You need to buy a Mac, people

Hi. I'm one of those undead zombies recruited by the sinister Cupertino corporation to blindly spout on about any pile of rubbish produced by Apple as being the best thing since sliced beans. Yeah, but this feels a bit special.

I'm not a great fan of Nine Inch Nails. However, I was very impressed to read in the great Music Thing blog that the new NIN single has been released in GarageBand format.

So? Let me explain. What makes the current Apple range so exciting is not the hardware (although it is good) but the software - specifically iLife '05. It comes bundled with new Macs and costs £49 to buy. It's got digital photo management software, movie-making software, a DVD authoring package AND a multi-track recording studio. Yeah: FREE with a new computer.

It's idiotically simple to use. On a good day, with a bit of mental discipline and a raft of good ideas, I can finish a song on a Sunday afternoon. One Sunday I did three. A few weeks later, a bit drunk and rather tired, I threw together a few clips (I'd never edited video on a computer before) behind the second song of that rather prolific Sunday.

That video has now been downloaded over 15,000 times, and the reviews are in.

Not bad. Want more?

I'm not bragging here. Honest. It's the computer that enabled me to do all this - or, more to the point, the software. Free software so easy to use that I can have an idea and actually get it down without stress and hassle in the form I heard/saw it in my head. This is what happens when you take powerful creative software and put it in the hands of people who simply shouldn't know what they're doing. People like me and you.

For crying out loud, Daisychain took me two hours with a piece of software I'd never had the inclination to use before. You've heard the buzz surrounding Tarnation? Made with the same free software on a budget that, frankly, took the piss ($218.32, to be exact).

And that is why I am so idiotically excited about Trent Reznor's gesture for us Garageband users. "Here's my work", he's saying: "go and play."

Now here's the thing. The hardware is so cheap now that you can put together a studio for £500-£600 should you wish to. The excuses stop here. The creative divide in the future will not between can-do's and can't do's, but between simply will-do's and won't-do's.

There's a creative party going on. You coming? I dare you. Discover something.