I do not have one yet, but I am sure I want one – strictly as a personal laptop though. I admire their attention towards achieving aesthetic excellence.
The other day I was watching the Apple Keynote video dated 20th October, 2010 (I have not watched the video completely at the time of writing). The Mac sales statistics are incredible! Apparently a customer sale study has put the ratio of Macs to the rest at 20%, which means that 1 in every 5 computer is a Mac! And if this does not impress you enough, then consider the iLife product that has been demoed next. I saw the iPhoto and iVideo applications and will write about them.
iPhotos does way more than any other photo software I have used till date. It has a nice full-screen feature which lets you focus completely on the task at hand – arranging your photos or making a collage or choosing the next facebook profile photo or making a photo album of the last adventure trip you had. The photos, if tagged properly, can be shown on a map at their locations. Apple has put in themes that allow you to quickly make a picture slideshow. One of the theme goes thus -
A globe is shown to start with. Then the app zooms into the city and photo pins start appearing on the neat map. Then using the time data from the photo, the app transitions from one photo to another. And while all this is happening, a soothing tune will be played in the background.
Say you now want to print these photos into an album and show them to your parents. iPhoto picks up your photos and chooses an appropriate cover. Inside, few pages contain single photos and the rest are collage. The single photos are those that have been rated higher, while the lower rated ones will be used as thumbnails in the collage. But this does not mean you are restricted by this default choice. You can just drag and drop photos to swap them or reorder the collection. The whole thing is so intuitive, you do not need a tutorial to make the first album. Just drag and drop.
iVideo was even more mesmerizing. One can now also apply effects on sounds, let alone the video. And the best feature was making trailers. iVideo comes with a few inbuilt trailer themes and it is very easy to get the hang of it. In fact, through the demo of making a trailer, was shown another feature which I loved the most – applying face recognition to videos. Say you want all the clips in which only one person appears. Just set a filter and voila! Watch the keynote video and you’ll appreciate the brilliance too.
There must be more to it than just this, but as I haven’t watched the complete video yet I’ll rather not comment. Now, your manager probably might not get impressed with the amazing slide transitions in your presentation, but your girl friend will definitely enjoy those lovely themes using which you can make a picture album in just a few minutes. Even without having used one, I do recommend a Mac for home use.
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