Interview with a Mac-loving Graphic Designer

by Magnus Nystedt

Charles Epres is a Mac-crazed graphic designer based in Abu Dhabi. He works in a wide range of areas including Corporate Identity, Visual Solutions, Print Media, Illustration, and Multimedia.

Website: http://charlesepres.tripod.com
E-mail: acutabove@gmail.com
Mobile: +971-50-8350312

Charles Epres is a member of the EmiratesMac User Group and an active user on Emiratesmac.com. We got the opportunity to talk to him about what he does, Macs, and other things.

EM: Tell us about yourself!
CE: I’m Charles Epres, a 25 year old native of Manila, Philippines. I’ve been in graphic design for over 5 years and on my 2nd year here in UAE. Married to an equally Mac-crazed lady named Michelle and we plan to bring Mac-crazed kids as well into this world.

EM: Can you remember the first time you saw or used a Mac?
CE: The first time I saw a Mac was back in 2002 when I did large format printing for my thesis and I was amazed at how the iMacs looked at that time. My first job gave me the chance to work with a Mac, a very old PowerPC G3 - the one with the beige casing and horizontal CPU. I even questioned the reason for using such a machine for it was still in OS9 and Windows XP back then was such a big hit. It just seemed to me during my days with it that it was impossibly dependable. Save for the rare hiccups and the crappy GUI, it worked like you want it to work: efficiently. When OS X was released, I wanted to upgrade the system but the G3 had very limited resources and was obviously out of OSX’s range. Since then, I was hooked to Macs and everything related to Apple.

EM: You are obviously a very talented artist. What do you do for work?
CE: I’m working as a senior graphic designer in a publishing / advertising firm right now and on my free time, I do photography.

EM: Can you tell us something about how you use Macs in your work? What is your workflow like?
CE: The whole graphic design department is run by G5s, the reason being CS3 is not released yet and the Adobe Creative Suite works better *for the moment* with PowerPCs. We only use one Windows machine to open buggy files such as Word, Excel…. er, Microsoft files to be exact. The workflow is basically to open the files either by Macs (if its fine) or with Windows (if its buggy), do the entire creative work i.e. graphic design, layout, color proofing & final artworks on the G5s, juggling the files from one software to another until it reaches approval. Finally, PDFs are sent to a *mother G5* that handles the final processing of the files for digital plate printing and eventually, final printing in production.

EM: We’ve seen the portraits you have made that are on EmiratesMac.com. How did you create those?
CE: I’ve been into caricatures as early as high school but I never thought it would be profitable until one of my college friends commissioned me to make caricatures of a whole hospital department. I start by drawing the main lines of the face by hand with a black and white version of the picture in front of me so I can take on the shadows and highlights better. This first step is the most tedious since it will define the level of similarities of the portrait and the photograph. After I’m satisfied with the pencil work, I scan the hand-drawn portrait into my Mac and re-draw it on vector based software such as Illustrator or Corel Draw - the reason for this, aside from the digital conversion of the portrait, is that the lines here are much more flexible and I can adjust them as I please - line thickness, stroke style, color… - as opposed to drawing by pencil. Color rendering follows either by Photoshop or Illustrator, depending on how the client will want it to look, be it cartoony, realistic, exaggerated, etc.

Review: Run parallel operating systems on your Intel Mac

by Magnus Nystedt

Mac users have pretty much always had some interest in being able to run Windows on their Macs. Many of us work in organizations which require some type of Windows software for various tasks but we don’t want to give up our beloved Macs. There has been various solutions to this problem over the years, including SoftWindows and Virtual PC. None have been satisfactory mainly because they’ve been emulation-based, meaning they translated Intel code into what the Mac understood, making them slow and full of problems. With the advent of Intel-based Macs that’s not necessary anymore.

BootCamp
Apple themselves introduced BootCamp with which you can install Windows on an Intel Mac. And BootCamp works very well but it requires you to re-boot when you want to switch operating system. BootCamp also requires you to partition your Mac’s hard drive into one part that is dedicated to Windows, and then the rest for Mac OS X. And presently you can only install Windows XP with BootCamp. Enter Parallels Desktop for Mac.

