Walkthrough: iTunes 7's big new features

In case you missed it, one of the big announcements of today's It's Showtime events was iTunes 7, a major update that brought changes on nearly every front. Organizing, shopping, syncing - everything got a lot of attention from Apple's software engineers and, as you'll see throughout this walkthrough, a lot of polish has been applied to make this one of the most significant updates in recent iTunes history.

First up are some of the basics: there has been a simple change to the iTunes Music Store's name; that's right, 'Music' has been dropped from the name, as the introduction today of movies (which we all knew were coming; more on those later), in addition to carrying TV shows for a year now, kind of begged the name change. As you can see, iTunes has also received a new, blue-ified icon. It has now gone from purple to green and now blue which, if you'd like a little bit of design trivia, is the human brain's favorite color to look at.


This should offer a good overview of just how much the iTunes UI has been updated and polished, though impressively without any major or unsettling changes. Dan Lurie noted that it all has a very 'web 2.0-ish' feel, and I tend to agree. Since the iPod was a major player in today's events as well, I figure changes to the iTunes + iPod relationship are as good a place to start as any.
Managing your iPod just became a whole lot easier
You can see what Mr. Jobs meant when he said you can now interact with and configure the iPod right from within the iTunes interface, instead of having to clunk around in the preferences. Underneath the display panel at the top of iTunes are now a series of tabs when an iPod is selected, offering the familiar options of choosing whether to sync the iPod, which podcasts to sync, etc.

TV show syncing now has its own configuration options, including '5 most recent' and '5 most recent unwatched.' I'm sure these will be welcome options to those chronically addicted to more than a few iTunes TV shows.

Also at the bottom of the iPod panel is a much-improved space meter that delineates between music (blue), video (purple), 'other' (orange - I guess this is any files/folders and possibly photos you have on the iPod) and, of course, free space (white). In an interesting change to Apple's fundamental UI behavior, they have added dedicated 'Cancel' and 'Apply' buttons in the bottom right of the iPod configuration panel, allowing users that last minute chance to decide whether they really want to commit a change.


New ways to view your library
The new viewing options for the individual library entries in the Sources list (Music, Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts and Radio) are really, really slick. As a clever touch, the List view, pictured below, shows album covers on the left (which iTunes can now grab automatically from the store for all your non-iTS purchases), with a list of each song, artist and album name (somewhat redundant) for each individual album. TV Shows works the same way in that it organizes episodes by season. Very, very well done.


The new Cover Browser, the third option of the new view buttons just to the left of the search box, is really a sight to behold.

This features definitely steps on CoverFlow's toes in a big way, and I'm sorry to say - it's done a bit better. A scroll bar at the bottom of the cover browser is easier to click and drag with, and the animation is incredibly smooth and, dare I say it, sexy.

[Update: we have since learned that CoverFlow was actually bought by Apple. So instead of having their toes violated, it sounds like they came out on top with a good chunk of change. Good show.]

Unfortunately, I was surprised to find that these new view buttons don't work for podcasts. They're still listed and organized in the iTunes 6 fashion.

All the rest
There are plenty of other big changes in iTunes, ranging from a UI bump to the preferences, the ability to toggle displaying any of the media sections in the Sources list (which, oddly, no longer has any kind of name/heading), parental controls that allow disabling various sections and the purchase of various content based on PG/TV rating, a new dedicated Store menu for managing your account and purchases, and an appetizing new "Transfer Purchases from iPod" option under the File menu, finally allowing users to sync (at least some of) their music between computers with nothing more than an iPod and a cable.

There has to be plenty more in this major update, but this is the rundown of the big stuff for now. We'll be sure to post even more goodies as we uncover them.

Record anything on your screen

Sure, a new PC comes with software. It’s just not software you’d ever want to use. A new Mac, on the other hand, comes with lots of really great stuff. So you can make lots of really great stuff.

Unpack your new PC and you’ll be amazed at what it offers. A bundle of mismatched software and that nagging feeling that your desktop has just been sold to the highest bidder. Of course, it does have that cool calculator. Oh, and a clock. That’ll come in handy when you’re ticking off the hours it takes you to uninstall all the software you don’t want and buy all the software you do.

Bring home a new Mac and you bring home an OS with more than 200 built-in features — including Dashboard widgets, Mail, and iChat AV, among other cool things — and the award-winning suite of iLife applications.

All that makes the Mac the center of your digital life from get-go. Just ask Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal. “Out of the box,” says Mossberg, “the Mac has better photo, music, video, and DVD-creation software than any Windows computer I’ve seen.” That’s because Apple’s iLife applications are built upon the same technology as pro applications like Logic Pro and Final Cut Studio. And unlike some media management software that only offers cookie-cutter clip art, iLife features gorgeous, professionally designed themes and templates that truly complement your baby album, vacation movie, family podcast, pop culture blog — anything you create on your Mac.

And creating stuff on your Mac is a mere matter of plug and play. Connect your digital camera, and iPhoto automatically launches and begins importing your photos. Open iChat and instantly start your own videochat with your iMac or MacBook Pro’s built-in iSight camera. Watch crystal-clear, HD video — no installation required — with QuickTime. Compose your own songs using nothing more than your computer keyboard and GarageBand loops. It’s all there, right from the moment you turn on your Mac. (Before that, even.)

So forget the fine print. With a Mac, fun is not sold separately.

With Mac OS X Leopard, the search that finds anything on your Mac will find anything on all your Macs. Use Spotlight to search beyond your desktop across network-mounted folders on other Macs. Combine that with improved performance and the convenience of a Quick Look preview, and Spotlight for Leopard is one maximum-strength search.

Search party

More haystacks? No problem. Spotlight for Leopard finds what you’re looking for on other Macs, including servers running Mac OS X Leopard Server. Just set up your remote Macs for file sharing and Spotlight includes results from those machines in your search. That’s one-stop searching on any Leopard machine with access to your network.

Quick on the draw

Sometimes you just don’t want to wait. That’s why Leopard introduces Quick Look, a new way to preview a document, picture, or slideshow in a single click, without opening an application. Select a search result and Quick Look displays the result — an iPhoto snapshot, a PDF, an Address Book contact — in a graphic overlay. Quick Look even plays your QuickTime movies, right in the preview window.

Look deeper

In Leopard, Spotlight provides a richer syntax so you can search for more specific sets of things. Use new boolean logic to narrow search results by entering “AND,” “OR,” and “NOT” into a search request. You can also search using specific file attributes — author, type, or keyword, for example.

iTunes makes it easy to create your own custom music CDs to play in your car or home stereo. Unlike some applications that limit the number of CDs you can burn, iTunes lets you burn as many custom CDs as you like. And iTunes prints pro-quality inserts to accompany your mix.

Burn with a click

Select a playlist in your library and insert a blank CD or DVD. The Burn Disc button at the bottom right of the jukebox lets you know it’s time to burn. A quick click and iTunes burns your disc in as few as two minutes.

Print in tune

iTunes now downloads cover art for all the music in your library, making the perfect artwork for your CD covers. For whole albums, you can print the cover with song listings. For custom mix CDs, iTunes can create a mosaic of cover art, or print a listing of songs in a playlist or your library, sorted however you like, plus other options — in color or black and white.

Play them anywhere

Create audio CDs to play in CD players like the one in your car or home stereo. Or make MP3 CDs to play on Mac and Windows computers and in MP3-compatible car stereos and CD players.

