Apple announced on Tuesday that the entire catalog of John Lennon‘s solo music has been added to their store. It’s all available as DRM-free music (which is also higher quality AAC files). This follows the addition of Paul McCartney‘s entire catalog earlier this year.
Good stuff. But when will the Beatles arrive?
If you’d like to see all this great stuff for yourself, you can watch the entire presentation online! Just click the image above.
As was predicted, Apple announced a new iMac yesterday. And they are beautiful! You can tell from the photos, but in person they are even better. We took a trip to the Apple Store last night to see the new Macs, and it was worth it!
They are a bit leaner (slimmer), and they have lots more power (feautring a new Core 2 Extreme processor in the top of the line model) … and they just look fantastic.
Enough about looks. What do you get with this new iMac?
Here’s a quick overview of the new machines:
Yes, that last point is actually a valid point. Lately it seems every time Apple has a special event, they are announcing something that won’t ship for months! (Remember AppleTV and the iPhone??) So, this was nice to be able to see and play with right away.
First thing I noticed was the new look. It is stunning. That glossy glass display does make it look very nice. Jen didn’t care for the functionality of it though. In the store with lots of flourescent lights, it was quite reflective. But to my eyes, it still looked very nice.
It’s also super fast! When I tried to import photos into iPhoto to play with its new features, it was nearly instantaneous. Incredible. Everything opened very fast, and the new skimming feature worked transparently in either photos of videos. Fantastically fast machines.
Then there were the new features. Not enough time to play with them with more folks wanting to play with the one display model, but what I saw, I liked. The new Events feature in iPhoto (and iMovie, I believe) does make it easier to sort/find photos. I would have liked to see it work with a much larger library. But, with what I did have, it seemed like it will be a great tool for organizing our photos and movies. iMovie looks totally different, and to be honest, at first glance was a bit overwhelming. Perhaps it would not take long to learn the new features (supposed to be able to make a great movie in 20 minutes). I did not have enough time to play with it, though.
Actually, one of my favorite new features announced at the special event yesterday is the upgrade to .Mac. Along with the “Back To My Mac” feature that will be part of Leopard once it comes out in October, they announced a new way to use .Mac, and some capacity increases.
First, subscribers will get 10GB of storage, and 100GB of monthly bandwidth (versus 1GB and 10GB currently, respectively). That is a decent upgrade. Greater space was needed for one of the main new features announced yesterday as part of the iLife ’08 upgrade, the .Mac Web Gallery. This is a superbly formatted, one-click way to publish photos and now videos as well. (Note… iMovie also offers an easy one-click publish option to YouTube as well! That’s great!) .Mac Web Gallery is even better than sending stuff to iWeb, which is what you would do in iLife ’06, from iPhoto. Check out this working model of a .Mac Web Gallery.
iWeb also got the enhancements I was hoping for. Now you can embed code (like YouTube videos, GoogleMaps, etc) into your iWeb/.Mac pages. iWeb has also been upgraded so that the features that used to only work with a .Mac address will now work with your own personal domain. (Like GregsApples.com!) 🙂
Apple also announced a speed increase for the Mac Mini, a new application for its iWork suite called Numbers, and some other fun stuff. But I’m tired of writing about all this stuff! 🙂 The best thing to do is FIRST, visit my GregsApples.com blog, then click the links I have provided there to some GREAT content at Apple’s website.
Some really great new stuff, and as I’ve said before… there has never been a better time to get a Mac!
When I was looking at the configurations available of the new iMacs at the Apple Store online, I think I got a little carried away. I wanted to research what options were available to people, and well… I got to dreaming.
“What if money were no issue… what would my (current) ideal Apple order look like…..”
Well, I told a friend I could easily drop $100K at the Apple store, but it turns out I was wrong. Here’s most of the list of what I would get for our family if spending limits were set free:
And all of that added up to just over $63,000! Not bad!!!
🙂
And don’t forget, we could sell all of our current equipment and put that towards the $63K… so, that would make it a bit cheaper.
🙂
Of course, in our current financial state, this will never happen. But hey, you never know… If I had a million dollars… 😉
I found this article yesterday, (which includes the video above) about an upcoming release of another virtualization option for the Mac. This software will allow you to run Windows apps as separate windows on your Mac, with icons in the dock… just like they were native Mac apps! Sweet! I think you still need to buy/install Windows, but sounds like the UI is much better.
(Articles on yesterday’s Apple announcements are forthcoming. Some have been posted at GregsApples.com, but I am currently writing a newsletter, and will detail my hands-on experience with the new iMac here at GregsHead.net later today. Stay tuned…)
Well, it seems that along with the possibility of a new iMac, perhaps Apple will also announce a new version of .Mac, it’s internet service. For a long time now, people have not been too impressed with .Mac, because without much effort, you can find better versions of most of what .Mac offers across the world wide web – for free. What .Mac offers (and the reason we currently have two accounts) is integration of all of those things, for $99/yr.
At this year’s WWDC, some great new .Mac features were announced. The main one that caught people’s attention was the “Back To My Mac” feature that will allow users to access all the files (they choose to make availble) on their Mac – from anywhere! This will be extremely useful to anyone who travels with their laptop. (I’ll use it!!)
So, tomorrow morning, look for the planned .Mac updates, as well as, I suppose, those shiny new metallic iMacs!
Fun!
(And, don’t forget, if you want one… let me know!) 🙂
Apple announced a special event to be held on August 7th, calling it “a presentation focused on the Mac.” Most speculate that we will see a new version of the iMac with the brushed aluminum look, perhaps bigger screens (at least dropping the 17″ model) and a new keyboard similar to the one on the MacBook. We can’t be sure, but this would make sense with it being back to school time, and the iMac is the best overall value (for the desktop lines).
Stay tuned…
Yesterday Apple announced it’s third quarter earnings, and actually it was astounding. They broke all kinds of their own records, and beat whatever estimates smart financial guys had predicted. Basically… they rock. Way more Macs sold than ever in one quarter. More iPods than this quarter one year ago. Tons of iPhones (and that was in just TWO DAYS) and I think iTunes is even doing better than ever.
When does it end? It’s got to… but… when? They just keep doing better!
If you can afford their stock… I’d say it’s still worth buying! It just keeps going up!
This is interesting… Some folks have already found a way around the “required” activation of the iPhone and are able to use it as a 6th generation Wi-Fi iPod. Intriguing…
I found this review on the AppleInsider.com website today. Quite thorough and really explains all the greatness of the iPhone (as best as you can with words… you really have to actually hold it and use it to understand how amazing it is.)
He covers all the features (and missing features) in a very in-depth article. If you’re interested in the iPhone, I’d say it’s worth the read. Don’t forget to check out all the great videos Apple has posted as well. Links at my Apple site (visit the Blog section…)