Virtualization
Parallels takes advantage of the Intel processor’s virtualization support. Basically this means one Intel processor can act like it was really distinct processors and run different operating systems on the different virtual processors. Even Apple sort of recommends Parallels (www.apple.com/getamac/windows.html) and there have been recurring rumors that upcoming Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard will have some kind of virtualization in it but Apple has denied those rumors.

Setup
Installation is a breeze really. Parallels takes you through the steps with a wizard and gets it all set up and running for you. There are some questions to answer and options to select along the way but nothing too technical and most users shouldn’t have a problem with getting through it. Once Windows is installed, Parallels Tools are installed. It is a set of utilities and drivers that installs into Windows XP and makes the integration between Mac and Windows. With Parallels, the operating system you install becomes one file on your Mac’s hard drive. This means it’s easier to manage for copying and backup, and you can have as many separate operating systems as you want installed. This could be great for web developers, for example. They could have any number of virtual computers and run them with Parallels, checking web pages in the different environments.

Running Parallels
Once it’s all set up, Windows running in Parallels is really like Windows running on any regular PC. On our test Mac everything wasn’t as snappy as on a good-spec PC but that’s not to be expected. That it runs as fast as it does is a small miracle in itself, I think. It’s fast enough for what most users do with their computers. I installed Adobe CS2 and Microsoft Office 2004. Photoshop will certainly never be any speed demon in Parallels but it runs well enough to be used occasionally. Windows runs in a window in Mac OS X but it can also take up the full screen. The mouse goes between Windows and Mac without problems, and in the future there will even be drag and drop support (see sidebar). I have an external monitor hooked up to my iMac and I have Mac OS X set up so it spans the desktop across the two monitors. In Parallels I could not figure out how to get Windows to do the same, but I could run Windows fullscreen on one display and Mac OS X on another, conveniently going between them. Obviously most users would want Parallels so they could run Windows on their Macs. But with Parallels you can actually run any number of operating systems for Intel processors. To get information between Mac OS X and Windows in Parallels, you can share a folder. In the same way you can share folders between Macs on a network, you can share a folder on the Mac so that Windows has access to it as well. It’s a convenient way to transfer information between the two operating systems. Since you can run many operating systems in addition to Windows with Parallels, I tried installing the latest version of Ubuntu Linux and it installed, booted and worked just fine. After finding a solution in the web, even networking works just fine from Ubuntu. Apple’s slogan “It just works” could be equally applied to Parallels Desktop for Mac.

Downsides
So what are the downsides to Parallels? Not many that I could find really. It’s an amazingly stable technology and after using it several times per day for a few weeks I did not have any crashes or anything like that. For what it does it very stable. There seem to be some issues with getting Parallels to work in some network environments. For example, since it does not have a physical network adapter it may cause problems in networks that filter access and traffic based on what’s called MAC addresses. For most users graphics may be the biggest drawback. Don’t expect to play any of the latest, graphics-intensive games with Parallels, for that you need BootCamp.

Wrapping up
One thing is for sure, buy as much RAM as you can afford and that your Mac can take. I would say 2Gb is the bare minimum of RAM your Mac should have to comfortably run Parallels. Think about it, you’re basically running two operating systems at the same time and they both need RAM. Bottom line though, Parallels is amazing. It’ makes running Windows alongside Mac OS X as easy as it can be.

With Parallels Desktop for Mac you can keep using your favorite computer (Mac) running the best operating system in the world (Mac OS X) but also get access to the most common operating system in the world (Windows)

We tested Parallels on an Intel iMac 17” with a 1.83GHz Core Duo processor and 1Gb RAM, with 512Mb dedicated to the Windows XP in Parallels. Parallels Inc., the makers of Parallels Desktop for Mac, provided us with a copy of the software for the review. Parallels Desktop for Mac is available for purchase at www.parallels.com for $79.99. From their web site you can also download a 15-day trial version.

In early December 2006 Parallels released a public beta version of Parallels Desktop for Mac, build 3036, and it reportedly contains a number of new features that shows some of what is to come. Among the bigger news is that Parallels can now use a BootCamp partition as a virtual drive and can boot directly from it. Graphics performance has been improved, and users can drag and drop files and folders between Windows and Mac. A feature called Coherency will apparently show Windows applications as if they were Mac applications. In the beta we also find Transporter which should make it easy to migrating virtual PCs from VMware or Virtual PC VMs to Parallels virtual machines.

