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Macworld In Review
By Steve Manke A great deal of excitement was raised in the month preceding Macworld SF 2002. We all listened while Jobs promised some astonishing new products but would not give any details. Now that Macworld is underway, we finally have access to what was considered classified insider information only a week ago. The release of the new iMac leaves as many people pulling out their credit cards as it does scratching their heads. The release of iPhoto promises an easy solution for the problems of digital photography. This is the same problem that only last week major computer manufacturers were not inclined to acknowledge. And to top it all off, Apple is now ready to start shipping new Macs with OS X as the default operating system. The new iMac is a vast departure from the initial design. If you ever took a look through the translucent case of the original iMac line, you could tell that most of the computers case was filled by monitor components. With the move to the LCD display on the new design, Apple can officially pronounce the era of the CRT displays dead. By adding a DVD-R and an 800MHz G4 processor to complement the new design, Apple insured that the new iMac would be a smash hit well into the future. iPhoto stands to be another hit for Apple. Digital photography sounds like a utopian dream when faced with the thought of eliminating film as well as the continual trips to the photo-mart. One of the first things you realize after purchasing a camera and snapping of a couple of dozen photos is how difficult it can be to manage your digital archive. iPhotos release eliminates the headaches involved in archiving your digital images. Consider your computer to be a photo album with limitless pages. iPhoto makes it easy to organize your images and even easier to view and print them. Dont expect to see on OS 9 version of this application as Apple engineers have drawn heavily on OS Xs Quartz engine to deliver the fast and efficient views of the image archive. The release of iPhoto means a big win for Apple. It makes digital photography much easier in nearly every way. Plug your camera into your computer via USB or FireWire and iPhoto will automatically launch and archive the images. If you set a preference, it will even delete the images off of your camera or memory card when it finishes archiving them. There are easy-to-use tools that let you crop photos as well as remove red-eye. Printing photos from the application is a breeze. If you are interested in having your photos output using professional equipment, iPhoto will take care of that too. With a few clicks of the mouse, you can order professional prints of your images via the web without ever leaving iPhoto. Taking it even further, even beginners can use iPhoto to design a photo book of their digital images. This involves a simple process of designing an album from a set of predefined design templates and then letting iPhoto connect to Apples web site and submit the book for publishing. Soon after that, your professional looking hard cover book will arrive in the mail. iPhoto makes it easy to publish your photos to the web as well. With a few quick clicks of the mouse you can choose a design for your web site. The program then links up the users account on Apples iTools web site and uploads the image archive without intervention. The software even generates thumbnails of the images and creates a professional looking site that can be accessed via Mac.com. With this Januarys Macworld, Apple announced yet another milestone in the road to OS X. Starting this month, Apple will begin shipping computers with OS X as the default operating system. This is due, in no small part, to the host of new applications that have been released for the OS in the last year. Adobes commitment to bringing all of its applications to OS X has been meet with great anticipation. This month Adobe announced the release of GoLive and InDesign for OS X. With Illustrator 10 already in the hands of graphic professionals, the list of accolades grows. Currently available are Acrobat, Illustrator, GoLive, InDesign, LiveMotion and AfterEffects. Adobes flagship product, Photoshop, is due to be released shortly. And love them or hate them, Microsoft has done great things for OS X. The release of Office X has been a huge hit for the operating system, and could be the deciding factor of companies considering moving to the Mac. Office X has won great acclaim for its improved feature set and its use of OS Xs APIs (symmetrical processing and protected memory, and so on). The Mac Business unit of Microsoft is pushing the envelope to make the Mac version of Office better than its Windows counterpart in every way. Apples own strategy to get users moved to OS X is also quite impressive. Releasing innovative new products like iMovie, iDVD, and iTunes for both OS 9 and OS X means that Mac users have the tools available to them even if they have not yet upgraded to X. But with the release of iPhoto, it becomes more evident that Apple has started to push more OS 9 users to X. iPhoto will only be released for OS X. Releasing revolutionary new products for the Mac brings new users to the table. And when they sit down, Apple is making sure that OS X is on their plate. Now you can edit video, burn DVDs, listen to MP3s, burn CDs, and manipulate digital photos easier than ever before. If you have a PC, what better time is there to buy a Mac? Apple is making the most common uses of a computer easier than ever before. One thing is certain- OS X is here to stay. Apple is working harder than ever to bring innovative new hardware to the public. At the same time it provides an impressive array of tools to Mac users for free. With developers moving more quickly than ever to release Carbon versions of their products, the movement can only gain power. There are a lot of big names behind Apple and the company is getting better press than ever. There has never been a more exciting time to own a Macintosh. |