Mac|Life Reviews RSS Feed

Apple Motion 4

Helmut Kobler — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:51:00 -0600

Motion 4 isn’t a standalone product--it ships with latest version of Final Cut Studio. Yes, this video effects program might be a mere “component” of a larger software suite, but because it competes with standalone applications, we decided to distinguish it with its own review. And we went all “deep focus” on it, because Motion 4 has come a long way since the days when Apple was selling it as solo software.

Motion came into the world as a rather immature competitor to Adobe After Effects, the respected and feature-rich standard-bearer. Since that time, Apple has steadily improved Motion to the point where it’s a credible alternative to the Adobe stalwart. The fact that you get Motion in Final Cut Studio 3 (along with a number of other fantastic, pro-level apps) makes it pretty hard to ignore Apple’s stake in the video-editing game.

The software helps you create slick motion graphics for everything from commercials to DVD menus to film and video title sequences. When Apple released the previous version (about two and a half years ago), it was the first time we thought Motion was really ready for a wide variety of projects, thanks to new features letting you set up cameras, lights, and objects in 3D space. But those 3D features only went so far, because Motion still couldn’t cast realistic shadows or reflections. Sure, you could fake those effects by creating duplicate objects and morphing and blurring them until they looked like shadows or reflections, but it was a painstaking process.

Motion 4 offers precise control over light sources and shadows.

Motion 4 fixes all this. For starters, light sources can now cast realistic shadows on everything in your 3D world. You can toggle lights to cast shadows or not and toggle objects to receive shadows or not. You can also tweak other parameters, such as a shadow’s edge softness and its color. Similarly, Motion 4 now lets an object--say, a video layer, shape, or paint stroke--cast reflections on its neighbors, giving you precise control over how reflections fall off.

Apple also adds more 3D realism by way of realistic depth-of-field effects, which enable you to control the relative sharpness and softness of foreground and background elements in a scene. Keeping some elements in focus and others out of focus helps direct the viewer’s attention to what’s important and imbues a scene with true filmlike qualities. Motion 3 had no way of knowing what should be in focus and what should be blurry; again, you had to manually blur elements to simulate depth-of-field effects. But now Motion 4 lets you easily set a point in 3D space where the camera will focus--anything closer or farther away will automatically fall off into fuzziness, depending on the characteristics you’ve given your camera. And speaking of the camera, Motion 4 has added Camera Framing, which enables you to pick an object on which to keep the camera pointed, no matter where you move the camera or objects in your scene.

Rolling credits are a staple of film editing, but it’s never been easy to actually animate a basic credit sequence. Motion 4 makes the process a piece of cake. You can import a text file containing your credits, set type properties, and use a custom navigation tool to quickly jump to any part of the credits to perform last-minute edits. Finally, just apply a Scroll Text behavior to your credits, and then adjust scroll speed, direction, and other useful attributes. Voilà! Instant and professional scrolling credits.

YUBZ Talk Mobile

Ray Aguilera — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:50:00 -0600

Retro telephonic style, with some practical advantages.

When the YUBZ Talk Mobile handset arrived at the Mac|Life offices, half the staff said words to the effect of “Why would anyone ever use that!?” and the other half fell into the “That is so rad!” camp. If you harbor a certain aesthetic sensibility (and an abiding belief that Bluetooth headsets make everyone look like robots--but not in a cool way) then the Talk Mobile is for you. It’s a handset for your cell phone that’s modeled after an old landline telephone receiver. It comes in nine colors, and, to our delight, even sports the iconic coiled cable.

Great for calls and whacking would-be muggers on the head.

As a handset--and seeing as it doesn’t clip to your ear, we can’t really call it a headset--it works pretty well. There’s a button to answer or end calls and a simple volume slider. With your phone’s earpiece volume and the handset volume both cranked up, the Talk Mobile gets loud enough to annoy anyone standing nearby, and the speaker is clear enough to use at maximum volume without distorting (useful in noisy environments or for people who have trouble hearing cell phone conversations).

Thanks to its retro design, you can cock your head just so and rest the Talk Mobile against your shoulder, secretary-style. Ergonomists will gasp in horror, but mastering this move allows you to go hands-free for as long as your neck muscles hold out. And thankfully, YUBZ has made the Talk Mobile considerably lighter than the phone handsets your grandparents used to use. At 8 ounces and 8.3 inches long, it’s not exactly ultraportable, but it’s small enough to easily stow in a bag. YUBZ also sells an optional belt holster ($10.95) for users with exceptionally high self-esteem. While we enjoyed the bemused stares we got when using the Talk Mobile out on the street, it’s probably most useful for people who do most of their phone calling from a desk or other stationary spot. The Talk Mobile has a 2.5mm jack, but includes one free adapter (the iPhone requires a 3.5mm adapter) and additional adapters for other phones are available for purchase. There’s also a USB model that connects directly to a computer for voice chat applications.

