At the University of Cincinnati’s Conservatory of Music, “electronic media” majors use MacBook Pro computers and the iLife suite of digital authoring tools to hone the skills they need for careers in audio and video production, radio, broadcast journalism, and new media. “The MacBook Pro allows us to leverage the iLife software suite,” explains Assistant Professor Richard Cawood. “This gives students an entire tapestry of tools for video, audio, web, and photographic work.”
Go to a concert, and you’re likely to see a tightly choreographed program on stage and an even more elaborately choreographed multimedia extravaganza playing out on the huge, multi-million-pixel displays backing up the on-stage performance by your favorite artists. Like the dazzling video shows created by XL Video. Specialists in huge-format video, XL Video uses “Macs throughout the whole process, from concept drawings to content creation to final playback. And Final Cut is the linking piece of the chain,” says Richard Burford, head of XL Video.
“That tall mocha Frappuccino never sounded so good,” comments Ellen Lee (San Francisco Chronicle) as she downs her mocha while testing out the iTunes WiFi Music Store at a San Francisco Starbucks. “The new service lets customers shop for music wirelessly through iTunes at Starbucks for free,” Lee explains. It made its debut in New York and Seattle Starbucks coffee shops earlier this year, just opened all across the San Francisco Bay area this week, and “is expected to be available in the nation’s 6,000 company-operated Starbucks coffee shops by the end of 2009.”
If you’ve visited the Aperture Users Professional Network recently, you no doubt noticed that the site sports a great new design that makes finding content on Aperture—like this informative article by Brett Wilhelm—much easier. Aperture gave Wilhelm, a photojournalist by trade, all the tools he needed to successfully shoot a friend’s wedding, edit the shoot, design a book (an elaborate 80-page layout), and have it delivered just seven days later—the day the bride and groom returned from their honeymoon. “I’m pleased to say,” Wilhelm says of the book, that “it was in its 2nd printing in under two weeks. Thank you Aperture.”
Farhad Manjoo (Salon) makes a compelling case. “If we’re going just by what’s better—the ages-old Mac-vs.-PC debate is over. Long over. Yell it from the rooftops; The Mac has won.” Now’s the right time “to buy an Apple computer,” proclaims Manjoo. “Indeed, it’s been that time for the past five years.” After all, “its Macintosh business is now in league with that of the biggest PC companies in the world.” And “everyone who’s used it agrees that Leopard, the operating system that Apple released late last month, is to its chief rival, Microsoft’s Windows Vista, roughly as Richard Wagner is to Richard Marx.” Manjoo even takes the opportunity to “put to rest the myth that an Apple computer will set you back more than a Windows PC. In fact,” he says, “it’ll cost you less.”
Whether you’re in the market for tropical fish, sporting goods, cold remedies, or guitar lessons, iPhone can help you quickly locate a nearby vendor. Just tap on the Safari icon and pay a visit to yellowpages.com. It’s just one of the more than 350 web apps available for iPhone and iPod touch on our web apps page. Like information about designing, coding, optimizing, and submitting your own web application? Then visit our iPhone Dev Center.
Thanks to Leopard Server—the most advanced Mac OS X Server ever—you don’t need a dedicated IT department to deploy and operate a server. Leopard Server lets you set up and manage servers quickly and efficiently; collaborate effectively on wiki-powered intranet websites; share calendars, schedule meetings, and coordinate events; encode, publish, and distribute high-quality podcasts; and much more. Beginning on November 27, you can learn how your organization can take advantage of the power and versatility of Leopard Server by signing up for a free seminar.
Calling it a “sexy beast,” Joe Hernick (networkcomputing.com) considers Mac OS X Server 10.5 “a substantial upgrade to Apple’s server offering, and we recommend shops running 10.4 to investigate.” In fact, Hernick find it “ready for work. The e-mail platform connects to Active Directory and bundles AV and anti-spam software without pesky client access licenses. A spiffed-up calendar application can serve as a group scheduler. VPN services can host 500 users per Intel Xserve. In a first for Apple, IP failover provides high availability, and TimeMachine enables easily deployed server-based client backup. Leopard Server can even mimic an NT domain controller.”
Apple’s Leopard Server offers numerous advantages over Microsoft’s Windows Server, concludes Computerworld’s Ryan Faas. The unlimited client version of Mac OS X Xerver “provides organizations with significantly more room to grow. There is no limit to the number of users or for replication to additional servers. “ And “more importantly, Apple has designed Leopard Server specifically for smaller organizations that have little or no IT staffers.” “Given the added possibilities that Mac OS X Server offers beyond simple client management,” Faas concludes it “worth consideration in many organizations, ranging from small businesses to enterprise networks.”
Listen up. The iTunes Store has just made it easier to find the perfect ringtones to assign to your favorite callers. After scouring the more than 500,000 currently available ringtones, iTunes editors have assembled a wide assortment of ringtone playlists. The genre-based playlists include such eminently “ringtoneable” tracks as “Answer the Phone” (Sugar Ray), “Pyscho” (Bernard Hermann), “My Funny Valentine” (Chet Baker), “Hung Up” (Madonna), “On the Road Again” (Willie Nelson), “Soul Man” (The Blues Brothers), and many others. Want help creating your new ringtones?
