In the first event of its kind, Paul McCartney will promote his new album, Kisses on the Bottom, by playing a concert which will be streamed live on iTunes. You’ll have to stay up late, or get up early to watch it however, as the event takes place in LA and starts at 7pm PST (3am GMT).

The concert will also be available directly on the Apple TV, the first live event of any kind to be streamed to Apple’s set-top box. In recent years, Apple has streamed its iTunes Festival events on iTunes, but these were only available on a Mac or PC using iTunes or on an iOS device through a dedicated app. The video from the app could, on an iPad 2 be mirrored to an Apple TV.

‘To celebrate the release of Paul McCartney’s latest album — available now — we’re streaming his exclusive performance at Capitol Studios on February 9 at 3 a.m. (GMT). Watch the concert on iTunes on your computer, or stream it on your TV using your Apple TV — just choose iTunes Live from the Internet menu.’

iBooks Author is a brand new and completely free Mac app that lets you create your own multimedia books for the iPad. Just before we went to press, we had the chance to explore its features for the first time, and we’ve put together a full tour for you in MacUser Vol 28 No 3, on sale now.

See how you can set up a book and insert your own text and pictures in minutes; the slick interactive elements you can add using tools within the app; the limitation that for some users will prove iBooks’ fatal flaw; and the steps you need to complete before you can sell your iBooks.

Last month, leading websites including Wikipedia blacked out their pages for a day to protest against SOPA, the proposed US legislation that would introduce new ways for copyright owners to bring down websites they claimed were infringing their intellectual property.

But web blocking doesn’t depend on new laws. It’s already happening today.

In this issue, we look at the various methods by which websites can be made inaccessible – and how they can be bypassed. We also consider the ease with which your computer or device can be identified by website owners and others, and explain the pros and cons of several ways to browse the internet anonymously.

On test, meanwhile, are the latest Spyder colour calibration device, supporting both Macs and iOS from just £99; the smallest ever Olympus PEN camera; Corel’s new photo management software, a rival for Aperture and Lightroom; an innovative app that scans documents to the cloud; and a striking Bluetooth speaker dock.

We also report from BETT, the biggest show for technology in education – where the iPad was looking even more dominant this year – and hear how one school is harnessing instead of forbidding social networks.

In Praktik, our mag-within-a-mag for creative tips, compare the right and wrong ways to set vertical type; ponder the mentality of the designer with the aid of a kitchen floor; envy Louis CK, the comedian who made a million dollars from a live gig video without ever cutting a DVD; and keep track of your invoices like you didn’t last year with iWork’s Numbers app and some clever automation.

Remember, MacUser comes out every two weeks, so get it now before we make you another one. Find us at newsagents, supermarkets and bookshops; on your doorstep when you SUBSCRIBE NOW to receive three issues of Britain’s favourite Mac magazine for just £1, for iOS in the App Store, or on your Mac or iPad. Missed a crucial issue? Find it online here.

Motorola has won a permanent injunction in Germany against push email services in Apple’s iCloud and MobileMe. When Motorola enforces the judgement, Apple will have to remove push email from the iPhone and iPad in Germany.

Although the injunction is permanent, it can be appealed and it’s likely that Apple will do just that. According to patent expert Florian Mueller ‘Motorola can seek its enforcement anytime now if it posts a 100 million euro bond, but if an appeals court overturns the ruling, Motorola will be liable for premature enforcement of an improperly-granted injunction.’

In a separate development, Apple has won a temporary suspension of the enforcement of another Motorola injunction which initially caused it to make the iPhone 3GS and 4, and the iPad 3G unavailable on its German online store last night.

A court in Germany ruled in December that Apple had infringed upon a patent held by Motorola relating to wireless technology.

According to the BBC, an Apple spokesperson said ‘Apple is appealing this ruling because Motorola repeatedly refuses to license this patent to Apple on reasonable terms, despite having declared it an industry standard patent seven years ago.’

Motorola has said in the past that it offered Apple reasonable terms and conditions to licence the patent.

Apple’s decision to recruit Dixons CEO, John Browett as its international retail chief caused more than a few raised eyebrows on this side of the Atlantic.

The philosophy and sales strategy of PC World and Currys could scarcely be more different to Apple’s, and anyone who remembers the failed ‘store within in a store’ partnership between the two companies in the late nineties still shudders at the thought of trying to get accurate information on Apple products from Dixons’ sales staff.

My favourite story was told by a MacUser reader who wrote to us to say that he had been told by a sales assistant in Dixons that the iMac was only for using the Internet, and that you couldn’t install software on it because it didn’t have a CD-Rom drive. It was left to our correspondent to explain that the CD-Rom drive-shaped rectangular panel on the front was in fact, a CD-Rom drive.

