iMovie '09 will read from an unencrypted DVD, but it's not as straightforward as you'd expect. The process below will allow you to load your custom DVD video into iMovie, assuming you can see the .VOB files on the DVD.

Typically when looking at the folders on a DVD (in PC Explorer or Mac Finder) you'll see 2 folders. In the VIDEO_TS folder you'll find some IFO and some VOB files. The VOB's are the video files. If there's just one video you want off the DVD, it's typically the largest .vob file.

If you're on a PC, you can often just copy this file to your hard drive and rename it to end in .mpg, and you have a usable file.

To import the .vob file into iMovie '09 on a Mac:

1. Insert the DVD. If it automatically begins playing full screen, you can use the Escape key to get out of the full-screen mode in DVD Player. Quit DVD Player or any other player that started.
2. Open up Disk Utilities (found in Applications >> Utilities).
3. Select the DVD from the list on the left, then click the "New Image" icon. Choose your disk image name, location, and leave the default options. This will take a few minutes, resulting in a new disk image (.dmg) on your hard drive.
4. When it's finished, it will now appear on the left side of the Disk Utilities window. We're not finished yet, this alone isn't enough. Start iMovie. With iMovie open in the background, go back to Disk Utilities and double-click the disk image. This will bring up a brief window stating it is Attaching the Disk Image. When it's finished, iMovie will pop up a screen prompting you to import from the Disk Image.
5. Select the movie(s) you want to import and click the Import button. Now we're finished!

Making a personal dashboard widget for your Mac is quick and easy, even for those with no coding experience. A  widget is no more than a portion of a web page that is displayed on your Dashboard, you can make one from any web page. Let's make one that displays a random Proverb on your Dashboard.

Many years ago I created a free service for Christian web designers to insert a random Proverb on their web page as an image, avoiding JavaScript, PHP and other more complicated languages. You can learn more about it at http://www.wireddisciple.org/proverbs. We're going to use that project now.

1. Open up Safari (yes, it has to be Safari on a Mac)
2. Enter in this URL: http://www.wireddisciple.org/proverb.php?ft=12&fc=d6008b&w=360
   You should now be seeing a Proverb. If you go to the URL mentioned above you'll see lots of configuration options, including font face, sizes, colors, even a Spanish version. Any configuration option will work, I chose this combination because it looks like it was typed in a book.
3. In your Safari browser, go to File >> Open In Dashboard.
4. Using your mouse, place the white square over the Proverb. Using the handles, stretch the square to cover it completely, leaving an edge around the width and height. The image returned will always be close to this size in width, but it may be a bit longer depending on the length of the Proverb displayed, so you might want to give your Dashboard some added height.
5. Once you're pleased with the size, click the "Add" button in the upper right. This should take you to your Dashboard with your Proverb on it.

You can change the style of the custom Proverb widget by clicking the i in the lower right. Personally I like the Torn Edge theme as it complements the typewriter font. While still in the Edit mode, you can also resize your widget window.

Don't like this version and want to try again? Go ahead, you can create as many as you want. To remove custom widgets from your Dashboard, start up your Dashboard, click the + in the circle at the lower left of the screen, then click the X in the circle on your widget. Please note that once it's gone, it's gone forever. But it only takes a couple of minutes to re-create it.

I've only used it a bit so far, but iMovie appears to meet every basic video editing need except for file types. I'm one of many PC users who switched to Mac largely because of their reputation for excellence, speed and fun in graphic editing, photos and videos especially. I was sorely disappointed to find out that iMovie cannot handle so many standard formats that PC apps handle without thinking. iMovie will import video from your digital video camera, if it's a compatible format, or from a disk it will import DV, MPEG-4 and some .mov formats. That's it.

Quicktime Formats

Ironically not all Quicktime videos (.mov) will open in iMovie, but there is a solution if you have Quicktime Pro (not just the player, you need the for-pay version). If you can open a movie in Quicktime Pro that you want to get into iMovie, "saving" the file as a .mov will not be enough, you'll need to export the movie. Exportimg the Movie to QuickTime Movie was enough to import it into iMovie '09. I would expect that you would have the same success exporting the Movie to MPEG-4 or exporting the Movie to DV Stream, although I haven't tried them. The DV stream will likely produce the best quality.

Note that you can use Quicktime Pro to convert other source video formats as well. Quicktime Pro can open AVI, MPEG-2 and a lot of other formats. Remember however that the more times you convert a video, the more quality you lose. A complete list of formats can be found on Apple's site here.

There are also Mac OS applications you can find with a quick Google search that are supposed to enable multiple formats in iMovie, but I tried some that didn't work. If anyone has some recommendations, feel free to share in the comments.

