Chris's Profile

I love the idea of having an application like the "Animator" app you described added to the iLife suite. Something that allows novices such as myself to experiment with creating short animations, but is as easy to use as Garage Band would be great. If anyone knows of something similar out there floating around in the Ether now (either open source or low cost) please let me know--I would love to experiment a bit. Cheers

In my opinion Apple released their most important OS to date back in August of 2002. It was at this time that Apple released what was their first true fully-functional version of OS X. That release was version 10.2, or the Jaguar version, as it was more commonly known. There are many reasons why I've chosen OS X, and that specific version in particular, to be the most important Macintosh operating system to date, but to sum them all up in a very overused former Apple marketing slogan--and a mantra recently assimilated into the Microsoft corporate culture--"It just works". Now, I know that other renditions of Macintosh's venerable operating system probably had more influence--after all, without the early Macintosh computer, Windows could still be command line driven today--however, one could also argue that these OS's were ahead of the game, merely ushering in the inevitable computing future. But, ohhhh, OS X in all your beautiful glory and Unix underpinings, how great you are for both neophytes and hackers alike, not to mention all those business profressionals, scientists, engineers, ... The real reason I name OS X the most important system that Apple has ever released is because they nailed everything for every user. For business users (arguably the majority of computer users) you had all the office applications you needed, from MS Office to QuickBooks. Not to mention it was finally easier to put a Mac up on a Windows-based network than it was to put a Windows machine on it. For hackers and computer scientists, OS X had all the power of Unix as well as its Open Source compadres. For scientists and academics OS X combined both of the aforementioned qualities to form a computer on which a researcher could do their research and actually write up the results on one PC. For families you could now keep all your home movies, pictures, journals, everything in one place and it made it fun to do so. The real power in OS X was that no longer would anyone need multiple computer--for the first time ever you could do everything on one machine. It was in August of 2002 when I realized this for myself. For the first time ever I could get rid of my multiple operating systems. No more Windows for Office and Linux for programming. From that moment I was finally able to do everything in one place. And not only did Apple finally make the one machine to do everything, but they made doing everything fun. Everything I do on my Mac is entertaining, while everything I do on Windows is work--or at least that's how it always feels. So, OS X gets my vote because it is the be all...end all, the alpha and the omega, its everything in one and its also fun to boot. OS X has everything necessary to satisfy every computer user and it does so in a way that just makes you smile.