Back it up

You can use iTunes to archive your entire music and video library on CDs or DVD-Rs for safekeeping. Just choose “Back Up to Disc” from the File menu, tell iTunes what you want to back up, and insert a disc. iTunes does the thinking for you — just keep feeding it discs till you’re done.

The Omni Group

OmniGraffle helps you draw anything that can be represented by symbols and lines, such as flowcharts, org charts, network diagrams, family trees, project processes, and office layouts. This program gives you the graphing tools to create anti-aliased diagrams that print exactly as they appear on your screen, including new smart guides that facilitate quick and measured layouts. Export options include TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, EPS, PDF, and HTML formats.

Download Now

Think secret has this article of Apple’s latest and soon to be release super toy for adults. Its a Apple Phone for the masses. Now, I can’t really imagine that, seeing that ipod is a run away success in the portal music player market doesn’t mean Apple’s phone will be the next Motorola Razr or the LG’s Chocolate. Apple’s product has this cool factor, like marijuana. Hooking a person into wanting more but when it comes to serious buyers, Apple lost it all. Just take a look at their ipod player. Every year they increase the capacity and shrink it a little, there is virtually no major improvement. Yeah, it plays video - so what? Sandisk Sansa music player doesn’t have the cool factor that ipod has, but interm of features, Sansa is loaded and the best part is it has a FM Tuner.

At the time, Apple was said to be encountering “significant technological hurdles” in its attempts to essentially re-invent the cell phone with an innovative ground-up design. Since then, Apple has scaled back its ambitions and has opted to go with several off-the-shelf parts for what will be the first of at least two or three different phones that sources say Apple hopes to deliver in 2007.

Apple’s product are usually over-price with limited features and locked into a whole of its own. Bill Gates was right when he predicted the death of mac during th 80’s and early this year, again he predicted that iPod will share the same fate, a slow and painful death. Let’s face it, to be able to lock a person into a single format is an up hill battle, for example the mp3 player format is the de facto of digital music, not even Microsoft with their WMA format can unseat it, let alone Apple’s AAC format - unless Apple open up their iTunes digital store and allow competitors with the ability to sell AAC format.

I’m thinking of getting a portal music player, flash based and there is a very high percentage that it won’t be Apple’s iPod. Sandisk Sansa is too good to be true, the smaller version runs on AAA battery meaning to say that I don’t have to buy those expensive Li-on battery like how Apple force their loyal customer replace an expansive battery.

Apple is good, but it could have been great if Steve Jobs were to run it like a business man, but then again, if Steve were to run it that way, then Apple would not have been what it is today - unique. Let us hope the next generation iPod comes with a FM Tuner. Forget about the video and games, I’m too old for that.

Introducing Pages 2. Thanks to new text and image editing tools, it’s the easiest way to look good in print. Use Apple-designed templates to build stunning documents in minutes. Quickly add photos with the built-in iLife Media Browser. Format your text in minutes with elegant predefined styles. Add punch to your page with multiple columns, self-calculating tables, and engaging 3D charts. Whatever you write, Pages 2 helps you do it in style.

Add modern design

Start with a template in Pages 2 and your document is halfway to gorgeous. Choose from 25 new templates, including posters, flyers, scrapbooks, folding cards, technical reports, business invoices, proposals, screenplays, and storyboards.

Learn more

Top the charts

Pages 2 lets you add beautifully designed 3D charts to any document. Edit your chart, then position it perfectly using the 3D rotation wheel. From there, you can add even more depth and realism by applying multiple lighting styles, angles, reflections, and shadows.

Learn more

Get in shape

Explore your options with curves, shapes, and masks in Pages 2. Choose from new shapes, insert the one you like best, then customize it by adding points or sides. You can even create custom shapes using new Bézier curves. When you’re done creating the perfect shape, you can use it to mask any photo in your document.

Learn more

Put it on the table

Leave it to Pages 2 to make mere tables more interesting. Add text, graphics, and photos to tables, then get ready to do the math: tables in Pages 2 let you perform spreadsheet-style calculations without ever leaving your document — a perfect solution for adding numbers late in the game.

Learn more

Sign, seal, deliver

Never again fear the mail merge. Pages 2 boasts seamless integration with Mac OS X Address Book, so creating personalized documents for individuals or groups is suddenly simple. Stationery templates offer predefined Address Book links: all you do is drag in contacts and Pages automatically personalizes your documents to match.

Learn more

Thank you, notes

With new reviewer comments in Pages 2, you can take notes. Type reminders, to-dos, or revision notes right on your document. Every comment you make appears in a handy sidebar that won’t affect layout or pagination. Plus, you can easily hide comments so they won’t clutter up your document and keep you from the important business of writing, editing, and printing.

The world’s smallest digital music player and just $79, the 1GB iPod shuffle lets you wear up to 240 songs⁽¹⁾ on your sleeve. Or your lapel. Or your belt. Clip on iPod shuffle and wear it as a badge of musical devotion.

One size fits all

You know what they say about good things and small packages. But when something 1.62 inches long and about half an ounce holds up to 240 songs, “good” and “small” don’t quite cut it. Especially when you can listen to your music for up to 12 continuous hours.⁽²⁾ In fact, iPod shuffle just may be the biggest thing in small.

Ready to wear

Clip it to your coin pocket. Clip it to your bag. No matter where you clip your skip-free iPod shuffle, you’ll have instant access to music. And iPod shuffle’s anodized aluminum enclosure goes with absolutely everything. Put it on, turn it up, and turn some heads.

Sync to fit

The first step to wearing 240 songs on your iPod shuffle is downloading iTunes — free. Then you can download 99¢ songs from the iTunes Store or import music from your CDs. When it’s time to sync, plug the included dock into your Mac or PC’s USB port and transfer your music from iTunes just by docking iPod shuffle.

Remix and match

Got more than 240 songs in your iTunes library? No problem. Let iTunes autofill your iPod shuffle and get a new musical experience every time. Pop follows jazz. Rock follows rap. iPod shuffle loves to improvise. Take the Shuffle switch, for instance. Even if you’ve synced a particular playlist, you can shuffle songs with a flick.

Konfabulator allows you to use and develop cross-platform mini-applications using JavaScript and XML to do whatever you want. Using the time-tested Mozilla JavaScript engine, Konfabulator is a completely open and easy-to-learn environment, so creating your own widgets is an extremely simple task. You can change the look, feel, layout, and even the functionality of a widget so it matches your lifestyle, your desktop, or the pants or skirt you have on that day.

Download Now

The Adium team is proud to present to you Adium X, a multiple-protocol instant-messaging client. This is a culmination of a yearlong rewrite of Adium, which now utilizes Libgaim (the core part of GAIM) to connect to multiple protocols, and also is based on a new plug-in architecture. Partial address-book integration, cool-looking tabs, multiple protocols for instant messaging, and a compact contact list are some of the many features of the new Adium X. Some core features include support for AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Jabber, Trepia, Napster, and Gadu-Gadu; unlimited accounts; as many names on as many services as you want; draggable tabs; any number of tabs in any number of windows; highly customizable yet intuitive preferences; address-book integration; iTunes and other AppleScript substitution buddy icons and away messages in AIM; and the beginnings of file-transfer support for AIM, Yahoo, and Jabber.

Download

Anyone using a computer spends a lot of time locating files and applications and carrying out actions on those items. The Finder is a reasonably good tool for getting a visual overview of the contents of your disk, but it isn't ideal for quickly locating and manipulating files, especially if you have a deep and complicated folder structure, or if you prefer keyboard navigation to using the mouse.

