Worried that OS X will relegate your software to Classic mode? These five apps should ease your mind.

When Apple introduced OS X back in 2001, many Macsters feared their old software wouldn't run properly after the upgrade. And they were right. Plenty of software makers waited for version 10.1 (or longer) before bothering to write new, OS X-native programs.

Even then, some software didn't work well. AOL for OS X, for instance, works like a charm on OS X 10.1, but it didn't initially run under 10.2 (Jaguar). Indeed, very few OS X users will be able to avoid using the Classic environment for pre-OS X apps altogether. But if you're sold on OS X, you're not totally out in the cold; there are finally some excellent OS X-ready apps available beyond Apple's bundled choices. We've rounded up a few third-party standouts.

Adobe Photoshop 7.0
For a long while, OS X threatened to simply wither on the vine. Why? The new OS just didn't have a native version of the one app that most Mac professionals were waiting for: Photoshop. Adobe's image editor is the seminal Mac program--one of the first to catapult the Mac into a superior graphics platform. But Adobe didn't release an OS X- compatible version of Photoshop until April 2002, fully one year after OS X hit the shelves. Finally, Photoshop 7.0 fills the void; luckily, it looks good and runs well in Aqua.

Adobe InDesign 2.0
Before there was Photoshop for OS X, Adobe released InDesign, the company's high- end desktop-publishing app and would-be QuarkXPress killer. Since Quark has yet to release a native OS X version and Adobe's product has garnered many an accolade, we suspect InDesign could win this war. With Photoshop finally following suit, Adobe stays true to its Mac roots with a one-two graphics-and-publishing punch.

Roxio Toast with Jam
Unlike fellow software makers, Roxio wanted to release OS X-compatible apps right off the bat. But when the OS first appeared, it didn't support the FireWire burners that so many Toast users prefer. Now, however, OS X has caught up, and Roxio returned the favor. Roxio has beefed up its OS X-compatible Toast Titanium 5.0 by bundling audio- mastering and -editing software and renaming the whole package Toast with Jam. Plus, Toast with Jam now burns DVD and MP3 discs.

LimeWire 2.6
Macsters have largely missed out on the almost daily barrage of new Windows file- sharing apps, but LimeWire has quietly offered Mac versions from the get-go. And in September, LimeWire unveiled OS X-native versions of both its free and Pro versions, decked out in a slick, Aqua-style interface. That makes LimeWire more than just the rare Mac-compatible P2P app--it's the only OS X-compatible file-swapper that we know about. Now that's forward thinking.

Microsoft Office X for Mac
When Microsoft announced the OS X version of the venerable Office suite--just a few months after the OS hit the shelves in March 2001--many pundits declared that Apple's new OS was finally worth buying. Indeed, you can't get much more support for an OS than a brand-new version of the 800-pound gorilla of office suites. While some argue that Office 2001 for Mac was the better all-around suite, the custom-built OS X program does wonders for OS X stability.

Adobe Photoshop 7.0

Every new version of Photoshop has delivered significant, noteworthy improvements. Witness: Photoshop 4.0 unveiled Effects Layers and Actions; Photoshop 5.0 brought us the History Palette and Layer Styles; Photoshop 6.0 introduced Shapes. Hence, Photoshop 7.0's perfunctory, should-have- been-there-earlier enhancements, such as the new file browser and updated paint engine, are a bit of a letdown. For the first time, we're not convinced that every Photoshop devotee and graphics professional must upgrade. But, as far as graphics apps go, Photoshop is still the best, most sophisticated image- editing software available. If you don't own an earlier version and want the best image editor on the market--or need it to run on OS X--version 7.0 is the best of the bunch.

More of the same
Photoshop 7.0's standard Adobe look and feel, complete with drop-down palettes and menu options, remain relatively unchanged. But Adobe has introduced a few cool improvements, including the handy Tool Presets option, which lets you change and save custom parameters for any tool to a quick-access palette. (With Tool Presets you can, for instance, define a 4-by- 6-inch, 300dpi crop box and save it as a preset.)

