Apple homeward bound with new iMacs, iLife

news analysis CUPERTINO, Calif.--Apple's fourth major event of the year was a bit more understated than the previous ones, but provided another glimpse of the company's view of the personal computer.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled new iMacs with aluminum and glass exteriors, keeping the rumor mill honest this time. Apple's iMac is an all-in-one computer where the motherboard sits behind a flat-panel display, in a more streamlined approach to the traditional desktop PC.

The company also updated its software for home Mac users, known as the iLife suite. The five applications that make up iLife '08 aim to help Mac users organize "user-generated content"--that ubiquitous Web 2.0 phrase--for both internal consumption at home and showcases that can one-up the Jones' trip to Nepal.

It's been a busy year for Apple. From January to June, it seemed everything was about the iPhone, while in the interim the company has been scrambling to get Leopard, the next version of the Mac OS, ready to ship in October. However, Tuesday's event featured far less glitz and hype as Apple introduced new products for its audience of home-media enthusiasts.

Apple separates its Mac customers into two main categories: the developers and creative professionals who use its heavyweight Mac Pro desktop and MacBook Pro notebook, and the rest of us, who get iMacs and MacBooks. It's been a good year for Mac shipments, which increased by 33 percent during Apple's last quarter, but the iMac product had been stale for quite some time.

So Apple borrowed the aluminum finish that it has previously reserved for its professional products, remaking the iMac in black and silver and taking a few inches off its waist. A glass display completes the look, along with a new slimmer keyboard and Intel's latest processors.

But Jobs sped through the introduction of the new iMacs to spend most of the morning walking attendees through the improvements to iLife and iWork, Apple's suite of office productivity applications. Apple's pitch for so-called "switchers" centers largely on the iLife suite as a friendly way of organizing the pictures and videos that pile up in the Digital Age.

Shiny hardware might get customers in the door, but software is where people spend their time, and where they form an attachment with their computers. The iron curtain of the past between Windows and Apple software is more of a backyard fence these days after the success of iTunes on Windows, software like Boot Camp, and the increasing percentage of time most of us spend on the Internet, rather than using desktop applications.

So to draw curious neighbors over the fence, Jobs likes to show family-friendly applications when showing off new Macs or software, appealing to the desire of those in attendance to easily create a digital record of their children's hijinks both for posterity and for distant friends and family. For example, Jobs showed how the new iPhoto and iMovie applications can organize photos and home movies and upload them to new Web Galleries hosted by the company's .Mac service, which also now allows customers to store up to 10 gigabytes of data for $99 a year, up from just 1GB of data.

The new iPhoto application automatically sorts pictures by "events," really just compiling all the photos taken on a given day. You can "merge" or "split" events that took place over several days, or multiple events that took place on a single day.

The iMovie application was singled out as having received the greatest overhaul between iLife '06 and iLife '08. Jobs told a story about an Apple engineer who wanted to make a short home movie of his trip to the Cayman Islands, but got frustrated by how long it took to create that movie in either iMovie or Final Cut Pro, Apple's professional video-editing software. The result was iMovie '08.

[NRecob]

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

"Underwhelmed" is the word that comes to mind on this iMac
release....

At least the Mac Mini has the Core 2 Duo and has 1.83 and 2.0 GHz
avaialble.

[thriftyT]

iLife 08: impressive engineering

iLife 08 wowed me, and here's why:

It made me glad that I procrastinated on organizing my
thousands of iPhotos and that i procrastinated on learning
iMovie.

I knew that organizing my iPhotos was a time sink so I just never
got around to it. Ditto to using iMovie. Although intuitive, I
could see that it would take hours upon hours of diddling to
make even a short movie.

From what I've seen, I'll be using iMovie for the first time as soon
as I buy iLife 08 (even though I've owned the older versions for
over 5 years) and I'll be able to organize my iPhotos in the
matter of an hour or two instead of half a day.

It may not be a killer app, but the time savings and modest price
make it a vicious app.

[Maccess]

Try again....

