Well, I've said right from the beginning that if digital photography is ten percent about taking pictures and ninety percent about what you do with them after you get them into the computer, then digital video is one percent about shooting footage, and ninety-nine percent about what you do after that. And while far too large a segment of digital camera owners have completely missed the point of a digital camera by merely turning around an printing their photos and then calling it a day, there's really no equivalent mistake to be made when it comes to digital video. Once you shoot your footage, you pretty much either find a way to do something meaningful with it that involves a computer, or that camcorder sits on a shelf and never gets used again. And it's far too expensive of a device to just leave it sitting on a shelf.
Sooner or later, digital camcorder owners everywhere are going to decide that they're going to figure out how to get their footage into their computer and do something worthwhile with it, if it kills them. The other ninety-nine percent of the digital video experience is going to elude them no more. And fortunately for Apple, the Macintosh absolutely owns the space in which that ninety-nine percent lies.
Unfortunately, many Windows users will never figure that last part out, instead laboring away forever on pitiful consumer digital video software solutions while tripping over hardware messes. They'll either toil unhappily forever, or end up putting their camcorder back on the shelf after all. But other Windows users will, in fact, figure out that not everyone is finding consumer-level digital video as unfulfilling of an experience as they are. In other words, they'll catch on to the fact that anyone serious about getting any value out of their digital camcorder simply must upgrade to the Macintosh platform. And a number of them will. A number of them already have.
But if Apple has been able to predict the face of the digital media future with near-perfect accuracy, the company's timing has been a bit backwards. Of music, pictures, and movies, Apple went after the last and most complicated of the three first. Sure, the existence of iMovie and the lack of anything comparable on the Windows side mandated that digital camcorder owners switch to the Mac in order to get any value out of their investment, but back in 1999, just how many digital camcorder owners were there?
Not nearly enough. Never underestimate the general public's continual failure to realize that the digital experience requires digital equipment. I can remember showing off iMovie to friends and colleagues back when it was still a new concept, and nearly every one of them couldn't wait to ask if it would work with their non-digital camcorder. Sure, the answer was technically yes, but not without throwing enough money and frustration at making it work, that it wouldn't have been worth it to most of them. I could see that iMovie simply wasn't going to have a widespread impact on the general public until we reached the point where more of them actually owned a digital camcorder. The iMovie miracle would have to wait until the days of analog camcorders had come and gone.
But with Canon's announcement, it would appear that we've finally reached that point. Five years and four versions of iMovie later, there are finally going to be heaps of Windows users who are going to find that their digital camcorder is almost a complete waste of money until they pick up a Macintosh computer to go with it. Apple doesn't need all of them to figure it out, just enough of them so that the MacOS X user base will grow even more impressively quickly than it already has been growing, and those worry-warts out there who completely misunderstand the meaning of "marketshare" will be silenced as well.
So what of all those Windows users already out there with digital cameras, who have yet to figure out that they need a Macintosh to make their digital camera a useful item, because so far they haven't gotten past their bizarre, expensive, and unfortunate obsession with merely printing them out? I think eventually, the general public will finally come around on this issue. Whether it's because they'll all go bankrupt from buying ink, or because they'll simply decide that they want to do more with their photos than sticking with same old, tired motif of putting them onto a piece of paper that's been with us for the past century. And when the public finally reaches that level of maturity, iPhoto and the Macintosh will be waiting in the wings for them, as well.
Yesterday, I wrote that digital music is Apple's way of putting an Apple product into the hands of Windows users, so that they can plainly see that Apple products are, in fact, usable and preferable. But digital photography and digital video are the carrots that Apple can then turn around and dangle in front of those same Windows users: "Hey guys, now that you've seen what the iPod (an Apple digital device) can do for you, how about getting an Apple computer so that you can finally begin using your other digital devices to their full potential?"
It's not anything necessarily new. iMovie has been with us since 1999, iPhoto since 2002. But as the number of digital camcorder owners is about to grow exponentially, and as the hordes of digital camera owners figure out that there's more to life than printing photos, Apple will be there waiting for them. And the iPod will be right there the whole time, driving the masses into Apple's waiting arms.
The digital revolution is about to go mainstream, and the Statue of Digital Liberty is drinking bottled water and wearing a black mock turtleneck.
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