Thanks to a new plug-in filter set from Image Trends, photographers can now quickly and easily correct hemispheric fisheye lens distortion without leaving Aperture. Bullish on the new, Aperture 2.1 image editing SDK, Image Trends plans “to offer PearlyWhites and ShineOff Aperture plug-ins within the next 60 days with additional products to follow,” announced president and CEO Dan Sullivan.

She hadn’t released a new album in five years. But that spell ended dramatically when singer/songwriter Erykah Badu sat down in front of her MacBook and fired up GarageBand. The music surged. “I learned how to use GarageBand by trial and error,” Badu says. “It’s like somebody stuck a plug in the back of my neck and uploaded a program to learn how to use GarageBand. It was automatic. Everything on that Mac was automatic.”

Like many small business owners, RealSimple’s Erin knew that “databases can simplify life and work, but until now, I’ve never been able to design them myself.” Until she began using Bento, that is. “Bento looks, feels and works like other Mac applications. Organizing your information into collections in Bento is much like organizing songs in iTunes,” she writes. It’s “just another reason to consider a Mac.”

“After about a month on the market,” reports Arik Hsseldahl (businessweek.com) “Time Capsule is proving to be far and away the market leader.” Hesseldahl notes that “Steve Baker of market research firm NPD called it the ‘dominant product in its category.’”

When it opens its doors to customers on May 15, the Apple Retail Store on Boylston Street — located in the heart of Boston’s historic Back Bay — becomes the largest Apple Store in the US. Customers will enjoy hands-on access to the Mac, iPhone, and iPod on the first two floors, and on the third, they’ll find a Genius Bar and Boston’s first Pro Labs, offering free, in-depth training on Apple’s pro applications.

HBO and Apple today announced that customers can now purchase and download critically acclaimed HBO shows — including such Emmy Award-winning programs as The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Deadwood, and Rome — from iTunes. “We’re very excited to make these legendary HBO programs available on the iTunes Store,” said Henry McGee, president of HBO Video.

On Monday, June 9, a team of Apple executives led by CEO Steve Jobs will kick off the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote address, Apple today announced. The keynote showcases two revolutionary development platforms: Mac OS X Leopard and OS X iPhone, the world’s most advanced mobile operating system.

Using .Mac sync in Mac OS X Leopard, you can synchronize most of your personal data — including contacts, bookmarks, iCal events, Dock items, Dashboard widgets and more — among the multiple Macs you use at work and home. In fact, .Mac Sync even lets you add your iPhone to the mix. Find out how by watching the latest Quick Tip of the Week.

“You can’t imagine how satisfying it is to know that if your hard drive dies, you will lose no more than one hour of work,” relates David Pogue (nytimes.com) in his review of Time Capsule. “The Time Machine automatic backup feature of the latest Mac OS X version backs up your Macs onto the Time Capsule, automatically, constantly, completely and wirelessly. And in my book, automatic, constant, complete backups are the only kind that really count.”

Using his 24-inch iMac, Jean-Pierre Hébert, the 68-year-old artist-in-residence at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara, California, creates “algorithmic art” in a variety of media—from sand to copper to tree bark. “Mac OS X is a very good environment for me to work in,” he says. “It offers the best of all possible worlds.”