MAC MUSIC

Book Reviews
October 2004
Read our reviews on Photoshop CS One-On-One and Mac OS X Help Line...

LaCie DVD Drives
September 2004
In case you haven't been keeping track, you may not be aware that optical technology has been evolving at an incredible pace...

Deck 3.5
August 2004
As with many pro and semi-pro audio engineers, I cut my teeth on magnetic tape with analog equipment....

M-Audio KeyStation 49e
August 2004
Without doubt, GarageBand™ made a hit at San Francisco's MacWorld and continues to be one of the most addictive apps ever to emerge from One Infinite Loop...

Duplicate Multiple CDs/DVDs
August 2004
Primera Technology's Bravo™ Disc Publisher is an automated, all-in-one disk duplicator and printer...

iPod Mini
July 2004
In less than three years, Apple's® iPod™ has conquered the high-end music player market...

Spectrum UltraLux 55W Floor Lamp
July 2004
When you spend a good part of your day staring into a glowing computer screen...

HP Deskjet 5850
July 2004
Wireless networking has come a long way in a fairly short time...

Laptop Armor: Making a Case for Security
July 2004
Mac® users, as a whole, are a comparatively secure group...

e-on Software Vue 4 Professional
July 2004
Corel®'s announcement last year that it would no longer update the Macintosh® version of Bryce®...

Minolta DiMAGE Scan Elite 5400 Digital Film Scanner
July 2004
A question for all you die hard 35mm photographers out there...

Adobe Creative Suite
April 2004
Years ago, Apple Computer joined with IBM and Lotus to develop a totally new approach to working with documents on a computer: OpenDoc...

JVC's GR-DVP9US
April 2004
JVC's GR-DVP9US is near the top of the company's ultracompact camcorder range...

Suitcase X1 Carries On the Tradition
April 2004
Suitcase X1 (Extensis™) is the most recent incarnation of what has to be one of the longest-living third-party enhancements to the Mac OS®...

Disk Warrior 3: Continuing the Fight Against Corruption
March 2004
Calling this update "long-awaited" may be one of the grosser understatements you'll see in this issue...

Apple® Loops Round Up
March 2004
Since its release this past summer, Apple SoundTrack 1.0 has done for the Macintosh® what Sony®'s ACID® Pro 4.0 did years ago for Windows' significantly eased the process of creating loop based musical compositions...

After Effects 6.0: The Picture of Performance and Control
March 2004
For some years now, software-only video editing systems have been displacing their hardware-based predecessors...

FastTrack Schedule 8
March 2004
FastTrack Schedule 8 is the latest version of AEC's business productivity software...

Maya Complete 5.0
March 2004
It has been two years since the Macintosh® debut of Maya Complete; and a year and a half since the 70% price cut that repositioned it as a mass-market application.

Open Apple > Macs & Linux
March 2004
Apple made a strong move by giving OS X an open source Unix-based foundation. It harnessed a wide community of developers by allowing...

Guarding Your Identity Online
February 2004
Over the past ten years the Internet has evolved from a little-known government communications experiment to a revolutionary new medium for media delivery, commerce, and financial exchanges.

Retrospect Server Backup 5
February 2004
One of the most neglected aspects of consumer computing is that of data backup. Hard drive warranties do not cover the four-figure cost of data recovery and if you, like me, ever had a hard drive die, the importance of backing up becomes crystal clear.

Olympus Digital Cameras
February 2004
This review looks at two outstanding ultracompact, high-resolution cameras from Olympus. The $699 (street $400) C-50 offers five megapixels in a tiny, durable, stylish, all-metal case.

HP7130
February 2004
Hewlett Packard's latest all-in-one device, the Officejet PSC 7130 ($499, HP) is something of a paradox...

Norton SystemWorks 3 and Norton Internet Security 3
January 2004
Symantec is known for producing quality utilities and giving Mac users a lot of value for their money, and Norton SystemWorks 3 and Norton Internet Security 3 follow in that tradition. More importantly, both products are now optimized to work with OS X.

BackOffice
January 2004
I'm writing this review while waiting to get on an airplane. I'm sitting near my gate trying to figure out exactly what I want to write about the BackOffice laptop bag from Shaun Jackson Design.

HyperEngine-AV
January 2004
iMovie on steroids. That's the best way we can describe HyperEngine-AV ($149, Arboretum), a digital video and audio editing app that runs native under OS X.

Final Cut Pro 4
January 2004
Some surprising things have happened since Final Cut Pro appeared on the scene. Adobe opted out of a Mac version of the latest Premiere release and brought out a pair of audio and DVD products that are...

