PROUD OWNERS of the Power Mac 9500 have no doubt discovered some small problems with applications and less than stellar speeds. Thankfully, vendors such as Adobe and Dantz have already devised fixes for Photoshop 3.0.1 and Retrospect 2.1, respectively.
Photoshop 3.0.4. This update speeds up specific Photoshop functions, including Skew, Rotate, and Gaussian Blur, on all PowerPC 604-based Power Macs. Back in this version is Composite Controls, from version 2.5, which now works on Photoshop layers. There's also a new scratch-disk efficiency indicator that shows when Photoshop runs out of real memory and begins reading data from and writing it to the hard disk. This can help you decide whether to invest in more RAM to make Photoshop run faster. Registered users can get the update CD-ROM free or the floppy-disk version for $19.95. 206-628-2749.
Retrospect 2.1A. Because of changes to SCSI Manager for the new line of PowerPC 604-based Macs, Power Mac 9500 users will need this update of the backup application to make Retrospect work on their new machines. The patcher also fixes a bug with startup volumes that have more than 2 GB of free space. Available on ZiffNet/Mac, on CompuServe (go zmc: downtech), as retrosup.sit, in the Commercial Updaters library. 510-253-3000.