Things have improved at Dixons’ stores in the decade and a bit since that event took place, but most Apple customers will nevertheless be relieved to read a re-assurance, apparently sent by Tim Cook to a reader of the MacRumors site. In it cook explained that ‘His role isn’t to bring Dixons to Apple, [it's] to bring Apple to an even higher level of customer service and satisfaction.’

Let’s hope he succeeds.

The New York Times has been criticised by an organisation which promotes the rights of workers over a story it ran last week which contained devastating accounts of the treatment of employees at factories in China where Apple products are made.

BSR, a group which promotes corporate responsibility and the rights of workers was unhappy with the way it was portrayed in the Times article. In a letter to the Times, BSR President and CEO, Aron Cramer, wrote ‘The narrative you present is an inaccurate picture of the work we have done with Apple, of the role Apple played in the worker hotline project, and of BSR’s views of Apple.’

BSR did commend the Times for shining a light on ‘important supply chain issues that are a crucial part of the global economy’ but added that ‘It is untrue that Apple has consistently disregarded advice that BSR has provided about problems related to working conditions in its supply chain.’

The Times story was widely discussed on Twitter and reported in UK newspapers over the weekend. And a report in the Observer linked it to columns in the LA Times and Forbes under the headline ‘Apple hit by boycott call over worker abuses in China’ The Times article focused on the Foxconn plant in Shenzen, which makes products for Apple along with electronics appliances for many of the world’s biggest consumer electronics companies.

Apple publishes a supplier responsibility report annually. It can be read here: Apple Supplier Responisbility.

Twitter has been widely criticised over the implementation of a system which will allow it to block tweets in specific countries while allowing them to be published in others.

The social network said it would assess requests to block tweets on a case by case basis and that its approach to freedom of speech would not change.

In a blog post the company pointed out that content which was legal in some countries would breach the law in others. It cited France and Germany, where pro-Nazi content is banned, as an example. The new filter would, it said, allow it to block relevant tweets in countries where they are illegal, while displaying them in others.

Twitter has been been seen as a force for good in countries where freedom of speech is restricted: it is widely used by pro-democracy campaigners in the Middle East, for example. But it has also been used to break injunctions in the UK.

The company said that it will continue to post requests for the blocking of tweets to the Chilling Effects website which collects and analyses legal complaints about activity online.

Apple has announced that it made $46.33 billion in revenue for its fiscal first quarter, which ended on 31 December. That’s a 77% increase on the previous year. Net profit for the quarter was $13.06 billion, which equates to $13.87 per diluted share. That’s a 131% increase on Q1 2011. Gross margin increased from 38.5% to 44.7%, the highest it’s been for 15 years.

Sales figures for each of Apple’s three key product streams were equally impressive. Mac sales rose by 26% to 5.2 million units, iPad sales were up 111% to 15.43 million, and the iPhone sold a whopping 128% more than the previous year, clocking in at 37.4 million. The iPod continued its steady decline, selling 15.4 million, 21% fewer than last year.

‘We’re thrilled with our outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs, said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. ‘Apple’s momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline.’

We are very happy to have generated over $17.5 billion in cash flow from operations during the December quarter, said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. ‘Looking ahead to the second fiscal quarter of 2012, which will span 13 weeks, we expect revenue of about $32.5 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $8.50.’

Apple’s $13bn net profit for the quarter, was $3bn higher than Google’s quarterly revenue.

During a conference call after the results were announced, Tim Cook provided figures for Apple TV sales. It sold 2.8 million units during 2011 and a record 1.4 million during Q1. Cook noted that the company’s cash pile was now $97.6bn, up from $81bn last quarter, and said the company was actively looking looking for investment opportunities and wouldn’t let it ‘burn a hole in our pockets.’

The price of Apple products in the UK is higher than anywhere else in Western Europe, when VAT is excluded, according to a report from price comparison company, Idealo.

Idealo compared the prices of five Apple products; an iMac, iPad 2; iPod touch; MacBook Air; and MacBook Pro. It priced each of the five on all 37 Apple online stores with and without sales tax. Idealo found that Malaysia has the cheapest prices in the world for Apple kit, closely followed by Canada and Hong Kong. The USA is fourth cheapest, followed by Singapore.

Brazil has the highest prices, followed by the Czech Republic, and Thailand.

The UK’s unenviable position of being the most expensive place in Western Europe to buy a Mac, exclusive of VAT, changes when sales tax is added. Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, which have the highest rates of sales tax in the world narrowly overtake it.

