Mac and Music News

You Software Inc. is offering Mac iTunes music lovers a free download of You Control:iTunes, the custom menu tool for Mac OS X that lets you control iTunes from the Mac OS X menu bar. You Control iTunes is a custom menu utility for Mac OS X that gives you full control over iTunes even when you are not in iTunes. With You Control:iTunes you can take control of iTunes from any menu or customized set of hot keys that you define. Pause, play, rewind or skip any song from within any application. You Control:iTunes lets you set hot keys to select and adjust any or all of the iTunes controls including Next or Previous Track, Play, Pause and even the Volume.

You Control:iTunes is a free download.

Griffin has just announced a new amazing (!) product : the PodPod. The soft foam Griffin PodPod slips into any auto cup holder and provides a safe secure ride for any iPod or iPod mini. It also places the iPod in comfortable reach for easy adjustment and perfect placement for the iPod or iPod mini with an iTrip on top.

The PodPod will ship next month for $9.99 and is being shown this week at Apple Expo Paris.

The Reason Drum Kits Refill is a very realistic and detailed drum sounds library for Reason with 60 drumkits made up from about 10.000 samples. The use of 70 layers per note – velocity variation, mic placement – ensures you to never trig the same sample in a pattern from a midi controller.

This « Refill » allows you to add some more « human » drums to your compositions.

According to sources, Steinberg should launch the new Cubase SX3, friday during Apple Expo. New features will include audio warp realtime timestreching, a pattern style arranging (like ACID and Live) and new editing features. At least, may be this version could correctly run on OSX. (to be continued...)

Phil Schiller' Keynote was just a remake of the WWDC2004 keynote. But he unveiled the new iMac G5, featuring a G5 processor and a new design that integrates the entire computer right into the flat panel display. The iMac G5 packs a complete computer system into a mere two inches of depth. The new line offers 17- or 20-inch active matrix widescreen LCDs and G5 processors running up to 1.8 GHz starting at $1,299.


The new iMac G5, for a suggested retail price of $1,299 (US), includes:
- 17-inch widescreen LCD with 1440-by-900 pixels;
- 1.6 GHz 64-bit PowerPC G5 processor;
- 256MB of 400 MHz DDR SDRAM;
- Combo (DVD-ROM/CD-RW) optical drive;
- NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra graphics processor with 64MB video memory;
- Two FireWire 400, three USB 2.0, two USB 1.1 ports;
- 1 ...

Here are our first photos from Phil Schiller' Keynote in Paris.

Korg has released the v1.1 update for the Legacy Collection with new features for the Wavestation (ability to edit multiple steps, new "Snap" function has been added) and the MS-20/MS-20FX (external modulation Patch Points have been added to the list of external modulation sources and 32 new sounds have been added).

Info on the Korg web site.

Audacity is a free audio editor. You can record sounds, play sounds, import and export WAV, AIFF, and MP3 files, and more. This 1.2.2 version features : VU Meters added for both playback and recording., export multiple files at once, add a label at the current playback positioni, mproved support for the Griffin iMi, basic printing support has been added, and bugfixes.

Info and download from the MM Softwares section.