Quicksilver allows you to find what you need quickly and easily, while keeping your hands on the keyboard. For example, if you want to launch an application hidden in the depths of your file system, simply activate Quicksilver with a keystroke, type a few letters of the application's name, then hit Return or Enter to launch it. When you don't need Quicksilver, it keeps out of your way, preserving precious screen real estate, yet you can summon it instantly with a keystroke.

Download

A free text editor

This download will automatically update Norton AntiVirus 9.0 for Mac OS X virus definitions and engine files to detect and repair the most recently discovered Macintosh and PC viruses. Once downloaded and expanded on your hard drive, simply double-click on the Installer and the appropriate files will be installed on your computer.

Download

More on iTunes and the 7-burn limit

Tuesday’s iPodBlog entry, iTunes and the 7-burn limit, seems to have inspired as many questions (and comments) as it answered. I’d like to round out that entry by responding to some of those questions and concerns.

If you make a change to a playlist after iTunes tells you that you can’t burn any more copies, then burn seven copies of the modified playlist, and then reverse those changes (subtract the track you added to modify the playlist), will iTunes still prevent you from burning additional copies of the original playlist?

In short: Is iTunes smart enough to keep track of the burn count of more than one playlist?

Yes, it is. Although Playlist’s accountants will shriek when they receive the bill for the blank media I’ve burned through in the past couple of days, it had to be done. I burned Playlist A seven times, altered it by removing a track, burned the altered Playlist B seven times, put the removed track back in place, attempted to burn Playlist A again, and iTunes gave me the “nuh uh” dialog box.

Ah, but what if you simply change the order of the tracks in the playlist?

Nope. iTunes doesn’t care about track order. Shuffle their order after you’ve burned seven discs and iTunes refuses to burn another copy.

What if you simply copy the tracks to a new playlist?

No joy here either. iTunes knows if you’ve been naughty or nice even if you delete the tracks, reimport them, and put them in a new playlist.

What if you change the names and/or the ID3 tags of the tracks?

No again. iTunes doesn’t seem to care what the files are called or what you’ve done to their tags.

Would adding a non-audio file—e.g. a PDF booklet—to a playlist make the playlist new in iTunes’s eyes?

That would be a negative. From all appearances, iTunes looks only at audio tracks.

If I wanted to burn more than the seven copies of a playlist that iTunes allows, couldn’t I just create a disk image with Apple’s Disk Utility and burn that image to as many discs as I like?

No. Disk Utility can create a copy of the CD from a disk image, but it will do so as a data disc rather than as a Redbook audio disc. Such a data disc won’t show up in iTunes nor will it play on a CD player.

Roxio’s $100 Toast Titanium 7, however, can create a disk image that you can then use to create Redbook audio CDs within Toast. This method puts an end to the seven-burn limit.

If I wanted to burn more than seven copies of a playlist and don’t want to use Toast, could I burn one CD, import the tracks on that CD with iTunes, and then burn more copies?

You could. This is a well-known method for getting around Apple’s (and everyone else’s) digital rights management (DRM) scheme. Some people suggest that converting the audio formats multiple times during the process—from AAC to AIFF (for the original CD rip) back to AAC (reimporting the burned CD)—degrades the audio quality. You could lessen the effect by reimporting the CD in a lossless file format—AIFF, .wav, or Apple Lossless.

What about creating a new user, copying those files to the new user, authenticating that new user (to allow them to play Apple’s DRM) and then burning new CDs with the new user’s account?

and

What if I delete iTunes’ support files (iTunes Library, iTunes Music Library.xml, .plist files, etc.)?

Both will work around the seven-burn limit because iTunes uses these support files to keep track of how many times you’ve burned a playlist. When you switch to a new user, that new user’s account uses different support files. When you remove iTunes support files it creates new ones that don’t contain the number-of-burns information.

What was the point of this article? This whole article was devoted to instructing people as to how to further violate copyrights, legally and ethically, using iTunes. There is no conceivable “personal use” or “fair use” that would require these methods.

I can’t think of a good reason why anyone would need to burn more than seven copies of the same playlist. The fact that so many people seemed to be in the dark about this subject makes it clear that very few of us have ever hit that seven-burn limit and I was largely interested in how iTunes goes about its business in this regard.

Just so you know where I stand on the non-technical issues, I believe that giving copies of purchased music to friends is both unethical and illegal if—and yes, Jeff, I’m talking to you—those friends don’t own each and every track on the CD you’ve given them. I know it’s common practice for people to create mix CDs and pass them out to friends (and I believe Apple accounts for that by allowing you six more burns than you really need), but just because everyone does it doesn’t make it right. Regardless of what you think of the RIAA, stealing their wares is one of those “two wrongs” things.

Then why write the entry?

Because I’m intrigued by these kinds of puzzles, because I couldn’t find this information elsewhere, because I believe in the free flow of information, and because anyone who wants to rip-off music by the metric ton can do so far more easily than by rejiggering iTunes playlists.

Steve Jobs was right on the money when he opined that “Piracy is not a technological issue. It’s a behavior issue.” It’s the dirty little secret of audio DRM that as long as audio travels down a wire it can be intercepted and copied.

You want to stop piracy? Watch your behavior.

Macs Do Windows, Too.

More and more people are buying and loving Macs. To make this choice simply irresistible, Apple will include technology in the next major release of Mac OS X, Leopard, that lets you install and run the Windows XP operating system on your Mac. Called Boot Camp, you can download a public beta today.

As elegant as it gets

Boot Camp lets you install Windows XP without moving your Mac data, though you will need to bring your own copy to the table, as Apple Computer does not sell or support Microsoft Windows.⁽¹⁾ Boot Camp will burn a CD of all the required drivers for Windows so you don't have to scrounge around the Internet looking for them.

Run XP natively

Once you’ve completed Boot Camp, simply hold down the option key at startup to choose between Mac OS X and Windows. (That’s the “alt” key for you longtime Windows users.) After starting up, your Mac runs Windows completely natively. Simply restart to come back to Mac.

What you’ll need

• Mac OS X Tiger v10.4.6 or later (check Software Update)
• The latest Firmware updates (check Support Page)
• 10GB free hard disk space
• An Intel-based Mac
• A blank recordable CD
• A printer for the instructions (You’ll want to print them before installing Windows, really.)
• A bona fide installation disc for Microsoft Windows XP, Service Pack 2, Home or Professional (No multi-disc, upgrade or Media Center versions.)

The Boot Camp course

Boot Camp Public Beta provides a straightforward means of letting your Mac run Windows. Here’s how it works:

• First, you need to make sure your Intel-based Mac has the latest version of Mac OS X and the latest firmware update. These provide technologies that make Boot Camp possible. It’s also wise to print out the Installation & Setup Guide.
• The Boot Camp burns a CD with the drivers Windows needs to recognize Mac-specific hardware. It is very important to do this before starting the Windows installation.
• The software also helps you set aside hard drive space for the Windows installation, without moving any of your Mac files around. Just drag the intuitive slider to choose the size that’s right for you. Boot Camp also helps you remove the Windows partition, should you so desire.
• Next, insert your Windows installation disc, restart and follow the Windows installation process. The only tricky part is selecting the C: drive manually. Be sure to get this right, or you could erase your Mac files accidentally. Remember, Apple Computer does not sell or support Microsoft Windows.
• After the installation process is complete and your Mac has booted Windows, you’ll need the Macintosh Drivers CD you burned previously. When you insert the CD, it will automatically install the drivers. Follow the instructions in the Installation & Setup Guide for helpful hints.
• Don’t forget to follow best practices for updating and protecting your Windows system (see “Word to the wise” to right).