Along the same lines, you can now save custom tool-palette layouts Workspaces so that you no longer have to recustomize palettes every time you open a project. A Windows Explorer-like file browser, similar to the Photoshop Elements file-management system, provides a welcome, if somewhat overdue, way to sort and locate your projects: the new browser lets you organize projects by name, date, resolution, and a number of additional parameters.

Brushes with greatness
You'll appreciate the aforementioned Workspaces, especially once you try Photoshop's slightly updated paint engine with its full-on brushes palette. Like Corel's realistic painting implements in Procreate Painter, Photoshop's improved tools now let you vary hue, opacity, and flow for brushes such as pastels, oils, and charcoal. The result is a more real-world painting experience than before. Better still, the Brushes palette now lets you set many more dynamic brush parameters, including jitter, color, and shape.

With all these improvements, Photoshop's brushes are still no match for Painter's. With Photoshop, your paint doesn't have any viscosity, so the results look fairly flat. And, despite the Brushes palette's newfound flexibility, it could use a few more improvements. For example, although Photoshop supports the Wacom Intuos2 tablet (with which we tested the software), the program could use a summary view of which tools and effects you've customized to respond to stylus pressure or tilt. Surprisingly, Photoshop also lacks a velocity control option that would allow brush size and similar parameters to work with your painting speed.

On autopilot
Even so, Adobe hasn't lost sight of Photoshop's primary purpose: image editing. To that end, version 7.0 adds two interesting tools to its image-editing arsenal. The Healing Brush makes quick and seemingly magical work of erasing wrinkles, minor skin defects, and other small flaws. For instance, though we couldn't quite restore the bloom to an old photo of a rose, we easily took a few days off its age. The Auto Color adjustment tool, for its part, essentially removes color casts from your photos, such as the green hue caused by fluorescent lights, and fixes the tonal range.

Thankfully, the new features don't require much more system overhead. In our casual tests on a dual-processor Athlon XP 1900+ system, application load time increased by about only 25 percent--roughly six-tenths of a second. When we ran Photoshop's Web-page-builder macro (which creates an HTML document from a directory of images and saves it locally) on a directory of 77 files, we saw a 35 percent jump--a mere 30-second difference.

Web enhancements
Adobe's bundled sister app, ImageReady, boasts a few small improvements of its own, including updates to the Rollovers palette. ImageReady 7.0 also introduces some useful image output tools: for instance, you can now create dithered transparencies for GIF files.

To buy or not to buy
Without a doubt, Photoshop remains the premier image-manipulation package in its class. If you rely heavily on some of Adobe's newly improved functions, such as painting, or you want to take advantage of OS X's improved graphics engine, you should run out and buy the new version as soon as you can. Otherwise, this upgrade is more of a luxury than a necessity.

Adobe Photoshop 7
Company: Adobe
Price: AU$1799, AU$339 upgrade
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 1300 550 205

Adobe Indesign 2.0

Adobe Systems created InDesign to woo you away from QuarkXPress, which currently dominates the high-end desktop publishing niche. The first InDesign releases had a lukewarm reception; the program was underpowered and not worth the trouble of converting files from Quark. InDesign 2.0, however, is a different story. Adobe has supercharged this program with tables, transparency controls, long document features, and output in both HTML and XML (a coding language for documents similar to HTML but far more flexible). We think the new features make InDesign the top choice for producing four-color magazines, books, and corporate identity material as well as onscreen documents, such as PDF files, e-books, and Web pages. In fact, InDesign's multipurpose output and fabulous typography tools finally push it through Quark's glass ceiling. Move over, Quark. InDesign has finally got you beat.

