In this edition of MacFormat This Week...

We talk to Polar Bear Farm about what the iPhone means as a platform to developers, Craig Grannell tells us all about using the easy, cheap shareware tool SuperDuper to keep all your documents and photos safe from a hard disk crash, and Trevor Middleton answers your questions in our regular Q&A slot.

Here are your links for this week's show...

You can subscribe to the enhanced edition of MacFormat This Week through iTunes. To do this, click here.

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For the MP3 edition of this show, click here.

If you'd like your questions answered in a future edition of MacFormat This Week, then please email machelpme-AT-futurenet.co-DOT-uk.

We'd love to hear your questions or comments regarding MacFormat This Week. E-mail us at macformatthisweek-AT-futurenet.co-DOT-uk.

Today, Adobe launched a public beta of Photoshop Express, its free online photo editor. It's not, you won't be surprised to hear, a replacement for Photoshop or even Photoshop Elements, but as a free online editor and manager – kind of like an online version of iPhoto – it's fantastic. It's only officially open to US residents at the moment, but with Adobe's blessing, we snuck in and took a look around.

The interface is Flash, but it's very responsive and user-friendly. When toggled to full-screen mode, you could easily think you were using a desktop application were it not for the styling and the lack of some basic functions such as the ability to shift-select multiple files.

Adding You can add images to Express from other online sites; there's currently no support for Flickr, but Facebook, Picasa and Photobucket are all there.

Uploading Or, of course, you can upload your own shots from your hard disk. Though there's no iPhoto-friendly import option, Leopard users at least can use the Media drop-down at the bottom of the leftmost pane of the standard open/save dialogue box that pops up when you tell Express to upload some images.

Uploaded Once they're up, you can view them as a list, a grid or a filmstrip, and you can see the basic metadata associated with each shot. Throughout, there's an emphasis on sharing; email links and links to directly embed shots and albums appear wherever you are.

Editing The main editing pane offers you some good basic image editing tools, including the ability to crop, adjust saturation, exposure, red-eye, white balance and more. Each time you click on an effect, half a dozen versions immediately pop up that have applied the effect – in this case, black and white – in different ways, You can apply multiple edits, and there's a handy Reset All button if you get in over your head.

Pop colour Expect to see this one used a lot The idea is that Express identifies a colour range that you want to highlight while turning everything else monochrome – think the little girl in the red dress in Schindler's List – and you also have the option of shifting the hue of the picked-out colours.

Albums You can create ad share albums too from your photographs; the full-resolution grabs from this tour, for example, are available here. Note that you can send an email with a link to your album as well as copying a link, or even by grabbing a little snippet of HTML that allows you to embed your albums in websites, as we have done at the end of this post.

Slideshows When someone clicks on a link to your album, they're treated to a rich Flash slideshow with loads of configuration options. It's potentially a great, easy way to share photos with less tech-savvy users.

So there you have it, folks; Photoshop Express. Initial impressions are very favourable. It seems solid, 2GB of free space is great, and while some purists might have preferred a strictly AJAX-based approach that shunned Flash completely, the experience for most people is likely to very positive. And remember that it's still in beta; give it a few months and it'll be even richer.

Photoshop Express screenshot tour

We're pretty happy with Mail 3.0, but one thing we've really missed since Leopard's arrival is Mail.appetizer, a spiffy notification window for Mail. Providing a temporary HUD-style overview of incoming mail, along with a few handy controls (delete, view, mark as read), it was pretty much indispensable. Today, finally, has returned, in beta form. We've not tried it yet, but the application's sure to make an appearance in our shareware pages, and if it's as good as previous versions, there's a good chance it'll snag a MacFormat Choice award.

When the iPod really started to gather momentum, people started talking about the halo effect. The idea was that the iPod would be an ambassador for Apple-ness, and that people’s positive experiences of using an iPod would make them think favourably of Apple’s other products.

(I was never, by the way, sold on the idea that a PC user would buy an iPod, proclaim it utterly without flaw, and immediately go out and buy a Mac. I think the halo effect was much more subtle and slow-burning, creating an affinity and respect for Apple as a brand and at most making people realise that Apple existed and that it might begin to figure in people’s purchasing decisions.)