27-inch and 21.5-inch iMacs (Late 2009)

Ray Aguilera — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:21:00 -0600

We Might Need to Start Calling Them "Big iMacs"

Apple's latest all-in-ones are bigger, brighter, and simply the best yet.

Glancing at a spec sheet, Apple’s latest iMacs might seem like run-of-the mill product refreshes. Sure, there’s the requisite processor bumps and storage updates, but an iMac’s an iMac, right? Ah, not so much. When you see these machines in person, their differences are much more apparent, striking even. The new line-up includes four new machines--two small ones and two bigguns--and we had the chance to review one of each size for this article.

The most obvious improvements are the larger displays. The early 2009 iMacs were available with 20- or 24-inch screens, but Apple’s newest models rock 21.5 and 27 inches of display majesty. These changes are important in a couple different ways. First, the new models have native 16:9 aspect ratios: 1920x1080 for the 21.5-inch model and 2560x1440 for the 27-inch iMac. Home-theater geeks will notice right away that this new aspect ratio looks demonstrably different from the 16:10 proportions of the previous generation of iMac screens. Essentially, the new displays are a bit “squatter” than previous models, but fall in line with current HD standards. It’s tough to say if that has anything to do with the possibility of Blu-ray drives eventually making their way into the Apple stable, but it’s good news for anyone who watches HD content on his or her Mac.

The 27-inch model is gunning for a spot on your living room wall.

The new larger screens also feature LED backlighting. Not only do they instantly achieve full brightness--no more waiting for your iMac to warm up before diving into serious photo editing--but they also offer a more uniform brightness across the entire display. Designers and other content creators will delight at the change, but even in our stock-and-trade Web browsers and word processors, we were dazzled by the difference. We especially appreciated the newfound control over screen brightness; the same 17-step brightness control is there, but the range is quite a bit wider. The lowest setting is darker, and the highest is considerably brighter than that of previous iMacs--so much so that benchmarking the new models at max brightness prompted us to don sunglasses indoors (seriously). The new displays are also crisper and have a whiter tone than their predecessors. In a side-by-side comparison, Robin, our art director, said the old iMac display looked “nicotine-stained.” The new displays are also edge-to-edge, so there’s no distracting aluminum bezel around the screen. It’s a small detail, but an elegant one.

Underneath the aluminum enclosures--which go all the way around; no more black plastic backsides--the new iMacs have improved system components. Borrowing a page from the MacBook playbook, the new iMacs feature an SD card slot alongside the optical drive on the left side of the chassis. RAM has been bumped from 2GB to 4GB across all four of the new models, and maximum memory capacity has increased from 8GB to 16GB, giving these machines a heavy dose of future-proofing. There are two 21.5-inch iMacs, and the starter-edition model that we reviewed ships with a 500GB hard drive, up from 320GB in the early 2009 model. The other 21.5-incher as well as the two 27-inchers (including the new quad-core 2.66GHz i5 model that was unavailable at press time) all come standard with 1TB of storage. There is, however, a 2TB build-to-order option in Apple’s online store for an additional $250.

Even the entry-level iMac packs a punch.

The two models we tested had similar hardware specs, with the larger iMac featuring more robust graphics courtesy of an ATI Radeon HD 4670 graphics card with 256MB of memory. The base model we reviewed was saddled with an Nvidia GeForce 9400M GPU, which taps into system RAM for its frame buffer. As such, most of our benchmarks were quite close to one another. The smaller iMac handled our InDesign-to-PDF export test in 4.2 seconds, while the larger model shaved that down to 3.6 seconds. And there was only a statistically insignificant tenth of a second difference in our Photoshop tests. In our Call of Duty 4 benchmark on the other hand, the ATI Radeon-equipped model pumped out an impressive 62.8 frames per second. By contrast, the more modest Nvidia chip averaged 36.1 FPS in the 21.5-inch model.

The 27-inch iMacs are an interesting sweet spot in Apple’s current product line. The model we reviewed comes in at $100 less than Apple’s current price for the 30-inch Cinema HD Display, which of course doesn’t include an actual computer. And one of the most unique--and under-promoted--features of the 27-inch iMacs is support for video input. So, now, not only can your iMac push an external monitor, you can use your iMac as an external monitor itself. The obvious example would be alongside a late model MacBook equipped with DisplayPort, but in fairly short order we expect a full complement of display adapters for the iMac to allow input from more than just your laptop. The fact that the 27-inch models are also compatible with VESA-compliant wall mounts commonly used for flat-screen TVs--along with the 16:9 aspect ratio--makes the new iMacs seem like Apple’s first concerted effort to break the Mac out of your office and into the living room.

