MacDirectory Magazine

Fall-Winter 2010 (#43)

MacDirectory magazine is the premiere creative lifestyle magazine for Apple enthusiasts featuring interviews, in-depth tech reviews, Apple news, insights, latest Apple patents, apps, market analysis, entertainment and more.

Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/4631

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Pristine's library is not huge, but it is very select. My favorite so far is a white-hot performance of the New World Symphony from a 1938 broadcast conducted by Toscanini. No matter what your musical taste is, you'll be bowled over by its intensity. The human animal seldom achieves anything more worthwhile than this performance, miraculously restored to listenable sound, and available anytime you want it with a few clicks of the mouse. Desktop publishing In 2009 we were impressed with the way Quark integrated easy Flash authoring into Xpress 8. We also like that 90 percent of the functionality of Photoshop and Illustrator are now seamlessly included in Quark Xpress. We also liked the interface redesign, which does truly improve workflow yet is perfectly comfortable for veteran users. It earns our award this year. Last year, Adobe got our award for CS3, but CS4 hasn't fixed several embarrassing, long-standing problems, and we've been disappointed by Adobe's documented descent into rude customer support. Intel We give a provisional award to Intel's new SSD (solid state hard drives). Review copies are in such short supply that we hadn't been able to get our hands on one at press time. But these drives have come up trumps in every evaluation we've seen. They're still too expensive to become universal, but we have no doubt prices will drop over the next years. I AM A KEY The most stylish product of the year is also the wittiest. It's also one of the most useful, and also one of the least expensive. La Cie's Iamakey is a USB key shaped . . . well . . . like a key. Beautifully shaped. The picture tells it all. This is _the_ product to have this year - - and makes the ideal gift for any style- conscious user you know who's worth $25. The best thing is, you don't have to worry if they already have one. You can't have too many! Apple 2009 has been a year Apple would like to forget. Overshadowing everything was the Mac community's concern about Steve Jobs's health. Nevertheless, it was a decision implemented by Jobs in 2008 that caused Apple the most ill will in 2009. Early in 2008 we predicted the demise of Firewire, clued in by its lack on the Macbook Air. Our gloomy prophecy was confirmed in late 2008 when Macbooks started showing up without Firewire at all, or with only a single 800 port. Resentment ran wide and deep. In an almost unprecedented move, Apple was forced to restore Firewire on some models. Like everyone else, I was impressed by Apple's new unibody cases for the Macbooks, but appalled by the new keyboards, reminiscent of the famous 'chicklet' keyboards that IBM had to withdraw afyer earning disdain from every quarter. There were other clouds to cause Mac users anxiety: One was the lack of a user- replaceable battery in the top Mac Pros. Everyone knows that this is a planned obsolescence grab to make sure you replace your laptop every 2-3 years instead of eking it out for 4-5 years or even longer. Everyone knows that batteries are the weakest link in a laptop's hardware chain. Nobody buys Apple's weak argument that there was no other way to keep the weight and size down. The doyen of Mac publications, MacWorld, noted that most of its 2009 Eddy awards went to non-Mac products. Even Apple was stymied when they were asked which products they considered award-quality this year. They couldn't name one. Despite all, Apple just recorded its most successful quarter ever. In the middle of a recession, you can't argue with success like that. So what are we seeing? Maybe a pattern we've seen in the past: whenever Apple is at its most successful, it begins to slip. Snow Leopard was its most successful OS introduction in nearly a decade. But it's a buggy release that renders hundreds of important programs, not to mention quite a bit of hardware, useless. See for a detailed report on Snow Leopard's birthing pains and a long list of incompatibilities, and coverage of the way Snow Leopard is the first Mac OS to use primitive Windows-like rules to open application files, rather than the creator-based system used by every iteration of the Mac OS since Day 1. Although there are some very nice things in Snow Leopard, you really have to wonder why a great OS was butchered to add a few new capabilities. Add the overheating iPhone 3G and 3GS, which Apple finally admitted was a problem in late September, and you see all the classic symptoms of a bad period for the company. Nevertheless, Apple's greatest triumphs always follow its lamest flubs, so we predict that 2010 or, at the very latest, 2011, will bring some really great products from our favorite technology company. COVER STORY MacDirectory 141

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