TidBITS#681/19-May-03 ===================== Do you have a road trip coming up? Some would argue that Apple's iPod is the best addition to the road trip since air conditioning. But how to play your music through your car's speakers? Travis Butler looks at the iTrip, and compares it with two other FM transmitters that work with the iPod. Also in this issue, Adam's iPhoto 2 Visual QuickStart Guide is now available, as are Safari 1.0b2 v74 and Interarchy 6.2. And, we're taking next week off! Topics: MailBITS/19-May-03 Adam's iPhoto 2 Visual QuickStart Guide Available Taking an iTrip: Three FM Transmitters Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/19-May-03 Copyright 2003 TidBITS Electronic Publishing. All rights reserved. Information: Comments: --------------------------------------------------------------- This issue of TidBITS sponsored in part by: * Make friends and influence people by sponsoring TidBITS! <--------- NEW! Put your company and products in front of tens of thousands of savvy, committed Macintosh users who actually buy stuff. For more information and rates, email . * READERS LIKE YOU! Help keep TidBITS going via our voluntary <------ NEW! contribution program. Special thanks this week to Johann Beda, Cleve Callison, and Orren Merton for their generous support! * SMALL DOG ELECTRONICS: eMacs On Sale! <---------------------------- NEW! eMac G4/800 with SuperDrive: $1095! New eMac G4/700 Only $779! eMac G4/700 128/40/Combo/56k 17-inch CRT (refurbished): $749! Visit: 802-496-7171 * Creo's Six Degrees is time-freeing technology that automatically <- NEW! connects messages, files, and people on your desktop so you can quickly navigate through projects. Free 30 day trial version! ==> <== * Bare Bones Software TextWrangler 1.0 -- New general-purpose tool <- NEW! for composing, modifying, and transforming text stored in plain-text files. Intro Price US$49. For more info, to download a demo, or to purchase: --------------------------------------------------------------- MailBITS/19-May-03 ------------------ **No Issue Next Week** -- We won't be publishing TidBITS next Monday to give everyone on the staff a break, particularly Jeff Carlson, who's just finishing iMovie 3: Visual QuickStart Guide and looking forward to a relaxing week culminating with his birthday on May 30th. Also, Tonya and Tristan and I will be driving to Tonya's sister's graduation from Oberlin College; though we don't have an iPod, the iTunes Music Store has inspired me to put together a couple of MP3 CDs of our favorite music to play in an MP3-capable portable CD player we received as a present a few years ago. Look for our next issue on 02-Jun-03. [ACE] **Safari 1.0b2 v74 Improves Security** -- Apple has released a new version of Safari 1.0b2 to improve how the beta Web browser validates the authenticity of Web sites that use SSL certificates. Since SSL ensures secure connections when transferring sensitive data, we recommend that all Safari users upgrade to avoid any problems on shopping, banking, or other Web sites that rely on SSL. Apple doesn't call out any other changes in this v74 release. The 2.9 MB download is available via Software Update. One note: although Software Update can install the new version with Safari running, it won't quit Safari automatically (which annoyed some people with the previous release), so if you have Safari running, you must remember to quit and relaunch to use the new code. [ACE] **Interarchy 6.2 Released** -- Stairways Software has released Interarchy 6.2, its utility for transferring files and testing network connections. The new version features an interarchy command line tool, more efficient SFTP mirroring, support for ELFP and SuperDOS FTP servers, and the capability to copy Rendezvous URLs from the Bookmarks window. Interarchy 6.2 was also reorganized to tie together related features, such as consolidating the Go menu and Organizer window into Bookmarks headings and making it easy to remove unused folders from the Bookmarks window. For advanced users, a new icutil command line utility can explore and edit Mac OS X's Internet Config settings. Interarchy 6.2 costs $45; upgrades from Interarchy 6.0 and later are a free 3.2 MB download. Interarchy 6.2 runs on Mac OS 8.5 and higher, although several features are available only for Mac OS X. [JLC] Adam's iPhoto 2 Visual QuickStart Guide Available ------------------------------------------------- by Adam C. Engst After releasing chapters of iPhoto 2 for Mac OS X: Visual QuickStart Guide to those who pre-ordered the book, and then the entire book as a single PDF file for early adopters, it seems almost anticlimactic now that the paper version of the book is readily available from traditional bookstores. But available it is, and even after all my years of publishing books, there was a thrill when I saw my first copy. Published by Peachpit Press, the book costs $14 at Amazon, where it's currently 30 percent off. **What's New** -- Updating the