—can overtax the CPU. To find out if the CPU is the bottleneck, open Activity Monitor (/ Applications/Utilities) and, in the CPU pane, click

When you see the Spinning Beachball of Doom you know your Mac may be in trouble but a simple fix can help. troubleshooting steps you’ve tried, because even Geniuses might not believe the radio is at fault.

all of the events it receives.

If an application does not respond for about 2 to 4 seconds, the spinning wait

on the % CPU column to sort applications by CPU usage. Keep an eye on that column. The processes 2010 October

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FEATURE

consuming the most CPU cycles will be at the top. The beach ball may also appear if you don’t have enough RAM or hard-drive space. Virtualmemory paging and swapping (making room in RAM by temporarily moving unneeded data from active memory to the hard drive) consumes CPU cycles. Insufficient RAM means more paging and swapping. Ditto if your startup disk is nearly full and has little space for swap files. In both cases, more swapping demands more CPU cycles, which means that fewer of those cycles are available to your applications. Again, you can use Activity Monitor to diagnose these problems; click on either the System Memory tab or the Disk Usage tab. In the pie charts shown in these panes, more green is better.

If you can isolate a hardware cause, the solution is obvious: Upgrade. If it’s the RAM or the hard drive,

resource-intensive your applications are, the fewer you should run. The beach ball can also appear when you try to access your hard disk or optical drives (by opening or saving a file, for example) when they’re in standby mode. (That’s when they spin down after a period of inactivity to save energy.) You can, if you wish, keep your startup disk from ever entering standby mode. To do so, open Energy Saver preferences (in System Preferences) and deselect Put the Hard Disk(s) To Sleep When Possible. Note that all your drives will still enter standby mode when your Mac enters its own sleep mode; you may see the beach ball if you wake your Mac and then immediately try to access a disk.

The Energy Saver option primarily affects your startup drive alone.

Other drives (internal and external) may still spin down on their own schedules; that means you

CPU Hog: If your CPU is overwhelmed, activity Monitor can tell you how much of its resources your programs are claiming.

Software Causes The beach ball can also be caused by software. An application can hang in an infinite loop or simply be inefficient. A background process can run amok. An errant third-party plugin can turn an app into a slug. If you suspect that software is the problem, wait a few minutes to see if the application responds or crashes. While you’re waiting, open Activity Monitor (if you can) and check the % CPU column to see which apps are hogging CPU cycles.

If you can switch to other applications and the Spinning Beach Ball of Death appears in all of them, that could mean a system process is hung up. In that case, try to shut down or restart your Mac by pressing 1-Eject or 1-Control-Eject, respectively. Otherwise, press and hold the power button to shut down your Mac and restart. When the system is back up,check Console (/Applications/ Utilities) to see if you can determine the cause.

You can’t prevent every

If you can isolate a hardware cause, the solution is obvious: Upgrade. If it’s the RAM or the hard drive, you can upgrade those individually. you can upgrade those individually. In the case of the CPU, however, that means buying a new Mac. If those aren’t viable options for you, you’ll just have to run fewer applications concurrently; the more 26

October 2010

could see the beach ball if you tried to access them at the wrong time. Contact the manufacturer of the drive to see if a firmware update is available to improve the drive’s cooperation with Mac OS X’s power management.

If the application doesn’t resume, it should appear in Activity Monitor in red text, with the words Not Responding next to its name. If it’s an application you opened, select it, click on Quit Process, then on either Quit or Force Quit.

instance of the Spinning Beach Ball of Death—it is there to inform you that your Mac is busy—but a little patience and the occasional forced quit or restart should help make those instances a little bit more bearable.

CLEAN UP YOUR HARD DRIVE Freeing up space on your main hard drive makes your Mac feel better

(donation requested; www. titanium.free.fr) can help clean up files and settings on your Mac, potentially speeding it up.

by magnus nystedt

Whenever one of my Macs suddenly and unexpectedly crawl to a halt I check how much free space there is on the boot volume. This was mentioned earlier and it’s happened more times than I care to remember that the volume has basically been full, perhaps with a few megabytes available. The simple fact is that Mac OS X loves having free disk space to play with to keep things moving. If you run below a few gigabytes things may start to slow down and you will eventually get a warning from Mac OS X. Try to keep about 10GB free at least. If you run disk and processor intensive software like Final Cut or Creative Suite then you will need a lot more free space.

If you want to find out what’s taking up space on your hard drive there are easy ways to do that.

WhatSize ($12.99; bit.ly/ a6KJ2N) shows you how much space each folder takes up and you can easily delete from within the app. Disk Inventory X (Free; www.derlien.com) does the same thing but you get a handy graphical overview of all that is on the disk. Spring Cleaning ($49.95; bit.ly/cE58Br) is a more expensive alternative that does offer some more options for figuring out what to delete. Finally, utilities like Cocktail ($14.95; www.maintain. se/cocktail) and Onyx

as water flowing through a pipe: the 64-bit pipe is twice as wide as the 32-bit one so more water flows through. To find out what

and you require 64-bit software, look around for alternatives. You should know that it’ll be tough, if not impossible, to run your

64-bit means more data can go through at the same time meaning faster operations.

IF YOU’RE 64-BIT, STAY 64-BIT Why keeping an eye on the bits might speed up your Mac by magnus nystedt

All current Macs are 64-bit compatible as is Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. In the world of computing, 64-bit means more data can go through at the same time meaning faster operations. Think about it

you’re running on your Mac, check the “Kind” column in Activity Monitor for “64 bit.” The idea is that the more software you run as 64-bit the faster your Mac should operate.

If there’s any software that you run on a regular basis that is not 64-bit then check the manufacturer’s web site to see if there’s an update available. If speed is really of essence

Mac completely free of 32-bit apps but it may help you to weed out some 32bit code if you can.

Activity Monitor doesn’t tell you whether your Mac OS X runs in 32- or 64-bit mode though.

To check that, head to Apple menu > About This Mac > More Info > Software. There it’ll say yes or no by “64 bit Kernel and Extensions.”

Suspending Standby: Trying to use a sleeping disk can summon the beach ball. Turn off sleep in the Energy Saver preference panel.