Do you use a lot of smart playlists in iTunes? Are you constantly tweaking them to get them just right? If so, here’s a quick way to edit them—quicker even than using the control-click contextual menu.

Just option-click on the smart playlist you’d like to edit, and the edit window will instantly appear. You don’t even need to select the playlist first—when you option-click, iTunes will move the selection to that item, and then open the edit window. Option-clicking on a standard playlist does nothing, as there’s nothing there to edit.

And before you ask—yes, this shortcut still works in the just-released iTunes 7.

Geo-Calc works out all the measurements (area, perimeter, sides, angles) of common geometric shapes. A scaled drawing of each calculated shape is shown with a graph paper background in one drawer, while another shows a history of your previous calculations. A definition of each shape and the different ways to perform the calculations is also provided. Geo-Calc's shapes include an ellipse, rectangle, triangle, trapezium, parallelogram, polygon, prism, cylinder, cone, pyramid and sphere.

Download

Safari Enhancer is an application for enhancing the functionality of Apple's Safari Web browser. Safari Enhancer has the following features: enabling the debug menu, removing underlines from hyperlinks, increasing the font size in the bookmarks sidebar, disabling Safari's Web content cache, changing the color of hyperlinks, switching between the Brushed, Aqua, and Unified title/toolbar application appearances, disabling the Web site icon cache, importing bookmarks from the Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Netscape, Camino, Omniweb, and iCab browsers, configuring of the history retention settings Safari uses, changing the search engine used in the Safari toolbar, disabling in-browser PDF support.
Download

LimeWire 4.12.6 has a new, personalized spam blocker to get rid of junk results. Automatic updates will keep you sharing faster than ever with the latest version. With version 4.12 you can search for Creative Commons and Weedshare licensed files, and publish your own creative works with Creative Commons licensing. LimeWire continues its guarantee of no adware or spyware.

LimeWire is the world's fastest P2P file-sharing application, letting users share and search for all types of computer files, including movies, pictures, games, and text documents. The applications other features include dynamic querying, the ability to preview files while downloading, advanced techniques for locating rare files, and an extremely intuitive user interface.

Version 4.12.6 adds support for Intel-based Macs and provides several bug fixes.

Download

This program moves beyond napkin sketching to communicating ideas in 3D. SketchUp takes what may traditionally be seen as a complicated task and adds an intuitiveness many design programs fail to achieve. On first impression, this sketch-based 3D-modeling program may look as if it has sacrificed function for simplicity, but that's not the case. Despite the extremely user-friendly interface, SketchUp offers a suite of powerful 3D drawing tools that lets you experiment and play with new designs. All actions are carried out using two button bars, one that runs down the left side and another that sits along the top of the work space. After you simply sketch and draw edges, the application fills in the objects to create 3D geometry. SketchUp handles perspective and alignment calculations automatically. You can then export these objects into CAD, 3D-modeling, image-editing, illustration, or animation programs for further manipulation and editing. Functionality and price mark this for professional use, but curious amateurs may enjoy exploring the demo.

Skype for Mac 2.0 Beta

• Make video calls to anyone on Skype, no matter what kind of computer they are using.
• Say hello, smile, or even wave with anyone, anywhere in the world on Skype.
• Great quality video that just works.
• All for free of course.

How much can your pocket hold? That’s up to you and your iPod. It holds up to 20,000 songs, up to 25,000 photos, and up to 100 hours of video — or any combination of each.⁽¹⁾ So you can browse movies on the iTunes Store, download the ones you want (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, perhaps?), then sync it to your iPod. Same goes for TV episodes, new iPod games, 99¢ songs, best-selling audiobooks, and an entire universe of free podcasts. Go ahead. Fill ’er up.

Suit yourself

From cases to car kits, customize your iPod with accessories made especially for it. Pick up an iPod Universal Dock for more convenient syncing. Add an iPod Hi-Fi for room-filling sound. Sync photos on the go with an iPod Camera Connector. Attach a voice recorder to take audio notes. And if you buy from the Apple Store online, you can even have your iPod engraved with your name or a message.

Input and output

• iPod
  • Dock connector
  • 3.5-mm stereo headphone minijack

• iPod Universal Dock
  • Dock connector
  • Audio and composite video output
  • S-video output

Power and battery⁽⁶⁾

• Built-in rechargeable lithium ion battery
• Playback time (30GB model)
  • Music playback time: Up to 14 hours when fully charged
  • Photo slideshow with music viewing time: Up to 4 hours when fully charged
  • Video playback time: Up to 3.5 hours when fully charged
• Playback time (80GB model)
  • Music playback time: Up to 20 hours when fully charged
  • Photo slideshow with music viewing time: Up to 6 hours when fully charged
  • Video playback time: Up to 6.5 hours when fully charged
• Charging via USB or FireWire to computer system or power adapter (sold separately)
  • Fast-charge time: about 2 hours (charges up to 80% of battery capacity)
  • Full-charge time: about 4 hours

Mac OS X Tiger introduced Dashboard, a wonderful world of widgets that perform common tasks and give you fast access to information on the Web. With Mac OS X Leopard, you get even more widgets, plus .Mac syncing that keeps all your Dashboard preferences on all your Macs.

Clips and flicks

Create your own website widget using Web Clip in Safari for Leopard. Just visit your favorite site and click the “Open in Dashboard” button in Safari. Dashboard launches a new clip of the site in a customizable widget. From there, you can resize your Web Clip and choose from a handful of window themes. And since your Web Clip is always live, it acts just like the website it was clipped from. Dashboard for Leopard also introduces a movie widget that finds movies and showtimes in less time than it takes to make popcorn.

Widgets wherever

Get yourself a .Mac account and your Dashboard preferences can follow you from Mac to Mac. With Dashboard syncing in Leopard, when you make a change to your Dashboard preferences, Leopard automatically keeps everything in sync across every Mac you use.

Ready, set, widget

Ever wish you could make your very own Dashboard widget? Say hello to Dashcode. With it, you can get a widget up and running in minutes, even if you’ve never written a line of code in your life. Choose from a handful of Dashcode widget templates — including a countdown timer, RSS feed, photocast, podcast, or gauge — or create a widget from scratch with a blank template. Drag in an RSS link and your widget populates with a full feed. Drag in a photocast URL and your widget transforms into a self-contained slideshow. Drag in a podcast link and you can start playing the feed right from your widget.

When your widget is ready for prime time, Dashcode packages up all the your files and the Apple-provided resources required to deploy your widget to Dashboard or submit it to Apple.com.

Take everything you love about iPod and shrink it. Now shrink it again. With 1GB (240 songs), 2GB (500 songs) and 4GB (1,000 songs) models starting at $149, the pencil-thin iPod nano packs the entire iPod experience into an impossibly small design. So small, it will take your music places you never dreamed of.

Believe Your Ears

Call it astonishing. Unbelievable. Impossible, even. Then pick it up and hold it in your hand. Take in the brilliant color display. Run your thumb around the Click Wheel. Put on the earbuds and turn up your music. That’s when everything becomes clear: It’s an iPod.