book to account for the changes in iPhoto 2 took almost as long as writing the first edition. That's in part because adding information in the middle of a highly designed Visual QuickStart Guide page isn't trivial - I often found myself rejiggering an entire page to make room for new tips or more screenshots - and also because there were a surprising number of changes in iPhoto 2 that required new step-by-step instructions. Nonetheless, I'm confident that I've covered pretty much everything there is to cover in iPhoto 2, and for anything else, readers can post questions on my iPhoto FAQ page. The result of this effort is a book that's about 50 pages longer than the previous edition and contains over 100 new tips (let's face it, tips are the best part of any computer book!). I also added to the extensive troubleshooting chapter, addressed concerns like backing up your photos, and included instructions for integrating iPhoto with iDVD 3 and iMovie 3. Also new is an appendix that offers detailed advice on how to choose the best digital camera for your needs and provides numerous tips for taking better photos in a variety of situations. **Free Electronic Versions** -- To keep the cost of the iPhoto 2 VQS down, we stuck with printing the images in grayscale, but everyone who buys the book can download a free PDF version of the book that includes every photo in full color. Plus, thanks to Adobe InDesign's extremely welcome PDF capabilities, there's a bookmark to each page, which makes jumping to a specific location easy. InDesign also made every entry in the Table of Contents into a link that takes you to the appropriate page. Finally, you can click any chapter reference within the text to jump to the referenced location, and all URLs and email addresses are also clickable. Instructions for getting the PDF are in the book itself, of course, but for those who order and don't want to wait for the book to arrive, you can still send your receipt to and I'll give you the download information. Lastly, you may remember that I also made the iPhoto 1.1 Visual QuickStart Guide available in PDF to people who bought that book. Needless to say, since that book covers only iPhoto 1.1, it's pretty much obsolete, so I'm now giving the PDF version away for free to anyone who wants it. It could be useful for those who have avoided updating to iPhoto 2, and it's a great preview of the current version of the book. I've uploaded a new version without a password on the StuffIt archive; to find out the current download location, send email to . Taking an iTrip: Three FM Transmitters -------------------------------------- by Travis Butler I've put 110,000 miles on my car in the last four years, and that doesn't count the untold miles I've driven in company vehicles. In other words, I spend time on the road. A lot of time. The disk-based MP3 player was a godsend for me, freeing me from dependence on dubious radio stations in the middle of nowhere, letting me carry my music without packing stacks of tapes or CDs. First a Nomad Jukebox, then an Archos Jukebox (both of which I reviewed for TidBITS), and finally an iPod have made driving a lot more enjoyable for me. Unfortunately, listening in a car isn't terribly convenient - very few car stereos have an input jack for direct connection, and cassette players (the second-best choice, using a cassette adapter) are increasingly rare in new cars. Fortunately, there's another option: miniature FM transmitters. These devices broadcast music over an FM signal on a frequency you select. To listen to your music, plug the transmitter into the headphone jack on the player, tune your car's FM radio to the desired frequency, and your music emanates from your car speakers as though it were being played by a normal radio station. An FM transmitter is also useful for playing someone a song from your iPod through a stereo that lacks the appropriate input jack. Note that these transmitters are apparently illegal in some areas of Europe - the link below gives a sense of how confusing the situation is. I've tried two FM transmitters originally designed for general use, Arkon Resources' SoundFeeder 100 and the iRock 300W, and been disappointed with aspects of both of them. Then at the 2002 Macworld Expo in New York, Griffin Technology - long known for well-engineered specialty peripherals like the PowerMate - started talking about the iTrip, a new FM transmitter designed especially for the iPod that promised to deal with the problems I had with the other two. Now that the iTrip is finally out, how does it compare? **Baseline Conditions** -- I've found that the performance of these units can vary considerably depending on where and how they're used. I live in Kansas City, a moderately sized city in the midwestern United States. Kansas City has a number of radio stations, and about two-thirds of my listening time has been driving in the city and the surrounding area; the other third has been spent on longer road