The iPhone, though, is destined to be Halo Effect 2.0, and where the iPod helped the company’s renaissance in the consumer market, the iPhone will do the same for business and enterprise.

The new firmware for the iPhone, due in June, not only offers full support for the sort of corporate-level Exchange servers we see in SMB and enterprise markets – with push email and calendaring, and remote wipe – but at least in theory overtakes the market leader RIM’s BlackBerry solution by making a direct connection to the server rather than being funnelled through the company’s apparently vulnerable NOC.

All of which will sweep aside many of the concerns that CTOs and board-level execs have to the highly desirable little iPhone, which should mean that when the decisions are being taken about what smartphones to roll out within a company, the iPhone can figure in the discussions.

And when the iPhone gets into the hands of management-level execs and IT directors wedded to Microsoft, the Apple trademarks of ease of use and polish will slowly begin to soften reactionary anti-Apple sentiment.

When an IT guy sees how well the iPhone integrates, he’ll perhaps begin to question his long-held, inaccurate assumptions about Macs being incompatible with everything else on his network. And when an MD starts eulogising about how easy her iPhone is to use, she’ll be less likely to dig her heels in when a couple of solitary Mac enthusiasts in the company ask if they can be bought MacBooks rather than ThinkPads. And so the ripples spread.

The iPod’s halo effect was a grass-roots, bottom-up thing; the iPhone’s halo effect will be a top-down process that starts with IT directors and management, but it could mean that at last the Mac is taken seriously as a business platform. And that would be huge.

Apple has just announced version 3.1 of Safari – the first finished version of the Mac's default browser to run in Windows. Though Safari for Windows has been in beta for months, today marks its official debut. It feels odd using it in Windows – especially when dialogue boxes are styled to match OS X, not Windows – and I still miss the ability to sync my bookmarks from my Mac version of Safari, but I've set it as my default browser in the Windows Vista partition of my MacBook and I'll see how I get on.

Think many people will download it for Windows? Think it will lead to more Mac sales? Let us know in the comments!

In this edition of MacFormat This Week...

We review all the news from the iPhone/iPod touch SDK announcement and explain it in simple end-user terms with Deputy Editor Chris Phin. Cliff Joseph shows you how to create your own widgets is seconds and Trevor Middleton answers your questions.

Here are your links for this week's show...

You can subscribe to the enhanced edition of MacFormat This Week through iTunes. To do this, click here.

Or you can download the files directly: For the enhanced edition of this show, click here.

For the MP3 edition of this show, click here.

If you'd like your questions answered in a future edition of MacFormat This Week, then please email machelpme-AT-futurenet.co-DOT-uk.

We'd love to hear your questions or comments regarding MacFormat This Week. E-mail us at macformatthisweek-AT-futurenet.co-DOT-uk.

Here's a good tip for iPod owners everywhere. Solutions-inc are offering 20% discount on Sennheiser headphones through March 2008.

If you're not familiar with Sennheiser then they're one of the world leaders in quality headphones. The Sennheiser range includes street style iPod headphones, sports headphones, occasional headphones and professional headphones for studio technicians and DJs alike.

Is it just a coincidence that Apple announced the iPhone SDK on the same day that the BBC made its iPlayer compatible with the iPod touch/iPhone over WiFi?

If you've got an iPod touch or an iPhone give it a try. It's still in Beta, so not all the content will work yet, but about 50% of it seems to. I just tried it on my phone and it worked very well over WiFi. I couldn't get any content to play over EDGE at all. Let me know if you can!

Get a beautiful website and a fantastic MacBook to manage it, courtesy of MacFormat

This month, MacFormat has teamed up with Mr Site, maker of the Takeaway Website suite, to offer a 2.2GHz MacBook and a box of Mr Site’s Takeaway Website Pro to one lucky reader. Plus, four runners-ups will receive a copy of the software, priced at £100 each.

