Big Book of Apple Hacks

Chapter 9. Hacking the iLife

What’s the best thing about a Mac? Is it the industrial design? Mac OS X? Or is it the iLife Suite? The answer is different for everyone, but one thing most Mac users seem to agree on is that iLife is a pretty nice part of the Mac experience. Out of the box (or when you boot up your new Mac), the iLife applications are useful, fun, and intuitive. But there is more power in the iLife applications than is revealed by a cursory inspection. Here are ways to get the most out of your new electronic life.

HACK 75: Get More Out of iTunes

There is a lot of power (and media manipulation) hiding under the hood of iTunes. Discover some lesser-known, but very useful, iTunes features with this handy guide.

Apple missed the start of the peer-to-peer music-swapping revolution. When music swapping was bringing university servers to a crawl, Apple was hawking Macs with DVDs so users could watch movies on their computers. What users really wanted was the ability to rip and burn CDs. A product cycle or two later, Apple realized its mistake and decided to jump into the music game as quickly as possible. Thus iTunes was born. Well, maybe not so much “born” as purchased from Cassady and Greene. Once the sale went through, Apple slapped a new interface on the program and released it to the adulation of users at the 2001 MacWorld.

iTunes morphed into more than just a digital media ...