Just in time for the holiday season’s official kickoff, audio giant Harman has announced the addition of two Lightning-friendly speaker systems to the lineup of its JBL brand.

First up is the OnBeat Micro, which is designed primarily for portability and can be powered either by an external power adaptor or by four AAA batteries; the latter, according to the manufacturer, will give you approximately five hours’ worth of play time.

Despite its diminutive size, the OnBeat Micro is geared for big sound, and uses digital sound processing to power its two full-range transducers to project high-quality sound that can fill its surroundings. In addition to a Lightning-friendly dock connector, the speaker set also comes with a 3.5mm stereo input and a USB connector for compatibility with other devices.

If you’re looking for bigger sound and a few more checkmarks in the functionality column, the OnBeat Venue is the Micro’s desktop-sized cousin. It features 30W of power—enough to get your party on—and is capable of streaming audio wirelessly with a high-rate AAC Bluetooth connection, using Harman’s TrueStream technology to ensure the best possible sound quality at all times. In addition to Bluetooth, the speakers also include a Lightning dock capable of charging your latest-generation iOS device, along with a wired stereo input.

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This week, in some ways, felt a bit like the calm before the storm. Apple announced a special event coming next week, we shared the stories of various unusual Macs, and of course we offered our usual slew of reviews, how-tos, and news.

Apple’s big little event

We scored invitations to Apple’s “A little more to show you” event. The “little” in the invitation’s text had us all thinking “iPad mini,” but the colorful background had us all thinking “Apple invented an iRainbow.” We’ll find out definitively early next week, and of course Macworld will provide live coverage from California.

You can listen in on our ruminations on the upcoming event in this week’s edition of the Macworld podcast.

How to do stuff

Your MacBook Air lacks a CD/DVD drive, and your disc just won’t fit in the USB port no matter how hard you push. Luckily, we can guide you on how to use such discs with your Air.

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The iPad mini’s hardware may just be a copy of the iPad 2’s, Apple does nothing but copy-and-paste from others, and app developers now have a way to report copycats. The remainders for Tuesday, September 4, 2012 copy loud and clear.

Predicting the “iPad Mini” internals (Marco.org)

Instapaper developer Marco Arment takes a stab at predicting what kind of technology might be inside a putative iPad mini, and guesses that it’ll be awfully similar to an iPad 2. So what you’re saying is there’s an iPad mini inside every iPad 2? Let’s crack that sucker open!

Apple Never Invented Anything (Monday Note)

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Apple didn’t use one of its prominent patents in the suit against Samsung, the iPhone may soon play wireless audio in a whole new way, and James Bond’s going to have a hard time coming up with a pun for “Xperia.” The remainders for Wednesday, August 29, 2012 are shaken, not stirred.

Pinch-to-Zoom and Rounded Rectangles: What the Jury Didn’t Say [Updated] (TechPinions)

Despite suggestions to the contrary, Steve Wildstrom points out that none of the patents involved in the Apple-Samsung trial cover Apple’s “pinch-to-zoom” gesture. Apparently that claim’s largely been pushed by reporters who didn’t read the patent documents. Hold on while I don my shocked face.

The Foreman’s Aha Moment in Apple v. Samsung Was Based on Misunderstanding Prior Art (Groklaw)

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This week’s roundup of new iOS accessories includes our first hint that iPhones will lead the forthcoming robot uprising. Read on for the gear that caught our eye this week.

CableJive: The $29 ProJive XLR is an adapter that lets you connect XLR microphones and mixing boards to your iPad or iPhone for recording high-quality audio. It comes with a four-foot-long cable and plugs directly into your iOS device without the need for an accompanying app—you just open an app such as GarageBand and start recording. The adapter also includes a stereo audio-out jack, so you can connect your headphones to hear the music you’re making while they’re making it.

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The Smule team is at it again—and this time, they’re getting somewhat jiggy with it. AutoRap is the latest music-making app from the company behind titles like I Am T-Pain, Magic Piano, and Ocarina. AutoRap aims to turn your speech from plain vanilla to, say, Vanilla Ice.