It holds up to three days’ worth of music. It plays for up to 14 hours between battery charges.⁽¹⁾ It displays the color album art for the song you’re listening to right now. It carries your photos, podcasts and audiobooks. It syncs seamlessly with iTunes. It connects to a host of iPod accessories. Simply put, iPod nano is 100-percent iPod. And then some.

Touch and Go

iPod nano’s Click Wheel puts music under your thumb. Click to fast-forward, rewind, play, pause or access menus. Use the touch-sensitive surface to control volume or browse music. You can do it all without looking. But with an iPod this beautiful, who’d want to?

Song Stylings

Add accessories to your iPod nano via the Dock connector and headphone jack and your music will always keep up with you — at home, on the go, even in your car. Of course, in either signature white or sleek black, iPod nano itself makes the ultimate accessory.

Up to 4GB⁽²⁾ of skip-free storage on a featherweight iPod means you can wear almost three days’ worth of music around your neck. Or jog with 1,000 songs on your arm. Now that you can take your music everywhere, there’s no limit to where it will take you.

1. Rechargeable batteries have a limited number of charge cycles and may eventually need to be replaced. Battery life and the number of charge cycles vary by use and settings. See www.apple.com/batteries for more information.
2. 1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less. Song capacity is based on 4 minutes per song and 128-Kbps AAC encoding; photo capacity is based on iPod-viewable photos transferred from iTunes. 25,000 photos refers to 2GB and 4GB iPod nano. 1GB iPod nano holds up to 15,000 photos.

So, you’ve bought a new Macintosh, and now you may be wondering how to make it safer. There are several things that you can do which will protect your Mac from viruses and hackers. Macs are already very difficult to hack, but don’t let that fact allow you to become lenient with your security.
1. Download all of the software updates available. This seems like a no-brainer, but some Mac users forget to download the newest updates. You can even set your computer to automatically download new updates. However, some dial-up users encounter trouble when trying to downloaded updates. If you are a dial-up user, the best suggestion is to leave your Mac on overnight and let it download. Apple releases many programs that fix bugs in iLife applications, and in Mac OS X. Probably the most important of these updates are the security updates. Apple periodically offers security updates for its operating systems (Panther and Tiger).

2. Be careful what you download. Some people use P2P downloads for Macintosh (I.E. Poisoned). Be careful when downloading using a P2P because you do not know where the music or file is coming from. Some P2P users specifically make corrupted files to send via music downloading programs. Generally, it is a good idea to stick to iTunes, because those files are ACC Protected and offered through Apple so they certainly won’t have viruses.

3. Choose the best and safest Internet Browser. Safari comes standard on all new Macs as part of iLife. However, some people do not enjoy Safari as much as others. Some say that Safari is not as safe from hackers as other browsers. Safari can also be a problem if you are going to a web page that requires a version of Internet Explorer or Netscape to view it. You can download Internet Explorer and Netscape for Mac, but again, some believe that these browsers are not as safe from hackers. Many people believe that Mozilla Firefox (my personal favorite) is the safest browser to use because of its customizable features. Firefox is available for downloading on the Macintosh.

4. Don’t be afraid to buy anti-virus software. If you have to download files from the internet as part of a job or hobby, then it is probably a good idea to have some sort of anti-virus software on your Macintosh. Apple provides a wide-variety of anti-virus software that is constantly updated.

5. Finally, keep an eye on those e-mail attachments and instant messages. Some hackers have programmed viruses to IM you from one of your friends’ screen names. Don’t click on any link without knowing what it is first. Most e-mail providers use virus scans automatically, but you should always be extra careful when downloading an attachment. If it is from someone you do not know, don’t trust it.

Apple computers are very safe from hackers, but they can always be improved. Keeping a computer safe, and running well requires a great amount of time and energy. Just remember that if your computer is safe, your Apple experience will be much more rewarding.

Any computer can play movies. But only one comes with all the software you need to make blockbusters. Every new Mac features iMovie HD, iDVD, and iWeb — three easy-to-use essentials for importing, editing, and sharing mouth-watering masterpieces. Part of the iLife ’06 software suite, these applications work seamlessly together. Try finding that on a PC.

No matter what you shoot — from MPEG-4 to HDV video formats — you can import everything to the Mac smoothly. How smoothly? They call it “plug-and-play” for a reason. Just connect your standard or 16:9 video camera to the Mac via FireWire and iMovie goes to work.

iMovie gives you moviemaking power you never imagined. Each iMovie theme contains consistent design elements, including backgrounds, motion graphics, titles, and effects. Acting as building blocks for your project, professionally produced scenes with drop zones allow you to easily add videos by drag-and-dropping them. Then just type in your titles and select optional visual or audio effects. iMovie does the grunt work. And thanks to iMovie’s seamless integration with the entire suite of iLife applications, it’s a snap to add photos from iPhoto and music from iTunes or GarageBand, too.

When you’re ready to share your jaw-dropping movies with friends and family, iDVD and iWeb have you covered. Make professional-looking widescreen DVDs with ease. The beautiful themes, polished menus, and smooth transitions in iDVD will dazzle and delight your toughest critics. Your friends will hardly realize they sat through vacation photos and home movies.

The sharing doesn’t stop there. Get your movies online. Fast. Just drag, drop, and design web pages using your choice of templates in iWeb. Access all your iLife content — movies, photos, music — without leaving iWeb. Drag an iMovie project into the template and with one click publish to .Mac. It’s that simple. You can even use iMovie and iWeb to create video podcasts, complete with chapter markers and live web links.

If you decide you want to move onwards and upwards to more complex video projects, only the Mac gives you a smooth transition from iMovie to Final Cut Express HD. You’ll be thanking the Academy in no time.

Who doesn’t want to be a rock star? Think of the groupies. The gold records. The limos. Sounds great, doesn’t it? So why wait to take the stage? Every new Mac comes with iLife ’06, including GarageBand, the perfect software to start you on your road to fame.

GarageBand gives you dozens of instruments ready to play the first time you start it up. Strings. Drums. Horns. “But wait, don’t I need a keyboard,” you ask. Nope. You already have one. Sure it’s got letters instead of sharps and flats, but turn on Musical Typing and your computer keyboard becomes a baby grand. Play the “white keys” using the middle row, the “black keys” with the upper row. Or use the resizable onscreen keyboard.

Of course if you want to add a “real” keyboard, you can. Take any USB or MIDI keyboard and plug it in. GarageBand knows a keyboard when it sees one. No searching for drivers. No changing settings. No traveling that twisted road of: Start > Settings > Control Panel > Sounds and Audio Devices > Sounds Tab before you can get going. It really is “plug and play.”

Since it’s hard for new artists to go solo, GarageBand comes with loops that give you an entire band. To add these loops, you’ll need to have mastered two skills: cut and paste. From there, you can stretch, shrink, and layer music to your heart’s content. By adding a microphone, or using your Mac’s built-in mic, you can record your own vocals. Then record yourself singing backup and use the Vocal Transformer to change the tone or gender of your voice to create a chorus.

Not into keyboards? GarageBand has lots of love for all you guitar players, too. Plug in your electric guitar, select a sound, and let it rip. What would it be like to play that big arena? Add some screaming rock distortion and find out. Or maybe try a little swamp blues twang or a cool, clean jazz sound — it’s up to you. After all, you’re the rock star.

You’ve practiced your radio voice enough. Time to set up the recording studio. With a Mac, that’s as easy as opening GarageBand in iLife. With a PC, well, keep practicing your radio voice.

