In This Chapter
Doing things the hub way
Digitizing your life
Making your digital devices work together
Huzzah! After years of empty promises of professional-quality media features for home and school — most of them coming from those silly Windows people in Redmond — Apple has developed a recipe for digital success.
By using tightly integrated hardware and software (where everything works smoothly together), Apple gives you the ability to easily organize and produce your own multimedia with the iLife suite of digital tools, which includes iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, GarageBand, iWeb, and iTunes. That same software also provides fantastic editing capabilities. Finally (and this is very important) — to paraphrase Will Smith in the movie Men in Black, "Apple makes these programs look good."
In today's overloaded world of personal electronic devices, people can try to juggle as many as five or six electronic wonders. Each device typically comes with its own software, power adapter, and connectors to the outside world. Although managing one or two devices isn't terribly difficult, as the number of devices increases, so do the headaches. When you have a half-dozen cables, power adapters, and software to cart around, the digital life can become pretty bleak. (And quite heavy. You'll need more than a backpack to lug all that gear around.)
To combat this confusion, Apple came up with the idea of a digital hub, whereby your MacBook acts as the center of an array of electronic devices. By using standardized cables, power requirements, built-in software, and even wireless connections via Bluetooth (the standard for short-range wireless communications between devices) and 802.11x wireless (for connections to your Ethernet network and your Apple TV unit), the MacBook — along with its operating system, Mac OS X — goes a long way toward simplifying your interaction with all the electronic gadgets that you use.
Given the hub terminology, think of the digital hub as a wagon wheel. (See Figure 1-1.) At the center of the wheel is your MacBook. At the end of each spoke is a digital device. Throughout the rest of Book IV, I give you the skinny on each device, but this chapter gives you the overview and tells you how they all work together.
Computers are handy machines. They can process information very quickly and never get bored when asked to do the same task millions of times. The problem is that despite their propensity for reliability and speed, they aren't so hot in the intuition department. You have to tell them how to do everything (and most of them talk only to application developers and programmers). Computers know only one thing — numbers — although they do know numbers very, very well.
In fact, binary (the language of computers) has only two values — one and zero, which represent on and off, respectively. (Think of a light switch that toggles: The earliest computers were simply banks of switches that filled up an entire room.) To work with a computer in meaningful ways, you have to describe everything to a computer with numbers — or, if you prefer, digits.
By describing audio in numerical digits, you suddenly have something that a computer can work with. Toss a computer as many numbers as you want, and it can handle them. The scientists who figured this out knew that they had a good thing going, so they proceeded to convert anything that they could get their hands on into ...well, digits. (Sorry about the atrocious pun.) Anyway, this resulted in some interesting technologies, most of which you'll surely recognize:
Audio CDs: The music is represented as numbers and is stored on a plastic disc.
Digital video: Images and sound are stored together on your hard drive or a DVD as one really, really long string of numbers.
Digital fingerprints: (No pun intended this time.) Your fingerprint is converted into numerical data, which a computer can use to compare against fingerprint data from other people.
Automated telephone operators: When you call a phone operator these days, you often aren't speaking to a real person. Rather, the computer on the other end of the line converts your voice into digits, which it uses to interpret your words. (At other times, I think I'm talking to a real person, but it's hard to tell.)
As you've probably guessed by now, practically anything can be digitized. As long as you can represent something as numbers, you can digitize that data. Whether it's photographs, video, or audio, your MacBook is adept at digitizing data and processing it.
Perhaps the most popular of digital devices, the digital camera has transformed photography forever. By using sophisticated electronics, digital cameras convert the image that you see through the camera viewfinder into an image made purely of numbers.
After this numeric information is transferred to your MacBook, your computer can cut, twist, fade, label, and paint your digital images. Because numbers are the only materials involved, you won't need scissors, paint, or adhesive tape to edit images. (Advertising photographers can say good-bye to the old-fashioned airbrush.) Your laptop does it all by manipulating those numbers. It cuts down on the messy art supplies and gives you the comfort of being able to go back in time — something that anyone who's not so handy with scissors can appreciate.
As I mention earlier in this chapter, audio CDs are one application of music represented as digital data. The physical CD is just a piece of plastic with a metal coating, but you don't even really need CDs any longer. Your MacBook can digitize audio for storage on your hard drive, too, which brings up another important point. Not only is digital information palatable to a computer, it's also very portable. You can store it on any number of storage devices, such as an iPod, a USB flash drive, or an external hard drive. (By the way, if you're a musician, you can use GarageBand and external instruments that will turn your mobile Mac into a combination of synthesizer, amplifier, and backup band. Mozart would've loved this stuff.)
When you photograph a scene multiple times per second and then replay the sequence, you get (tah-dah!) moving pictures. In the analog (as opposed to digital) world, this would be a strip of celluloid film or magnetic tape. In the digital world, such a sequence of photographs is called DV, or digital video. After you take your digital video, you can transfer that data to your MacBook to further manipulate it: You can edit it and add transitions, text, and other effects.
