In this edition of MacFormat This Week...

To celebrate 200 issues of MacFormat, we've got a slew of fantastic tips to help you get more from your Mac. Also: Editor Graham reflects on the past 15 years of MacFormat and Apple history, James reviews three great products and we answer your questions.

Here are your links for this week's show...

You can subscribe to the enhanced edition of MacFormat This Week through iTunes. To do this, click here.

Or you can download the files directly: For the enhanced edition of this show, click here.

For the MP3 edition of this show, click here.

If you'd like your questions answered in a future edition of MacFormat This Week, then please email machelpme-AT-futurenet.co-DOT-uk.

We'd love to hear your questions or comments regarding MacFormat This Week. E-mail us at macformatthisweek-AT-futurenet.co-DOT-uk.

We weren’t quite sure to expect for this year’s major European Mac show. In the weeks leading up to the event, whenever we spoke to someone in the industry, the response to the question “so, will we see you in Paris?” was usually along the lines of “nah, not bothering this year”.

Despite this, however, there was lots to see at the show. Best of all, though, was this stand for the iPhone:

Stick with us, we know it sounds dull; actually, it ‘sounds’ great. Drop your iPhone onto the clear plastic block with some audio playing through the iPhone’s built-in speaker, and a gramophone-style horn built into the plastic base amplifies the sound completely passively. There’s no power or extra speakers involved, and even on the noisy show floor you could hear a tremendous difference in volume between having the iPhone out of the stand, and dropping it in. It’s a lovely technical trick, and had us endlessly amused. That you can thread in a cable and have your iPhone charging at the same time is just the icing on the cake.

You can read our full show report here.

200 unmissable Mac tips

To celebrate 200 glorious issues of MacFormat, we’ve come up with 200 fantastic tips to help your get more from your Mac

Many people will know a handful of shortcuts from their favourite app or some handy timesavers. But we have a whole heap of tricks and tips that will prove invaluable. From OS X and iLife to system performance and essential software, there is something for all Mac users in our massive 20-page feature.

We also take a nostalgic look back at MacFormat’s 200 issue history. We talk to some familiar faces from the magazine’s past, and look at ten of our classic covers. It’s a great trip down memory lane for die-hard MacFormat readers.

Also this issue

Tutorials
Get better results with RAW images
Add and edit titles in iMovie
Get organised with your Mac
Set up multiple displays
Organise your photos in iPhoto
And more…

Reviews
QuarkXPress 8
Redlex Mellel 2.5
Elgato EyeTV DTT deluxe
Sennheiser MM50 IP
Desktop speakers group test
And more…

Mac questions answered
Trouble booting iMac G5; foreign song faults in iTunes; jumping mouse problems; wonky printing in Preview; streaming connection drops and much more

On the disc
Three full programs: ConceptDraw MINDMAP, AppDelete 1.1.1 and TextSpeach Pro Basic 1.5, plus learn Russian, six hours of video training, freeware toolkit, hot demos and more…

It’s all in MacFormat issue 200, on sale now!

Visit the MacFormat forum by clicking here
Subscribe to MacFormat and never miss an issue again!

To mark our bicentennial celebrations, Apple would like to wish us and all our readers a happy birthday by offering a brand new iPod Touch 16GB as a prize; well, it was brand new when we organised the competition - so, in fact it's the older, first-generation iPod touch.

To enter this competition please go to this web page

In this edition of MacFormat This Week...

Chris Phin reviews Apple's new iPod announcements - the iPod nano and the iPod touch. We talk to The Filter about Apple's new Genius music recommendation system that features in iTunes 8. Plus: AppleCare discussion, September shareware picks, and our regular Q&A!

Here are your links for this week's show...

You can subscribe to the enhanced edition of MacFormat This Week through iTunes. To do this, click here.

Or you can download the files directly: For the enhanced edition of this show, click here.

For the MP3 edition of this show, click here.

If you'd like your questions answered in a future edition of MacFormat This Week, then please email machelpme-AT-futurenet.co-DOT-uk.

We'd love to hear your questions or comments regarding MacFormat This Week. E-mail us at macformatthisweek-AT-futurenet.co-DOT-uk.