Recording your very own podcast on a PC may seem the stuff of dreams. After all, just getting started requires downloading the right recording software, buying a professional microphone, and compressing the audio yourself. By the time you do all that, you may be left speechless. With a Mac, you can go from zero to “on the air” in minutes.

GarageBand — included on every Mac as part of the iLife ’06 suite — requires no more than a built-in microphone and your sparkling wit to record a professional-sounding podcast complete with sound effects, jingles, and an artwork track. Provide color commentary on the baby’s first steps. Record your diary instead of writing it. Or just roll it stream-of-consciousness style. With a Mac, you can even record iChat sessions for an interview-style show. Virtual family reunion, anyone?

Start talking and you’re halfway there. GarageBand’s Speech Enhancer improves the sound of your voice, going so far as to simulate a professional mic — even if you’re not using one. Then you can browse the GarageBand jingle library to find the perfect theme song. A rollicking surf tune for your daily Tide Report. Or something a bit more raw for your rant against The Man. Don’t worry that the music will detract from your message. GarageBand also lets you add a dynamic “ducking” effect to automatically reduce music volume when you speak, so everyone can hear the talk above the tunes.

And if you want your listeners to see what they’re hearing, just drag in images to the podcast artwork track. You might choose your smiling (or smirking) face as the cover art, then show everything from your latest political cartoon to your vacation snapshots as you talk about them.

Of course, it takes more than a sound file to achieve podcast stardom. You have to get your message out. Lucky thing the Mac you recorded the podcast on, the software you used to produce it, and the largest repository for podcasts on Earth — the iTunes Music Store — were all devised by the same company. In just a few clicks, you can submit your podcast to iTunes for all the world to hear.

So, are you ready to become a podcast celebrity? Only if you have a Mac.

With a Mac, you can create your very own website — complete with video, podcasts, and photo galleries — in the time it takes a PC to churn out a single text-only blog entry.

Say you want to create a video blog. Well, it so happens that a MacBook Pro or iMac comes tricked out with a built-in iSight camera. That’s right. A fully featured video camera, nestled right at the top of the screen. To film the first entry for your blog, just launch iMovie HD. Then record your latest rant, rave, or rumination. Or hold the cat up there for a few seconds. Whatever suits your fancy.

Once you’ve recorded your entry, export it to iWeb. Pick a website theme in iWeb to match your mood (or the cat’s eyes). Your movie appears in a brand-new template, all ready for you to personalize with clever commentary. And when you’ve wrapped up your entry for the day, iWeb lets you hit the web in stride. Click “Publish” and your brand-new video blog goes live, complete with index and archive pages.

And that’s only one example of how everything in iLife works together to give you a one-way ticket to webdom. Got a photo album you’re dying to share with the fam? Click the little iWeb icon at the bottom of your iPhoto album and voila! Instant photo gallery. Or start with a blank slate in iWeb and use the iLife Media Browser to drag in all your stuff. Add a graduation photo to your latest blog entry. Post the family reunion podcast you recorded at your grandma’s house. Everything you create in iLife appears in the Media Browser, ready to make its web debut.

That’s what you get with a Mac and iPhoto. One place to find everything you need to create the photo books that set the standard for elegant simplicity.

Sure, you can create a photo book using a PC. If, that is, you can juggle. One application to manage your images. Another to edit them. And let’s not forget the time you’ll spend uploading or emailing your photos to the Internet. The hodgepodge of tools you’ll find there. Or the cookie-cutter approach to design that many offer.

Compare all that to the integrated and robust experience available on the Mac where iPhoto does it all. Easy to use, iPhoto offers an intuitive environment for everything you want to do with the photos you take. Even if you have thousands of them, iPhoto makes it easy to find just the ones you want to share. It also offers you a rich assortment of Apple-designed themes and a complete set of built-in tools that make it easy to customize your book from the first page to the last. Add pages, change themes, crop or rotate images, resize your photos, add effects, insert captions or other copy, drag photos from one page and drop them in another.

Suddenly remember a photo you’d like to include in your book? On a Mac, you simply drag it in from the library. Two seconds, tops, and you pick up right where you left off. On a PC, you’d have to stop what you’re doing, start up another application, find the photo you want, transfer it to an editing app for finishing touches, export it, then upload it to the website of the book vendor you’re using. What a hassle.

iPhoto, in contrast, offers a one-stop solution, even providing a simple formula for ordering books. Click one button, and your book is whisked off to the advanced digital presses where it’s professionally printed and bound. “Sensational” best describes the results. Tack sharp photos. Vibrant color.

With iPhoto, it’s so much fun to create a book — not to mention calendars, greeting cards, slideshows, and websites — that you won’t hesitate to make another.

Think of it as the next best thing to teleportation. On a Mac, video chatting with friends, family, and colleagues the world over is even simpler (and sometimes faster) than dialing a long-distance phone number.

Only a Mac is so ready to video chat that it brings along its own camera. The built-in iSight camera on every new iMac, MacBook, and MacBook Pro lets you start a video chat (or join one) at a moment’s notice. There’s nothing extra to buy, nothing to attach, no cords to fumble with, no software to install or configure. Simply start up iChat AV, click your buddy’s video icon and you’re ready to chat with sight and sound — with up to three friends at once.*

With support for video chats between up to four people and a stunning, three-dimensional view, iChat AV practically puts your friends and family in the room with you. See their faces reflected into space, just as though you were sitting around a (very polished) table together.

You can even record your video chats for podcast. The included GarageBand program simultaneously records the audio from your chat and assigns different tracks to each participant — identified by buddy name and icon — for easy editing. GarageBand even captures a real-time still image every time each guest speaks, for the podcast artwork chat. Great for pros and aspiring talk show hosts alike.

“Want to see what the future of personal computing looks like?” asks Computerworld’s Michael Gartenberg. “Don’t wait for Microsoft to show you; go out and get yourself a copy of Apple’s latest operating system release, [Mac] OS X Tiger. It’s that good.”

He isn’t alone. From Walt Mossberg — “The best and most advanced personal computer operating system on the market” — to David Pogue — “The classiest version of Mac OS X ever” — to Eric Convey — Tiger can “revolutionize the way you go about your computer business” — one highly respected tech pundit after another has lavished praise on Mac OS X v10.4 “Tiger.”

And for good reason. Mac OS X, the most advanced operating system in the world today, delivers a platform of features designed to make the time you spend on your computer a wholly pleasant and entirely productive experience.

Can you say that about your computing life in Windows?

If you’ve ever tried to find a file you know is hiding somewhere on your hard drive, wait till you try Spotlight. Built into the very fabric of Mac OS X, Spotlight puts lightning-fast search capabilities right at your fingertips, quickly showing search results as you type. And Spotlight searches most of the file types, including images, emails, contacts, calendars, and applications, you have on your drive. Duly impressed, David Pogue says it’s “like Google for your hard drive.”

Has Microsoft delivered such functionality yet?

Vista, Microsoft’s future operating system, promises to bring gadgets to the Windows desktop. Small, highly focused applications ideal for accomplishing discrete tasks, gadgets are a truly great idea. But why wait until 2007? Since it began shipping last year, Mac OS X Tiger has offered a bounty of Dashboard Widgets. Right now, you can use Mac OS X widgets to review your stock portfolio, check the weekend weather, track flights, take screenshots, play Sudoku, or conduct research in Wikipedia. That’s technology you can put to good use today.