Integrating the iPod with Home & Car Stereos
January 2004
Over the past few years, MP3s have emerged as a viable means of distributing and consuming music, evolving from a marginal niche pursued by a select few to a class-cutting cultural phenomena.

Terra Soft > Apple Linux
January 2004
Based at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Loveland, Colorado, Terra Soft Solutions delivers integrated PowerPC Linux solutions throughout the world.

iTunes & iPod Tips For Mac Masters
January 2004
Let's get a few things straight at the outset. Hacking iTunes, whether by legitimate third-party software, or by your own Apple Scripting hand, is usually bad news.

Wireless Routers
A couple of years ago I spent days installing an in-the-walls twelve-drop network in my home. The result? The entire house could connect to our broadband modem and to other machines from anywhere but the bathrooms.

Workgroups
For those of us whose livelihood depends on maintaining accurate and detailed records of billable time, the need for good quality time tracking software is obvious.

OpenOffice.org 1.0
OpenOffice.org is an open source (free) Microsoft Office analog that supports common word-processing and spreadsheet tasks.

iSport
The iSport is a cleverly designed exercise waist pack for the active iPod owner.

ViaVoice & iListen: Talk to Your Mac!
ViaVoice for Mac OS X by IBM, and iListen 1.5 by MacSpeech are two Jaguar-compatible speech-recognition programs.

Upgrading to Lasso 6 on OS X
I have been programming Lasso websites with Filemaker and WebStar on the regular MacOS ever since Lasso was released.

MacSense AeroPad USB Wireless Adapter
When I installed my home network I tried to place the Ethernet drops in the most convenient and well-reasoned locations possible....

HP PSC 2210
It seems that printer manufacturers these days are trying to make the printer version of the Swiss army knife ­ "an all-in-one" device that prints, scans, makes copies, sends faxes, and often has a few extra features to boot...

Lexmark t522 Advances the State of the Art
Lexmark has always defined the state of the art in monochrome laser printing...

Spring Book Review
Not All Apple history books are created equal...

MO Better Reliability Safe Storage
After a decade of writing on archival storage media, I can honestly report that the $349 Fujitsu MO drive reviewed here is the best, safest removable storage money can buy.

Gift Ideas
Do you have a Mac person whom you want to buy a present for? If so, you're sure to find at least one item on this list that would be a welcome surprise.

To The Man Who Made Apple and Saved It!
Author's Note: Please do not expect to find the smallest shred of objectivity in the following commentary

Director MX
2002 was an interesting news year for Mac-based designers. Prominent among these news events was a legal struggle in which Adobe egged Macromedia's car and Macromedia responded by running over Adobe's lawn flamingos.

Book Reviews
September 2004
Check out the book reviews featured in the Spring/Summer edition of MacDirectory...

Macromedia Director MX 2004
August 2004
If you are a multimedia developer and are involved in creating projects that can be dispersed...

Introducing Software Asset Management
August 2004
One area of technology that is increasingly important is that of Software Asset Management...

MOTU MachFive 1.07
August 2004
Sample-based synthesis has matured over the last three decades from bulky and expensive hardware-based solutions to...

Snapz Pro X 2.0 with Movie Capture
August 2004
One of the most overlooked aspects of Macintosh® graphics is the lowly screen shot. While popular with gamers and tech writers...

Minolta DiMAGE X20 Digital Camera
July 2004
Minolta's latest tiny digital camera...

News Aggregators? > Check the Doe Report
July 2004
The Drudge Report, Matt Drudge's popular web daily, syndicates dozens of publications...

CP Technologies 3.5" FireWire Drive Enclosure
July 2004
Space. Just when you think you finally have enough of it, you realize that you need even more to back everything up...

iBook G4
July 2004
The "PowerBook® for the rest of us" has made the jump from G3 to G4...

Vienna Symphonic Library
June 2004
This is the first of four reviews that focus on the Vienna Symphonic Library and related software...

Macromedia Studio MX 2004
April 2004
The Macromedia Studio MX suite is the top collection of web-oriented design software on the market...

DVD Studio Pro 2
April 2004
With the arrival of such applications as Final Cut Pro® and DVD Studio Pro, desktop video has since progressed...

Matias Tactile Pro
April 2004
If you're a hunt-and-peck typist who's content with any keyboard as long as the keys are clearly labeled...

Carrara Studio 3
April 2004
With an interface more intuitive than its Infini-D and Ray Dream forebears, CS3's uncluttered approach to work environments takes users...

World's Fastest DVD Burner
April 2004
Plextor® has always been known for making the best CD burners...