Takeaway Website Pro gives you all the tools you need to make a professional website in minutes, including a generous hosting package, 50 email addresses, your own URL, drag-and-drop design tools and superb web design templates. You can even plug in shop fronts and accept PayPal payment, exhibit galleries of your work or create business cards and stationery to match your site’s look and feel. The bandwidth offered is unlimited.

In addition to the serial key for the software, your subscription will be free for the first year, after which you can renew (£7.99 per month) or take your website to a new provider for £15.

You also get useful site management tools to monitor your site’s traffic and SiteBoost, which runs word searches of keywords, and tells you how to bump your website up in Google’s rankings and other search engines.

It’s a brilliant product. The interface is intuitive, taking no time to master, and wide open to future expansion and edits. Get on board now with a fantastic looking site and a stable, well supported place to host it.

For more information visit www.mrsite.com .

How to enter
For your chance to win either the first prize of a MacBook and Takeaway Website Pro, or one of the Takeaway Website Pro runner-up prizes, simply click here. Competition closes on 2 April 2008.

60 Apple gems: get more from your Mac with our favourite budget apps!

We bring you 60 of the very best free or inexpensive apps to enrich your Mac life

What’s more, the majority of applications mentioned in our main feature can be found on the DVD! Whether it’s everyday tasks like phone calls, word processing or sleeping (yes, we have apps to help you sleep!), playing games, using the net or keeping your Mac healthy, we have an indispensable program to do the job.

Also this month, we explain in detail how the iPhone’s WiFi location works, and Christopher Phin goes on the road with Vodafone’s USB modem, trying his hand at liveblogging from San Francisco: is this device worth buying? Read his diary to find out.

Also this issue

Tutorials
Turn a grey sky blue with Photoshop
Make an iDVD slideshow
Create widgets with Safari 3
Make your Mac child-proof
Control your Mac over the net
And more…

Reviews
Apple MacBook Air 1.6GHz
Apple iPod touch 32GB
Creative T40 Gigaworks
Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac SME
Elgato EyeTV 3
And more…

Mac questions answered
Drive partitioning; restricting Time Machine usage; speeding up your Mac after installing Leopard; a MacBook crashing since Leopard; managing an Office 2008 update and more…

On the DVD
Three full programs: Jigsaw Puzzle 1.1, Schreiben 2.4 and Pano2Movie 1.2.1 plus German lessons, guitar tutorials, hot demos and more…

It’s all in MacFormat issue 193, on sale now!

Visit the MacFormat forum by clicking here
Subscribe to MacFormat and never miss an issue again!

In this edition of MacFormat This Week...

We share our favourite Mac budget applications with Graham Barlow. James Ellerbeck reviews the MacBook Air and Creative T40 Gigaworks speakers. Christopher Phin goes on the road with Vodafone's USB modem and Trevor Middleton answers your Mac questions.

Here are your links for this week's show...

You can subscribe to the enhanced edition of MacFormat This Week through iTunes. To do this, click here.

Or you can download the files directly: For the enhanced edition of this show, click here.

For the MP3 edition of this show, click here.

If you'd like your questions answered in a future edition of MacFormat This Week, then please email machelpme-AT-futurenet.co-DOT-uk.

We'd love to hear your questions or comments regarding MacFormat This Week. E-mail us at macformatthisweek-AT-futurenet.co-DOT-uk.

Check out this amazing video showing how games will be able to take advantage of the iPhone's accelerometer.

At the moment this game is only available for jailbroken iPhones, but once the SDK gets realsed this is the sort of thing we'll be able to expect. So, could the iPhone (and iPod touch) become the next big gaming platform?

In short: Faster processors, larger hard drives, people. This time MacBook Pro has got the new Mult-Touch track pad (not available on the MacBook) and the Apple Remote is now an extra, not included as standard.

The MacBook is now available in 2.1GHz and 2.4GHz, and the MacBook Pro can be fitted with a 2.6GHz processor speed. In addition, MacBook Pro includes the latest NVIDIA graphics processors, now with up to 512MB of video memory.