And here’s another example: Really Simple Syndication. RSS makes it easy to quickly scan the latest headlines and article summaries from thousands of websites. Unfortunately, if you use Internet Explorer, you need two applications to take advantage of RSS — both IE and a news browser. On a Mac, Safari offers built in support for RSS, letting you see, at a glance, when the latest news items appear. So you never have to leave your web browser to check your news browser because the latter is built into the former.

There’s more. Tabbed browsing in Safari. Crystal clear video conferencing. Parental controls. Easy DIY scripting with Automator. Mail with built-in spam blocking. It all comes with Mac OS X, and there’s nothing extra to buy. In fact, even buying Mac OS X is easier because one version gets you everything. No need to choose among a myriad number of versions. You install the same version of Mac OS X on your laptop as you do on the desktop you use at work or at home. If you do have multiple Macs, you can purchase a Family Pack that allows you to install Mac OS X on up to five Mac systems. And without any nasty activation codes to contend with either.

With Mac OS X, the future’s right before your eyes.

From its breathtaking industrial design to its elegant desktop icons to everything in between, a Mac delivers a computing experience to savor. And the more you get to know it, the more you’ll want to spend time with it. How many things can you say that about?

Apple designers and engineers agonize over every millimeter of every new Macintosh model and every pixel of the user interface. The result: ergonomic products that are the toast of the design world. You can see obsession with detail wherever you look: the orderly layout behind the removable back cover of the iMac, the pint-sized perfection of the Mac mini, the anodized aluminum alloy enclosure of the MacBook Pro, even the elegantly simple Mighty Mouse.

About the user interface, the more said the better. It starts with the desktop. A unique, friendly background image welcomes you, and photo-realistic icons on the Dock and in the Finder beg to be clicked. Launch the Dashboard and marvel at the colorful widgets — small applications that are as elegant as they are functional. Start a multi-person video conference using iChat and a built-in iSight camera and see an astonishing three-dimensional view of all participants. Enjoy pristine video quality in QuickTime movies.

No detail is too small. Window title bars possess the eye-pleasing look of brushed metal and brightly colored buttons that immediately signal their functions.

So throw out your preconceived notions of how a computer should look, then take a closer look at a Mac.

If you’ve ever wanted to make a movie, publish your own podcast, create gorgeous coffee-table books, produce a Hollywood-style DVD, state your views in a daily blog, make beautiful music, or any combination of the above, you’ve definitely come to the right place.

To iLife to be exact. A suite of stellar applications, iLife consists of iPhoto, iMovie HD, iDVD, GarageBand, iTunes, and iWeb. Every one’s a winner. And everyone can perform magic with them. What’s that, you say? On the PC, you can find any number of photo applications, music software, DVD authoring packages, jukebox programs, and web creations tools. And if you don’t like the wares of one developer, another one has a package with just as many features. Maybe more.

And therein lies the problem. You can purchase lots of separate programs from different PC developers, and any one of them may have similar features to those you’ll find in one of the iLife applications. But how many of those applications work hand in glove together? How easily can you transfer photos you used in a photo book to burn onto a DVD or incorporate as a still in a movie or quickly add to a blog? They may work pretty well apart. But how well do they work together?

Seamless integration. That’s the telling difference between iLife and all the great pretenders out there. Independently superb, the iLife applications work together to let you easily create practically anything you can imagine.

For example, thousands of people just like yourself have created movies using iMovie HD. They may never have edited a movie prior to using iMovie, but iMovie put all the necessary tools at their disposal and made the entire editing process drag-and-drop easy. Once bitten with the movie-making bug, those filmmakers are now screening movies shot in high definition and showing them on widescreen displays. How many PC applications do you think can do that?

That’s not all. Thanks to the integration built into the iLife suite, those filmmakers are also incorporating voiceovers recorded in GarageBand; effortlessly plucking high-res photos from their iPhoto libraries; scoring their movies with tracks out of iTunes; adding chapter markers that iDVD uses to create scene selection buttons; and with a single click, using iWeb to publish those movies online for the world to enjoy.

In iLife, creativity rules the day.

Your toaster doesn’t crash. Your kitchen sink doesn’t crash. Why should your computer? Think of the countless hours you would save if your PC worked on your time — not the other way around. Then think about a Mac.

If you spend more of your precious time figuring out why your PC crashes than you spend taking out the garbage every week, you need a Mac. Still not convinced? Just ask the millions of people who use and love a Mac why it’s become such an integral part of their lives, and most will tell you the same thing: it just works. Letting them do what they want to do. When they want to do it. All the time.

That’s because a Mac offers absolutely flawless integration of hardware and software. Only with a Mac do you get a system built by the same people who make the OS, applications, and the computer itself.

Take a Mac out of its box and you experience that hand-and-glove fit from the get-go. Plug it in. Turn it on. And you’re ready for anything. With a Mac, you’ll find all of the essentials built right in. USB. FireWire. Ethernet. Every new Mac comes with built-in antennas for wireless networks, so getting on the Internet from anywhere is a mere matter of turning on your Mac. No reconfiguring your network settings. No plugging in some clunky wireless card.

The real secret behind the Mac’s crash-resistant performance lies deep within the operating system itself. Beneath the surface of Mac OS X lies an industrial-strength UNIX foundation hard at work to ensure that your computing experience remains free of system crashes and compromised performance. Time-tested security protocols in Mac OS X keep your Mac out of harm’s way. Most Fortune 500 companies, governments and universities rely on UNIX for their mission-critical applications. And now, so can you.

Of course, should you happen to experience the occasional hiccup with your Mac, you won’t get the runaround. Because Apple makes the whole enchilada, one phone call — or better yet, one visit to the friendly Genius Bar at your local Apple Store — can solve both hardware and software problems in one fell swoop. And when you add the AppleCare Protection Plan, you extend your support options to include three full years of free telephone help and comprehensive repair coverage. That ought to save you some time and sanity, too.

Welcome to the next level in computer animation. No, it’s not a feature film, it’s your desktop. Core Animation lets Mac developers create applications and experiences as groundbreaking as Spaces and Time Machine, without needing to know esoteric graphics and math techniques.

Order from depth

Creating dynamic scenes can get confusing without a systematic approach. Using Core Animation, Mac developers can create snazzy animations in their programs using different media types, such as text, 2D graphics, OpenGL renderings, and video, simultaneously. Core Animation dynamically renders these media layers together, complete with transparency effects and Core Image filter and effects. When content changes, Core Animation updates it, automatically.

Two heads are better than one

Core Animation takes advantage of the multiple cores in most new Intel-based Macs. When developers use the framework for an application, the process runs in its own thread. On a multi-core Mac, this means the application runs on one core, and Core Animation on the other. Core Animation runs on any Core Image-capable Mac (including most Macs shipped in the past two years).

Bring ideas to life

Let Core Animation take the headache out of animation. Previously, developers had to create a scene and manage movement of individual elements on a frame by frame basis. Core Animation opens up the power of Apple’s graphics technologies and proven interface aesthetics to every developer. Look for whiz-bang visual effects in an upcoming crop of scientific visualization tools, media organizers, and whatever else you can dream of.

Why keep all the amazing features of iCal to yourself? With Mac OS X Leopard, everyone in your group, family, or company can share calendars, schedule events, and exchange information using iCal.

