ATPM 12.02 / February 2006 Volume 12, Number 2 About This Particular Macintosh: About the personal computing experience.™ ATPM 12.02 1 Cover Cover Art Copyright © 2006 Phillip Gore1. We need new cover art each month. Write2 to us! The ATPM Staff Publisher/Editor-in-Chief Michael Tsai3 Managing Editor Christopher Turner4 Associate Editor/Reviews Paul Fatula5 Copy Editors Johann Campbell6 Chris Lawson7 Ellyn Ritterskamp8 Brooke Smith9 Vacant Web Editor Lee Bennett10 Webmaster Michael Tsai11 Beta Testers The Staff12 Contributing Editors Eric Blair13 David Blumenstein14 Tom Bridge15 Matthew Glidden16 Ted Goranson17 Andrew Kator18 Robert Paul Leitao19 Wes Meltzer20 David Ozab21 Sylvester Roque22 Charles Ross23 Evan Trent24 1mailto:[email protected] 2mailto:[email protected] 3mailto:[email protected] 4mailto:[email protected] 5mailto:[email protected] 6mailto:[email protected] 7mailto:[email protected] 8mailto:[email protected] 9mailto:[email protected] 10mailto:[email protected] 11mailto:[email protected] 12mailto:[email protected] 13mailto:[email protected] 14mailto:[email protected] 15mailto:[email protected] 16mailto:[email protected] 17mailto:[email protected] 18mailto:[email protected] 19mailto:[email protected] 20mailto:[email protected] 21mailto:[email protected] 22mailto:[email protected] 23mailto:[email protected] 24mailto:[email protected] ATPM 12.02 2 Cover How To Vacant Interviews Vacant Opinion Vacant Reviews Vacant Artwork & Design Graphics Director Vacant Layout and Design Michael Tsai25 Cartoonist Matt Johnson26 Blue Apple Icon Designs Mark Robinson Other Art RD Novo Emeritus Reprints RD Novo, Robert Madill, Belinda Wagner, Ja- Articles, original art, and desktop pictures may not mal Ghandour, Edward Goss, Tom Iovino, Daniel be reproduced without the express permission of the Chvatik, Grant Osborne, Gregory Tetrault, Raena author or artist, unless otherwise noted. You may, Armitage. however, print or distribute copies of this issue of atpm as a whole, provided that it is not modified in Contributors any way. Authors may be contacted through atpm’s editorial staff, or at their e-mail addresses, when pro- Lee Bennett, Tom Bridge, Torben Buchardt, Bill vided. Chenault, Jerry Foster, Ted Goranson, Matt John- son, Miraz Jordan, Chris Lawson, Robert Paul Legal Stuff Leitao, Wes Meltzer, Ellyn Ritterskamp, Steven About This Particular Macintosh may be uploaded Romero, Sylvester Roque, Charles Ross, Mark Ten- to any online area or included on a CD-ROM com- nent, Grover Watson, Angus Wong, Macintosh users pilation, so long as the file remains intact and unal- like you. tered, but all other rights are reserved. All informa- tion contained in this issue is correct to the best of Subscriptions our knowledge. The opinions expressed in atpm are Sign up for free subscriptions using the Web form27. not necessarily those of the entire atpm staff. Prod- uct and company names and logos may be registered trademarks of their respective companies. Thank you Where to Find ATPM for reading this far, and we hope that the rest of the Online and downloadable issues are available at the magazine is more interesting than this. atpm Web Site28. atpm is a product of atpm, Inc. © 1995-2006. All Rights Reserved. ISSN: 1093-2909. ••• Production Tools Thanks for reading atpm. Apache, AppleScript, BBEdit, Cocoa, Docu- tils, DropDMG, FileMaker Pro, GraphicConverter, LATEX, Mesh, make, Mailman, Mojo Mail, MySQL, Perl, Photoshop Elements, PyObjC, Python, rsync, Snapz Pro X, ssh, Subversion, Super Get Info. 25mailto:[email protected] 26http://www.cornstalker.com 27http://www.atpm.com/subscribe/ 28http://www.atpm.com ATPM 12.02 3 Cover ATPM 12.02 4 Cover Sponsors About This Particular Macintosh has been free since 1995, and we intend to keep it that way. Our editors and staff are volunteers with real jobs who believe in the Macintosh way of computing. We don’t make a profit, nor do we plan to. As such, we rely on advertisers and readers like you to help us pay for our Web site and other expenses. ••• This issue of atpm is sponsored by Bare Bones Software1: ••• You can help support atpm by buying from online retailers using our links2. If you’re going to buy from them anyway, why not help us at the same time? We are also accepting inquiries from interested sponsors and advertisers. We have a variety of programs available to tailor to your needs. Please contact us at [email protected] for more information. 