The Wall Street Journal’s, Walter Mossberg, offers a look at iPhoto and Apple’s ‘Digital Hub’ campaign in an in-depth gander at iPhoto, Apple’s new photo management software. Better yet, Mr. Mossberg gives iPhoto the thumbs up in the latest edition of his ‘Personal Technology’ column. Mr. Mossberg had this to say about Apple’s ‘Digital Hub’ strategy:
Some of this (Apple’s Digital Hub campaign) is just plain marketing, a skill at which Apple has few peers. Competing PCs, using the Windows operating system, are also perfectly capable of connecting with cameras and music players, and handling photos, videos and songs. But even when you clear away the hype, Apple has a point.
Every Mac comes with a suite of free, elegant digital media programs, which are in most cases simpler and more capable than their Windows counterparts. There’s iMovie, the easiest and best video editor I’ve seen. There’s iTunes, a very nice MP3 music jukebox that can also burn audio CDs. There’s iDVD, the best and simplest program I’ve tested for creating home-made DVDs. And now, Apple has rounded out the quartet with iPhoto, a program for organizing, managing and sharing digital photos.
Mr. Mossberg also likes some of the major features of iPhoto. From his column, he writes:
It’s like a digital replacement for that shoebox where you keep years of prints from the drugstore. When you plug a digital camera into your Mac, iPhoto automatically launches, ready to import the pictures. It can also import pictures from your hard disk or from a CD.
With iPhoto, you can handle thousands of pictures, stretching over years. And you can quickly and easily turn them into prints, or into a free, customized Web page, or — and this is the coolest part — into a professionally bound book, with heavy glossy pages between linen covers.
Stop by Walter Mossberg column, ‘Personal Technology’, and see what else he has to say about iPhoto.
The Mac Observer Spin:
Walter Mossberg is no stranger to Apple’s technology, he write a lot about it, and other technology issues in his columns on the Wall Street Journal. Once upon a time, those columns almost always had a negative slant on Apple and the Mac, but for the last 2 1/2 years, he just hasn’t been able to say enough good things about Apple. That shift is what we in the profession call a “Good Thing.” We have pointed this out on other occassions, but Mr. Mossberg’s opinion carries enormous weight, writing as he does from his perch at the WSJ. His articles put Apple products front and center to those who make decisions to buy from home, office, or a corporation. Good press for good stuff makes Timmy a Mac user.