When Steve Jobs appeared on stage last Tuesday, he finally had some great news for the Mac faithful. We all know that he is a man of vision and that what he is visualizing is a world where portable devices will eventually replace most desktop computers. While this may be true, the Macintosh is still a cornerstone of Apple’s business and perhaps more surprisingly for him, an engine of growth for the company.
That means that even if there is doubt within Apple about the future of the PC, they still have to push the Mac, at least for now. My personal feeling is that those efforts are half-hearted at best. The new iMac is hardly a revolution, although it is still a great machine. The real news was software related. New versions of iLife and iWork were exactly what the Mac crowd was clamoring for. For those who are not familiar with the Mac platform, all this excitement about a new software release may seem strange. However, on the Mac, elegant, easy-to-use software is as important, if not more, than hardware. For Apple die-hard fans, Numbers is probably the most important announcement, as it allows most Mac users finally to work on their computers without having to rely on any products from Microsoft. The general public will probably care more about the major upgrades made to iPhoto and iMovie. Despite all the improvements and new features that will make iLife’08 and iWork’08 an instant success (by Apple software sales standards) I think that Mac users deserved more. My gut feeling, as a developer, is that Apple is not devoting a lot of resources to these products, otherwise we would have seen even more improvements. After all, they had eighteen months since the last release to update the software. Besides, some programs like iWeb or iDVD saw little change. I would love to believe that Apple is listening to their customers and that they have worked as hard as possible to deliver a release well planned years in advance, but it doesn’t seem likely. It looks much more like the work of a couple of passionate (and talented) developers.
The truth is that while I am very happy with all these announcements, as a Mac user I cannot help feel a little worried. This was probably the best keynote delivered by Steve Jobs to the Mac community in years. It deserved to be delivered during a high profile event. Instead, it was delivered to a small group of journalists at the Apple headquarters. Why?