Unibody MacBook

Susie Ochs — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:22:00 -0600

There's only one MacBook in town, but Apple's lowest-cost notebook doesn't feel entry level.

The only MacBook left standing isn’t some neglected also-ran. With this redesign, Apple gave its most modest notebook nearly all the power and the style of the 13-inch MacBook Pro. For $999 ($200 less than the base 13-inch Pro), the white MacBook has nearly the same specs, minus the FireWire port, SD card slot, IR sensor, and backlit keyboard--and the MacBook has a bigger hard drive: 250GB to the base Pro’s 160GB.

The most glaring difference between this MacBook and the 13-inch MacBook Pro is the MacBook’s plastic body, which now comes only in white. Still, Apple took a page from the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air lines and built this MacBook as a unibody, with a single piece of durable polycarbonate, curved corners, and a huge glass multitouch trackpad. The bottom is covered with a gray nonslip pad--no battery compartment, because the battery is built in.

The body is constructed from a single piece of white polycarbonate plastic. No more black MacBooks--at least for now.

Yep, no user-replaceable batteries in any of Apple’s laptops anymore. The new lithium-polymer battery can last between 3.5 and 7 hours on a charge--we got a full day’s worth of usage with Energy Saver on, and a hardy 4 hours, 5 minutes during our DVD-rundown test. Apple says the battery will last 1,000 charge cycles before its capacity dips to 80 percent of the original, which could take up to 5 years. Replacement is $129, the same price as a spare battery back when you could replace it yourself. You can still access the hard drive and RAM slots to upgrade those.

The LED backlit screen (1280x800) looks gorgeous, goes to full brightness right away, and isn’t covered by glass like the MacBook Pros’ screens. We like it--there’s far less glare, even though the screen is still glossy. The MacBook has a Mini DisplayPort connection, but Apple doesn’t include the adapters for hooking it to DVI or VGA monitors ($29 each). Front Row fans will be disappointed that the MacBook doesn’t have an IR sensor, so you can’t use it with the Apple Remote. The FireWire port is gone too. You get two USB ports and that’s it. The MacBook lacks the 13-inch Pro’s SD card slot, but that barely matters because you can just use a USB card reader.

As far as system hardware, the MacBook has identical components to the 2.26GHz 13-inch MacBook Pro but a bigger hard drive. Relative to that Pro, it performed 23 percent better in our Photoshop CS4 Actions test, 29 percent better when importing a 2GB DV clip into iMovie, and squeaked out 4 more frames per second when playing Call of Duty 4. Our other tests had closer results, but the MacBook’s larger hard drive still helped it outperform the 2.26GHz 13-inch Pro across our benchmark suite.

Apple Set to Meet Economic Projections

J Keirn-Swanson — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:45:46 -0600

Recession? What recession? In October, Apple posted its best quarterly sales figure ever with 3 million Macs out the door and 7.4 million iPhones.

With December's quarterly projections aimed squarely at 2.85 million Macs, Apple's gearing up for the holidays.

While October's iPod sales were down 16% over last year's figures and September's figures saw Mac desktop sales fall by 16% compared to 2008, Gene Munster, analyst for Piper Jaffray, is expecting an end of year spike in both categories. The month of December accounts for most Mac products sold in that quarter, and 27" quad-core iMacs are backordered several weeks.

On the cusp of Black Friday, with new Macs out on the market, it's possible that the lower September figures were customers holding out on purchasing a Mac until the latest releases hit the stores. If Apple meets these estimates, Mac sales will have grown 14% over last year.

Now just imagine what'd be happening if the tablet were dropped into the holiday mix.

Zuma's Revenge

Susie Ochs — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:44:17 -0600

The name might remind you of an unpleasant side effect of drinking the water in Mexico, but this Zuma’s Revenge won’t make you run for the bathroom. Instead, you’ll be glued to your chair, clicking away at ever-harder levels in four fun game modes.

The sequel to Zuma doesn’t change the fundamental gameplay: You’re a frog who shoots colored balls at an advancing train (or trains) of colored balls, trying to match three colors to make them disappear. The trains double back on each other, making it hard to get the right shot, and the balls just keep on coming until you rack up enough points to fill the Zuma meter. Then no new balls emerge from the start point, but you still have to clear all the balls on the board before they advance to the end point--or you lose.

All we wanna do is Zuma zoom-zoom-zoom.

