Tag: macintosh

So Apple has done it again, changed the world. And in clas­sic Apple style they’ve changed the world in the “here is some kewl new stuff that no body else does very well, now watch as our com­peti­tors scram­ble to make cheap copies and pre­tend they came up with the idea first” kind of way.
In is not insignif­i­cant that the new hard­ware intro­duced yes­ter­day is tar­get­ed at the low bud­get user. It is also inter­est­ing to remem­ber that a week ago Apple announced lots of new stuff for the enter­prise mar­ket two, so they are show­ing that they care for and cater to both ends of the spec­trum, with lots of there oth­er com­put­ers in-between for every­one else.
iPod shuf­fle
At this price this thing is a good deal if you only ever used it as a mem­o­ry stick. The fact that it can play music to just sweet­ens it. In my ‘favorites’ playlist there are about 500 songs, so put any 120 of those on an iPod shuf­fle and it don’t mat­ter to me what order there played it. I think Apple has real­ly hit the mark on this one and in a way stuck its aqua fin­ger up at the rest of the flash MP3 play­er mar­ket by say­ing “you only need to be able to select which track to lis­ten to when you have LOTS of music with you”.
My rat­ing: 5 stars
Esti­mat­ed demand: more pop­u­lar than sex at the annu­al con­ven­tion where the nympho­ma­ni­acs and fire­men acci­den­tal­ly booked into the same hotel and some­one spiked the drinks with via­gra.
Mac mini
Can we say “cube, but bet­ter”, or how about “enter­tain­ment com­put­er”, or maybe “PC killer” or even “home serv­er”. This thing is the cheap­est Mac­in­tosh ever. Actu­al­ly, it is the cheap­est Apple com­put­er ever. And it still packs a punch. Let me put it this way, its still bet­ter than the com­put­er I’m using.
Four and a half years ago Apple released the Cube, it was hailed as all as being a mar­vel, just a tad to expen­sive for any­one to actu­al­ly buy one. The Cube mys­te­ri­ous­ly still has the same resell val­ue as its orig­i­nal price tag due sim­ply to how well engi­neered it was. But now in many ways and with many improve­ments the cube is back, just a lit­tle short­er, and a hell of a lot cheap­er.
PC users that already have a screen, key­board, mouse, print­er and all the oth­er bits need­ed for mod­ern com­put­er lifestyle can now actu­al­ly just throw the tow­er away and put a lit­tle mac in instead.
The Mac mini can con­nect with a TV, great for watch­ing your DVD’s, play­ing your itunes, run­ning games, check­ing your email and all that stuff, and if your tel­ly is any good then it’ll still look okay.
And as for me, I think a Mac mini would plug in nice­ly to my net­work and run as a lit­tle serv­er for the house.
My rat­ing: 5 stars
Esti­mat­ed demand: will be a slow starter, but give it a month and every­one will have one.
iLife ’05
A year ago when Apple moved from call­ing this prod­uct iLife 2 to iLife ’04 they paint­ed them­selves into a cor­ner. Sure they could have gone down the Microsoft path and just not both­ered to update iLife for ages, skip straight from 04 to 07 or some­thing, but no one real­ly thought Apple would do they. The entire suite gets an over­haul with this update, and for each up it is a decent and wor­thy amount of improve­ments, mix­ing the bound­ary between the con­sumer apps and the pro­fes­sion­als ones a lit­tle more (don’t wor­ry, the pro apps are still light years ahead of there lit­tle broth­ers).
iTunes only gets a small upgrade, but then its the free one and is upgrad­ed all the time any­way and I doubt they could think of some­thing big enough to get away with call­ing it iTunes 5.
As for the oth­er four apps, iPho­to, iMovie, iDVD and Garage­Band, they are each well worth the new price tag of $119, but you get all four for that, so very kewl.
My rat­ing: 5 stars
Esti­mat­ed demand: not that much, but as it’ll be on all the new com­put­ers sold from now on there will end up being a lot of copies out there.
iWork
Apple last updat­ed Apple­Works in 2000, and it has long since been lack­ing the aqua/brush met­al look, so it is about time Apple got to this. How­ev­er this does not replace all the func­tion­al­i­ty of the old Apple­Works, but what it does it does with amaz­ing style.
Pages alone is worth the price tag, a sim­ple, fast, ele­gant, pow­er­ful and styl­ish word processing/page lay­out pro­gram.
And Keynote makes Pow­er­Point look like the 90’s prog it is.
My rat­ing: 5 stars
Esti­mat­ed demand: it will take off once peo­ple get just how kewl it real­ly is.