Apple eNews: February 5, 2004

	The recently introduced GarageBand, “includes many of the core features of costlier music-production software in an interface easy enough for rank amateurs to handle,” says the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg. “All in all, GarageBand is a terrific tool for amateur musicians. It’s another reason to buy a Mac, and another feather in Apple’s cap.”
	“Two words come immediately to mind to describe Apple’s Xserve G5: power and choice,” writes Ryan Faas in Computerworld. “Focusing solely on the hardware, the new Xserve just wows me” he says, adding that “compared to similar server platforms, the Xserve G5 offers more sheer computational power for straight high-end computing tasks.”
	“Digital crews used Apple’s iPod as a modern-day ‘Rings’ bearer,” reports columnist Sheigh Crabtree, allowing director Peter Jackson to review dailies filmed on location in New Zealand from his London home. “During the course of two movies and four months, ‘Rings’ iPods stored and served up nearly one-half terabyte of digitized footage from ‘Towers’ and ‘King.’”
	Todd Bishop writes in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about enthusiastic Mac users at Microsoft, “‘We may be part of Microsoft, but we’re really Mac users,’ said Roz Ho, general manager of the Mac Business Unit. ‘Many of us use Macs both at work and at home, and I think that’s what keeps us current on what’s happening in the Mac environment.’”
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If music be the food of love, a veritable banquet awaits you on the iTunes Music Store. Take, for example, the new “Love Songs” playlist now available in iTunes Essentials.

But don’t stop there, search the music store for “love songs,” and you’ll find a cornucopia of music from which to choose—everything from Alabama to Will Downing. Music—the perfect accompaniment for Valentine’s Day.

It’s time to go on Safari. Visit the Safari website (or use Software Update) to download Safari 1.2. The fastest browser on the Mac—and the best browser on any platform—offers a number of improvements, including full keyboard access. That means you can tab among all the elements on a web page you’re visiting, including links. You’ll love the new feature when filling out forms.

Now Shipping: Macromedia Director MX 2004. Learn what’s new in this essential product for developing professional cross-platform multimedia for deployment on CDs, DVDs, kiosks, intranets, or the web.

You can realize increased over-the-air security on wireless networks by installing AirPort 3.3. The release—available via Software Update and on the AirPort website—provides support for the Wi-Fi Protected Access specification to the AirPort Extreme Base Station (via the included AirPort Extreme Firmware 5.3 update) and to AirPort and AirPort Extreme Cards. The release requires Mac OS X v10.3 (or later).

For the many Mac customers who have come to depend on the stellar Dantz products, “Retrospect” and “backup” are practically synonymous. Now the industry leader offers three versions of Retrospect 6.0 for Mac OS X v10.3, “Panther”: Retrospect Server, Retrospect Workgroup, and Retrospect Desktop. Find out more about them by visiting the Dantz website.

With Ovolab’s Phlink—a crowd favorite at last month’s Macworld Expo—you can use your Mac to answer phone calls, identify callers, and record messages. It gets better. Phlink also lets you create sophisticated call trees. E.g.: play a custom message when a caller presses “555”; or activate an AppleScript that converts a voicemail message into email.

Shareware Spotlight. Remember the Macintosh TV? The Macintosh IIci? Would you like to celebrate your first Mac by replacing those generic hard drive or folder icons with an icon of a Color Classic, LC 475, or Quadra 950? Designed to celebrate the 20th birthday of the Macintosh, the Magnum Opus collections—brought to us by widget : widget—contains over 250 hardware icons for such products as the original 128K Mac, Bondi Blue iMac, Power Mac G5, and many others.

New software and hardware products for the Mac and Mac OS X arrive on a daily basis. Like to see some more of the New Arrivals?

Apple eNews
February 5, 2004
Volume 7, Issue

We hope you enjoyed reading this issue of Apple eNews. Look for your next issue on February 19.

Apple eNews is a free, bi-weekly email publication.

