Apple released a slew of Mac-related products on August 7 and after using a few of them already, I figured I would take the time to comment on the products themselves, as well as the strategy Apple is taking.

First, the ‘new’ iMac is new.  Sort of.  Yes, it has a redesigned keyboard and is now in a very professional, metal casing.  And the new iMac has a glossy screen, just like the Macbooks.  And it’s smaller.  But all in all, this is not the machine I was hoping for.  Performance-wise, the iMac is just as blazingly fast as ever and is a real competitor to other products out there.  However, the form factor hasn’t really changed in several years and I was hoping for, and indeed expecting, something radically new that would push the bounds of computing today as we know it.  I guess we got that with the iPhone and Apple’s designers need a rest for now.

Apple finally released some important software about eight months later than expected, iWork ’08 and iLife ’08.  We were led to believe that both of these products were pushed back because the software was heavily tied to new features and technologies only available in Leopard.  With this wee’s release, we now know that this isn’t the case and that leaves me a bit disappointed.  Let me elaborate.

First, iWork is a mixture of feelings.  Numbers finally made it’s debut, and a rather strong one at that.  I have used the software for about 30 minutes and it seems to be a robust and very elegant spreadsheet application.  Way better than Excel has ever hoped to be.  But Pages gained only marginal features (read: changes tracking) and poor Keynote just gained some new transitions and templates.  That’s not really a new release at all folks, who are we kidding?  UPDATE: Somehow I missed the ‘instant-alpha’ feature, to instantly erase backgrounds from images.  I haven’t tried this feature out yet.

When reading over the presentation notes, I was initially excited about one announcement in particular.  iMovie.  Not because I use iMovie that often, au contraire.  I was excited because I saw the phrase ‘video library’.  Jobs was on stage telling viewers that iMovie wasn’t really iMovie anymore, that it had been rewritten from the ground-up based on a new workflow and had gained a horrid icon.  But I was excited.  iTunes just isn’t designed to manage my video library.  And I thought that Apple had finally decided to fill this need with a new iMovie.  After reading more about the software, I realized that this wasn’t the case at all.  However, the software does seem promising and takes a new approach to film-editing.

For the other iLife applications, I can’t think of anything to say.  iTunes saw no update, apparently iTunes is no longer part of iLife in any shape or form.  iPhoto saw significant updates, using the term ‘event’ quite a lot, but I’m not interested in this update either.  Garageband gained 24-bit audio support and a live band feature, but nothing as groundbreaking as the previous release with iLife ’06.  Oh, and iDVD received new themes.

It was exciting initially for Apple to release so many Mac products and let us know that the iPhone and the iPod are important, but not the only thing Apple does.  However, I feel like a lot was left out of this release at the same time and that projects were stalled and then hurried out the door to make a deadline, with a lot of features left out just to make some marketing buzz.

I’m just a little disappointed, but I’ll let you know more when my copy of iLife ’08 arrives.