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By Bob LeVitus
Each January for the past fifteen years I’ve attended
Macworld Expo in San Francisco
and this January was no exception. I enjoy it and always
look forward to the miles of aisles jam packed with the
latest and greatest and coolest new Mac stuff. I’ve
often referred to it as the “greatest show on earth
for Mac enthusiasts,” the ultimate gathering of the
faithful and the vendors that serve them, including Apple.
As usual, the show kicked off last Tuesday with a keynote
address delivered, as usual, by Apple C.E.O. Steve Jobs.
This was a pretty good one. I give it an 85—it had
a good beat and you could dance to it, but points were deducted
for having no mind-blowing new hardware such as the iMac,
iPod, or iBook at past keynotes.
The focus this year seemed to
be “new and improved” versions of familiar Apple
products. For example, in the enterprise space, Apple introduced
new Xserve servers, now powered
by single and dual G5 processors,
and bigger, faster, more economical Xserve
RAID Storage Systems. Yawn.
No new consumer Macs were announced—no desktops, no
notebooks, and no displays. So the only new consumer hardware
product was the cute and cleverly named iPod mini, a smaller
sibling to the portable digital music player we all know
and love (including, apparently, HP, which will ship an
HP-branded iPod this summer).
It looks great and is quite stylish with its anodized aluminum
case in a choice of silver, gold, pink, blue, or green.
It’s smaller than an iPod—the size of a business
card and half an inch thick, and is lighter in weight as
well (3.6 vs. 5.6 ounces). With a 4GB hard disk holding
approximately 1,000 songs, the iPod mini for Mac and Windows
will ship in February for $249. My teenage daughter has
already informed me that she’s partial to pink.
On the software side, Apple introduced
a new version of their mid-range video editing software,
Final Cut Express 2. The new version,
available immediately, now offers real-time effects and
transitions and is still an incredible value at $299 (or
$99 upgrade).
The high point of the keynote
(and the whole show, if you ask me), was the surprise introduction
of the brand new and never-before-seen-in-public GarageBand,
a new program that turns your Mac into a complete, easy-to-use
audio recording studio and includes more than 50 realistic-sounding
software instruments including an amazing grand piano, more
than 1,000 professionally recorded audio loops, and over
200 pro-quality effects presets, like reverb and echo, each
expertly configured by professional recording engineers.
It even includes advanced guitar and amp modeling technology
similar to the amazing AmpliTube Live (www.amplitube.com),
which makes your guitar sound like it’s being played
through several vintage amplifiers and effects. Very cool.
Of course iLife ’04 includes iPhoto,
iMovie, iTunes, and iDVD, and the ’04 versions
are better and faster and come with more “stuff.”
And speaking of stuff, there’s no shortage of it to
go with GarageBand. Apple offers Jam Pack, a $99 add-on
content package for GarageBand with over 2,000 additional
audio loops, over 100 additional software instruments, and
15 additional guitar amp models including, “surf,
grunge, heavy blues, and atmospheric.” And the Apple
Store is stocked with hardware to use with GarageBand like
a 49-note, full size, velocity sensitive USB MIDI keyboard
for $99; a cable to plug your guitar into your Mac for recording
for $19.95; and other keyboards, MIDI and audio interfaces,
and cables.
iLife ’04
costs $49 and is available now.
www.apple.com
Bob LeVitus
is a leading authority on Mac OS and the author of 41 books,
including The
Little iTunes Book and
Mac OS X for Dummies, 2nd Edition. E-mail comments to
doctormac@boblevitus.com.
Copyright © 2003 Bob LeVitus
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