Safe Storage
March 2004
As regular readers know, we consider magneto-optical (MO) cartridges to be the single most reliable way to backup and exchange digital data...

SonicFire Pro 3
March 2004
I, like many others, am a music purist. If I have the choice between creating an original soundtrack for video and using a canned solution...

MacDirectory Spring Book Reviews
March 2004
MacDirectory reviews "The Mac OS X Conversion Kit: 9 to 10 Side by Side" and "The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time"

Freeway Pro 3.5 - Web Design in the Fast Lane
March 2004
Being a graphics or media professional doesn't always mean that you have the web design skills to put together a showcase for your work.

ArtMatic Voyager 1.0
March 2004
Eric Wenger is back with a new landscape generation tool for Mac® users.

Resurrecting Music's Fallen Phoenix
February 2004
In July, following the RIAA's pledge to sue file-sharers as a means of deterrence, music industry lawyers began amassing dossiers on thousands of music-swappers in preparation for court cases in the Fall, utilizing the detective work of such people as Ishikawa.

CoolPad
February 2004
Do you own a laptop and use it as your primary computer? Are you worried about your laptop overheating? Consider getting the Cool Pad, our ergonomically designed base that maximizes air flow underneath your laptop.

Lexmark's E323
February 2004
Lexmark's E323 is one of the smallest, most attractive laser printers we've ever seen, with a tiny footprint of just 14.5 by 15.5 inches. Its smooth black color fits into style-conscious environments like a glove.

Macromedia Freehand MX
February 2004
FreeHand has been a major player in the illustration market since the late 1980s and it continues to be the application of choice for such heavy hitters as Knight/Ridder and the Associated Press. Now at version eleven (aka FreeHand MX,) it has an improved interface and includes some wow-factor features that are guaranteed to turn heads.

Mac OS X Hacks
January 2004
Until now, if you wanted to diddle with the Mac OS, you either needed to use some sort of utility application (boring) or learn a programming language and the ins and outs of the Mac Toolbox (difficult). With OS X, those of us who are not content to leave it alone have direct access to the system's underpinnings.

RagTime 5
January 2004
In Hollywood, they have this thing called the pitch, a one-sentence encapsulation of a project usually with the word "meets" thrown in - for instance, "this movie is Hello, Dolly' meets The Goodbye Girl.'" If we were going to pitch RagTime to you, we'd say something like, "This app is MS Office meets Quark XPress."

Adobe Acrobat Professional 6
January 2004
Over the past decade, Adobe Acrobat has grown from a simple document-sharing tool to become the heart of many high-end document production and prepress workflows. If half a billion Reader downloads is any indication, Acrobat has become ubiquitous.

Plextor
January 2004
For those never satisfied unless they have the best, Plextor has been known for years for consistently making the best CD-R recorders in the industry. Plextors are the Rolls-Royces of CD-R/RW burners.

iList Studio 1.2
January 2004
As a contributing reviewer for MacDirectory I am grateful for the opportunity to write about a Mac OS X application that I played a lead role in developing...

Book Reviews
January 2004
Apple's iPod is the most popular portable MP3 player on the market. Media coverage surrounding Apple's iTunes¨ Music Store helped the company sell 304,000 iPod units in the quarter ending in...

Acme Made Bags and iCovers
January 2004
Macs are always at the top of the list for what's cool. But how cool is it to tote that oh-so-sweet 17-inch G4 PowerBook around in the same plain, boring luggage used to schlep around those Wintel lap toasters? Not very, we say.

Matias Tactile Pro Keyboard
January 2004
If you're a hunt-and-peck typist who's content with any keyboard as long as the keys are clearly labeled, you can probably move along to the next article.

Accounts 1.4
January 2004
If you’re in the market for quality, low-cost checkbook/accounting software, the folks at Nano Software have developed just the thing.

Other World Computing
Check out Other World Computing's Top Rated FireWire and USB Solutions...

Fire-i Digital Camera
Digital cameras are certainly a vital component of any digital hub. More specifically, web cameras for use in office and home applications are fast becoming a must have for those looking to utilize video communication in those environments.

IconBuilder
If you create software the last thing you think of are the icons - those tiny representations of all your hard work that are the first thing users see.

Apple 17-inch Widescreen iMac
When I first saw the new iMac last year, I was taken by the funky design. But, I wondered if anyone would buy it. After all, the G4 Cube wowed me, but it proved to me and the rest of the Mac community that looks aren't everything.

HP Deskjet 6127
Hewlett-Packard has introduced an inkjet printer for the home and small office market. The Deskjet 6127 is a speedy, network-ready, duplexing inkjet printer that fills the niche between low-end inkjets and more costly laser printers.