If the reviews are any indication, Apple is headed in the right direction with its new products.
Apple’s new “music jukebox” application, iTunes, is getting very good notices. Bob LeVitus, columnist for the “Houston Chronicle” and MacCentral, says that iTunes rocks. In a Houston Chronicle article, he tells why:
“I spend a lot of time sitting in front of my Mac. I like to listen to music while I work. I don’t like to spend a lot of time searching through CDs on my shelves and changing discs. I don’t usually like every single cut on a CD. iTunes resolves all these issues for me, and does it in a way that’s elegant and appealing. I find myself enjoying this program almost all day, almost every day.”
Meanwhile, one of iTune’s companion products for the “digital lifestyle,” iDVD, has received a thumbs-up from James Lileks in the Minneapolis Star Tribune . Tape is the past; VCRs are the past; DVDs and digital media are next, he said.
“I made digital movies on the iMac with iMovie, and I want to store them on DVDs instead of dumping them down to VHS tapes or leaving them on a hard drive,” Lileks writes. “This is what most PCs will provide some day, but will it be as easy as using iMovie and iDVD? Probably not.”
James Coates of the Chicago Tribune said the CD-RW drive was worth it, “given the fact that the new machines integrate the process of burning disks in the Finder.” And he finds iTunes to be the “icing on the cake” as it is “just about the most elegant and easy to use computer MP3 music playing and recording system.”
And the Titanium PowerBook G4, which has already seen its share of glowing reviews, can add another one to its list. Julio Ojeda-Zapata, staff writer for PioneerPlanet , says you shouldn’t even “think about buying a pedestrian PC until you’ve kicked the tires on this metallic Mac.” If you have at least $2,600 to drop on a portable and Windows isn’t a must, this is the baby to buy, he adds in an online review.
Meanwhile, Peter H. Lewis of Fortune says the Titanium PowerBook “is a very impressive piece of technology. This is not just the coolest laptop on the market, but also the most impressive portable DVD player anywhere, he said.