2010 October

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WORKINGMAC

Tips, Tricks, and Tools to Make You and Your Mac More Productive

Five reasons to partition a disk Here are a few situations when it’s worth it to split up your hard disk

BY JOE KISSELL

TOP TIP When you get a new Mac, it comes with one startup drive (a hard disk or, in a few cases, a solid-state disk) named “Macintosh HD.”This arrangement is perfectly fine for most of us, but it’s not your only option. If the need arises, you can split that disk up. Any internal (IDE or SATA) or external (FireWire, USB, or eSATA) disk can be reorganized into one or more volumes called partitions.

Each partition appears on your Desktop as an independent disk, and you can even mix and match formatting methods from one partition to the next on the same disk. You can use Disk Utility (found in /Applications/Utilities) to repartition a drive, although doing so normally requires erasing the entire drive in the process. You can also choose from several thirdparty utilities, such as Prosoft Engineering’s $99 Drive Genius 2 (bit.ly/9PxDMb) and Coriolis System’s $45 iPartition (bit.ly/ a1tsLu) that can change a drive’s partitioning without erasing it.

I know some people who have partitioned their Macs’ hard drives for decades, but can’t really give a good reason for doing it. Partitioning can waste space and even decrease your hard drive’s performance. So why would you ever bother? Here are five good reasons:

1. TO SWITCH BETWEEN VERSIONS OF OS X If your Mac is capable of running multiple versions of OS X (for example, you have an early Intel-based iMac that can run Tiger, Leopard, or Snow Leopard), you can partition your drive so that you can use more than one. Divide your disk into one partition for each version of OS X, and then install the operating systems separately. When you need to run a different version of the operating system—say, for testing, or to use older software that won’t run under a newer OS—open the Startup Disk pane of System Preferences, select the partition you want, and click on Restart.

2. TO USE BOOT CAMP If you use Boot Camp Assistant (built into OS X 10.5 Leopard and later) to run Windows on your Mac, it creates a special partition just for your Windows installation.

Unfortunately, Boot Camp Assistant won’t work if your disk is already partitioned, so if you intend to use Boot Camp, 28

October 2010

you’ll have to stick to just two partitions (one each for Windows and OS X).

3. TO REPAIR DISK PROBLEMS If your startup volume develops disk errors, you may need to run a repair program (such as Disk Utility) from another volume in order to fix them. That other volume could be an external hard drive or a bootable DVD. But another option is to keep a small partition on your main disk that includes a bootable copy of OS X and a repair utility or two. When trouble strikes, you can boot up from this volume and fix some problems without having any secondary media at all.

4. TO SHARE YOUR IPHOTO LIBRARY If you want to share a single iPhoto library between two or more user accounts on the same Mac, one way to do so, per Apple’s advice, is to move it to a volume where ownership is ignored. That can’t be your main startup volume, but it could be an external disk—or another partition of your internal disk.

5. TO MANAGE BACKUPS EFFICIENTLY I recommend maintaining two kinds of backups. The first is bootable duplicates of your entire disk, using a program such as Bombich Software’s Carbon Copy Cloner (www.bombich. com, donation requested) or Shirt Pocket Software’s $28 SuperDuper! (www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper). The second is versioned backups (which store copies of your files as they appeared at many points in time) using Apple’s built-in Time Machine or any of numerous other backup utilities. You don’t need to keep two different hard drives around for your two types of backup. Instead, use partitions. For example, if you have a 1TB internal disk, you could buy a single 2TB external drive, divide it into two 1TB partitions, and then put your bootable duplicate on one while using the other for versioned backups.

Hitachi LifeStudio Mobile Plus 500GB

Attempts to bring some excitement to the dreary world of external storage REVIEW LifeStudio Mobile Plus is an external 2.5-inch hard drive with a docking station, which connects to your Mac using USB 2.0.

The docking station and the other components are stylish and made out of a very glossy plastic. Unfortunately the plastic easily attracts all kinds of dirt and dust.

Hitachi has tried something new by adding a USB flash memory on the front of the dock. The 4GB USB key automatically syncs a subset of files from the main drive. You select what should be synced using Hitachi’s software and changes can be synced back to the main drive from the USB drive once it connects again. It’s unfortunate that the flash drive connects with what appears to be a proprietary connection to the dock. This means that it’ll be harder and presumably more expensive to find a replacement if it’s lost or damaged. The good news is that the actual memory sits on a MicroSD card, which you can upgrade.

The main functionality in the software is that users can use a CoolIris-powered interface to browse through their media. Hitachi’s LifeStudio software, for Mac OS X and Windows, goes

Hitachi LifeStudio Mobile Plus 500GB Pros: Comes with docking station; flash memory; included software Cons: Flash memory uses proprietary connection and it’s limited to 4GB; more expensive than comparable drives Info: www.ifestudio.com Price: Dhs 519.99 (model without flash drive Dhs 439.99)

through your connected drives and looks for digital media, which is then available on a “3D wall.”You browse through this wall and can easily share files with family and friends through Facebook, Picasa and other online services.

The LifeStudio software lets you backup locally (to a hard drive) as well as online from within the same application. Hitachi offers a cloud backup service where the first 3GB is free and you can purchase 250GB space for $49 per year. It’s not quite as simple and transparent as Apple’s Time Machine but I

had no particular problems making it run. How well the online cloud component works depends on your Internet connection. I only tried the free 3GB option and it also worked without problems.

Apple has yet to adopt USB 3.0 but the new standard is catching on fast in the PC world. Since we’re looking at this drive from Mac users’ perspective the lack of USB 3.0 is really not an issue. QuickBench 4.0 rated the drive’s read speed at 26.6MB/s and write speed at 20.7MB/s. This falls in the lower end of the range

of comparable drives but for most users that’s not a particularly important issue.

Overall the LifeStudio drive is nothing special in terms of performance and other brands have docking stations for their drives.

However, the addition of the flash drive is clever. Free limited online backup is welcome as is the 3D wall file browsing functionality.

You pay a premium for all of this but it might just be worth it. Hitachi is trying some new things in the dreary world of external had drives and for that they should be commended.