Event dates are subject to change. Some products, programs, or promotions are not available outside the U.S. Visit your local Apple site or call your local authorized Apple reseller for more information. Prices are estimated retail prices and are listed in U.S. dollars. Product specifications are subject to change.

With close to 300 million thirsty souls inhabiting the US at the moment, nearly a third of the US population could download a free song from the iTunes Music Store over the next two months.

Thanks, that is, to the Pepsi + iTunes Promotion.

Offering a new twist on legal music downloading, Pepsi has shipped 300 million 10-ounce and 1-liter bottles of Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, and Sierra Mist to stores all over the country. Inside one bottle cap in three, you’ll find a redemption code you can use to download one free song from the iTunes Music Store.

And with over 500,000 songs on the iTunes Music Store, you’ll have plenty to choose from when you win. (Your odds are good: 1 in 3.)

As soon as the center snaps the ball, you can see the Buccaneers’ Tom Wagner jukin’ and jivin’, doing his best to keep pace with the speedy receivers and stay clear of the refs. No, he’s not worried about drawing a flag; just intent on getting his shot.

Responsible for covering the Tampa Bay football club from end zone to end zone, Wagner works the sidelines of every home and away game, eye pressed to the viewfinder, frantic to catch all of the action on his Nikon D1x digital camera. Players may take a breather, but Tom’s in for every play, shooting up to 3,000 digital photographs a game.

When the final gun sounds, the digital workflow Tom devised kicks off. After all, he’s got to get those highlights up on the website.

While Spirit gets back to business in the Gusev Crater, Opportunity—the second of a pair of “twin robot geologists” to explore the Martian surface—has already delighted NASA scientists with its initial discoveries in Meridiani Planum.

And the scientists aren’t the only Rover rooters.

Millions of people have flocked to the NASA website to read all about the Mars mission and to watch the numerous QuickTime videos that offer an excellent explanation of the project.

Thousands more taken it one small step further: downloading a free copy of Maestro, so that they can explore the Martian surface vicariously and try their hand at driving one of the two Rovers. Care to take a spin around the Red Planet?

Warm. Nostalgic. Distinctive. Monochromatic. However you choose to describe them, sepia photographs have long been admired for their rich, comforting tone. No doubt you’ve seen landscapes, portraits, and wedding photographs printed in sepia. You may even have one or two adorning a wall in your house.

Google “sepia,” and your browser will direct you to sepia filters, software to create the “antique photo effect,” and articles listing all the steps needed to create a sepia look in the darkroom or in various image editing applications.

Or you can use the new Sepia feature in iPhoto 4. To do so—now, this is really difficult, so pay close attention—you need to:

1.	Choose an image
2.	Switch to “Edit” mode
3.	Click the Sepia button

Should we go over that again?

Looking to take care of business? The Mac puts a wide assortment of serious business tools at your disposal—MS Office v. X, Keynote, FileMaker Pro, AirPort Extreme, Adobe Creative Suite, QuickBooks, DayLite—tools that make it easy to manage your business more effectively.

And we want to show you how easy it is to use the Mac to address your accounting, finance, marketing, and office management needs. Every Wednesday, we’re opening Apple retail stores an hour early to offer special presentations and one-on-one product demonstrations just for business customers.

Find out how you can take advantage of the latest business solutions, set up a wireless network, promote your business, and benefit from video conferencing. Attend Pro Day at your local Apple Store.

Have you visited the new GarageBand support site yet?

Really cool, the site provides a wealth of information about the newest member of the suite of iLife applications. You can learn more about the GarageBand timeline, how to work with Apple Loops, how to record your own music, and more. The site also offers PDFs that answer some of the most frequently asked questions about GarageBand. Like to search the Apple Knowledge Base for articles about GarageBand? You can do it right from the GarageBand Support Site.

In fact, you’ll find a dedicated support site for each of the iLife products, and each site offers easy navigation to the others. With just one click, you can jump from the GarageBand support site to the sites for iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD.