The press loves shorthand expressions that they can repeat in the headline and/or first two paragraphs; tv news likes them for the headlines on the bottom of the story openers. The problem is, they stick and everyone begins to believe them.
Whether these people create anything substantial is moot; what is important is that they want to. All of the iLife tools let them create something: photos that are cropped correctly and are not sideways, movies with titles that have actual scenes and transitions, and DVDs that they can hand around to goggle-eyed friends and relatives who say "you really did this on that computer of yours?!?". It ain't much, but it's enough to make the user feel happy.
GarageBand will be like this. I saw part of the demo at Macworld Expo this week, and my first reaction was "this is like iPhoto for music novices". Mike dismisses these people, but I'm one of them and I'm quite happy with iPhoto. It has made my digital photography go from bad to passable. I really appreciate that.
After the GarageBand demo, the fellow standing next to me said to his friend "Oh, man, that's sweet. I guess I'll have to spring the $50 for the iLife upgrade." The rest of their conversation made it clear that he's a music novice and wants to play with it to see what comes out.
I expect that GarageBand will help Apple sell a million Macs that it would not have. Those million folks own PCs that are about three or four years old, they need a new computer, and they saw one of the Mac-head friends showing off GarageBand. Those friends will not have created anything wonderful, and the switchers won't either. Doesn't matter: Apple will get a bunch of new users and make money.
Let us not forget 20 years ago. MacPaint sold many of the first Macs. The graphics that those of use created with it were often barely passible, but they were much better than what we were creating with our PCs.
The cruelty of the L&J work is pretty deep. They purposely send to hell many people who were good and generous simply because they didn't claim Jesus as their lord and savior, and save folks who are less good and generous because they made the claim.
When confronted with folks of this ilk, I usually just ask "Where did Jesus talk about that?" and "Which of Jesus' actions makes you think that?" They always take it back to the book of Revalations, and I ask again "did Jesus say that?"
It's amazing how many Christians haven't thought through the huge difference in tone between the beginning and end of the book...
There is no way that a hotel on Vineyard can be without connectivity. They have an excellent local ISP (called vineyard.net, of all things) which was/is run by an ubernerd, Simson Garfinkel. Tell the hotel now that you expect them to have at least a pluggable-in hub, and preferably wireless in the lobby/bar, before you sign next years's contract.
Years ago when I was in the book field (albeit mostly doing dweeb books), and PW was always kissing up to the Big New York Houses, other publishers would refer to it as "Publishers Weak Knees".
Owww! Amazingly bad pun, Patrick.
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