?You can?t imagine how satisfying it is to know that if your hard drive dies, you will lose no more than one hour of work,? relates David Pogue (nytimes.com) in his review of Time Capsule. ?The Time Machine automatic backup feature of the latest Mac OS X version backs up your Macs onto the Time Capsule, automatically, constantly, completely and wirelessly. And in my book, automatic, constant, complete backups are the only kind that really count.?

Using his 24-inch iMac, Jean-Pierre Hébert, the 68-year-old artist-in-residence at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara, California, creates ?algorithmic art? in a variety of media?from sand to copper to tree bark. ?Mac OS X is a very good environment for me to work in,? he says. ?It offers the best of all possible worlds.?

The first online science and nature film series, TERRA lets us enjoy the compelling documentaries produced by the grad students in the Science and Natural History Film Program at Montana State University. Through multiple seasons of programming, TERRA introduces us to the nature of our world.

?If your mom or dad has a Mac, help them safeguard their digital heirlooms with Apple?s Time Capsule,? implores Eric M. Strauss (abcnews.com). ?Time Capsule combines simple setup and a speedy wireless network with automatic backup in a tidy box. Plus, recovering Aunt Chippie?s first black-jack victory photo after your mom?s hard drive crashes will certainly make it all worth the cost.?

If you?re browsing the web on a public computer, the last thing you want to do is leave personal information about yourself behind for others to discover. Of course, if you use Safari, you have a number of ways to safeguard your privacy while browsing publicly. Read about them in this week?s Pro Tip of the Week.

?A slate of under-the-hood improvements have facilitated a performance spike in the standard models that makes them an especially good value for people looking to upgrade,? reports Roman Loyola (macworld.com) in his recent review of the new iMac. ?The 2.8GHz iMac, in all its 24-inch glory, is a stunning machine and is bound to make an impression in your home or office,? Loyola concludes.

Nik Software today announced that its eagerly awaited Viveza plug-in for Aperture 2.1 is available for immediate download. Powered by U Point technology, the Viveza plug-in lets photographers make localized enhancements to brightness, contrast, or color without ever having to leave Aperture. ?With the power and popularity of Aperture, we want our customers to decide how and where they edit their digital photos,? said Michael J. Slater president and CEO of Nik Software.

A great way to text, set up video conferences with multiple parties, or host remote Keynote presentations, iChat also offers a fast and simple way to exchange large files with clients or colleagues. Find out how by watching the latest Quick Tip of the Week.

In his glowing review of the new 8-core Xserve, Tom Yager (infoworld.com) asserts that it ?breaks the PC server mold with big iron-class reliability, availability, and serviceability features, but with neither the big iron price tag nor management complexity.? A great option for small business, ?Xserve is built and supported to run not for one or two years, but three years, five years, and beyond.?

At Intezyne Technologies, viruses, spyware, and endless restarts kept researchers at the biotechnology startup from job one: finding better treatments for catastrophic illnesses. But the company put their computer ills behind them once they switched to the Mac. ?Working on a Mac allows me to spend more time calculating and analyzing my data, and less time trying to figure out what?s wrong with my computer,? says co-founder Kurt Breitenkamp.

To celebrate the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, such talented artists as Tony Gilroy, Amy Poehler, Clive Owen. Errol Morris, Jeremiah Zagar, and Wong Kar Wai came to the Apple Retail Store, SoHo, to speak about their latest projects. Now you can enjoy their talks, too, by downloading the latest podcasts.

If your Mom?s not comfortable with computers, consider computer training as a Mother?s Day gift this year, suggests Troy Wolverton (mercurynews.com). Apple offers ?a program it calls One to One. For $99, the service provides a year?s worth of once-a-week, hourlong training sessions for Mac users.? Or you could consider one of these other options for Mother?s Day.

The Associated Press today launched a new service for iPhone. Called Mobile News Network, the service ? now with more than 100 participating newspapers ? delivers local news, sports, news video, news photos, and other content directly to your iPhone via a customizable web application.

?Apple?s put a load of work into Leopard Server, and it shows,? reports Oliver Rist (pcmag.com). Awarding Mac OS X Leopard Server a four-star Editor?s rating, Rist notes that ?after exploring this OS for a while, I?ve concluded that Leopard is definitely a competitive all-purpose small-business server.? In fact, Rist believes that ?for small businesses making their first server-buying decision, Leopard is a viable option?no matter what their clients are running.?