Oh, no! More expensive Macs.

Try again Apple. The iMac keeps on getting bigger, more complex, and more expensive.

In the meantime, the Mac Mini is just standing still.

How about a $300 15" iMac that schools and companies can deploy en masse. It doesn't need an optical drive, maybe not even firewire.

And how about a $200 Mac Mini, like the Mac TV, without an optical drive, without even an internal drive, just an external SATA port and a matching hard drive enclosure. It would be great for companies and home servers.

I've been a long time multi-platform user, and I use Macs, but everytime Apple clicks they manage to shoot themselves in the foot by moving upmarket.

[coryschulz]

I'm impressed

I think they look much nicer than the older models, and the software upgrades look way nice too.

I think the iMacs will look even better in a few months when Leopard comes out. Leopard looks truely orgasmic.

Overall Apple is in a stronger position then they've ever been in, and I think they'll only get stronger. It's easy for a lot of people to hate Apple, because they're growing up and claim to have the best PCs in the business, but they're always years ahead of any machine Dell or HP are putting out and even more ahead of Microsoft when it comes to their OS. I can't wait to see what they release next year. Their products are just so amazing and exciting and fun.

[lingsun]

Who cares? Apple is irrelevent.

Who cares? Apple is irrelevent. Wow. Maybe their market share will hit 4% now. It's amazing how much space is devoted to a computer company with so little sales.

[Norseman]

Anybody notice...

...how much time Jobs spent talking about online apps? Yep--exactly zero. Yet for some companies, online is "where it's at". Interesting.

[randalllewis]

Underwhelmed

Organizing photos by date (or as Apple calls it "event'') is an innovation? Oooooh. So impressive. As usual, Apple is all about design and marketing/hype.

[joebuff75]

ordered mine already

The new iMacs look very nice and polished.

Last night after the new models were announced I ordered an
iMac 24" with the 2.8 Ghz processor and 750 GB hard drive.
We're going to use it with an Elgato EyeTV 310 to watch satellite
TV on it and use it as a media center.

Besides that I ordered separate copies of iLife'08 and iWork'08 to
use on my regular desktop system... iMovie should make it really
easy to quickly edit movies. I just hope all the plugins from the
old iMovie will still work in the new version.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Good news for the Apple product line

The current line hasn't had a fresh take on design in several years so it was time they did something to refresh it. The new designs are cosmetically improved and that should appeal to non-technically oriented customers.

Apple took out the cheapest product in their line, now making the lowest price for an iMac being $1199. That does tend to put it approximately double the price of a comparably equipped PC. The Mac Mini is on an extended lifespan for one more model and then- well, it doesn't seem that they are putting much behind this model. A shame as I really like the Mini, but it's not an all in one unit where they tend to make most of their money for new customers.

They will follow economics and go with what works for them. I wish them well.

To each their own. Some like PC's, some like Macs. Both do the job for different people. Use what best fits your needs. Keep your eyes and ears open, don't listen automatically to proponents that push this or that OS or platform. Educate yourself and make an informed decision.

[gerardogerardo80]

How long takes an Apple to rot ? Is it worth the money?

Or in 2 years will be ready for the Salvation Army store or Goodwill, or in the worst case after the warranty expires, you have hardware troubles and you'll be singing The Broken Apple Blues.

A friend still uses a 1999 HP, I added more memory and runs XP fairly decent, yet I've seen people at a local flea market, unable to sell a much newer Imac, leaving the funky piece of junk behind.

[Mad Dog - Chi]

Integrated display ? No way!

I would never buy a desktop with an integrated display. When the computer finally outlives its usefulness (becomes too slow), why pay for a new display if the old one is fine?

The computer manufacturers love to sell us more stuff to boost their profits and fill up our landfills.