BootCamp and Parallels on Intel Macs is actually not the first products for Mac with which you could run DOS/Windows without software emulation. Back in 1994 Apple introduced the Power Macintosh 6100 DOS Compatible which had a card with a 486 processor on it. It was discontinued in 1996.

How do you explain how great Mac is?

In a thread on EmiratesMac.com (www.emiratesmac.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1725) we asked “how do you explain how great Mac is to someone who has never used a Mac and has very little knowledge about Mac and Apple? We’re not talking iPod here, that’s a totally different ball game, we’re talking Mac. Without showing something on a Mac, just talking about it, how you explain how great Mac is?” The question produced some really interesting and inspiring answers so we thought we’d highlight a few here. If you have something to contribute, please log in on the site and post your reply.

Acutabove kicked off the commenting with some very valid points:
“Ask the PC guy how many times he:
- Updates his anti virus in one year
- Gets infected with a new virus that his antivirus didn’t even knew existed at the time of update.
- Restarts his PC because it crashed from that new virus or just simply, it crashed.
- Reformats his system due to some unfixable system error.
- Installs security updates and patches to make his system more “secure”.
- Closes pop up windows and adwares while surfing the net.
- Defragments his system to make it run smoothly.
- Keeps track of all the drivers that came along with his hardware.”

MacUAE reminisce about his days as a PC user before going all-Mac some years ago:
“Before converting to Macs, I remember my life as a PC user as:
- I never got viruses and was always up to date.
- I think I never got attacked or hacked.
- My system was never hogged with adware or junk.
But, that took a lot of work and effort of updating, searching for latest drivers, download latest patches and yearly purchase of Norton SystemWorks. When I moved to Macs the first few days were weird. I didn’t have to do the above which took a lot of my PC time. All I can say is Macs are just more fun to use and you have the space, time and tools to be creative about life. A PC was just a tool for games and internet for me. The Mac is a personal family system that forces you to involve it in your life rather than seclude it to mundane tasks. I am happy and will never go back.”

Zaid argues that buying a Mac is the best choice for most users because with a Mac there is less need to be a computer expert:
“I share views of acutabove, for a common Windows user, all you’ve stated is true. MacUAE, you were and still an expert user on Windows, to stay up-to-date with all protective add-ons. I know few people who are like you in old days, they don’t complain about any viruses, spyware and the like, yet they admit spending 10-15 minutes of each morning performing preventive medicine for their PC. The level of most Mac/PC users in maintaining the machine daily is at its best None. That’s why buying a Mac for the common user is preferable so he/she will keep doing what they want to perform without worrying about behind the scene issues.”

According to ultrablue662, people are basically lazy and want to stay with what they’re used to (Windows):
“You cant. Well, you can, but no one, especially in this country, will listen. Seriously, I’ve tried all of the above, even pulling out statistics from Wikipedia for people, and what I get is Oh, I know Mac/BSD/Linux is better. Oh really, um, if you KNOW this and its cheaper or free. This is where common sense comes into play. And no, they still use their Windoze boxes and still come to me three times a week asking me stupid questions like “How do you reformat your HD?” and “What Virus scan do you use?” People are lazy and like a comfort zone. they’d rather put up with all those problems, or spend half their time trying to get rid of them, than take two weeks to get used to something new and be happy afterwards.”

EMUGer istara says that “tact and patience” is what’s required:
“Honestly? You cannot explain how good a Mac is. You have to wait until they finally agree to try one. And bear in mind given the lies that have been fed PC people about Macs over the years, it takes some pride swallowing for them to do this, and then have to admit that they were wrong, and you were right. So I think tact and patience is the best way. One of the major things that people need to be convinced about is being able to run all their regular applications. 99% of the time this is no issue, plus there is a lot of stuff for Mac that runs better and cleverer than PC equivalents.”