All iMacs come with the basic iLife application suite on them, which includes iMovie. This is a fun and easy video editing package, ideal for the Mac user hobbyist who has home videos on a compatible tape or disk, and who wants to put together a bunch of clips from the tapes and turn it into a video to be shared with friends via YouTube, DVD, iPod, or their Mac MobileMe Gallery. 

iMovie lets you select clips of your videos (or the entire video), arrange them in order, add fun transitions, photographic effects (sepia tone, soft romantic focus, vignettes, cartoon effects and more,) voice overs and soundtracks, even title slides. It has some advanced features such as stabilization for all those hand-held jiggly videos, changing the speed, adding a freeze-frame and normalizing your audio for you, to name a few.

iMovie also works well for creating a slideshow of your photos. Simply drag the photos into the project where you can crop it, add the "Ken Burns" effect (zooming and panning slowly), set the duration, and add transitions between your pictures. You can easily combine pictures and videos in the same movie. Many animated title slides come with it as well, allowing you to create the perfect title intro for your home video.

Best of all, there are a lot of short video tutorials on http://www.apple.com/ilife/tutorials/#imovie that make learning iMovie easy.

There are a couple of things I don't like about the iMac. One is having to relearn keyboard shortcuts. The keyboard shortcuts do not directly translate to a PC, and I never realized how dependent on them I am. Trying to force my middle finger to use CMD-C to copy instead of my pinky requires re-training what my fingers have been doing for over a decade. The Home and End keys on the iMac don't function the same way either. CTRL-A doesn't select all but actually returns you to the beginning of the line, except when you're in a webpage form field, sometimes then it takes you to the previous webpage losing everything you were typing in the form field. Very frustrating!

The only other significant thing I don't like is the operating system has the same opinion about my intelligence as Bill Gates does, that is that the computer knows better where I want my files than I do. NOT TRUE!!! Steve Jobs, give me more credit than that!

For instance, I've been using iMovie to create a movie (more about that tomorrow). When you're finally finished, you don't "Save" your movie, in fact you can't even save your project, you have to go on faith that it's saving it for you (which also means don't work ahead expecting you can "save as" a different filename later - any change you make is made to this one and only version). When you're ready to use the final product, you "Share" it. You can share it in different formats, each choice determines where on the computer it goes, for instance you can share it with iDVD so you can write it to a DVD. But can I find that file anywhere? No, it's not to be found, not even through searching, although I don't know what the filename is which makes it difficult.

If I just want the file itself because I want the file off my iMac and not in one of their pre-determined uses such as an iPod or iDVD, I have to export it. According to Apple documentation, exporting does exactly the same thing and uses the same format as sharing, except exporting allows you to give it a filename and decide where to save it. Imagine that, a user wanting to know what the file is named and where it is.

The Magic Mouse has it all, including the corny name. It has a smooth surface with no buttons or wheels, yet it works the same as a PC mouse, plus a whole lot more. My right-click is too ingrained still to ignore that, so the first and only customization I made to the mouse was to enable right clicking. OK, no problem, I even mastered the vertical screen scroll the PC scoll wheel does, swipe your finger the same way in the middle of the mouse, without the wheel. OK, pretty cool. But there's more.

You can scroll horizontally within your window, just move your finger right or left (or even an at an angel) and it moves around inside your window that way. Honestly I haven't needed this much yet, but when I get Photoshop on it I'm sure that will be very handy!

OK, not bad, but what else, you ask? One feature I use a lot is the two-fingered scroll. Want to go back in your web browser? Put two fingers on the mouse and slide them both to the left at the same time. Want to go forward? Slide them right. That is a big time saver, not having to find the back button in the upper left of the screen or the backspace key on the PC.

Still want more? Hold down the control key while scrolling up or down with your finger - it zooms the entire screen! The resolution on a 27" iMac is a whopping 2560x1440! But realistically, font size looks about the same as 1280x1024 on my wimpy little 17" PC monitor, there are just that many more pixels! So you want to zoom in on something to see it better? CTRL-swipe up.

And yes, there's more! My favorite part of the mouse is something I've adapted to quickly and barely notice already, except when comparing it to my PC (which I haven't quite given up entirely yet).  Scroll With Momentum means the faster you move your mouse, the faster and farther it moves. Moving it slowly gives you more precision, quickly gives you greater power, you could scroll the length of this article with one quick movement!

And it works without a mousepad!