At the heart of your digital hub is your MacBook. To use and manipulate all the data that arrives at your laptop, your computer needs software, which provides instructions on what to do with the information that you send. Fortunately, Apple has fashioned some of the most attractive and easy-to-use software ever written to help you manipulate and manage your digital lifestyle — and that outstanding software accompanies your new MacBook as part of your purchase! The list of software that belongs to the digital hub includes
iPhoto: Use iPhoto to download, manipulate, and organize your favorite digital photographs. After everything is just so, iPhoto can print them, burn them to disc, or even help you design and order a hardbound album! (For way more on iPhoto, go to Book IV, Chapter 3.)
iTunes: iTunes offers the ability to create and manage your music and movie collection, along with sundry other media such as podcasts, Internet radio, audiobooks, and music videos. You can also purchase and download audio tracks and video from Apple's iTunes Store. iTunes can even burn CDs! (Head to Book IV, Chapter 2 for more.)
iMovie: Every film director needs a movie-editing suite. iMovie gives you the chance to set up Hollywood in your neighborhood coffee shop with outstanding results. (Just keep that double mocha away from your laptop!) For more, see Book IV, Chapter 4.
iDVD: As home video moves toward the digital realm, iDVD becomes an essential tool for authoring your own DVD media. Home movies will never be the same! iDVD is covered in Book IV, Chapter 5.
GarageBand: Call it a "music-building" application! Even if you can't play a note, GarageBand makes it easy to create your own original songs — and if you are a musician, you can turn your MacBook into a traveling production studio. The latest version can even help you learn how to play an instrument. (Turn to Book IV, Chapter 6 for more.)
iWeb: Interested in producing a professional-quality Web site, but afraid that you'll have to give up your personal life to build and maintain it? Never fear; with iWeb you can join the Web publishing crowd the easy Apple way. (I cover iWeb like a blanket in Book IV, Chapter 7.)
iCal: To help keep your hectic digital lifestyle in order, iCal (which is included with Snow Leopard) offers complete calendar features. Besides tracking your dates and appointments on your MacBook, you can publish calendars on the Web or share them with different parts of the digital hub. (Or, if you have an iPod, you can even download your appointments and carry 'em with you.)
iSync: With so many digital devices at your disposal, it gets hard to keep them all straight. iSync is software for automatically synchronizing contact and calendar information between cell phones, your personal digital assistant (PDA), an iPod, the Mac OS X Address Book, and iCal. iSync is included with Snow Leopard.
What good is a camera without a photo album? iPhoto, Apple's photography software, serves as a digital photo album. Use it to help you arrange and manage your digital photos. Beyond its functions as a photo album, iPhoto also gives you the ability to touch up your images through cropping, retouching, scaling, rotating, and red-eye reduction (photographically speaking, not morning-after speaking).
Besides offering editing features, iPhoto also works automatically with your digital camera. Simply plug in the camera to your MacBook's Universal Serial Bus (USB) port, and iPhoto knows it's there. Need to transfer photos from the camera to your photo album? iPhoto can do that, too.
When you complete a collection of photographs that you find interesting, use iPhoto to help you publish them on the Internet or even to create your very own coffee-table book, custom greeting cards, and full-color calendars. (The latest in high-tech: paper products.) And for those of you who still want that nifty wallet print to show off at work or a poster to hang on your wall, you can print them with your own printer or order them online through iPhoto. Orders made with iPhoto show up in your mailbox — the U.S. Postal Service physical one outside your domicile — a few days later.
To help you wrangle your enormous digital music and movie collection, Apple offers iTunes (see Figure 1-2). For starters, iTunes is a sophisticated audio player for all your digital audio files. But iTunes is also handy for converting audio tracks from audio CDs to a number of popular digital audio file formats, such as AAC, MP3, and AIFF. After you import or convert your music into computer files, iTunes helps you manage and maintain your music collection. You can even listen to streaming online "radio stations," 24 hours a day. The latest version of iTunes even allows you to rent or buy videos and movies, either on your MacBook or on your video-capable iPod.
Plus, Apple throws in the iTunes Store, where you can preview hundreds of thousands of songs and videos for up to 30 seconds each without spending a dime. (Podcast subscriptions are usually free, bucko.) If you latch onto something that you'd like to buy, you can use your credit card to purchase and download your media (either as individual tracks for 99 cents each, or as a complete album or movie for a package price). After the media that you've bought is comfortably nestled in iTunes, you can play it on your laptop, burn music to an audio CD, or download it to your iPod.