Gather ’round

Simply posting your group’s calendar to the Internet is a one-way transaction. Turn it into a conversation with iCal sharing in Leopard. Whether you’ve got an activities calendar or a work schedule, your friends, family, and colleagues can participate in managing the group’s events, thanks to support for the CalDAV standard in iCal. And don’t worry about prying eyes: Security features built into iCal let you control who has access to your calendars.

See who’s free

Make things happen with group scheduling in iCal for Leopard. Forget the guesswork and send meeting or activity invitations when you know people can attend. With iCal, you can view attendees’ availability before you schedule a meeting. Of course, if you’d rather let iCal do the legwork for you, a new Auto Schedule feature finds the best time for everyone.

Get the drop on it

iCal for Leopard introduces a new way to share the files and information you need to carry off a successful meeting or event. With the event dropbox, anyone attending an event can share documents, contacts — even video — by simply dragging them into an event. Not using an iCal server to schedule your event? You can still stay organized by dropping files into your events and sharing them by sending invitations that contain your dropbox contents.

Room service

iCal for Leopard not only puts all your people in one place, it reserves the place, too. Reserve meeting rooms and equipment as you create your meeting invitations. When you add a room or resource to your invitation, iCal displays its availability.

Filled with fun new features, iChat turns any mere video chat into an event. Video backdrops, Photo Booth effects, photo slideshows, Keynote presentations, or an entire Mac desktop — you can share it all with iChat in Mac OS X Leopard.

Chat from anywhere (or just look like it)

Set the scene for a chat with video backdrops in iChat. Drag and drop a picture or video from iPhoto, iMovie, or the Finder into the video preview window to create a backdrop that will fool your buddies into thinking you’re chatting from your living room, the beach, or the moon. Even buddies who don’t have Leopard will see your backdrop.

Chat for effect

Transform your iChat video using the nifty effects introduced in Photo Booth — a new standard feature in Leopard. Add Kapow! to a chat with the comic book effect. Get twisted with twirl. Or soften your image with glow. Just choose an effect and your video changes instantly.

Share and share alike

Remote control takes on a whole new meaning with iChat in Leopard. Thanks to iChat Screen Sharing, you and your buddy can observe and control a single desktop via iChat, making it a cinch to collaborate with colleagues, browse the Web with a friend, or pick the perfect plane seats with your spouse. Share your own desktop or share your buddy’s — you both have complete control at all times. And when you start a Screen Sharing session, iChat automatically initiates an audio chat so you can talk things through while you’re at it.

Show off (without showing up)

Why wait for a darkened room and a projector to present vacation photos or Keynote slides? With Leopard, you can do it all remotely, from the comfort of iChat. Use new iChat Theater to present photos from iPhoto, slides from Keynote, or content from any iChat-enabled application with any iChat or AOL AIM buddy. And do it in style — full-screen, accompanied by a video feed of you playing host. iChat’s virtual presentation room makes a big impact.

Pick up the tabs

With iChat for Leopard, you can keep tabs on your chats — with a new tabbed interface. Pull all your chats (even group ones) into one simple window, then toggle between them using tabs that display your buddy’s screen names. Text bubbles indicate when someone is typing, so you don’t miss a chat when a buddy’s tab isn’t at the front.

With Mac OS X Leopard, Mail transforms mere email into personalized stationery. A virtual memo pad accessible from anywhere. To-do lists that can change as often as your errands do. For everything you do with email — and some things you haven’t thought of yet — there’s Mail.

Sincerely yours

Mail for Leopard features more than 30 professionally designed stationery templates that make a virtual keepsake out of every email you send. From invitations to birthday greetings to travelogues, each stationery template features coordinated layouts, fonts, and colors — everything’s designed to keep your mind on the message. You can even effortlessly add pictures to your email via a new Media Browser. Just find the perfect photo and drag it onto your template. Hit “Send” and get ready for some astonished replies from everyone — even folks on PCs.

Noteworthy, indeed

Ever email yourself a quick reminder that ends up lost in your inbox? Mail makes it more convenient to capture and organize all your thoughts into handy notes you can access from anywhere. To write yourself a note in Mail, click on the Note icon and start typing. Brainstorm ideas, jot down lecture notes, or just scribble down a phone number — Mail notes can include graphics, colored text, and attachments. Group your notes into folders or create Smart Mailboxes that automatically group your notes based on topic or interest. Since your notes folder behaves just like an email Mailbox, you can retrieve and read notes from any Mac or PC.

Much ado about To-Dos

Forget manually entering a new item to your to-do list every time an email hits your inbox. With Mail for Leopard, simply click an email or note to create a new To-Do. Include a due date, an alarm, or assign priorities. To-Dos you create in Mail automagically appear in iCal, complete with any edits or additions you make. And, of course, you can always get a little help from your friends by sending To-Dos to anyone via email.

Stop the presses

Thanks to new support for RSS in Leopard Mail, you’ll never miss another article. All the news you’re most interested in is delivered right to you. Just subscribe to an RSS feed in Mail and you’ll know the moment an article hits the wire. Even better, that same article will be waiting in your inbox. Quickly scan headlines and jump between feeds via the streamlined interface. And sorting your news is easy, too. Just set up a Smart Mailbox using search terms that pique your interest and Mail dynamically updates it when relevant articles are posted to your subscribed feeds.

You do a lot on your Mac. So what happens when all those projects pile up? Easy. Use Spaces to organize all your windows into groups and banish clutter completely. A Space for everything and everything in its Space. Only with Mac OS X Leopard.

Rearrange the rooms

Create a Space for work. Create a space for play. With the click of a function key, you can drag all your application windows onto different Spaces. Keep all your work projects in one Space and that fun flick you made in iMovie in another. Create a communication Space for iChat and Mail. Organize your Spaces however you want just by dragging windows into them. You can even rearrange your Spaces with drag-and-drop ease — shift a Space and every window in it comes along for the ride.

Make yourself at home

When you’re working in one Space and you want to move to another, you can get a bird’s eye view of all your Spaces, or just toggle between them using a few simple keyboard commands. Even the Dock is down with Spaces: When you click on an icon there, Leopard whisks you away to the Space (or Spaces) where you have that application open.

Pick your patterns

Configure your Spaces by visiting the Dashboard and Exposé preference pane in System Preferences. Add rows and columns until you have all the desktop real estate you need. Arrange your Spaces as you see fit, then assign what function keys you want to control them. You can also lock specific applications to specific Spaces, so you’ll always know where, say, Safari or Keynote is at all times.

Set it, then forget it

The first time you attach an external drive to a Mac running Mac OS X Leopard, Time Machine asks if you’d like to back up to that drive. Set up the drive and Time Machine takes care of everything else, automatically, in the background, so you can get on with your digital life.

Back up everything

Right from the start, Time Machine in Mac OS X Leopard makes a complete backup of all the files on your system. That includes your system files, applications, accounts, preferences, music, photos, movies, documents — everything you keep on your Mac. As you make changes, Time Machine only backs up what changes, all the while maintaining a comprehensive layout of your system. That way, Time Machine minimizes the space required on your backup device. Since backups are stored on your device by date, you can browse through your entire system as it appeared on any date. And that’s what makes Time Machine different from any backup application you’ve ever tried.

Go back in time

With Time Machine, you can restore your whole system from any past backups and peruse the past with ease. Can’t find a file you want? Enter Time Machine’s time-based browser to see a snapshot of how your entire system looked on any given day — file by file. When you find the file you want, just select it and restore it. Time Machine brings it into the present. You can do the same with a group of files, whole folders, even your entire system. With a single click.