For those of you who are frequent readers, it may strike you as odd, that I’d be writing about Apple. My disdain for Apple’s marketing campaign is well-known (though perhaps poorly blogged). However, I’d like to blog about my latest (and really only) experience with iLife.
As my wife and I recently had a child, I had a new expression of celebration on Mother’s Day. I had never celebrated the motherhood of my wife before, so I was looking for something thoughtful, unique, loving and that was distinctly me.
So I purchased a Mac Mini sometime ago. I instantly installed Windows onto it using BootCamp and had only run Windows after that point. After selecting multiple still images of my wife and child (some including me) I copied those to my NAS. I booted into the Apple side of my Mini, and used iPhoto to catalog the images, then iTunes to rip some music to files. I then used iMovie to put the images to music we both have enjoyed. Finally I used iDVD to load my movie into a DVD menu with a picture of my wife and child. Sum total, I spent about 2 hours to learn and use the applications and finally burn the DVD to a DVD+R.
Honestly, she loved it and was a feat I would have never attempted on a PC. Why? The iLife suite is all integrated with itself. iMovie can pull images from iPhoto, music from iTunes and create transitions, text, etc… iDVD loads files from the logical place the other apps put them and allows easy drag-and-drop access. I was very pleased. I began to understand the allure of Apple’s iLife suite and the cute single-mouse-button using applications and tools.
PC users are now aghast at my “review”. How could a known PC addict and proponent support Apple openly? I’ve never argued that Apple wasn’t good at what it does. Graphics, movies, and integrated tools like blogging, web info posting etc… – Apple accels at these. However, the world is not based on blogs, pictures and movies (though owners of Blogger, Myspace and YouTube would argue with me). Money is created through business. Business is still based in spreadsheets, documents, and databases. iLife is all well and fun. But I’m interested in a larger scope of computing as a whole. Unix rules the server world (sorry Mr. Gates). Windows rules the desktop environment. Apple rules the art and graphics world – though honestly each competes somewhat in other markets. So I applaud Mr. Jobs for creating a viable, functional set of applications that non-computer junkies can really use. But I’m interested in so much more that I’ll keep my PC.