Journalism today requires more than just the ability to write — just ask freelance journalist Guido Gebhardt. One of Europe’s leading authorities in the field of medical radiology, Gebhardt’s work regularly graces the pages of respected medical journals and industry publications. However, due to the complexity of the subject matter, he often needs to illustrate his work with photos, video and other media. Whether he’s using iWork for creating and editing documents, iLife for working with audio and video files, or Aperture for organising and re-touching photos, the Mac provides this multi-talented “rennaisance journalist” with all the tools he needs.
Gebhardt’s love affair with the Mac began in 2005 when he bought a 12-inch PowerBook. “My fascination began five minutes after I took my first PowerBook out of the box, installed it on my home network and connected it to the Internet”, he recalls. “The switch from PC to Mac was a lot easier than I thought it would be”.
Gebhardt has since augmented his collection with a 15-inch MacBook Pro, a Mac mini and an iPod — and each plays an important role in his professional life. Gebhardt’s family were similarly quick to recognise the benefits of the Mac: “The intuitive user interface and ease-of-use have helped the whole family catch the Mac fever”.
As a busy freelance professional, Gebhardt travels a great deal. He often visits doctors’ practices, clinics and international conventions to research his articles. Until recently he found getting online at airports, train stations and hotels relatively difficult; but the Mac has changed all that. “With the MacBook Pro, all it takes is a click of the mouse and a stroke of the keyboard”, he says with a smile.
Writing articles means conducting interviews, which Gebhardt habitually records, using an iPod and an external microphone. “The iPod is the ideal solution for recording audio”, he says. “It’s particularly useful for me because it allows me to start preparing for the write-up on the way back from visiting a customer or a trade show”. Gebhardt listens to the recordings whilst in transit and creates an initial draft using Apple’s Pages. He has also found another use for his iPod: “I’ve added an iPod interface to my car, so I can listen to interviews over the car speakers as I return from appointments. This helps me get a handle on the story really quickly”.
As soon as his iPod is connected to the Mac, the audio files are automatically transferred to his iTunes library. With the files backed up on both the Mac and the iPod, there’s no danger of any important information being lost or destroyed. And when Gebhardt is away from his Mac, he isn’t worried: with a storage capacity of 30GB, his iPod has more than enough space to store all his interviews and a selection of travel music.
