You may have overlooked it, but there’s another prominent birthday to celebrate in the month of January. This year is the sixth birthday of the “digital lifestyle”. Others (who shall remain nameless, but their initials are “Bill Gates”) have attempted to co-opt (and, to my mind, denigrate) the term. The words “digital lifestyle” and “digital hub”, at least as they refer to personal computing, were used way back in 2000 by Steve Jobs as he was returning to become CEO of Apple Computer.

While the rest of the world was wiping its collective brow, grateful that their computer was still working after New Year’s Day (Macs didn’t have that problem), Steve Jobs was talking about the newly-introduced iMac as a “digital hub” – a place where all forms of digital media could be brought together, managed, modified, and distributed.

Between and before (the second coming) of Jobs, Apple had a good deal of “before their time” experience with the “accessories” of the digital lifestyle. The term “PDA” (Personal Digital Assistant), was coined by Apple CEO John Sculley in the early ‘90s to describe the “Newton”, which you could call the granddaddy of the Palm Pilot and even the Tablet PC. In the summer of 1994 Apple introduced the QuickTake digital camera. Remember, we’re talking 1994 here. The year before Windows ’95. You know – Middle Earth.

Jobs’ modern-day vision of the digital hub plays out in the iLife suite of applications. While iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand, and the newcomer iWeb are all separate applications, they are in a sense all joined at the hip. For example, if you want to add music to your photo slideshow, you don’t have to leave iPhoto to see and access all the music stored in your iTunes Library. If you want to add still images to a movie, you don’t have to leave iMovie to find the images stored in your iPhoto Library and drag them into your movie. You get the picture.

Contrast this with the Windows PC method, illustrated by a quick gander at Dell’s website to put together one of their “high-end” multimedia powerhouses. Here we find the list of optional software you have to buy to properly outfit their digital hub. Musicmatch Plus. Corel Photo Album Premium. Sonic DigitalMedia Plus. Sonic MyDVD Plus. (Windows Movie Maker is included). Forget the added cost. How do you get them all to work together? You don’t, really.

iLife comes free on every new Mac, and is a $79 upgrade if you have an older Mac and want the new features. And iLife ’06 is certainly packed with new features, many of them centered around “sharing” your media.

For example, iPhoto has had (for several versions, at least) a built-in photo book builder, with which you can assemble and order a very attractive, hard-bound, linen-covered coffee table book. iPhoto 6 adds the ability to order professionally printed greeting cards and postcards bearing your photos, in 20 different themes.

iPhoto 6 also introduces the term “Photocasting” into the modern lexicon. We all know (or do we?) than a “podcast” is an audio or video presentation designed to be distributed over the internet and listened to/viewed on an iPod (or computer), right? With iPhoto 6 (and a .Mac account) you can easily create online photo collections, and invite friends, family, or clients to view them. If they have a Mac with iPhoto 6, they can view the photos from within iPhoto. Others can view with any RSS-enabled browser or dedicated reader. It’s actually less complicated than it sounds. More iLife ’06 next time.

© 2006 Peter F. Zimowski