W e are always keen on seeing a bit of positive mainstream press about Apple, and Fortune delivered just such a treat today. The financial and business magazine has published a very positive outlook on Appleis Macworld San Francisco 2003 product announcements that is fairly gushing with glowing remarks. The author, Brent Schlender, specifically looks at Safari, Keynote, and iLife -- Appleis collection of iDVD, iMovie, iPhoto, and iTunes. The article specifically discusses the ease of use, quality, and usefulness of all of those apps, and kicks off with this intro:
But [Keynote] speeches are ephemeral. What matters are the goods. While Jobs didnit unveil anything to point Apple or personal computing in a radical new direction, the company is fulfilling its pledge to make the Macintosh into the ultimate digital hub--a machine that enables ordinary people to create, manipulate, and enjoy digital media of all sorts (video, photography, MP3 audio), not to mention browse the web and cook up business presentations as flashy as Jobsi. His speech also underscored how Apple hopes to cash in on its growing software prowess, as much to goose revenues amid an industry slump as to give conventional Windows PC users more reasons to switch to Macs.
Of particular note to much of Fortuneis audience are the comments on Keynote. With so many business people reading the magazine, presentation software is likely important to a much higher percentage of those readers than most other mainstream magazines. Those comments:
Jobs, who has always made most of his presentation slides himself, was almost breathless when introducing his favorite new software--a $99 presentation program called Keynote. He didnit just show demos of Keynote; he actually used it to organize and illustrate his speech. "They made this just for me," he crowed. Itis probably the most elegant application software Apple has ever created. The cinematic transitions and special effects are similar to those in iMovie, and thereis a suite of subtly beautiful thematic graphics templates, many of which came from iDVDis menus. It was no surprise when Jobs told me he spends more time using Keynote than any other program on his own Macs.
Check out the full article to get the specific comments on Appleis software offerings. The piece closes with an interesting look at the time-consuming nature of being creative with Appleis iApps, and is a good read.