2010 October

29

PLAYLIST

Everything You Need to Know about iPods, iTunes, and Mac-based Entertainment

iTunes 10 Goes Social Apple adds Ping social networking, but changes the interface in baffling ways

BY DAVID CHARTIER

I

don’t think you could be blamed for assuming that iTunes 10 is a major update—after all, 10 is a big number, and it marks iTunes’ foray into double digits. But Apple seems to have used some restraint this time around, introducing only one major new feature while noticeably improving performance. However, the company has still slapped on a haphazard array of interface changes.

Ping Me The one key new feature in iTunes 10 is Ping—an optional social network for music that Apple built into iTunes 10.

Friends can follow, view, and comment on each other’s new purchases and 30

October 2010

songs they “like,” as well as stay on top of upcoming concerts. Artists can create store pages, interact with fans, and post photos and videos.

Although it’s fun to see what my friends are listening to and to let others across the world jump into the conversation, Ping leaves a lot to be desired.

There’s no way to be notified of new activity, such as when friends make new comments or your favorite artists post something new to their pages.

The only way you can add new friends is by typing in their names or e-mail addresses. How very 2003. Perhaps most importantly, Ping is currently restricted to music (and only music that’s on the

iTunes Store, to boot). Of course, you can bet Apple will make a steady flow of updates to Ping and, hopefully, extend the feature to the other types of media on the iTunes Store.

Other New Features Though pitched mostly for future owners of the new Apple TV, iTunes 10 offers current users the ability to rent TV shows. AirPlay (an evolution of AirTunes) is also an interesting new feature that will let iTunes stream music and video to new AirPlay-enabled speakers, receivers, and iPod accessories.

If you click the album artwork at the lower left, the window it opens now includes player controls when you

Although it’s fun to see what my friends are buying and to let others across the country jump into the conversation, Ping leaves a lot to be desired. every window in Mac OS X) are now listed vertically down the top left of the window. In a way, this is not a new layout for these buttons—for quite some time they’ve shifted vertically when you use iTunes’ Mini Player.

But initially, many across the Internet sounded a cry of horror upon seeing this change in iTunes 10, as if a million interface designers cried out at once.

But the complaints have subsided.

Inexplicably, Apple’s second major interface change was to suck the color out of iTunes’ sidebar icons. Gone are the blue, green, and purple hues for Music, Movies, iTunes Store, and Smart Playlists icons—they’ve faded to a pale gray.

Macworld’s Buying Advice mouse over it. Other perks in iTunes 10 include a new Album List view that displays album artwork more intelligently, and new preferences that let you hide features like the checkboxes next to media in list view and the icons next to sidebar items. iTunes 10 also received a speed boost— it starts up faster and the interface feels a bit snappier.

Apple did remove one feature from iTunes 10, however: You can no longer buy ringtones from the iTunes Store; nor

can you create them from tracks within iTunes. Creating ringtones with thirdparty tools still seems to work.

Tossing Interface Darts Once again, various iTunes elements both big and small have changed; many for the sake of change, and some to the detriment of usability. First, the buttons to close, minimize, and “best fit” iTunes (the red, yellow, and green orbs, respectively, that are laid out horizontally at the top left of virtually

iTunes 10 seems like a foundational update. Ping, at its core, is a great idea but it has a ways to go. And speedier performance is great to have as well. But version 10 leaves room for improvement. Finally and most importantly, there is still no full iTunes store for customers with Middle Eastern credit cards so you still can’t buy your media from Apple. That’s of course not required to use the iTunes app but it’s a major let-down that continues to plague us.

EmiratesMac.com

EmiratesMac Apple Users Group Discounts - Support - Debate - News How to join: Contact: Paul Castle, Community Evangelist, paul@emiratesmac.com, @daddybird, +971-55-580 1829 2010 October

31

PLAY LIST

iPad: a playlist lover’s best friend Create and edit playlists with the iPad while on the go

BY KIRK MCELHEARN

W

ith a new device comes new possibilities. And while the iPad is much more than just a portable music player, you’ll probably listen to music on it from time to time.

One feature that is greatly improved on the iPad compared with its implementation on the iPhone and the iPod touch is the ability to create and edit playlists. Your only choice on these smaller devices is to use the on-the-go playlist feature. But the iPad has some extra-large playlistcreation features up its 32

October 2010

sleeve. (Apple announced that the iPhone OS 4 update, due out in a couple of weeks, will add playlist-creation support as well, so these features may not be limited to the iPad for long.)

Find music, create lists To access your music on the iPad, you tap the iPod app. This displays an interface that is closer to that of iTunes than that of a pocket-size touchscreen device. The left column shows your library: music, podcasts, audiobooks, and any playlists you have synced. Tap an entry to see

its contents to the right. To create a new playlist, tap the plus (+) button below the sidebar. This brings up a box — similar to the one you get when prompted to enter a Wi-Fi password — asking you to name the playlist, as well as an on-screen keyboard to type it. Enter a name and then tap Save.

The playlist displays briefly in the sidebar, and then a list of all your songs pops up.

Each song has a blue plus (+) icon to the right; to add a song to the playlist, just tap the icon next to its name.

This song list shows only limited information, though:

the song name and artist. So if you have more than one version of a song, you won’t know which album the song comes from. Under the volume slider in the upper left corner there’s a Sources button — use it to pick from music, podcasts, audiobooks, or other playlists to build a new playlist.

You can view your music in other ways, too, to add songs to a playlist (the Sources button serves the same function with them all). At the bottom of the song list are buttons labelled Songs, Artists, Albums, Genres, and Composers.

Tap one of these to see your music sorted in different ways. If you tap Artists, you’ll see each artist’s name with a single album cover in front of it (assuming all your music has album art).

Tap an artist name and you’ll see all the songs you have by that artist, sorted by album and then song on the right, with album art on the left.

Tapping Albums displays all your albums as cover art graphics, similar to what you see in iTunes’ Grid view. Tap an album image to get a pop-up of its contents; tap a song to add it to the playlist.

Tap Genres and you’ll get a Grid view display of your genres. Tap one and you’ll see a pretty useless pop-up menu of all the songs or tracks in that genre, without any artist or album information to help you figure out what’s what. Lastly, if you tap Composers, you’ll get a display similar to that of Artists: one line for each composer, with a name and album cover.

Whichever method you use to find your music, just add all the songs you want and then tap the blue Done button, at the top right of the window.