The new MacBook Pro features the latest Intel Core 2 Duo technology with up to a 2.6 GHz processor with 6MB of shared L2 cache; up to 4GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM memory and up to a 300GB hard drive, plus NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics with up to 512MB of video memory.

I'm making the not-really-very-bold-at-all prediction that the development kit for the iPhone will be released on Tuesday. I make this earth-shattering prediction because Jobs told us that it would be launched in February, and Apple has a habit of interpreting 'month X' as 'the last Tuesday of month X'.

So, what can we hope and expect to see? Personally, I'd be amazed if Apple hasn't been allowing very select third parties access to early versions of the SDK in order that it can have a few apps to unveil alongside the kit itself. I don't think we'll see Flash – it's too early, and besides, it's unlikely that the SDK will allow complete access to all parts of the OS – but it would be great to see a few games launched. The guys at PopCap could do wonders with Bejeweled and Peggle, never mind simple stuff like Battleships.

What about comms apps such as Skype that everyone's clamouring for? I think they'll happen, but not right away, and I wouldn't be surprised to see some restrictions being placed on VoIP apps anyway. Certainly, O2's terms of service forbid it on the cellular network – relevant clause quoted below – but there are some crude ways that even I could think of that Apple could restrict certain data types to WiFi only. I think we'll see Apple itself release iChat for the iPhone, quite possibly alongside the SDK announcement, and developments from the open source community for a multi-protocol IM app such as Adium won't be far behind.

While you can view Word and Excel attachments on the iPhone, there's currently no way to edit them; how long till we see a lightweight office suite? And what about a nimble little image editor? Are you listening Adobe? (Actually, I think we'd be more likely to see small, boutique developers such as BeLight work their Image Tricks magic, depending on what hooks are there in the iPhone's OS.)

It's likely that the apps will be sold through the iTunes Store, as iPod games are currently, and I think it likely that Apple would take a little commission. It's possible that selling through the iTunes Store won't be mandatory – devs could sell from their own sites – but the iTunes Store is a great shop window.

Now over to you: what apps do you think we'll see in the first month, and what ones for you would take the iPhone/iPod touch from nice technical exercises to must-have devices? What, essentially, is the killer app for Apple's new mobile platform?

Data and Wi-Fi excessive usage policy
Your O2 tariff for iPhone allows you unlimited use of O2 UK's EDGE/GPRS networks and The Cloud's UK Wireless LAN network, for personal internet use, email and Visual Voicemail (VVM) on your iPhone only. All usage must be for your private, personal and non-commercial purposes. You may not use your SIM Card in any other device, or use your SIM Card or iPhone to allow the continuous streaming of any audio/video content, enable Voice over Internet (VoIP) P2P or file sharing or use them in such a way that adversely impacts the service to other customers of O2 or The Cloud. If O2 reasonably suspect you are not acting in accordance with this policy O2 reserves the right to impose further charges or disconnect your tariff at any time, having attempted to contact you first.

So, I'm playing about with some video footage on my Mac. I've been using iMovie '08 ever since it came out and I really like it. The thing is I've only ever made short little clips out of video shot on my (photo) camera - an Canon IXUS. For tasks like this I've found iMovie '08 to be perfectly fine. It's even quicker to use that the old iMovie 6 HD.

Recently however I've been editing a little trailer together for somebody from higher quality clips shot on a camcorder. iMovie '08 seems to be really struggling here. I don't know if it's just my machine (a 1.83 GHz Intel MacBook with 1GB memory - plenty of free hard drive space) or if it's a problem with iMovie '08 generally. It seems incapable of smooth playback of the clips - it's like it can't keep up. So it plays things back in fits and starts, which makes it impossible to do fine editing and the whole program pretty much unusable.

I've given up and gone back to iMovie 6 HD for this project (which, incidentally, any iLife '08 owner can download for free from the Apple website here). iMovie 6 seems rock solid in comparison.

Has anybody else found the same thing, or is it just me? I'd like to explore this further in the magazine, so please email me your comments, or post them below. Thanks.