Rick Sammon (doubleexposure.com) offers his ?top ten list of Aperture 2.1 features that help me maximize my time when working (and playing) in the digital darkroom ? features that also help me create dynamic images.?

?All you need is an idea and a Mac,? says Brian Storm, the founder and prime mover behind MediaStorm. On his award-winning, multimedia storytelling site, Storm has used Aperture, Final Cut Studio, and Logic Studio to establish a new paradigm for photojournalism. ?The Mac is just a magic box,? says Storm. ?It allows us to do so many amazing things. It?s a seamless visual environment that keeps the creative juices flowing.?

Peter Burrows (BusinessWeek) notes that customer enthusiasm is pushing more and more Macs into the Enterprise and that ?the call is coming from mainstream users, people who may have started off with an iPod, then bought a Mac at home and no longer want a ?Windows-by-day, Mac-by-night? existence.?

PC Magazine awards 4/5 stars to the new 24-inch iMac, calling it ?the iconic all-in-one desktop that others try to emulate.? Praising its energy efficiency, lack of pre-loaded ?bloatware,? and space-saving design, reviewer Joel Santo Domingo concludes that ?even though there are a slew of new competitors to the iMac, none of them have quite enough innovation or execution to dethrone the king of the all-in-one desktops.?

Awarding the new 24-inch 2.8GHz iMac an Editor?s Choice, CNET gives it an 8.5/10 score and says, ?Given its strong application performance and competitive price, we give the iMac a strong recommendation as a mainstream desktop in addition to being best in class in the all-in-one niche.?

Starting today, movie fans can purchase new releases from major film studios and premier independent studios on the iTunes Store on the same day as their DVD release. New releases and catalog titles will be available from 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Lionsgate, Image Entertainment and First Look Studios.

When Elizabeth Mateo (cnnmoney.com) put three ultraportables through their paces, only one stole her heart. MacBook Air. ?Using the Air,? she says, ?is like Christmas, your birthday, and Valentine?s Day all rolled into one.? In fact, Mateo was so impressed with its looks, size, weight, and performance that the 20-year PC users says ?I now lust for this laptop and will switch to a Mac as soon as possible.?

Explains Rob Pegoraro (washingtonpost.com) Time Capsule ?combines a fast 802.11n WiFi router and a massive external hard drive in an enclosure no bigger than a regular AirPort Extreme router.? Working in conjunction with Time Machine, it ?allows you to back up every Mac in the home over your home network.? And, notes Pegoraro, since he began using it, ?its primary trait has been a near-complete lack of drama.?

A friend or colleague sends you a Word document and asks you to give her some feedback. Don?t have MS Word on your Mac? Not a problem. You?re running Mac OS X Leopard, so you have an application on your Mac that will let you open the Word document, edit it, then save it as a Word document again. What application could that be? Read the latest Pro Tip of the Week and find out.

Whether you want to develop applications for iPhone or the Mac, you can get expert assistance at this year?s Worldwide Developers Conference from Apple engineers and learn hands-on in the highly informative sessions and labs. And since we?ve extended early registration until May 9, you can still save $300.

When you find a link for a PDF while surfing the Web, Safari lets you open it right in the browser with a single click. In Mac OS X Leopard, Safari also offers new PDF controls that let you zoom in, zoom out, save that PDF file, or open it in Preview. Find out how by watching the latest Quick Tip of the Week.

The updated all-in-one iMac introduced today offers the latest Intel Core 2 Duo processors and the most powerful graphics ever available in an iMac. The ultimate all-in-one desktop computer includes faster processors with 6MB L2 cache, a faster 1066 MHz front-side bus across the entire line, and 2GB of memory standard in most models. And the 24-inch iMac now offers a 3.06 GHz Intel processor and the high-performance NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS graphics as options. Available immediately, the new iMac starts at just $1,199.

Jim Dalrymple (macworld.com), still going strong on his recording project, knew he wanted to write ?a traditional type blues song?nothing too complicated, just a good slow blues number in A.? But even though he knew what he wanted, laying down some tracks proved harder than he thought. Until, that is, Dalrymple remembered Magic GarageBand. Just 45 seconds later, he ?had the perfect slow blues song playing, while I filled in the leads.?

??We?re seeing more requests outside of creative services to switch to Macs from PCs,? notes David Plavin.? In fact, the operations manager for the Publicis Groupe explained to Galen Gruman (infoworld.com) that he?s received so many requests that he ?now supports 2,500 Macs across the U.S. ? nearly a quarter of all Publicis? U.S. PCs.?

