Here are the main applications on the CSTS computer along with
their uses. All of these programs have on-line help files and some printed
documentation, which can be found in the CSTS. These computers also
contain
several
other applications. To view and use them, use the Finder to view the
contents of the “Applications” folder.
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The Finder. The background file management application on the Mac.
It stays open always, to allow you to view and manage your files,
connect
to
other servers, etc. |
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Dashboard. A collection of "widgets": small appllications
that can perform useful tasks (a calculator, a flight
tracker, a dictionary, a translator, etc.). Dashboard widgets occupy
their own space, separate from the regular desktop. |
Audio / MIDI / music notation |
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Digital Performer. Professional audio
and MIDI recording and editing. This is the Department's standard
audio/MIDI application, found also in Brunton's recording studio,
in the Music Computer Lab (Computer 5), and on the Department's laptop
computer. |
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Pro Tools LE. The "light" version of another very popular professional
audio and MIDI recording and editing application. |
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Ableton Live. An audio sequencer that allows you
to compose, record, remix, improvise and edit your musical
ideas. It brings together, in a single interface, acoustic,
electronic and virtual instruments, as well as digital audio
recordings. |
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Soundtrack. An audio recording and editing application
from Apple, meant as part of its Final Cut Express digital video software.
It comes with an extensive collection of pre-recroded patterns. |
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Garage Band. Apple's consumer-level music production
software, more-or-less a subset of Soundtrack. Use their library of
ready-made music patterns and add to them using MIDI-generated
and recorded audio. |
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iTunes. Apple’s music player. It will play
music from CDs, imported .mp3 files, as well as the .mp4 (AAC) format
(better quality and smaller files than .mp3). Use it to burn audio
and .mp3 CDs. |
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Sibelius. A powerful, popular, and
fairly intuitive music notation application. It is the standard for
this Department. |
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Digital video |
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Final Cut Express. A "light" (but still quite powerful)
version of Apple's Final Cut professional-level video editing software. |
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LiveType. An application for applying titles to digital video; bundled
with Final Cut Express. |
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iMovie. Apple’s consumer-level digital video
application. Easily create digital movies with sound tracks, voice-overs,
transitions,
text-overs, etc. |
Media players |
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Quicktime Pro. Apple's media player. Quicktime
plays audio files (it underlies iTunes), MIDI files, and several types
of
video files. This Pro version enables several features not available
to the regular verion. |
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RealPlayer. Plays Real-media and several other
types of files. |
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Windows Media Player. Plays Windows Media files. |
Office applications |
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MS Word. The OS X version of Microsoft Word, part of the MS Office
suite, MS Word is the industry standard word processor. It shares
files seamlessly with the Windows version of MS Word. |
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Pages. Apple's word processing
application. It features powerful and easy-to-use page layout capabilities.
Pages will import and save to MS Word format files. |
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MS PowerPoint. The standard presentation application.
Use it to build digital slide shows. (The Choral Room computer also
has PowerPoint,
so you can build presentations here to show in class.) |
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Keynote. Apple's presentation application. A worthy
alternative to PowerPoint. |
Other applications |
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Safari. Apple’s Web browser. It’s
a very good one: generally fast, usually stable It supports “tabbed
browsing”: opening new pages in tabbed windows -- quite useful. |
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iPhoto. Apple’s photo application, works
for pictures in much the same way as iTunes works for music files.
Import, build collections. Has some image manipulation functions. |
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iDVD. Apple’s DVD creation application. Create
DVD with movies, picture collections, etc. that you can play in regular
DVD players. |
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Preview. A viewer application for PDFs and many
other types of image files. Also useful for converting one image file
type into another. |
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