Not for amateurs
If you're looking for a friendly desktop publisher with wizards, templates, and context-sensitive help, this is not the layout app for you. For starters, its largely uncustomizable, Adobe- standard interface sports a small toolbar and a mishmash of tabbed palettes in small type that only a user with excellent eyesight could love. You can nest palettes together, dock them on the side of the display, and add keyboard shortcuts for some functions, but that's about it. If you're familiar with other Adobe products, such as Illustrator and Photoshop, however, you'll find the interface comfortable and familiar.

To set up a document, define the desired page size, margins, and columns, then place text and graphics on the page; you can either import whole files or type text and create drawings with InDesign's flexible illustration tools. Unlike Quark, with a rigid Place command that makes you select a specific cursor and have a text or graphic box ready to receive the file, InDesign's easy File > Place command lets you import any type of file, regardless of the currently selected tool, and drops the imported material wherever you designate. This convenience saves extra steps and a lot of time if you are importing many files. InDesign 2.0 also imports QuarkXPress files flawlessly--a nice touch that makes the migration process relatively painless.

As you might expect from Adobe, InDesign's typography tools are awesome. The program uses a special algorithm to ensure the most visually pleasing type we've ever seen, and InDesign lets you adjust and tweak the font, color, and special effects of both character and paragraph styles. We were quite impressed with InDesign's Unicode support, too; we added Japanese kana and a good selection of Kanji characters without having to install special software.

Not just for brochures anymore
Layout designers will adore InDesign's new Table and Book features. The Table feature lets you create and format tables as well as convert tab-delimited text from word processing, database, and spreadsheet programs. In addition to presenting tabular material in an organized manner, these tables are handy for creating structured Web pages. However, since InDesign's Web tools are basic (you can't create rollovers or other neat Web stuff), we recommend using InDesign primarily for paper docs that you'd also like to publish on the Web.

The handy Book palette groups multiple documents into a list and numbers pages sequentially for you. From this palette, you can print selected files, package them for the typesetter, and synchronize colors and paragraph and character styles across the book for consistency. Adobe has added the ability to generate indexes and tables of contents, letting you save a group of Table Of Contents settings as a style--quite useful if you need several types of lists in a book--for example, lists of figures and tables in addition to the main TOC. Quark boasts a similar and just as useful long document feature. However, neither InDesign's nor Quark's book tools are as powerful as FrameMaker's, which can assemble lists of imported files, fonts, markers, and cross-references.

Sophisticated tools
Although InDesign is no substitute for a full-blown illustration program such as Illustrator or CorelDraw, its subset of drawing tools (which includes a Bezier pen, pencil, eraser, smoother, and scissors) is quite convenient for simple graphics. New in version 2.0 are nifty transparency controls that let you apply drop shadows, feathering, and other editable transparency settings to text, graphics, and images. The program also maintains transparency in native Illustrator and Photoshop files and imports and exports transparent Acrobat 5.0 (PDF 1.4) files.

Multiple publishing options
For quite a while, Adobe has thumped the multipurposing drum, claiming that InDesign's advantage is its ability to create one document and use it for print, Web, and e-book readers. So far, Adobe seems to be following through on its promise. InDesign lets you save a single file in many different formats: PostScript, PDF, HTML, XML, and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics, which lets you view an image on a screen of any size and resolution).

Not perfect but getting there
InDesign's one major deficiency? Its Search And Replace feature lets you search only for text and special characters. There's no way to search for a style and replace it with a different one, something that FrameMaker allows. Neither can you search for figures, tables, or special formatting breaks. We also miss automatic numbering, bulleted lists, and footnotes--items often found in long documents that are tedious to typeset by hand. But Quark also lacks these features.

On the whole, however, InDesign 2.0 is polished, elegant, and multifaceted, and we think it offers more than QuarkXPress. If you're looking for the top of the line in desktop publishing, this is it.

