Software for Organization, Communication, and BusinessYour Mac mini includes these programs to help you work effectively and efficiently: Address Book, AppleWorks, iCal, iChat AV, iSync, iWork, Mail, Preview, Safari, and Sherlock. You may also want to consider a subscription to .Mac, which provides a number of utilities, including backup functions and an e-mail service. Address BookThe Mac OS X Address Book is where you keep information about your contacts. It also can be synchronized with your PDA, iPod, and some wireless handsets that are Bluetooth enabled. Spotlight integrates with Address Book to make your contact information easily searchable.Address Book is an example of Mac OS X's doing the right thing. The Address Book itself is functional and not nearly as overwhelming as the contact manager in Outlook can be (Figure 9.26 ). Figure 9.26. Address Book won't store as many types of information as Microsoft Outlook. Here are the fields you can use in Address Book, which are quite enough for most people.![]() AppleWorksAppleWorks (see Figures 9.15, 9.16, and 9.17) is a six-function basic productivity suite that includes word-processing, spreadsheet, painting, drawing, presentation, and database functionality. It also knows how to read and write Word and Excel documents.I will not try to convince you that AppleWorks does everything Office doesit doesn't. But I would challenge you to spend a week or two with your new Mac mini and see if the combination of AppleWorks, iCal, Address Book, iSync, Safari, and Mac OS X Mail doesn't meet most of your software needs.If you then do decide you need full-bore Office for Mac, go right ahead. But be sure you buy the student edition, if you qualify.Most people buy way more software than they need because the software companies keep telling them that they need more and more features. Sure, there are new bells and whistles in new software, and I love many of them, but before you spend money for features you don't need, give AppleWorks a chance.However, in the interest of full disclosure, every word of this bookand my previous onewas written in Microsoft Word. iCaliCal is a personal calendar application that does a very nice job of helping you manage your time. Apple's description of it as "elegant" is appropriate, and comparing iCal to Microsoft Outlook offers an excellent example of the differences between Apple's way of thinking and Microsoft's.iCal lets you create separate color-coded calendars for your work, home, school, or other activities (Figure 9.27 ). You can view all these calendars at once in a single day-at-a-glance, week-at-a-glance, or month-at-a-glance window. Figure 9.27. iCal is a very functional calendaring program that allows you to store different parts of your life in different calendars (as shown at the left side of the screen). You can also share calendars and subscribe to other people's calendars, including several you see here. The daily sunset time appears courtesy of a shared calendar.[View full size image] ![]()
iChat AVThe iChat instant-messaging (IM) and conferencing program is great, as far as it goeswhich in the current release is pretty far, with multiperson audio and video conferencing. iChat was the first outside client software that AOL licensed to use its instant-messaging network. The AOL relationship gives iChat users immediate access to 150 million AOL Instant Messaging users as well as .Mac users.tipThere are a number of cameras that work with iChat AV to provide video conferencing, including those from Logitech. But the best I've found, not surprisingly, is Apple's own iSight camera. It also happens to be, at $149, the most expensive. Using a technology called Bonjour (formerly Rendezvous), you can see which people are available on your local network without even knowing their screen names. Although you may not want to type-talk to someone that close to you, it offers an excellent drag-and-drop way to send or receive files.The first thing most people notice about iChat is that the chats look different than other chats. First, it's easy to use a picture in iChat of yourself, perhapsas an icon, and the dialog itself appears in thought bubbles that look like cartoons. If this bothers you, just turn off the bubbles by selecting View > Show as Text. You can also select the way that people are identified; the best way is to display names and maybe pictures, if you like.tipDon't use pictures alone, because people without pictures get generic icons, and you won't be able to tell who they are. The program provides the usual font, color, and smiley options that allow you to make your messages either more personal or merely annoying, depending on the mood of the recipient. And there is also a chat-log feature, which may prove useful or incriminating, depending on your online habits.iChat is integrated with the Mac OS X Address Book and Mail applications, so you don't have to endlessly retype contact information. The .Mac and AOL Instant Messaging (AIM) account names for your contacts are stored along with their e-mail addresses and other contact information. Adding someone to your Buddy List is as simple as dragging his or her Address Book entry to the Buddy List. Mac OS X Mail is also buddy-aware and gives you the opportunity to IM rather than reply to an e-mail if the sender is online when you are.There are lots of instant-messaging clients