MacAddict, another relatively recent switcher rounds out the discussion with some very pertinent observations from his own experience:
“No one can tell how many crashes I had and how many data I lost with my earlier PCs. Million times I had viruses, bugs , computer crashes, etc. I tried many ways to fix and retrieve all the data i lost even if you have all the softwares that can make your PC safe from all of that, still you will face those problems no matter what. But I when tried using Mac, it was kinda of a relief from all of that. Seriously you feel like your data is in a safe place plus of course the quality of the operating system and the hardware. It’s been more than year and a half since I became a Mac user and I didn’t get any single problem with my Macs. I really wanna thank Apple for giving us the quality we’ve dreamed of. I believe you all agree with me in this.”

The “Macintosh insanely great” graphic is borrowed from the introduction of the very first Macintosh computer in 1984. You can watch a short video from the event at YouTube.com (www.youtube.com/watch?v=izASLl0PvAk). At the introduction, Steve Jobs was showing off the considerable graphics talent of the Mac and the computer “wrote” the text itself across its screen, something pretty much not seen before that time.

Editorial - New beginnings

by Magnus Nystedt

In the previous issue I said that we had some exciting things coming for this issue, the first issue of 2007. It’s new beginnings in a number of ways. Perhaps the biggest change is the new look for the newsletter. One of our more recent EMUGers, Latifa, has worked hard for quite some time testing out different options and this is the result. We hope you like it as much as we do. Latifa didn’t have a simple task, that’s for sure. But we gave her a pretty open mandate which included something about a contemporary and simple design that has something of an Apple-style to it. Personally I think she did a wonderful job and shuffle now has a very appealing and professional look. We can also announce that we now have a sponsor for the newsletter. Apple IMC Middle east is supporting the production of the newsletter. For a start, it enables us to acquire some much needed equipment and consumables, and perhaps if we can get more sponsors on board, we can eventually distribute copies of shuffle to EMUGers, stores, cafes, and other places. In the Mac world, MacWorld Expo coming up next week in San Francisco is of course the talk of the town. What will Apple announce? Will we see some new Mac? New software? New iPods? Perhaps even an iPhone? Obviously I don’t know more than you do, but a safe bet is we will see a new iLife and iWork suites. After that it’s a bit more tricky. I think we’ll see some updates of computers but my guess is that it’s the minis who are in line to get a Core 2 Duo makeover and perhaps even more. I think it’s pretty likely there will be an iPhone sooner or later but not next week. And perhaps they will show some new glimpses from Leopard but I’d be very surprised if they actually started shipping Leopard. Whatever news are announced it’ll no doubt be exciting and surprising. Our next issue of shuffle is out on February 2nd and I’m sure it will be full of MacWorld Expo news.

Guide to buying a Mac on Souq.com

With the arrival of web sites like Souq.com and UAE Mall shoppers in the UAE who may be interested in iPods and Macs have new places to shop at. These new shopping channels are not without their problems however and they put more responsibility on the buyer to make sure they know what they’re getting. We browsed around on Souq.com and focused on Mac computers and software. Souq has separate categories for different kinds of items, such as desktops and notebooks. Buying items on sites like this really is a case of buyer-beware. You may be able to save some money but at what cost? There are no guarantees that you actually get what you think you’re getting, that the seller is who they say they are, etc.

User rating
On Souq.com each buyer and seller has to be registered with the site. For each transaction both parties involved get to leave a rating. Newly-registered users will obviously have a low rating, so someone having just a 1 may not be a problem, but beware of users with negative rating.

Software
If you’re buying a computer obviously you’re interested in what software is included. If more software is included you may be interested in buying the item which is something many sellers are aware of so they try to “pad” the item with software. What you need to make sure is whether that software is legal or not, whether you get the original manuals, and whether the software comes on original disks (usually cd or dvd). If the buyer leaves software installed on a Mac’s hard drive and says it’s included in the deal, you should ask if it’s licensed software (it may just be a trial copy) and whether the seller will sign a license transfer.

In a hurry
If a seller says that they are in a hurry to sell, as a buyer that’s something to be careful about. It may be that they have perfectly good reasons for being in a hurry but it may also be that there is something suspicious going on. The same applies for buyers who want to make a deal because they are in a hurry, like in this example. If a seller is offering to close an auction early, that’s something to be careful about too. An auction is supposed to run for a specified period of time and the winning bidder is whoever has the highest bid at the end of that period.