Adobe InDesign 2.0
Company: Adobe
Price: AU$1,599 Upgrade AU$355
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 1300 550 205

Roxio Toast with Jam

Roxio Toast pioneered CD-R burning on the Mac, but it lagged behind in OS X compatibility because the new OS didn't at first support the fast FireWire burners that many Toast users prefer. But the new Toast Titanium 5.0, which works without a hitch in both Mac OS 9.2 and OS X, changes all that. As more incentive, Roxio now bundles two other products with Toast: Jam, which is audio-mastering software that lets you tweak an audio file's sound levels, cross-fades, and more before burning; and the Bias Peak LE audio editor--all in a AU$366 package. Combining powerful features and an easy- to-use interface, the Toast with Jam bundle is really the only option for anyone who uses a CD-R burner on the Macintosh.

Easy interface; powerful features
Both Toast 5.0 and Jam 5.0 install without a hitch, and you can easily access each in either OS 9.2 or X. Thanks to Toast's long history, the software supports an impressive list of CD-R and DVD burners. On our test machine, Toast instantly recognized our QueFire 16X FireWire CD-R from within both operating systems.

But Toast 5.0's greatest feature is its ultrasimple interface. After you select the type of disc you want to burn (Music, VideoCD, DVD, MP3, Mac/PC data disc, or a copy of the current disc), just drag and drop files or folders into the main Toast window and hit Record. Select which speed to burn your files, click OK, and Toast burns your disc. This process is seamless, and depending upon the speed of your CD-R drive, the resulting audio CD burns quickly and sounds great.

We be Jam
Want to customize your audio CDs before burning? That's where Jam 5.0 comes in. This audio-mastering program lets you precisely control your audio tracks, from how one track fades into another to the volume of each track. Jam's interface lets you simply drag and drop audio files into the main window, where you can arrange and adjust the tracks.

We also love Jam's cross-fade controls, which let you easily create custom mixes of your favorite music using a display that shows the audio waveforms , a graphic display of your audio. Unfortunately, while you can see a waveform, you can't edit it. Jam allows you to adjust the start and stop times of the waveform only by using a numeric dialog box. To do more, you'll need to use the included Bias Peak LE audio-editing software. You can use preset cross-fades or drag a custom cross-fade to seamlessly blend different music tracks. Best of all, Jam lets you preview cross-fades and volume changes without having to burn the disc--a stellar feature.

Unfortunately, while Jam can carefully organize your audio files by letting you adjust the placement, start times, cross-fades, and volume of each track, its editing tools remain weak. The included audio-editing program, Bias Peak LE, provides only basic functionality for trimming and adjusting sound files. For example, if you want to trim the silence at the beginning or end of an audio file, you must type a new start time in a dialog box. We'd rather simply select and delete sections of the track using a mouse.

Slight room for improvement
In fact, Roxio may want to take a few tips from its PC-programming brethren. RecordNow Max for the PC boasts several features we'd like to see in future versions of Toast. For instance, RecordNow Max allows you to use up to 64 CD-R recorders at one time, create batch lists, and adjust the bit rates of imported MP3 files. You can't do any of that with Toast or Jam. Still, thanks to Toast's smooth OS X interface, low cost, and powerful features, you won't find a better package for CD-R burning on the Mac.

Roxio Toast with Jam
Company: Roxio
Price: AU$366
Distributor: Selected resellers

LimeWire 2.6

While one-time competitor Audiogalaxy has bought the farm, LimeWire is alive and kickin'. Version 2.6 of this popular file- sharing app retains the good looks and ease of use of its predecessors but lacks some of the bugs that marred the younger crop. And you can register an ad-free version, LimeWire Pro, for just US$9.50. But despite all there is to love, LimeWire comes up short where it counts: in our tests, search results weren't so hot, installation was a bear, and downloads dragged on for what seemed like decades. Although you shouldn't abandon LimeWire just yet--especially if you work on a Mac, in which case this app is your best bet--turn to Xolox first for now.

An enviable interface
To search for music using LimeWire, enter a search term in the box on the left side of the screen. You can limit your search to a specific media type (programs, documents, audio, video, or images) or search for all of the above. LimeWire organizes your results in tabs along the top right of the screen, while tabs above the window let you view your download library or monitor other users' search terms.