Get your hands on a huge amount of storage to go with your Mac

This month MacFormat has teamed up with Western Digital to offer three lucky readers some whopping desktop hard drives. These are Western Digital My Book Studio Edition II 2TB boxes, which should solve all your storage needs.

These are the biggest desktop drives that Western Digital offers, with a capacity of two terabytes. They are also RAID-enabled and use 30% less power than their predecessors. Each has two FireWire ports (1x 400 and 1x 800), a fast USB 2.0 port and even a cutting-edge eSATA port, and can read and write to them in blisteringly fast times from your Mac.

These drives work right out of the box, but software is included to help you partition the drives and set a backup schedule if you want to use it. You could use OS X’s Disc Utility or Time Machine to do the same job.

All Western Digital drives have light indicators to show you how the drive is operating, how full it is, and whether any warnings are afoot that you should take notice of. For more information on Western Digital’s various offerings for the Mac, please visit www.wdc.com.

To enter this month's competition please visit our online entry form by clicking here

I have to say, after having a little play around with the new Genius feature in iTunes 8, I'm impressed. It's one of those 'does what it says on the tin' things that Apple does so well - it just works.

Genius is the new feature that automatically generates a playlist from your music library based on a single song. So if you choose something rocky by Nirvana then expect Genius to create a playlist of similar types of songs. It also recommends other music on the iTunes Store that you might like to purchase because other people who brought that song also brought it.

Of course, Genius is bad news for all those companies making similar programs that recommend tracks based on music you select, such as The Filter. The Filter aren't taking it lying down though. Faced with their potential irrelevance thanks to Apple they issued this spirited, if lengthy, reply:

“We genuinely welcome what Apple is endeavoring to do with Genius – it brings into the mainstream what we’ve known for some time, namely that with too much choice, recommendation solutions are the future of search and discovery in the digital age. While we believe, as you’d expect, that our blend of Bayesian algorithms and collaborative technology delivers better quality playlists and recommendations within music, we further differentiate ourselves by broadening out this technology beyond music. The Filter is truly different because the technology determines our tastes by making sense of our aggregated activity on The Filter, iTunes/WMP/WinAmp and other movie and music services (e.g. last.fm and flixster) and uses this to filter music, movies, video and news feeds that match our tastes. In time, we expect The Filter to become the choice for personalised (and totally unbiased!) recommendations within the world of entertainment (music, movie, video and television content), while also acting as a brilliant portable tool of all your tastes and activity – something we genuinely believe to be the future, and something that really is ‘genius’…”

So far only one song I've tried to base a playlist around (Good Riddance by Green Day) has popped up a message saying that it was unknown to iTunes, so it couldn't use it as a basis for a playlist, but that as more people start to use Genius the situation would change, so, er, try again later. Not so much a case of "computer says 'no'", more like "iTunes says 'no'"

So what do you think of Genius and iTunes 8? Post your thoughts here.

The technology gods weren't smiling on us tonight, but we were able to get some pics of the new iPods and upload them to the web for you to have a look at. As well as this shot of the new iPod nanos - one of which is looking pretty in yellow - there's shots of the new iPhone-a-like iPod touch too, and some shots of me grinning like a fool. Check out the gallery here, and let us know what you think of the new iPods in the comments.

You can also check out some of our initial hands-on impressions over on TechRadar.

We're about to head to London to see what Apple is going to unveil at its "Let's Rock" event, and we'll be teaming up with our colleagues at TechRadar to bring you all the news as it happens below. We're trying out a new system, so please be patient with us as we try to iron out any glitches! Things are due to kick off at 6pm BST; we'll see you soon, OK?

As the exclusive interview with Music Radar reveals, Noel Gallagher is a big fan of Apple's GarageBand, which he prefers to his high-tech recording studio at home!

"I had my own fully functioning recording studio with an EMI II desk and a really cool Neve desk. But I kind of got sick of it because the demos were starting to sound better than the records," Noel told MusicRadar's US Editor Joe Bosso. "We actually do our demos now in Gem's bedroom on his little GarageBand computer", says Noel.

You can listen to the full interview with Noel about the new Oasis album here.

We just got a call from O2 to let us know the pricing for the iPhone on its pay as you go tariffs. The 8GB iPhone will cost you £349.99, and the 16GB model will be £399.99. You don't get visual voicemail (much to our surprise) but you do get a year's unlimited data and access to the WiFi hotspots; thereafter they're a pretty reasonable £10 a month. Full details are on O2's site.