Limited or no information
When a seller puts an item up for sale you would think that they would describe the item as thoroughly as possible, giving detailed descriptions of its condition, features, specifications, etc. If a seller does not say much about what they’re selling, be careful. Also, if a seller can show photos of the actual item(s) for sale, that’s obviously better than them just taking something from a manufacturer’s web site. Many sellers are lazy and they just take a picture from a web site, which obviously is not satisfactory. If you’re buying something you want to see the actual item.

Non-responsive seller
Many web sites have some function for buyers to ask questions of sellers. If a seller is not answering questions or takes a very long time answering them, that may be something that puts up a flag in your mind. I noticed one auction for a Mac where a question was asked on June 12th but on July 3rd there was still no answer. Remember it’s your responsibility to ask any questions before the deal is done. If you don’t make sure to ask all the necessary questions before bidding or buying, it’s your fault. Don’t count on a seller being willing to accept any returns once the deal is done, especially on an auction site.

History of item
Sellers should describe how old an item is and what the history is. This would include things like where and when it was bought, how has it been used since, etc. If a seller cannot account for an item’s history, it may be cause for concern. This is especially important when you’re buying something that is still under warranty. One way you can check yourself on aspects of a Mac’s history is by its unique serial number. To decode the serial number you can use the Chipmunk web site (www.chipmunk.nl/klantenservice/applemodel.html). It will tell you when the Mac with a particular serial number was manufactured, where it was made, and exactly what model it is.

If you’re selling
So what if you’re a seller, what can you do to make the process easier? Here are some suggestions:
Describe the item well, with all relevant details and remember the condition of the item, how it has been used, etc.
One way to include the complete specifications is to include the System Profiler output. You find this by going to the Apple-menu > About This Mac > More Info. This starts the System Profiler and from there you can save that as a text file and include in your listing.
Include real photos of the actual item. Pictures from manufacturers’ web sites are good, but real photos are better.
If the item has scratches or other blemishes, be honest about that in the description and try to capture them in the photos.
If you’re selling a Mac or an iPod (or anything with storage) make sure you empty the drive and restore it to factory defaults. On a Mac this means running the Mac OS X installation again after reformatting the drive.
If you’re including software, make sure you describe what it is, and whether you will transfer the license and if the original disks and handbooks are included.
Be prepared to answer questions.

Wrapping up
As I said in the beginning, there is certainly room for bargains in this type of transactions but it’s not as easy as many people think. As a buyer, it’s your responsibility to make sure that you know what you’re getting by asking questions. As a seller, you should describe the item as honestly as you can, and be willing to answer questions. Remember that in this type of buying and selling there are few set rules so be prepared to be 
flexible.

by Magnus Nystedt

What Google Has to Offer a Mac User

Google, the online juggernaut and reigning king of everything online, has not always been known for its inclusiveness of Mac and Mac users. But it seems they have warmed up to Mac lately and they now sport quite a line of downloads and online services that are Mac compatible. They have also started addressing the Mac community directly by a blog dedicated to issues of Google and Mac (googlemac.blogspot.com/).

Online services
The crown in Google’s collection of online services is undoubtedly their search engine. That’s where they started and that is still at the core of most anything else they do. Gmail, for example, takes advantage of Google’s search technology to allow you to quickly sort through lots and lots of email. If you feel that Apple’s .Mac email is not enough for you, chances are Gmail (gmail.com) delivers on everything you want and more. Over time it’s grown into a fully-featured email system that can rival and perhaps trump the best of them. Curiously though, it’s still in beta after many years. Google Calendar (www.google.com/calendar) was when first launched not working in Safari but now it is. It’s a similar situation with Google Docs & Spreadsheets (docs.google.com). Google acquired online word processor Writely in early 2006 and toward the end of the year they had integrated that software into their other offerings and now it’s called Google Docs. Into the mix Google has thrown an online spreadsheet. Unfortunately Docs & Spreadsheet are not working in Safari, but Google says “Safari support coming soon”. Finally we’ll mention Google Reader (reader.google.com), an online RSS reader, which works just fine in Safari and can in functionality actual rival some of desktop RSS reader applications.

