The patient, about to give birth at a hospital in a rural area, is having complications, and her doctor isn’t experienced enough to recommend proper treatment. In the past, such a patient would have been flown by helicopter to a larger hospital, wasting crucial time and possibly endangering her life. But now, thanks to Wade Rome’s APEX Radiology Inc., the mother can stay put while her doctor consults with experienced radiologists.

Virtually.

Power Macintosh computers running AppleScript turn X-rays and other medical images into QuickTime movies (complete with voice annotations) that are posted securely on a web site, where the doctor and a radiologist can review them and discuss treatment options before taking action.

“The Mac and AppleScript have helped us achieve unparalleled efficiency and cost-effective image-processing,” says Rome.

They serve specialized clientele—non-profits who guard production costs like grizzlies watching over their cubs. So when it came time for Deborah Thomas and Ralph Preston of Snow Hill Productions to put together a state-of-the-art digital video editing studio, there was only one way to go.

They turned, says Preston, to “the only uncompressed video solution at an affordable price—the Power Mac G4 with Final Cut Pro.”

Final Cut Pro and the Power Mac helps them produce video of the highest quality, allowing such clients as Habitat for Humanity get their messages across at a fraction of the cost, which is why Thomas and Preston started Snow Hill Productions in the first place.

Two actors. Two props. And two amateur filmmakers with the chutzpah to fill in the rest.

That’s the story behind “Duality,” a six-minute film set in the Star Wars universe and currently one of the most popular downloads on the Internet.

With no money to spend on expensive sets, Dave Macomber and Mark Thomas shot two actors against a bluescreen and then used their Power Macintosh computers to add in a stark desert planet, lightsaber effects, spaceships, droids, and more.

Their do-it-yourself approach even extended to their software choices. For example, Macomber says that Final Cut Pro was perfect for final editing because it “is such an intuitive program that it was really easy to get started and move ahead quickly.”

“The Mac is a musician’s computer,” says digital music producer Victor Calderone. “It’s like when they built it, they had us in mind.”

Calderone’s Brooklyn studio houses an amazing array of samplers, synthesizers and other music gear, all of it connected to a Power Mac G4 that sits next to his keyboard in the middle of the room, at the literal heart of his studio.

“My Mac is a communication tool that enables my creativity,” he explains.

And when he needs to enable his creativity on the road, Calderone has a Titanium PowerBook G4 that he takes with him, so that he can “arrange and create music [in airplanes], and more importantly, to be able to use this material once I am back in the studio.”

Popular science-fiction writer Kevin J. Anderson owns one accessory that he never leaves at home when he travels.

“My PowerBook is indispensable to me,” he says.

His portable Mac allows him to work on his novels anywhere, anytime, as he travels to remote locations while chronicling the adventures of such well-loved characters as Luke Skywalker, Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, and the Lady Jessica Corrino. But his intimate knowledge of the Mac—he’s owned 18, so far—has also informed the attitude towards technology he presents in his novels.

“My view of futuristic computers has always been very much colored by the way Macs look at things,” he explains, “in that they should be easier and more hands-on for people to use.”

Here’s a basic recipe for great personal music CDs: Open iTunes, mix in your favorite songs, then burn a batch onto a CD-R. It’s simple, fun, and a great way to take your own music with you wherever you go.

But what if you’re a real stickler and want to create audio CDs of only the highest quality? MP3 files may be good for some, but you want the music on the CDs you cruise with to sound just like the ones at home.

iTunes is up to that task, too. The trick is a secret ingredient known as the AIFF encoder. It won’t compress your music as compactly as the MP3 encoder, but it will let you retain the quality of the original music in your CD collection. To try your hand at this recipe, follow the steps in this article from our Technical Information Library.

With QuickTime rapidly becoming the preferred means of delivering video over the Internet, you may be looking for an authoring tool that offers a comprehensive QuickTime 5 development environment.

Look no further than Totally Hip’s LiveStage Pro 3, now available for Mac OS X. With this software package you can: