MacFest (special edition)

Sat, 29 May 2005
Apple Experience Centre, Ikano Power Centre
8:00 - 10:00pm

Report : Azul Adnan
Photos : Azul Adnan, Jasemaine Gan

The night was supposed to start with Alvin Fok talking about the latest Mac OS X, Tiger, but because he arrived a little late, professional photographer Jen Siow kicked off the evening with a brief talk on iPhoto 5.

Ironically, Jen had earlier in the afternoon given a two-hour talk on iPhoto at Equatorial Hotel, an event organised by Apple Malaysia. But thanks to his dedication to myMUG, he turned up at Ikano even though he must have been tired.

Jen took us through the cool new features of iPhoto 5, showing how some of them were just as powerful as those found in Photoshop but were easier to use.

When Alvin arrived, he presented Tiger to the crowd, about half of whom were still using Panther. He highlighted the differences than can be found between the two 'Cats', showcasing some of the wonderful stuff that Tiger had to offer, including Dashboard and Widgets, new networking capabilities and the RSS screensaver.

Next up was Mustafa Mamat who demonstrated five little shareware or freeware that most of us would find very useful. Amongst them were Alphababy, Jiggler and Scriboard.

Then it was my turn. I showed how I put together some animated visuals or paintings to a self-composed song called "Please Don't Cry For Me" using GarageBand 2, Corel Painter IX, Snapz Pro X and iMovie HD. I briefly demonstrated Painter using a Wacom tablet and showed how desktop movements could easily be captured as QuickTime movies with Snapz Pro.

Jasemaine closed the presentations for the night by performing her latest song "Syurga di Bumi", a composition that was being given its 'world premiere' exclusively for MacFest. Though it had a Bahasa Melayu title, the happy and infectious tune was actually a Mandarin song.

As usual, the event ended with lucky draws. This time there were plenty of prizes:

• ShuffleArt skins for the iPod shuffle, kindly donated by ShuffleArt
• iPod/iTunes Missing Manual, iPhoto 5 Missing Manual, Apple I Replica Creation books - courtesy of O'Reilly
• Apple T-shirts, cap, tumbler and bag, kindly sponsored by Apple Malaysia

After 10pm, some of us went downstairs to Starbucks but were told that they closed at 10:30. So we crossed the road to Coffee Bean at The Curve and hung out until 11:30.

To date, this was the biggest turn-out with over 30 people cramming into the room. Thanks to all who came and special thanks to Jen, Alvin, Mus and Jasemaine for participating. A big Thank You also to our prize sponsors: ShuffleArt, O'Reilly and Apple Malaysia, and to the Apple Experience Centre (Mac Studio) for providing the venue - we may need to find a bigger venue for the next 'Fest ;-)