Downloadable software
When it comes to downloadable software specific to Mac (www.google.com/mac.html) Google has improved considerably of late. The Google Notifier has seen some recent upgrades and now checks your Google Mail as well as Google Calendar. The Google Toolbar for Firefox gives you access to a number of features and functions right there in the browsers. Google Earth is of course a major application from Google, and it’s so much fun just playing around with. It’s a 30Mb download but well worth it. If you want to build 3D models, Google SketchUp is a good choice, and amazingly it’s free. If you want to have a look at what others are building, check out Google’s 3D Warehouse (sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse). There are even some models from the UAE, including the Bur Dubai. If you like Dashboard in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger you may want to look at Google’s widgets. So far Google has released three widgets. One for posting to a Blogger blog, one for reading Gmail email, and one for Google searching. Google has a very nice application for photo organization and simple editing called Picasa. Picasa is Windows only, but there is a Picasa Web Albums Uploader for Mac with which you can upload photos to the Picasa online storage. So all in all Google offer a lot of online services compatible with Mac, and there’s more to come, I’m sure. They also offer quite a range of downloadable software, most of which will extend or enhance your Google experience.

Tools for web masters
This article has focused on Google’s services and tools for end users and we’ve been ignoring a whole other side to Google’s universe. That other side is Google’s tools for people who run web sites. There’s Google Adsense of course, which is their online advertising program, Google Analytics, online statistics, and much more. We will come back to those tools in a future issue.

Review: Run parallel operating systems on your Intel Mac

Mac users have pretty much always had some interest in being able to run Windows on their Macs. Many of us work in organizations which require some type of Windows software for various tasks but we don’t want to give up our beloved Macs. There has been various solutions to this problem over the years, including SoftWindows and Virtual PC. None have been satisfactory mainly because they’ve been emulation-based, meaning they translated Intel code into what the Mac understood, making them slow and full of problems. With the advent of Intel-based Macs that’s not necessary anymore.

BootCamp
Apple themselves introduced BootCamp with which you can install Windows on an Intel Mac. And BootCamp works very well but it requires you to re-boot when you want to switch operating system. BootCamp also requires you to partition your Mac’s hard drive into one part that is dedicated to Windows, and then the rest for Mac OS X. And presently you can only install Windows XP with BootCamp. Enter Parallels Desktop for Mac.

Virtualization
Parallels takes advantage of the Intel processor’s virtualization support. Basically this means one Intel processor can act like it was really distinct processors and run different operating systems on the different virtual processors. Even Apple sort of recommends Parallels (www.apple.com/getamac/windows.html) and there have been recurring rumors that upcoming Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard will have some kind of virtualization in it but Apple has denied those rumors.

Setup
Installation is a breeze really. Parallels takes you through the steps with a wizard and gets it all set up and running for you. There are some questions to answer and options to select along the way but nothing too technical and most users shouldn’t have a problem with getting through it. Once Windows is installed, Parallels Tools are installed. It is a set of utilities and drivers that installs into Windows XP and makes the integration between Mac and Windows. With Parallels, the operating system you install becomes one file on your Mac’s hard drive. This means it’s easier to manage for copying and backup, and you can have as many separate operating systems as you want installed. This could be great for web developers, for example. They could have any number of virtual computers and run them with Parallels, checking web pages in the different environments.

Running Parallels
Once it’s all set up, Windows running in Parallels is really like Windows running on any regular PC. On our test Mac everything wasn’t as snappy as on a good-spec PC but that’s not to be expected. That it runs as fast as it does is a small miracle in itself, I think. It’s fast enough for what most users do with their computers. I installed Adobe CS2 and Microsoft Office 2004. Photoshop will certainly never be any speed demon in Parallels but it runs well enough to be used occasionally. Windows runs in a window in Mac OS X but it can also take up the full screen. The mouse goes between Windows and Mac without problems, and in the future there will even be drag and drop support (see sidebar). I have an external monitor hooked up to my iMac and I have Mac OS X set up so it spans the desktop across the two monitors. In Parallels I could not figure out how to get Windows to do the same, but I could run Windows fullscreen on one display and Mac OS X on another, conveniently going between them. Obviously most users would want Parallels so they could run Windows on their Macs. But with Parallels you can actually run any number of operating systems for Intel processors. To get information between Mac OS X and Windows in Parallels, you can share a folder. In the same way you can share folders between Macs on a network, you can share a folder on the Mac so that Windows has access to it as well. It’s a convenient way to transfer information between the two operating systems. Since you can run many operating systems in addition to Windows with Parallels, I tried installing the latest version of Ubuntu Linux and it installed, booted and worked just fine. After finding a solution in the web, even networking works just fine from Ubuntu. Apple’s slogan “It just works” could be equally applied to Parallels Desktop for Mac.

