Sean Cook, lead singer for the band Lupine Howl, is happy to stay out of recording studios. Thanks to his Power Mac computer, he and his bandmates were able to work at his house and record their debut album, “The Carnivorous Lunar Activities of Lupine Howl,” straight to its hard drive.

“It’s quite a liberating thing, being able to record on the computer at home,” says Cook. “It cuts out a lot of the so-called experts at studios and it allows you to learn a lot more about the recording process yourself, which is a very empowering thing.”

Having a home studio also allowed the band to capture an unusual background recording for one of their tracks. Want to know what it was?

How would you like to walk into a computer store that stocks over 500 software titles for the Mac?

A comfortable shop where you can find up to 15 categories of software neatly organized, so you don’t have to walk up and down the aisles searching for what you want.

Where can you find such a software superstore? Online.

It’s the Apple Store, of course, and over the last few months, we’ve nearly doubled the number of available software titles and will be adding more categories by the end of the month. Now there are more games, more reference software, and more educational titles (over 100!) than ever before, including some software you rarely find in stores.

If you have a few minutes, come take a look at how much software you have to choose from at the Apple Store.

“People underestimate themselves,” declares Michael Phillips. “One’s only true limit is the imagination.”

He should know. Despite his inability to use his arms and legs, he graduated with honors from high school. He’s also an accomplished digital artist — his work has been published in magazines and has been displayed at Macworld and other technology conferences.

He credits his achievements to his own tenacity and his PowerBook, which is equipped with assistive hardware and software.

And his mother concurs. She says that access to a Mac “changed Michael’s entire outlook. His artwork and everything he can do to his photography is all because of Apple. His Mac has given him the most independence he has ever had.”

Learn how the Mac has helped Michael find creative freedom.

When the dot-com he was working for folded, Joel Kuwahara’s next project was more than just a change of pace — he decided to enter a monastery.

No, not to become a monk. He traveled to Dharamsala, India — the site of the Tibetan government in exile — to help Buddhist monks archive and preserve the teachings of their spiritual leader, His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama.

In fact, the need was urgent: India’s humid climate threatened to ruin more than 40,000 hours of teachings preserved on audio and video tape. So Kuwahara, armed with his PowerBook and a new 733-MHz Power Mac G4, entered the monastery to offer the monks a crash course in digital storage.

And the results? Lots of good karma.

Imagine being able to “fly” through a 3D representation of the human body and explore every bone, nerve, and vessel. Sound like the brainchild of a science-fiction writer?

Actually, such an incredible journey will be possible soon — thanks to the hard work of the scientists involved in the Visible Human Project. They’re using computers to label thousands of anatomical points that will aid students, researchers, clinicians, and others who need to navigate through a virtual human as part of their jobs.

Explains researcher Geri Durka-Pelok: “There is a place in the health sciences for a computer able to handle the ever-expanding need for power and speed in generating visual answers about how humans function. The Power Mac has found that place and it is a logical fit.”

Care to peek inside the Visible Human Project?