Work with your playlists A big difference with the iPad’s playlist feature compared with that of the iPhone and iPod touch is in what you can do after you’ve made a playlist.

Choose a playlist by tapping it in the sidebar.

Then, if you don’t like the way you’ve set it up, you can make changes. Tap the Edit button. To change the order of the songs, tap and hold the three-line icon at the right of a song, and drag it where you want. If you want to delete a song, just tap the red minus (–) icon and then the Delete button that appears. And if

you want to add songs, tap the Add Songs button next to Done and throw another few songs or albums in the mix. When you’ve finished, tap Done.

Want to make a new playlist? Tap the plus icon again and start the process over — you can create as many playlists as you want.

Tired of your playlist? Tap Edit, tap the red icon to the left of the playlist’s name, and then tap Delete.

You may even find that making playlists on an iPad is easier or more convenient than doing so on your Mac. Since any playlists you create on the iPad are

copied to your Mac when you sync them, you can use this method to set up playlists to enjoy on your computer as well.

There are a few shortcomings with playlist creation on the iPad, however. You can’t easily create playlists of TV shows, movies, or music videos, which are confined to the Videos app (unless, that is, you’ve created a playlist containing videos on your computer to sync with the iPad — and even then, the iPad treats them as songs). You also can’t create smart playlists. At least not yet.

EmiratesMac.com

EmiratesMac Apple Users Group Discounts - Support - Debate - News How to join: Contact: Paul Castle, Community Evangelist, paul@emiratesmac.com, @daddybird, +971-55-580 1829 2010 October

33

DIGITALPHOTO

Techniques and Gear for Shooting, Editing, and Managing Great Photos

Canon PowerShot SX210 IS A pocket megazoom for novices and advanced photographers

BY TIM MOYNIHAN The SX210 IS approaches ergonomics in an innovative way.

Lacking a raised handgrip, the camera instead has a narrow, finger-width trench along the top and sides for securing the grip; you control the 14x-optical-zoom lens (28mm to 392mm) by using a toggle-like control on the top of the camera with your fingertip. The pop-up flash is another improvement over last year’s model, as well. Instead of its being controlled by fully electronic measures, you can manually flip the flash up and down on this camera.

Battery life is decent, but nothing spectacular. The SX210 IS is rated for 260 shots per charge of its rechargeable battery, short of the 300-plus shots we see on average for a point-andshoot camera.

To sum up, the Canon PowerShot SX210 IS is the rare camera that’s sure to please a variety of users, making this pocket megazoom a solid recommendation for any camera shopper. Basically it’s a fun camera with top-notch performance.

REVIEW Offering the holy trinity of ease of use, manual controls, and bestin-class video quality, the 14x-opticalzoom PowerShot SX210 IS is a followup to last year’s excellent PowerShot SX200 IS. Improvements include a slimmer frame, the ability to zoom while shooting video, support for SDXC cards, and new scene modes.

What probably surprised me the most with the SX210 IS was the noticeably better video quality than any other pocket megazoom I’ve tried.

In contrast, audio capture was a weak spot; the camera has no mic-in port, so you’re stuck with less-than-impressive

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October 2010

sound to accompany the camera’s stunning 720p, 30-fps videos.

This is very much a “one-size-fitsall” camera, offering a good range of controls to suit both advanced and novice photographers. It has a full set of manual controls, including aperturepriority mode, shutter-priority mode, and full manual exposure. Aperture settings range from f3.1 on the wideangle end to f8.0 in full telephoto.

For beginners and creative-butcasual snapshooters, the SX210 IS has a few scene modes worth exploring including Minature Mode, FishEye, and Color Accent.

Canon PowerShot SX210 IS Pros: Great blend of fun features and manual controls; zoom toggle gives good control over 14x zoom lens; innovative design feels good in the hand; superior video quality Cons: Subpar audio-capture in video mode; plastic zoom toggle takes some getting used to Info: bit.ly/powershotsx210 Price: Dhs 1,399

2010 October

35

DIGITAL PHOTO

Canon EOS 1D Mark IV

The latest DSLR from Canon delivers in speed and quality

BY MAGNUS NYSTEDT

REVIEW

To set something straight right away, I’d say that if you’ve not heard of this camera you’re likely not a potential customer. This is a heavy, expensive DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) camera, squarely aimed at professionals and advanced amateurs. The rest of you needn’t bother looking at it for your photography needs, okay?

Let’s get to the specification first. This is a 16.1 megapixel camera (4,896 x 3,264 pixels), which may not seem like that much considering the steady increase in the megapixel count of cameras. But there are so many other issues that go into the quality of a shot like lenses, correct exposure etc., that in the end 16 megapixels is probably more than you need in most situations. And let’s face it, this is not a camera you’re going to use to take photos that are to be blown up to a big board on the side of a road, this is more a camera to capture fast action in sports or for other news/ press photography. Like its predecessor it has a 1.3x crop factor, which effectively turns a 50mm lens into a 65mm lens.

The 45-point AF system, including 39 cross-pointsbasically in between the other 45 points, to simplify a bit- seems to be very accurate at setting the right focus, and even more so to track focus when you or the subject moves. The lightmetering system also seems 36

October 2010

to be dead-on. With 63 zones of metering the Mark IV gets the reading and setting right most of the time, even in tricky situations spanning a wide range of light. You can pick from evaluative, partial or spot metering.

This is a fast camera In terms of speed, this is a fast camera. You can take 10 fps of continuous shooting up to 121 JPG shots or 28 RAW, then it needs to empty the buffer and write to a card. That’s one reason I say this is a good camera choice for those who need to capture quick action.

Another reason is a top shutter speed of 1/8,000s.

This is a professional DSLR that can also shoot full 1080i HD video, 29.97 fps.

Unfortunately the way you operate the video feels a bit like an afterthought rather than an integrated part of the camera. That’s not too uncommon though with DSLRs and the video quality, once shooting, is very good.

Battery life is very good, at least with moderate use of the Live View function (seeing what you’re going to shoot on the rear 3 inch LCD) and video recording.

If you stick to still pictures

you can shoot a lot without having to worry about the battery running dry.

This camera has an amazing top ISO of 12,800 and it’s actually useable.

