Monday
Jun182007
A Weeks Reflection....
Monday, June 18, 2007 at 10:54AM
It's now been a week since WWDC and every blogger and their mother have had chance to vent their spleen on the (allegedly) crushing disappointment that was the SteveNote.
My turn.....
No blow by blow analysis but some key points:
Games - Now that they've got the "my application isn't available for the Mac" issue out of the way, the "Mac doesn't run popular games" can be hit on the head. OK, so some people are beefing the games aren't true OSX ports but if they run and have comparable performance with Windows, so what!
Leopard - I've got to admit to being disappointed that more secret stuff wasn't announced but some thoughts....
"give you a final look at Leopard before it ships in October." Not a look at the final version, a final look! Important!
The feature complete copy of Leopard given to developers at WWDC is given under strict NDA (very strict!) so the version we saw in the keynote is not necessarily the version that the developers have and is definitely not the version that will be delivered in October.
The adoption of coverflow within the Finder and Quicklook should not be viewed in the same light as coverflow within iTunes, they are completely different metaphors. In iTunes, it's there to help you browse your music via the artwork. The artwork is a pointer or prompt to give you a visual reminder of the content. And no, I don't use it either!
In Finder and QuickLook, the image is the content and I can see it being really very useful it helping to visually find stuff and examine in situ.
The jury is out if adopting the iTunes interface for the Finder will help in other areas of file management, we'll have to just wait and see, but I do consider this a deliberate dumbing down of the finder to entice more iTunes savvy switchers to make the jump.
I won't bother going over the stuff we already knew about, and that would be seven of the ten features that Steve re-iterated from last year, but they all looked suitably polished and ready for release.
Safari for Windows - Smart move for both generating additional income from Search in the browser but this obviously ties is with developing cross platform web apps using Safari - now available for Mac. PC and iPhone! PC based businesses wanting to develop a mobile strategy using iPhone won't now feel railroaded in going down the Mac route.
iPhone Development - A bit naughty the way it was positioned as we knew web apps would be available via the browser and it was directed at an audience of primarily Cocoa developers but that's just Apples spin machine in action! Fully understand Apples decision to keep the true apps at bay until after the iPhone has launched and bedded in. No one really seems to have picked up on the fact that Apple are allowing elements of the the iPhone functionality to be utilised by the web apps - making calls, etc? Seems a pretty good compromise solution to me but then I'm not a Cocoa developer.
So all in all, not the major announcements the rumour mills has us all lined up but don't forget, the iPhone launch (the biggest in the companies history) takes us through to June 29th - nearly half way (to the day) through 2007.
That leaves a whole six months to focus on the Mac!
Things we are missing:
Full Leopard functionality: Don't forget, Leopard is not just about software, it's about the integration with the Apple hardware. Apple is in a unique position to develop its OS to seamlessly integrate with its hardware platform and we've heard diddly squat about that. I wonder why?
New Hardware Of course, we'll get new iMacs and Cinema Displays this year, they're both well overdue for a refresh. The funny thing is that they both include display technology. I hate to go into rumour mode but..... What if the iMac and Cinema Displays include some brand new technology that we've not seen before? What if Apple do want to leverage the power of Core Animation and MultiTouch into their new hardware range? They'll need Leopard to provide the software to enable the hardware. I'm still sticking to my prediction I foolishly made back in January during MacWorld in that Apple will be getting into multitouch in a big way on a refreshed Mac platform.
Wouldn't coverflow in Finder be cool if you could swish it with your finger?
Warning - completely unfounded navel gazing/wishful thinking bit: Wouldn't it be great if they extended the Stacks feature into something more 3D like BumpTop and you could use your finger! (Watch the official video then watch the parody - hilarious)
New Software iLife 07 and iWork 07 where are you? Expect Leopard only versions of these apps with stunning core animation features built right in. Looks like a dual launch with Leopard/New Hardware to showcase some of the next gen features.
That's probably enough for now but really, the next six months should be amazing!
PS Love the fact that an unreleased alpha application using an unreleased OS won the Best Mac OS X Leopard Application - Delicious Library 2.0 - check it out. If a third party developer can do all this, imagine what the Apple software developers can do!
