A birthday surprise from Trent Reznor

Trent Reznor releases the first song, The Hand That Feeds, off of the new album, With Teeth, in Apple's GarageBand 2.0 format!!!! What a great an unexpected birthday present for me! I am a long time Nine Inch Nails fan. I went to see them in the Meadowlands at the Continental Airlines Arena back when I was in college, it was great. You can grab it here NIN.com Current on the 4/15 entry. This is truly amazing, a major artist releases a brand new song in a format that allows anyone to customize in any way they see fit. Granted this is limited to Mac users, and ones on iLife '05, but you woulnd't have seen this even 2 years ago. There just wasn't any software like GarageBand installed to even a reasonable amount of people to make it a worthwhile experiment. For someone that has played around with GarageBand, even bought a keyboard to use with it, and wondered what a real song would look like, this is fantastic. It's like getting the source code. If you are not a Mac user but you are a NIN fan, among the many reasons to get a Mac, this might be one of the best. You can grab a Mac mini for about $499 (get the RAM upgrade to 512 MB, you definitely need it for this song, brings the price up to $574) if you just want to get started. If you have the cash and this tips the scales for you getting a Mac, get something with more processor than the Mac mini, like an iMac 1.8 Ghz w/ 512 MB ($1574). GarageBand is one of the more intense consumer apps you will ever use. And wait until 4/26 so you get Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) pre-loaded on any Mac you buy. You can research and price everything at Apple Store Online.