Unfortunately, LimeWire doesn't excel at its most important job: seeking and downloading files. In our tests, Java-based LimeWire, running on the Gnutella network, returned results more slowly than its competitors, such as KaZaa Media Desktop and BearShare. We found a decent number of results when we searched for top-40 artists such as Britney Spears and The Beatles, but far fewer when we looked for oldies or classical artists, such as Stravinsky. KaZaa and iMesh both offer fuller song libraries.

Although you can search for all the files you want, you're not guaranteed a successful download. Success depends on the number of other users who are sharing files at the same time and the speed of their connection--and yours. We managed 50 percent with LimeWire using a high-speed cable modem, but KaZaa and iMesh, by comparison, completed at least 60 percent of downloads. One nice touch: if you search for a file that is hosted by two or more users, LimeWire, like KaZaa, groups the results for quicker downloading.

Expect the unexpected
As with any P2P app, expect unwanted guests at installation. LimeWire's Windows version includes a customized version of bundled adware called Cydoor, which you can't dump when you uninstall LimeWire. In fact, it continues to run in the background and doesn't show up in the Add/Remove Programs control panel. Plus, LimeWire litters your desktop with aliases for other products, and even if you opt out during installation, the app still installs a shortcut to its shopping network, LimeShop. Happily, the OS X-compatible Mac version, one of the few big- name P2P apps that runs on Macs, doesn't include any unwanted programs or aliases, and LimeWire also runs on Linux.

Registration nation
In addition to its cross-platform nature, LimeWire breaks the mold by offering a paid version, called LimeWire Pro. For US$9.50, you can avoid the banner ads, eliminate bundled software and desktop aliases, and get e-mail tech support (nonpaying users can use only online discussion boards). You'll also get six months of free updates and a slightly smaller app. That's nice, but registration doesn't offer, say, priority server access or more search results, so we don't recommend ponying up.

We're happy to see LimeWire's bulked-up online documentation, which now serves up more tech support than any other P2P site does. We especially like the well-moderated forums, where users discuss bugs and LimeWire forum moderators offer advice.

Too few extras
Despite LimeWire's ease of use and ample support, we wish this app offered more goodies. For example, KaZaa lets you browse the libraries of other users, and iMesh lets you instant- message songs to your friends; LimeWire offers neither and seems bare by comparison. Add the free tool to your stable of P2P apps, but if you have to pick just one, stick with Xolox or iMesh.

LimeWire 2.6
Company: Limewire
Price: Free via download, paid version available

Microsoft Office X for Mac

No application is more important to the fate of Mac OS X than Microsoft Office. It doesn't matter how great an operating system is, it isn't useful to most people unless it can run mainstream business software. And whether you like it or not, Microsoft Office is about as mainstream as it gets. Fortunately for Apple, Office X ships with a well-conceived and well-implemented collection of Mac OS X applications that make the most of OS X's new Aqua interface and features. The Office X apps are fully Carbonized (that is, they've been ported to OS X from an older version of the Mac OS), so, unfortunately, they don't run in Mac OS 9. But if you've been waiting for top-notch, Mac-specific business programs before switching to OS X, Office X is for you.

Aquafied Office does it better
In building Office X, Microsoft took care to stick to Apple's OS X user interface guidelines, which often help to make text, buttons, and menus easier to see and navigate. For instance, Open and Save dialogs look and act like those in OS X. When you click them, they roll down from title bars as sheets (dialog boxes attached to a window). Word's View buttons, which let you switch between Normal, Page Layout, and other views, are colorful and easy to distinguish from the background. In Excel, as soon as you start typing in a cell, it develops a drop shadow to make it stand out from inactive cells. And using OS X's transparency (a feature that lets you adjust the opacity of text and graphics), you can overlap 3D charts and graphics in Excel, PowerPoint, and Word.