Consumers in the UK, however, do well compared to those in Brazil, Czech Republic, and Thailand. Idealo compared prices in each country with the GDP per capita at purchasing power parity (the per capita GDP normalised using US prices) and found that those three countries, which have high prices for Apple kit, but relatively weak economies, get a particularly poor deal. By contrast, Singapore, USA, and Hong Kong, which have some of the strongest economies in the world, also benefit from relatively low prices for Apple products.

So you want to make aliens tapdance? On your iPad? You got it…

Stop-motion animation is a fun, creative process, and Boinx’s iStopMotion has been helping Mac users do it for years. Now there’s an iPad 2 version of iStopMotion, too, with some clever-sounding tricks that are specific to the iOS version.

iStopMotion for the iPad isn’t like the desktop software. As you might expect, this is really more for having fun than critical, precision production work. Having said that, it’s surprisingly good and by far the best iOS stop-motion app we’ve seen. Either camera – front or back – in an iPad 2 can be used, and shots can be captured one tap at a time or in timelapse mode. The timing between automatic shots can be from three seconds to just under an hour.

Using the iPad as both controller and camera does present certain problems. It’s difficult to avoid jogging the view each time the screen is tapped, so it’s probably better used with the timelapse option.

However, there’s a very clever answer to this controller/camera issue: the free companion iStopCamera app lets you use an iPhone or iPod touch as the camera, freeing up the iPad for controller-only duties. With both devices on the same wifi network, you see the scene on each screen and control everything from the iPad. This means you can set the focus as well as exposure (only exposure is controllable with the iPad’s own cameras) and if you have an iPhone 4S, you get the benefit of its better optics. Use a Glyph grip or a lump of plasticine to keep your remote camera device steady while you wander around with the iPad in your hand.

The first-generation iPad isn’t officially supported – it has no camera, after all – but at least one customer reviewer reported getting it working on that model with his iPhone by using the iPhone configuration utility and pairing it with the iStopCamera app.

Capturing work in HD delivers the best results, but it does mean slightly longer processing for each shot. With an iPhone or iPod touch used as the camera, the transfer of each image is also a factor, and there’s a pause of four or five seconds between capture and being ready for the next shot. That’s not usually a problem, but it may slightly frustrate very fast workers. Frames can be deleted easily from anywhere in an animation, but we could only add new frames at the end of a sequence. Again, that’s not usually a problem, but it’s worth keeping in mind as you go.

The framerate defaults to 12fps, a good choice for quick work, and in-app playback can be set to run at half the actual set speed if you like. A simple ‘thirds’ grid can be turned on, and this shows on the iPad screen and, if you’re using a remote device as the camera, on that as well.

Your work is stored in the iStopMotion app, but this uncompressed data can start to eat up storage space pretty quickly; one second generally runs to 20 or 30MB.

You can save finished animations to the Camera Roll, send them by email or uploaded them directly to a YouTube account. You can add a soundtrack at this point. That’s a nice touch, but if you want any control of how sound and visuals work together, you’d be better off editing it in iMovie instead.

The iPad version of iStopMotion is a great way to play around with stop-motion and timelapse animation. It lacks some of the tricks of the desktop versions, but it’s pleasingly direct, really easy to use and lots of fun. And using an iPhone or iPod touch as a remote camera is a great idea.

Keith Martin

Price: £2.99
From: App Store
Info: Boinx
Pro: Easy stop-frame animation creation + Clever use of iPhone and iPod touch cameras
Con: Virtually no editing options + Can be awkward using the iPad as both camera and controller

Apple announced a new version of iBooks today with support for interactive textbooks, and a Mac application for authoring them.

Textbooks in iBooks 2 behave like apps and can be updated in the same way. They will be priced at $14.99. UK details have yet to be announced.

Publishers Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill, and Pearson announced that they would deliver titles on the store.

‘Education is deep in Apple’s DNA and iPad may be our most exciting education product yet. With 1.5 million iPads already in use in education institutions, including over 1,000 one-to-one deployments, iPad is rapidly being adopted by schools across the US and around the world, said Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. ‘Now with iBooks 2 for iPad, students have a more dynamic, engaging and truly interactive way to read and learn, using the device they already love.’

iBooks 2 is available now on the App Store and iBooks Author is free on the Mac App Store.

Apple also announced a new iTunes U app which allows teaching establishments to provide students with the materials they need to take entire courses. These include lectures, assignments, and books. Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, and Stanford are among the universities taking part.

‘Never before have educators been able to offer their full courses in such an innovative way, allowing anyone who’s interested in a particular topic to learn from anywhere in the world, not just the classroom,’ said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services.