trips. My car is a 1998 Pontiac Sunfire, which has the radio aerial mounted on a back corner. I also spend a fair amount of time driving the full-size GM pickup trucks my company uses; they have the aerial mounted just in front of the windshield on the passenger side and generally seem to have better reception. All of these vehicles have the standard GM CD/FM stereo unit, so it's possible that a different stereo would perform better. Because I frequently switch among different company vehicles and must often leave on a few minutes' notice, the smaller and less cumbersome the FM transmitter, the better. Finally, while I love music, I'm not a technical audiophile; I can't promise accurate descriptions of frequency response, for example, and the most I'll be able to tell you about how good something sounds is whether I liked listening to it. Cars aren't exactly high fidelity listening environments anyway. **The SoundFeeder 100** -- I tried the $30 SoundFeeder first, and while it's better than nothing, it's far from my favorite. It draws power from a 12V cigarette lighter socket, eliminating the need for batteries, and it can be tuned to any frequency. It also includes a built-in power supply for other devices, which was useless to me as it wouldn't power any of the MP3 players I've used. These good points are outweighed by the SoundFeeder's problems. First, and most annoying, its mechanical tuner tends to drift, forcing me to fiddle with it frequently to keep it on the same frequency. Second, the broadcast signal often seemed weak, though that may be a side-effect of the tuner issue. Third, it is physically cumbersome. With a box for the tuner, a lighter socket plug/power adapter that's almost as large, and cables for the headphone jack and secondary power support, it's a bother to carry and tends to tangle. There are better choices, and I gave up using mine shortly after I acquired an iRock. **The iRock** -- The $30 iRock, also sold under the Link-It! name, was a substantial improvement over the SoundFeeder. It avoids the problem of tuner drift by restricting itself to four fixed frequencies: 88.1, 88.3, 88.5, and 88.7. The iRock is powerful enough that it can sometimes override stations on the same frequency - 88.1 is the home of a local radio station, but it's where I usually found the best reception from the iRock. It's also a cleaner design than the SoundFeeder, with just a rounded pod for the transmitter/batteries and a short cable to plug into the headphone jack. When used with an iPod, it's both possible and convenient to pick up the iPod and just let the iRock dangle, though I wouldn't advise this for any significant amount of time. The iRock is not without disadvantages. By far the most annoying is the power switch, a large press-on, press-off button that requires very little pressure to operate. It's far too easy to drain the batteries accidentally by bumping the switch, and the switch was often triggered in my laptop case. The four fixed frequencies can leave you stuck if your area has multiple stations in the 88.x band. Kansas City has stations on 88.1 and 88.5, and the signal on 88.5 is strong enough to cause interference on 88.3 and 88.7 as well. Finally, while the pod-on-short-cable design is a major improvement over the SoundFeeder's tangle, it is still inconvenient and vulnerable to damage. I had to replace my first iRock because the wires apparently frayed and then broke close to the headphone plug, presumably because I was spending too much time carrying it around hanging from the iPod, with the cable bearing the weight of the iRock plus 2 AAA batteries. Speaking of batteries, I strongly suggest getting a set of AAA NiMH rechargeables if you get an iRock. Although I've had a single set of two batteries last several hours on the road, the power switch issue will likely put you through a lot of battery changes. The iRock is not a bad FM transmitter, and I was fairly satisfied with mine for many months, but I still found myself wanting something better. **Enter the iTrip** -- The $35 iTrip was the first FM transmitter designed to work specifically with the first and second generations of Apple's iPod, and it shows in the industrial design. It's a small cylinder that clips to the top of the iPod, adding almost nothing to the iPod's size and weight. A plug goes into the headphone jack, while a small ring around the plug fits into the remote control contacts that circle the headphone jack on the iPod; this ring draws power from those contacts to power the iTrip. A solid plastic second plug fits into the iPod's FireWire port to hold the iTrip in place. To select a broadcast frequency, the iPod itself controls the iTrip via software, eliminating the need for a power switch or tuning control. This design is far more convenient than the competition. Instead of juggling boxes and wires, you carry a single unit that still fits into your shirt pocket. Picking the iPod up to switch playlists or browse music