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Adobe Creative Suite

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.

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FEATURE Miguel is the founder and coordinator of GUM-Rioja (GUM = MUG, Mac user group) which has about 50 members. Five or six people make up the core of the group and Miguel says he is going to pass on the role of coordinator next Christmas when the group turns one year old. About once a month, they get together for demos and lectures such as a presentation on the use of iMovie3 by an expert user of FinalCut Pro. He insists it's "not just a social event or get-together, as many other MUGS here are." Usually about 15 people show up, partly because a lot of the members live in Madrid or Barcelona where the jobs are. To compensate, they have active forums and an iChat room "usually crowded in the evenings." Miguel says the open source movement in Spain exists in certain regions, such as Extremadura and Andalusia, where they are "leading the revolution." A regional version of Linux called LinEx (Linux + Extremadura) is used in municipal offices and in the public school system. That means tens of thousands of PCs running LinEX, with the money saved going to around-the-clock tech support and training. Consequently, Extremadura has the highest ratio of computers to students, 1:2, even though in some parts it's relatively poor. Rioja Party is similar to the Spanish equivalent of the annual MacWorld Expo in the United States, called CampusMac. The project arises out of efforts by two leaders of Spanish Mac publications, MacByte and, on the Internet, Macuarium, as well as various leaders of Mac user groups from Malaga, Seville and Barcelona, including Cool-Crew and MacForum. CampusMac started in 2001 to bring together Mac users who originally grew in number in the 1980s as a result of early developments on the Mac platform involving object oriented systems operation, local network managing, and the adoption of TCP/IP and PPP protocols in Internet use in the 1990s. Consequently, the age spectrum of Spanish Mac users is wide. The event itself follows the typical MacWorld format, with conferences, workshops, demonstrations and keynote speeches, but because the Spanish Mac community is spread out, the event provides a unique opportunity to beta-test new software and troubleshoots because so many Mac professionals are on hand. We spoke to Enrique Aguirre in Malaga, part of Spain's Costa del Sol, renowned throughout Europe's pastier climes, as in tourist literature, for its predictably glorious weather and amazing seafood. He is the creative director for Essential Marbella Magazine, through his company, the Art Room (targeted to foreign residents and visitors to the Costa del Sol). Enrique is glad they committed to Macs early, citing productivity advantages over Windows systems for DTP, such as being able to undertake all the prepress work for clients, including scanning and color separations, without having to reinvest in additional color separation equipment. They currently run G4 1GHz Macs with 20- inch TFTs (flat screen monitors) running on OS X for the bulk of the design work, in addition to a G3 that handles scanning and remains available for legacy applications. As is often the case with magazines in the United States, editorial is generated on iMacs and text and images from various sources are transferred to design and incorporated into the workflow. For images, they embed an ICC profile to ensure color reproduction after the layout, and then traffic the proofs for approval via PDF. OS X hasn't caught on for most pre-G4 users in Spain because it means a productivity lapse, but now that a native version of Quark is available, that will bring more Mac holdouts along to the new OS, says Enrique: "Most users I know that have converted did so because they were Ôforced,' either by the need for features only available to software that is OS X native (i.e., digital cameras and Photoshop), or after purchasing new Macs requiring OS X. When you are happy with your computer it makes little sense to start messing about with it." 109 MacDirectory

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