We’ve come to get used to high ISO values being a big no-no because of noise, poor colors and more. Actually on the Mark IV you can crank up the ISO to 102,400, but I didn’t try that myself.

In my brief experience with this camera I can certainly attest to it being heavy, but I don’t mind that so much. I guess my large hands fit very well around the body of the camera, and

as I always do, I appreciated having a vertical grip.

Although I shoot mostly with Nikon cameras, I guess I know Canon pretty well because all the controls, dials, etc. were familiar to me and seem to fall in natural places. I experienced no issues with finding controls or having problems making something happen.

Expensive but worth it So, finally let’s consider the price. This beast of a camera goes for just north of AED 20,000 in the UAE. Just that fact alone means this camera is out of reach for the vast

masses of photographers, but as mentioned earlier it’s not meant for them anyway.

What you have to add to the equation is that the price is for the camera body only.

If you have a collection of lenses already for Canon then you’re good to go; if not, then you’re looking at spending as much if not more on just lenses. Add to the lenses that you may need big memory cards and other accessories, and you see that you could buy a new car cheaper than a new photography outfit centered on the Mark IV. But that’s a bit of an unfair comparison

as the aim is professionals, and they know they have to spend money on their gear. And as a professional camera with the quality and

feature set it has, the price is acceptable. That’s why I can’t see myself giving the Canon EOS 1D Mark IV anything, but top marks.

Canon EOS 1D Mark IV Pros: Top-notch build quality; weather sealed; great battery life (except when shooting video); extensive array of features; quick start-up time; 10fps shooting; bright LCD; amazing high ISO performance; fast and accurate AF; very accurate metering even in tough situations; very good full HD video quality Cons: Expensive; movie shooting is a bit complicated, feels like an after-thought rather than integrated part of camera’s functionality; heavy Info: bit.ly/avuHB1 Price: Dhs 21,999 (body only) 2010 October

37

DIGITAL PHOTO

Joby: more than flexible tripod legs Famous for its Gorillapod tripod legs it’s now branching out

BY MAGNUS NYSTEDT

S

cott E. Ellis, Vice President of Marketing at Joby, talked to Macworld Middle East about the company, their products and what the future holds. Joby is the company best known for their Gorillapod series of tripods with flexible legs, a concept they’re now branching out into various areas.

Q: Tell us how Joby got started.

A: Joby was originally created in a product design class at Stanford University over 10 years ago. After several years perfecting the original Gorillapod tripod design, and countless hours of materials testing, the product was finally launched in 2005. Our original product hit the market just as a new wave of photographers emerged due to the democratization of photography and the explosion of digital

cameras – and Joby became a fast success.

Since then we have continued to grow our product lines to fit the needs of all levels of photographers.

Q: You’ve branched out from the original Gorillapod but your unique design for tripod legs is still at the core of new products. How are the Gorillapod legs designed and what makes them so special?

A: The design concept behind the Gorillapod is straightforward: it provides a way to attach and position creative technology, such as a camera, almost anywhere with great ease and precision. We use the most advanced materials available in the design, and integrate them in a simple mechanical design that is flexible and durable. This ball-and-socket technology was developed and perfected through a great deal of experimentation with engineers, designers and manufacturers working together to obtain the best possible function, while remaining simple, lightweight, and portable.

Q: The legs of the Gorillapod move freely in whichever direction but at the same time they can hold quite some weight. How can they do both?

A: You’ve nailed precisely what makes the Gorillapod such an amazing product – the legs are incredibly flexible and bendable (which allows the user virtually endless possibilities on how to use it) and it’s also very portable and lightweight (which makes it easy to take with you). But because of the innovative balland-socket leg design, the legs are quite strong, and are sturdy enough to hold significant camera and lens weight. The ability to combine seemingly opposing needs is what makes users love our products.

Q: Your design has been copied a lot. Is that a big problem for you and how do you fight it?

A: Whenever you introduce an exciting new product into the market – such as our balland-socket tripod – others will try to copy you. We have certainly seen this as imitation products have appeared in most markets where Joby products are sold. The quality of these “copycat” products is typically inferior to the 38

October 2010

Gorillapod, so we work to educate the consumer about our patented design and high quality materials – which allows us to offer a 1-year warranty. This isn’t just a matter of opinion (although of course I think ours are the best), you can easily read about the quality difference by reading online product reviews.

Q: You have different sizes of Gorillapods for different types of cameras. How should a customer decide which one to get?

A: The most important consideration in selecting the correct Gorillapod product is the weight of the camera and lens that the customer wants to support. Of course, some may argue that color is most important in the Gorillapod Original line – I am partial to the blue myself. Our Gorillapod line starts with the Gorillapod Original, which is great for point and shoot cameras weighing up to 325g. One size up is the Gorillapod SLR, which holds up to 800g, followed by the Gorillapod SLR-Zoom, which is perfect for DSLR cameras with zoom lenses weighing up to 5kg. For professional-grade photography equipment, the Gorillapod Focus is our top-ofthe-line product and supports up to 5kg. We have a Joby Gorillapod product to meet every need, from the first-time photographer to the experienced professional.

Q: It seems that you have a pretty passionate following of fans and customers, not unlike Apple. How do you nurture that community?

A: We have a very passionate and loyal community of creative and active users – we call them “creactives” – who are a powerful source of inspiration for us. We love to hear from our fans – and especially the stories about the new and innovative ways that they’re using our products.

We try to stay connected with them, especially through our blog and social media like Twitter and Facebook as well as our online community – Joby in the Wild. So join us. We would love to hear about your experiences with Joby products.

Q: Finally, can you tell us something about what we can expect from Joby in the future? Is what you know about tripod legs applicable to totally different products?

A: I can’t share too many details yet, but what I can tell you is that we’re always thinking about new potential products, and exploring the intersection of great product design and the ideal user experience. We’re best known for our unique ball-and-socket Gorillapod design language (also utilized in our Gorillamobile and Gorillatorch product lines) but we’ve also launched products (like our ballhead products) that don’t utilize this technology. We have a number of disruptive products in the pipeline, and are always exploring ways to deliver the best possible product experience – even if it means moving beyond our famous ball-and-socket legs.

