Apple's Bumper Crop Steve Jobs brought out a bushel of cool new stuff at Macworld--if Apple keeps this up, its core business might just end up being software.
By Brent Schlender

(FORTUNE Magazine) – A couple of weeks ago Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs bounded onstage at the Macworld trade show in San Francisco to engage once again in his unique brand of performance art--the keynote speech. This was his 20th or so such gig since returning to Apple in 1997, and the production values had never been slicker as he demoed new or improved software and rhapsodized about flashy new laptops (see box). He was so compelling that it's tempting to review the show rather than the products he plugged.

But 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.

The centerpiece was iLife, a bundle of upgraded versions of previously released software--iMovie for editing video, iPhoto for working with digital photos, iDVD for burning multi-media content onto discs playable on TV, plus iTunes 3, Apple's current MP3 software. More than the sum of its parts, iLife puts the "multi" back into multimedia, making it easy to mix and match music, pictures, and video in a single production. Previously users had to rummage through their Macs to find, say, Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild" for the soundtrack to a slide show or to select still photos to put into a movie. Now each iLife component can reach directly into the others' archives. In a sense, iLife is to do-it-yourself multimedia what Microsoft Office is to business documents.

Each program has been souped up. iPhoto now makes it possible to retouch photos and correct for color and contrast rather than rely on a third party like Adobe's Photoshop. iMovie has a new feature called the Ken Burns Effect (it lets you pan across photos to create the illusion of motion the way Burns does in his documentaries) and more-sophisticated sound editing. iDVD makes it easier than ever to transfer movies and slide shows to disc, with professional-looking navigation menus that can be viewed on the TV via a standard DVD player. While there are many video editors, photo managers, and MP3 jukeboxes for Windows PCs, and they continue to improve, iLife keeps the Mac comfortably ahead in terms of features and, especially, ease of use.

The iLife package will be preloaded on all new Macs. For existing Mac users, iMovie, iPhoto, and iTunes can be downloaded free from www.apple.com. iDVD, however, will cost $49, ostensibly because it's so large it has to be delivered on CD-ROM. (The same disc will also contain the other iLife programs.) Sounds a little fishy to many Mac users, but given the quality of the software, $49 is a bargain. And of course there's another catch--iLife will run only on Macs loaded with Apple's OS X 10.2 operating system.

Next, Jobs showed off Safari, a turbocharged Internet browser that operates exclusively on Macs running OS X. For several years Jobs & Co. had hoped that the Internet could be a great equalizer in its quest to grow its market share--less than 4% in the U.S., just over 2% worldwide--because more and more computing tasks, particularly in business, are handled via a web browser. But it hasn't happened, in part because Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape's Navigator run noticeably more slowly on Macs. Hence Safari, another free download, which not only outperforms IE and Navigator but also is easier to customize and can block pop-up ads.

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.

Which proves my next point. As easy and as much fun as it is to cook up a video or photo album or DVD with iLife (or a speech with Keynote), it's also incredibly time-consuming. Last year, for the 50th birthday party of FORTUNE columnist (and my old friend) Stewart Alsop, I made a 15-minute video roast that included still photos, videoclips, background music, sound effects, and as many sight gags as I could fit. Satisfying as the experience was--especially when I showed it to the 100 or so guests--the reality is, I spent nearly 80 hours on it: downloading and editing pictures with iPhoto also can eat up days, as does converting your CD collection to iTunes. (It took me three months of evenings and weekends to rip my collection of 2,500 CDs onto a 120GB hard-disk so I could use my iPod to listen to them.) Apple's new software is a pleasure, but let's face it: To even begin to get the full benefit, you have to have a top-of-the line Mac, a gargantuan hard disk, and lots of time to burn. And it helps to be as obsessive about production values as Steve Jobs himself.

Feedback? bschlender@fortunemail.com