To assist you, Zuma’s Revenge tosses in power-up balls, including three new ones not seen in the last game. You’ll get to explode parts of the train, shoot lasers, fire cannonball spray, eliminate all the balls of one color, slow down or reverse the train, and so on.

The frog doesn’t even stay fixed. In some levels, he jumps between two vantage points to shoot from. Other levels let the frog slide back and forth on a track. After every 10 levels you’ll fight a boss character, who showers you with obstacles that slow you down, make the balls wildly change colors, and more. The linear, 60-level Adventure mode doesn’t let you progress until you beat each level, but save points, free lives, and a generous continue system ebb the frustration.

Once Adventure mode is complete, you can play Iron Frog mode, and Heroic Frog, more difficult twists on the main game. Challenge mode offers one-off levels, where you try to achieve a set score within a time limit. The more you beat, the more are unlocked, 70 in all.

PopCap’s bright, tiki-inspired graphics and island music give the game polish, with the 3D balls seeming to glow against the backgrounds. We experienced a crash or two on our 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro, but for the most part the experience was smooth.

One Arm Battle

Susie Ochs — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:49:02 -0600

The computer is beating us by $1,000 right now, but we just hit Bop Till You Drop, so we're about to rack up a huge risk-free score.

It's you against your phone, racing to bank $5,000. You first roll a goal and then spin the slot machine's reels. When the reels stop spinning, you click on individual reels to hold those points, and then either tap the Stop button to end the turn and bank those points, or the Spin button to re-spin the reels you haven't held. So in that way, it's like a cross between a slot machine and video poker.

If the slot machine shows no points on any reels after a spin, you lose that turn. So it's a gamble after every spin: You either tap Stop and bank any points into your permanent total, or keep spinning to increase your points but risk losing the turn and not getting any points at all.

If you "sweep" the machine, or score points on all 6 reels, you usually get a bonus. Most of the goals, in fact, are to sweep the reels and get a bonus, and you can stop the turn and bank your points anytime. Other goals change things up a little, offering huge bonuses but not letting you stop.

For example, Bop Till You Drop keeps spinning the wheels until no more points can be scored, but you can't lose the turn—all the points will be banked, even when the wheels don't show any more points at the end of a spin. And the Grand Force goal will give you a 1,000-point bonus if you sweep, but you can't stop the turn so if you don't sweep you get nothing.

Tap the Pay Table button for a reminder of how that particular slot machine awards points.

The game has multiple slot machines you can play—they look the same but offer different scoring and bonuses. You start with one and then unlock eight other machines as you play. When playing, you can tap the Pay Table button to see a list of how that machine pays out. And a scrolling information bar gives you prompts on what to do if you ever get stuck or confused about if it's your turn or not.

I dug One Arm Battle. The music is cheesy, but we just turned off the sound effects and went back to listening to our iPod tunes -- if you leave the sound effects on, they'll play right over your music. It'd be nice to be able to play single-player, maybe in a timed race to a certain dollar amount. Or to play against a friend, either with two devices connected via Ad-Hoc, or by passing one device around.

The graphics aren't jaw-dropping—they reminded me of a dressed-up version of the pocket-sized casino videogames my dad used to get in his Christmas stocking and play at the breakfast table. But the gameplay is fun and has moments of real excitement, like when the computer-controlled player is up by $3,000 and you hit a huge winning streak and catch up in one turn. We did experience occasional crashes, but the game saved our progress every time, so it wasn't too annoying.

In Your Face Viewbase

Jan Hughes — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:24:00 -0600

Despite what they say about idle hands (hint: it has something to do with an evil workshop), there are times when you simply want your hands free. Say, when your in-flight meal arrives as you’re watching a movie on your iPhone or iPod touch. Or when you’re reading on your touch and need your hands free to grip the handlebars of the elliptical machine. Or when you simply want to give your weary hands and arms a break. This is where the In Your Face Viewbase comes in. The simple gooseneck design supports your device, while the hinged clamp secures to the lip of your desk, tray, headboard, visor, door handle, etc.

The Viewbase provides a little rest for your weary hands.

As stands go, the Viewbase is a solid, well-made gadget. The padded vise that holds your iPhone or touch in place has a firm grip and is adjustable, even fitting around the protective case we opted to leave on. It also swivels, enabling you to have a horizontal or vertical screen. The 8-inch flexible neck bends handily to accommodate any viewing angle and is surprisingly sturdy. The clamp, which can grip surfaces up to two inches thick, maintains a secure hold--even while bumping along with us on a 40-minute ride on an elliptical. And we can happily report that despite the bouncy nature of such a ride, the Viewbase kept the touch still enough to be able to read while we rode the machine.