Earlier this year Apple shipped Final Cut Server, its media asset management and workflow automation solution. Unlike Final Cut Pro and the other creative applications bundled in Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Server is not a content creation application. In fact it's something quite different: a powerful server-based solution for managing media and assisting users with tools to automate time- consuming pieces of your workflow. Charlie Miller explains how.

Among all of the iPhone documentation published, how do you separate the wheat from the chaff? In this article, Matt Twomey highlights some of the documentation from Apple that he has found most accessible, but at the same time particularly useful.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs stood in front of a sold out crowd at Apple's WWDC and told them that Apple is about to release phones that are better than the ones in their pocket and will cost half of what theirs cost. The developers responded with sustained enthusiastic applause. That reaction makes perfect sense. Jobs' keynote wasn't about products -- it was about a promising future, especially for developers in the audience.

ScreenFlow grabs audio and video from the computer and external sources, provides a timeline for editing these recordings, and offers a range of effects aimed specifically at creating on-screen software presentations. This screencasting studio is easy to use and affordable. And if you have a Mac running Leopard with ScreenFlow loaded up, you're suddenly in the educational movie making business. Jochen Wolters reviews this application and provides plenty of video samples.

Apple automation guru, Sal Soghoian talks about the scriptability of Aperture in this podcast interview with Derrick Story. Sal points to the "Aperture-InDesign Integration Demo" as a powerful example of how AppleScript can extend Aperture's capabilities.

Most of the features of VectorDesigner are available in higher-end vector drawing programs, but the $70 cost of VectorDesigner is hard to beat. Moreover, if you've never used a vector drawing program before, the simple features you'd end up using in a higher-end program aren't much different than the standard features in VectorDesigner -- and in VectorDesigner, they're easy to find. Adam Goldstein delves into his discovery from the Macworld Expo floor.

Aperture 2.0 is faster, easier to use, and produces better images, says Joe Schorr, Apple Senior Product Manager. In this interview with Derrick Story, Joe explains how Aperture 2.0 meets those lofty claims. This chat covers a lot of new ground.

Steve Jobs opened the Macworld surprise envelope at the 2008 keynote address and out slid a sleek notebook computer: the Macbook Air. Daniel Steinberg was on hand for the unveiling and files this report about all the new hardware, iPhone updates, and more.

O'Reilly Media has a full slate of in-booth tech talks and plenty of Mac and digital media titles to browse during Macworld SF 2008 (Jan 15–18, Moscone Center). We have goodies, too! If you buy any book at the O’Reilly booth (S-2218), you’ll get a free Mac OS X Quick Reference Card (while supplies last). When you stop by the O'Reilly booth, swipe your badge for a chance to win O'Reilly books (a $500 value) and gear. And if that isn’t cool enough, all O’Reilly books are discounted 30 percent.

Apple's product manager of automation technologies is the same guy who many of us consider the ultimate AppleScript guru: Sal Soghoian. Even though Sal and I live only a few hours apart, I had to go all the way to the Caribbean to chase him down for this podcast interview. It was worth it. Sal talks about Leopard, automation improvements, and of course, how this all affects Aperture.

Aperture provides plenty of tools for creating professional looking slideshows from your images. But you have even more possibilities outside its cozy confines thanks to its interoperability with other Mac OS X applications. In this first part of a two-part series, Dominique James explores the options within Aperture, then takes you on a tour of other Mac OS X slideshow tools.

Learn how to use Cocoa to build an exception handling system. This article shows the classes and keywords needed, how to prepare and raise a Cocoa exception, as well as how to intercept and process the exception.

Giles Turnbull examines Mark Hurst's "Good Easy" productivity tools and methods for Macs. Giles spoke with the author of "Bit Literacy" about his philosophy and choices for simplifying computing.

In this final segment of our Open Directory series, Noah Gift introduces Manage Client for OS X (MCX) and shows how to use the OS X specific schema attributes for Mobility to synchronize laptops to a network profile and change Dock settings. Noah also demonstrates how Windows can use Open Directory for authentication and Home Directories.

Giles Turnbull examines several methods and applications for managing your PDF collection.

Erica Sadun examines Elgato's new Turbo.264 graphics co-processor in a USB dongle. In this article, you'll discover whether the Turbo.264 is right for you and, if so, how to use it for your video compression needs using four handy compression methods.

Noah Gift shows how to set up a Mac with an NFS home directory using Open Directory, integrate an existing Linux NFS file server for a cross-platform home directory, and authenticate a Linux client into Open Directory.

In the latest installment in his series on windowing system options for Mac developers, Jeremiah Foster takes a look at using GTK+ on OS X. If you like living on the bleeding edge, this article will show you how to install and get up and running with GTK+ on OS X.

Learn about the new features announced in Leopard, Safari for Windows, and the way iPhone development is going to work. Daniel Steinberg reports from this year's WWDC keynote.

AppleScript automation is one of OS X's most useful features, and it can be made even better with the use of keyboard shortcuts. Jochen Wolters examines three ways to assign a keyboard shortcut to an AppleScript, and digs in to FastScripts and Quicksilver in this detailed tutorial.