We are always keen on seeing a bit of positive mainstream press about Apple, and Fortune delivered just such a treat today. The financial and business magazine has published a very positive outlook on Apple’s Macworld San Francisco 2003 product announcements that is fairly gushing with glowing remarks. The author, Brent Schlender, specifically looks at Safari, Keynote, and iLife — Apple’s collection of iDVD, iMovie, iPhoto, and iTunes. The article specifically discusses the ease of use, quality, and usefulness of all of those apps, and kicks off with this intro:
But [Keynote] speeches are ephemeral. What matters are the goods. While Jobs didn’t unveil anything to point Apple or personal computing in a radical new direction, the company is fulfilling its pledge to make the Macintosh into the ultimate digital hub–a machine that enables ordinary people to create, manipulate, and enjoy digital media of all sorts (video, photography, MP3 audio), not to mention browse the web and cook up business presentations as flashy as Jobs’. His speech also underscored how Apple hopes to cash in on its growing software prowess, as much to goose revenues amid an industry slump as to give conventional Windows PC users more reasons to switch to Macs.
Of particular note to much of Fortune’s audience are the comments on Keynote. With so many business people reading the magazine, presentation software is likely important to a much higher percentage of those readers than most other mainstream magazines. Those comments:
Jobs, who has always made most of his presentation slides himself, was almost breathless when introducing his favorite new software–a $99 presentation program called Keynote. He didn’t just show demos of Keynote; he actually used it to organize and illustrate his speech. "They made this just for me," he crowed. It’s probably the most elegant application software Apple has ever created. The cinematic transitions and special effects are similar to those in iMovie, and there’s a suite of subtly beautiful thematic graphics templates, many of which came from iDVD’s menus. It was no surprise when Jobs told me he spends more time using Keynote than any other program on his own Macs.
Check out the full article to get the specific comments on Apple’s software offerings. The piece closes with an interesting look at the time-consuming nature of being creative with Apple’s iApps, and is a good read.
The Mac Observer Spin:
PowerPoint has been the mainstay of presentation software for many years. It’s ubiquity as part of Office has made it a mainstay of the corporate world, and it would be impossible to guesstimate the number of people who have seen a PowerPoint presentation through the years.
What will Windows users from that market think when they read about being able to create elegant presentations with "cinematic transitions and special effects," and "beautiful thematic graphics templates?" It might get them curious about Keynote, and therefore the Mac. To the right audience — Fortune readers, for instance — that could be a powerful, yet subtle, message. Look for an extended editorial on this in the near future from TMO.
In the meanwhile, the overall piece itself offers great exposure to Apple and the Mac platform. That’s always a Good Thing™.