tick tock, tick tock
I think I’m going to have make the iPhone my first* cellphone. Even though it’s the first of it’s kind and I’m always a bit suspicious of the bugginess of such things, I can’t pass up having a “1st gen” iPhone. I wonder if they’ll come out with an iPhone nano!? The iPod was a feature packed, premium priced music player, and then Apple introduced the mini (now nano). I don’t see why they would only have one entrant in the mobile phone industry and not add some variants.
I’ve been hankering to expand my digital suitcase, and the 512 MB shuffle is not the most roomy. While I only listen to an album or two at a given time, the storage capacity and ability to bring large files over to friends’ houses is painfully lacking in my current setup. Sure there’s other ‘smartphones’ out there and there’s large USB drives too, but, c’mon, that touchscreen is awesome!!!
*I did get a prepaid phone a few weeks ago which I’m hobbling on for now, but it’s very temporary (i.e. piece of shit).
Albrecht and Rose of Diggnation
I thought this was interesting. Twice I’ve noticed that during a piece on the Zune, the iPod shuffle has been brought into the conversation.
In chronological order, the guys on the podcast Diggnation were the first to start talking about Zune news but then drift into the coolness of the new iPod shuffle. The two digital audio players are not in the same league, but that doesn’t seem to stop people from interrupting the Zune-time with talk of the iPod shuffle.
The second time it happened was blogged here earlier. Soledad O’Brien busted out her iPod shuffle near the end of a Zune review piece, saying, “why would you buy that (the Zune)?” Dang.
I know monopolies are never good and lead to stagnation, although Apple’s middle name is ‘innovation’, but it seems like nobody can take down the 800 lb. gorilla. But the introduction of the Zune did do one good thing — brought the price of the iPod down a tad.
More fun than the Price Is Right
I’m really enjoying this Mac Heist shareware promoting adventure. It’s full of fictional emails sent to fictional Apple employees that lead to fictional websites with fictional product shots and DMGs. It’s amazing how much detail the people at Mac Heist have put into this scavenger hunt-like game. Fictional personal websites with pictures of family members. Hilarious, albeit Mac nerd-centric, forum posts in the fictional internal website for Apple (like the fake post from Phil Schiller stating he lost his iPod nano somewhere and if anyone sees it, let him know.). Also in the fictional internal Apple website is the Employee Handbook with a rule that states, “All members of Jonathan Ives design team must drive Audi TT’s” playing around with that ‘fancy designer’ stereotype.
There will be multiple heists/puzzles for a few weeks and the loot is free software donated by small developers. I’ll admit the first load of ‘cash’ was not of much use to me, but a high school or college student should appreciate them (3 software items in one heist reward!).
They try to play up the whole clandestine angle, but I think you can get a Mac Heist account with little effort. I got mine while reading a post on TUAW and I think you might even be able to just sign up on the MacHeist website. Once inside, the forums can help you if you get stuck, but don’t spoil the fun for yourself.
I guess registered members get 7 invites to hand out, so I can send out those too. Lemme know.
Some dudes point in front of Vista banner
Well I think this shows what Microsoft thinks of the home consumer. ‘Meh, we’ll get to you when we get a chance.’ Apple LOVES the home consumer, they want to suck your BALLSes they love you so much! Windows Vista is STILL coming out in 2007, it’s the corporate edition (and Office 2007) that’s being released on November 30th. The corporations are more important than you, Joe Living Room.
Make like Windows and crash… on your couch
While downloading some pictures and video clips from my camera, a thought occurred to me: why doesn’t Apple make something like iPhoto but for video clips? I’m not talking about iMovie because that’s not really for organizing your video clip library, it’s more for doing editing and such. I mean something like iPhoto or iTunes, where you organize, and can view all of your movie files all in one place. Right now, iTunes sorta organizes movies, if you want it to, but that’s not really it’s job. iTunes is being quite charitable.
I think Apple should either (a) retool iMovie to include library capabilities yet make it faster on startup, or (b) create another iLife app that gathers and organizes your movies/video clips. Although, quite frankly, there’s too many iLife apps as it is (they’re up to 80 now).
It seems unlike Apple to not address this situation and to put movie file organization into the hands of an application whose job is to organize music. I can hear iTunes now, “What do you want me to do with this movie? But that’s not my job!”
So, with Apple’s “Showtime” event coming up, I’ll predict, along with the pretty much guaranteed movie store, that Apple will move videos off of iTunes’ couch and into some other digs.
Hmm… but then how would the video iPod connect and sync? Damn you Apple and your multimedia device! They just need to combine aspects of iTunes and iMovie – iTuvies.
WWDC 2006
I have to say that after watching the WWDC keynote address, I’m less bummed about the event. The features of Leopard they did show, look awesome… dude. I guess the disappointment of no new products besides Mac Pro and Xserve overshadowed the rest of the keynote even though there were other exciting things revealed. Lots of people had the gut reaction of disappointment after hearing about the things Apple did announce—and yes, not getting a full preview of Leopard as promised was sad—yet there were some really impressive things that did get mentioned. New improvements to old apps as well as completely fresh programs—most of them benefitting from some fancy animation.
