Digital Life

The Mac has landed.

I'm referring to the Mac mini, the latest wonder from Apple computers, which formally had its marketing debut in Cebu last June 18. I anticipated it in this column, early this year, to give PCs a good competition after Apple’s Steve Jobs launched it (without the usual embarrassing glitch that often happen to Microsoft's Bill Gates during product launches).

Already, I know some friends who are buying it. DreamTech Enterprises, the authorized reseller and Service Center owned by Robert lee was offering a promotional package of either a free Mac keyboard or mouse with every purchase of the diminutive Mac. At a price of a PC, one gets to own a Mac.

But better than PCs, it has its ilife features, attuned to contemporary digital lifestyle, as well as PC applications like Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer. You can even run Windows as an application in the Mac.

Mac was the first to give people a more integrated and organized approach to modem digital living with the launching of Mac OS X that introduced iTunes, iDVD, iFotos. It sees the computer as the hub for digital equipments that have become indispensable to us, giving users a more systematic utilization of these gadgets. Now, it even gets better with the Tiger, the Mac’s latest operating system, with its real time search capability, among other new features.

It's a new world. We are in a new age. The byword today is digital integration and creative expression using the available technology. In a talk before some college students recently, I said this is the age of the individual. No other time in man's history has man been so free to express himself or herself. Where before, big organizations were needed to produce a film, music, publications, etc., now one can produce these in one's own garage or backyard. Thus, allowing for a freer and more creative and daring self-expression.

As I write this, I’m listening to Alicia Keys, one of the featured artists in a music CD from McDonald’s. Yes, the fast-food chain. They have produced a collection of hit songs from both foreign male and female artists. Here in Cebu they have launched a talent search for the best RnB singer dubbed, 'The Next Best Thing'. One just have to submit a recording to McDonald’s of one's RnB song and have a chance to be a music star (the winner being assured of a recording contract with Vicor.)

Everybody is living the digital lifestyle. And even big old corporations are reengineering. Individuals can make the difference in an organization provided it has a mechanism for allowing new ideas to set in. McDonald's latest marketing strategy, like that of Apple is acknowledging the new reality.

We're seeing the passing of an old world giving way to a new one. A generation of pioneering spirits in the I.T. industry are now seeing and welcoming the entry of a whole new generation born and bred on a digital world.

Just recently I was going over my son Joshua's books and came across Headstart, a computer literacy work text for Grade School. I browsed the book and was amused that the basic computer course I was taught in college for a semester, a few years ago, are now taught to my son, and he's still in Grade Two. Hopefully, he will be learning more with the real McCoy – the Mac that launched the digital revolution some twenty years ago.