True to form, Microsoft has gone a bit overboard with some new Office X gewgaws. For example, when you close and open the Formatting palette, the palette slides in a goofy, animated, morphing way, called "genie," to and from the toolbar. There's no way to turn the genie effect off, and the process takes far longer from the toolbar than it does from the Dock (the strip at the bottom or sides of your Mac screen that replaces the Control Strip).

More bad news: Office X isn't consistent with antialiasing, an important OS X feature. Office X applies antialiasing to icons, buttons, Excel chart text, and all the text in Word. But some other text still appears jagged. Entourage, for example, doesn't antialias text in e-mail messages, and while Excel smoothes out text in the row, column, and formula field headers, it leaves text within the cells rough around the edges. The effect is a bit jarring.

Word and Excel are still the stars
Whereas Word 2001 made fantastic and necessary improvements from Word 98, Word X makes even greater improvements from 2001. Now, if you need to, say, format and spell- check unconnected blocks of text, simply hold down the Command key and use your pointer to select all the appropriate sections in one fell swoop. This saves you the trouble of having to choose one text block, apply the format, and then repeat the process for every area you want to change. We're pretty impressed by Word's slick Contact toolbar as well. It lets you export contacts and addresses to Entourage (the e-mail/scheduling app) directly from Word and lets you add addresses to Word documents. To put a name and an address in your Word file, just choose the name from the pop-up menu on the Contact toolbar, then click the Include Address button. Entourage doesn't even need to be open.

Microsoft has also greatly improved Excel. Office X lets you customize keyboard commands by using the Customize command in the Tools menu, a powerful feature Word has offered for a long time. And Excel now imports FileMaker Pro database files. Oddly enough, Excel doesn't import Microsoft Access database files--too bad, since there's still no Macintosh version of Access. Want to read Access files from a Windows user? Forget it.

In addition, some of Office X's apps occasionally fail to communicate with each other. At times, as we edited an Excel chart in Word, the Word and Excel interfaces would pop to the foreground two or three times, so that first Word would show, then Excel, then Word, then Excel. We have no idea why this happened, and Microsoft reps have not yet identified a cause. We also found that if we had Word or Excel open, CD-ROMs would not eject when moved to the Trash until we selected the Finder. Microsoft says that this isn't a known issue and suspects the culprit is Mac OS X, not Office.

PowerPoint stands still; Entourage marches on
Of all the Office X apps, PowerPoint has evolved the least since Office 2001. Its most notable new feature, the PowerPoint Package option, lets you wrap a presentation and all of its attendant files into one neat little package, then move it into a single folder. To do this, click File > Save As and select PowerPoint Package in the Format pop-up menu. Then name the folder you want the files to reside in. Despite the dearth of new features, PowerPoint is still the best presentation package for the Mac.

Entourage, Office's combination e-mail/calendar program, wins our most-changed app award. Unfortunately, it is still the weakest application in the suite. It sports an all-new interface with large buttons that make it easy to navigate among mail, address book, calendar, and notes displays. The redesigned Calendar window now consists of three panes, one of which sports a Task List that shows the day's events. And the Custom Views window (also accessible from a button) lets you combine address book, calendar, and mail information in many different ways, so you get all the information you need on a single screen.

Unfortunately, Entourage still lacks some basic PIM features. You can't print paper calendar pages that'll fit in your appointment booklet or binder, for instance. Nor can you sync directly to handheld Palm devices--both features that the free Palm Desktop supports. Microsoft says direct Palm syncing will be available later as an update.

Get going on OS X
Although Office X isn't perfect, we think it's one of Microsoft's better Mac offerings. If you've been champing at the bit to upgrade to Mac OS X, you'll be pleased to have this powerful package to use with your new operating system. Office X gives you something to do with Mac OS X and shows off Apple's new OS with style.

Microsoft Office X for Mac
Company: Microsoft Australia
Price: AU$999
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 13 20 58

Copyright © 2009 CBS Interactive, a CBS Company. All Rights Reserved.
ZDNET is a registered service mark of CBS Interactive. ZDNET Logo is a service mark of CBS Interactive.