VISIT TO THE APPLE STORE

On February 16^th, I finally went to the Apple store to talk to someone about what I really need for my MacBook. Been wanting to do that for a while! So here’s what I learned:

·      The only advantage of the 15” is that it will give me 2” more visually for GarageBand. Looking at both computers at the Apple store, it seems like this 2” will be beneficial for this purpose.

·      It would be good to get a 7200 rpm drive because it accesses info faster, but I don’t need any more than a 4G hard drive.

·      There are free music lessons in GarageBand that some of my students may benefit from.

·      I should look into getting a USB keyboard. Apparently GarageBand can do notation too, so my students would be able to compose a melody by improvising on the keyboard and having it instantly translate it to music notation.

·      A nice accessible tool would be the Bamboo Pen & Touch. It’s basically a large track pad, which students could use more easily.

·      The iPad would also be an awesome tool! There is a communication app for it that would be great for a lot of my students. I have thought about getting an iPad, i.e. instead of a computer. Problem is, it doesn’t have GarageBand. But there are a lot more awesome apps that would be great to use with my students!

·      There is a program called djay (for MacBook or iPad) that would be useful for having our students DJ for our biannual performances.

·      Apple does not make adaptive software programs that my students can use, i.e. to compose a song by using a joy stick. Therefore I should research programs compatible with the MacBook! Anybody know of any?

·      Please leave a comment if you have any more suggestions!