I haven’t blogged for about a week. I’ve been too engrossed with a spurt of creative activity. I thought that I’d share with you how stunned I continue to be by Mac OS X and the incredible productivity gains of using Apple’s tightly integrated application suites like iWorks and iLife.

For example, just a few days ago, I was asked for a 1-page overview of the course I wrote to go alongside my book ‘Next Generation Wireless Applications.’ Actually, the course came first, a few years ago now, and then I wrote the book as a kind of manual for the course, which is a lot better (for the students) than a bunch of course notes. With the new edition of the book comes a new version of the course.

Anyhow, O2 wanted an overview. I’ve run the course for them before, but this is the updated version, which I’m also offering to tailor to their particular requirements. Using Pages, part of the iWorks suite, I was able to create a decent looking brochure-style page and send it back in under an hour, pulling in graphics direct from iPhoto, such as cover art from the book and related imagery. I work with real graphics designers who use Adobe InDesign, a great tool, but aimed at the professionals market. I was able to create something comparable, mostly because of the fantastic design templates that come with Pages and the close integration with the media management of Mac OS X. For example, when pulling in a photo, the mask is already set up in the Pages template. It’s just a case of dragging and dropping the media from iPhoto. I should add that when it comes to creating new designs, I couldn’t do what my designer friends do. The tools aren’t that good!

My interest these days is in how I can use video and animation to communicate. Today, unlike a few years ago, we have the tools to create video and, perhaps more importantly, to share it, whether it’s via YouTube or some other streaming host, courtesy of fatter broadband pipes (notwithstanding that they might not be as fat as we’ve been led to believe).

Again, the Mac proves to be so powerful when it comes to creating video. This stems from their longstanding expertise in this area, mostly due to their QuickTime heritage. It’s so easy on the Mac to move in and out of video. For example, I recently created a storyboard for a 15-minute training video, which I did using Storyboard Quick. This allowed me to create the various scenes, position the actors and so on. I then imported the images into KeyNote so that I could add some motion graphics and, most importantly, a narration from the script that I wrote using the brilliant Scrivener tool. This is a Mac-only app and many writers claim to have switched to Mac OS X just for this app alone. I can believe it. It’s great for scripting and any other writing project. It’s actually a fantastic piece of software put together by a writer who understands the writing process, as opposed to word-processing! I could go on and on about it’s great features. I always have it open, whether putting together a script, a new text book or tinkering with a novel. I used its pinboard/synposis features to create the initial non-graphical storyboard concept, which I presented to the client.

From within KeyNote, I added narration to the storyboard images. I could have done this directly in a video editing package, but with KeyNote I can time the narration exactly with scene advances and I can easily add motion graphics and animated slide shots. This is far more productive than attempting motion graphics in a video editing package. It’s also easy to drag and drop overlay graphics (such as thought bubbles), which I created using Intaglio. Again, OS X drag-and-drop preserves as much formatting as possible, including vector formats so that the imported graphics will still scale without loss of resolution. When I’m done, I simply export the whole show as a QuickTime movie.

From there, if I want, I can take the movie into iMovie (part of iLife) to add titles and so on. In fact, what I wanted to do was use the imported movie as the baseline, including the sound track, which is perfectly synchronised from the KeyNote slide recording feature. I could then re-import some of the still images from Storyboard Quick. This would allow me to add smoother transitions and to add some movement (e.g. Ken Burns Effect) bringing even more life to the storyboard. All this can be done within iMovie, but it’s a little more difficult to manage the timeline in order to ensure that I don’t lose sync with the narration. This led me to upgrade my video editing suite to FinalCut Express. It’s priced for amateur use, but has semi-professional features. Most important of all, it’s tightly integrated with the media capabilities of Mac OS X and the other iWorks, iLife apps, which also means that I can export the finished project back out to iDVD to produce DVD titles and menus and so on.

If this blog post is sounding like an unabashed commercial for Mac OS X and I’m sounding like an Apple groupie, then that’s fine. I don’t mind telling you what a great experience Mac OS X really is. In my profession, I need to focus on creativity, which is where I add value. Creativity is my product. Alongside that, effective communication of ideas is vital. Using the Mac, I have found that I have been able to concentrate on building and expressing my ideas unhindered by tool problems. In the past, I could easily spend 80% of my time on tool issues, leaving 20% to do “real” work. Now, at least on a good day, it’s the other way around.

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