Like so many of Smule’s vocal manipulation apps, AutoRap auto-tunes your voice to fit in with its pre-programmed rap beats. It also tweaks your syncopation, adjusting your spoken word rhythms so that the final product both hips and hops.

AutoRap can mash-up your recordings with songs from Snoop Dogg, Nicki Minaj, the Beastie Boys and others. Though the app itself is free, it uses an approach wherein you must spend in-game currency on backing tracks. That currency is divided into two tiers—you need to earn premium currency for more premium tracks. You can get the in-game currency by paying for it, or by taking advantage of offers built into the app: Watch a commercial, sign up for a service, or fill out a survey, for example, and you can earn more of the virtual lucre.

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CasaTunes, maker of multi-room music servers that allow users to hear their tunes anywhere in the house, has upgraded its operating system to let iPhone and iPad users wirelessly stream their audio using Apple’s AirPlay feature.

The company announced the release of CasaTunes 4.0 on Tuesday. While the hardware has always accommodated Internet-based radio stations, it previously worked only using wired-in speaker systems. Tuesday’s upgrade includes the addition of CasaTunes Air, which lets users stream music wirelessly from their iOS devices to the server, or wirelessly from CasaTunes to AirPlay-enabled speakers.

The new software works on CasaTunes’s complete line of multi-room music servers—starting at $1299 for standalone servers—which let you choose which sound-system-equipped room to play which music in. The equipment comes ready to play music from Internet-based services such as Pandora, Rdio, and Spotify.

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Each week in this space, we offer up a roundup of Macworld’s biggest stories from the week gone by. Our friends at Ars Technica do something similar, and their roundup last week was written entirely in limerick form. I take that as a challenge; hence, this week’s Wrap is written in haiku.

As a reminder:

That’s five syllables,
And then seven syllables,
And then five again.

Good advice

Dropbox or Google?
Which cloud storage should you choose?
We crown one winner.

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British high-end audio manufacturer Bowers & Wilkins only recently jumped into the headphone business, but the company is already expanding its product line—on Thursday, the company announced new Apple-compatible P3 headphones.

The $200 P3 comes in black or white, can fold up to be stowed in a hardshell case, and ships with two cables—one featuring a inline, three-button remote/microphone module for use with Apple devices. This cable allows for hands-free phone conversations and music and volume control without removing your iOS device from your pocket or bag.

Bowers & Wilkins’ announcement follows 2010's release of the $300 P5 headphones, which Macworld reviewed; the P3 is aimed at a somewhat more cost-conscious crowd than the P5. Gone are supple-leather earpads; the P3 instead has fabric ear pads, and the company says its audio components have been designed “from the ground up” for the new product. (Bowers & Wilkins also offers the $180 C5 in-ear earphones.)

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While Apple executives have continued to call the Apple TV a hobby, over the past couple years, the company has dedicated a fair amount of resources to it. The Apple TV 2 was a major upgrade, and Apple has added a good number of features to that media player through software updates.

The third-generation Apple TV unveiled Wednesday shows Apple is taking its hobby just a little bit more seriously, thanks to improved video support and an overhauled interface. But there are still plenty of questions about the latest edition. Here’s what we know so far.

What’s new about it? Does it finally do 1080p?

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Steve Jobs is honored posthumously by the music industry, while Tim Cook is honored, er, humously by the financial sector. Elsewhere, Apple gets some serious props from consumers even as some say that AT&T’s new upgrade fees aren’t exactly honorable. The remainders for Monday, February 13, 2012 are not without honor.

Steve Jobs Honored at Grammys (MacRumors)

Apple senior vice president Eddy Cue accepted a Grammy award on Saturday on behalf of Steve Jobs. The late Apple co-founder was honored by the Grammy’s Special Merit Awards for contributions to the field of music, though some will argue it’s a pity award for the man’s five consecutive losses in the Best Solo Artist category. He was robbed!

Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference (Apple Investor Relations)

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Google is planning to enter the home entertainment market with a Google-branded wireless device that streams music within a house, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In addition to music, the device may also stream other media, the Journal reported on Thursday, quoting anonymous sources familiar with the company’s plans.