What I can promise is that we’ll have more exciting news soon – keep an eye on us.

2010 October

39

CREATE

Using the Web for Video, Graphics, Web Publishing, and oTher Creative Pursuits

What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font?

What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font?

What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font?

What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font?

What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font?

What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font?What Makes a Great Font?

What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font?

What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font?

What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font?

What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font?

What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font?

What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font?

What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font?

What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font?

What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font?

What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font?

What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font?

What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font?

What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font?What Makes a Great Font?

What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font?

What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font? What Makes a Great Font?

What

makes a great

Choosing the right typeface for your project

BY JAY J. NELSON

T

ypically, a list of bestselling fonts does not represent the most interesting designs—in fact, best-selling fonts are often simply new OpenType versions of older text fonts.

So what constitutes an interesting font? Graphic designers look for several things: appropriateness for the project at hand; an elegant and refined design; typographic extras such as ornaments and alternate characters (glyphs); and if fonts will be used in text-heavy projects, an 40

October 2010

extended family of weights and styles. It also helps if the font seems fresh and not overused by everyone, everywhere. The MyFonts. com Website has an excellent annual Top 10 list—my favorites from that list are Aphrodite Slim Pro, Champion Pro, and Liza Pro, because of their huge sets of alternate glyphs and advanced OpenType features that automate the use of thousands of glyphs. They are graced with beautiful swirls and swashes, many of which

are attached to alternate versions of standard characters. Examine the same letter in different locations, and its shape changes according to letters on either side of it.

Subhead Magazine designers are constantly on the lookout for unique fonts that complement article topics.

Two great examples of fonts that could appear as graphic headlines in a magazine are Narziss and Memoriam. Both work best

at large sizes because of the dramatic difference in weight between the thin and thick strokes of the letters, which tend to break up at smaller sizes. This also makes them suitable for use in posters. If you’re looking for a book text font, Calluna is a useful choice. It has several weights, along with elegant italic styles.

This variety is helpful when you need to distinguish between headlines, subheads, text, and captions. In addition, Calluna includes ornaments

Essential design sites When it comes to creative projects, even professional designers need help now and then. There’s no shortage of Websites they (and we civilians) can turn to for inspiration and advice. Whether for specific technical instruction or just good ideas, these four sites are among my favorites.

for beginning or ending chapters, and a true small caps style for callouts, quotes, and other places where you want variety.

Subhead While some publishing applications can create a fake small caps style from a regular font, these rarely look right—the difference in thickness between the large caps and the small caps looks unprofessional.

If your book leans more toward the fantastical, look at Ivory. The illustrated capital letters are perfect for chapter titles, or even for the book jacket. In addition, the illustrated backgrounds for the letters are available separately, so you can stack them and even apply different colors to the foreground and background of the letters.

A catalog project requires an even larger array of weights and styles, which the best-selling Alright Sans provides. Its design is modern, yet approachable— and not so unfamiliar as to be distracting. The wide-

open design of its letterforms lends itself to use in a wide range of sizes, as well as in Web pages. And it has oldstyle numbers that blend in nicely with the text—a feature also available in Calluna. Both of these fonts include lining numbers, which feature an equal width for each number, so they line up when used in a vertical column. We’ve become accustomed to seeing lining numbers because they have been included in all fonts since the beginning of the desktop publishing era.

Old-style numbers were previously available only in special font sets, but now they’re included in some of the advanced OpenType fonts.

If you’re designing, say, a timetable, an events chart, or liner notes for a CD, try Geogrotesque. The letters have uniform strokes: There’s little difference in width between vertical, horizontal, and curved segments. Its modern—even postmodern—appearance also lends itself to lowresolution display, such as

Khatt Foundation: For anyone interested in Arabic and Islamic typography and design this site is a must.

You can find a list of like minded and creative people, a discussion forum and a list of recommended reading. www.khtt.net Planet Photoshop: This site features an abundance of tutorials that canl help you fix problem photos or make your shots more vibrant. Though sponsored by the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, you don’t have to be a member to benefit from all the cool stuff. www.planetphotoshop.com

for Web pages. We Love Nature, a picture font, reminds us that fonts may contain any kind of shape, not just letters. These flowers are simply outlines placed into the slots normally reserved for letters in a font.

Type the letter A, and you get one of these flowers; type B, and you’ll get a different one. This font is

Digital Photography Review: If you want to know everything about nearly any digital camera, go here. The site includes almost every vendor and covers point-andshoots, compacts, DSLRs, and lenses. There are forums, howtos, sample images, and more. www.dpreview.com Smashing Magazine: This is the ultimate Web designer’s companion. For experienced developers or just people doing research, this site has tons of engaging information. Check out tips and coding tutorials, plus all the icons, graphics, wallpapers, themes, photos, and fonts you’ll ever want. www.smashingmagazine.com I Love Typography: Whenever you need help with type, head to I Love Typography, an inviting blog that covers all aspects of the subject. The site’s links are deep and complete, with connections to plenty of other font-centric resources and site. www.ilovetypography.com

one example of hundreds of fonts that contain outlines of different objects—everything from fish to cats, airplanes to people, and weapons to Michelangelo’s drawings.

Jay J. Nelson is the editor and publisher of Design Tools Monthly, an executive summary of graphic design news.

2010 October

41

CREATE

The hidden talents of Preview It’s lurking in your Applications folder and can do more than you think

BY MAGNUS NYSTEDT

Whenever you think graphics software you probably immediately jump to Photoshop as it’s even become a noun in popular culture as in you photoshop a picture, you don’t edit it. Apple’s iPhoto is also a capable editor although it doesn’t let you do the same pixel-level editing that Photoshop supports. There are also many other options, for example Pixelmator and GraphicConverter.

For most simple task and even some pretty advanced ones there’s an application lurking in your Applications folder that will do probably more than you think it can. That application is Preview and I want to give you a few ideas of what it can offer you.

Add Bookmarks: When you’re on a page in PDF that you want to bookmark so you can easily go back to it later, just go to the Bookmarks menu and select Add Bookmarks.

Editing: The editing functions in Preview are fairly basic but you’d be surprised how useful they can be. Firing up Preview and do a simple crop, resize, flip and rotate is a lot quicker than opening Photoshop or other application.

