This was the result of a 1978 lawsuit against Apple Computer which was settled three years after with US$80,000 being paid to Apple Corps: Apple Computer agreed not to enter the music business while Apple Corps was not to enter the computer business.

But in 1986 Apple added MIDI and audio-recording capabilities to its computers and the suit mentioned these capabilities present in the Mac Plus, Mac SE and MacII, the Apple IIGS and in an upgrade kit for the Apple IIe. Also mentioned as infringing were the AppleCD SC drive and Apple’s MIDI device. Although Apple maintained that it had not violated their agreement, it again decided to settle, in October 1991, paying US$26.5 millions and keeping an eye on possibile future violations since it was prohibited from using its trademark on “creative works whose principal content is music”.

On September 12, 2003, Apple Corps/Records sued again Apple Computer. This time the lawsuit was over the use of the name Apple in conjunction with the iTunes Music Store. This third legal tussle was settled in 2006 when the court ruled in favor of Apple Computer holding that “no breach of the trademark agreement [had] been demonstrated”.
Apple Corps did not accept the decision and announced that it would be filing an appeal and putting the case again to the Court of Appeal.

The matter was put definitely to rest on February 5, 2007 when the two Apples announced a mutual settlement of their trademark. Some of the terms were kept confidential but the main point was that that Apple Inc. (now sans “Compuetr” since January) was to own all of the trademarks related to “Apple” and would license certain of those trademarks back to Apple Corps for their continued use.

The image of the Apple logo is from Wikipedia.

In the last years the artistic duo has been hard at work scoring music for movies and TV shows and Apple products play a substantial role.
An example is the Heroes series soundtrack which is

played entirely by Melvoin and Coleman themselves and is produced on three Intel Macs and a hard drive RAID system.

In the picture -taken from a Heroes “behind the scenes” programme- you can see that while Lisa plays looking at the footage Wendy is using a black MacBook.

After a programs for managing music (iTunes), digital pictures (iPhoto), home moviemaking (iMovie) and Dvd creation (iDvd) with iLife 04 it was the turn of a solution that turned a Mac into a professional-quality musical instrument and recording studio thanks to technologies from German software-house Emagic, which Apple acquired in 2002.

Using Apple’s promotional images for media let’s see how GarageBand has evolved in its first five years (and five versions) although, as you can see the official screenshots in the last year stray away from showing the main interface and put the spotlight on specific features that Apple wanted to showcase and promote.

GarageBand (iLife 04): it’s clear how GarageBand belongs to the Logic lineage and the lower section with samples and instruments also resembles Soundtrack, introduced in 2003.

GarageBand 2 (iLife 05): the main new feature spotlighted here is that the program now “displays and edits musical notation in real time for people who know how to read and write music or want to learn”.

GarageBand 3 (iLife 06): the new sidebar and the lower area make it pretty much evident that GarageBand is also “a complete solution for creating professional quality Podcasts”.

GarageBand 08 (iLife 08): there are many improvements but Apple chooses to focus on Magic GarageBand, “an easy and fun way for musicians and non-musicians alike to create a song. Users can pick from nine musical genres and interact with a band of “players” on a virtual stage”.

GarageBand 09 (iLife 09): Apple transforms GarageBand into a music teaching tool and a lesson marketplace “with 18 basic lessons” for free and “optional lessons from top artists” for sale through the GarageBand Lesson Store.