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I'm used to Apple lightning striking. Over the years I've been showered with sophisticated
laptops, AirPort, colorful desktop machines, and a host of powerful third party
applications. Each new thing changed my personal computer landscape, and most of them
brought substantial improvements to my daily life. But nothing has taken my breath away as
quickly as the first time I plugged a digital camcorder into my laptop and launched iMovie
2 for Mac OS X.
Ten years ago, I had a Mac IIfx on my desk at work. From it, I could connect to the
company mainframe via a 3270-interface board, the department VAX via a dialup modem, and
the building's Ethernet network, all at the same time. I could access four different email
systems, switch seamlessly between budget data on the VAX and company-wide reports on the
mainframe. While my officemates were forced to share terminals all over the building, I
could access everything I could ever need directly from my desk, or with Timbuktu, from my
home. It was a perfect example of Apple's ability to create elegant solutions to what was
once an overcomplicated set of tasks. And now Apple has done it again, with
iMovie.
On the first day I owned a camcorder, I was able to make a movie. A good movie. It was
only after I dug a little deeper, and learned just how hard it used to be to edit a movie
with the previous generation of home video recorders, that I began to fully appreciate
just how big this is going to be. Now I understand a little better why Apple has been
hawking iMovie at all. Until now, I thought iMovie was a neat demo, but the number of
people lucky enough to afford a compatible camcorder was too small to encourage people to
take another look at a Mac.
Camcorders are expensive. Last year’s models were very expensive. This year they became
affordable enough for me. Next year and the year after, I predict Mac-compatible models
will be everywhere, as they become affordable to an even larger and ever-growing audience.
Once again, Apple has built a better solution, and brought it to market several years
before the other guys.
iMovie follows the tradition of great Apple software. Great because it does things that no
other product does, and it makes it so simple the first thing you think when you see it is
why didn’t someone think of this before? Attaching a camera is as easy as plugging in the
keyboard. A single FireWire cable connects the camera and the Mac, and as soon as
everything is powered up, iMovie is ready to pull the video through the cable and save it
to a hard drive. Beware however; if you are going to jump into iMovie, 30 minutes of video
require a whopping 7 GB of disk space.
It does not take much to make hours of home video of birthdays and vacations into
something interesting to watch. Something as simple as dubbing some music over junior’s
birthday party at Chuck-e-Cheese can transform a tape you watch with your finger on the
mute button to a warm and pleasant memory. Add a few fades and zap all that noise between
scenes, and your home movies go from collecting dust to entertaining the family.
It sure beats a summer rerun.
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"Apple Does it Again with iMovie 2"