The Google home entertainment system, which could make its debut later this year, would let users download digital content and stream it to other home devices like speakers also made by Google or by other vendors. The product is the brainchild of Google’s Android team, the Journal reported.

Google has a cloud-based online music service called Google Music, which includes song and album sales and is integrated with the company’s Google+ social network. Google Music also lets users store and play back music.

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Macworld | iWorld 2012 this week offered a look into the very near future of how musicians will be able to use their Macs and iOS devices to create, perform, or record music. Nearly all of the products listed below are slated to ship in the next few months.

IK Multimedia in Booth No. 648 showcased a whole new set of iOS products for musicians. All due late in the first quarter or early in the second quarter of 2012, the company’s latest products include the $99 iRig MIX, a compact mixer targeted to DJs or musicians that use one or more iOS devices in their performances. Working with the company’s own DJ Rig app for iPhone and iPad, you can combine the output of two iOS devices, or an iOS device with a CD player or other audio source. The app’s X-Sync technology lets you automatically synchronize the beats per minute (BPM) of the app’s audio with that of a second source. It has an extra quarter-inch input for a guitar or microphone which can be processed with one of IK Multimedia’s iOS apps for instruments, like AmpliTube or VocaLive. The iRig MIX includes crossfader, equalizer, gain, cue and volume controls, as well as RCA outputs to connect to a PA system.

Also on display at the IK Multimedia booth is the new iRig Pre ($40), a mobile preamp for iOS devices that lets you plug in and use any XLR microphone with your iPad or iPhone. It uses a 9 volt battery to supply phantom power for those mics that require it.

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For the masses, January might just be a time to embark upon—or, for the less fortitudinous of us, give up on—New Year’s resolutions, but for Apple fans and users, it’s also synonymous with Macworld Expo, the annual show featuring Apple-related vendors, panel presentations, and conference sessions. The event, rebranded this year as Macworld | iWorld, kicks off this week in the West Hall of the Moscone Center in San Francisco, and runs from Thursday, January 26 through Saturday, January 28.

The show’s new name reflects an embrace of Apple’s other major platform, which has been an increasingly large part of the show in previous years. Given that only this week Apple announced that it has cumulatively sold 315 million iOS devices, it makes sense to better incorporate this huge—and hugely profitable—sphere of products.

But the name isn’t the only aspect of the show that’s changed this year. Billed as the “ultimate iFan event,” Macworld | iWorld sports a renewed focus on the community of users, emphasizing the way that people use Apple products to create music, films, art, and more. That’s in addition to all the usual conference fare, such as presentations, tech sessions and workshops, and a packed exhibit hall.

Sight and sound

Music in particular is a major part of the event this year. Macworld | iWorld’s new Music Experience will feature a number of performances from artists including BT, moe., Atomic Tom, and more, in addition to a DJ battle and bash, drum circle, and a number of sessions and talks produced in association with the Berklee College of Music. And that’s not even counting the performance by indie rock band Modest Mouse at the opening night launch celebration, Macworld | iWorld Blast.

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As first noted by MacRumors, Apple on Monday expanded access to iTunes Match to 19 new countries in Latin America and Europe—more than doubling the number of nations where the service is available.

The new markets include Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Guatemala, Honduras, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela. That brings the total number of countries where the service is available to 37.

Apple launched iTunes Match in November as part of the iTunes 10.5.1 update; at that point, it was available only to U.S. users. The service stores the entirety of your music library in the cloud, at a cost of $25 per year. Even better, iTunes Match saves some bandwidth strain by identifying which songs in your iTunes library are already available in the iTunes Store, and then uploading only those songs that it can't match. Any matched music you stream from iCloud plays back at 256-Kbps quality.

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Pioneer this week introduced two new AirPlay audio systems that can play audio wirelessly from the listener’s iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

The company unveiled the $499 N-30 and the $699 N-50 networked audio players on Wednesday. In addition to the AirPlay feature, both models include a 2.5-inch LCD screen to display music information—including album artwork—and both can be remotely controlled from your iOS device using Pioneer’s free iControl app. Both are Wi-Fi-ready and Bluetooth-enabled to allow playback from music libraries on any compatible computer.