Downsides
So what are the downsides to Parallels? Not many that I could find really. It’s an amazingly stable technology and after using it several times per day for a few weeks I did not have any crashes or anything like that. For what it does it very stable. There seem to be some issues with getting Parallels to work in some network environments. For example, since it does not have a physical network adapter it may cause problems in networks that filter access and traffic based on what’s called MAC addresses. For most users graphics may be the biggest drawback. Don’t expect to play any of the latest, graphics-intensive games with Parallels, for that you need BootCamp.

Wrapping up
One thing is for sure, buy as much RAM as you can afford and that your Mac can take. I would say 2Gb is the bare minimum of RAM your Mac should have to comfortably run Parallels. Think about it, you’re basically running two operating systems at the same time and they both need RAM. Bottom line though, Parallels is amazing. It’ makes running Windows alongside Mac OS X as easy as it can be.

With Parallels Desktop for Mac you can keep using your favorite computer (Mac) running the best operating system in the world (Mac OS X) but also get access to the most common operating system in the world (Windows).

We tested Parallels on an Intel iMac 17” with a 1.83GHz Core Duo processor and 1Gb RAM, with 512Mb dedicated to the Windows XP in Parallels. Parallels Inc., the makers of Parallels Desktop for Mac, provided us with a copy of the software for the review. Parallels Desktop for Mac is available for purchase at www.parallels.com for $79.99. From their web site you can also download a 15-day trial version.

In early December 2006 Parallels released a public beta version of Parallels Desktop for Mac, build 3036, and it reportedly contains a number of new features that shows some of what is to come. Among the bigger news is that Parallels can now use a BootCamp partition as a virtual drive and can boot directly from it. Graphics performance has been improved, and users can drag and drop files and folders between Windows and Mac. A feature called Coherency will apparently show Windows applications as if they were Mac applications. In the beta we also find Transporter which should make it easy to migrating virtual PCs from VMware or Virtual PC VMs to Parallels virtual machines.

BootCamp and Parallels on Intel Macs is actually not the first products for Mac with which you could run DOS/Windows without software emulation. Back in 1994 Apple introduced the Power Macintosh 6100 DOS Compatible which had a card with a 486 processor on it. It was discontinued in 1996.

Adobe Tutorial: Good as Gold

You can build-up a type effect by using Photoshop’s built-in layer styles. Although I’ve used Arabic font “AXtLEna” for the 18th Gulf Football Championship that will be held in few days in Abu Dhabi, you can apply these same steps to a non Arabic font that suits the occasion something like Goudy or Trajan font will do.
Note: I have used Photoshop CS3 on my machine, however if you are a user of Photoshop 7, 8, or 9 the effect will work fine.

by Zaid Al-Hilali

STEP ONE: On a white background, type a word or phrase in black. Position it in the middle of your canvas - preferably, keep the text layer selected.

STEP TWO: From the bottom of Layers Palette, click on Layer style button and choose Drop Shadow from the list.

STEP THREE: Apply Drop Shadow to your text and keep the default settings if you like.

STEP FOUR: Click on the Phrase Bevel and Emboss in the left Styles pane, then apply these settings in the Structure section: Style=Inner Bevel, Technique=Chisel Hard, Depth=3, Direction=up, size=2. Now in the Shading section below apply the following: Angle=151º, leave the “Use Global Light” selected, for Altitude=37º, Gloss Contour: select “Ring - Double” from the drop list, and change the Shadow Mode Opacity to around 60%. Back in the left Pane click on the Contour check–box to apply a stroked like edges.

STEP FIVE: Click on the Color Overlay in left Styles pane, click on the small color rectangle to get the Color Picker window. In the Color Picker, type-in the C: 0, M:19, Y:100, and K:0 to achieve a dark yellow color and click OK button.