in the worldincluding several for the Mac, such as Yahoo, MSN Messenger, and AOL Instant Messaging. iChat happens to be one of the nicer ones. Yahoo Messenger rates tops with the largest feature set, but iChat is the most fun to use. There is also a multiservice chat client called Fire that runs under Mac OS X. iSyncWith the introduction of Mac OS X Tiger, iSync has lost some importance. It used to be the only Apple-provided synchronization tool. Now, .Mac Sync has expanded the synchronization options.This is another of those things Apple is doing that Microsoft should have done first. iSync keeps your contact and calendar information synchronized across multiple devices, including Palm OSbased personal digital assistants (PDAs), the address book and calendar on iPods, and a handful of Bluetooth-enabled cell phones.Synchronizing a PDA, iPod, and phone using iSync is a one-button process. Setup is straightforward, as iSync looks for devices connected to your system and helpfully offers to connect them. iWorkThere are two programs that are not included with the Mac mini that deserve mention. They are Keynote and Pages, which together form a package called iWork.Simply, Keynote is an excellent presentation program that creates much more interesting "slideware" than PowerPoint does (Figure 9.30 ). Of course, you need a Mac to show a Keynote presentation, so if all you have is a Mac mini, you probably won't be making a lot of presentationsthough hauling the Mac mini is easier than transporting many laptops. Figure 9.30. Keynote is what PowerPoint should be: classy. Keynote templates look great, and it's easy to add iPhotos, iMovies, and other media to them.[View full size image] ![]() Figure 9.31. The nicest thing I can say about Pages is it's a first-generation product that will improve over time. Today, it's filled with gorgeous templates that most users will find impossible to duplicate.[View full size image] ![]() I have always liked the Mac OS X Mail client, which is significantly improved with the addition of the Spotlight search feature and improved connectivity to Microsoft Exchange servers (Figure 9.32 ). The only thing I don't like is the inability to drag an e-mail message to iCal to create a calendar item. Figure 9.32. Here's my inbox in Apple's Mail program. This is a mix of Exchange and .Mac mail. Note the Smart Mailboxes that automatically gather messages to, from, or about specific people or about a topic or project of interest. The shading on three inbox items shows that they are related to the message I have selected.[View full size image] ![]() Figure 9.33. This is the junk mail preferences pane in the Mac OS X Mail program.![]() PreviewMac OS X is unique in that it uses Adobe PostScript technology for its displays and printing. This means that every Print dialog allows you to create PDF documents, using the Adobe Acrobat PDF file format. There are Acrobat readers for almost all operating systems, including Mac, Windows, and Linux. That makes PDF a safe choice for sending files to people who might not have the application used to create a document.Mac OS X uses an application called Preview to open PDF files for viewing. It allows users to copy text from PDF documents for use in other applications. Preview also displays some graphics formats.Preview allows you to view and create comments in PDF documents, but is otherwise not as fully featured as the free Acrobat Reader program or the authoring software sold by Adobe Systems. Visit www.adobe.com. SafariBack in 1996, Apple released a Web browser called Cyberdog. Although those who used it loved it, Cyberdog never caught on, and Apple quietly put it on the shelf. The company, however, apparently never stopped dreaming of having its own browser, because Apple kicked off 2003 by releasing another Web browser. Called Safari, it employs a handful of clever features that make browsing the Internet a snap. For example, the application includes a Google search field right in its address bar. It also uses a smart tabbed interface and can display RSS newsfeeds from your favorite Web sites. It also includes a pop-up blocker and a private-browsing mode that lets you protect personal information.Microsoft Internet Explorer is no longer being developed for Macintosh. There are, however, at least three alternative browsersFirefox, from the Mozilla project; OmniWeb, from the Omni Group; and Opera, from Opera Softwarethat are available for Mac OS X. SherlockHere's an application that I'd like to get excited about but haven't been able to. Why? Because Sherlock has been a heartbreaker, and I am not putting myself through that again.The pitch goes like this: "Sherlock 3 displays custom information in a context-specific window so you can grasp the information you want quickly." That's what Apple says about Sherlock, which you might also think of as a particularly nifty Web-search utility (Figure 9.34 ). Figure 9.34. Use Sherlock to do a search forbats (the flying mammal), and here's what you get.[View full size image] ![]() Figure 9.35. Here's what's showing at a local theater, courtesy of Sherlock's Movies channel.[View full size image] ![]() Figure 9.36. I asked Sherlock to find the nearest Starbucks, and it produced a list, plus a map and directions. This is much more complete than what the Yellow Pages widget in Dashboard provided (no map, no directions).![]() |