Watermelons, avocados, apples, onions, carrots, squash, tangerines?these fruits and vegetables come to your dinner table thanks in large part to the industry of the tiny honey bee. Better Bees, a podcast from KQED Public Broadcasting (part of iTunes U) explains what researchers are doing to ensure that the honey bee survives deadly mites, Colony Collapse Disorder, and other threats to their survival.

Starting next month, Apple takes the Final Cut World Tour to cities from Hollywood to Mumbai. During the free, in-depth seminar on Final Cut Studio 2 and Final Cut Server, Apple production experts offer step-by-step demonstrations of workflows used by leading post-production houses, creative agencies, Hollywood film studios, and broadcast television operations. Sign up today to reserve your seat.

Apple today posted revenue of $7.51 billion and a net quarterly profit of $1.05 billion, or $1.16 per diluted share, for its fiscal 2008 second quarter, which ended March 29. ?We?re delighted to report 43 percent revenue growth and the strongest March quarter revenue and earnings in Apple?s history,? said Steve Jobs. During the quarter, Apple shipped 2,289,000 Mac computers (representing 51 percent unit growth and 54 percent revenue growth over the year-ago quarter), sold 10,644,000 iPods, and reported quarterly iPhone sales of 1,703,000.

Did you know that you can use iCal to easily set up recurring events, send yourself reminders, invite participants to meetings, reserve meeting rooms and equipment, attach documents to an event, and more. Find out how you can tap into the power of iCal by reading the latest Pro Tip of the Week.

On the same day that Apple posted the Software Development Kit (SDK) that third-party developers can use to create image editing plug-ins for Aperture 2.1, the first image editing plug-ins from third-party developers have arrived and several others are expected to appear shortly.

The London interactive agency Hi-ReS! builds intriguingly imperfect, immersive experiences with the help of Mac applications such as Adobe Creative Suite, Final Cut Studio, Logic, and Autodesk Maya. ?The Mac puts everything in one place,? says Hi-ReS! Creative Director Florian Schmitt. ?Especially with the new MacBook Pro. For the first time, we have the power to do anything anywhere.?

In its annual tribute to innovation, Businessweek invites us to meet the ?world?s 50 most innovative companies.? Foremost among them is Apple. ?Our repeat winner has rocked the wireless handset world with the iPhone, spurring rivals to imitate the touch-screen design. After just nine months on sale, it?s already No. 3 in the global smartphone market.? Indeed, Apple not only leads the overall rankings but also tops the Consumer Products and Technology categories and comes in second in the Entertainment and fourth in the Retail categories.

While Mother?s Day will be here before you know it, you still have plenty of time to get Mom something really special. Simply use the photos you have in your iPhoto or Aperture library to create a gift she?ll treasure for years to come. If you place your order by May 11 and use our special offer code, you can even save 20% on the cost of your custom photo book. (Order by May 4 if you?d like her to receive it in time for Mother?s Day.)

For the first time ever, this year?s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco offers a track designed for those developing applications and optimized web content for iPhone. In fact, we?ve already listed 80 sessions and hands-on labs essential for iPhone development. The conference offers developers a great opportunity to speak with Apple?s own iPhone engineers and user interface experts, and if you sign up now, you can take advantage of early registration pricing and save up to $300.

Deb Roy and his wife Rupal Patel have turned their house into a high-tech observatory and live-in laboratory. With the aid of their young son, the pair of academics are collecting data for the most ambitious study ever conducted on how children acquire language. So far, their Human Speechome Program has amassed more than 200,000 hours of audio and video recordings ? more than 250 terabytes of data ? and they?ll depend on a Mac application called TotalRecall to help them make sense of it.

In what columnist Glenn Derene (popularmechanics.com) billed as the ?Ultimate Lab Test for New Desktops & Laptops,? both the iMac and MacBook soundly outperformed Vista-running PCs. ?In our speed trials,? reports Derene, ?Leopard OS trounced Vista in all-important tasks such as boot-up, shutdown and program-launch times. We even tested Vista on the Macs using Apple?s platform-switching Boot Camp software?and found that both Apple computers ran Vista faster than our PCs did.

