Apple outdoes itself in year of innovation
What a year for Apple! It introduced new products and perfected old ones at a whirlwind pace, from the start of January right on through to the year's end.
It was almost impossible to keep up and, in retrospect, it seems as if January was eons ago, with innovations from then now industry standards and icons.
The year started with a tsunami of new products. Keynote (a new presentation application) and Safari (Apple's new web browser) seemed directly to attack Microsoft's PowerPoint and Internet Explorer. So far, they have been outstanding successes.
Also at the beginning of the year, Apple put some finishing touches to its famous iApps and reintroduced them as the iLife suite. Together, iPhoto, iMovie, iTunes and iDVD once again raised the bar with their cross-application integration and professional features.
As if this was not enough, Apple established another precedent by introducing its first 'presumer' application for video-editing, Final Cut Express, which came with most of the features of Final Cut Pro but had a consumer-friendly price.
During MacWorld San Francisco, Apple floored everyone with its huge 17-inch and the tiny 12-inch aluminium PowerBooks. These impressive machines broke the one-gigahertz speed barrier for Apple portables and introduced Firewire 800, USB 2 and Bluetooth short-range wireless. They also came with superdrives that burned DVDs and CDs. In addition, Apple introduced Airport Extreme, which doubled the data rate of the previous Airport wireless networking technology.
About this time, accessory manufacturers started shipping 500-gigabyte portable Firewire and USB hard drives that took advantage of the new double-speed performance.
In February, Apple dropped the price of its most drool-worthy item, the 22-inch Cinema Display, and put an even higher resolution 23-inch Cinema Display at the top of the line - resulting in a new definition for the verb 'to covet'. The following month it started shipping a spectacular 20.1-inch Cinema Display for the rest of us - or at least the rest of us with US$1,295 to spare.
Apple got back to its pro users in April, introducing major upgrades for its video production applications Final Cut Pro 4 and DVD Studio Pro 2.
Next Apple flexed its innovation muscle outside the hardware and software realm with the introduction of the breakthrough iTunes Music Store. At first, the move was severely criticised by Wall Street, but then the numbers started coming in. There was actually a market in people who wanted to be honest. Wall Street was amazed.
Apple crossed another milestone in October with iTunes (and, of course, the iTunes Music Store) for Windows. This complemented a number of Apple products, from the Windows version of the iPod to the Windows version of Apple's bottom line. As I write this column, the morning's news is that Windows iTunes music store downloads have already surpassed those of Mac music lovers.
If that isn't enough of a stir, in June Apple announced the long-awaited G5 computer, with specs well beyond what everyone expected. The G5s were on show at the July MacWorld in New York, which had become the CreativePro Conference and Expo. Because of differences with the producers, Apple had only a modest presence and there was no keynote from chief executive Steve Jobs, but Soundtrack was introduced.
Apple's second prosumer application caters to people creating original music for video or CD mastering. As expected, its reception was warm. At the same show, Apple introduced its remarkable iSight video camera and iChat AV, the chat application that enables you to see who you are talking to.
The next month Apple released Panther (OS 10.3). As impressive as OS X was, Panther took it to the next level with interface enhancements, new technologies for networking and interconnectivity, and a new level of stability and performance. It also stealthily announced the aluminium version of its 15-inch PowerBook, and upgrades to the 17- and 12-inch.
At this point, most firms would have taken a break, but not Apple. It started shipping the new G5 in September, along with the finished version of Safari 1.0.
Then, not to ignore its creative user base, Apple surprised everyone by upgrading its consumer portable, the iBook, to a G4 processor. With that and some other tweaks, the iBook evolved to become an impressive low-price laptop.
Later that month Apple updated its iPod so that it could, with the help of an adapter from the Belkin Company, store tens of thousands of high-resolution photos, and record and play back a user's voice for meetings, memos or musings.
The year isn't over yet. It is expected that Apple will announce, at the very least, another update for Panther before Christmas. In my column a few weeks ago, I said that if you bought a Mac now there would be no compelling reason to upgrade for a year or so. I am now rethinking that idea. After all, MacWorld in San Francisco is just a few weeks away and Mr Jobs will be giving the keynote.
