Apple eNews: June 24, 2004

	iTunes Rocks Europe. It didn’t take European music lovers long. Just one week after Apple CEO Steve Jobs launched the iTunes Music Store in the UK, France and Germany (see photos and a video of the event), fans had already downloaded 800,000 songs (450,000 in the UK alone), making iTunes “Europe’s top online music store.”
	“Overall,” says Walt Mossberg in his review of Roxio’s Easy Media Creator 7 for the Wall Street Journal, “I found Media Creator to be significantly inferior to the Apple [iLife] suite. It’s harder to use, less consistent in the way it works, less well integrated, and it fails to display the same delicate balance between power and simplicity that is the real strength of the Apple software.”
	We’re in the Army Now. “A U.S. Army contractor has purchased a $5.8 million, 1,566-server supercomputer from Apple Computer, a real-world cousin to an academic system that briefly appeared high on a list of the most powerful machines,” reports Stephen Shankland on CNET News.com. “The Colsa system, made of dual-processor Xserve G5 machines, is expected to reach about 15 teraflops when it’s up and running this fall, said project manager Mike Whitlock.”
	More news...

As a .Mac member, you can:

•	Publish your iCal calendars on the web.
•	Check email even if you’re thousands of miles from your Mac.
•	Store contact information in an online Address Book that’s accessible worldwide.
•	Back up important files automatically to a variety of media.
•	Share your iPhoto albums by easily publishing them on the web.

And to help you get the most out of these—and all the other—.Mac services, we’ve fully incorporated .Mac support into our award-winning on-line support services. Visit .Mac Support anytime you need help with a .Mac service. You’ll find how-to articles, FAQs, community discussion boards, real-time system-status indicators, and more.

Need additional assistance with iDisk, HomePage, or any other .Mac service? Send us email. We’ll respond within 24 hours.

iPhoto Tip. When you get back from your vacation, how would you like to carry your best photos in your pocket? No, not in your wallet. In your Palm. Digital photographers can thank palmOne for making it a snap to move photos back and forth between iPhoto and palmOne handhelds (like the new $149 Zire 71 or $299 Zire 72) and such smartphones as the new Treo 600.

Make your digital photos “to go.”

Alias—the same company that brought the award-winning Maya software suite to the Mac—has just announced another stellar Mac OS X product. Alias SketchBook Pro. The perfect tool for artists and illustrators, industrial designers, game designers, educators, and architects, Alias SketchBook Pro offers high-quality brushes, a natural user interface, flexible drawing layers, intuitive annotation tools, and an assortment of background templates. Like to download a free trial?

Hear Bill Clinton narrate “My Life.” The autobiography, published just this week, is already available as an audiobook on the iTunes Music Store.

Mac OS X, the Power Mac G5, Xserve, the Xsan storage networking—all are helping scientists make new discoveries and perform basic research. Keep abreast of the part Apple technology plays in scientific computing by bookmarking our new and improved Science website.

We’ve recently opened new retail store locations in Austin, Texas, and Bethesda, Maryland. How close are you to the nearest Apple Store?

Shareware Spotlight. This is just between the two of us, okay? Intego ChatBarrier offers real-time, two-way encryption of text chats. Easy-to-use, it employs military grade 512-bit encryption, so we can use iChat AV to text message and not have to worry about someone “eavesdropping” on our private chats.

Take a look at more of the newest arrivals for the Mac and Mac OS X.

Apple eNews
June 24, 2004
Volume 7, Issue 14

We hope you enjoyed reading this week’s issue of Apple eNews. In our next issue—on July 8—we’ll bring you all the news from our annual Worldwide Developers Conference. Until then, have a safe and enjoyable July 4 weekend.

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.

Now, thanks to a new adapter co-developed by Apple and BMW, you can enjoy the ultimate sound experience while tooling around in the Ultimate Driving Machine.

Available immediately for late-model BMW autos, the iPod, and iPod mini, the new adapter lets you use the control functions on your steering wheel to adjust volume, skip tracks, fast forward/rewind a song, or switch to random shuffle. What’s that playing now? Just check your audio display. And in addition to delivering 100% of iPod’s audio quality to your car’s speakers, the adapter (tucked neatly away in your glove compartment) also recharges iPod as you drive and keeps messy wires out of sight. Like to hear more?

Control and configure remote systems. Install software. Monitor activity. Offer end-user assistance in real-time. Compile detailed hardware and software reports for the systems on the network you administer.

Do all of the above—and more—without stepping away from your Mac. Using Apple Remote Desktop 2, our powerful asset management, software distribution and help desk support software.

Great for IT professionals in business or education, Apple Remote Desktop 2 is powerful, easy to use, and very affordable. For just $499 per administrator, the unlimited-client edition lets you manage any number of client computers with no per-client charge. Manage a small network of 10 users or fewer? Purchase our 10-client edition for just $299 per administrator. Find out what you can accomplish with Apple Remote Desktop 2.

Got a G4?

The new dual processor Power Mac G5 runs Photoshop 83% faster than the fastest Power Mac G4 ever produced. 83% faster. We ran a pretty grueling test—see the results—and even we were impressed.

Maybe video’s your game. If so, you’ll win with the G5 every time. The dual 2.5GHz system delivers four times as many simultaneous SD video streams as the fastest Power Mac G4 ever produced, delivering 8 real-time SD video streams as compared to 2. And wait till you see how many more audio plug-ins a G5 supports. (Hint: up to 3 times as many.)

So how could these performance improvements make a difference for you, translate to real savings in your Photoshop or design and publishing workflow? Plug some numbers in our handy Productivity Calculator, and find out how much time and money a Power Mac G5 could save you over the course of a year.

Getting a new Power Mac G5? Then you have a few surprises in store. Not only can you look forward to some truly impressive performance gains, but you’ll have your new system set up and ready to go more easily than ever before.

Thanks to a new version of Setup Assistant.

In the past, Setup Assistant took you through all the necessary steps—creating a user account, configuring network and mail settings, and the rest—but you had to do a lot of the heavy lifting: inputting all the needed info.

The new version of Setup Assistant does all of this for you, automatically copying this information from your existing Mac to your new Power Mac G5 and thus simplifying the process enormously.

And that’s not all. Signalling the end of set-up drudgery, the new Setup Assistant will actually copy your files and applications for you. Easily and FireWire fast.

Setup simplified.

Scientists have accomplished the first step: mapping the human genome. Now they’ve turned their attention to the second major bioinformatics hurdle: understanding how the DNA in a single fertilized egg can develop into a complex organism (like you and me) composed of over 10 trillion cells.

Knowing how cellular structures develop from single cells will help us fight disease and improve human health. That has prompted David Benham and a team of biologists at the UC Davis Genome Center to employ a 38-node Xserve cluster to perform the enormously complex calculations required to analyze those cellular processes.

It’s made a world of difference: Before, it could take a week to finish a calculation. With Xserve, says Benham, “we can calculate at a rate of about a million base pairs an hour.”

With DVD Studio Pro 3, it takes just a few mouse clicks to add high-quality transitions between menus and in slideshows. In fact, DVD Studio Pro 3 boasts 30 customizable transition styles, including blur, dissolve, droplet, melt, and reveal. Flexible to use, transitions can be applied to all the slides in a slideshow at once. Or you can assign transitions to individual images. With render-free previews, the transitions work instantaneously, so you can experiment all you want without having to worry about falling behind schedule.

To see the new transitions in action—including our new alpha transitions—take a look at our DVD Studio Pro 3 demo video. And here’s the best news for owners of earlier versions: you can make your own smooth transition to DVD Studio Pro 3 for just $199.