This Friday, October 26, Apple retail stores will open from 6:00 to 10:00 p.m. to celebrate the availability of Mac OS X Leopard. Visit a store near you, and you’ll see live demos of Leopard and have a chance to be one of the first to test drive the most impressive version of Mac OS X yet. There’ll even be free T-shirts for the first 500 guests to visit an Apple Store.
One day, Jason Russell, Laren Poole, and Bobby Bailey bought a camera on eBay, jumped on a plane, and began filming a documentary. The next day, they were saving lives. Invisible Children, the documentary the three produced, has become a highly successful film alerting millions to the plight of the children of Uganda. But the three filmmakers weren’t done yet. They also founded an international nonprofit organization, also called Invisible Children, that’s one of the fastest-growing nonprofits on the planet. And it’s built around Mac computers.
When Christopher Laub “sat in” on a Spanish, social studies, reading, or math lesson, he actually “sat” at home—miles away from his classroom—battling leukemia and undergoing chemotherapy. But thanks to iChat AV and iSight, Christopher could attend classes—even recess—on a regular basis. In fact, videoconferencing via his Mac and iChat not only kept Christopher connected with his friends and current with his classwork; it also let his fellow students learn about leukemia and its treatment, according to principal Patti Purcell. “Through the use of iChat AV, we’ve had many ‘teachable moments,’ and the kids have learned so much.”
“One of the best new features in all of the Final Cut Studio family,” maintains Kevin McAuliffe (CreativeMac) “is the addition of surround sound mixing to Soundtrack Pro 2.” To illustrate, McAuliffe takes readers step-by-step through a simple “surround” tutorial. “This great and easy to use feature in STP2,” he concludes, “lets you mix your entire show in surround, export your mix as surround, and then take your submix, switch it back to “1,2”, and you now have a downmix to stereo from 5.1 for a stereo version of your show.”
Available for pre-order exclusively on the iTunes Store, “The Complete Led Zeppelin,” a special digital box set, delivers the band’s entire discography for just $99. The 165-track collection includes the new career-spanning “Mothership,” a 24-track retrospective of the group’s best-known songs that’s also available separately. Pre-ordering either “The Complete Led Zeppelin” or “Mothership” automatically enters fans to win the chance to see the band’s reunion performance at London’s O2 Arena on November 26. Winners will receive 2 tickets to the show, round-trip airfare, and hotel accommodations. (Terms apply.)
Announcing its fiscal 2007 fourth quarter results, Apple reported today that it had posted revenue of $6.22 billion and net quarterly profit of $904 million, or $1.01 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $4.84 billion and net quarterly profit of $542 million, or $.62 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 33.6 percent, up from 29.2 percent in the year-ago quarter. In the fourth quarter, Apple shipped 2,164,000 Macs, representing 34% growth over the year-ago quarter and exceeding the previous quarterly record for Mac shipments by 400,000. Apple also sold 10,200,000 iPods (representing 17% growth over the year-ago quarter) and 1,119,000 iPhones, bringing cumulative fiscal 2007 iPhone sales to 1,389,000.
“First-time filmmaker Jesus Beltran,” reports Joe Garofoli (San Francisco Chronicle), “has made a couple of thousand dollars in the few months that his 19-minute ‘The Grass Grows Green’ has been sold on iTunes.” But for Beltran, Jon Bloom (“Overnight Sensation”), Tiffany Shlain (“The Tribe”), and many other short-filmmakers, the fact that people can actually find and see their films is even more rewarding.
Tight integration between Address Book and iWork ’08 means that you can add addressing information to personal or business correspondence simply by dragging a contact’s name from Address Book into a Pages ’08 template. Need to send the same letter to one—or twenty—contacts? We’ll show you how in the most recent Quick Tip of the Week.
“iTunes U, the education portal within Apple’s iTunes,” reports Campus Technology, “has expanded its content to include educational materials from sources beyond colleges and universities,” Called “Beyond Campus,” the area provides programming from Smithsonian Global Sound, KQED, Little Kids Rock, the Museum of Modern Art, and, most recently, “American Public Media, which is making its radio programming available free for educational purposes.”
Wikipedia recognizes him as “one of the most important figures in the development of modern electric musical instruments and recording techniques.” Indeed, Les Paul, invented reverb, sound-on-sound and multi-track recording. On a mission to create “a radical new sound,” the multi-talented guitarist developed not only new ways of—and new equipment for—recording music but also new instruments. Most notably: the solid-body electric guitar that would bear his name and that legions of jazz, blues, country, and rock musicians would zealously adopt. Now Paul and his technical team have tapped the Mac, Final Cut Pro, and Soundtrack Pro to help tell the story about how he brought his radical new sound to life.