STEP SIX:
Now hit OK button to close down the Layer Styles window. You can insert an image underneath your text as an extra step and perhaps add a sparkle here and there on the text to add the shine.

Inquisitor Spotlight for the web

If you’re a Safari user you probably use the Google search box in the menu bar quite a bit, don’t you? Have you ever wished for some more functionality, some better options? There is something small, simple, and free that will change the way you search in Safari. It’s called Inquisitor and it’s basically a plug-in for Safari that enhances the search-box functionality. The developer claims that Inquisitor learns from what you search for which should mean you get better results over time. I haven’t used Inquisitor long enough to really see if that is true or not. The software also flags websites that you’ve visited previously and keywords you’ve used before show up before the rest of the results. Inquisitor is now available in version 3.0 beta 2 and it’s free from www.inquisitorx.com/safari.

by Magnus Nystedt

Review: Missing Sync

Palm has long been seen by many as the PDA platform that works best with Macs despite Palm dropping support for Mac in 2004. They still ship Palm Desktop which is now up to version 4.2.1 Rev D, but apart from some vital fixes it doesn’t seem to have been significantly improved for years. If you have Microsoft Office for Mac, you can sync Entourage with a Palm device and it works well. We tested Missing Sync for Palm OS version 5.1 together with a Treo 650 smartphone. Missing Sync works with a lot of different Palm OS devices as well as Windows Mobile and PSP devices.

New in 5.1
The main news in version 5.1, released in March 2006, is that it is now Universal Binary, meaning it runs natively on Intel Macs. Among the other news we find: fixed numerous issues syncing PIM conduits, and updated assistants to include information about Tungsten TX and LifeDrive. Even though the release notes doesn’t say so directly, arguably another improvement in 5.1 is stability. I’ve not personally used Missing Sync before but after talking to some long-time users, it seems like 5.1 fixes some stability issues that have been present in recent 5.x versions. And using it for a number of weeks I’ve had no problems. On Versiontracker and Macupdate, Missing Sync 5.1 gets mixed reviews, ranging from “dangerous” to “fantastic”. I wouldn’t say that users’ opinions posted on these sites should be taken too seriously but they can be an indication on the performance, functionality, and stability of a piece of software.

Conduits
Missing Sync comes with a lot of conduits for all kinds of documents formats and applications. In fact, there’s a rather long list of supported conduits. A conduit is basically a piece of software needed for the sync software to be able to connect to and sync with another document format or software.

Installation and setup
What can I say? No problems at all. I downloaded Missing Sync (about 20Mb) and started the installer. When starting up Missing Sync it took me through a wizard that step-by-step asked questions about how I wanted the software configured for use with the Treo.

Pictures and music
Missing Sync comes with support for syncing iTunes and iPhoto with your Palm device. You pick albums in iPhoto and playlists in iTunes that you want to put on your device and Missing Sync transfers all the data for you. In Missing Sync you can choose where the photos and music should be stored, whether internally or on a storage card. A good idea is obviously to buy a large storage card to save the internal memory. One thing to remember if you’re syncing over Bluetooth is to have patience. Music and photos are going to take time so don’t expect a quick sync. Obviously that’s not Missing Sync’s fault, but it’s something to keep in mind. Photos from iPhoto are automatically resized to a size appropriate for the Palm device. Since the screen on my Treo is 320×320 it doesn’t make much sense to put 3000×2000 pixel photos on there.

Folder sync
A nice feature of Missing Sync is that you can select a folder on your hard drive which you can sync with your handheld device. Save or copy a file into that folder and on the next sync it’s placed on the handheld as well. It’s an easy way to transfer certain files to the mobile device.

Wrapping up
I found Missing Sync to be an excellent product. It installed without problems and I’ve run it for a few weeks now, syncing a few times per day without any issues. Music from iTunes and photos from iPhoto flow smoothly across to my Treo. Events from iCal and contacts from Addressbook sync without problems as well. But it’s with mixed feelings I say that everything went so well because this is something that Palm should put in the box of any Palm-powered device they sell. This is not something that customers should have to pay extra for. That said, if you own a Palm device and a Mac and want to sync the two, there is simply nothing else around that compares to Missing Sync.

by Magnus Nystedt

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