About a month ago at Macworld, Apple introduced two new notebooks, including one using the same 17-inch landscape screen that's in the high-end iMac (check out the video). More recently, Apple has revamped its entire desktop line, bumping up performance and lowering prices. The company is also beefing up its Xserve server offerings as it makes a run at specific markets, like science and film/video, where its Unix-based OS X may have opened some doors.
All that hardware is, of course, important and has generally been well-received. But Apple hardware doesn't sell itself. For Apple, like the rest of the struggling PC industry, the old adage is true: software sells hardware. And as Apple's market share has eroded, that software increasingly comes from Apple itself.
At least in consumer markets, Apple has become a software company that also sells the hardware necessary to run its applications and OS. So today I want to update you on Apple, the software company, and its increasingly troubled relationship with Microsoft, still a major publisher of Mac software.
In addition to the new hardware, Apple also introduced at Macworld its new iLife, a package that includes iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, and iTunes, as well as the Safari browser, and a new presentation program called Keynote.
Before Macworld I wrote a column saying, essentially, that the show as we know it needs to die because it messes up Apple's development efforts. The reason: the company is forced to roll out products when there's a show, rather than when those products are really ready.
After playing with Keynote for two weeks, I think that's exactly what happened to it. I'd describe it as very "version 1". The presentation app had problems with some video cards that caused it to crash, bugs that have subsequently been ironed out. (Although, given all the fun Apple has had at Microsoft's expense over crash issues, Jobs & probably deserve a hit on this one. What is it about charismatic computer execs who live in glass houses?)
Less forgivable is the fact that, overall, Keynote isn't that special. For example, given Apple's pride about bringing nice design to the masses, Keynote's 12 included templates aren't very much for the masses to start working with. Apple is notorious for not building things out the way customers might expect, so what should have been 50 or 100 templates petered out at only a dozen.
This isn't to say I don't like Keynote. I will, in fact, probably use it. But if I were the product manager for Mac PowerPoint, I wouldn't be losing too much sleep over it, either. I hope I can help light a fire under Apple to get a more fully-featured and template-rich Keynote 2.0 out the door quickly.
While I don't yet have the personal experience to back this up, I've been told that the new iApp releases are also ahead of their time -- as in shipped too early. Blame it on Macworld?
Much has been made over whether Keynote is some sort of shot across Microsoft's bow. If it is, Microsoft hasn't noticed. I'm told that Apple gave MS an early heads-up before the Keynote introduction. Microsoft seems to accept Keynote as what Apple says it is -- Steve Jobs's pet project -- rather than a serious competitive threat.
That's partly because Microsoft is focused on implementing full cross-platform compatibility between the Windows and Mac versions of its applications. Indeed, a very senior Microsoft exec told me that cooperation between Apple and Microsoft is better today than it has been in a long time.
Work continues on the next release of Mac Office, which I believe will be timed to coincide with a significant future update to OS X, provided Apple and Microsoft can get their respective stars aligned.
Closer to the horizon, perhaps very close, is a solution for Mac Office customers who need to connect to Microsoft Exchange servers. I don't yet know how complete this solution will be or what form it will take, so I won't order the champagne. But a fully-featured Exchange client (the equivalent to Outlook on Windows) would be a real boost to OS X as a business tool.
It's nice to report a warming of the Microsoft/Apple relationship even as Apple finds it necessary to compete even more aggressively with Microsoft products. This should be an interesting spring and summer for the two companies' shared customers. Especially if Steve Jobs intends to make his pet product something everyone in the Mac community will want to use.
