So, I Bought An iMac - What Should I Do With It?

Okay, so the six-year-old PC conked out on me today and I convinced the wife to FINALLY change to an Apple product.

We got an iMac. It pretty much suits our needs. Has iTunes (we each have iPods). Has iMovie (the in-laws, who live out of town, bought us a video camera to record all the baby's "firsts").

I'm just wondering, what kind of other shit should I use this thing for that maybe I don't know/didn't know it could do.

Also, I work from home quite a bit. Can I create audio files? Podcasts? Anything else to enhance stories/features/blog posts?

Basically, I've used iMacs all my nine-year-life in this business and I've never used them much for more than writing stories and laying out pages.

 

Give it to me.

"Don't give it to me. My commodore works just fine."--BTE Express

 

With that camera, iMovie, iLife and your .Mac account, you can just build a Web page devoted to your baby. No mailing DVDs to the grandparents, just direct them to that URL.

 

Thought you loved your Dell?

 

If you get stuck in the snow, you could jam it under one of your back tires to keep from getting stuck. That's about the best use I can come up with.

 

Turn it on

 

Unpack it. Plug it in.

 

You can surf the Interwebs.

 

Yes, yes, yes and yes. You can do all kinds of fun stuff, including audio. Check out the Garage Band software that came with it, or spend a few bucks on QuickTime Pro (not the free QuickTime viewer) to quickly clip audio and video files.

Set up the Mail application to receive e-mail from all your accounts, work/home/gmail/whatever. It makes a great catch-all and good backup for browser-based accounts.

Go browse for widgets at apple.com/downloads/dashboard.

Go download Firefox.

And congrats on joining the cult!

 

...Throw it out the window.

 

Good point; I was getting ahead of myself.

 

Hey Cadet

I see you can create a podcast using Garage Band. However, is it possible to conduct an interview outside of my home/office using a digital recorder and then inserting that into my podcast? I can't see how, if it's possible.