Core Animation I wouldn’t think Apple would have another “Core” technology to introduce
after they covered Image, Audio, Video and Core Data. Now they are releasing Core Animation, which, I guess still makes things move, like in video, but is more streamlined with less overhead/code. Any software developer can utilize this slick new feature. One example of Core Animation was compared with the “album-art city” that Apple featured in one of their commercials—you know, the one where all the album covers swirl around and build up a city skyline. Well, they recreated that animation using Core Animation, and what took them 4,000 lines of code to make the video only took 400 lines to do in Core Animation. Less is more. You can set a starting and ending point for your animation, and you can set a keyframe—something that reminds me of Flash, and which made me think how enticing this must appear to multimedia creators from the web who might not be hardcore software people, but who might think twice about software development now. Plus, it just looks cool.
Time Machine Another thing I found to be really cool was Apple’s answer to automated backup—Time Machine. Unlike in Windows ME, Time Machine will backup everything and not just the system files. 
Time Machine uses the Core Animation technology to give that ‘spacey’ look to the background with the stars floating towards you and away from the The Big Bang (the beginning). I can see the hacks from fundamentalists now: the windows appear to be emitting from a little Jesus instead of the singularity. 
On the side of your Time Machine is a column of time through which you can travel, or you can use the arrows to move back in time (gosh that’s a useful theme!) to the point when the folder, or whatever, was last changed. You can select an older or deleted file, click a button and its brought back (forward?) to the present. Marty McFly would be impressed (when he’s not doing hoverboard wall-rides).
WebClips Dashboard got a few updates too—Dashcode for widget-builders, and WebClips for us users. WebClips may just put comic strip widget builders into early retirement. 
Basically, you draw a box around a part of a website and that box becomes a live widget in your Dashboard. If the site updates its, say, comic strip, your widget will also be updated because it basically has the whole webpage in the box, but you’ve cropped it to only show the comic strip. You can also do this with webpages that have live webcams. “Boom,” instant webcam widget. Also, as pictured, you can use this to watch Ebay auctions. Just crop the widget to the auction box, and now you don’t have to open a web browser and navigate to the Ebay site to check you auction, just activate Dashboard and have a look-see.
iChat BackDrop Last but not least is the backdrop feature coming to iChat. Phil Schiller demonstrated how you step out of frame for a moment to let iChat see what’s behind you, then you step back in, choose an image or movie and iChat will eliminate all that wasn’t in that first step. So you become super-imposed onto whatever image/movie you’ve chosen. 
There is a slight halo surrounding you but it’s not a big deal compared to this fun new feature. You can also give slideshows and Keynote presentations while video-chatting. I wish you could do some kind of desktop mirroring so someone could watch what you’re doing as you teach them how to open a port in the Firewall, or something. If you can’t be standing right next to the person and pointing where to click on their screen to do something, it’d be cool if you could let them remotely watch you do it on your desktop.
EDIT Actually, Leopard WILL allow you to remotely share your buddy’s screen with iChat Screen Sharing! Wow, they read my mind. I still don’t fully understand what all you can do with this feature – the make it sound ike you can actually control your friends computer (!) by moving windows, launching programs, etc. Man, I hope this doesn’t open a floodgate of security risks.
Wow. From the coverage I read, it sounds like the keynote address was of the utmost lame. Basically it sounds like Apple is quietly pulling a “Microsoft” and is delaying its OS upgrade until Spring ‘07!!! Granted, this isn’t a four year delay like with Microsoft, but since Apple has been on-time with their previous upgrades, this news sucks balls. AND we didn’t even get a proper preview because Apple supposedly doesn’t want Microsoft to rip off Leopard.
Looks like there was no speed bump with Core 2 Duos. What the hell’s up with that? C’mon Apple you gotta keep up! I suppose they have to redesign and tweek the iMac enclosures each time the put in a new chip that gives off more/less heat and consumes more/less power, but they know Intel’s roadmap—let’s keep up!
I was also wrong about the “kentsfield” chip going into the Mac Pro. I didn’t know Dell and others were putting “woodcrests” into their top-of-the-lines, so I guess it’s good that Apple kept up. Apparently, Phil Schiller showed how the Mac Pro is actually cheaper than an equivalent Dell. I’m taking that with a grain of salt. It sounds like the Mac Pros are extremely customizable and fast!
The Leopard features that they did talk about are “eh” actually pretty cool, mostly. I never got the whole multiple desktops thing from the Linux world, and now Apple is copying it with their Spaces feature. I have a hard enough time finding my open app, I don’t want to think about which ‘desktop’ has my open app on it. If you desktop is cluttered (and you’re too retarded to use Exposé) just hit Command-H to hide unwanted apps.
I dig how realistic the VoiceOver technology has become. Alex is a great example. Finally I can have my Mac read me bedtime stories. I guess the visually-impaired might like it too… I guess.
Not even a fuckin’ “merom” update for the MacBook Pro! C’MON!!!
