iLife 09: First Impressions

I have to say, overall I'm impressed with the majority of the new features of the new iLife suite:

iPhoto

What I love: The face recognition, while not perfect, is amazing, but the Facebook sync has to be the best new feature. You can upload albums to your profile, and when people tag your photos, you can sync those tags back to iPhoto!

What I'd like to see: While Faces, Places, and Events are nice, not everyone uses them. I like that iTunes allows you what type of libraries to show (Music, Movies, Podcasts, Etc). I'd like to see a similar feature for the iPhoto sidebar.

iMovie

What I love: Precision editing is great; it's odd that it took them this long to add it!

What I'd like to see: It was too bad iMovie's companion iDVD didn't get any noticeable updates. While online video is becoming the fad, DVD is still popular as a family video medium.

Garageband

What I love: A visual representation of virtual amps and pedals is a nice step in making amateur recording fun and user friendly. While I probably won't use the "Learn To Play" feature, it's a great tool that if developed, may give Practica Musica a fair amount of competition (although I don't see Apple offering theory lessons in the future).

What I'd like to see: With the virtual pedals, I'd love for Line 6 or M-Audio to create a USB stompbox to give it an authentic experience. I'm also hoping that they eventually create an environment like iWork.com where musicians can collaborate on projects through the web.

iWeb

What I love: Finally, they added direct FTP publishing! The process I had to go through in order to update all of my websites was just to complicated (while other programs offered FTP publishing, nothing beats the WYSIWYG capabilities iWeb offers).

What I'd like to see: There's still a few features that are easy to offer to external sites that they limit to MobileMe published sites (password protection, RSS). If they want to keep MobileMe popular, they should consider adding domain hosting as a feature of the service.

iTunes DRM upgrade: now per song, but I'm still not happy

MacRumors has reported that iTunes is now allowing folks to upgrade their previously purchased DRM songs to DRM-free on a 'per track' basis instead of having to upgrade their entire library at once.

While this is a step in the right direction, it's still insulting to loyal Apple customers.

Apple is trying to pass this scheme off as a chance to upgrade the bit rate of your song from 128kps to 256kps, charging you 30 cents for the better bit rate. But most users could care less about the higher bit rate, and probably aren't going to notice the difference unless they have a serious sound system hooked up to their computer. From my perspective (which I think is shared by a large amount of veteran iTunes customers), I'm being charged 30 cents for a song I've already purchased just to have the right to play it on a device of my choice.

Does that sound like an honorable business decision to you?

While I love Apple software and hardware (I just bought iLife '09, and will post a review once I have a chance to play with it), I feel as though I'm being punished for the business I've given to the iTunes store for the past few years (over 4000 tracks worth of business). Since I currently have no need to play the songs on other devices, I won't be upgrading my songs, and going forward, my business is going to Amazon.

I'm hoping by the time iTunes incorporates the layered pricing structure, they'll come up with a better offer. What are the chances someone is going to want to pay an additional 30 cents for a song they've already bought for 99 cents, and is now available for 30 cents less?

(FYI - this isn't the first time Apple has defecated on their customers. In 2007, they charged people who had recently bought new Macs an additional $2 after the purchase just to activate the 802.11n wireless capabilities already built into the computer).

Forget Apple, and You May Be Forgotten

Palm's new smartphone, the Pre, has garnered some attention, and some folks are calling upon it, like many before, to be the "iPhone Killer". Nokia had one. So did Blackberry. But none of them have even put a damper on Apple's momentum in the phone market.

It appears as if karma is catching up with a lot of companies for snubbing Apple over the past decade. Now that times are tough, most consumer tech companies are feeling a hit. Apple sales are similar, but they are able to sell laptops priced 30% higher then comparable offers from competitors.

My theory is that this could have been avoided if companies had only recognized Apple's turning point back in 1998 with the iMac. Before Apple unveiled their 'bondi blue' savior, their products came in beige or gray, and the few major software and hardware companies who supported them didn't provide updates for Mac as often as they did for PC. And after the iMac was released, those companies still didn't see much potential in them.

This was also right around the time that MP3s were taking over the CD and short lived minidisc market. Hardware companies were making portable players to jump on the trend, but with the exception of Diamond Rio, they didn't see profit in extending compatibility to the Mac. So Mac released iTunes, then the iPod, and finally the iTunes Store. Today, they are the #1 music software, device, and store in the world. Most of the original companies from the 90's are nowhere to be found (How many people do you see today carrying a Grundig or a Diamond Rio?). The same thing applies to phones. While Palm had limited ability to sync with a Mac, Blackberry offered nothing. People still rely on 3rd party software to make it work. So Apple created the iPhone, cutting into Blackberry's market share, and leaving Palm and Motorola in the dust.

Can you see the pattern? Apple's not necessarily trying to take over these markets. OK fine - yes they are, but part of the decision to go down the recent paths they've traveled is to further strengthen their computer market share. You haven't seen them dive into the graphic software market, because Adobe has always provided cutting edge software for them. They backed off of the printer market because Epson's entire line of printers were compatible by the mid 90's. By the time digital cameras were commonplace, Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Olympus knew better than to ignore Apple. Today, gaming companies are quickly porting their most popular games to play on the Mac, and Google was quick to admit their mistake in not having a Mac version of Chrome upon release.

The moral: Apple marketing is king. If you create a product that is not compatible with the Mac, Apple may just create a similar product that will render yours obsolete.