Annotate: You can add notes to documents in Preview. Just head to the Tools menu > Annotate. You can add

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ovals, rectangles, notes and links. This comes in very handy if you need to work with others on reviewing documents.

Adjust photos: Taken straight out of iPhoto, with the adjustment palette (Tools > Adjust color) you can adjust exposure, brightness, contrast and more.

Again the functionality is fairly basic but you can still do a lot, including working on exposure, brightness and contrast.

There’s even an “Auto levels” button, which typically makes a good decision about adjusting the variables.

Batch process files: Partner Preview with Automator and you will find out that it can be a formidable batch processing tool. Why not set up an Automator workflow that automatically resizes photos to a specific size for publishing to a web site?

Open EPS and PSD files: Of course you know that Preview can open JPG, GIF, PDF and other types of files but did you know it can also open files like PSD and EPS? If someone sends you a PSD file and you don’t have Photoshop you can still

look at it with Preview. There are limits to what Preview can do though but it’s worth a try in a pinch.

Photo meta data: When you take photos with a digital camera lots of extra information is typically saved along with the actual picture. This Exif and IPTC information could be date, location, shutter speed and more. This information your digital camera saves about your shots, you can see with Preview, just open the Inspector (Tools > Inspector) and click on the exclamation mark icon.

So next time you need to do something quick and easy to a photo, consider Preview. It may be just what you need.

HELP DESK

Answering Your Questions and Sharing Your Tips about Getting the Most From Your Mac

Mac 911

Solutions to your most vexing Mac problems

BY CHRISTOPHER BREEN AND MACWORLD MIDDLE EAST STAFF

Sort Out-of-Sorts Contacts Since I upgraded to OS X 10.6.3, the addresses in Address Book refuse to sort. I tried changing the way contacts are sorted in the program’s preferences, but nothing works. Is there anything else I can do?

Michael Hull

Empty iPhoto’s Stubborn Trash My iPhoto trash contains 474 items. I’ve been trying to empty the trash but it just won’t go away. Do you have any suggestions for how to do this?

Via the Internet As I’ve mentioned before in these pages, when you delete images in iPhoto, they go into a separate iPhoto trash folder, but they’re not actually deleted from your Mac until you expressly tell iPhoto to empty the trash. To do this, Control-click (or right-click) iPhoto’s Trash icon and pick Empty Trash from the contextual menu. If this doesn’t work, it’s possible that you’ve hit a fairly common snag where iPhoto won’t delete a lot of images at one time. Select all the images in the trash, assign an identifying keyword to them (for purposes of this example, use ‘trash’), and choose Photos > Restore To iPhoto Library (see “Trash

Photos”). This places the trashed photos back in your iPhoto library.

Now choose File > New Smart Album, create an album with a condition that reads Keyword Is Trash, and click the OK button to create the smart album.

Select a hundred or so images in the smart album and press 1-OptionDelete. This tosses those images in the trash. Now use the Control-click (or right-click) trick to empty the trash. Continue doing this until all the images are really gone. If none of this works, iPhoto may be corrupted.

Quit the program, hold down 1 and Option, and launch it again. A Rebuild Photo Library window will appear, in which you’ll see a number of repair options. Start with the first one (Rebuild The Photos’ Small Thumbnails) and give the rebuild option a try. Check iPhoto after you’ve done this to see how it behaves. If it’s still acting funky, give the next option in the Rebuild window a go. Rinse and repeat until iPhoto bends to your will.

This is another one of those “if all else fails, nuke the preference files” situations. This option follows such tried-and-true methods as changing preferences within the application, restarting your Mac, and cursing. In this very particular case, you should follow this path: youruserfolder/Library/Preferences; then enter AddressBook in the Search field (search by File Name in the Preferences folder). This will turn up both the com.apple.AddressBook. plist and com.apple.AddressBook.abd. plist files. Next, quit Address Book, drag these files to the desktop, and relaunch Address Book. Doing this will create new preference files, and your contacts should now be sorted according to Address Book’s default settings: Show First Name Before Last Name and Sort By First Name.

If everything is as hunky-dory as I suggest it should be, go ahead and trash the old preference files that you dragged to the desktop.

2010 October

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HELP DESK

MAC 911

Unhappy Holidays

Print Keynote Handouts

Add a Network Printer

I would enjoy the Genius Mixes feature in iTunes a whole lot more if it weren’t for the fact that my holiday songs get mixed into every Genius genre. I’m wondering if there’s a work-around (other than putting all my holiday music into a separate iTunes library).

Richard Potter

I’ve switched from PowerPoint to Keynote. When I printed PowerPoint handouts, I could put several slides on a page so that each slide took up one-quarter of the page.

When I print Keynote handouts using the Handout option in the Print sheet, I get four small slides along the side of each page. How can I print Keynote handouts so they look like my old PowerPoint handouts?

Gary McDonald

I have an HP LaserJet 2100TN that formerly used AppleTalk to connect to my network. But since we upgraded to Snow Leopard, my iMac no longer sees the printer. How can I make the HP work with my iMac over a network?

Chris Rose

Genius isn’t terribly bright when it comes to discerning season-appropriate music. If it were, on each January 7th Genius would scan your iTunes library for any track assigned with the Holiday genre tag and promptly ignore it until the end of the year. Fortunately there’s a way to get Genius Mixes out of the holiday mood: Uncheck the box next to any selections you don’t want to include in a Genius mix. To do that, create a smart playlist and then create a condition that reads Genre Contains Holiday. Select this smart playlist, hold down the 1 key, and click on any track’s checkbox. All the tracks in the playlist will be unselected. If, in the future, you find that some of your holiday music is still in your Genius mixes, it’s because the tracks haven’t been properly tagged. I’ve downloaded a fair bit of holiday music, and some of it is tagged as Classical. Just tag these selections correctly, and they’ll move into your smart playlist. Note that the album artwork for this music may still appear as part of a Genius mix, but the music won’t.

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Choose File > Print, and in the sheet that appears select Layout from the pop-up menu in the middle of the sheet. In the Pages Per Sheet pop-up menu, choose 4 (or the number of slides you want on each page). Click the pop-up menu that now reads Layout and choose Keynote. In the Print area of the resulting sheet, select Individual Slides rather than Handout (see “Asking for Handouts”). The preview to the left should display the neatly organized layout you’re after.