is easy, with no cables to interfere... unless you plug in a charger. To accommodate a charger, you can rotate the iTrip 90 degrees, putting the plastic FireWire port plug in front and leaving room for a cable. See the picture linked below for a comparison of the iTrip in both positions with the iRock. The rightmost picture shows an edge-on view of the plastic plug that goes into the FireWire socket on the iPod. Unfortunately, I have had a lot of trouble getting the power ring to seat solidly without the assistance of the FireWire port plug, and for now I'm not even trying to charge the iPod while I'm using the iTrip. Tying the design so closely to the iPod has another liability: Apple changed the remote control socket in the just-released third generation of iPods, and the iTrip won't work with them. Hopefully Griffin will be able to redesign the iTrip's case to work with the new units; that's all that should be necessary. **iPod Controller** -- When I heard that the iTrip would use the iPod as a controller, I was both admiring and dubious. I wanted to see the clean design this promised, but I was worried it would require an invasive software patch that would break the next time Apple revised the iPod firmware. Griffin's solution turns out to be both more elegant and more Rube Goldbergian than I had anticipated. They include a set of 102 five-second MP3 files: one for each FM frequency plus a couple to toggle the iTrip's status LED. To tune the iTrip to a specific frequency, you play the appropriate MP3 file, which sends a set of modulated pulses that the iTrip interprets as a tuning command. The iTrip also uses output sensing to control the power. When it hears output from the iPod, it switches on (which takes about 3 seconds), and 30 seconds of silence causes it to switch off. As ingenious as this method of tuning is, it has some disadvantages. First, it's slightly finicky; you have to start the tuning track playing, wait until the iTrip flashes its LED to show the command was accepted, and then quickly pause the iPod before it can play the next code. If the iTrip is asleep, it doesn't wake up fast enough to catch the full tuning command; the LED flashes, but the station is not set correctly. Second, it clutters up your iPod with those five-second files. Griffin gives them a unique artist and album, so you're unlikely to find them in casual browsing, but they're still there in the global song list. This fact leads to the third irritation - if you like to shuffle through all the songs on your iPod, accessing one of the tuning files could accidentally change your frequency. You can work around this by creating a Smart Playlist that excludes the artist or album tag for the iTrip files, but that's still a bit less convenient. Fourth and finally, changing the frequency interrupts whatever is currently playing, requiring you to back out of wherever you are, drill down to the tuning tracks, then navigate back to where you were. Griffin seems to assume most people will set the frequency once, as the documentation mentions that it's all right to throw away all of the frequency files beyond the one(s) you need. Unfortunately, I often need to change frequencies when driving around town, to say nothing of long road trips. Despite these disadvantages, I still find the iTrip's tuning approach a big improvement over the SoundFeeder's drifting mechanical tuner or the iRock's fixed frequencies. **iTrip Performance** -- So how well does the iTrip work? Ideally, I'd like to see better performance. It prefers a clear frequency, and when it gets one, it sounds very good, at least as good as a clear FM station. Unfortunately, finding a frequency that clear can be deucedly difficult. In twenty hours of driving around the greater Kansas City area, I could not find a single frequency that remained clear throughout the region, though I could always find at least one usable frequency wherever I went. I often experienced some mild static or fading as I moved around the city, as if driving on the fringes of a radio station's reception area. Sometimes the static lasted for a only few seconds, other times it caused me to switch frequencies. I also occasionally hear a high-pitched whine that appears to be radio interference, since it changes with location and occurs even when the iPod is paused, but it vanished when I went 30 miles outside of the city. If you turn the volume up loud enough on the iPod (past about 80 percent), you can start getting static on the peaks in the music. The iRock has from the same problem, though not as badly. However, I can't grade the iTrip too harshly based on these performance problems, because all the FM transmitters I've tried have suffered from similar troubles. FCC regulations limit the power of this type of device, and that fact likely accounts for the similarity of the performance issues for all three of these FM transmitters. Nonetheless, the SoundFeeder was the worst; its mechanical tuner was difficult