If you own a Macintosh, or have ever been in an Apple retail store, you’ve likely seen Photo Booth.app. It’s a small application that lets users take some quick pictures of themselves using the iSight camera that’s built into their Mac. The quality of the images isn’t wonderful; the application produces 640px by 480px fuzzy JPEGs. (Here’s an example image. Two external hard drives with a chemistry hipster PDA.)
I love the Mac for many reasons. The design is impeccable, the operating system is stable and feature-rich, and the developer community is strong. Despite all this, I think that Photo Booth has sold more Macs than any true merit of the platform. When I walk around an Apple retail store, I see kids playing with Photo Booth. When I’m browsing Facebook, I find images from Photo Booth.
Although I sound somewhat critical of Photo Booth, I use it daily. It turns my MacBook Pro into a sophisticated mirror. It’s remarkable that such a simple tool is now so pervasive.
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