Why do I keep harping on the iPod? Well, as a proud owner of one, I'm glad you asked: Apple's iPod is a versatile, lightweight audio and video player with hidden extras that James Bond would covet. It has enough capacity to store your entire collection of music and several movies, but it's small enough to fit into your shirt pocket. With iTunes, you can instantly exchange media between your MacBook and your iPod. You can also use iTunes to create audio and MP3 CDs for playback elsewhere. And the iPod even works as honest-to-goodness, back-up storage ...you see, it also functions as a standard external USB 2.0 hard drive. An iPod can display text files and play games; you can even carry your Address Book contacts and iCal appointments with you with aplomb. (For the lowdown on iPod, peruse Book IV, Chapter 2.)
You needn't restrict yourself to still images: Hook up your digital camcorder to your MacBook as well. Use iMovie, the easy-to-use video editing application shown in Figure 1-3, to create and edit digital movies.
With stunning video-editing candy such as transitions, sound effects, and video effects, iMovie turns your home movies into professional productions that you'll be proud to share with friends and family. Finally, you can have a home-movie night without putting everyone to sleep.
Of course, after you create a video masterpiece, you probably want to save it on a DVD for preservation and future viewing. To help you in your endeavors, use iDVD to create — or, as video professionals call it, author — DVD movies. With the preset templates, iDVD will have you cranking out stunning DVDs with interactive menus in no time, ready to use with any DVD player.
Imagine the freedom to create your own original music by simply dragging "digital instruments" onto a canvas ...and then adding your own voice as the lead instrument! After the basic melody is in place, you'll be able to edit whatever you like, or even choose different instruments with the click of a mouse. As recently as ten years ago, dear reader, that concept was indeed just a dream. Then, software-based synthesizers and mixing applications brought musicians into the digital age. (The problem was that normal human beings couldn't afford the expensive software or the sample libraries of literally thousands of different instruments.) With the addition of GarageBand, however, the iLife suite provides everything that you need to start making your own music (inexpensively) and then create MP3 files or burn your own audio CDs. And believe me, if I can create a techno track that actually hit the speakers at a local dance club, you can, too!
In the days of old — I'm talking five or six years ago here — putting a Web site online meant hours of drudgery, usually with a so-called "what you see is what you get" page creation application. Problem was, "what you saw" was very rarely easy to create, and if you were actually successful in getting the results you wanted, you still had to get all that stuff to appear on a Web server somewhere so that visitors could actually see it. With iWeb, the creation of a Web site is intuitive, easy, and downright fun! Click and drag your way to the Web site you want, starting with a number of truly outstanding predesigned templates. Add all sorts of cool pages, such as blogs and automated online photo albums. And the best part? Click a couple of buttons, and your new work of online art appears automatically on your MobileMe Web site, or as a group of files that's ready for uploading to your Web server. Voilà!
What makes the digital hub idea even juicier is that it's an interoperable model. Let's pause to appreciate that. (What, you don't speak engineer? No problem!) In plain English, the digital hub allows you to use digital media from one part of the hub with another part of the hub. Thus, the individual parts of the digital hub can work together to complement each other. To illustrate, consider some digital-sharing scenarios:
You shoot a great photograph of your kids. It's so great, in fact, that you'd like to use it as the title screen of your family's home movie. With the digital hub, you can use that same photograph in iMovie to create your home flick. When you're done with that, transfer the whole thing to a DVD by using iDVD, and your masterpiece is safe for decades of viewing. One image just worked its way through three parts of the digital hub.
You just recorded a catchy song with GarageBand. You add the song to the soundtrack of the music video that you're creating with iMovie. Then you create a fancy opening menu and burn the finished project to DVD with iDVD to show prospective agents. Again, one piece of media has traveled through three parts of the digital hub!
Your band becomes popular and starts to play some impressive gigs. To document your band's rise to stardom, your friend films a concert with a DV camcorder. You use iMovie to transfer the video to your MacBook and create clips of your favorite performances of the concert. The clips are transferred over to the primo Web site you've created with iWeb, and your band's Internet image takes off! After that, it's a simple matter to author to DVD with iDVD, extract the audio from the video for use as an MP3 with iTunes, and grab an image from the video for a band scrapbook that you're creating with iPhoto. Now you've attained honest-to-goodness DHH (shorthand for Digital Hub Heaven). You've traversed the entire hub, easily sharing the media along the way.
Tip
Lest I forget, I should mention the other advantage of the digital hub: The media that you swap between all your "iApplications" remains in digital form, which is A Good Thing! In the previous example of shooting a concert, for instance, that concert footage remained practically pristine while it was being transferred to DVD, converted to MP3, pasted into your iPhoto album, or uploaded to your iWeb site. (Because some audio and video formats are compressed to save space, such as MP3, a purist will argue that you lost a little something. It ain't much.) Unlike with archaic analog VHS tape, you don't have to worry about whether your source is second generation — and you can forget degradation and that silly tracking control.