Yep, it looks like it’s going to be a Digital Lifestyle Christmas this year. For those that just said, “Huh?”, Digital Lifestyle is a phrase coined two years ago by Apple Computer’s CEO Steve Jobs. He sees computers as a “Digital Hub”, where digital peripherals like video camcorders, still cameras, MP3 music players, Personal Data Assistants, and phones can be connected to manage all that digital data. In it’s usual fashion, Microsoft has bulldozed late into the party, but it’s much ballyhooed Windows XP Media Center can’t measure up to the Apple concept. Whether you are in the market for your first computer, or looking to upgrade an older system, even a Windows-based system, you should take a long look at what Apple has to offer this holiday season.

The centerpiece of Apple’s Digital Hub is OSX (pronounced “oh-ess-ten)”, a new state-of-the-art operating system that marries traditional Mac ease-of-use to the power of UNIX. Unlike other operating systems, OSX comes with all the applications you need to handle digital data and media. They’re Apple’s suite of “i-Apps”, and they’re the best in the business at what they do.

iMovie imports, edits and exports digital video. You connect your digital video camera to your Mac using a FireWire cable (Sony calls it iLink), an industry-standard high speed transmission line. IMovie’s intuitive interface controls the camera as you import your footage, then supplies ready-made titles, transitions, and sound effects, to make really professional-looking home movies. Once finished, you can export the movie to the internet, to a VHS tape, or burn it to onto a DVD with iDVD.

Almost all Macs come equipped with an optical drive that will read and write CDs and DVDs. With iDVD, you can do more than just burn the movie onto the disk – you can create stylish backgrounds and buttons to guide your viewer through your movie masterpiece.

iTunes manages your digital music collection. With one click you can import songs from CDs onto your computer as MP3, or the new hi-fi MP4, files. iTunes automatically searches the internet to catalog and label them. iTunes can also keep track of your favorite songs, and the songs you listen to the most. If you want to make your own CD, simply click the songs you want to put on it and click to start burning.

iTunes also manages music for Apple’s iPod, an amazing portable MP3 player that’s tiny (about the size of a deck of playing cards) but packs a big punch. The top-of-the-line 20GB iPod holds 4000 songs – enough to get you through your morning jog, for sure. You can also keep calendar and contact information on it.

iPhoto keeps track of your digital still images. Connect your camera to the Mac, and iPhoto automatically downloads and catalogs the images. iPhoto can edit your images, attach images to email, send them to a ready-made web page, create a slide show movie, order prints from Kodak, and make a desktop image or screensaver. The best of all is it’s ability to format your photos and comments into a picture book that is sent via the internet to Apple where it becomes a beautiful linen-bound hardcover album, mailed to you, all for a very reasonable price.

Again, all these applications come loaded on all Macs (with the exception of iDVD, which comes loaded only on Macs with DVD burners). You can find similar applications available for Windows, but none so elegantly integrated and executed as Apple’s i-Apps. To find out more about Apple’s digital vision, point your browser at: www.apple.com.

© 2002 Peter F. Zimowski