Product Review

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Apple iBook Part 2

Apple iBook Product Review Part 2

Last month we looked at the iBook from the hardware perspective. Now let’s look at it from a software perspective. Just to recap, the iBook is a really nice notebook for a reasonable price. It’s lightweight, compact, and has great battery life. As for software, the center of the Apple platform is their “Digital Hub” series of software. It is comprised of: iTunes for your digital music, iPhoto for your digital photos, iMovie for your DV (Digital Video) movie editing and production, and iDVD for creating your very own DVD movie disks. iDVD is only available on models configured with a SuperDrive, which is not available on any of their iBook models. Also included with the iBook was AppleWorks, their basic office suite.

I’ve run several basic projects through their “digital hub” and everything seems to work pretty well. My favorite application is definitely iMovie. I had the pleasure of compiling a 20 minute movie for a client. The iBook worked seamlessly. I was able to import the video, insert transitions, create titles and ultimately export a finished movie. There were two down sides: One, a 20 gig hard drive is just not large enough for editing Digital Video, and two, IT TAKES FOREVER to render a movie. It took over 2 hours to render a 20 minute movie.

My next favorite application was iPhoto. It worked just fine with my Olympus C-700 digital camera. Once the photos are imported, you can perform simple editing and touch-up functions, order prints on-line and even have a photo album sent to you of all your photos. While Windows XP has some support for photo importing and printing, it’s nothing like what Apple has provided with iPhoto.

As for the other applications… They were ok but I was not overly impressed with any of them. My least favorite of all was iTunes. I thought that I’d really like iTunes as I have a huge collection of almost 400 CDs that I want to convert to digital files. iTunes was slow to convert CDs to MP3 files, about ½ as fast as my eMachines desktop, and does not really organize things very well. I like Windows Media Player much better.

The most disappointing thing that I’ve noticed is that everything seems much slower on the iBook compared to similar functions on a PC. It is a neat little computer and for someone who is not familiar with Windows XP or invested in Microsoft Technologies, it would be great. Apple did a good job at providing a well rounded solution for the end user. But if you need applications beyond those that come with it, STOP. Everything costs much more when you buy for the Macintosh platform and local support is really non-existent in most markets. My final opinion is that the Apple is still a niche computer perfect for those that insist on being different and have money to burn. Today’s PCs running Windows XP are less expensive, faster and just as easy to use.

P.S. I no longer have the iBook computer. I showed it to someone who really fell in love with it and offered to take it off my hands. To replace it I purchased a PowerBook G4 DVI with a 15.2” Mega-wide display. I was hoping that the major upgrade in hardware, and price, would resolve some of the speed issues that I found in the iBook. Unfortunately things are about the same. It is a bit faster, and the screen is much better than the 12” display on the iBook. It also did not come with AppleWorks and therefore is useless for basic computer functions unless you go out and buy an Apple compatible office application suite.

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