My turn.....
No blow by blow analysis but some key points:
Games - Now that they've got the "my application isn't available for the Mac" issue out of the way, the "Mac doesn't run popular games" can be hit on the head. OK, so some people are beefing the games aren't true OSX ports but if they run and have comparable performance with Windows, so what!
Leopard - I've got to admit to being disappointed that more secret stuff wasn't announced but some thoughts....
"give you a final look at Leopard before it ships in October." Not a look at the final version, a final look! Important!
The feature complete copy of Leopard given to developers at WWDC is given under strict NDA (very strict!) so the version we saw in the keynote is not necessarily the version that the developers have and is definitely not the version that will be delivered in October.
The adoption of coverflow within the Finder and Quicklook should not be viewed in the same light as coverflow within iTunes, they are completely different metaphors. In iTunes, it's there to help you browse your music via the artwork. The artwork is a pointer or prompt to give you a visual reminder of the content. And no, I don't use it either!
In Finder and QuickLook, the image is the content and I can see it being really very useful it helping to visually find stuff and examine in situ.
The jury is out if adopting the iTunes interface for the Finder will help in other areas of file management, we'll have to just wait and see, but I do consider this a deliberate dumbing down of the finder to entice more iTunes savvy switchers to make the jump.
I won't bother going over the stuff we already knew about, and that would be seven of the ten features that Steve re-iterated from last year, but they all looked suitably polished and ready for release.
Safari for Windows - Smart move for both generating additional income from Search in the browser but this obviously ties is with developing cross platform web apps using Safari - now available for Mac. PC and iPhone! PC based businesses wanting to develop a mobile strategy using iPhone won't now feel railroaded in going down the Mac route.
iPhone Development - A bit naughty the way it was positioned as we knew web apps would be available via the browser and it was directed at an audience of primarily Cocoa developers but that's just Apples spin machine in action! Fully understand Apples decision to keep the true apps at bay until after the iPhone has launched and bedded in. No one really seems to have picked up on the fact that Apple are allowing elements of the the iPhone functionality to be utilised by the web apps - making calls, etc? Seems a pretty good compromise solution to me but then I'm not a Cocoa developer.
So all in all, not the major announcements the rumour mills has us all lined up but don't forget, the iPhone launch (the biggest in the companies history) takes us through to June 29th - nearly half way (to the day) through 2007.
That leaves a whole six months to focus on the Mac!
Things we are missing:
Full Leopard functionality: Don't forget, Leopard is not just about software, it's about the integration with the Apple hardware. Apple is in a unique position to develop its OS to seamlessly integrate with its hardware platform and we've heard diddly squat about that. I wonder why?
New Hardware Of course, we'll get new iMacs and Cinema Displays this year, they're both well overdue for a refresh. The funny thing is that they both include display technology. I hate to go into rumour mode but..... What if the iMac and Cinema Displays include some brand new technology that we've not seen before? What if Apple do want to leverage the power of Core Animation and MultiTouch into their new hardware range? They'll need Leopard to provide the software to enable the hardware. I'm still sticking to my prediction I foolishly made back in January during MacWorld in that Apple will be getting into multitouch in a big way on a refreshed Mac platform.
Wouldn't coverflow in Finder be cool if you could swish it with your finger?
Warning - completely unfounded navel gazing/wishful thinking bit: Wouldn't it be great if they extended the Stacks feature into something more 3D like BumpTop and you could use your finger! (Watch the official video then watch the parody - hilarious)
New Software iLife 07 and iWork 07 where are you? Expect Leopard only versions of these apps with stunning core animation features built right in. Looks like a dual launch with Leopard/New Hardware to showcase some of the next gen features.
That's probably enough for now but really, the next six months should be amazing!
PS Love the fact that an unreleased alpha application using an unreleased OS won the Best Mac OS X Leopard Application - Delicious Library 2.0 - check it out. If a third party developer can do all this, imagine what the Apple software developers can do!
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iMac, Apple, Leopard, wwdc2007, iPhone
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