Watch the mouse in action: http://www.apple.com/magicmouse/#here-video

The iMac operating system (Mac OS X Snow Leopard) comes with a very useful and fun little application called Dashboard. With a single click it brings up utilities (widgets) on your desktop for as long as you need it, then hides them again. It comes with some widgets preconfigured such as a calculator, clock, iCal (today's date) and the weather forecast. A little exploration and you'll find a surplus of widgets for download. 

Widgets are only limited by the developers' creativity. You can track how close meteors come to the earth, get Michael Scott (from "The Office") quotes, a NASA Image of the Day, comic strips, recipes, or monitor the status of the Tube in London. There's even a Public Toilet Locator. Not sure why you'd need that on an iMac...

For the more serious minded digital developers, there are widgets for searching Google, PHP.net or GoDaddy available domains, color pickers that provide the hex code for copy/paste, CHMOD and CSS cheat sheets, a JavaScript evaluator, PHP and MySQL date formatters and so much more!

http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/

While I still believe my experience at the Apple Store was superior to most computer experiences, I can't sing their praises too much. I do have to admit that my Specialist (who acknowledged he was new) didn't always give me the correct answers. Not knowing Apple software, I mistakenly assumed iMovie and Final Cut Express could handle all standard PC file formats, such as the .AVI's my clients send me, and he confirmed this. Not true, they import from a variety of current video cameras, but importing movies someone else provides in any format other than Apple formats doesn't work. For those of you who care about this, there are free "drivers" I'll call them for lack of a better word, that make Final Cut Express recognize other formats such as AVI. Google "Perian".

When I asked him about the difference between iMovie and Final Cut Express, one of the things he mentioned was you can't control your iMovies at a finer level than 1/10 of a second. Not true. You can control it by entering in times more precise than that manually, or by magnifying your viewer to 1/2 second segments.

While nothing he told me incorrectly would have been a significant deterent to buying an iMac, it was a bit frustrating to start using it at home and find he was incorrect on a bunch of little things. My advice to any PC user about to make the leap: do your research first, or make sure you get an experienced and knowledgeable Specialist to answer your questions.

I needed a new computer, my clients are needing more video editing capabilities for me that my 3-year-old PC couldn't handle. As much as I love my Dell, it was time to face facts: Apples are better at graphics. I priced out a top-of-the-line Dell, compared specs to a less-expensive iMac, and found the iMac was faster for what I needed to do, with a better screen and came with video editing software. Considering the Dell was going to make me learn a new operating system and upgrade all of my software anyway (due to Windows 7), there really was no choice left to be made.

At the Apple Store

The store is very contemporary, very clean, all white, like you're in an unearthly world. Very streamlined too, like their computers. There are more than two dozen computers sitting out, connected to the Internet and loaded with the iLife "lifestyle suite," waiting to be test-driven. And I have to add, as a mother this was important: a video game console to keep the kids occupied! We hadn't been in the store more than a few seconds when the Concierge introduced us to a Specialist. This guy spent the next 2 hours dedicated to me, answering every question, recommending what I needed based on what I said (he listened!) and what was more than I needed or useless for me. Very down-to-earth, honest kind of guy, not salesman-y at all. When I was ready to check out, he verified what I needed, ordered it on his handheld (some guy in the back brought it up), and swiped my credit card through his handheld. I don't know if they even have a register there for checking people out, this was all done standing in front of their demo machines.

I had originally placed my order with Dell before looking at the iMacs. They told me it would be at least two months before I could receive my order. After 2 hours at the Apple store, I walked home with a superior computer in my hands, including a gorgeous 27 inch monitor, for less expense. Not bad, eh?

It has been suggested to me that others might benefit from reading about my experiences in digital development, so here we go. I hope you find this useful, or at least entertaining. We'll start with how I got where I am. I began this technological journey back more than 25 years ago when my then HP-employed father brought home the first computer of its kind, one that was small enough to fit in a home, the HP-85. He had me programming in BASIC in no time. By middle school we had Apple IIG's, and the graphics app of the time: TURTLE - anyone remember this? My college years saw me using a comand-line text editor on an HP-86, switching over to Windows 3.11 machines with gopher, and venturing into hyper-text (the first two letters of "http://") on none other than a Macintosh (back when they were known as Macintoshes).

When we got married my husband wanted a Macintosh but I refused, I really preferred the Windows machines. (What was I thinking?) So we bought our first PC, and have been a devout PC family for the past 16 years. On our first anniversary my husband came home with a use for our new computer, "There's the coolest thing I have to show you, it's called the World Wide Web." As he likes to remind me, my response was, "What is that good for? There's no practical application for that." I still made my first website that day.

After 6 years at HP in marketing and e-commerce, I have now been running my own business for over a decade designing websites and developing online applications, plus some digital photography and video editing.

Coming up next... the switch to an iMac!