Preview, says Bob Levitus (chron.com) has ?always been a gem. But in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, it?s turned into a real powerhouse with many new and useful features.? For example, Preview?s ?Mark Up icon provides a drop-down menu with highlighting, strike-through and underlining tools, all fantastic for editing text. ? And, Levitus points out, you?ll find tools for annotating PDFs, reordering pages in a PDF, and several other new and highly useful features.

Twentieth Century Fox today released Juno, the critically acclaimed comedy that took home an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. If you?d like to make Juno part of your movie collection, you can purchase and download it from iTunes immediately. Or you can visit a store and purchase it on Blu-ray Disc or a Special Edition DVD. Since both feature iTunes Digital Copy, you can easily transfer Juno to your Mac, PC, iPod, or iPhone and enjoy it at home or to go.

Bento, the personal database application for Mac OS X Leopard, ?harkens back to what software once was: simple, uncomplicated and really, really useful,? recalls Mark Kellner (washingtontimes.com). ?Need to create a super ?to-do? list? Done. Ditto for inventories, donations, expense tracking, even a membership list for your book club.? The highly approachable application allows users to ?be more organized, more easily, and that?s a good thing,? he says.

In Mac OS X Leopard, Dictionary has evolved into an even more valuable resource, letting you not only quickly search the built-in Dictionary, Thesaurus, and Apple Dictionary on your Mac but also search Wikipedia, the expansive online encyclopedia. There?s more. You can now access the Dictionary from Mail, Safari, iWork, and most other Mac OS X applications. Find out how by watching the latest Quick Tip of the Week.

From The War: A film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick to The Jewish Americans: A Series by David Grubin to Meet the Author, featuring more than 40 interviews with top children?s book authors and illustrators, WETA ? Washington D.C.?s Public Broadcasting Station ? delivers a rich assortment of educational programming for students, teachers, and parents alike. And they?re not alone. Educational programming from four other PBS stations, including KQED, WGBH, thirteen, and ideastream can also be seen and heard on iTunes U. Take a look. And enjoy.

?I?ve been using Time Capsule for a few weeks now, courtesy of Apple, and have found it to be an ideal backup for anyone with a Mac ? especially a MacBook, MacBook Air or MacBook Pro,? relates Ken Mingis (computerworld.com). ?Not only does it serve as an 802.11n Wi-Fi router, beaming the Internet throughout the house or small office, but it also marries that router with a server-grade Serial ATA hard drive spinning at 7,200 rpm.?

Calling it ?a small, thin, unobtrusive box that fetches music, photos and videos from your home network using either a wired or a wireless connection,? Walt Mossberg lauds Apple TV in a response to a question submitted to his ?Mailbox.? Not only does it work ?with any computer, Windows or Mac, that has Apple?s free iTunes software installed and running,? but it ?also allows you to access YouTube and to purchase music and TV shows from Apple, and rent movies from Apple, without the use of a computer.?

Beginning this month, two of the best wedding photographers in the world ? Joe Buissink and Yervant ? visit multiple US cities as part of the ?Two Views? seminar tour. In addition to offering marketing strategies and demonstrating camera techniques, the two award-winning and trend-setting photographers ? both of whom use Aperture 2 ? will discuss the value of Aperture in their capture-to-output workflow. Apple representatives will also be on hand to demo Aperture 2 for attendees.

Many of us don?t back up our computer because we think it?s too much trouble, suggests Hiawatha Bray (boston.com). But, thanks to Time Machine and Time Capsule, ?data backup is easy for devotees? of the Mac, says Bray. ?Without bothering the user, Time Machine preserves all the data on your computer, constantly updating any changes to your files.? And Time Capsule automates the process even further. Offering a ?spacious place to store backed-up files,? it partners perfectly with Time Machine to ?painlessly and wirelessly? back up one?s otherwise irreplaceable files.

?Apple?s new MacBook Air makes an impressive eco-conscious statement,? writes Paula Lehman (businessweek.com). ?The new ultra-thin computer has a recyclable carrying case and was given a silver rating by the new Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) standard from the Green Electronics Council.?

Egyptologists have extracted amulets from the remains of mummies in the past. But before Dr. Samuel Mérigeaud made the amulets of Seramon the subject of his doctoral thesis, no one had done so non-invasively. Embalmers interred the ancient Theban priest with multiple glass, stone, and beeswax figurines placed inside his thoracic and abdominal cavities. And though they remain there still, X-ray tomography, VGStudio MAX 1.2.1, a Mac Pro, and two Apple Cinema displays have revealed them in spectacular fashion. See for yourself.