By Diana Ezell

Getting Apple technical support has never been such a breeze as it will be this holiday season! Beginning December 15, 1995, when you call the Apple Assistance Center (800-SOS-APPL) you will experience "Cool Breeze," Apple's new queue messaging system. "Cool Breeze" uses improved professional quality sound, creative use of Macintosh related sounds, music, and a variety of actual Apple phone center voice talent to both entertain and educate you while you are waiting to speak with an Apple phone agent.

Apple's intention in implementing "Cool Breeze" is to make your technical support experience more pleasant and informative. You will be supplied with information about the Apple Fax System, hear important technical tips, and learn of late-breaking news concerning your Apple product. With all the information supplied by the "Cool Breeze" queue messaging system, you may get your answer before you even speak to a technical support representative.

Before you call Apple with your technical support questions you may want to make a list of your questions on your new Apple Messagepad 120 with the Newton 2.0 OS. Because of the overwhelming popularity of this new Apple Messagepad I have included several articles in this issue about the Newton 2.0 OS and general use of the Apple Messagepad itself.

If you are like me, you might be keeping track of your holiday purchases on your Apple Messagepad. For those of you with a new Apple Multimedia computer on your holiday shopping list, you might want to check out the article on performance tips for digitizing video before you buy that new computer. This article will give you several hints about how best to digitize video. You will also get some clues about how much power (RAM) is needed to do the job right. Before you know it you'll be making a holiday video to remember with an excellent musical score, snazzy titles, and cool artwork used to fade from one scene to another. Oooh, Ahhh!

When you set up your new home computer your kids will probably want to get connected to the Internet right away. If you can sneak in a few minutes of "set up" time before you turn it over to them, you might want to make sure you have all the latest Apple Software Updates for your computer installed. Remember, that you may not need all of the software updates that are posted by Apple. It is best to read the Read Me file before you download an update, to be sure you need it for your model, or else you may be causing more harm than good.

I have included an article containing instructions on where to find Apple Software Updates and how to automatically get notified of the latest news about them by way of a mailing list. Depending on which online service you use to download these files, you may also be interested in the article describing the Macbinary file format in this issue. I hope you all have a happy, multi-media filled, web-surfin' holiday break and you don't have to spend too much time in the "Cool Breeze"!

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