GarageBand Genius

GarageBand. It's a program that comes as part of the iLife suite of applications that run on a Macintosh. If you are a musician then GarageBand can be your sound studio.

If, on the other hand, you are a musical hack, devoid of talent, tone deaf and unimaginative, then GarageBand is nothing short of a miracle. With GB you can string together loops of pre-recorded material, dub in songs from iTunes, do voice overs and GB will even enhance your voice. I won't go into Husky Female in much detail other than to say that one should go with one's strengths.

Anyway, the point of all this is to describe a genuine benchmark of computer speed. Now, the PowerBook, which was my Speed Demon until yesterday, could mix down a 40-minute Podcast in about 20 minutes. Considering all it's doing, that's chomping the bits big time.

Introduce the MacBook Pro and it mixes down the same Podcast in 5 minutes.

I wanted to believe Steve Jobs when he said this machine would be 4-5 times faster than a PowerBook, but you know hype. Tons of small print.

Well, I'm here to tell you that this machine is some fast and I made sure I didn't cripple it by short-changing memory or disc. I opted for the full 2 Gb of memory and the 7200 rpm disc which only increased the base cost by $400.

Assuming that the E Key holds out I'm in for some Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Oh, and the backlit keyboard that lights up the letters, even the E Key, when the light gets dim is ample excuse for my nocturnal activity.

So, here I am, in the end, singing the praises of an Intel-based computer when I've been a Motorola-IBM bigot all my life. Pigs will fly and if they use GarageBand, sing too!