In addition to those basic capabilities, the pricier N-50 also includes gold RCA jacks for improved sound reproduction, along with two features—Advanced Sound Retriever and Sound Retriever AIR—designed to offer a song’s full sound even when played from compressed digital formats like MP3 or Internet radio.

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Apple made its professional music creation applications, Logic Pro 9 and MainStage 2 (Mac App Store links), available on the Mac App Store on Thursday, making these the last of Apple’s major pro applications to appear at Apple’s direct-download emporium.

Logic Pro, Apple’s professional digital audio workstation (DAW), moves to version 9.1.6 and is available for $200. This version contains a few bug fixes, but no new features. (All the expected Logic Pro features are there including guitar amps and stompbox effects and Flex Time editing.) According to Apple’s release notes, the bug fixes in version 9.1.6 include improved compatibility with the full-screen view and Mission Control for Lion users, a correction to the sample preview option available when importing samples into Ultrabeat, and a change that properly resets the destination for recorded files to the new Project folder after using the Save As command.

Current Logic Pro 9 owners will be offered the same version through Software Update. The download weighs in at around 700MB.

MainStage 2 is Apple’s live-performance tool and moves to version 2.2. It costs $30 and offers such new features as the ability to take advantage of Macs with four or more processor cores, a new template picker, a new Assignments & Mapping view, and larger interface elements. There is no upgrade pricing for current MainStage owners. Each appliation requires that you be running Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later.

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Every year, Macworld editors pick our favorite products from the past 12 months and hand out some trophies. We call it the Editors’ Choice Awards, and this year, we recognized 23 products for meeting our standards of quality, utility, innovation, value, and excellence.

In this episode of the Macworld Podcast, I'm joined by senior editors Roman Loyola and Jackie Dove and staff editor Serenity Caldwell to talk about the 27th annual Eddy Awards. We discuss the criteria for the awards, talk about some of the more memorable winners, and even spend some time on some high-profile products that didn't capture top honors this year.

Download Episode #274

• AAC version (15.9 MB, 32 minutes)

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The Editors’ Choice Awards (we affectionately call them the Eddys) recognize our favorite products released during the past year (from November 1, 2010 to November 1, 2011). It’s a task we take very seriously; starting with a list of over 130 candidates, we spend weeks discussing each product, debate its merits, and whether it fulfills our standards of quality, utility, innovation, value, and excellence.

The result of all this is the list presented here, the 23 best products of 2011. Take a look at the list, and you’ll find a set of products that’ll help you get things done. (For more visual versions of this list, take a look at our 2011 Macworld Editors’ Choice Awards: Hardware slideshow and 2011 Macworld Editors’ Choice Awards: Software slideshow.)

11-Inch MacBook Air

The MacBook Air has come a long way since its introduction in 2008. Once thought of as an underpowered and overpriced laptop, the MacBook Air has evolved into a machine that strikes the perfect blend of portability and processing power. The 11-inch MacBook Air ( ) is Apple’s smallest laptop, but it might have had the most impact on the company’s Mac lineup.

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If you’re taking to the stores on Friday to kick off the holiday season, keep the Apple Store on your list. As teased earlier this week, Apple is holding a one-day shopping event, with discounts on both its own products and many third parties’ as well.

The discounts, while not huge, are still significant for Apple, which tends not to knock its prices down. You can pick up iPads for around 8-percent off, iPod touch models for around 10-percent off, and iPod nanos for $11 off. Those looking to pick up a new Mac are in luck as well: MacBook Airs, MacBook Pros, and iMacs are all $101 off. (Apple, however, has not put any discounts on the Mac mini or the increasingly long-in-the-tooth Mac Pro.)

Apple’s also put several of its accessories on sale, so you can save $11 on a Magic Trackpad, Wireless Keyboard, or Magic Mouse; $21 on a 2TB Time Capsule or AirPort Extreme; $11 on an AirPort Express; and more. You’ll also find discounts on many third-party products, including speakers and headphones, cases for your iPhone or MacBook, app-enabled accessories, and other tools.

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