By Bob LeVitus
It’s Apple software that really distinguishes Macs
from PCs, and Apple announced a bunch of it at Macworld
Expo earlier this month.
First there’s Safari, Apple’s
new Web browser. The Apple hype machine crows that: “it’s
the fastest and easiest to use web browser ever created
for
the Mac,” “its highly-tuned rendering engine
loads pages over three times faster than Microsoft’s
Internet Explorer for the Mac,” and “it runs
Javascript over twice as fast.” Steve Jobs modestly
predicts that, “many will feel it is the best browser
ever created.”
It would make me sick if it weren’t
true, or mostly so. Safari is wicked fast, with a clean,
uncluttered interface
and a feature I love—a special field in its toolbar
that lets you search the Web via Google without
going to the Google Web page first!
I’ve been using
Safari for several weeks and even though it’s still
in beta, it has become my browser-of-choice. It is much
faster than the others and it may very well
be the best browser ever created. Not bad for a program
that’s not even done yet. Join more than one million
other Mac users and download the beta. It’s at www.apple.com/safari.
Moving
right along, I’ve seen a lot of Steve Jobs
keynote performances at various Macworld Expos and I’ve
always been impressed by the stuff Steve shows on the big
screens. I always figured he had a room full of graphic
artists, QuickTime engineers, and video gurus working ‘round
the clock, but I was way wrong. It turns out that Jobs
has been using the ever-so-appropriately named Keynote,
Apple’s just-released $99 presentation
program. Keynote is reminiscent of PowerPoint, but with
that slick Apple interface. And since it takes advantage
of cool OS X technologies like Quartz, QuickTime, and OpenGL,
it has superb typography, Photoshop-like image resizing,
and high-quality transitions. Plus, it includes 12 Apple-designed
themes, and just like the themes you get with iDVD, the
Keynote themes are just gorgeous.
I got my copy on Tuesday
(as did everyone who attended the keynote—thanks,
Steve!), so of course I went back to my hotel that night
and created a slide show for
the “Dr. Mac’s 2002 Shareware, Freeware, and
Otherware Awards,” I was hosting on Thursday. I spent
less than 90 minutes on it and, ignoring my own advice,
I didn’t even glance at the manual.
It came out great.
And since Keynote allowed me to export it as a QuickTime
movie, you can see it for yourself at http://homepage.mac.com/boblevitus/iMovieTheater9.html.
Two
other software announcements capped off Jobs keynote: Final
Cut Express, a new and less expensive program for
editing video. Based on Apple’s award-winning Final
Cut Pro software ($999), Express leaves out some of the
pro features most people would never use and costs just
$299. The last software announcement concerns something
old—iTunes,
iMovie, iPhoto, and iDVD—and something new—the
name you call them. Forget about “iApps,” or “the
Digital Hub.” From here on out they’re to be
addressed as “iLife.”
Steve Jobs says, “iLife
does for our digital lifestyle what Microsoft Office did
for office productivity. Apple
is far ahead of its PC competitors in offering the best-in-class
applications for digital music, photography, moviemaking
and DVD creation, and now they all work together seamlessly.”
You
can say that again.
The iLife applications are free with
new Macs. Beginning on January 24, (tomorrow), iPhoto
2 and iMovie 3 will
be available for free download at www.apple.com/software (iTunes
3
is already available for free download). The iLife
retail package, with all four applications, will be $49.
Alas, iDVD 3 still requires an internal Apple SuperDrive.
Bob LeVitus is a leading authority on
Mac OS and the author of 41 books, including The
Little iTunes Book and
Mac OS X for Dummies, 2nd Edition. E-mail comments to
doctormac@boblevitus.com.
Copyright © 2004 Bob LeVitus
|
