How about Apple's new goal of evolving the personal computer into the hub of our increasingly digital lifestyle? iMovie was a big step in that direction, with its ability to transform a simple digital camcorder into a tool of unbounded creativity and purpose. (Hey, we didn't really believe the hype either, until we started using it-- but trust us, it really is as good as they say.) Steve's got a point: look around, and everyone's got PDAs and digital cameras and mobile phones and portable MP3 players and... well, you get the idea. Why not make the Mac the perfect personal computer that can link and augment all those gadgets with power and ease of use? Sounds good to us. (Unfortunately, judging by Apple's stock price, Wall Street doesn't necessarily agree-- and that was obviously Steve's real audience.)

All that aside, though, at least Apple's "vision" means we get some cool toys to play with. Specifically, iMusic-- er, iTunes. Hey, c'mon, even Steve slipped up and called it "iMusic" once or twice; we suspect a last-minute name change just to make the rumors sites look bad. Whatever. In any case, we get an Internet radio-playing, portable MP3 player-loading, custom audio CD-burning, crazy trippy light show-producing, MP3-playing and -encoding app... and it's 100% free. With that feature set and at that price, they can call it "iMucus" for all we care; just give us the download link and get out of our way. The only catch is that you have to be running Mac OS 9 to install and use it, but hey, that doesn't seem too much to ask.

Now, iDVD, on the other hand, is a whole different story altogether. In a manner of speaking, it's free, too-- assuming you're willing to shell out $3499 for a high-end Power Mac G4 capable of burning DVDs. While the notion of an easy-to-use DVD authoring tool that can encode video data over twelve times faster than other systems is indeed an attractive one, and while the AtAT staff is absolutely still salivating over the prospect of making our own DVDs, it's not exactly an activity "for the rest of us." Have you seen iDVD in action? It's so easy to use, it's obviously targeted at consumers... heck, that'd be clear even if Apple didn't have a professional app called DVD Studio Pro selling for $995. So how come iDVD is only available in the highest-end of Apple's high-end professional workstations? (Yes, we know it's because that's the only model with the DVD-recording SuperDrive, but you get our drift, right?)

In fact, come to think of it, currently the audio CD-burning component of iTunes is only supposed to work with the CD-RW drives available in Apple's new Power Macs-- yet another example of a consumer-oriented product that requires professionally-targeted hardware, at least for one use. Weird, huh? And while we're dead certain that Apple will add CD-RW drives to the iMac in the not-too-distant future, we can't help but feel that this first push into Apple's destiny of digital hubdom has some ragged edges that need to be smoothed out. That's okay, though; there has to be something left for next month's Tokyo keynote, right?