This week on Mac Power Users, David Sparks and I talk about the history and present of the Mac mini, before diving into a myriad of ways to use it as a home or office server, as well as its merits as a standalone workstation:
Introduced as a low-cost way to switch to the Mac, the Mac mini can now be found working quietly as home and office servers, hosting files, media, backups and more.
My thanks to our sponsors for this very nerdy episode:
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This week on Download, I joined Florence Ion and Mikah Sargent in drafting stories coming from CES:
The Consumer Electronics Show is, as always, a flood of new technology, corporate announcements, products that will never ship, and embarrassing garbage. How better to sum it all up then with a draft? In this episode, we choose the top stories of the week, then move on to pick some vaporware and the worst story of the show. But don’t worry, in the end we’ve got some fuzzy CES puppies to cheer you up. Is that fresh bread I smell?
Shelly Brisbin has updated her excellent iOS Access for All for 2019:
This is the sixth edition of my book, and it’s fully updated for iOS 12.1. The book has grown along with Apple’s mobile software – its 168,000 words, with a page count that varies by platform, but that’s between 700 and 800 pages on many platforms. But more important than word or page count, iOS Access for All remains most comprehensive iOS accessibility resource anywhere!
This is the book when it comes to the topic of accessibility and Apple platforms.
This week, I chatted with Tyler Stalman about what it is like to have a decade-old blog, and how I moved from writing to podcasting, and how it all became a job.
Tyler is awesome, and this podcast is great. You should subscribe.
David puts his new cohost, Stephen Hackett, in the hot seat to talk about his tech background, love of the Mac, and if Batman or Superman is better. All of that, plus a couple of exciting event announcements.
I have huge shoes to fill with Katie retiring, but I could not be more excited to get started.
My thanks to our sponsors this week:
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CES is here and it started with quite the news, via Samsung PR:
With the new iTunes Movies and TV Shows app on Samsung Smart TVs, Samsung customers can access their existing iTunes library and browse the iTunes Store to buy or rent from a selection of hundreds of thousands of movies and TV episodes — including the largest selection of 4K HDR movies. iTunes Movies and TV Shows will work seamlessly with Samsung’s Smart TV Services, such as Universal Guide, the New Bixby and Search, to create a consistent experience across Samsung’s platform.
With AirPlay 2 support, Samsung customers will be able to effortlessly play videos, photos, music, podcasts and more from Apple devices directly to Samsung Smart TVs, including QLED 4K and 8K TVs, The Frame and Serif lifestyle TVs, as well as other Samsung UHD and HD models.
The iTunes Store and iPod were two sides of the same coin; Apple sold music to make the iPod easier to populate, and iPod customers bought music to play on their devices because it was easier than stealing it.
Today things are different; Apple now needs its services as many places as possible. That’s why the jokes I keep seeing on Twitter about the ROKR aren’t that applicable. Apple didn’t need the ROKR to succeed, and clearly treated it with disdain. If Apple is going to succeed with its forthcoming streaming service, it has to be broader than the base of customers with Apple TVs.
In 2003, iLife was a huge selling point for the Mac. It made managing photos, making movies and burning DVDs all easy (and even fun!) for users who found more pro-focused apps difficult to approach.
At Macworld 2004 — 15 years ago this weekend — Steve Jobs introduced GarageBand.
I’ve watched this keynote section before, but in reviewing it this week, I was struck by how underrated it is. I think it’s in the top handful of Jobs performances on stage.
He opened the section citing research that said half of U.S. households had at least one person who currently played a musical instrument. That number seemed surprising to me at the time, but he argued that this meant GarageBand had huge market potential.
The program was designed for who weren’t trained as audio engineers. Users could mix up to 64 tracks, blending digital instruments and loops with their own music and vocals to create songs right at home. The loops Apple included were smart; their pitch and tempo were adjusted automatically to better blend with any given project.
Jobs was joined by John Mayer on stage to demonstrate the product. He sat down at a keyboard hooked up to Jobs’ Mac and after joking he wasn’t a great keyboardist, played riff after riff as Jobs changed the virtual instruments in GarageBand. The back and forth between the two is a lot of fun to watch, even years later. It’s a fun, laid back keynote segment.
He later switched to a guitar, which again, was piped right into the Mac on stage. Jobs could change how the instrument sounded with just the click of a mouse. This seems simple today, but to have this in a consumer application in 2004 was mind-blowing.
Together, they built a project, with Mayer’s live playing, coupled with examples from the program’s loop library. Jobs then exported the song, right into iTunes.
GarageBand rounded out iLife ’04, joining iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD. The entire suite sold for $49.
Of course, the program has seen a lot of changes over the years. It gained (and then lost some) podcasting features. Apple has also added automation, ringtone creation, project templates, more advanced plug-ins, instrument lessons and a whole lot more.
Today, GarageBand is on the iPad and iPhone as well. I really like the iPad version in particular; music creation and audio editing are so well suited for touch surfaces. It was introduced in 2011 with the venerable iPad 2.
Both the Mac and iOS versions have been used by countless hobbyists, but both have also powered major projects over the years. Nine Inch Nails released a GarageBand project for their song “The Hand That Feeds” for fans to remix on their own, as did Radiohead with “Nude.” St. Vincent’s “Actor” was arranged with the program, and loops from it can be heard in countless songs.
I remember being blown away by GarageBand when I first installed it on my PowerBook. I had dabbled in some other music programs at the time, but GarageBand was far easier to understand right out of the box.
I’ve since graduated to Logic for my podcast editing, but GarageBand gave a generation of people (including me) the tools to create music and other audio on their Macs and iOS devices without the headaches found in other applications. That’s what all great Apple apps do, and now that iLife is but a memory, it’s a free program for anyone with an Apple device. I just love that.
