GarageBand Updated To Celebrate Chinese Music

Apple released an update for the Mac and iOS versions of GarageBand that add Chinese instruments. This is to celebrate the "rich history of Chinese music." Apple says that they've added Chinese instruments like the pipa, erhu and Chinese percussion to their growing instrument list. There are also 300 Chinese musical loops added. And to top it off, you can share GarageBand creations via Chinese social networks if you wish to.

Apple Posts The Story Behind Holiday Ad 'The Song'

Today, Apple posted a behind the scenes look of this year's holiday ad, 'The Song'. It talks about he voice-o-graph and how Dana Williams, the granddaughter in the film, used musical talent and GarageBand to create her song. Check out the embeds below.

Create Ringtones in Garageband!

Have you ever wanted to create a ringtone with a sound byte or your favorite song? Now you can! Just open Garageband on your Mac, create a new project (empty project), select "Software Instrument", when prompted, and drag a song or sound into the project. Then go to Share > Ringtone to iTunes > and adjust the length if needed. You can sync this to your iOS device and have it go off with every text or phone call. I hope this helps!

How to Move Your iPhoto Library... The EASY Way!

To easily move your iPhoto library (say, to an external hard drive), just quit iPhoto if it's open (don't just close the window, go to the menu bar and click iPhoto > Quit). Locate the iPhoto library. By default, it's located in the Pictures folder. Simply drag and drop it into the desired location and double-click it. That's it.

* This procedure is for iPhoto 8 or later. Check your version by opening iPhoto, go to the menu bar, and click iPhoto > About iPhoto.

Apple iPad Event 2013 - Part 2

Today, I'll be talking about the software announced at the Apple event this week. Apple has announced  updated versions of their apps for Mavericks and iOS 7. It was pretty much focused around iWork and iLife.

iWork:

iWork is the Apple version of Microsoft Office. Finally, iWork has collaboration. Collaboration allows for multiple people to work on one document at once. It's pretty cool (even though Google Drive had it first). Other than that, iWork brings more enhancements such as amazing styling tools and interactive charts and graphs.

iLife:

iPhoto (part of iLife) finally adds photo books to iOS. In the Mac version, you could buy photo books for about $40 each. We can finally do that on our iOS devices. Garageband (also part of iLife) allows you to play 16 tracks at once and 64-bit iOS devices (iPhone 5s, iPad Air, iPad Mini 2) can run up to 32 tracks at once. The Mac version of GarageBand has a new feature named "Drummer." First, add in your music into your mix like normal. Then, add the instrument "Drummer." Pick a drummer with the correct personality with your song and fine-tune their drumming beat and what part of the drum they hit. iMovie has some more advanced tools for editing in slow motion. This should be helpful for people with iPhone 5s'.

P.S. To the person who I gave my business card to today: I hope I didn't freak you out like that!