The newest wave in iPods. It features the same Mac OS Mobile "touch" interface as the iPhone. In fact, it shares a lot with the iPhone. You can check your email including Exchange, surf the web, download from a huge selection of games and applications... and most importantly you can listen to music, view photos, and watch TV shows and Movies.

If you would like an iPod for music and photos, but want the ability to watch movies (just in case) this is your iPod. Nanos are the most popular iPod and they come in a variety of cool colors. They also sync effortlessly with iTunes.

Time Capsule is essential to the health of your new Mac. It's got great features as well. Most people don't back up their PCs like they should but this works with Leopard to do it automatically for you. Plus it's a wi-fi router. You can even plug your printer in so that all your Macs can print remotely to it.

Your Mac can run Windows too! In fact, it does so better than most PCs according to PC World Magazine (iMac and Macbook Pro). Your Mac will help you set up a partition so that you can run either Windows or Mac when you turn it on. If you need to interface with PC only applications this would be the way to do it.

Standard has all the same applications as Student, but also has exchange server support in Entourage meaning that you can read your work email and have it delivered directly to your Mac if your company supports such features.

The latest of Roxio's killer Toast application for burning and managing unprotected media on your Mac. This is my personal favorite application for transferring TV shows I've recorded on my Mac (through Elgato's EyeTV) to a backup DVD. It also works with TiVo Desktop for Mac.

If you bought your new mac to do some serious design or layout work, this software suite is the holy grail of the work you're after. The whole suite is a lot of overkill; however if you are just looking to do touch up or edits on photos. If that's the case, stick to just Photoshop and save a great deal of money.

Aperture is one of 2 strong options for photo editing on a Mac. It encompasses the entire photo cataloging, editing, and layout process in a way that's been drawing users away from Photoshop. However, the industry standard is still Adobe Photoshop when it comes to professional level photo editing.

I view this as an essential accessory to my Mac. It is a DVR (think TiVo) for your Mac. You plug your Cable/Satellite into it and it will record shows on your Mac's hard drive. If you do decide to buy this I highly recommend you also buy Toast 9- which allows you to burn those shows on your hard drive to a disk and make room for more.

Your Mac plays nice with TiVo! If you buy the TiVo wireless adapter below, and download free software from TiVo's website. You can actually transfer shows recorded on your TiVo to your Mac (Note that you can't do this with protected shows like Amazon Unbox content). It's also a great way to see what your TIVo is doing from another room.

Your new Mac is a great photo editing machine. You'll want to take great photos for it to store and edit. This is my favorite camera, but you'll want to choose one based on size of lens, the feel of the body, the MP (megapixels or picture quality), battery life (never buy a camera that runs on AA or AAA batteries. Look for internal batteries. etc...

Photo quality prints in printers have come leaps and bounds over the years. Just about any printer can do great photos from a home-user perspective so I'd recommend getting an all-in-one printer to get the most for your dollar. One printer that prints, copies, scans, faxes, and makes photos instead of two printers to do the same.

The amazing successor to the Amazon Kindle includes text to speech, a better and less polarizing design and an even more vast library of books than the original. Still compatible with Mac!

A competitor to Apple's Logic Studio, this recording software combined with the Pro Tools expansion pack (another product and cost) is one of the most popular recording standards in digital audio for Pro applications. You shouldn't need this and Logic Studio both.

Recording interfaces can be expensive but make sure you get the right one! Some of them only record in mono. Meaning that your song will be coming out the left speaker and the right will be blank. Do your research on these. A bit extra spent can save a lot of hassle in the long run in my experience with audio interfaces.

A lighter application taking the core essentials of Final Cut and combining them. The user interface will still take some getting used to. This is designed for the more advanced home user.