Suppose you a have a hectic lifestyle. Most of your daily prime time and energy go into your main occupation and personal or family obligations. Then, of the one or two hours left to do the things you love, you only have a few minutes left every day to retouch photos and videos, and to publish them to your family album online on a website somewhere.
The last thing you need is having to re-boot your computer system, force-quit and restart a locked application, or what’s even worse, call it a day without making any tangible progress.
It was said in the 80s, that XXI century personal computing would have evolved to guarantee predictable levels of reliability, efficiency, and ease of use to the end-user, right?
Well… it depends.
If you’ve been running Windows apps lately and tried to manage digital photography, video and audio editing, music sequencing, web design, or even more complex multimedia development, it is very likely that you’ve been feeling short changed by technology. Lots of promise on paper, little to show in bits.
If you are technically inclined and with substantial experience in computer technology, my statement may not necessarily apply to you, but for the average user of personal computers, the concept of a “digital hub” first proposed and popularized by Steve Jobs appears to be delivering on that promise. And a little better than most other consumer solutions I’ve tried in the Windows and Linux worlds.
It is not the ‘perfect’ solution for everyone in every possible way, but it comes close.
Personally, I’ve tried managing digital media in several different ways, but it’s been by using mostly software created for Apple’s Mac OS X and Macintosh computers, that I’ve been able to ‘predict’ how long it could take me to produce deliverables and meet project deadlines with scary accuracy.
The overall hardware/software combinations I’ve used have varied over time, but overall they been surprisingly stable and consistent.
In one little box, like the Mac Mini for instance, a user would get everything needed to begin building memorable multimedia artifacts that over time, could become the best digital legacy to leave to family and friends.
Mac OS X, iLife, JAlbum, a few small image/audio/video editing apps for very specific tasks, shareware and some utilities, and voilá, you too could become a not so amateurish publisher of digital media.
Trust me, you’ll still get enough sleep to be functional in the morning.