1http://www.barebones.com/1903 2http://www.atpm.com/about/support.shtml ATPM 12.02 5 Sponsors Welcome by Robert Paul Leitao, [email protected] Welcome to the February issue of About This Par- the cash to shareholders, essentially liquidating the ticular Macintosh! We start the second month of company and putting it out of business. our twelfth calendar year of publication with the A bit over eight years later, Apple Computer’s Macintosh community in an envious spot: a growing popular products and record earnings contrast with network of users; new Macintosh products in the Dell’s struggles to maintain its earnings per share stores; and increasing opportunities for users to en- growth. A quick look at Dell’s balance sheet indi- joy and exploit new technologies that help us inspire cates that the world’s number one PC maker has had the mind, express, the heart, and sometimes stir the to buy back billions of dollars of its own stock in order soul. to keep its share price at current levels. In short, Ap- January was a spectacular month for the Mac- ple has achieved through organic sales growth (gains intosh community. Were it not for winter’s cold in earnings per share) what Dell has only been able and our desires for the calendar to advance toward to achieve lately by using up its own cash to reduce spring, January was a month many of us wouldn’t the number of its shares outstanding. have minded to let linger. Following the release of Apple’s fourth calendar quarter (first fiscal quarter) financial reports, the rise Intel Core Duo in Apple’s share price subsided. At press time the For years Intel chips seemed everywhere except in- shares were trading in the range of $73 per share. side a Mac. In January, Steve Jobs introduced the As Steve Jobs suggested in his e-mail to staff, we first Macintosh computers with Intel Core Duo chips don’t know what tomorrow brings. But for a brief inside. The new Macs were introduced with a top In- time in January Apple’s bright shine caused a finan- tel executive dressed in a company “bunny” or clean- cial eclipse of Dell on Wall Street. room suit alongside. The clean-room suit was similar to the attire Apple spoofed in the G3 v. Pentium 1st Fiscal Quarter Results advertisement eight years ago. Buoyed by rising iPod sales, Apple Computer re- iMacs with Intel chips have already begun to ship ported record sales and earnings for the three-month and are available in stock configurations at Apple re- period ended December 31, 2005. During the quarter tail stores. The new MacBook Pro (which replaces Apple shipped just over 1.25 million Macs and over the legendary Macintosh PowerBook) will begin to 14 million iPods. This lead to record revenue of $5.75 ship this month. billion and record earnings of $565 million or $.65 per diluted share. Apple v. Dell During the quarterly webcast with analysts, Ap- In January, for a brief moment, Apple surpassed Dell. ple executives offered subdued guidance for this fis- No. Not in market share but in “market cap” or mar- cal quarter. Apple’s performance for the period end- ket capitalization. In other words, Apple Company as ing in March will depend on Intel’s ability to deliver a company had a higher market value than industry sufficient Core Duo chips to meet demand for the volume leader Dell. new iMac and MacBook Pro and will also depend During the first part of January, Apple Com- on whether or not consumers in the market for a new puter’s share price hit an all-time high of $86.40. At Mac will buy iBooks and G5 mini-towers this quarter that lofty share price the total value of the company or wait to buy their Intel-based successors soon after eclipsed Dell’s value, prompting an internally dis- they arrive. tributed e-mail from Steve Jobs to the staff noting The subdued forecast from management caused the event. The event had symbolic significance be- Wall Street analysts to take pause and review their cause in October 1997 Michael Dell responded to a recommendations for the quarter as Apple works reporter’s question about what he would do if he were to complete the chip transition in the Macintosh the head of Apple Computer. Mr. Dell suggested line. Management’s cautious outlook for the quarter he would sell off the company’s assets and distribute ATPM 12.02 6 Welcome is what caused the stock price to retreat from its Pod People: Proud to be a Pod Person January new highs. Traditional radio broadcasts tired old content to its hapless listeners. Find out how to break free of the Rosetta straitjacket with podcasts. While it didn’t take a Rosetta Stone to decipher Apple’s record breaking revenue and earnings report, About This Particular Outliner: Two New it will take Rosetta to dynamically translate instruc- Outliners: Mori and iKnow & Manage tions for PowerPC-based applications on Intel-based This month’s ATPO outliner column examines two Macs. A new icon symbolizing what Apple calls new outliners, Mori and iKnow & Manage. Universal applications will now appear on software boxes. The Universal designation indicates software Segments: Thanks For All the Fish that will run natively on Intel- and PowerPC-based After years of speculation and false starts, the Mac Macs.