8th
Competition is good
Microsoft released “performance and reliability” fixes* for Vista today, making it painfully clear that even after 5 years of development, the OS was still not ready for release this past January.
Meanwhile, their competitors relentlessly push forward, with Apple releasing iLife and iWork ‘08 today. iWork completes their productivity suite by adding a new spreadsheet app. So, for $79 you can get the same apps that Office 2004 includes for $399. To add insult to injury, Pages works with Word 2007, while Microsoft only provides a beta file converter that will allow Word 2007 files to work with Office 2004. Microsoft also recently announced that the next version of Office for Mac has been delayed.
iLife ‘08 includes vastly improved versions of iPhoto and iMovie. I thought these apps in iLife ‘06 were phenomenal, but they now seem outdated. Watching the demo for the completely new iMovie made me smile. The new way to skim videos is as revolutionary as it is simple.
iLife is the reason I recommend Macs to family or friends. There isn’t anything like it available in Windows that I’ve seen. I loved Picasa, but the new iPhoto radically reduces the complexity in the way photos are organized. As for iMovie and iDVD, it is simply years ahead of the competition. More than anything else, iLife makes you feel more in control of your digital media. No longer do the videos I take on my camera just sit as files on my hard drive never to be played again. With iMovie, I can do anything I want with them, and better yet, have fun while doing it.
* Why would they release these updates as separate downloads? Would someone want the performance update, but not the reliability update? Ugh!
