New Apple Software Spices up iLife
Saying he had "two Macworld’s worth of stuff for you today," Steve Jobs unveiled a host of new software (and hardware, covered elsewhere in this issue) offerings at his Macworld Expo San Francisco 2003 keynote address. In fact, the sheer number of products prevents us from going into much detail about the software in this issue – look for more detailed analysis in upcoming editions of TidBITS.
iLife — The digital hub remains a core Apple strategy, and the company has tightened the radius of its iApps by creating iLife, a bundle consisting of iTunes 3, iPhoto 2, iMovie 3, and iDVD 3. In addition to new features, these applications now integrate with each other – so iTunes playlists are available in iMovie, iPhoto albums are accessible in iDVD, etc. iPhoto 2 and iMovie 3 will be available 25-Jan-03 for free download (iTunes 3 is already available). Due to iDVD’s size, it’s not practical to make it available online, so on 25-Jan-03 Apple will start selling the entire iLife package on CD-ROM for $50.
Keynote — Steve Jobs has always been noted for his showy keynote addresses; now he’s revealed the application he used to create his sophisticated slide shows during 2002. Keynote is a presentation program which takes advantage of Mac OS X display technologies like Quartz and OpenGL to make sophisticated slide shows. It imports and exports from PowerPoint, making it an intriguing alternative to Microsoft’s dominant presentation program (see "Apple Reduces Its Microsoft Dependency" elsewhere in this issue). Keynote is available now for $100.
<http://www.apple.com/keynote/>
Final Cut Express — Apple also announced Final Cut Express, a slightly stripped-down version of its Final Cut Pro digital video editing application. Final Cut Express uses the same interface as Final Cut Pro and offers most of the pro-level non-linear editing, transitions, and real-time effects as its big brother at about one-third of the price. That makes it a good choice for someone who wants to produce projects more sophisticated than what iMovie can handle, but who doesn’t need extensive image capture and export capabilities. Final Cut Express is available now for $300.
<http://www.apple.com/finalcutexpress/>
Safari Public Beta — One of the most exciting announcements was Safari, Apple’s home-grown Web browser. Built by some of the folks who develop Chimera for Mac OS X, Safari is a new Web browser based on the open source KHTML rendering engine. Apple intends it to be the fastest browser available on the Mac – and so far, they seem to be pulling it off – with easy-to-use features. Currently Safari is in public beta and available as a tiny 2.9 MB download. On 10-Jan-03, Apple released a v51 update, which is recommended for everyone who initially downloaded Safari in the first few days after release.
<http://www.apple.com/safari/>