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This article is from January 10, 2002, and is no longer current.

The Creative Toolbox: A Designer’s Reflections on the iMac and Mac OS X

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Whenever I attend Macworld Expo keynotes, I do my best not to get swept up in the excitement and fervor swimming around the convention hall. It helps to keep my impression of the announcements objective and see them in their true light. But this isn’t always easy when you have Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, presenting the keynote in such a way that you’d swear he was leading a sermon. Although Apple’s hype-machine was running at full-tilt, I still felt they succeeded in living up to it all, for the most part. So now that all is said and done, or rather announced and unveiled, I thought it would be a good idea to distill it all down and try to mull over what it all means for the creative industry.

Software: Adobe Shows Up to the Party
Steve started the keynote off by going over the state of Apple’s recent developments: how the iPod was selling, the popularity of the retail stores, and the proliferation of Mac OS X apps. From all this Steve segued into the recent slew of developers making their software compatible with OS X, notably Microsoft Office v.X.

All this talk was meant to assure us that OS X is ready to be taken seriously with the implication that we should consider switching over to it as our primary operating system (in fact from now on, when you buy a new Mac, it boots up in OS X — that’s one way to force a changeover). But let’s face it: The large majority of those in the creative industry won’t even entertain the thought of migrating until a carbonized version of Photoshop is released. Apple and Adobe both know this. They want buy-in from us, we want them to show us the goods. So they did.

Adobe took center stage and gave us a quick demonstration of carbonized versions of Illustrator 10 (released), InDesign 2.0 (soon to be released), GoLive 6.0 (just announced) and, yes believe it or not, Photoshop coming together to produce a barrage of marketing materials for the movie, “The Lord of the Rings.” While we were only treated to a glimpse of each Mac OS X-native application, it was enough to get us excited about the upcoming releases. I still can’t get over the transparency capabilities of InDesign 2.0, even though I’ve seen them in action several times. LiveMotion 2.0 was also announced on Monday along with GoLive 6.0. I hope to have first looks of these two Mac OS X-native applications very soon.

In fact, Adobe’s executive vice president Shantanu Narayen pointedly pledged that any future product upgrades will be carbonized, which doesn’t leave many. After Effects 5.5 and Acrobat 5.0.5 are now available as carbonized updates of their former selves. When these recently announced upgrades get out the door in the next few months, Adobe will have delivered OS X updates to all their major applications. Having the leading creative software company in full support of Apple’s next generation operating system leaves us with little excuse for not switching over. Hats off to you, Adobe: You may be a little late to the party but you’ve certainly brought the goods.

Hardware: The New iMac as a Serious System?
After the parade of other developers showing their latest and greatest software running on OS X, Steve gave us a run down of the iApps: iMovie 2, iDVD 2 and iTunes 2. Shortly thereafter, we were treated to a great presentation of the new addition to the digital lifestyle collection: iPhoto. It’s a neat application that I’m sure many of us will want to use as it eliminates the need for the hodgepodge of applications we use now to do similar digital photography tasks.

After the iPhoto presentation, the time came for the big announcement — the highly anticipated new flat-panel iMac. To be quite honest, I wasn’t completely won over by the new design at first. It’s a pretty radical approach and hard to take in all at once. But after listening to Steve describe how he and industrial designer Jonathan Ive arrived at the final design and spending some time in front of the new iMac, I started to warm up to the new form factor. I’m sure many will love it or hate it just as with the original iMac. The extreme user reaction just underscores the fact that Apple is still taking chances and perpetually innovating.

If you look beyond the industrial design of the new iMac and take a hard look what’s being offered within it, you’ll probably find yourself a bit conflicted, especially if you’re a creative on a budget (which nowadays who isn’t). Housed within the dome base of the new iMac is a 700 or 800Mhz PowerPC G4 processor with a 100Mhz system bus along with a NVIDIA GeForce2 MX GPU. All pretty enticing but to shake it up a bit, the high-end model offers a SuperDrive giving you the ability to read and burn both CDs and DVDs. If that wasn’t enough, you get Harmon Kardon Pro Speakers, 60GB hard drive, and a 15-inch LCD display that on its own would cost $600. All this for just $1,800.

I swear I could hear several jaws dropping when these details were being presented. This may not sit well with those who think iMacs are meant to be cheap machines for consumers (incidentally, Apple is still selling the old CRT-based iMac models for $800 – $1,000). But if you think of these iMacs as being a good deal even at $1,800, then I’m with you on this one. Steve said it best, stating that the new iMac is approximately the same offering as last year’s PowerMac that retailed just shy of $4,000 not including the display. Tell me this isn’t a deal.

But the question still stands. Can a creative professional realistically use a new iMac as a serious, working system? In most cases probably not. Unfortunately, what stops this system from making the cut is the 15-inch display. This is just too small to be practical for most creative work. If you tend to work on small graphics or layouts, such as a web designer, then maybe you’d be fine with one. It would’ve been really slick if Apple designed the display to be replaceable with larger display units, although that might jeopardize its professional line. Can the new iMac be used as secondary or home system? In my opinion most certainly. In fact, I’m already scheming ways to justify the purchase of one to my wife.

What We’re Missing
In the excitement surrounding all these announcements, it’s easy to overlook what wasn’t announced. Taking a step back, here’s my quick list of what I felt was missing from Macworld Expo.

Obviously, Apple watchers were left scratching our heads as to why the PowerMac line didn’t get the heavily rumored speed bumps. It seems rather odd since the new iMac (800Mhz) surpasses the G4 processor speed offered in the low-end PowerMac model (733Mhz) for about the same price. While it would’ve also been nice to have a rough date put in our heads as to when we could expect the next major update to OS X (10.2), but I’m not crying over this.

It was also a bit unexpected that Quark and Macromedia were mysteriously absent from the cavalcade of OS X applications presented. True, Macromedia had another event to think about and Quark is a notorious no-show at this venue, but I can’t help but think “You snooze, you loose,” when it comes to Macromedia and Quark.

Overall, this keynote redeemed itself from the recent string of ho-hum Macworld Expos. Apple did deliver the truly innovative products for which they are known. There is no doubt that developers are gravitating toward OS X, but it remains to be seen when the majority of creative professionals will follow suit. But with Adobe coming on board the Mac OS X train and with Apple challenging our notions of what a computer can look like, designers have good reason to join in.

 

  • anonymous says:

    I don’t own a Mac but I like to keep up with what’s current on the Mac front. George, you have a nicely balanced point of view. Obviously a Mac fan but not a rabid Mac fanatic….

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