So is it enough to convince you? Are you walking outside now to go and pick one up or are you resolutely unimpressed by the iPhone? Let us know in the comments!

In this edition of MacFormat This Week...

MacFormat This Week is on vacation, so we've revisited some highlights of our previous episodes - our interview with Walt Mossberg and there's QnA with Trevor Middleton.

Here are your links for this week's show...

You can subscribe to the enhanced edition of MacFormat This Week through iTunes. To do this, click here.

Or you can download the files directly: For the enhanced edition of this show, click here.

For the MP3 edition of this show, click here.

If you'd like your questions answered in a future edition of MacFormat This Week, then please email machelpme-AT-futurenet.co-DOT-uk.

We'd love to hear your questions or comments regarding MacFormat This Week. E-mail us at macformatthisweek-AT-futurenet.co-DOT-uk.

There are a whole bunch of Mac software bundles out there, with users able to snag a selection of shareware at a bargain price. However, the PMC Bundle is different: you make a selection from a diverse array of software, negotiate an offer, pay the agreed price to the Pan-Mass Challenge (a cancer charity) and then get all your apps in a download bundle.

It's a real win-win—you get a bunch of software at a potentially bargain price, and a cancer charity gets some cash. Be quick, though—there are only a few left of many of the applications on offer!

Vote now in Future’s 10th annual .net Awards

Internet users across the globe are being asked to come forward and have their say about the best and worst of the internet, as voting opens for the 10th annual .net Awards.

The public vote for the .net Awards 2008 is now open at www.thenetawards.com and runs through until 13th October 2008.

The influential.net magazine has held the awards annually since 1998 and celebrates the best in web design and development, mixing public opinion with those from a leading global panel of online gurus, including experts from Yahoo, Microsoft, Adobe, the BBC and many more.

In 2007, the .net Awards attracted their largest haul of votes ever, Google led the way with two awards, including ‘innovation of the year’ for its map service, Google Earth. Russell Brand’s popular BBC Radio 2 show scooped ‘podcast of the year’ whilst Facebook beat its rivals to scoop ‘socially powered site of the year.’ MySpace collected the dubious honour of ‘infamy of the year’ with judges condemning customisation features which often led to ‘eyeball-bleeding’ design.

Celebrating its tenth anniversary – the .net Awards are the UK’s longest-running Web awards. With 16 categories ranging from Best Redesign of the year and Viral Campaign of the year, through to the Infamy award – a chance to name and shame those ruining your web experience. Visitors to www.thenetawards.com can vote on as few or as many of the award categories as they wish.

.net Awards 2008

Interactive site of the year
Web application of the year
Socially-powered site of the year
Mashup of the year
Blog of the year
Podcast of the year
Vodcast of the year
Mobile site of the year
Design agency of the year
Innovation of the year
Web personality of the year
Viral campaign of the year
Standards champion – best use of accessible design
Open source application of the year
Best redesign of the year
Infamy award

Editor of .net, Dan Oliver said:

“The .net Awards give web users the chance to vote on the sites, services and people that they believe have made a serious impact in 2008. Our Awards combine nominations from the public and the opinions of more than 30 leading industry figures, making a .net Award the ultimate seal of approval!”

For more information and the chance to vote, visit www.thenetawards.com

In this edition of MacFormat This Week...

Deputy editor Christopher Phin joins host Brad Gibson to review Apple's replacement for the .Mac internet services suite, MobileMe; and following the launch of the App Store, we turn the spotlight on six of the very best applications you can download for your iPhone and iPod touch. Plus, Trevor Middleton answers your technical support questions.

Here are your links for this week's show...

You can subscribe to the enhanced edition of MacFormat This Week through iTunes. To do this, click here.

Or you can download the files directly: For the enhanced edition of this show, click here.

For the MP3 edition of this show, click here.

If you'd like your questions answered in a future edition of MacFormat This Week, then please email machelpme-AT-futurenet.co-DOT-uk.

We'd love to hear your questions or comments regarding MacFormat This Week. E-mail us at macformatthisweek-AT-futurenet.co-DOT-uk.