to lock solidly on a frequency, and the way it drifts made it difficult to tell whether the poor performance was tuner drift or radio interference. The iRock performs well in areas where there's no strong signal in the 88.x frequency range. Unfortunately, these areas aren't as common as the iRock's designers seem to think. The iRock seemed to handle competing signals somewhat better than the iTrip, and when I compared them side-by-side on the same frequencies the iRock seemed to have a slightly stronger signal, though not so much that I'd give it a clear advantage. The iTrip's much broader range of usable frequencies gives it the overall win. One last issue is battery drain. Since the iTrip draws power from the iPod, how does that affect the iPod's battery life? It's hard to estimate, since the iPod's battery gauge is imprecise. Griffin says using the iTrip shouldn't affect battery drain any more than using normal headphones, but when I compared the iTrip against the iRock in normal use, the iPod's battery level appeared to drop somewhat faster when using the iTrip. Still, that's a more-than- adequate trade-off for not having to mess around with lots of batteries and chargers or tangled power cables. **Take the iTrip** -- Is the iTrip perfect? No. I wish the signal was stronger so reception could be clear and consistent across the city. I wish Griffin could have come up with a less cluttered approach to tuning, though I'm not sure what would work better. Would I recommend the iTrip to others? Yes. If nothing else, the massive improvement in convenience over the other FM transmitters is worth it. The wide-ranging digital tuning - even given the Rube Goldbergian approach - is also welcome. And although the performance of FM transmitters in general leaves something to be desired, I don't think there's a good alternative for people who have a car stereo without an input jack or cassette player. Trying to use headphones in a car is inconvenient, dangerous, and illegal in some places. And even if I were willing to spend the money to have an input jack installed in my car, I'm still out of luck when using a company vehicle. I'll stick with an FM transmitter, even with the hassles, and the iTrip is by far the best of the lot if you have an older iPod that works with it. I just hope Griffin can come up with a version that works with the third-generation iPods. PayBITS: If Travis's comparison helped you decide which FM transmitter to buy, say thanks with a few bucks via PayBITS! Read more about PayBITS: Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/19-May-03 ------------------------------------ by TidBITS Staff **Challenge-Response Anti-Spam Systems** -- Our policy about challenge-response anti-spam systems drew comments from all sides, people who like the concept (including the CEO of one of the main challenge-response services) and those who consider them a significant threat to the long-term utility of email once spammers start attacking them. (14 messages) **Palm Tungsten C impressions** -- Extensive additions to Geoff Bronner's review of the Palm Tungsten C - a must-read for anyone considering a Tungsten C. (4 messages) **Mac OS X 10.2.6 changes** -- Short comments about what has changed in Mac OS X 10.2.6 for better and worse. (5 messages) **Should I upgrade questions** -- Suggestions for the best way to determine if you should upgrade the Mac OS (or perhaps any application) or stick with an older version that's working fine. (4 messages) **Frequency of shareware updates** -- Does it bug you when shareware programs are updated frequently, seemingly once a week? You're not alone, but there are ways that developers can minimize the irritation. (6 messages) **Controlling iTunes** -- After last week's article mentioning a simple way to control iTunes, TidBITS readers suggested a number of other, better ways of controlling iTunes, including a couple of excellent utilities. (8 messages) **How iTunes Music Store deals with naughty words** -- It turns out that the iTunes Music Store tries to obscure naughty words in song titles, which prompted a good bit of discussion on TidBITS Talk about how it's done and how it could be improved. (10 messages) **Selection in the iTunes Music Store** -- Discussion of how good a job Apple has done with the breadth of selection in the iTunes Music Store, particularly with respect to classical music, cartoon music themes, and computer game soundtracks. (8 messages) $$ Non-profit, non-commercial publications may reprint articles if full credit is given. Others please contact us. We don't guarantee accuracy of articles. Caveat lector. Publication, product, and company names may be registered trademarks of their companies. This file is formatted as setext. For more information send email to . A file will be returned shortly. For information: how to subscribe, where to find back issues, and more, email . TidBITS ISSN 1090-7017. 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