GarageBand puts its ringtone-creation feature front and center on the welcome screen, but using its complex interface can seem like overkill when all you want to do is trim a song to ringtone length and export it to iTunes. iToner does the same thing, with a simple, almost spartan interface. It even bundles a few premade ringtones, but they may be there solely to convince you that you can do a better job yourself.

At its core, Notion is a powerful music notation tool. Basically, it transcribes music on the fly, allowing composers to quickly and easily get ideas down onto paper with the help of a MIDI keyboard or other controller. It also allows for fine editing of individual notes, and even step-recording (that is, note-by-note) to transcribe complex passages. 

Audio editing applications come and go like the seasons — Bias Peak and Apple’s Soundtrack Pro are now history, and while GarageBand, Logic, and Adobe Audition all vie for attention (along with Audacity and a few others), Sony has finally brought the popular Windows editor Sound Forge Pro to the Mac. While this should warm the hearts of Mac musicians and audio engineers, the fact is that this first version has enough rough spots to give us some pause in considering it ready for prime time.