Try printing over IP. First, you must determine the IP address for your printer by forcing it to print a status page. The method for doing this varies by printer maker and model (you can usually find instructions in the printer’s manual and online). In your case, briefly press the printer’s Go and Job Cancel buttons. In a short while a couple of pages should emerge; on one of those pages is the printer’s IP address in the form of a common internal network address— 192.168. something.something, for example.

Now that you have the address, launch System Preferences, choose the Print & Fax preference, click the plus (+) button at the bottom of the Printers list, choose IP in the resulting Add A Printer window, and, in the Address field, enter the printer’s IP address. If all goes as it should, your printer’s name will appear in the Name field at the bottom of the window. Click the Add button, and your printer will be added and made available to you. You’ll want to leave the printer on at all times to keep it from adopting a new IP address when you turn it off and then back on.

REGION FREE

REGION FREE

REGION FREE

REGION FREE

Moving files to PC

iPhone service in UAE

DVD Player out of regions

We need to move some information off an iMac and onto a PC in the office. We’re about to go out shopping for a flash drive of some kind, but thought I’d double check if you had any suggestions for good options to do this.

Via the Internet

I bought an iPhone from Carrefour in Mall of the Emirates through Etisalat in September 2009. Recently the phone hangs and the screen does not unlock when someone calls. I need to have the phone serviced in Dubai. Who is the authorized service center and what is their contact number?

Via the Internet

I’ve exhausted the region choice on my DVD Player on my iMac. Now it’s stuck on region 1. Is there a way we can reset the setting again or fix it a certain region?

Via the Internet

The simple answer is that it doesn’t matter much. Few flash- or external hard drives are Mac specific today. They may come with some software for Mac, but pretty much anything you can pick up can be used with and formatted for Mac. If you’re going to use it exclusively with Macs, format it as Mac OS X format with Disk Utility. If you’re going to use it also with Windows and Linux computers, leave it as FAT32, which is probably the format it comes formatted as.

If it’s an Etisalat iPhone and not just an iPhone that happens to have Etisalat SIM card, then Etisalat would be the place to turn to for help. Call 101 or take it to one of their service centers. If it’s a gray market iPhone that happens to have Etisalat SIM card then you’re out of luck I’m afraid. You can turn to Carrefour if you like, but I doubt they’re really going to do much to help.

Region codes can be such a pain and you can only change it five times in the DVD Player application in Mac OS X. If you search the web you’ll find various solutions, but they are are all different types of hacks and not supported by Apple. A better solution may be to download and use VLC (www.videolan.org/vlc).

With VLC you can play DVD movies as well as almost any other video format and it doesn’t care about region codes.

Have you got a problem?

HELP DESK

Email your question to mac911@ macworldme.net or connect with us on Twitter at twitter.com/macworldme.

You can also check out the forums at www.emiratesmac.com. EmiratesMac is an Apple Users Group based in Dubai.

2010 October

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MAC COMPATIBLE

“Ignorance is no Bliss” Apple keeps things simple and that is a good thing.

BY PAUL CASTLE Recently, the management of my apartment building posted adverts in the lobby making known the existence of affordable office space also available from them, which was situated only a block away. The notice accentuated this revelation with a turn on a common phrase, the headline reading, “Sometimes Ignorance is No Bliss”.

In the past I’ve encountered Windows proponents who think Mac users are ignorant, that they don’t know anything about “real” computing. While using a Mac can certainly make things easy and help avoid having to learn a lot of computer jargon and technical trick, I’ve often found that the user-friendliness has a very beneficial effect on one’s computer education. Instead of being frustrated and getting sick and tired of computing, a Mac user is quite likely to be instilled with the idea that working with computers can be enjoyable, even fun. Many new users have been encouraged by the positive experience provided by their Mac and then gone on to more technical projects and even programming.

My own background is somewhat different. I had extensive experience with computers and even did some programming before Macintosh

I may not like Steve Jobs but I do like Apple.

enjoyable. In fact, Apple has done pretty well all along of keeping that as a main aspect of everything they do.

Because of my wider knowledge of the computing world, it’s hard to think of myself as an Apple “fanboy.” I certainly have enjoyed many Apple computers and devices in my time, but I also don’t think Apple is perfect or has done everything right. They’ve certainly put out some poor products in their time. Additionally, I’m not a big fan of Steve Jobs and I think iTunes is becoming a dreadful monster.

Basically, I enjoy my Apple devices, but

When Macs did come along, they didn’t have much of the geeky stuff that keep nerds so enthused times. computers ever came along. But my grounding in more technical aspects of computing made me appreciate the main value of such devices and programs.

When Macs did come along, they didn’t have much of the geeky stuff like command lines and arcane keystroke combinations that keep nerds so enthused at times, but they did make so many of the things that we loved computers for even easier and more 46

October 2010

they’re not nearly the limit of my tech world.

Conversely, there is a common phenomenon with many who are derisive of Apple’s products. I have had numerous conversations with people who think very little of Macs or iPhones, etc. only to find that they haven’t actually tried the device they are so scornful of.

They are mainly going by what someone else has told them or an article they read,

not personal experience. Sometimes they will say that they watched someone else using one and weren’t impressed.

This was especially true with the iPad. Many people, even Apple enthusiasts, didn’t understand it or see the point of it when it was initially announced. Steve’s assertion that it was “magical” wasn’t enough even for some true fanboys. But this didn’t worry me at all. Having long been an avid user of an iPod touch, I was aware of the potential of the iPad. When some asserted that the iPad was just “a giant iPhone, without the phone,” I said, “Yes! And that’s a GOOD thing!”

But this has always been the case with Apple products, since the very first Macintosh. Convincing people how good they are by verbal arguments may give limited results. The most convincing evidence comes when they actually try it for themselves and learn first-hand what the fuss is about. Which demonstrates that knowledge can be blissful too.

Paul Castle is a freelance ne’er-do-well.

Mostly harmless. Often aims to misbehave.

Sometimes writes and edits things. Tweets entirely too much as @daddybird about tea, cats, Macs and Bollywood.