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Video-Ready Mac:
The Power Mac G4 / Mac OS X
Digital Media Experience (4/2002)

by Douglas Dixon

Power Macintosh G4: SuperDrive and Display
Starting Up: Mac OS 9 and OS X
Macintosh Digital Media Tools:
QuickTime Player
iTunes 2 - CD Jukebox
iMovie 2 - DV Video Editing
References

(See Apple's DVD Answer: DVD Playback and Recording Under Mac OS X)

Just as Apple established the graphical personal computer with the Macintosh, and then helped create the desktop publishing revolution, now Apple is driving to become the 'hub' of the digital media experience with new Macintosh computers and applications. With the iMovie video editor, plus support for video capture from DV camcorders, and now the iDVD authoring tool with the ability to burn to both CD and DVD discs, the Macintosh platform offers all the necessary components for convenient desktop video production and even DVD authoring. The recent introduction of Apple's next-generation operating system, Mac OS X, has provided a powerful platform for enhancing and optimizing digital media applications.

In this article, we will explore the out of the box experience with the Power Mac G4 to explore the Mac OS X the digital media experience. The new iMac line, introduced in January 2002, now offers the same range of digital media capabilities. The Macintosh system includes a full set of built-in digital media applications, including iTunes for ripping and playing CDs, iMovie for video editing, and iDVD for DVD authoring. So, let's get started ..

Power Macintosh G4: SuperDrive and Display

The entire Power Mac G4 system is shipped in only two boxes, one for the system unit and peripherals, and the other for the display. But the box for the Apple Studio Display actually was smaller and lighter. Welcome to the wonderful future of flat-screen displays, and the end of the huge, clumsy, heavy CRT monitors.

In the boxes were the top-of the line Power Mac G4, as introduced at MacWorld New York in July 2001, and the Apple 17-inch Studio Display. The Power Mac G4 line was designed with a rounded 'quicksilver' enclosure, with a side door that swings open for easy access to expansion slots and memory. The case does not even have an eject button for the CD/DVD drive; instead you use an eject key on the keyboard (Apple provides a little sticker to remind you about this).

For interfacing to DV camcorders and other peripherals, the Power Mac G4 systems include two 400 MHz FireWire (IEEE 1394) ports and two 12 Mbps USB ports. For communications, they provide 10/100/1000BASE-T Ethernet networking and a built-in 56K V.90 modem. The systems have four 33 MHz PCI slots and one 4X AGP slot for a NVIDIA GeForce2 graphics card. They are expandable with up 1.5 GB or memory, up to 72 GB SCSI hard disks, AirPort wireless networking, and three disk expansion bays for hard drives and CD and DVD drives.

The system Apple kindly provided for evaluation is powered by dual 800 MHz PowerPC processors with 2 MB cache, 256 MB built-in memory, and 80 GB hard disk. Plus, it skips past boring old CD drives and even DVD players to the new DVD-R/CD-RW SuperDrive, with reads - and records - both CD and DVD discs.

There is not much to unpacking and hooking up the Mac. You just chain it all together: plug the power cord to the system unit, plug the display into the system, the keyboard into the USB port on the display, and the mouse to the USB port on the keyboard. No more collection of wires running from every component back to the system unit.

And the display is beautiful! The 17-inch Apple Studio Display stands about 17 inches wide and 17 inches tall off the desk surface, and requires only seven inches of desk space front to back. And it's so bright and colorful, even when viewed from the side or in brighter light. It supports 800 x 600, 1024 x 768, and 1280 x 1024 resolutions, all in full color (although 800 x 600 is really too small for working with full-size video). It's a full-color display; you do not run in 256-color mode on this system.

After sitting unused, the Mac automatically turns off the monitor, and after a while longer it spins down the disks and goes to sleep. Only the power lights on the system unit and the display show that the system is sleeping. In a very cool design concept, the power light on the display pulses quietly from dim to brighter, as a subtle reminder of how to turn the system on again. Press the button (which is actually embossed on the display front surface), and the system is up and running within five seconds.

Starting Up: Mac OS 9 and OS X

As Apple made the transition from Mac OS 9 to the next-generation Mac OS X in 2001, it shipped systems with both operating system installed. This allowed customers to continue working with their existing applications in the familiar OS 9 environment, and then step up to the new OS X to use new applications designed to take advantage of the new operating system features, and to work with the new interface.

When first powered on, the Power Mac G4 starts up in OS 9. It steps through set-up and registration screens for specifying your country and hooking up to the Internet, and then you are up and running. The Apple media applications like iTunes, iMovie, and iDVD are pre-installed, but you really need to switch to OS X for the full experience.

Unlike the difficulty of managing multiple versions of Windows with dual-boot modes on the PC, the Macintosh can quickly switch between operating systems by using the Startup Disk control panel to select the appropriate System Folder. Just select OS X, and restart.

The Power Mac G4 starts up again, this time in Mac OS X, version 10.1. Again, you step through a set of setup screens, and then you are up and running in OS X with the new Aqua interface. Aqua has a new look, with larger and expressive icons, bright color, and fluid motion. Background windows turn translucent, and objects have drop shadows. OS X also includes a new Finder with a customizable toolbar for navigating folders, and the Dock area which is designed to help you navigate and organize your system, and gives you instant access to your most frequently used applications, folders, and minimized windows. And application launch times are not just quick, or fast, they really are instant -- click on the icon for an application, it animates by bouncing while the application is launching, and within a few seconds you are up and running in the application.

Mac OS X is intended to combine the simplicity and elegance of the Macintosh with the power and stability of a new underlying foundation, the UNIX operating system. The UNIX-based core operating system, called Darwin, provides Mac OS X with powerful, advanced features such as protected memory, preemptive multitasking, advanced memory management, and symmetric multiprocessing. The result in better performance, as when iDVD 2 can compress your video clips in the background while you continue to work on authoring your DVD menus and navigation.

The graphics and media capabilities of OS X are built on three graphics technologies: the Apple Quartz 2D graphics engine with build-in PDF and PostScript support, the OpenGL standard for 3D graphics drawing and effects, and Apple QuickTime 5 for image a