[ratGT]

When you don't know what you're talking about

I HATE people criticizing multiple OSs/ platforms, when they've
NEVER used anything else outside their Microsoft world (oh
yeah, visiting a local store, messing around with a Mac's mouse
for a couple of minutes and clicking on a few program icons
doesn't give you ANY sort of privilege saying "been there, done
that")

As for the 1999 HP, you know both you and your friend are lying
to yourselves when you are saying "runs XP fairly descent".
Unless he has stuffed it with +1GB memory, turned off ALL of
XP's visual effects and is not using the PC for anything other
than Office 97/2000 and Internet Explorer, you are either using
pre-2K software or you haven't been outside your house to see
what Intel Core 2 Duo machines are doing now days.

On the hand, I have a 1999 G4 Mac (PIII equivalent) that has only
got 'faster' and more efficient all these years. And that's because
every new Mac OS X released has the 'tendency' to make older
machines to run faster and do even more stuff that they used to
(in opposition to every new Windows version, that 'demands' a
PC to have a hefty amount of memory and processor as
minimum specs, or more...)

Oh yeah, and I speak out of 2 decades of experience on most
popular platforms (Mac, Linux, Windows) due to the nature of
my work. Not as aν average biased, undereducated, MS fanatical
PC user...

[drgum]

Where is it?

Where is an upgrade for the Apple Airport Extrene card to "n" for
the iMac?

[nrambeck]

I'm this close to switching to a Mac

It's difficult to imagine switching to a Mac for my web development business (I'm concerned about the initial loss in productivity), but I think the next home computer is going to be a Mac.

[kalodev]

$1500 reasons for not buying a iMac

I'd rather buy a PC at half that price running Vista.

[szovegek]

Faring well

Faring well against Windows-based competition, Brown says, ?Apple did a really good job in putting a fast PC together.? Brown also compliments the redesign
http://www.szovegek.com/szovegek/lou-reed/index.php
http://www.szovegek.com/szovegek/ocean-colour-scene/index.php

[equals42]

I call BS

I just looked at PCs for my sister. I shopped at Dell and a few other places. If you compare a new 20 inch iMac to a PC with similar specs (LCD with same resolution, similar video cards with same dedicated video memory, equal system memory, hard disk, network) and then toss in the software which includes fully licensed copies of Vista (to be fair you should include Vista Ultimate but we'll go with Home Premium), MS Office, Virus software with subscription, DVD burning software, DVD playing software and perhaps more you'll find the Mac is only slightly more expensive (in the range of $100-150 more). If you use iLife 08 instead of MS Office for Mac on the Apple the Mac is cheaper.

I know... you could use OpenOffice or some other office product on the PC. Who does that? Really. Not many people who think of the computer as a tool to just get things done. If you like messing around with computers as I do, you can load Linux or Solaris x86. Heck, go load up Plan9 and geek out. That type of person, like me, never buys a whole system from Dell. They build computers from scratch. For the rest, I believe my comparison is fair. For everything you get in the Mac, it is not that expensive compared to the PC alternative.

[equals42]

Who else should we talk about?

Who else in the computer industry does anything exciting for home computing? Gateway? HP? News from Dell about their contribution to the personal computer market is as interesting as my Aunt's Tivo schedule.

Apple, Sun, IBM and HP are really all that's left of complete system integrators. IBM and HP really only still make a whole stack for Unix and other backend server applications. Sun is always trying to appear to be on the desktop and on your phone but who knows what they are anymore. Apple still makes personal computers with a non-MS operating system. That's intriguing compared to the 5 year OS cycle for MS.

Computer press [CNET being an example] have to have something to write about. 90% of the people reading news.com.com.com.com don't care about SAN virtualization or legacy Mainframe apps working with a new MQ on linux. They need easy to understand basic computer news. Apple, Intel, AMD, Cisco, MS, and PC/console gaming fit that description quite well.

If you don't understand all the basics behind that, you're daft.

[technewsjunkie]

Mac vs. PC cost analysis at ComputerWorld...

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?
command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9029458&intsrc=hm_list

[technewsjunkie]

Get Windows, Linux AND Mac OS X, on Macs.

A bargain no matter how you slice it.

Parallels, VMware virtualization.